Because if they tell us to unlock the back door in the middle of the night, or to get into that nice man's car, we probably won't do what they say?

Bullshit. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

I believe that clause 30, which excludes interconnections from the scope of that rule, means that the Netflix deal is *not* affected. But I'm not a lawyer, and I haven't read all 400 pages either. :-)

The rule is written very broadly. It basically covers *anything* that improves performance for the other party, no matter how it is implemented.

However, it turns out that the rule's scope is defined later on in the document to explicitly exclude interconnections. So it won't stop peering, which is good, on the other hand it also wouldn't apply directly to the Netflix wrangle.

It might still apply to in-network hosting, I'm not sure. I think you could argue that was new traffic, which just happens to replace the old traffic. Or that it's a form of interconnection. I'll let the lawyers figure that one out, or at least someone who has read the entire document. :-)

IIRC, that was because Comcast didn't want to pay for extra peering connections. I don't *think* it's relevant to this case.

The Wikipedia article calls it "internet transit" and distinguishes it from "peering" as follows: "Transit is distinct from peering, in which only traffic between the two ISPs and their downstream customers is exchanged and neither ISP can see upstream routes over the peering connection." That more or less matches my original understanding. Mind you, there are no citations.

The rule disallowing paid prioritization is very broad, and does *not* have an exception for normal network management. (They actually call out explicitly that this rule does not have that exception, unlike the first two.)

However, clause 30 appears to restrict the scope of the rule to explicitly exclude peering. So that's OK after all.

Here's a reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I... : "Transit is distinct from peering".

You appear to be using the word "peering" to include connections between ISPs and backbone providers. Last time I checked, that wasn't standard usage.

Regardless of the linguistics, though, I'm fairly sure you understood what I meant. The rules as written appear to prohibit the practice of two ISPs exchanging data directly rather than via a backbone provider.

Stopping this practice would pretty much break the internet. I don't suppose the FCC intends to interpret the rule that way. But I don't think this is a good sign, and it would appear to justify the claims ISPs are making about the new rules creating uncertainty.

I can't find anything in that which says they'll pay for the rack space, and IIRC they don't. IOW, Netflix customers are being subsidized by ISPs.

You're assuming that Cogent (for instance) actually has enough capacity to carry the necessary traffic to Comcast, and that the only reason there was ever a problem was that Comcast created one artificially.

I do not claim to know whether or not this assumption is correct, but it should be noted that it is not a law of nature.

Clause 18 - "no paid prioritization" appears to prohibit peering. It favors some traffic (traffic from the peer) over other traffic (traffic not from the peer) and is done in exchange for consideration - even if it is just on a quid-pro-quo basis ("I'll accept your traffic at the peering point if you accept mine") that's still a "consideration".

The FSF disagrees with you:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gp...

Not if the rules are enforced. Or if there's enough competition that anyone offering "poor" access to the general internet won't survive for long.

So how do things like Netflix work, if they can't put their boxen inside the local network, and don't have any QoS guarantees? Or, say, an on-line gaming system that needs low latency?

(And are you sure the government isn't subsidizing access in some way?)

I reckon you should need to get a license to travel to the UAE, including mandatory training on their various absurd laws. With an examination.