Re: why strict Net neutrality works best: simple beats complex

Very well said - I am myself a big fan of Ethernet, if you throw
enough money behind a technology, it's not very hard to make it do
what you want, even if it wasn't ever meant to do that (Internet being
a case in point). While most of your arguments about simplicity, I
completely agree with - I do not agree with

> Any violation of net neutrality adds to complexity. Once you let the
> marketing guys call the shots, the complexity only grows. Any change you
> implement involves changing the software, which becomes bloated and buggy.

All of us would agree that any use of shared resource needs some
policing - if for nothing else - to at-least prevent it from being
hogged completely by rogue elements to the extent it becoming
unusable. So whether we like it or not - wherever humans (or programs
written by humans) are involved - policing is required. Fortunately
(or unfortunately) the same tools or techniques that can be used to
police rogue traffic can also be used to 'prefer a traffic you want to
serve better', so 'that doesn't come at any (significant) additional
cost. Most of these techniques are already implemented even in Linux -
so someone with a thousand dollar budget can do it at 1gbps speed and
with some creativity - _nearly_ @ 10gbps speeds on a workstation grade
machine.

> This is why I believe that strict net neutrality will win.

I am not sure whether it will  or it won't and frankly I don't care.
Here's why - Internet (or more specifically TCP/IP protocol stack)
succeeded because it was open to experiment and failures (and started
offering non-critical path solutions and moved up the value chain).
The ITU technology stack suffered the most because it was very hard to
contribute to standards (and hence participate in experiments) and
when a critical point was hit by Moore's law the game entirely
shifted.

Let's all accept that the Internet today is not the same research
network that connected universities, but a commercial network where
corporations would try to squeeze value out of it. That's a reality
we've to live with. Whoever that corporation is - doesn't matter. What
I still strongly believe in - if thanks to many Telco's and OTT
players' efforts Internet becomes a network hard to experiment with -
without deep enough pockets and eventually ends up becoming what
Telecom networks were a few decades ago, there'd be another networking
paradigm - that will win and so on. Hence I am not concerned whether
net neutrality would win.

However, as a Telco, it will be economically 'stupid' to _not_ follow
net neutrality - at least broadly (so I am okay if a Telco punishes
bi-torrent traffic - even severely - a very personal opinion) and if
the Telcos do that markets (not just capital markets) would punish
them, but in principle I would still support their decision to do so.

So to conclude - I'd say - an economical solution would eventually win
- and what that is we don't know. It's very easy to explain things
post facto and very very hard to predict what's likely to happen!

-abhijit

PS: I work for a company whose products and services might _look_like_
violating net neutrality. I believe, a disclaimer to this effect is
certainly required in this case.