8 ms·

Eric Schmidt on the Verizon Deal (et al)

59 points by moultano 16y ago

moultano 16y ago
We have been talking to Verizon for a long time about trying to get an agreement on the definition of what net neutrality is. We’re trying to find solutions that bridge between the hardcore net neutrality view and the telecom view. I want to be clear what we mean by net neutrality. What we mean is if you have one data type like video, you don’t discriminate against one person’s video in favor of another. But it’s OK to discriminate across different types, so you could prioritize voice over video, and there is general agreement with Verizon and Google on that issue. The issues of wireless vs. wireline get very messy because of the issue of Type I vs Type II regulation and that is an FCC issue not a Google issue.
- roc 16y ago
  > "What we mean is if you have one data type like video, you don’t discriminate against one person’s video in favor of another. But it’s OK to discriminate across different types, so you could prioritize voice over video" Which sounds good, but completely falls apart upon examination. E.g. Is a video-call video? or voice? Is it a new type altogether? What if a new videochat service uses a new protocol with different encryption/compression/etc? Is that a distinct "type" with distinct 'management' profile? Given the largely arbitrary distinction of bits into "types" of communication, being able to decide what is or is not a discrete "type" and priority essentially gives the power to decide whether a new service sinks or swims. And, as many new service types are effective competitors against old service types, getting to decide whether the new type is discriminated against is functionally equivalent to deciding whether to discriminate against arbitrary competitors within a service type. The only improvement of discriminating by type over discriminating by source, is that you can still have competition among those who use an entrenched protocol -- to the extent that competitors are free to use said protocol. Because --to be perfectly clear-- there's absolutely nothing stopping that sort of "compromise" being followed by a patented, proprietary google/verizon video chat protocol that they will not license, while they simultaneously throttle FaceTime/Fring/etc. EDIT: (some punctuation/grammar)
  - lutorm 16y ago
    Sure there are edge cases, but I fully support a decision that if it comes to dropping a call or interrupting someones youtube watching, the priority should go to the call. Video calls are an interesting case, but it seems to me that the audio stream should be given higher priority than the video.
    - pedalpete 16y ago
      But does that mean that a call takes priority over a live video feed? Does talking to your grandma take priority over a live feed of some major world changing event? The key is to make the entire case moot. That can be done with a combination of software engineering and increasing bandwidth. the challenge is how do you promote developers to build bandwidth efficient systems, as it seems bandwidth is now a distant thought in the minds of most developers.
    - bjnortier_hn 16y ago
      Why should the priority go to the call? You don't know if the person is watching a Youtube video showing how to give someone CPR, and the person is busy dying. Would you prioritise a call from a telemarketer over that? Tele-medicine is just one example. Who decides? I completely agree with roc that once you start thinking about it, there are just too many holes in the argument for prioritising on type. "Type" can just be a synonym for "provider". There will be nothing to prevent carriers to push new protocols to a non-priority "type", if they don't pay up. If voip calls get priority, what prevents me from writing a torrent protocol over voip? That would just be a waste of bandwidth. Prioritising will set off a never-ending arms race.
      - lutorm 16y ago
        As long as bandwidth is a scarce resource, something will happen. Either there's a well thought out procedure, or it's random. I think we can do better than random.
        bjnortier_hn 16y ago
- mootothemax 16y ago
  So is this all about Google wanting to prioritize Google Voice's traffic over YouTube's?
jedc 16y ago
I also thought this was interesting (re: Android) "Remember we make the majority of our money on advertising and the powerful browser that is in Android when people search — they click on ads and that revenue goes to Google. And trust me that revenue is large enough to pay for all of Android activities and a whole bunch more."
invisible 16y ago
Sure sounds completely and utterly different from "Google and Verizon in Talks on Selling Internet Priority." Thanks for failing us NYT.
- sprout 16y ago
  >But it’s OK to discriminate across different types, so you could prioritize voice over video Sounds like selling Internet priority to me. In fact, if you can prioritize voice over video you can likewise prioritize http over bittorrent, smtp, or xmpp. And if a competitor's video is going over xmpp while yours is going over FaceTime, that sounds like it's legit depending on how you define 'data type.'
  - invisible 16y ago
