[CAnet - news] How Non-Net Neutrality Affects Businesses

For more information on this item please visit my blog at 
http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/ or http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com
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[Michael Geist has been maintaining an excellent blog on the challenges of
net neutrality. While this remains a hot topic in the US, despite Michael's
best efforts it has barely caused a ripple in Canada. There is increasing
evidence of the impact of bit torrent throttling is having on business,
competition and Canadian cultural policies, as for example, CBC's attempt to
distribute DRM fee video content through BitTorrent. As well Geo-blocking is
preventing Canadians from watching the NHL hockey games over the Internet
which will be distributed in the US by Hulu.com. It is incredible that the
country where hockey is considered almost a religion, that Canadians do not
have the same rights and privileges as their American cousins to watch their
national sport.  The major ISPs who are practicing bit throttling and
benefit from geo-blocking are also Canada's major distributors of video
content via cable TV and satellite. As  Michael Geist's reports in his blog
"As cable and satellite companies seek to sell new video services to
consumers, they simultaneously use their network provider position to lessen
competition that seeks to deliver competing video via the Internet.  This is
an obvious conflict that requires real action from Canada's competition and
broadcast regulators" --BSA]


Michael Geist's Blog
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/

How Network Non-Neutrality Affects Real Businesses
http://www.xconomy.com/2008/03/24/how-network-non-neutrality-affects-real-bu
sinesses/


Network neutrality leaped back into the headlines last month, when FCC
commissioners held a public hearing at Harvard University to examine whether
the commission should institute rules to regulate the way Internet service
providers (ISPs) manage traffic on their networks. The panel heard from
executives representing the two largest ISPs in the Northeast, Comcast and
Verizon, along with Internet pundits, politicians and academics.

The hearing coincided with an increasing public awareness that Comcast and
dozens of other ISPs (most of them cable TV companies) commonly use methods
to throttle some forms of traffic on their networks. They do this to prevent
their networks from becoming congested. These methods typically target
peer-to-peer traffic from BitTorrent, a popular music and video file sharing
program the ISPs say generates a third or more of their traffic.

Accordingly, BitTorrent has become the debate's poster child, pushing much
of the net neutrality debate into endless arguments over free speech,
copyright law and what-if anything-should constitute "legal use" of the Net.

But there's another side to this debate, one that gets far too little
attention. In their attempt to limit BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer file
sharing traffic, some ISPs have unwittingly caused collateral damage to
other, unrelated businesses and their users. For example, some Web
conferencing providers have seen their services slow to a crawl in some
regions of the world because of poorly executed traffic management policies.
Since ISPs often deny they use such practices, it can be exceedingly
difficult to identify the nature of the problem in an attempt to restore
normal service.

My company, Glance Networks, has first hand experience. Glance provides a
simple desktop screen sharing service that thousands of businesses use to
show online presentations and web demos to people and businesses worldwide.
When a Glance customer hosts a session, bursts of high speed data are sent
each time the person's screen content changes. The Glance service forwards
these data streams to all guests in the session, so they can see what the
host sees. The streams need to flow quickly, so everyone's view stays in
sync.

One day a few years ago, our support line got a spate of calls from
customers complaining that our service had suddenly slowed to a crawl. We
soon realized the problem was localized to Canada, where nearly everyone
gets their Internet service through one of just two ISPs. Sure enough, posts
on blogs indicated that both of these ISPs had secretly deployed "traffic
shaping" methods to beat back the flow of BitTorrent traffic. But the
criteria their methods used to identify the streams were particularly blunt
instruments that not only slowed BitTorrent, but many other high-speed data
streams sent by their customers' computers.

This experience illustrates why additional rules need to be imposed on ISPs.
While we were working the problem, customers were understandably stuck
wondering who was telling them the truth. Their ISP was saying "all is well"
and that "nothing has changed", both of which turned out to be wrong. But
how were they to know? Their other Web traffic flowed normally. From their
perspective, only our service had slowed.

Luckily, we quickly discovered that by changing a few parameters in our
service, we were able to restore normal performance to our Canadian
customers. But the Canadian ISPs were of no help. For over a year, they
denied even using traffic shaping, let alone what criteria they used to
single out "bad" traffic. We were forced to find our own "workaround" by
trial and error.

