Re: [76attendees] A Net Neutrality comment

[Ted Lemon <[e-mail]>]

I asked Fred privately to clarify what he meant by "militant libertarian," because I have the good fortune to be somewhat naive about this dispute.   I think his reply might be helpful to some other readers, so I'm forwarding it to the list.   FWIW, I happen to agree with Fred on this, now that I understand what he was referring to.

On Nov 9, 2009, at 9:55 AM, Fred Baker wrote:
> There are at least two belief systems I am commenting on.
> 
> One is one of the common viewpoints promoted in the Net Neutrality debate. Two extremes of that debate are perhaps characterized as "the ISP can whatever it pleases and can block anything it likes at any time for any reason" and that which I call "militant libertarian": "the ISP should never block or drop anything, or engineer its network". On the surface, both are obviously problematic; yet, I regularly hear proponents of literally those positions. I would argue that an ISP makes its money by making guarantees to its customers, and is obligated as a business to fulfill those guarantees. Among the guarantees an ISP often makes is that it will block a large percentage of attacks on edge networks, and that it will deliver certain SLA characteristics such as one-way delay, throughput rates, and loss levels within its network. I don't sign contracts that authorize the ISP to comb through my applications, but I do have legitimate expectations of my ISP, which means in part that it has an obligation to deal appropriately with its other customers.
> 
> The other viewpoint is that of members of the TCPM community. I am reminded of a particular comment from Injong Rhee, designer of Linux CUBIC. I was asking him to play with some ideas I was proposing in the area of tuning to the knee, and he asked "why in the world would one tune to the knee?" (my paraphrase of his remark, which I don't have handy). This is why one tunes to the knee.
> 
> You may forward this to 76attendees or other lists if you wish. I am replying to you privately as you commented to me privately. And yes, the important thing is the belief system, as it is what leads people in the direction they take.