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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 tha

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
        I argue that a "well thought out procedure" is not possible for such a complex system as the internet. Every kind of procedure that can be thought of will either have holes in the logic, or will be gamed by users and providers in a never-ending arms-race. Emergent complexity is not "random", although it can be based on elements of randomness. Nature is an example of a massively complex system that has evolved on elements of randomness, but the system itself is by no means random. And there's no way that it could have been designed with a "well thought out procedure".
- jonknee 16y ago
  We're quickly going to be in a world where all phone calls are VoIP and I don't think it's unreasonable to allow QoS tiers. I don't want to have my phone not work because my neighbors are torrenting. Hell, I already do this on my home network. Google just wants to make sure you don't have to pay to get in a QoS tier.
  - ericflo 16y ago
    How about a corollary: why should your neighbor's torrents slow down just because you are making a bunch of phone calls? (And remember, people are using torrents for legitimate purposes, like how Blizzard uses it to distribute purchased copies of Starcraft II.) The solution is to fix overall network capacity.
    - pvg 16y ago
      That's a 'fix' if network capacity were infinite. You can rephrase your corollary as 'why should my VOIP calls drop just because I'm downloading StarCraft II'. There isn't anything inherently evil in the notion that you might want to prioritize, say, latency-dependent traffic over traffic that isn't.
      - nostrademons 16y ago
        Haven't people done studies on this and found that the cost to implement QoS is greater than the cost to just increase network bandwidth? That may not hold forever, but it holds now in the U.S. Current residential broadband lines in the U.S. could go much faster with zero technical effort. They're capped because Verizon and Comcast only give you enough bandwidth to make sure that you get more than you would with a competitor. They hold the rest in reserve so that they can raise speeds and please customers easily when a competitor raises speeds. We've got the slowest Internet speeds in the developed world, and you can bet it isn't because of technological reasons: http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/1004/ http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/1004/
        pvg 16y ago
- moultano 16y ago
  All of this will end up working out fine so long as money doesn't change hands in the process. It seems reasonable that someone will have to make a judgement call about whether a certain type of traffic deserves to preempt others or not. The really awful world will be if people can pay ISPs to influence that judgement call in their favor.
- btilly 16y ago
  It seems to me that you're hitting on a likely issue that could let there be general agreement between Google and Verizon with great room left for negotiation. In any case I hope they come to some sort of agreement, as imperfect as it may be. And shortly thereafter I'd like to see agreement that certain kinds of traffic, such as port scanning, should be filtered very aggressively. (Yeah, I can dream, can't I?)
- neurotech1 16y ago
  What seems to get lost in this debate is the difference between priority and type: top) VoIP 2nd) Video Chat 3rd) IM 4th) Streaming media 5th) Web Browsing 6th) Large file transfers/torrents etc. The idea would be to make it protocol "agnostic", and base it on the real-time requirements.
  - westbywest 16y ago
    The most elegant, protocol-agnostic solution I've seen for doing this is 1st to throttle individual clients to their allocated BW (i.e. so that one client doesn't gobble up an entire shared link), and 2nd to simply kill any long-term (12hrs+) TCP/IP connections that are not over a recognized/allowed L7 protocol. The 2nd is very effective at starving unwanted bit torrent usage. This method is in use right now by the guys who hang 5.8GHz antennas on grain silos, i.e. rural WISPs.
    - wmf 16y ago
      simply kill any long-term (12hrs+) TCP/IP connections that are not over a recognized/allowed L7 protocol. [This] is very effective at starving unwanted bit torrent usage. I don't see how. BitTorrent will just reconnect to a different peer and continue.
    - ElliotH 16y ago
      I like first one. However, while the second one is fair enough for the example of rural WISPs - if my ISP starts killing connections as a matter of common practice then I'd be looking for a new ISP.
- Ardit20 16y ago
  Can't you just hack a website page to tell it that it is a video page? I mean you can hack a php file to tell it it is a css file. So if this can be done, wouldn't any attempt to prioritize data by time be futile? Why should video be prioritized anyway? I hardly watch youtube, much less than search on google, read a website, do online research, or whatever else. I'd rather video was less prioritised. I can pause it for a few minutes while doing something else, but if a website has to load slowly if video is to be prioritized that has the necessary effect of lowering my quality of surfing, thus less google searching.
mootothemax 16y ago
So is this all about Google wanting to prioritize Google Voice's traffic over YouTube's?

