Excite@Home To Change Routing Priorities For $$ 177
" I am expecially troubled by this because it would mean that sites and companies that have gobs of cash could in essence pay excite to guarantee a better experience than a competitor. It's not clear from the article, but for excite to specifically give higher priority to one than that would by default reduce the priority of competitors.
The question then becomes, how long until someone can literally pay to make it impossible to reach a competitors site. Say how would cnn reader feel if they could no longer reach cnn , but msnbc always came up super fast?
It's a surprise that the same company that appears to be for open access for cable lines would take this approach to cash for network routing. Excite is definately doing the right thing through it's support of open access (imho), but a very wrong thing in pursuing this line of business. "
Comment removed (Score:3)
A subscriber's point of view (Score:1)
Why, I'm so fscking happy I wish I were paying $80 dollars a month!
Re:I'm guessing this won't hold up too long. (Score:1)
Re:Monny-grubbing... (Score:1)
To further steer this off topic a new resteruant/movie theater just opened here that serves pizza and beer during the show, and I think that's just pretty damn cool, prices are pretty decent too.
Which one is the server? (Score:1)
The only problem with this is defining which system is the server, and which is the client.
Is the server the one providing most of the traffic? That would work for ftp downloads, but not uploads. How about gnutella and other peering systems?
The way to do it would be to say that you don't pay for any traffic _from_ your location, only to it. Currently, you pay for traffic in both directions.
Note that this is how cell-phones work over here. It is the caller that pays for the call. If you call a cell-phone, you pay. If the cell-phone calls you, they pay. This is different from North America, where the cell-phone always pays (again from what I remember).
As for collecting payment for traffic, most ISPs outside of the US do this already. My cable modem here in New Zealand is metered, and so is the ADSL line the Telco offers.
Jason PollockSounds like AOL (Score:1)
What about Jakob Nielsen…? (Score:1)
Jakob Nielsen (we've had him interviewed here) says that people are very sensitive to download times - guess why he recommends spartan design in his sites.
I can't find the quote from his book, but he cites surveys where it's found that people prefer speed over content.
With high bandwidth piping from excite, some would have a very real advantage in reach people.
The $1.5 Billion Question (Score:1)
Excite needs money. Bad. And they'll use all of their resources (i.e., their infrastructure) to make it. I don't think it is really clear what the effects will be on others. If Excite isn't robbing Peter of bandwidth to pay Paul, then they should be free to sell their resources as they see fit.
Re:this is easily analyzed.. (Score:1)
Why? (Score:1)
Isn't that our close future? (Score:1)
Thus we no more pay for the time, we will anyway pay for something... will it be bandwith, traffic, priority, or all of them?
Re:Well, there's no bill of rights here... (Score:1)
This is already happening in a big way.. (Score:1)
Lets see...
"Slashdot's new co-location site is now at Andover.Net's own (pinky finger to the mouth) $1 million dedicated datacenter at the Exodus network facility"
You mean that if you have lots of money to throw at your servers and hosting, your sitell load faster? Wow.
Akamai and their clients (Score:1)
Hence, @home via Akamai is saying to these companies that they will provide them fast(er) service to @home customers. But it will cost you. If these companies maintain their relationship with Akamai, then they will be essentially saying okay. Can't wait for the open access fights to start up again.
But most importantly, Victoria's Secret is an Akamai client. You know what this means.:-)
Re:could be good if... (Score:2)
Re:Monny-grubbing... (Score:1)
Back to the original poster--"the company that is for open access..."; is he high? E@H has never been for open access, they've been fighting it tooth and nail.
Possible usage? (Score:1)
I wonder if they are using anything based on the type of service field in the IP header, this is very possible and combined with route maps its easy to impliment per (extra paying) customer. So, @Home customers, why not set your own TOS bits and see if it makes any difference?
Under WINNT (and I guess most MS OSes?)
Edit the registry to add:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Ser
Use the "Edit->New->DWORD Value" menu selection and type in "defaultTOS" without the "s."
Double-click on the new defaultTOS value and enter 20 (make sure the units are set to HEX).
Exit the registry and reboot the system.
A value of 20 sets the TOS to "priority."
