Zoe Lofgren spins tall tails about the Judiciary Committee’s bid for power, making the grandiose claim that it saves the Internet:
The bill requires broadband providers to operate their networks in a non-discriminatory manner and makes sure that the phone and cable companies cannot favor or block access to the Web sites or online services that they pick instead of the consumer. It will keep the Internet an open and free marketplace of ideas and services chosen by consumers instead of big corporations. It will also guard against those who own “the pipes” gleaning profits by creating a virtual toll road.
What it really does is apparent from the bill’s actual text:
If a broadband network provider prioritizes or offers enhanced quality of service to data of a particular type, it must prioritize or offer enhanced quality of service to all data of that type (regardless of the origin or ownership of such data) without imposing a surcharge or other consideration for such prioritization or enhanced quality of service.
It bans performance levels and pricing flexibility, making the Internet a truly one-size-fits-all network, except for one big thing: companies like Google who have private feeder networks attached to the public Internet will still be able to buy faster connections and control the flow of information on the public Internet. So in the name of creating a “level-playing field” (quoting another moron, Craig Newmark) it actually creates a status quo where the guy with the fattest pipe controls the network, and nobody can do a damn thing about it. Unintended consequences, anybody? Not inintended for Google, those freedom-hating bastards know exactly where they’re going.
Lofgren was last seen in these parts pushing the silly V-chip, the device that’s supposed to raise your children for you by blocking undesirable TV shows. Her grasp on reality hasn’t improved any, nor has her consistency.
What happens to an ISP that wants to sell an Internet V-chip to heroic single mothers working three jobs to make ends meet and unable to monitor their daughters’ access to pedophile-friendly web sites and chat rooms? Why, they would go to jail, of course, because they would have to filter and block certain web sites.
Back to the ole drawing board, Zoe.
Okay, I’m calling bull***t here. Ever heard of NetNanny? How about WebSense? How about any one of a thousand Internet filtering tools, ranging from free to enterprise-class?
Why in the name of Bob Saget would you want an ISP to filter content? That’s like having the water company decide when your lawn needs sprinkling and turning the irrigation system on and off as needed.
Let’s get this straight: the ISPs are in the bit-moving business.
Letting them delve into application- and content-filtering is opening Pandora’s box for a pure, unmitigated disaster.
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. The ISPs are not in the bit-moving business, they’re a carryover from the days of dialup. They provide you with an address, a DNS, a default route, and an e-mail account. The broadband network provider moves the packets (the Internet isn’t about “bits”, dude, it’s a packet network.)
And I can think of plenty reasons for the heroic single mom to ask the ISP to filter and block web sites for her, not the least of which is to ensure the filtering doesn’t get circumvented by Jr. and her buddies.
And just to be clear, NSPs have been in the filtering business since Day 2 of the Internet, when they adopted Active Queue Management to prevent Internet Meltdown.
Under Lofgren’s system, the guy with the fattest pipe controls the net, pure and simple.
When you’re refering to a carryover, do you mean AOL? “AOL offered plenty of its own online content, it walled off the greater Internet.” – PC World. ISPs aren’t carryovers from the days of dial-up, they’re an escape from AOL’s way of handling the internet. Some ISPs don’t even supply you with an email address and as for them not being in the bit-moving business, packets are comprised of bits, “dude”.
Why should it matter if someone pays good money for their own connections to the public? What about someone hosting a website out of their home? What difference is there between them and Google? Should everyone be given these huge “pipes” to keep a “level-playing field”? It seems that’s what you’re arguing.
Doug should listen to my two-part interview with the Security Catalyst on botnets (part two should be up in the next few days). I don’t think the botnet problem is likely to be well-addressed *unless* ISPs develop the ability to detect and quarantine bot-infected hosts. 99+% of bots are consumer Windows boxes. Most end users aren’t going to do it, and they’re not going to pay a third party to help them do it. Only the ISP and OS vendor are in a position to make a difference, and only the ISP has the leverage to push the consumer to remediate by blocking service to those who don’t.
Richard’s point about filtering is also a good one–kids can get around parental controls on the box more easily than parental controls in the network. Also, spam filtering works better at the ISP’s mail server than at the end user’s host–there are more options and the end user’s bandwidth and processing power doesn’t get consumed.
kickeside89, let’s not rewrite history, OK? AOL got started when the Internet was the walled garden, shut off from commercial access. AOL provided its customers with the only Internet access they could, Usenet and e-mail, before the Web was invented. Other dial-up services of the day were similar: Compuserve, The Source, et. al. When it become legal for AOL to offer their customers access to the Internet, and the Web made the Internet something worth connecting to, the walled garden was opened.
Packets are composed of bytes, and not all bytes in a packet are created equal. Some are address bytes and some are control bytes, and they have more significance to the forwarding service than the payload does.
The TCP model of networking is flawed because it fails to recognize that packets need different handling based on the nature of the applications they serve. TCP is fascist networking that only supports one application – the so-called “careful file transfer” — at all well.