{"id":3938,"date":"2006-06-14T18:54:02","date_gmt":"2006-06-15T01:54:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/index.php\/archives\/2006\/06\/14\/roycrofts-nonsensical-neutrality-study\/"},"modified":"2006-06-14T18:54:02","modified_gmt":"2006-06-15T01:54:02","slug":"roycrofts-nonsensical-neutrality-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/2006\/06\/14\/roycrofts-nonsensical-neutrality-study\/","title":{"rendered":"Roycroft’s Nonsensical Neutrality Study"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tThe Network Neutrality consumer groups are flogging a study by one Trevor Roycroft attacking Christopher Yoo’s arguments in favor of Network Diversity. Roycroft is an economist whose grasp of communications technology is virtually non-existent. The study, ECONOMIC ANALYSIS AND NETWORK NEUTRALITY: SEPARATING EMPIRICAL FACTS FROM THEORETICAL FICTION<\/a> consistently confuses the Internet with the telephone lines that parts of it use for consumer access.<\/p>\n

But the meaning of Network Neutrality finally comes across: these people want to force-fit the Internet into the regulatory framework that was devised for the old monopoly analog telephone network back in the 1930s. It’s a great example of the old saw “if the only tool you have is a hammer every problem looks like a nail.”<\/p>\n

The differences between the Internet and old telephone network are so vast I hardly know where to begin in pointing them out, but here’s a stab:<\/p>\n

1. The Internet is not a single network, it’s a meeting place for large number of private networks, some of which sell access to the public.<\/p>\n

2. The Internet isn’t a single-service, analog network or a digital clone of one. It’s a multi-purpose packet-switched network formed by loose agreements of thousands of carriers and supporting dozens of applications.<\/p>\n

3. Packet-switched networks manage resources in a dynamic way and have to deal with loads that are highly variable. Consequently, forcing resource management schemes on packet networks that originated in the circuit-switching world is asinine and counter-productive.<\/p>\n

4. It’s almost impossible to define “discrimination” in packet network management practice because every packet affects every other packet. It’s more like a market than a centrally controlled and rigorously predictable telephone network,<\/p>\n

5. Misapplication of the telephone regulatory framework to the Internet will certainly make the Internet behave more like a telephone network than it does today: limited services, low speeds, and no capital investment.<\/p>\n

Network neutrality is a colossally stupid idea. The Internet is cool because it’s not the telephone network; it’s way more powerful and way more capable of doing new and interesting things because it construction applies more intelligence to more dynamic conditions. Forcing it into a regulatory straitjacket devised for analog monopoly is the surest way to kill it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Network Neutrality consumer groups are flogging a study by one Trevor Roycroft attacking Christopher Yoo’s arguments in favor of Network Diversity. Roycroft is an economist whose grasp of communications technology is virtually non-existent. The study, ECONOMIC ANALYSIS AND NETWORK NEUTRALITY: SEPARATING EMPIRICAL FACTS FROM THEORETICAL FICTION consistently confuses the Internet with the telephone lines … Continue reading “Roycroft’s Nonsensical Neutrality Study”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-net-neutrality"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbifyw-11w","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3938\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}