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> 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 thi

> 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.
- grandalf 10y ago
  > And none of this requires any traffic shaping rules that deliberately identify what's video or VoIP True, so why is net neutrality necessary then? Do you think ISPs are making this possible out of the goodness of their hearts? I'd argue that their profit motive has made this happen because it's what consumers demand, and the internet (protocols and services) has changed rapidly enough that entrenched patterns have not really emerged.
  - wtallis 10y ago
    Making what happen? ISP's aren't deploying fq_codel, but they're still buying Sandvine deep packet inspection equipment.

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.

grandalf 10y ago
> And none of this requires any traffic shaping rules that deliberately identify what's video or VoIP True, so why is net neutrality necessary then? Do you think ISPs are making this possible out of the goodness of their hearts? I'd argue that their profit motive has made this happen because it's what consumers demand, and the internet (protocols and services) has changed rapidly enough that entrenched patterns have not really emerged.
- wtallis 10y ago
  Making what happen? ISP's aren't deploying fq_codel, but they're still buying Sandvine deep packet inspection equipment.