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

The roads analogy naturally only takes one so far. Synchronising technologies, in the meantime, have leaped forward, which means that it is far more feasible today to optimise data travel lengths, within a few, geographically sensible, hops. Of course that requires some far sighted rethinking on what constitutes IPR. Still, the robot surgeon need not compete with Fast and Furious 9.73's robot actors for packet priorities.


And ideas like this also come up against the steaming pile that is telco thinking on billing and accounting. Very narrow viewpoint. 

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From:"Kiritkumar Lathia" <[email protected]>
Date:Tue, 19 May, 2015 at 4:27 pm
Subject:Re: [india-gii] why strict Net neutrality works best: simple beats	complex

Hello Arun,

I am interested in the ITU presentation you made in Pune!

I am also one of the old veterans having started my telecom experience with CCITT #6 Signalling System (SS#6) - before the ITU name! I believe it was the first time packet switching was used!

I think we need to recognise what happened: ITU did X.25, X.75, etc. as "telecom rugged" with belt/braces/... and so were very complicated and failed in market place since it was over engineered but more to the point it was going to canabalise the cash cow (Switching Systems) since the major part of the revenue stream was in voice telephony.

Internet (TCP/IP) started with DARPA (and later ARPA) as a rudimentary communication system which would survive a nuclear attack which takes out key telecom nodes. (Remember, circuit switched telecom is still highly pyramidal and taking out the APEX would rend the whole network useless.)

Hence TCP/IP did not have telecom needs for charging, metering, etc. but the need to have the "self-healing" features in case a node was taken out. Hence each packet needs to be examined (for routing) and the edge performs packet assembly/dis-assembly. The common technique for priority (traffic class field) is to create "virtual circuit switch" (by suitably using the flow/QoS field) so that the packets use the same paths and lower the re-assembly time at the edge. Better techniques are coming or being utilised with IPv6 but not all Internet is at IPv6 level!

Arun, whether one wants to or not, these all packet header fields need to be analysed to allow proper packet flow. The Priority/Traffic Class is a 8 bit field if I remember correctly so you are not going to have that much choices in the priorities. That is why I try to always explain by using roads as example. During Commonwealth games, a priority lane was "permanently" created for VIPs traffic - think of this as a dedicated "virtual circuit switch". On the other hand you have ambulances, police, etc. who want to have priority on the road so they can save lives. One know this by flashing lights and sirens - consider this as "Priority Class=x". People have to move out (throttled) to allow the priority cars to go forward.

This will be needed more and more as we move to 5G which will change the Internet we know it today with a conservative estimate of 50+billion devices connected to Internet vs about 6billion for human beings! When we talk about e-health where a surgeon is operating on a patient remotely using robotic arms and instruments; should this suffer the same potential delays because someone is downloading a film?

So "net neutrality" is much more nuanced and the packet header analysis will be a must. So there will be (almost) no time saving if one were not to analyse the Traffic Class filed in IPv6 to provide "net neutrality". What is needed is good "regulation" (!) to provide "net neutrality"; hence in USA FCC is now charged with coming up with USA regulations to provide "net neutrality". Note also that the big players (Goggle, ...) are busy building their own roads to bypass the existing roads!

Up to now the discussions were "muted" because most of the Internet traffic was using "spare" capacity of telcos and the Internet traffic provided additional revenue on the big roads that were built (and maintained). Their cash cow was normal telephony. This is fast disappearing with OTT so they are in a bind - why should they invest in more roads and maintain them if there is no return-on-investments?

Curiously, even for Internet, the only existing models for payments of traffic is still the good old "settlement of accounts" of ITU / SG3 and "bulk buying".

Governments are not going to build and maintain all the roads so if you involve "fast toll roads", one does pay a toll and get from point A to point B fast - correct? The issue is to what level these toll roads control traffic? (Think of Bangalore airport - one has to pay the toll as there is no alternative!)

And then you have a different business model of "free" Internet from the Facebook initiative Internet.Org!

To conclude: I think the solution of "net neutrality" is not in the Internet routers not analysing the header information but in Governance on how "public" roads are used as opposed to totally private roads where the only traffic is that of the road owner.

Best wishes,

Kirit




On 19 May 2015 at 05:34, Abhijit Gadgil <[email protected]> wrote:

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.

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