Category: Net Neutrality

FCC Hearing at Carnegie Mellon

Here’s the witness list for the July 21st FCC hearing at CMU: 4:00 p.m. Welcome/Opening Remarks 4:30 p.m. Panel Discussion 1 – The Future of Digital Media Panelists: Mark Cuban, Chairman & Co Founder HDNet, Owner – Dallas Mavericks Jon Peha, Professor, Department of Engineering and Public Policy, and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, … Continue reading “FCC Hearing at Carnegie Mellon”

Here’s the witness list for the July 21st FCC hearing at CMU:

4:00 p.m. Welcome/Opening Remarks
4:30 p.m. Panel Discussion 1 – The Future of Digital Media
Panelists:

Mark Cuban, Chairman & Co Founder HDNet, Owner – Dallas Mavericks
Jon Peha, Professor, Department of Engineering and Public Policy, and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University
Mark Cavicchia, CEO, Founder & Director, WhereverTV
Matthew Polka, President & CEO, American Cable Association
Jake Witherell, Sim Ops Studios
John Heffner, Conviva
Representative, You Tube

5:30 p.m. Panel Discussion 2 – The Broadband of Tomorrow
Panelists:

David Farber, Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science and Public Policy, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
Rahul Tongia, Senior Systems Scientist, Program on Computation, Organizations, and Society, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
Robert W. Quinn, Jr., Senior Vice President – Federal Regulatory, AT&T, Inc.
Rey Ramsey, Chairman & CEO, One Economy Corporation
Rendall Harper, Board Member, Wireless Neighborhoods
Scott Wallsten, Vice President for Research and Senior Fellow, Technology Policy Institute
Marge Krueger, Administrative Director, Communications Workers of America District 13

6:30 p.m. Public Comment Period
8:30 p.m. Adjournment

A live web cast of the hearing will be available to the public on the FCC’s website at: http://www.fcc.gov/realaudio/#jul21 — you may also go to “FCC Meetings” from the homepage and then click on FCC Audio/Video events to access the web cast.

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One significant detail: Google is breaking its silence on Net Neutrality Phase II by having its YouTube division speak. Another interesting thing is that Prof. Jon Peha gets a second bite at the apple. He’s the guy who made significantly false testimony at the Stanford hearing on the relationship of TCP Resets and BitTorrent transactions. I hope he corrects his former misstatements of fact.

Mark Cuban is always entertaining, but I imagine Prof. Farber will show the most insight.

Free Press doesn’t want you to read this

Speaking of censorship, what are we to make of Free Press’ censorship of hostile opinions on its “Save the Internet” blog? Clearly, they have the right to remove any comment they want to remove, but it’s normal to leave behind some admission that a comment has been censored and why. Here are three comments Brett … Continue reading “Free Press doesn’t want you to read this”

Speaking of censorship, what are we to make of Free Press’ censorship of hostile opinions on its “Save the Internet” blog? Clearly, they have the right to remove any comment they want to remove, but it’s normal to leave behind some admission that a comment has been censored and why. Here are three comments Brett Glass left on the STI blog that were all silently erased:
Continue reading “Free Press doesn’t want you to read this”

Hysterical Perspectives

Hoping to counter claims that demand for residential bandwidth is growing rapidly, Karl Bode uncritically accepts some dubious analysis from file-sharer Robb Topoloski: Complete congestion is a technical fantasy which only exists in the minds of people who do not understand TCP congestion control and how Additive Increase/Multiplicative Decrease (AIMD) works in TCP Congestion avoidance … Continue reading “Hysterical Perspectives”

Hoping to counter claims that demand for residential bandwidth is growing rapidly, Karl Bode uncritically accepts some dubious analysis from file-sharer Robb Topoloski:

Complete congestion is a technical fantasy which only exists in the minds of people who do not understand TCP congestion control and how Additive Increase/Multiplicative Decrease (AIMD) works in TCP Congestion avoidance works, he says. “AIMD allows a linear growth of bandwidth utilization until loss occurs, at which time an exponential reduction takes place. This slow-start, fast-fallback ensures congestion cannot cause gridlock.

