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> just start dropping packets where there's congestion Aside from being normal, do you think this is preferable because it is fair? I think of QoS as a way o

> just start dropping packets where there's congestion Aside from being normal, do you think this is preferable because it is fair? I think of QoS as a way of allowing more types of SLA to exist. Maybe Youtube makes a deal with T-Mobile to keep videos playing longer (before packets start dropping) in exchange for money. This money might allow T-Mobile to invest in other parts of its infrastructure. Isn't any backbone link in a sense a way of shaping traffic? The old pattern (from point A to B, say) may have been less efficient than the new pattern (using the new link). The link makes economic sense to install simply because there is demand for bandwidth from A to B. If there weren't, a link would have been installed elsewhere instead. The price of the new link is passed along to downstream and upstream providers. Assuming that each ISP has a shaping model in place that is generally fair, is there really any difference between these three things: - the ISP shopping upstream providers based on SLA committments for traffic X - the ISP imposing QoS that addresses the quality experienced by customers using traffic X - the ISP investigating upgrading networking hardware to allow for superior handling of traffic X I'd argue that in every case the ISP has a cost and a benefit. In the case of the QoS change, the cost is that some customers might be slightly worse off (those who used traffic Y but never used traffic X).

kelnos 10y ago
> Maybe Youtube makes a deal with T-Mobile to keep videos playing longer (before packets start dropping) in exchange for money. This money might allow T-Mobile to invest in other parts of its infrastructure. That half of it isn't the problem, and I doubt anyone would argue against reasonable things that make it easier for a provider to increase their network capacity. The problem is what it does to YouTube's competitors: they now suffer because YT can afford to ask T-Mobile to make their traffic more important.
- grandalf 10y ago
  > The problem is what it does to YouTube's competitors: they now suffer because YT can afford to ask T-Mobile to make their traffic more important. But simply by virtue of YouTube's market share, an economic incentive exists to install backbone links that help route YouTube's traffic (as opposed to others'). In other words, if two backbone links might be installed, the one whose outcome makes access to Youtube more reliable is more likely to be installed than one that makes unknown startup's service more reliable. In other words, network topology adapts to traffic demand (albeit more slowly than traffic shaping).
  - wtallis 10y ago
    > In other words, network topology adapts to traffic demand (albeit more slowly than traffic shaping). A fair traffic management policy would allow for YouTube users to consume bandwidth in exact proportion to their share of overall demand for bandwidth. Traffic shaping on top of that could only have the effect of meaning that a YouTube user will get more bandwidth than their Netflix-using neighbor even if they're both paying for the same service and both content providers have CDN nodes at the same local peering point. That's not adapting to demand, that's artificially distorting the market.
    - grandalf 10y ago
      > A fair traffic management policy would allow for YouTube users to consume bandwidth in exact proportion to their share of overall demand for bandwidth. I think this statement is in effect a straw man, since the relevant consideration for QoS is the timing of consuming that bandwidth. If you mean instantaneous bandwidth, then you are saying that both Youtube customers and Netflix customers should be able to use a circuit that they primarily use for watching video to also be equally optimized for real time protocols. If you argue that a VOIP customer should be able to place a call with the absolute minimal latency the network can provide, even if it means that video content will (on average) buffer for an extra second, that is not an example of a fair system, just one that is extremely friendly to VOIP. Why shouldn't someone be able to start a Skype competitor that offers latency characteristics for audio calls that rivals POTS latency? As it stands, Skype unusable for low latency coms both because of protocol/codec design and typical network characteristics. So, I think that unless you enthrone modern "typical" characteristics as ideal then it's hard to argue that imposing restrictions of what shaping approaches can and should be utilized is somehow qualitatively neutral, rather than simply benefitting incumbent interests.
      - wtallis 10y ago
        > "If you mean instantaneous bandwidth, then you are saying that both Youtube customers and Netflix customers should be able to use a circuit that they primarily use for watching video to also be equally optimized for real time protocols. > If you argue that a VOIP customer should be able to place a call with the absolute minimal latency the network can provide, even if it means that video content will (on average) buffer for an extra second, that is not an example of a fair system, just one that is extremely friendly to VOIP." That's the real straw man. The current state of the art for QoS is active queue management that both increases effective link utilization and reduces latency to a point that VoIP is usable, as compared with naive FIFO queuing with tail drops when the queues are full. That's why I said QoS isn't a zero-sum game. In the real world, you don't actually have to choose between throughput and latency; both can be good enough for what people normally want to do. VoIP traffic doesn't cost enough bandwidth to have a significant impact on Netflix video quality, and firing up a Netflix stream doesn't have to produce queuing latencies that make VoIP unusable. And none of this requires any traffic shaping rules that deliberately identify what's video or VoIP—that's an objective criteria for "neutral" that doesn't force ISPs to use naive sub-optimal traffic management.