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
      I argue that a "well thought out procedure" is not possible for such a complex system as the internet. Every kind of procedure that can be thought of will either have holes in the logic, or will be gamed by users and providers in a never-ending arms-race. Emergent complexity is not "random", although it can be based on elements of randomness. Nature is an example of a massively complex system that has evolved on elements of randomness, but the system itself is by no means random. And there's no way that it could have been designed with a "well thought out procedure".
jonknee 16y ago
We're quickly going to be in a world where all phone calls are VoIP and I don't think it's unreasonable to allow QoS tiers. I don't want to have my phone not work because my neighbors are torrenting. Hell, I already do this on my home network. Google just wants to make sure you don't have to pay to get in a QoS tier.
- ericflo 16y ago
  How about a corollary: why should your neighbor's torrents slow down just because you are making a bunch of phone calls? (And remember, people are using torrents for legitimate purposes, like how Blizzard uses it to distribute purchased copies of Starcraft II.) The solution is to fix overall network capacity.
  - pvg 16y ago
    That's a 'fix' if network capacity were infinite. You can rephrase your corollary as 'why should my VOIP calls drop just because I'm downloading StarCraft II'. There isn't anything inherently evil in the notion that you might want to prioritize, say, latency-dependent traffic over traffic that isn't.
    - nostrademons 16y ago
      Haven't people done studies on this and found that the cost to implement QoS is greater than the cost to just increase network bandwidth? That may not hold forever, but it holds now in the U.S. Current residential broadband lines in the U.S. could go much faster with zero technical effort. They're capped because Verizon and Comcast only give you enough bandwidth to make sure that you get more than you would with a competitor. They hold the rest in reserve so that they can raise speeds and please customers easily when a competitor raises speeds. We've got the slowest Internet speeds in the developed world, and you can bet it isn't because of technological reasons: http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/1004/ http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/1004/
      - pvg 16y ago
moultano 16y ago
All of this will end up working out fine so long as money doesn't change hands in the process. It seems reasonable that someone will have to make a judgement call about whether a certain type of traffic deserves to preempt others or not. The really awful world will be if people can pay ISPs to influence that judgement call in their favor.
btilly 16y ago
It seems to me that you're hitting on a likely issue that could let there be general agreement between Google and Verizon with great room left for negotiation. In any case I hope they come to some sort of agreement, as imperfect as it may be. And shortly thereafter I'd like to see agreement that certain kinds of traffic, such as port scanning, should be filtered very aggressively. (Yeah, I can dream, can't I?)
neurotech1 16y ago
What seems to get lost in this debate is the difference between priority and type: top) VoIP 2nd) Video Chat 3rd) IM 4th) Streaming media 5th) Web Browsing 6th) Large file transfers/torrents etc. The idea would be to make it protocol "agnostic", and base it on the real-time requirements.
- westbywest 16y ago
  The most elegant, protocol-agnostic solution I've seen for doing this is 1st to throttle individual clients to their allocated BW (i.e. so that one client doesn't gobble up an entire shared link), and 2nd to simply kill any long-term (12hrs+) TCP/IP connections that are not over a recognized/allowed L7 protocol. The 2nd is very effective at starving unwanted bit torrent usage. This method is in use right now by the guys who hang 5.8GHz antennas on grain silos, i.e. rural WISPs.
  - wmf 16y ago
    simply kill any long-term (12hrs+) TCP/IP connections that are not over a recognized/allowed L7 protocol. [This] is very effective at starving unwanted bit torrent usage. I don't see how. BitTorrent will just reconnect to a different peer and continue.
  - ElliotH 16y ago
    I like first one. However, while the second one is fair enough for the example of rural WISPs - if my ISP starts killing connections as a matter of common practice then I'd be looking for a new ISP.
Ardit20 16y ago
Can't you just hack a website page to tell it that it is a video page? I mean you can hack a php file to tell it it is a css file. So if this can be done, wouldn't any attempt to prioritize data by time be futile? Why should video be prioritized anyway? I hardly watch youtube, much less than search on google, read a website, do online research, or whatever else. I'd rather video was less prioritised. I can pause it for a few minutes while doing something else, but if a website has to load slowly if video is to be prioritized that has the necessary effect of lowering my quality of surfing, thus less google searching.

mootothemax 16y ago

So is this all about Google wanting to prioritize Google Voice's traffic over YouTube's?