The Cost of a Tiered Internet 246
An anonymous reader wrote in to mention a Popular Science article about the money issues involved in a tiered internet. From the article: "With a tiered Internet, such routing technology could be used preferentially to deliver either the telecoms' own services or those of companies who had paid the requisite fees. What does this mean for the rest of us? A stealth Web tax, for one thing. 'Google and Amazon and Yahoo are not going to slice those payments out of their profit margins and eat them,' says Ben Scott, policy director for Free Press, a nonprofit group that monitors media-related legislation. 'They're going to pass them on to the consumer. So I'll end up paying twice. I'm going to pay my $29.99 a month for access, and then I'm going to pay higher prices for consumer goods all across the economy because these Internet companies will charge more for online advertising.'" Update: 05/26 16:54 GMT by Z : The article is hosted on CNN, but is original material from Popular Science. Post updated to reflect this.
My letter to my congressman. (Score:5, Informative)
Congressman McCotter:
I am not politically active and have never contacted a federal representative in my life. However, I am taking the time today to write you because I am very deeply concerned about pending legislation intended to counter recent actions by large telecommunication companies that will hugely detrimental effect on the American citizenry, your constituents, and myself personally.
As things currently stand, big phone companies and cable conglomerates have what is called "common carrier [wikipedia.org]" status. Meaning that they are required to treat all phone calls, Internet traffic, etc. identically. In exchange for keeping their hands off, carriers are given special tax breaks and are normally exempt from being liable for the content they carry (Comcast can't be held criminally liable if someone downloads child porn using a Comcast cable modem, for example). This is how things have been since 1934. However, Congress is moving in the direction to give the big phone and cable companies the power to regulate the 'net as they see fit. They will be able to pick favorites and decide who's traffic they carry--or don't carry at all.
December of last year, I founded Bright Idea VoIP [brightideavoip.com] here in Novi, Michigan. We're an Internet-based telephone company that provides voice communication services to small-businesses. I frequently explain it as "Vonage for companies with 5 to 100 employees." This technology is known as "Voice-over-IP" (VoIP) is currently one of the fastest growing segments of the Internet. There are hundreds of companies like mine popping up all over the map. I am not rich by any sense of the word; I am simply a computer geek with a great idea who is trying to earn my piece of the American dream. And it's paying off... The company is growing very quickly. I (and my small, but also growing, group of coworkers) are working hard, but enjoying almost every minute of it. But for us to continue to thrive, or just to survive, we need a level playing field.
If AT&T, Verizon, or another large competitor of ours gains the ability to turn off or slow down areas of the Internet, our service will grind to a halt and I won't be able to do a thing about it. If they start to charge me a special "priority access fee", I'll have to pass that cost onto my subscribers. Suddenly the largest appeal of VoIP is reduced, making it less of a threat to the big telecom companies. The net effect is that I will be out of business within a year. And it's not just me... it's the thousands of other Internet innovators. We'll never know the next Google, eBay, or Amazon.com if the established 800 lb. gorillas get the power to decide who stays and who fails. That's not capitalism and that's not the American way.
With the lifeblood of manufacturing jobs in the metro Detroit area rapidly disappearing, your district desperately needs your help in promoting innovation and job growth in the technology sector. I ask that you please support Massachusetts congressman Ed Markey's "Network Neutrality Act of 2006 [house.gov]", and that you see through the well-funded smoke screen of large telecom lobbyists.
I didn't even get a form letter back in return. Since he's up for relelection this
Two versions of "teired internet" (Score:3, Informative)
Version 2: What will probably happen. Any site can pay for what amounts to a "leased line" from their server to our ISP. This would give them guaranteed bandwidth across the entire trip and eliminate potential bottlenecks.
Another idea (would also fit in #2) I've heard mentioned is that service providers can essentially buy more bandwidth for you, but only to use their site. Say you have a 3 Mb connection. ABC wants to stream HDTV to you and would prefer it be over a 6- or 10 Mb connection. They pay your ISP, your ISP conditionally opens up your bandwidth so you can get the stream flawlessly without having to pay for the higher bandwidth full-time.
I'm all for #2, especially the second part. I'd love to be able to pay a small fee to have my bandwidth opened up for a particular service.
Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act (Score:5, Informative)
Good news! (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/ [savetheinternet.com]
hansoff.org FYI (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.kessels.com/whois/whois.php?InputQuery
And came up with "The Mecury Group" as the owner:
http://www.mercgroup.com/ [mercgroup.com]
From the site:
"Proven practitioners of persuasive arts..."
Not that this should come as any surprise.
Re:Fix it (Score:5, Informative)
It may, actually.
I'm the senior engineer for a 9 county fixed wireless operation. We are MPLS-based in our core, run a minimum of DS3 licensed and unlicensed point-to-point links and feed out into our small communities at a minimum of 24 Mbps. We feed with redundant fiber to diverse carriers. We really have tried to deliver a reliable network on quite a bit of a budget. Our competition is companies like Qwest and Mediacom that usually brings at most bonded T1s (3 Mbps) to a community, does not run MPLS, gets burnt alive by P2P abusers, etc.
We have notified our uplink that we will not tolerate tiered Internet offerings (our SLA prohibits it presently and is locked in for four years). I've been around the BGP peering Internet since 1993, so we were careful to make sure this crap doesn't force us into accepting someone's bastard vision of the Internet.
The bottom line is it comes down to consumers. If you are too stupid to know what you're buying, you're screwing all of us. I had a pain in the ass insurance office (virus of the week kind of nightmare customer) leave for Qwest this week - only noticed it since I hadn't heard his weekly "I'm gonna sue everyone if you don't fix my incompetent LAN" call. I finally told him his ISP is not his LAN integrator and 12 hours of comp time by a CISSP/CISA/CCSP was enough.
But if enough clueless users switch to the Qwests and Mediacoms, buying "9 Mbps download" (on a network fed with 3 Mbps - cluestick!) then the small wireless businesses that are emerging to give you all a better choice will wither and die.
Should that happen in our case, my heart won't break. We diversified two years ago into high-end security engineering for the financial industry which pays a hell of a lot more money than rural broadband. But for those of you that do want a choice:
1. quit voting for losers that screw you time after time. That means BOTH parties. Learn that the big corporations own both parties. Quit falling prey to the bait they offer of blindly blaming one party and being a shill for the other. Go take a look at the immigration votes from both parties. Do you know how many Senators from both sides voted the way they did because some $20 million per year fat cat told them they're tired of paying IT people $60K per year? I've dealt with it first-hand. Most of your large corporate CEOs would prefer us all making less than $30K per year and will outsource or illegally hire to make that happen.
2. quit supporting tired, old fat-cat companies. So what if they advertise 9 Mbps? Will they fight for you when the RIAA is coming for you like I do for our customers? Not a chance. They'll sell you out for a dollar. Ethics? Go read about Qwest's financial statement fraud or insider trading that stole from its shareholders and tell me how they're committed to all of us.
Yea, we may not have our act together all the time. Yea we may not have a 24x7 call center in India that will tell you within 2 minutes of your call to reformat your hard drive as a solution and blow you off.
It's up to you all what Internet you'll have by your decisions.
*scoove*
Re:Google does pay transit fees (Score:3, Informative)
It is the optimal way when the two endpoints are an AT&T transit customer and a Level3 transit customer.
No, it really isn't a mystery. Level3 obviously has some sort of connection to AT&T (probably a peering arrangement), and Level3 is advertising to AT&T that they have a route to Google. AT&T customers see this advertisement and simply follow the breadcrumbs home to Google. Level3 isn't some sort of unwitting accomplice here; they are actively telling other networks that Google is reachable through Level3.
I just about coughed up milk through my nose when I read this...
If two of the major tier-1 backbone providers aren't "cluefull", then just who is? I would guess that Level3 has one of the top ten highest-quality backbones in the world, with AT&T perhaps being in the top 5. Accusing them of not understanding how to correctly operate a network is really quite laughable.
Perhaps you should just accept the simplest (and most common) explanation: Google pays Level3 for transit. It makes sense if you think about it, too. Most of the major carriers (AT&T, Sprint, Level3, Qwest, etc...) have a list of very stringent requirements for peers, including a certain ratio of sent to received bits. I doubt that Google has a nice balance of inbound and outbound traffic, as they are primarily a content-provider network. This would make them ineligible for most major peering situations, thus requiring them to buy a lot of transit.