    You're arguing that they consider video types different when you have no idea what their talks entail - it may be so general as video, voice, web, mail, and other. Schmidt's comments were ambiguous to protocol and yet you're adding xmpp, smtp, FaceTime, and bittorrent. What NYT was suggesting was that Google be given priority over Bing, for example - grossly different from this situation. QoS is already in place for most major large corporations (and small!), but most ISPs have not gone down the avenue of implementing quality of service for their networks. Here's the headline on NYT's site: Google and Verizon Near Deal on Web Pay Tiers And a quote from the article: "...allow Verizon to speed some online content to Internet users more quickly if the content’s creators are willing to pay for the privilege." Does that sound like what Schmidt said at all?
    - sprout 16y ago
      The way I see it, there are only two possible ways to implement that kind of speed throttling: 1. Protocol filtering. This is basically the status quo with wireless. Voice/Text is separate from Internet data. 2. Deep-packet inspection. I'm sure that Schmidt wasn't advocating this, for a variety of moral and practical reasons. How exactly do you do what Schmidt is describing without favoring a protocol? How do you favor a protocol without locking out third-party protocols? ISPs have no way of classifying the data sent on a third party protocol.
jonknee 16y ago
So the sky isn't falling, Google isn't evil [yet]. Amazing how quickly people jump to conclusions.
brk 16y ago
It's funny that a lot of this would not be an issue if Verizon, et al, actually had the ability to deliver the speeds they quote you on any sort of consistent basis. Most consumer-grade networking problems can be solved with "QoS via excessive bandwidth". But, what the carriers want to do is oversell their backbones by 10,000%, and then charge extra to deliver the kind of service you would have expected to receive in the first place. Wholesale bandwidth to a Tier 1 provider is ~$15/Mb these days (monthly). This doesn't include loop charges of course. But still Verizon, Comcast, etc. should be able to deliver a symmetrical 5Mbs pipe to an average residence (ie: in a populated suburb) for $60/mo. without the end user every really worrying about running up against capacity for any practical application. The ISP's are worried about being reduced to "dumb pipes", yet they could easily differentiate based on speed, uptime, customer service and other things that don't rely on packet tagging and prioritizations.
- ergo98 16y ago
  >Most consumer-grade networking problems can be solved with "QoS via excessive bandwidth". But, what the carriers want to do is oversell their backbones by 10,000%, and then charge extra to deliver the kind of service you would have expected to receive in the first place. While this argument sells to the crowd, it's facile and doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
  - oostevo 16y ago
    Can you be more specific? I'm really quite a layman in this area, but I've heard the overselling argument quite a lot, and I'd be interested in hearing why it might not be a valid one.
    - ergo98 16y ago
      Look at the prices of unmetered commercial connections to understand the economics of overselling and burst connectivity. I have a 15Mbps home connection, which serves me brilliantly when I need to grab an ISO or watch a couple of videos. I have no illusions that this is equal to a business 15Mbps connection, which would be significantly more expensive. A T3 runs $3000 a month, best case. I pay $45 a month. The original point that I disagreed with was the assertion that everyone should have a unmetered 6Mbps connection. Firstly, I don't want a 6Mbps connection -> I want a 15Mbps burst connection that best accommodates a normal user. Secondly that's enough bandwidth that if you filled it at Amazon's AWS, you'd be paying some $240 a month, and Amazon is at the crossroads of a number of primary connections, pretty much the cheapest place to possibly origin data. Joe Homebody is many nodes down, through a lot of infrastructure and choke-points, and the cost for throughput is significantly higher: My neighbourhood has a large number of cable modem subscribers, and to aggregate the total sum up through each junction would lead to enormous bandwidth potential. In the mobile space the situation is vastly uglier. I don't think most people realize how incredibly crowded the data space is.
moultano 16y ago
Related: Verizon has also moved to dismiss the story. "The NYT article regarding conversations between Google and Verizon is mistaken," the company said. "It fundamentally misunderstands our purpose. As we said in our earlier FCC filing, our goal is an internet policy framework that ensures openness and accountability, and incorporates specific FCC authority, while maintaining investment and innovation. To suggest this is a business arrangement between our companies is entirely incorrect." http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/aug/05/gogle-denies-verizon-deal-net-neutrality http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/aug/05/gogle-denie...
Ardit20 16y ago
Doesn't anyone think that we elect politicians to decide precicley such things as whether there should be net-neutrality or not, rather than leave it to massive corporations to decide in their own interest. All it takes is one sentence No content should be prioritized by any internet service provider. Hmm, maybe someone should make a Facebook page with that sentence. I hardly use Facebook myself, but seeing as this issue is quite in focus, it would probably get traction with some promotion and then you can get a newspaper saying 24,000 people have joined a facebook group called...