And there's the rub.

Imagine for a moment that regional phone companies were allowed to "manage
their congestion" by implementing arbitrary methods that block a subset of
phone calls on their network. People whose calls got blocked would be at a
loss to know why some calls failed to connect, while others continued to go
through normally. Such behavior would never be tolerated in our telephony
market. Yet we allow ISPs to "manage their congestion" this way today.

In a truly open marketplace, we could expect market forces to drive bad ISPs
out of the market. But most ISPs are monopolies, for good reason. Their
infrastructure costs are enormous. The right to have a monopoly, however,
must always be balanced by regulations that prevent abuse of that right.

Business and markets cannot thrive when ISPs secretly delay or discard a
subset of their traffic. Networks need to be free of secret, arbitrary
traffic management policies. Just because an ISP's network suffers chronic
congestion, that ISP cannot be allowed to selectively block arbitrary
classes of traffic.

[..]

Meanwhile, FCC commissioners need to understand that arbitrary and secret
traffic management policies have already impacted businesses unrelated to
the peer-to-peer file sharing applications targeted by those policies. These
are not hypothetical scenarios. The ongoing threat to legitimate Web
services that businesses and consumers depend upon daily is real.

The FCC must impose rules that prevent ISPs from implementing such policies.
ISPs that oversold capacity must respond with improved pricing plans, not
traffic blocking policies. To let the status quo continue imperils
legitimate users of the global information infrastructure that so many of us
depend upon daily.

The Bell Wake-Up Call
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2787/125/

For months, I've been asked repeatedly why net neutrality has not taken off
as a Canadian political and regulatory issue.  While there has been some
press coverage, several high-profile incidents, and a few instances of
political or regulatory discussion (including the recent House of Commons
Committee report on the CBC), the issue has not generated as much attention
in Canada as it has in the United States

[...]
The reported impact of traffic shaping on CBC downloads highlights the
danger that non-transparent network management practices pose to the CBC's
fulfillment of its statutory mandate to distribute content in the most
efficient manner possible. This should ultimately bring cultural groups like
Friends of the CBC into the net neutrality mix. Moreover, it points to a
significant competition concern.  As cable and satellite companies seek to
sell new video services to consumers, they simultaneously use their network
provider position to lessen competition that seeks to deliver competing
video via the Internet.  This is an obvious conflict that requires real
action from Canada's competition and broadcast regulators.

The Bell throttling practices also raise crucial competition issues. 
The CRTC has tried to address limited ISP competition by requiring companies
such as Bell to provide access to third-party ISPs that "resell" Bell
service with regulated wholesale prices that lead to a measure of increased
competition.  Indeed, there are apparently about 100 companies that
currently resell Bell access services.  Many have made substantial
investments in their own networks and have loyal customer bases that number
into the tens of thousands.

Those same companies have expressed concern to Bell about the possibility
that it might institute throttling and thereby directly affect their
services.  Until yesterday, Bell had sought to reassure the companies that
this was not their plan. For example, in response to a question about
network speeds to resellers, it told the CRTC in 2003 that:

Bell irks ISPs with new throttling policy
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080325.wgtinternet26/BN
Story/Technology/home


CBC To Release TV-Show via BitTorrent, For Free
<http://torrentfreak.com/cbc-bittorrent-tv-080319/>

CBC, Canada's public television broadcaster has plans to release the  
upcoming TV-show "Canada's Next Great Prime Minister" for free via  
BitTorrent. This makes CBC the first North-American broadcaster to  
embrace the popular filesharing protocol.

According to an early report, high quality copies of the show will be  
published the day after it aired on TV, without any DRM restrictions.

CBC is not alone in this, European broadcasters, including the BBC,  
are currently working on a next generation BitTorrent client that will  
allow them to make their content available online. The benefit of  
BitTorrent is of course that it will reduce distribution costs.

The popularity of movies and TV-shows on BitTorrent hasn't gone  
unnoticed. We reported earlier that some TV-studios allegedly use  
BitTorrent as a marketing tool, and others leaking unaired pilots  
intentionally.

[snip]=

Hulu.com Blocks Canadians from NHL Games
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2776/196/


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