Subject: RE: the iab & net neutrality

From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2006 09:07:37 -0800

I think that people need to consider that maybe there might be advantages to
non-flat rate, non-consumer pays charging models.

I don't expect the attempted shakedown of Google to work and there are
certainly tactics that they could use to preclude any desire on the part of
the carriers to do any such thing.

A much more interesting case would be delivery of video on demand. This is
surely what the proponents of the sender pays scheme are really thinking
about. 

If I am going to send a copy of a $200 million action movie to a viewer I am
going to expect to be paid for that. The viewer is going to expect a high
quality viewing experience. The problem is that the bandwidth they subscribe
to for Web browsing purposes may not be great enough to support that viewing
experience.

If I am charging $8 for a movie I might well be willing to pay $0.50 to the
carrier as a distribution fee in exchange for access to high bandwith pipe
for an interval.

The point here is that higher bandwidth costs more to provide. If the
bandwidth is provided to every subscriber all the time the costs are much
greater than providing the ultra-high speed to a small pool of subscribers
who need it for a limited time and purpose. If the high bandwidth is added
to the general pool then it will be diluted by contention and the folk
running file sharing &ct. 

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From: "JFC (Jefsey) Morfin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2006 19:39:48 +0100

May be if you think the other way around, you reinvent the Minitel model?
Not sure as the final text is not voted and is _very_ confused, but 
this _may_ be what the French DADVSI law _may_ lead to.
jfc

At 18:07 24/03/2006, Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote:

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>boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0014_01C64F3B.8ABDFF10"; 
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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2006 02:12:39 +0100

I know I'm going to regret saying this, but we haven't made much progress
in ten years.
http://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-carpenter-metrics-00.txt
I got a lot of interest in that draft, none of which came from
ISPs...

    Brian

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From: Geoff Huston <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2006 13:16:59 +1100

To quote from the Carpenter draft:...

"One approach to resolving the current crisis in Internet
  performance is to institute an efficient system of
  inter-carrier settlements."

Progress is often hard when you are heading in off in the weeds.

Try http://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/2005-01/interconn.html as an alternative 
view of the ISP settlement world.

regards,

     Geoff

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From: Patrik Fältström <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2006 17:56:09 +0100

> carrier as a distribution fee in exchange for access to high  

See the document Geoff sent a link to.

The way it works is that IF the end user want to be able to see high  
quality movies, he need to buy a good quality Internet Connection.  
One with good quality on the connections all the path that "the  
receiver pay". The company sending the movie have to pay to get  
quality for the full path that "the sender pay".

What does not work is to route money over the Internet. It has never  
worked.

The problem is that end users today pay for low quality Internet  
access, and then ask why they do not get high quality.

Where we have a problem is when the access provider that have a bad  
quality packet exchange relation with some other ISP is also  
providing a video service. They the bad quality is used as a lock-in  
tool to keep the customer. I.e. there are many access providers/ISP's  
that have no interest what so ever to sell "good quality  
interconnect" to other ISP's. There is not enough economical force  
behind building it.

Only path forward is, I think, that end users start to demand better  
service, and the ones that do are prepared on paying more. Like "if  
you just want broadband, buy blue service, but if you want better  
quality, buy red service" tied together with "to be able to use our  
movie distribution service, you need a broadband access of at least  
red service".

Then the market can show how many consumers want that better service,  
they pay more, and that money can be used for creating higher-quality  
interconnect.

    Patrik

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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2006 18:02:12 +0100

Geoff, things were indeed different then, as long distance
bandwidth costs were a serious concern. That has changed. I think
the fact that content providers who are paid for that content
don't (in effect) pay for the congestion that they cause hasn't
changed. But mainly I was interested to see PHB making arguments
quite close to the ones I made ten years ago.

    Brian

Geoff Huston wrote:
> Try http://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/2005-01/interconn.html as an 
> alternative view of the ISP settlement world.
> 
> regards,
> 
> 
>     Geoff
> 
> 
>

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From: "Jeffrey I. Schiller" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2006 12:54:04 -0500

> movie distribution service, you need a broadband access of at least

Of course the other model is that the content provider temporarily
upgrades your "blue" service to "red" service for their streams. If
content providers cannot do this and most people have "blue" service,
then the market for content that requires "red" service may be less
then the critical mass required to make providing the content viable.

The problem is how do we differentiate between cases where content
providers pay to get a higher then default QOS for their streams
vs. the case where the provider pays to prevent the ISP from
intentionally interfering with their streams. I believe the former is
reasonable while the later is extortion. Then there is the threat that
ISP's will permit their "default" level of service to degrade over
time because all those who "care" must now pay for higher QOS.

                        -Jeff

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Information Services and Technology
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From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2006 13:08:29 -0500

--On Saturday, 25 March, 2006 12:54 -0500 "Jeffrey I. Schiller"
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> The problem is how do we differentiate between cases where
> content providers pay to get a higher then default QOS for
> their streams vs. the case where the provider pays to prevent
> the ISP from intentionally interfering with their streams. I
> believe the former is reasonable while the later is extortion.
> Then there is the threat that ISP's will permit their
> "default" level of service to degrade over time because all
> those who "care" must now pay for higher QOS.

The latter is, of course, one of the interesting behaviors that
have been observed in parts of the US (at least) from TV cable
providers.  And, behold, several of them have become major ISPs
for the residential / telecommuter/ SOHO market, so we are
dealing with a group that has already learned that particular
trick.
:-(

    john

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From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2006 13:08:29 -0500

john

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From: Geoff Huston <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2006 04:09:07 +1000

Brian,

Actually the document I referenced is also around 9 years old - so even then
we were having a Fine Debate about settlement systems in this industry.

The introduction of "Content" into this debate has also been interesting
with the earliest intersection of the two groups (ISPs and content
factories) resulting in the claims of "you have to pay me" coming
from the content industry and being directed to the IP access providers,
while the precise opposite is the case today. (Some reflections arising
from the first set of encounters are at
http://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/2001-06/2001-06-content.html
if anyone is vaguely interested in such things!)

Content was, and remains, a distinct  overlay economy and making
claims that content providers should pay ISPs for the shortcomings
in the ISP's own network engineering are around as specious as
earlier claims that that ISPs should pay content providers for
content that their customers may well have been completely uninterested
in!

(Bundling service and infrastructure, in whatever form, also strikes
me as yet another reprise of that 'convergence' nonsense that has
been inflicted on this industry for some decades now, primarily by
folk looking desperately for monopolistic relief from the harsh
realities of a highly competitive deregulated communications industry.)

regards,

    Geoff