wtallis 10y ago
Backbone capacity is a separate issue from last-mile connectivity. Only one is truly a natural monopoly. I don't care whether YouTube directly builds out backbone capacity or whether they outsource that to Level 3. Incumbent last-mile providers enjoy a privileged position that gives them unfair bargaining power over end users. They should not be allowed to decide which content providers and applications get to have a successful business model. If anybody gets to pick winners and losers like that, it should be a democratically elected government, but it would be far better to just prohibit last-mile providers from imposing unfair artificial limits or costs. If T-Mobile wants to make a deal with YouTube to provide a subsidized video streaming service with dedicated bandwidth to guarantee a certain level of video quality, then that service should be billed and provisioned separately from their common-carrier Internet and phone services. If they want this YouTube streaming service to be wireless, then they should have to acquire a separate spectrum license from the FCC and convince the FCC why a dedicated YouTube service deserves a slice of the public's limited RF spectrum when there are other video providers on the public Internet that would be disadvantaged.
- grandalf 10y ago
  > If anybody gets to pick winners and losers like that, it should be a democratically elected government, but it would be far better to just prohibit last-mile providers from imposing unfair artificial limits or costs. Isn't it the proper authority of the FTC or DOJ to enforce anticompetitive behavior? Do we need the FCC also dipping in to impose penalties on firms who may have already spent a lot of money in the spectrum auction? What privileges does winning the spectrum auction permit companies? To your last point, what if T-Mobile showed that by following its preferred QoS scheme it actually transferred more information over its last mile link? Economic incentives typically reward the highly efficient use of a resource. Being able to get an extra bushel of corn from an acre of land is one example, as is being able to get an extra Megabyte of data over a pipe each hour. In the case of residential bandwidth packages, the metric for how effectively an ISP is maximizing the available resource should simply be its own competitive choices. Should T-Mobile sacrifice $1M in profit each month simply so that any customers who happen to be using an obscure protocol can get slightly better service? It seems that Net Neutrality is akin to the government forcing corn farms to plant 25% of their fields with different crops, just in case anyone wants to buy them, and to force those farmers to offer them for sale even if they don't believe anyone wants to buy them. I think if we want to go down the path of the fine-grained allocation of the spectrum as a public good, there would be large scale, sweeping changes that we'd make. Why should we waste spectrum broadcasting over-the-air TV in 1080i? Why should soap operas be broadcast in full quality or even broadcast at all? Why should anyone have LTE bandwidth when some people can't afford 2G?
redler 10y ago
Maybe Youtube makes a deal with T-Mobile to keep videos playing longer (before packets start dropping) in exchange for money. This money might allow T-Mobile to invest in other parts of its infrastructure. Another possibility: as a major ISP nears network capacity, they can implicitly (or explicitly, depending on law) solicit revenue streams from Youtube and many others for "priority access" to their somewhat- or completely-captive customer base. Eventually, secondary tiers are created to efficiently segment the content market -- a priority plan conveniently sized for every budget. Those who can't or won't pay fall into an ever decreasing performance category as the priority slices are snatched up. The ISP then starts selling premium bundles on the customer side -- Platinum Service will include Youtube, Netflix, Amazon, Apple (and get our bonus in-house streaming service at no extra charge!). Platinum-Plus, for another $14.95 per month plus fees, adds priority streams from your choice of up to three major sports content sources. And Platinum-Pro adds non-degraded VPN so you can work from home. Choice! The ISP is monetizing the fact that they're NOT adding capacity. Eventually they can choose to take the hit to their numbers and make that investment, but they'll do so within the now-normal tiered framework -- offering new capacity and premium deals at the top of the stack, rather than letting the bottom free-ride into better service.
- grandalf 10y ago
  You are describing a content lock-in dystopia. Yes, this would be anticompetitive (and appropriately addressed by the FTC or DOJ, not the FCC) and it is among the more unlikely scenarios.
  - comex 10y ago
    The parent post is a little hyperbolic, but ISPs are certainly willing to artificially limit capacity upgrades as a way to extract tolls from content providers. Remember the spat between Verizon and Level3/Netflix? http://web.archive.org/web/20160405105037/http://blog.level3.com/open-internet/verizons-accidental-mea-culpa/ http://web.archive.org/web/20160405105037/http://blog.level3... Both networks had plenty of capacity internally; the bottleneck was a single router at each interconnect location which Verizon refused to upgrade.
  - deleted 10y ago