With a Cisco....
add to your outbound interface:
ip route-cache policy (of course depends on IOS / if CEF is used etc)
ip policy route-map settos
Global conf:
access-list 1 permit ip any any
Make the route map:
route-map settos permit 10
match ip-address 1
set ip precedence 1
The above might be a bit wrong but you get the idea. 1 is the second lowest precedence, with 7 being the highest, 0 the lowest. Both of these will of course only work for traffic in the out bound direction.
OK, is this possible under Linux I guess so, but how?
Well, mostly it's the content distributors, so far (Score:2)
Besides, it appeared that the companies signing up (well, at least one that I am aware of, Akamai) distribute content, rather than provide it. They don't create or provide the content. They get paid by companies that want to have the ability to distribute their own high-bandwidth streaming media content. The content distributors have various mechanisms to achieve this, and one of the tools they need is, naturally, high bandwidth. What this means, is that companies that wish to pay more to get their own content out there will be able to do so because of this. If you cannot or don't want to pay to get the bandwidth for distribution, why should you have it?
Pretty silly controversy. (Score:1)
It's not as if @home is routeing packets to CNN at a higher priority than MSNBC, it's simply that if CNN has a 'direct' link to @home then @home subscribers will naturally see better service.
Look for a cause elsewhere.
could be good if... (Score:2)
Instead of getting angry, let's see if we can convince them to take this approach instead.
Want to work at Transmeta? MicronPC? Hedgefund.net? AT&T?
Re:How would they do this? (Score:1)
So what? (Score:1)
Paying for Better Access? How can this be? (Score:3)
I can't believe that the open spirit of the
Internet has been sullied by this obvious attempt
at crass commercialization. The Internet has
survived for the past 2 decades without charging
any money for access and providing equal levels
of service to everyone based on merit. This
could change all that.
What's next, having Internet access facilitated
by telecommunications carriers that will charge
$13,000 a month for DS3 access that is currently
provided for free?
I am shocked. We should all boycott Excite@Home.
These concerns may be unwarranted (Score:5)
By buying bandwidth directly to a network segment, these providers will get better throughput. If you look at the buyers (Akamai, iBeam and Microcast) in the article, you'd see that they defintely have an interest in eliminating netlag and other delays to cablemodem users (who can make best use of their services). I expect other 'wide pipe' providers to follow suit, and consider it both prudent, and a service to all customers. (The revenue stream is welcome, too: Excite@Home lost $1.5 billion on revenues of $337 mill last year. How long do you think they can afford to keep supplying service at current prices at his rate?)
There is a huge distinction between *providing* service* and *denying* it.
You might as well argue that high-bandwidth users are 'crowding everyone else off the Internet' (which has been argued). Howver, this doesn't have that nice conspiratorial anti-business ring, does it?
Why was this even posted? It's just CoLo/Peering (Score:3)
Why not make an announcement that "Search Engine X" or "E-Commerce Book Store Y" also has multiple connections to the internet? It's absolutely NO DIFFERENT.
This just some lame-o marketdroids attempt to get publicity, and somebody fell for it.
And this is new.... how? (Score:2)
You seem surprised that ISPs provide you with a better service if you pay more money. This has always been the case.
Typically, it's the "Pay more for more bandwidth" scenario, which will make your site appear "faster" to the end users. Try and go over your allocation, and you get throttled. Nice.
It was only a matter of time before this was extended to routing.
Internet hosting is a business. Deal with it.
Re:why not? (Score:2)
Exactly. The poster might as well have said "it's unfair that some sites can afford better graphic designers" or "better servers" or "to publish more content". If Excite users don't like it, they'll vote with their feet. If rivals to content providers don't like it, then they have to either make their content more compelling, or pay for similar services.
Either way, the consumer gets a better deal. That's why it's called the free market.
Capitalism at work! I love it! (Score:2)
Re:Monny-grubbing... (Score:2)
Yeah, they kind of lumped onto the bandwagon when it became clear that AT&T, etc, were not about to just give them the same sweetheart deal twice. After all, if you can't have it to yourself you'de better make sure your competition can't either.
Re:Well, there's no bill of rights here... (Score:2)
You put your finger on the crux of the issue. Given lively competition among service providers to end users this is not a concern. However, what's more valuable at this point, 95% of Internet content or consumers connected at high speed? The value of the Internet to the big money forces now is not in current content, its future markets. This is why Excite@home can lose $1B, as the article says, right now the game is to jockey for position in future markets.
