Public Knowledge blows it

A grad student in media studies named Bill Herman makes an earnest attempt to rationalize Snowe-Dorgan for Public Knowledge and fails miserably: For instance, what in the Snowe-Dorgan proposal, S 2917, mandates a specific internet architecture? The text is remarkably free of techno jargon. It forbids the blocking or degrading of legal net traffic, but … Continue reading “Public Knowledge blows it”

A grad student in media studies named Bill Herman makes an earnest attempt to rationalize Snowe-Dorgan for Public Knowledge and fails miserably:

For instance, what in the Snowe-Dorgan proposal, S 2917, mandates a specific internet architecture? The text is remarkably free of techno jargon. It forbids the blocking or degrading of legal net traffic, but it specifically authorizes companies to prioritize packets. If VoIP and streaming video need a smarter network, companies can build that smarter network. They just cannot charge extra for delivery of those specific services.

Technical people schooled in network protocols in general and priority-based QoS see the hole in his argument instantly: Priority-based QoS isn’t something you can give to everybody. There are a very limited set of time slots available on any network segment for low-latency delivery, and the only way we have to guarantee QoS to limit the number of QoS users at each segment in the routes we find for QoS. And that implies some sort of queue policing, which in general is triggered by a service contract.

So Snowe-Dorgan does mandate an architecture for datalinks and network segments, and it just so happens that the architecture it mandates is out of step with all new networks engineered in the past 10 years: WMM for WiFi, MBOA UWB, IEEE 802.15.3a UWB, WiMax, and even DOCSIS. Network engineers know this stuff, but media critics don’t.

As far as the “strike now while the iron is hot” argument goes, the argument for taking rash action because the issue will soon fade from public interest is the best argument for doing nothing we could possibly have. If the predictions of abuse the pro-regulation neutralists have made come true, the issue will certainly not fade from the public’s attention; that only happens if the predictions of abuse don’t materialize.

The neutralists have put themselves between a rock and hard place by making these hysterical claims, by the way. If nothing happens on the regulation front this year and these dire predictions fail to materialize, their credibility will certainly be damaged, perhaps permanently.

See the Ed Felton paper for the background on Herman’s complaints. The paper has a number of smallish technical errors, but reaches the right conclusion anyway.

6 thoughts on “Public Knowledge blows it”

  1. Could someone elaborate on the “smallish technical errors” in Professor Fulton’s paper?

  2. If VoIP and streaming video need a smarter network, companies can build that smarter network. They just cannot charge extra for delivery of those specific services.

    Would free QoS even work if ISPs had to give them away for free? Businesses and users will lazily or greedily overstate the QoS that they need for their applications. If an ISP refuses their QoS requests, the ISP would probably be sued or prosecuted for a “violation of net neutrality.” Futhermore, users would have little incentive to not overuse QoS connections. For example, they might leave their HDTVs on or leave their VVoIP connections open.

  3. Could someone elaborate on the “smallish technical errors” in Professor Fulton’s paper?

    One of them revolves around the difference between TCP and UDP.

    In this example, he describes the behavior of TCP:

    This is a very indirect way of coping with congestion—drop packets, wait for endpoint computers to notice the missing packets, and respond by slowing down—but it works pretty well.

    But doesn’t realize that not all applications use TCP, some use UDP where there are no backoff, sliding windows or other flow control mechanisms. Unfortunately, VOIP is an application that uses UDP primarily 😉

    Also take into consideration that the network community has realized for awhile the TCP is not very efficient and has many problems of it’s own. It was built for a time when the Internet was much less reliable, and has been reworked frequently to deal with it’s performance related shortcomings. It’s sort of the X.25 of the IP world because of that.

    He also seems at various times to confuse two different types of QoS. There are guaranteed services, and then there are priority/ differentiated services. He clarifies this somewhat by saying he’s only talking about guaranteed services as being QoS, fair enough point.

    But in the networking world, you can user either or both together to get the same practical effects, depending on the situation. There are variations in the QoS world that are more complicated than just switching it on or off.

    Plus, the Internet is growing. Right now, Consumer grade VOIP is mostly a toy. People expect better reliablity out of their land lines than their Cellphones, and a Pizza Joint that relies heavily on delivery orders will require that same level of wireline reliability.

  4. The “error” you point to is just a decision on my part to simplify the explanation for nontechnical readers. If you want to write a short paper that nontechies will be willing and able to understand, you have to leave some things out. The congestion control discussion is about the cooperative nature of TCP backoff. For that purpose it’s enough to know that TCP works that way, and there is lots of TCP traffic.

  5. That’s always a challenge, of course. Given that Snowe-Dorgan bans for-fee QoS, I would emphasize why that’s a technically infeasible approach, Ed.

  6. “Would free QoS even work if ISPs had to give them away for free? Businesses and users will lazily or greedily overstate the QoS that they need for their applications. If an ISP refuses their QoS requests, the ISP would probably be sued or prosecuted for a “violation of net neutrality.” Furthermore, users would have little incentive to not overuse QoS connections. For example, they might leave their HDTVs on or leave their VVoIP connections open.”

    MnZ, you hit the nail on the head!

    Oh but we can’t be doing “deep packet inspection” now can we. Remember if we have to look at the source or destination and the routers interact (collude with BGP in any way), we can’t call it the “Internet” according to DPSProject.

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