kelnos 10y ago

> Maybe Youtube makes a deal with T-Mobile to keep videos playing longer (before packets start dropping) in exchange for money. This money might allow T-Mobile to invest in other parts of its infrastructure. That half of it isn't the problem, and I doubt anyone would argue against reasonable things that make it easier for a provider to increase their network capacity. The problem is what it does to YouTube's competitors: they now suffer because YT can afford to ask T-Mobile to make their traffic more important.

grandalf 10y ago
> The problem is what it does to YouTube's competitors: they now suffer because YT can afford to ask T-Mobile to make their traffic more important. But simply by virtue of YouTube's market share, an economic incentive exists to install backbone links that help route YouTube's traffic (as opposed to others'). In other words, if two backbone links might be installed, the one whose outcome makes access to Youtube more reliable is more likely to be installed than one that makes unknown startup's service more reliable. In other words, network topology adapts to traffic demand (albeit more slowly than traffic shaping).
- wtallis 10y ago
  > In other words, network topology adapts to traffic demand (albeit more slowly than traffic shaping). A fair traffic management policy would allow for YouTube users to consume bandwidth in exact proportion to their share of overall demand for bandwidth. Traffic shaping on top of that could only have the effect of meaning that a YouTube user will get more bandwidth than their Netflix-using neighbor even if they're both paying for the same service and both content providers have CDN nodes at the same local peering point. That's not adapting to demand, that's artificially distorting the market.
  - grandalf 10y ago
    > A fair traffic management policy would allow for YouTube users to consume bandwidth in exact proportion to their share of overall demand for bandwidth. I think this statement is in effect a straw man, since the relevant consideration for QoS is the timing of consuming that bandwidth. If you mean instantaneous bandwidth, then you are saying that both Youtube customers and Netflix customers should be able to use a circuit that they primarily use for watching video to also be equally optimized for real time protocols. If you argue that a VOIP customer should be able to place a call with the absolute minimal latency the network can provide, even if it means that video content will (on average) buffer for an extra second, that is not an example of a fair system, just one that is extremely friendly to VOIP. Why shouldn't someone be able to start a Skype competitor that offers latency characteristics for audio calls that rivals POTS latency? As it stands, Skype unusable for low latency coms both because of protocol/codec design and typical network characteristics. So, I think that unless you enthrone modern "typical" characteristics as ideal then it's hard to argue that imposing restrictions of what shaping approaches can and should be utilized is somehow qualitatively neutral, rather than simply benefitting incumbent interests.
    - wtallis 10y ago
      > "If you mean instantaneous bandwidth, then you are saying that both Youtube customers and Netflix customers should be able to use a circuit that they primarily use for watching video to also be equally optimized for real time protocols. > If you argue that a VOIP customer should be able to place a call with the absolute minimal latency the network can provide, even if it means that video content will (on average) buffer for an extra second, that is not an example of a fair system, just one that is extremely friendly to VOIP." That's the real straw man. The current state of the art for QoS is active queue management that both increases effective link utilization and reduces latency to a point that VoIP is usable, as compared with naive FIFO queuing with tail drops when the queues are full. That's why I said QoS isn't a zero-sum game. In the real world, you don't actually have to choose between throughput and latency; both can be good enough for what people normally want to do. VoIP traffic doesn't cost enough bandwidth to have a significant impact on Netflix video quality, and firing up a Netflix stream doesn't have to produce queuing latencies that make VoIP unusable. And none of this requires any traffic shaping rules that deliberately identify what's video or VoIP—that's an objective criteria for "neutral" that doesn't force ISPs to use naive sub-optimal traffic management.