Topolski’s grasp of protocols is consistent with his grasp of arithmetic. Cutting a flow rate in half is not “an exponential decrease,” it’s an arithmetic one. Data links can become saturated by Internet traffic in two ways that aren’t mitigated by TCP flow control: by increasing the number of TCP streams beyond the manageable limit for the datalink, such that requests for bandwidth collide with each other, and by using UDP, which is completely uninvolved in the TCP sliding window scheme. P2P subverts congestion control by using excessive numbers of streams, and that’s why TCP RSTs manage it so effectively.

Larry Roberts, the designer of the ARPANET, explains it like this:

…P2P expands to fill any capacity. In fact, as I have been testing and modeling P2P I find it taking up even higher fractions of the capacity as the total capacity expands. This is because each P2P app. can get more capacity and it is designed to take all it can. In the Universities we have measured, the P2P grows to between 95-98% of their Internet usage. It does this by reducing the rate per flow lower and lower, which by virtue of the current network design where all flows get equal capacity, drives the average rate per flow for average users down to their rate. They then win by virtue of having more flows, up to 1000 per user.

So who are you going to believe, file-sharer Topolski or one of the icons of packet switching?

Bode’s other error is to assume that demands for bandwidth are always nicely linear and orderly. The history of the Internet suggests otherwise. There are periods of time in which a new application reaches a tipping point, and demands for bandwidth on particular links increase rapidly. This has happened with P2P, as demands for upstream ISP bandwidth by P2P are roughly a thousand times more than they are for web browsing. It’s an effect like “punctuated equilibrium” is in evolution.

In normal times, bandwidth appetites grow steadily, but genuine innovations kick this growth into high gear for short periods of time.

Let’s use historical perspective, boys and girls, not anti-corporate hysteria to analyze our tech phenomena.

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Commentary on today’s Senate Anti-Trust Hearing

I don’t have time to carry on at length about today’s Senate hearing on the Google-Yahoo search ads price-fixing deal, so here are a couple of pieces written before the hearing that put in its proper perspective. For your cocktail, try a bit of Information Week, a straight-up tongue loosener. For your appetizer, enjoy Washington … Continue reading “Commentary on today’s Senate Anti-Trust Hearing”

I don’t have time to carry on at length about today’s Senate hearing on the Google-Yahoo search ads price-fixing deal, so here are a couple of pieces written before the hearing that put in its proper perspective.

For your cocktail, try a bit of Information Week, a straight-up tongue loosener.

For your appetizer, enjoy Washington insider and tech buff Declan McCullagh on the revolving arguments:

The U.S. Senate is holding a hearing Tuesday on the antitrust implications of the Google-Yahoo ad deal, and the two companies, along with Microsoft, are testifying. You should expect sober, selfless discussions conducted with the public’s best interests in mind.

Or not. In reality, Microsoft will offer fanciful claims about the alleged detrimental impact of a Google-Yahoo partnership, just as Google offered fanciful claims a few months ago about the alleged detrimental impact of a Microsoft-Yahoo combination.

And for your main course, read Scott Cleland on the importance of advertising earnestly:

This is now a broad antitrust investigation of whether:

* Google and Yahoo are illegally colluding to reduce competition and/or fix prices;
* Google is more broadly abusing its market power illegally to impede competition from its #2 and #3 search advertising competitors Yahoo and Microsoft; and
* Google is abusing its market power in a myriad of ways, for example, “raising the minimum bids on keywords swiftly and steeply.”

And for desert, enjoy Andrew Orlowski’s incredibly insightful analysis of the importance of search ad competition for the future of the Internet economy:

Google: the mother of antitrust battles? | The Register

So Google has been readying itself for regulatory intervention for several years. It lobbies extensively, and thanks to its reach-out program to politicians and wonks, now owns a fair chunk of mindshare among the political elites. With its private “Zeitgeist” conference – an annual orgy of self-glorification – it reaches over the heads of representatives and and hacks to the political leaders and media owners themselves. In the UK, there’s a revolving door between the two major parties and Google.

Politicians can sprinkle a little of the future on themselves just by rubbing up against the web giant.

As Microsoft discovered, fortuitously, this is money well-spent. A sympathetic Bush administration dissolved the DoJ’s will to impose tough penalties against Microsoft more effectively than any lawyer or economist.

And finally, have some nuts with your brandy in the form of the testimony submitted to the hearing, which is just as Declan said it would be.

After I’ve seen the video of the hearing, I’ll have something else to say.

Google not censoring PFF – or are they?

