How does common carrier fix this? In the old days, if I was an alternative long distance provider, say MCI (they paved the way for others), wouldn't I have to make sure that I had enough capacity at the local exchange? The local exchange would "peer" with me. I can't imaging the local exchanges forcing all the long distance traffic to the various companies out of a *single* port on their switch.

Let's put it another way. Say I had this brand new idea for a phone service (the industry term is "audiotext"). I decided I want MCI to handle my calls instead of Ma Bell. So I setup with MCI. Suddenly everyone likes my service. The only problem is that MCI doesn't have the capacity that MaBell has at some of the more popular localities. MCI's switch just isn't as big as MaBell's and the link to the metro switch is saturated. Do I stick with MCI and pay MaBell? Or do I make my own links to those popular metro areas?

This is not common carrier stuff. What this fast lane law is proposing is something completely new.

That what is means to you. Net Neutrality in the beginning only meant that all packets were treated the same. Peering *does* treat all packets the same. Peering is a good thing so that ONE large provider of content can't spike out the connection for *everyone*. How is that helpful?

Think about my example with long distance companies. Even *with* common carrier it was up to the individual long distance companies to accommodate the required capacity at the local exchange. The entire long distance traffic for a CO didn't come out of a single port on the switch. MCI in the early days built out their own alternative path for calls using microwave towers. Phone companies had to pay other telcos to connect calls at the local level. Sound familiar? Isn't that what Netflix is doing?

What you are proposing is not common carrier, but something brand new.

Good. I don't want the local government running broadband. I want actual, real, competition. I want the right-of-ways to be loosened. I want less paperwork, less cost, less red tape. I want local governments to make it easier for companies like Google to come in and build out infrastructure. Or heck, just the local guy wanting to setup a microwave tower on his farm and then run fiber to all the nearby farms. That's the way make things better. Not government owned broadband.

What does common carrier have to do with peering? Even long distance companies of old had to connect to the local exchanges. The local exchanges had only so much capacity on their switches. It would be possible that a call couldn't go over a particular long distance router because the switch was full "all circuits are busy, please try again." This is no different than Internet peering except that Internet peering doesn't have discrete channels for each "call".

Exactly! This stuff needs to happen at the *local* level, not at the FCC level. I firmly believe the government is ignorant on how the Internet works and they will only screw it up. The best way to solve the problem is working with the local city that manages right-of-way. Force the city to make it easier for companies to get permits. Reduce the cost and paper work, etc.

Netflix chose to build peering links. They could have just easily pulled back all peering and started sending all traffic over transit links. What do you think would have come of that? Netflix decided they received more bang for buck when they directly peered with ISPs.

I predicted this would happen. As soon as lawmakers figured out there was this thing called peering they'd freak out and try to control it. The discussion went from treating each packet the same to controlling peering. How long will it take for lawmakers to completely screw up the Internet? Much of what I see about net neutrality is like reading people's thoughts on organic food. Small bits of truth, but mostly junk. Now turn that ignorance over to the power of the Federal government. No good can come of this.

So basically between 1 in 4 to 1 in 2 packets going over the ISP's transit link will be Netflix data. Why would an ISP do that if they have the option to peer directly with Netflix? It makes absolutely no sense. Any spike in Netflix data will cause everyone's connection to be crap. Not just Netflix users, everyone. This is not helping the potential competitor to Netflix, it is hurting them! Peering is a good thing! Please stop trying to regulate it.

Initially, yes. CentOS narrowed and then beat SL with each point release

Now that CentOS is part of RedHat, I would expect that CentOS should be able to keep pace.

Very, very interesting. I don't work in the Windows world, but I will pass along this information about WMI on Windows to the people testing DSC. If WMI isn't right all the time, then DSC is not going to work.

What .NET calls used to require WMI?

Microsoft de-emphasized CIM? DSC (Desired State Configuration) is entirely based on CIM. It works by creating CIM objects with Powershell. It will create a corresponding .mof file from the provider written in Powershell. Once you have the mof and the provider, the provider can be called from Powershell. DSC will manage the state of the provider based on the parameters passed by the configuration script.

MIcrosofties where I work are all excited about DSC. I think they think is Chef/Puppet for Windows. I don't know that they understand that Chef/Puppet do much more than handle providers. If anything Chef/Puppet would use the CIM objects created with DSC. CIM abstracts the complexity of changing the configuration of Windows. Microsoft provided CIM configuration objects are a huge win for scripting configurations!

I'm not sure that the OMI people envisioned large configuration scripts being called through CIM. It would be like configuring an OS via SNMP. SNMP would be the mechanism to call scripts on a remote machine (net-snmp can do this). You could do it, but why? MS could just have easily exposed the objects directly without going through CIM. The advantage I suppose is that OMI provides an open transport to call CIM objects. Only problem, Microsoft uses WS-Management, not WBEM.

And what if Netflix stopped peering with those ISP's? Then what? The problem started because Netflix was depending on Cogent to have sufficient peering links. Cogent didn't. Cogent also didn't have any incentive to upgrade those links because Cogent likes to have settlement-free links.

In Los Angeles, there is a heck of a lot of fiber. I remember talking down the sidewalk in Burbank. Three man holes a few feet apart. One said "MFN 20K" (which is now AboveNet), another "ATT 20K", and another "Layer3 20K".Admittedly, these are obviously backhaul links, but they were on the same street as the muni sewer. Given how they were laid out, they were probably using the same conduit. Fiber is not the same as water, sewer, etc. It can be done and is already being done. I'm pretty sure AT&T and Charter fiber run on the very same poles in a city.

I'm not pro-big-ISP, I'm just skeptical of FCC regulation. There is a difference. I am also convinced that most people have no idea how the Internet works. My comment about Burbank just a funny thing. It works just like you want. Burbank doesn't own the fiber, it is owned by the "evil" big-ISP. They just sub-out to the cable company for maintaining a neutral network that all businesses can connect to. Transit is optional and doesn't have to be provided by the cable company. Burbank had a huge incentive to do this because of all the studios in the area. They needed high speed point to point links to send large amounts of data.

It has been implemented this way already. Starting with Yahoo! years ago. AOL too. If a company has a large national network, they can deliver data to peering points bypassing expensive transit links. Do you think Yahoo! and AOL had unfair advantages?

Net neutrality as was originally defined was that packets shouldn't be treated any different than any other packet. The idea was to prevent traffic shaping. I pointed out, quite awhile ago, that no shaping had to be done. All a company would have to do is let some ports get congested and upgrade ports that serviced their preferred services. Few seemed understood this point. I also wondered exactly how this would be regulated since peering is an integral part of how the Internet works. Fast forward to present. Now everyone is talking about peering. Welcome all! This was my point all along. I just feared the day when people would realize this point. I don't want the government approving every single stupid change an ISP has to make to their peering. It sounds like a regulatory disaster. More lobbying, more corruption. The best way to solve the problem is to pressure local governments to open up right of ways. The cable companies can sue. Let them.