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To be honest, I'm not actually sure what QOS even has to do with the initial post in this thread; wouldn't a dedicated private ethernet network between the ECC

by tsuraan 17y ago

To be honest, I'm not actually sure what QOS even has to do with the initial post in this thread; wouldn't a dedicated private ethernet network between the ECC machines and the EBS machines (assuming it's possible within Amazon's network structure) have worked, assuming that their switches are configured to only allow communication between ECC and EBS (forbid ECC - ECC traffic)? Your commentary about how this would deprioritize other traffic wouldn't then be quite right; it would be a dedicated network, with no cost to any external sites. It would obviously give EBS an "unfair" advantage over anybody who wants to provide an ECC block storage solution to compete with EBS, but honestly, is that a concern? Nobody's demanding that all internet hosts (end-user included) have the same bandwidth to all other hosts. It's just artificial crippling of services that are bad, not some things having advantages over others. QoS on the general web doesn't seem likely, as you point out. Prioritization based on which services can afford to pay off all the nation's ISPs seems like a really bad idea though. As a service provider, I don't want to have to pay kickbacks to every ISP in the country (world?) to ensure that no unfortunate accidents befall my traffic. Much more personally, though, as a human, I'm sick of being sold as a product. I don't watch commercial TV because I'm not a product to be sold to advertisers. Similarly, I'm not a product for Comcast to sell to google; that's how they see me, but it's not how I see myself. And, I get pissed off when people see me that way :)

tc 17y ago
wouldn't a dedicated private ethernet network With appropriate capacity, a VLAN/QoS configuration is functionally identical to having physically separated networks. On an abstract level, if you object to provider prioritization, you should probably object to them running separate physical networks for their own services. As to your point about feeling screwed by the (mostly theoretical) possibility of intentional service degradation, I sympathize. I'll point out though that 1) I'm quite certain this isn't terribly prevalent in the US, 2) in most cases where people think this is happening it is the result of simple under-capacity or generally bad network design or management, and 3) the correct answer to this general issue is to enable provider competition, not to impose ham-handed mandates.
tsuraan 17y ago
I can't reply to tc's reply to me (I think that "feature" should probably be disabled, btw; it tends to lead to broken threads like this one, and inhibits discussion), so I'm replying to myself, like a monster. Service provider competition is definitely the answer. Where I live, we finally have a competitor to Comcast (Qwest), and t-mobile is also gearing up for a bit of wireless service. I've heard that some municipalities assert ownership of their power grids, phone lines, pretty much everything that's built on public land, and they force open competition for providing services over those infrastructure pieces. That would definitely be preferable to net neutrality, but it seems that wresting ownership of infrastructure from the ISPs is even more offensive than the creation of neutrality provisions. At least new communities can learn from existing ones and have sane starting points for competition, I guess.

by tsuraan 17y ago

tc 17y ago

wouldn't a dedicated private ethernet network With appropriate capacity, a VLAN/QoS configuration is functionally identical to having physically separated networks. On an abstract level, if you object to provider prioritization, you should probably object to them running separate physical networks for their own services. As to your point about feeling screwed by the (mostly theoretical) possibility of intentional service degradation, I sympathize. I'll point out though that 1) I'm quite certain this isn't terribly prevalent in the US, 2) in most cases where people think this is happening it is the result of simple under-capacity or generally bad network design or management, and 3) the correct answer to this general issue is to enable provider competition, not to impose ham-handed mandates.

tsuraan 17y ago

I can't reply to tc's reply to me (I think that "feature" should probably be disabled, btw; it tends to lead to broken threads like this one, and inhibits discussion), so I'm replying to myself, like a monster. Service provider competition is definitely the answer. Where I live, we finally have a competitor to Comcast (Qwest), and t-mobile is also gearing up for a bit of wireless service. I've heard that some municipalities assert ownership of their power grids, phone lines, pretty much everything that's built on public land, and they force open competition for providing services over those infrastructure pieces. That would definitely be preferable to net neutrality, but it seems that wresting ownership of infrastructure from the ISPs is even more offensive than the creation of neutrality provisions. At least new communities can learn from existing ones and have sane starting points for competition, I guess.