[Chapter-delegates] News from the front

Fri Jun 9 12:27:40 PDT 2006

There is not currently a regulatory authority for the Internet. The  
ITU periodically applies for the job, and some issues have been  
discussed there.

I'm not sure what "definition of the Internet" you are referring to.  
My working definition of the Internet is "anywhere IP datagrams might  
go". If it is something about routing and services, do corporate  
firewalls break the Internet model? Some would say that they do. But  
prior to commercial deployment, the Internet in most cases had what  
were referred to as "Acceptable Use Policies" or AUPs, which said "if  
you are using my network, it is targeted for <something in  
particular> and we don't expect you to <do something else>". These  
were often of an academic nature, and precluded content that was  
considered illegal or detrimental to education. The NRENs do the same  
thing today - for one example, see http:// 
informns.demo.ties.k12.mn.us/sites/8b8b7c58-f0c8-442a-9610- 
e26539e2cf7b/uploads/AUPmnI2.pdf. Commercial networks often do the  
same as well: I use Cox Business Services from my home, because I use  
a VPN to "go to" work and Cox's commodity home network in its AUP  
precludes VPN traffic. This is to say that a service is available to  
me to do anything I want, but not all services available to me permit  
me to do all things, and I don't see a problem with that as long as  
there is in fact an affordable service available to me that does what  
I need done. Coming back to corporate firewalls, as you will note  
from my email address, I work for a company named Cisco Systems.  
Cisco drops about 70% of email arriving at the corporate firewall,  
they tell me. This is based on one of two systems: a reputation based  
service that attempts to isolate active bots and not accept SMTP  
connections from them, and another service that compares email we do  
receive to known patterns and marks traffic that appears to be spam  
or virus traffic. In addition, on my laptop, I run a Baysian filter  
that further interdicts spam load. Would you argue that services that  
reduce the spam load and protect corporate or private assets from  
being subverted or attacked break the Internet model? I'm not of that  
opinion - speaking for myself.

When it comes to applications "hogging" peers, if it's not attack  
traffic, then I imagine you are referring to either Internet Video or  
peer-to-peer file sharing; I would be very surprised to find voice  
being limited for other than competitive reasons. I should think that  
it is within the rights of an ISP to charge a customer for usage  
beyond some threshold or in some way to limit them to some rate. For  
example, it might sell tiers of service - for a low price or maybe  
even for free, it offers a few hundreds of kilobits per second, for a  
stated price it offers more, and for yet another price it offers a  
lot more. In the latter, it might use concepts from ftp://ftp.isi.edu/ 
in-notes/rfc2597.txt, in which is marks some traffic as in excess of  
some capacity threshold and targets that as "what to drop first".  
Many ISPs give you free access to their web caches but charge some  
fee for traffic that goes off-net. In the present Net Neutrality  
debate in the US, I don't think that an ISP is required to give  
premium service absent a contract to give premium service, but that  
it might give premium service to its own servers and standard (the  
same as it gives everyone) service to services outside of its  
network. That's not intentionally harming the other services, but it  
also means that it only helps services that it has an appropriate  
contract with.

Am I making sense?

On Jun 9, 2006, at 5:36 AM, ISOC wrote:
> Fred:
>
> Im not saying we should not give infinite bandwidth, but to  
> applications hogging the overall performance of peers due to which  
> massive multimillion dollar networks are being rolled out even in  
> the US should be excercised a ROT/ROF. Applications like example  
> SKYPE / SIP / VOIP which are also affecting worldwide telcos. It is  
> true that if we limit any application , the definition of Internet  
> would not be the same but with Global emerging peers having their  
> policies regulated by their authorities the debate has risen to  
> disallow many types of traffic. The idea to support ROT/ROF (Right  
> of Tranport / Right of Flow) could create a total convergence of  
> Telecom to Internet as it would be adding value to the existent  
> idea of the Internet.
>
> I have a question, if my local ISP disallows some kind of traffic  
> or the National Peering Network, Internet loses its definitions but  
> it is a concern which is still within a grey area, is there any  
> global authority which can re-regulate in such an event.
>
> Your comments please?
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Fred Baker" <fred at cisco.com>
> To: "Franck Martin" <franck at sopac.org>
> Cc: "isoc Chapter Delegates" <chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org>
> Sent: Friday, June 09, 2006 4:57 AM
> Subject: Re: [Chapter-delegates] News from the front
>
>
>> I'm not sure what your point is. The first says that broadband is a
>> bad thing and the chairman of the local ISOC chapter says we
>> shouldn't be giving people infinite bandwidth. The second says that
>> broadband is not only a good thing but South Africa's economic future
>> depends on it.
>>
>> Keep talking?
>>
>> On Jun 8, 2006, at 4:16 PM, Franck Martin wrote:
>>> http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Story.asp?
>>> Article=145685&Sn=BNEW&IssueID=29080
>>> Cut-price Internet
>>> <http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Story.asp?
>>> Article=145685&Sn=BNEW&IssueID=29080>
>>> Gulf Daily News - Manama,Bahrain
>>> *...* Referring to Batelco's new Internet packages, which limit
>>> usage to
>>> certain thresholds of up to 15GB, Bahrain *Internet* *Society*
>>> chairman
>>> Ahmed Al Hujairy said it *...
>>>
>>> *http://www.capeargus.co.za/index.php?
>>> fSectionId=498&fArticleId=3282874
>>> Sever the bonds of broadband access - or SA will pay a heavy price
>>> <http://www.capeargus.co.za/index.php?
>>> fSectionId=498&fArticleId=3282874>
>>> Cape Argus (subscription) - Cape Town,South Africa
>>> *...* Alan Levin is a specialist in change management and
>>> organisational
>>> governance and chairman of the *Internet* *Society* of South
>>> Africa. *...*
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> Franck Martin
>>> ICT Specialist
>>> franck at sopac.org
>>> SOPAC, Fiji
>>> GPG Key fingerprint = 44A4 8AE4 392A 3B92 FDF9  D9C6 BE79 9E60 81D9
>>> 1320
>>> "Toute connaissance est une reponse a une question" G.Bachelard
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Chapter-delegates mailing list
>>> Chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org
>>> http://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/chapter-delegates
>>
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