Save the Internet’s Marxian Slip

Posted by Richard Bennett

Reading blogs about network neutrality is a never-ending source of fun. This comment from the Save the Internet Blog about Verizon’s open wireless network is choice:

Verizon customers will be able to use non-Verizon cell phones and applications like GPS, but what about the rest of us?
What about the rest of us non-customers indeed.
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The Nemertes Study

Posted by Richard Bennett

Nemertes Research speculates that investment in residential networks isn’t keeping pace with user demand for bandwidth, hence a bandwidth crunch will come about in 2010 or so. Their method is to assume that bandwidth appetite follows Moore’s Law and investment is linear, therefore the lines have to cross.
They may very well cross, but their [...]

Verizon’s Open Cell Network

Posted by Richard Bennett

This is impressive:

Verizon Wireless today announced that it will provide customers the option to use, on its nationwide wireless network, wireless devices, software and applications not offered by the company. Verizon Wireless plans to have this new choice available to customers throughout the country by the end of 2008.
Does it signal VZ’s intention to bid [...]

DOCSIS vs. BitTorrent

Posted by Richard Bennett

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned an academic paper on cable modem (DOCSIS) – TCP interaction which highlighted a couple of problems. The authors maintain that web browsing doesn’t interact efficiently with DOCSIS, and that DOCSIS is vulnerable to a DoS attack based on packet rate rather than data volume. DOCSIS mechanisms that cap [...]

The Comcast Net Neutrality Controversy: A Discussion

Posted by Richard Bennett

The Heritage Foundation has graciously transcribed the discussion we had a couple of weeks ago on Comcast, featuring Adam Thierer, Jerry Brito, Ed Felten, James L. Gattuso and yours truly.
The Comcast Net Neutrality Controversy: A Discussion
On October 25, the Technology Liberation Front, a technology policy weblog, hosted an online discussion concerning recent actions [...]

The End of the Stupid Network

Posted by Richard Bennett

Writing in EE Times, Mobidia CEO Fay Arjomandi offers suggestions for managing IP traffic on wireless networks with QoS:

Achieving the best results requires the mobile device to participate with the carrier network as an active and intelligent element so that it can share the responsibilities of network traffic delivery management in a wireless-friendly manner. A [...]

Tit-for-Tat on BitTorrent over Comcast

Posted by Richard Bennett

Hiawatha Bray writes a nice, balanced column on legislative efforts to revive net neutrality over the Comcast thing. Highlight:

Comcast senior vice president Mitch Bowling said that BitTorrent users absorb a disproportionate amount of network capacity. That makes it necessary to throttle back BitTorrent transfers so that e-mails and other Internet traffic can get through. Bowling [...]

Web Hog!

Posted by Richard Bennett

George Ou takes up the Comcast kerfuffle in today’s blog, providing a more comprehensive view than you’ll find anywhere else, if I say so myself.
He also has a YouTube link to the great SBC Web Hog commercial, suddenly relevant amidst the demands for infinite bandwidth.

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Telecom Regulators Eye the Internet

Posted by Richard Bennett

(Note: A slightly revised version of this post is in The Register, titled Harold and Kumar Go to Comcastle.)
As expected, the coalition of the frustrated who comprise Save the Internet! have filed a multi-trillion dollar complaint with the FCC regarding Comcast’s blatant exercise of, um, reasonable network management. The key fact seems to be this: [...]

The Internet’s Big Idea (part 2)

Posted by Richard Bennett

In the first part of this series I tried to explain that pooling communications bandwidth is the central fact of Internet architecture, and that the problem raised by pooling – fairness – hasn’t been resolved in the general sense. The Internet has a mechanism that prevents it from becoming unstable, but that mechanism (TCP backoff) [...]