UPDATE 2: On further analysis, it seems that we were right the first time. Google does in fact flag as containing malware the majority of PFF’s PDF documents on net neutrality, and none of these documents actually does contain malware, viruses, or exploits. It’s a case of “guilt by association” as they share a directory … Continue reading “Google not censoring PFF – or are they?”

UPDATE 2: On further analysis, it seems that we were right the first time. Google does in fact flag as containing malware the majority of PFF’s PDF documents on net neutrality, and none of these documents actually does contain malware, viruses, or exploits. It’s a case of “guilt by association” as they share a directory with some infected files. This doesn’t mean Google is deliberately censoring free-market ideas on net neutrality, but they certainly are interfering with the public’s access to them. This is more a case of incompetence than of deliberate censorship, however.

Let’s apply the same standard to Google that its net neutrality partners have applied to Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon. ISPs shape traffic on their first mile networks, sometimes with blunt instruments and sometimes with surgical tools. According to Free Press and Google’s other partners in the net neutrality “let’s micro-manage broadband” coalition, blunt instrument management is a sign of anti-competitive bias.

How does Google look if we judge their actions by the yardstick they propose for ISPs? Guiilty as sin. Now you see why this is an important story.

UPDATE: See the comment by Erica George of Stop Badware. It’s actually Google that identifies malware-infected sites, and Stop Badware simply works the process of removing black-listed sites when their problem is resolved. These stories are hard to get right, but we try.

In a now-deleted post, I complained about certain net neutrality criticisms being apparently censored by Google. This was an error by my part, as I rushed a reader e-mail into a blog post without doing my research. Here’s a comment by PFF on the matter:
Continue reading “Google not censoring PFF – or are they?”

Marketplace Story on FCC and Comcast

I’m on today’s edition of Marketplace, FCC considers Comcast’s net blocking They illustrate the rationale for treating applications differently by playing an audio clip with an interruption. It’s very clever.

I’m on today’s edition of Marketplace, FCC considers Comcast’s net blocking

They illustrate the rationale for treating applications differently by playing an audio clip with an interruption. It’s very clever.

Kevin Martin Passes the Test

Note: this is an update on my earlier story, which incorrectly said that the AP reported that Chairman Martin was seeking to impose “fines” on Comcast. In fact, the story used the word “punish” rather than “fine,” and a headline writer at the New York Times added “penalty” to it: “F.C.C. Chairman Favors Penalty on … Continue reading “Kevin Martin Passes the Test”

Note: this is an update on my earlier story, which incorrectly said that the AP reported that Chairman Martin was seeking to impose “fines” on Comcast. In fact, the story used the word “punish” rather than “fine,” and a headline writer at the New York Times added “penalty” to it: “F.C.C. Chairman Favors Penalty on Comcast” (I won’t quote the story because I’m a blogger and the AP is the AP, so click through.) Much of the initial reaction to the story was obviously colored by the headline.

Martin’s concept of punishment is to order the company to do what it had already told the public it was doing, phasing out one system of traffic management in favor of another one. It’s a non-penalty punishment, akin to forcing a misbehaving child to eat the candies she’s already enjoying. Now back to our story.
Continue reading “Kevin Martin Passes the Test”

Google’s political head-fake

Here are a few excerpts from my piece in today’s San Francisco Chronicle on Google’s net neutrality trickery: The devil’s best trick is to persuade us that he doesn’t exist, but Google only has to convince us that it’s not evil. Nearing an agreement with Yahoo to grab the ailing company’s search business, Google scripted … Continue reading “Google’s political head-fake”

Here are a few excerpts from my piece in today’s San Francisco Chronicle on Google’s net neutrality trickery:

The devil’s best trick is to persuade us that he doesn’t exist, but Google only has to convince us that it’s not evil. Nearing an agreement with Yahoo to grab the ailing company’s search business, Google scripted a series of dramatic public events apparently designed to distract from the pending deal. These events emphasize network neutrality, an ever-changing regulatory ideal that Google thrust into the political spotlight two years ago. As entertaining as this spectacle is, regulators should not be fooled. They should apply traditional anti-monopoly standards, blocking the Google-Yahoo deal.

…

The centerpiece of Google’s net neutrality misdirection campaign, a new initiative to bring faster broadband at lower prices to American consumers, was book-ended by Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s visit to Washington and a public endorsement of heavy broadband regulation by Internet pioneer and Google Vice President Vint Cerf. The initiative, Internet for Everyone, is virtually identical to earlier network neutrality organizations, It’s Our Net and Save the Internet. Each of these organizations was fronted by rock-star intellectuals such as Lawrence Lessig, co-founder of the Google-funded Stanford Center for Internet and Society, and his protégé, Tim Wu, the new chairman of the advocacy group Free Press.