wtallis 10y ago

Backbone capacity is a separate issue from last-mile connectivity. Only one is truly a natural monopoly. I don't care whether YouTube directly builds out backbone capacity or whether they outsource that to Level 3. Incumbent last-mile providers enjoy a privileged position that gives them unfair bargaining power over end users. They should not be allowed to decide which content providers and applications get to have a successful business model. If anybody gets to pick winners and losers like that, it should be a democratically elected government, but it would be far better to just prohibit last-mile providers from imposing unfair artificial limits or costs. If T-Mobile wants to make a deal with YouTube to provide a subsidized video streaming service with dedicated bandwidth to guarantee a certain level of video quality, then that service should be billed and provisioned separately from their common-carrier Internet and phone services. If they want this YouTube streaming service to be wireless, then they should have to acquire a separate spectrum license from the FCC and convince the FCC why a dedicated YouTube service deserves a slice of the public's limited RF spectrum when there are other video providers on the public Internet that would be disadvantaged.

grandalf 10y ago
> If anybody gets to pick winners and losers like that, it should be a democratically elected government, but it would be far better to just prohibit last-mile providers from imposing unfair artificial limits or costs. Isn't it the proper authority of the FTC or DOJ to enforce anticompetitive behavior? Do we need the FCC also dipping in to impose penalties on firms who may have already spent a lot of money in the spectrum auction? What privileges does winning the spectrum auction permit companies? To your last point, what if T-Mobile showed that by following its preferred QoS scheme it actually transferred more information over its last mile link? Economic incentives typically reward the highly efficient use of a resource. Being able to get an extra bushel of corn from an acre of land is one example, as is being able to get an extra Megabyte of data over a pipe each hour. In the case of residential bandwidth packages, the metric for how effectively an ISP is maximizing the available resource should simply be its own competitive choices. Should T-Mobile sacrifice $1M in profit each month simply so that any customers who happen to be using an obscure protocol can get slightly better service? It seems that Net Neutrality is akin to the government forcing corn farms to plant 25% of their fields with different crops, just in case anyone wants to buy them, and to force those farmers to offer them for sale even if they don't believe anyone wants to buy them. I think if we want to go down the path of the fine-grained allocation of the spectrum as a public good, there would be large scale, sweeping changes that we'd make. Why should we waste spectrum broadcasting over-the-air TV in 1080i? Why should soap operas be broadcast in full quality or even broadcast at all? Why should anyone have LTE bandwidth when some people can't afford 2G?

redler 10y ago

Maybe Youtube makes a deal with T-Mobile to keep videos playing longer (before packets start dropping) in exchange for money. This money might allow T-Mobile to invest in other parts of its infrastructure. Another possibility: as a major ISP nears network capacity, they can implicitly (or explicitly, depending on law) solicit revenue streams from Youtube and many others for "priority access" to their somewhat- or completely-captive customer base. Eventually, secondary tiers are created to efficiently segment the content market -- a priority plan conveniently sized for every budget. Those who can't or won't pay fall into an ever decreasing performance category as the priority slices are snatched up. The ISP then starts selling premium bundles on the customer side -- Platinum Service will include Youtube, Netflix, Amazon, Apple (and get our bonus in-house streaming service at no extra charge!). Platinum-Plus, for another $14.95 per month plus fees, adds priority streams from your choice of up to three major sports content sources. And Platinum-Pro adds non-degraded VPN so you can work from home. Choice! The ISP is monetizing the fact that they're NOT adding capacity. Eventually they can choose to take the hit to their numbers and make that investment, but they'll do so within the now-normal tiered framework -- offering new capacity and premium deals at the top of the stack, rather than letting the bottom free-ride into better service.

grandalf 10y ago
You are describing a content lock-in dystopia. Yes, this would be anticompetitive (and appropriately addressed by the FTC or DOJ, not the FCC) and it is among the more unlikely scenarios.
- comex 10y ago
  The parent post is a little hyperbolic, but ISPs are certainly willing to artificially limit capacity upgrades as a way to extract tolls from content providers. Remember the spat between Verizon and Level3/Netflix? http://web.archive.org/web/20160405105037/http://blog.level3.com/open-internet/verizons-accidental-mea-culpa/ http://web.archive.org/web/20160405105037/http://blog.level3... Both networks had plenty of capacity internally; the bottleneck was a single router at each interconnect location which Verizon refused to upgrade.
- deleted 10y ago