If E@h (or any other high speed provider) can obtain a dominant market position they can dictate terms to content providers. More insidious, if a content provider owns a service provider they can exclude other content providers. Aol/TimeWarner? Didn't TimeWarner try to play hardball with Disney?
This is what Aol would have like to have done with the dialup crowd but all phone lines being equal it wasn't very compelling to content providers in the way that high speed access to consumers could be.
We need a vigilant FTC. Check out The Media Access Project [mediaaccess.org], they are part of a coalition that filed with the FTC to block the Aol/TimeWarner merger [mediaaccess.org].
Re:Nope! Read the article (Score:1)
If you were both on the same leaf of the tree, the call would be routed within that tree. If you were one hop away, your call would be routed one level up the tree, then back down to the leaf.
In some cases, a call may go up three levels of the tree and back down again. (Much like how IP is handled).
Eventually, the people at AT&T noticed that some of the main trunk lines were getting really clogged. (Like ones that run from NYC-Los Angeles.) These weren't exactly in the same section of the tree, and so they needed to work their way up to the top of the tree and back down, making it difficult at times to make that call.
So, what was the solution? A direct trunk line from NYC-Los Angeles. Calls that would normally travel up to the top of the tree were instead shunted out along this new line. The direct service not only improved the NYC-LA connection, but it also improved other conenctions as well, because the bandwith that was hogged by NYC-LA connections was freed up.
This is very similar to what we see here, except in this case, the cost of the additional bandwidth is only being absorbed by one "leaf" of the tree... those leafs willing to pay extra to have a direct connection to one of the main trunks... bypassing a lot of the hops on the way.
Hot Potato Routing (Score:1)
This obviously doesn't have to happen, Excite may persue this as just a little lucrative business on the side. Or @Home users might not allow it to get out of control, by finding another provider and forcing Excite to keep the general purpose pipe fat to keep its customers.
Anyone remember who wrote the bit on hot potato[e] routing(SF author maybe?). It was another take on how an Old Boys Network could be established to regulate who gets to use resources. Packets that aren't coming from or going to a prefered IP are passed along to the next (other company's) router since they don't generate direct revenue. If everyone passes the buck, then the packet gets tossed around like a hot potato until it finally gets delivered or its TTL expires.
-sb
Well, there's no bill of rights here... (Score:2)
***JUMP PAD ACTIVATION INITIATION START***
***TRANSPORT WHEN READY***
Re:why not? (Score:1)
It sounds like a great deal for the users.
Re:Monny-grubbing... (Score:1)
And? (Score:1)
service competition w/infrastructure diff. (Score:1)
In his keynote on Monday at SuperComm2000, John Sidgmore of UUNET declared that stand-alone broadband doesn't work as a business model and that UUNET isn't profitable despite the fact that it is the Internet's largest transport provider.
You might dismiss Sidgmore's comments as self-interested whining, but as Excite@Home's actions and the discussion here indicate, there are real issues. The fundamental question is what sorts of unequal treatment and service differentiation are likely to lead to the best competitive structure. As Justice Breyer noted in the Iowa Utilities Board decision,
Substitute "equality in packet routing" for "sharing" and you have an important comment on Excite@Home's action.As horrifying as it might seem to some, beyond best-effort "base level" IP connectivity, allowing service providers to be more closely tied to particular wide-area network infrastructure may provide a better competitive structure for advanced network services. I've explored these ideas in detail in some discussion papers available at http://www.erols.com/dgalbi/telpol/think.htm
Pay for content WAS Re:I'm guessing this... (Score:1)
What is the difference? (Score:1)
Paying for high speed access... (Score:1)
Nothing new.... (Score:2)
Re:Well, there's no bill of rights here... (Score:2)
Chris DiBona
VA Linux Systems
--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
Pres, SVLUG
Finally (Score:1)
You will search for the ISP's will the best contracts.
I've never liked servers paying for bandwidth. (Score:3)
If the client pays, then it makes sense for the pipe owners to upgrade the server's connection whenever it's needed. If the server pays, then a free site that gets too popular will be shut down by the bandwidth requirements.
Every move further toward making the servers pay for bandwidth creates greater pressure to make websites profitable, rather than merely useful or entertaining.