59 points by moultano 16y ago

We have been talking to Verizon for a long time about trying to get an agreement on the definition of what net neutrality is. We’re trying to find solutions that bridge between the hardcore net neutrality view and the telecom view. I want to be clear what we mean by net neutrality. What we mean is if you have one data type like video, you don’t discriminate against one person’s video in favor of another. But it’s OK to discriminate across different types, so you could prioritize voice over video, and there is general agreement with Verizon and Google on that issue. The issues of wireless vs. wireline get very messy because of the issue of Type I vs Type II regulation and that is an FCC issue not a Google issue.

roc 16y ago
> "What we mean is if you have one data type like video, you don’t discriminate against one person’s video in favor of another. But it’s OK to discriminate across different types, so you could prioritize voice over video" Which sounds good, but completely falls apart upon examination. E.g. Is a video-call video? or voice? Is it a new type altogether? What if a new videochat service uses a new protocol with different encryption/compression/etc? Is that a distinct "type" with distinct 'management' profile? Given the largely arbitrary distinction of bits into "types" of communication, being able to decide what is or is not a discrete "type" and priority essentially gives the power to decide whether a new service sinks or swims. And, as many new service types are effective competitors against old service types, getting to decide whether the new type is discriminated against is functionally equivalent to deciding whether to discriminate against arbitrary competitors within a service type. The only improvement of discriminating by type over discriminating by source, is that you can still have competition among those who use an entrenched protocol -- to the extent that competitors are free to use said protocol. Because --to be perfectly clear-- there's absolutely nothing stopping that sort of "compromise" being followed by a patented, proprietary google/verizon video chat protocol that they will not license, while they simultaneously throttle FaceTime/Fring/etc. EDIT: (some punctuation/grammar)
- lutorm 16y ago
  Sure there are edge cases, but I fully support a decision that if it comes to dropping a call or interrupting someones youtube watching, the priority should go to the call. Video calls are an interesting case, but it seems to me that the audio stream should be given higher priority than the video.
  - pedalpete 16y ago
    But does that mean that a call takes priority over a live video feed? Does talking to your grandma take priority over a live feed of some major world changing event? The key is to make the entire case moot. That can be done with a combination of software engineering and increasing bandwidth. the challenge is how do you promote developers to build bandwidth efficient systems, as it seems bandwidth is now a distant thought in the minds of most developers.
  - bjnortier_hn 16y ago
    Why should the priority go to the call? You don't know if the person is watching a Youtube video showing how to give someone CPR, and the person is busy dying. Would you prioritise a call from a telemarketer over that? Tele-medicine is just one example. Who decides? I completely agree with roc that once you start thinking about it, there are just too many holes in the argument for prioritising on type. "Type" can just be a synonym for "provider". There will be nothing to prevent carriers to push new protocols to a non-priority "type", if they don't pay up. If voip calls get priority, what prevents me from writing a torrent protocol over voip? That would just be a waste of bandwidth. Prioritising will set off a never-ending arms race.
    - lutorm 16y ago
      As long as bandwidth is a scarce resource, something will happen. Either there's a well thought out procedure, or it's random. I think we can do better than random.
      - bjnortier_hn 16y ago
mootothemax 16y ago
So is this all about Google wanting to prioritize Google Voice's traffic over YouTube's?

jedc 16y ago

I also thought this was interesting (re: Android) "Remember we make the majority of our money on advertising and the powerful browser that is in Android when people search — they click on ads and that revenue goes to Google. And trust me that revenue is large enough to pay for all of Android activities and a whole bunch more."

invisible 16y ago

Sure sounds completely and utterly different from "Google and Verizon in Talks on Selling Internet Priority." Thanks for failing us NYT.