…

Initially, network neutrality was the demand that network carriers ignore the Internet’s fundamental inequality. Google had good reason to advocate this, because it is advantaged by a status quo in which money buys privilege. Any move by carriers to selectively boost speeds for fees dulls the advantage Google has secured for itself by building huge complexes of hundreds of thousands of computers.

These complexes exploit a flaw in Internet architecture that enables them to seize more than their fair share of network bandwidth, effectively giving their owner a fast lane. A richly funded Web site, which delivers data faster than its competitors to the front porches of the Internet service providers, wants it delivered the rest of the way on an equal basis. This system, which Google calls broadband neutrality, actually preserves a more fundamental inequality.

…

The tech press has been too busy reprising its Internet Bubble era cheerleading and cooing about Google’s network neutrality “idealism” to raise questions about the demise of Yahoo as a search competitor. Fortunately, the Justice Department is investigating, and Congress has planned several hearings, including one today.

Read the whole thing, if you please, and tell me what you think about the argument.

UPDATE: Nice reaction from Om Malik at Gigaom. Also Scott Cleland at Precursor and Hands Off the Internet. Paul Kapustka isn’t very impressed with my reasoning, unfortunately.

Today’s Senate committee testimony is here, and the announcment of next week’s Senate hearing is here and next week’s House hearing is here.

Robbing The Cookie Jar

What do you do if your mom finds out you’ve been robbing the cookie jar? Blame your little brother, of course. And that’s the essence of the net neutrality campaign that the Internet’s major monopoly has been waging against its little brothers the telecom and cable companies. The San Francisco Chronicle is running my Op-Ed … Continue reading “Robbing The Cookie Jar”

What do you do if your mom finds out you’ve been robbing the cookie jar? Blame your little brother, of course. And that’s the essence of the net neutrality campaign that the Internet’s major monopoly has been waging against its little brothers the telecom and cable companies.
The San Francisco Chronicle is running my Op-Ed on the subject tomorrow, details and a link to follow.

Pew Study: Broadband is Healthy

The Pew Internet and American Life Project released their latest report on broadband in America today, and it looks pretty rosy. Pew makes a great deal out of the fact that broadband use isn’t rising among America’s poor, but that’s hardly surprising. You sort of need a computer, some education, and an income of some … Continue reading “Pew Study: Broadband is Healthy”

The Pew Internet and American Life Project released their latest report on broadband in America today, and it looks pretty rosy. Pew makes a great deal out of the fact that broadband use isn’t rising among America’s poor, but that’s hardly surprising. You sort of need a computer, some education, and an income of some sort to make much use of broadband, so until those issues are addressed you’re not going to see much change over the 25% broadband use among Americans with household incomes below $20,000. Not many of these people have health insurance either, and I imagine they’d choose it before broadband if you asked. Broadband isn’t growing among the richest Americans either, having reached 85% among $100,000+ households. What are these people doing that’s so much more fun than reading blogs?

Some highlights I found interesting:

* Broadband is getting cheaper:

Overall, home broadband users reported that their monthly payment for internet service was $34.50 – 4% less than the figure of $36 per month reported in December 2005.2 This decline in monthly broadband bills is half the rate (8%) reported over the February 2004 to December 2005 timeframe.

* DSL and cable are losing share to Fiber and Wireless:
facilities

* Prices aren’t falling faster because users choose premium services:

One possible reason that users’ monthly broadband bills did not fall as fast from 2005 to 2008 as was the case in the 2004-05 interval is the existence of pricier premium service. Most (54%) of broadband users say they subscribe to basic broadband service, but nearly one-third (29%) say they subscribe to a premium service at a higher price.

* Price isn’t the reason more people don’t have broadband, it’s lack of interest:

Still, one-third (33%) of non-internet users say they are simply not interested in the internet, with another 12% saying they don’t have access. Some 9% of non-users say the internet is too difficult or frustrating for them and just 7% say it is too expensive.

The overall state of broadband in America isn’t nearly as dire as Google’s Internet For Everyone coalition maintains, but they’re going to spin this report to say that it is.