Quality of Service (Score:2)
This is nothing new and has been happening for a long time. There is nothing wrong here.
It takes money to run a network, and it costs more money to guarantee service which is reflected in the price. It's just that simple.
The e-business model (Score:1)
Excite@Home lost $1.5 billion on sales of $337 million
Eventually, IT isn't going to be able to sustain itself on the grace of massive, undeserved investment capital. Eventually, some of these firms are going to have to start turning a profit to survive.
This may be a Bad Thing for the internet, but let's face it, enterprises that start out idealistic eventually have to consider their bottom line. I'm sure that the first Tower Records and Starbucks weren't evil, either.
Nothing wrong with that (Score:4)
Face it - @Home is massive. With well over a million people with multimegabit per second connections, you can believe that @Home generates a LOT of traffic (I did the math once, and they have over 5Gbps of peering alone). Now, let's say for arguements sake that at any given time, 30Mbps is moving between Yahoo! and @Home. When Yahoo! realizes that they can in essense, colocate a server within @Home, and save that extra 30Mbps, it may be much cheaper to do that than to use up their external peering.
There is an advantage for @Home as well - not only do they save money on peering since they need fewer external links, but also now @Home users have access to this content over much faster connections.
I see how you are saying that companies are paying for performance, but I don't see how that's any different from the current situation. Some companies can afford an OC-3 and can send 300KB/s to an @Home user, while some companies can afford a T1 and can send 20KB/s to an @Home user. Nothing's changing. @Home's peering will not cease to exist when this new service is being offered, so people who cannot afford to place servers on @Home will still be able to send content to @Home users at the same speed as they can now. Since @Home's peering is actually quite nice to most networks (most notable exception is UUNet), their end of the connection can handle as fast as yours can send it.
Re:Slashdot's shallow "Journalism" (Score:1)
The Question:
I don't mind if you have some masochistic urge to read news you hate on a site you don't like, but do you have to complain about it too?
Hey, they are free to do it [Write horrible irresponsible stories], but we are also free to talk or complain about it.
Thank You, Drive through.
I fail to see the problem with this... (Score:2)
Here's another point: How much of the internet can they speed up? Is this just the connections to their subscribers? Also, I'm certain that this will decrease conjestion slowdowns, but they still have to pass the data through the last mile.
No, I don't see how this will allow them to SLOW DOWN other's connections, nor do I see a significant increase in the time it takes a customer to download the information. Just an increase in the availability of the information. Many thinks to Excite@Home, though, for getting them out of our way.
Mythological Beast
Most of you are missing the point here. (Score:1)
Excite is not charging users here, but rather the *content providers*. A provider can pay Excite a fee, and in exchange, Excite will route their traffic so that users visiting that site will have faster access. Of course this is the same as saying users will have slower access to sites that do not pay this fee to Excite.
Now think about where this is going. If this business model became the norm for ISPs, then only corporations willing and able to drop the big bucks will be able to pay these fees. For the rest of us, visitors to our sites will encounter delays imposed by the ISPs. It is inevitable that the corporations will attempt to erode what equality is left in the Internet. This is one of the most insidious methods I've heard of so far.
The good news is that (for now) any ISP can choose not to implement this business model, and I'm sure that a certain nonzero number of people in the online community would prefer such an ISP.
Its a thought (Score:1)
I think this means customers are will jump ship. (Score:1)
tried before and... (Score:1)
On top of this ignominy, Excite for years has been the SLOWEST search engine/portal out there, making it very ironic that they're now charging for speed. I thought their slowness might change after a couple of years but hasn't. They were also one of the first large web sites to deny pings to their web server, one of the first to jump on the dumb serach engine -> portal bandwagon and fill up their home page with a ton of useless crap and so forth. Therefore, this latest development doesn't surprise me. @Home is the same way, a company built on marketing (like AOL) in stead of engineering - you know where that gets you.
Re:A subscriber's point of view (Score:2)
If I were to guess, I'd say that their crackdown on unauthorized NNTP servers is a direct result of the UDP (usenet death penalty) imposed on them earlier this year. I wouldn't be too annoyed with them if they checked for unsecured SMTP servers too, and LARTed the guilty parties. I'm willing to put up with a little portscanning if it helps stop spam. I'm not crazy about being portscanned by anyone -- but then, that's why I have a firewall.