sprout 16y ago
>But it’s OK to discriminate across different types, so you could prioritize voice over video Sounds like selling Internet priority to me. In fact, if you can prioritize voice over video you can likewise prioritize http over bittorrent, smtp, or xmpp. And if a competitor's video is going over xmpp while yours is going over FaceTime, that sounds like it's legit depending on how you define 'data type.'
- invisible 16y ago
  You're arguing that they consider video types different when you have no idea what their talks entail - it may be so general as video, voice, web, mail, and other. Schmidt's comments were ambiguous to protocol and yet you're adding xmpp, smtp, FaceTime, and bittorrent. What NYT was suggesting was that Google be given priority over Bing, for example - grossly different from this situation. QoS is already in place for most major large corporations (and small!), but most ISPs have not gone down the avenue of implementing quality of service for their networks. Here's the headline on NYT's site: Google and Verizon Near Deal on Web Pay Tiers And a quote from the article: "...allow Verizon to speed some online content to Internet users more quickly if the content’s creators are willing to pay for the privilege." Does that sound like what Schmidt said at all?
  - sprout 16y ago
    The way I see it, there are only two possible ways to implement that kind of speed throttling: 1. Protocol filtering. This is basically the status quo with wireless. Voice/Text is separate from Internet data. 2. Deep-packet inspection. I'm sure that Schmidt wasn't advocating this, for a variety of moral and practical reasons. How exactly do you do what Schmidt is describing without favoring a protocol? How do you favor a protocol without locking out third-party protocols? ISPs have no way of classifying the data sent on a third party protocol.

jonknee 16y ago

So the sky isn't falling, Google isn't evil [yet]. Amazing how quickly people jump to conclusions.

brk 16y ago

It's funny that a lot of this would not be an issue if Verizon, et al, actually had the ability to deliver the speeds they quote you on any sort of consistent basis. Most consumer-grade networking problems can be solved with "QoS via excessive bandwidth". But, what the carriers want to do is oversell their backbones by 10,000%, and then charge extra to deliver the kind of service you would have expected to receive in the first place. Wholesale bandwidth to a Tier 1 provider is ~$15/Mb these days (monthly). This doesn't include loop charges of course. But still Verizon, Comcast, etc. should be able to deliver a symmetrical 5Mbs pipe to an average residence (ie: in a populated suburb) for $60/mo. without the end user every really worrying about running up against capacity for any practical application. The ISP's are worried about being reduced to "dumb pipes", yet they could easily differentiate based on speed, uptime, customer service and other things that don't rely on packet tagging and prioritizations.

ergo98 16y ago
>Most consumer-grade networking problems can be solved with "QoS via excessive bandwidth". But, what the carriers want to do is oversell their backbones by 10,000%, and then charge extra to deliver the kind of service you would have expected to receive in the first place. While this argument sells to the crowd, it's facile and doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
- oostevo 16y ago
  Can you be more specific? I'm really quite a layman in this area, but I've heard the overselling argument quite a lot, and I'd be interested in hearing why it might not be a valid one.
  - ergo98 16y ago
    Look at the prices of unmetered commercial connections to understand the economics of overselling and burst connectivity. I have a 15Mbps home connection, which serves me brilliantly when I need to grab an ISO or watch a couple of videos. I have no illusions that this is equal to a business 15Mbps connection, which would be significantly more expensive. A T3 runs $3000 a month, best case. I pay $45 a month. The original point that I disagreed with was the assertion that everyone should have a unmetered 6Mbps connection. Firstly, I don't want a 6Mbps connection -> I want a 15Mbps burst connection that best accommodates a normal user. Secondly that's enough bandwidth that if you filled it at Amazon's AWS, you'd be paying some $240 a month, and Amazon is at the crossroads of a number of primary connections, pretty much the cheapest place to possibly origin data. Joe Homebody is many nodes down, through a lot of infrastructure and choke-points, and the cost for throughput is significantly higher: My neighbourhood has a large number of cable modem subscribers, and to aggregate the total sum up through each junction would lead to enormous bandwidth potential. In the mobile space the situation is vastly uglier. I don't think most people realize how incredibly crowded the data space is.

moultano 16y ago

Related: Verizon has also moved to dismiss the story. "The NYT article regarding conversations between Google and Verizon is mistaken," the company said. "It fundamentally misunderstands our purpose. As we said in our earlier FCC filing, our goal is an internet policy framework that ensures openness and accountability, and incorporates specific FCC authority, while maintaining investment and innovation. To suggest this is a business arrangement between our companies is entirely incorrect." http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/aug/05/gogle-denies-verizon-deal-net-neutrality http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/aug/05/gogle-denie...

Ardit20 16y ago

Doesn't anyone think that we elect politicians to decide precicley such things as whether there should be net-neutrality or not, rather than leave it to massive corporations to decide in their own interest. All it takes is one sentence No content should be prioritized by any internet service provider. Hmm, maybe someone should make a Facebook page with that sentence. I hardly use Facebook myself, but seeing as this issue is quite in focus, it would probably get traction with some promotion and then you can get a newspaper saying 24,000 people have joined a facebook group called...