"The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Monny-grubbing... (Score:1)
wish in. If I don't like that policy, I have no right to demand being
let in with a Big Mac in my hands.
Just Business (Score:1)
Re:Monny-grubbing... (Score:2)
How long will it be before the movie theatre denies entry to people carrying McDonalds in an effort to ensure that they can keep raping the Burger King for rent?
All ad server companies have this business model (Score:1)
That's why when you load broken sites, you can often still get the banner ads
(we've all had this happen, admit it).
True ROUTING prioritization won't happen unless TCP/IP changes significantly,
because the packets don't contain enough information about the true originator.
It may not even be possible, because the security overhead would offset any reasonable gain
from the prioritization.
So if you like the net as it is, don't worry, be happy.
Steve Maurer
This was bound to happen (Score:1)
The rising tide of network speed will not lift all boats, and while that's unfortunate, you can't be surprised. As averse as we all are to consider it, this is the kind of situation where you look at a tax-flush federal government to make sure everyone can keep up.
-jpowers
1900collect anyone? (Score:1)
If corporations are willing to pay this, where will they pass the cost back to the customer? I know they won't just eat the costs...
Re:A subscriber's point of view (Score:1)
I was so sick of their slow DNS server i set up my own caching DNS server.
As for uplink, it sucks, but compared to ADSL it's fine (50k/sec verses 15k/sec)
And portscanning? @home scans my IP every 4 hours on NNTP. Ever since i got a new IP (forced to get one) it's been scanning from authorized-scan.security.home.net! I have logs of this going back 4 months now!
If there was an 80/mo alternative to cable/dsl, i'd buy it if the benefits were numerous. But considering the next best thing is 5-10 times that per month (commercial DSL, t1 line, etc) it's just out of reach for almost everyone =( I thought competition (dsl VS cable) would bring faster speeds.. *nope* not yet.
Consider this: I started on 10mbit at university in 1996. Switched to cable. =( Damn was i ever spoiled..
Re:Well, there's no bill of rights here... (Score:3)
There are lots of things that I have a "right" to do, that are legal to do, that I nonetheless don't do for various other reasons.
Corporations have a "right" to do this sort of thing. We have have a "right" to bitch about it and to try to discourage this sort of thing in various ways, including making it illegal. If we can make ourselves heard over corporate lobbyists, that is.
Re:A subscriber's point of view (Score:1)
And the fact the network goes down spontaniously.Had this happen when I was playing Starcraft with 5 other people.I probably pissed them all off too.
------------------------
Content providers are nothing new. (Score:2)
So now Excite@Home is doing this with audio/video services. Big whoop. You saw how miserably they've been doing financially: $1.5 billion in losses against $377 million in revenue. Hopefully these deals will encourage them not to go bankrupt and still provide Internet access. You don't _have_ to use their services, but they'll be made accessible to you as an instant-gratification option.
Re:Awww, come on! (Score:2)
Your only hope is to vote for Ralph Nader. Go ahead and do it. Along with the rest of your ten percent.
You wouldn't try to insult us if you thought that our opinion doesn't matter in politics.
My take - Read it and take heed, /. editors! (Score:2)
Your argument can be applied directly to other things that are already in place: Why should slashdot get a (zippy fast loading) 100K+ server setup and gobs of bandwidth when I have to host a pretty good website off a virtual hosted (slow dodgy) piece of junk behind an ISDN line? You janus-faced goons over at Andover would (and probably do) buy priority routing and dedicated bandwidth from your provider so as far as I'm concerned, you can take your whining story and shove it. If you have more money you buy more bandwidth; more priority; more promised uptime; more protection against D/DoS; more redundancy; more security. Is THIS FAIR? Put slashdot back on the old machine from which it was born and see how it holds up. Then eat your words.
What If some company goes out and buys so much bandwidth from a major provider that they dont even have bandwidth to sell to other people? Same thing only it's actually much much less likely to happen when a network is selling 802.1p bits.
Think! For the love of God, please!
~GoRK
Back in the day.... (Score:2)
~GoRK
Unethical or not? Depends on this one question. (Score:2)
That question is: When the content provider pays the ISP money, does the ISP use the money to create additional connectivity to that content provider, or does it merely allocate a greater percentage of its existing connectivity to that content provider? That's the million dollar question here.
There's nothing wrong if the money is used to buy *additional* infrastructure, so that connections to other providers are still 100% as good as they used to be, and connections to the paying provider are, say, 150% as good as they used to be.
On the other hand, it's highly unethical if what they are doing is taking resources *away* from non-paying providers and allocating them to the paying providers, without actually building anything new. (So the network responsiveness of the non-paying providers is less than 100% of what it used to be.) I say this is unethical because they are essentially opening up an auction where providers pay money whose only purpose is to hinder their competitors. ("Better pay us more money or we'll take away more of the bandwith to your site and give it to your competitor's site.")
Paying money for new bandwith is great. But holding the existing bandwith up for ransom is evil.
Re:Indeed (Score:2)
I applaud @Home's inventiveness. Might I suggest selling web proxies as well?
Positive Promotion VS Open Warfare (Score:2)
A DoS attack is a DoS attack, and IS a criminal offence in many countries. IMHO, it is IRRELEVENT as to whether that attack is through fake packets or adjusted queues. It is STILL a malicious attempt to attack a service, via access.
If Smurfing, or a DDOS campaign can result in years in prison, then bribing the network managers to block legitamate access should do likewise.
If you don't like that, tough. It's either one law for all, or no law at all.
Now, there's nothing wrong with guaranteeing a minimum QoS, PROVIDED it does not inhibit anyone else's QoS. As soon as QoS controls are used for malicious reasons, to harm others, that should be grounds for immediate arrest and inprisonment for all involved, and a sentance of up to life.
(After all, that's what these same large companies want for teenage geeks who DDoS their systems, or even posess the tools with which to do so.)
Last, but not least, DON'T blame some faceless "Slashdot". There is no "Great THEM" out there, just a bunch of guys, like any other bunch of guys, who hit on a cool way to read and debate the news. Whining about "Slashdot Journalism" (as if the "They" wrote the stories) is childish and immature. If you want to behave like a 5 year old, go run a Baby Bill. But if you want to be on a site aimed at readers with IQ's in at least double digits, act with the maturity you are (in theory) capable of.
It's the natural evolution of the 'net. (Score:2)
At first the internet was only available to the researchers and the educational facilities that were instrumental to the building of the protocols and basic infrastructure - they were the natives.
As home computers became more and more affordable, and ISPs became widely available, these new users began the migration to the internet - from places like AOL, CompuServ, Prodigy, etc. These were the settlers... people who often found themselves in huge "flame wars" with the aboriginal internet community.
Right now, we are in the "California Gold Rush" stage of the internet... everyone and every business is eyeing the internet as the great cash cow of the 21st Century.
What this article is pointing to is a opening up of the internet to broadband access, much like the first highways - often marked with toll roads and bridges. If you can't pay to take the shortcut to get the information you are looking for, you are going to have to go around.
I think we're going to see a major corporatization of the internet, with major ISPs creating VPNs that will only allow their customers access to their own resources. And the AOL mentality of the masses is going to prefer this to today's free-for-all.
Of course, I'm no psychic. Call Dionne Warwick for that. With any luck, I'm totally wrong.
Re:I'm guessing this won't hold up too long. (Score:2)
Reread the article... (Score:3)
Unclear SJ Merc reporting (Score:2)
There is no news here. @Home has always had
a commercial ISP business (@Work) that sells
lease-line connectivity. All that is happening
here is that @Work is selling more circuits by
marketing the fact that @Home and @Work share
the same 5 Gbps nationwide backbone, so any
@Work customer has good access to @Home customers.
@Home isn't blocking access to any content and
isn't slowing down other content. So no issue.
As to the claim that Cox@Home has a mandatory
proxy, this is flat wrong. In all markets,
@Home has optional proxy servers deployed. In
all cases, all one has to do is go into
Netscape/IE and disable use of the proxy
if one doesn't want to use it. Because 99%
of @Home customers are not geeks, the installers
are trained to configure this by default.
Geeks can just turn it off after the installer
departs the house, if they care. In many
situations, performance is improved by the
Inktomi proxys.
(former employee of @Home Engineering;
now working for another firm)
Nothing new.. but it is.. (Score:2)
What we SHOULD have a problem with is places that offer 'Internet' access, but then proceed to screw people over based on bandwidth usage and/or content usage. If joe average purchases a connection, he should have a fair idea of what that means, not simply 'oh.. it's so I can surf the web'.
I'm tired of @HOME's 'no server' policy. If it's bandwidth they are worried about, put a surcharge on the bandwidth in question. THAT is fair. THAT let's people undersand the resources in volved, and ultimately, what they are paying for. Joe average doesn't understand? He damn well SHOULD! Network technology is the way of the future.. it's better that the public gets involved and leaves their ignorance behind.
Re:Quality of Service... (Score:2)
please, please, as relatively enlightened users of technology, understand the meshing of technological capabilities and market forces. don't just fear it, understand it.
Paid QoS makes a great deal of sense, from a capitalist perspective, as much as it might suck in terms of closing down avenues of communication for the less monied aspiring broadcaster/publisher. understandy why. understand how. then coherently assemble an argument as to why it's wrong, and how we can change it.
otherwise, shut your festering gob. you tit. your type makes me... oh you know the rest.
nathan
what's the big deal... (Score:2)
And that my friends, is capitalism in all it's glory. If I don't care for all the crap, the three major TV networks are still free to anyone who puts up a big antenna. Same on the net...get a free account at NetZero and use it to your hearts' content or get high-speed access and take the good with the bad for a price. They call that a "FREE MARKET ECONOMY." Live with it, or move to a socialist country...those are the choices.
why not? (Score:2)
Re:Nothing new.... (Score:4)
Chris DiBona
VA Linux Systems
--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
Pres, SVLUG
Re:I've never liked servers paying for bandwidth. (Score:2)
Currently, most people do pay for bandwidth. It's the backbone providers who are making the money from the scheme -- they charge somesite.dom so many dollars per gigabyte, and then charge the people loading the page (inderectly via the ISP) for the same gigabytes.
If the backbone providers had more competition, and there was a standard way of paying for site useage (anonymously, of course), your idea could work. But I'm not holding my breath
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Re:I've never liked servers paying for bandwidth. (Score:2)
I'm guessing this won't hold up too long. (Score:2)
Case in point, Salon.com and their old days of subscriber-based content, which went the way of the do-do.
tcd004
Here's my Microsoft Parody [lostbrain.com], where's yours?
I feel lucky... (Score:2)
Before the telcos were deregulated in 96 we had one local monopoly (ATU) two competing LD carries (GCI and ATT/Alascom) and one second rate cable company. Service sucked, it was an exercise in pain to get an ISDN to your home or business. Since deregulation both LD's bought switches and entered the local market, ATU entered the LD market, was sold and changed it's name to ACS. GCI bought the cable company and about two years ago gave us cable modems. In the last year ACS has gotten it's act together and started offering DSL. GCI appears to be rolling out cable modems to any town with more than about 500 people everywhere in the state they have cable. They just laid a new fiber to Seatle, greatly improving latency (my ping time to
The point that I promised is just around the corner. This seems to me to be the best way to run a broadband business, cable modems are already turning a profit for GCI, consumers are very happy and flocking to the new services in droves, and no one is getting censored or screwed in anyway. I don't know precisly how everything managed to come together in such an ideal libertarain way up here, but from my point of view the broadband situation in the "lower 48" is pretty broken and mired in troublesome politics.
Just thought I'd share one free market success story with everyone.
How would they do this? (Score:2)
"Legal" DoS? (Score:2)
One person said that it was a case of installing a faster dedicated pipe. (A bit like the old Local Bus scheme.) Sure, that makes things faster up-stream, but it does NOTHING to the pipe down-stream. So, either they have to prioritize the faster pipe, for any of the benefit to be seen, (in short, squeezing the smaller pipe by creating an artificial log-jam), OR they are going to end up fraudulantly selling bandwidth they don't have to sell.
(For those new to networks, think of a major 3-lane highway as the backbone. Now, at a junction, they have two roads leading off. So far, so good. Nobody is causing any problems. What happens if you now upgrade one of those roads also to a 3-lane highway. The traffic flow will all but shut the smaller road down.)
Comment removed (Score:3)
Nope! Read the article (Score:5)
Everyone on Excite has equal access to all sites (through the regular internet backbones) with some latency and bandwidth determined by that pipe.
Excite is getting companies to pay them for the privalege of hooking high-speed pipes directly from their servers to Excite's routers.
Request for them don't go to the internet backbone - they are routed over these new, direct lines. Faster performance to those sites (less latency, more data/sec., etc.)
Noone is given priority over another. No competitor's service is reduced - in fact it would also be enhanced, since some of the traffic is not going to that common backbone (at least a little).
Put away the pitchforks and torches for now.
As opposed to... (Score:2)
I don't see a difference...
Monny-grubbing... (Score:4)
This smells rather funny though. No ISP has tried this in the past, so there must be a rather good reason. I'm guessing everyone is afraid when the 'competition' starts screaming to Congress, Congress will hand down far more 'Thou shalt nots' than are needed to rectify the situation.
Congress has shown historically that it not like this sort of thing amongst the telephony and satelite data providers; Why should it like it when e@h does it?
The result? e@h makes a quick buck, and those that paid for 5 years of 'special' routing are going to lose it in a round of regulation.. e@h and the honest ISPs alike are going to have to deal with additional regulation laden on by every SIG waiting for the first ISP regulation test bill to show it's face..
Re:Parsers! (Score:2)
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@Home routing (Score:2)
My suspicion is that they are choosing these routes over more efficient, low-latency ones because of high-bandwidth peering agreements. i.e. At exchanges, packets will ignore more direct routes in favor of links which can provide greater throughput. (This is unsurprising considering the purposes for which they advertise their service, such as streaming/multimedia content, although it strikes me as flaunting convention a bit.)
Not directly related to the article at hand, but I believe it provides some useful background...
Other ISPs are already doing something similar. (Score:2)
I designed and built a frankenstein monster that is now running amok out of control and I don't know whether I should be proud or ashamed. Anyway, he's made me a lot wealthier that I was before.
Re:Monny-grubbing... (Score:2)
Re:This could work against them. (Score:2)
Not necessarily. The extra money from these sites will allow them to improve their connectivity to other networks, and they make this extra bandwidth available preferentially to sites that have funded it.
You're assuming that the one and only bottleneck is at the modem/xDSL end, which is not the case.
Re:Monny-grubbing... (Score:2)
A peering agreement says "I got a lot of traffic going your way, you got a lot coming mine. Let's put a pipe between so we can pay the middleman less for a smaller pipe."
This says "I got a lot of users. If you wanna look good to all my users, I'll sell you fat pipe right in. I'm gonna make money hand over fist cuz I can keep making you pay for your pipe, and I can keep cutting the other pipe and paying less."
In a few years, this will say "What?? Altavistas slow?? Yeah, you hafta load them over the cache on the skinny pipe to the Real World. Excite's plenty fast and you better switch soon, 'cuz that pipe's provided as a courtesy to some of our users, and we may not keep it around forever."
There is absolutely nothing new here (Score:5)
Since it gets the content "closer" to the end user's (albeit of @Home), and doesn't negatively affect everyone else out there, I can't necessarily see this as a bad thing.
-- PhoneBoy
Peering Groups and Content Caching (Score:4)
CNN and MSNBC will load off the cache server just as fast. When it comes to streaming audio and video then you're going to see issues. Maybe Real won't work as fast as MS.
On the other hand this isn't anything all that new. PSInet has been offering peering arrangements for some time. And ISP can have a direct connection to PSInet sites, and PSInet has a direct connection to the ISP. Depending on traffic considerations it may not be that bad of a deal. Then again PSInet hosts a lot of servers and T's. Excite really doesn't.
I think this is a pretty big non-issue. Excite is obviously trying to make a dime off high bandwidth video streaming. Somehow I doubt the Opensoure, GNU, FreeWare, Freedom of speech market is going to be hurt. Maybe one porno site will load quicker than another. More power to them.
Doesn't seem too evil to me (Score:3)
Also something you have to look at is the line "Excite@Home lost $1.5 billion on sales of $337 million." Those are some hefty losses, even for a tech company. They have to make money somehow.
-B
Not as bad as it sounds? (Score:2)
Personally, I don't mind that my access speeds up when I go to download that 150MB file. Of course, this all depending on where they're getting the bandwidth.
If it means I have to put up with pages loading slower than than they normally would, yes it's a bad thing. But if it simply gives major content providers extra needed bandwidth that nobody's using, then so be it.