Re: [p2pi] One more proposed definition of fairness...

Comment below:

Henning Schulzrinne wrote:
> On Jun 9, 2008, at 3:00 PM, Richard Bennett wrote:
>> Accepting statistical multiplexing as a design constraint from the 
>> get-go will help this group make faster progress.
> The problem is that we'll get systems that are not going to work as 
> advertised, from a user perspective.
We already have such systems, largely because we don't know how to 
mandate meaningful disclosure. It strikes me as going the wrong way 
around to say that ISPs have to provide CIR because that's the only 
thing that can be adequately communicated to the customer in a way that 
he can't misunderstand. If we go that way, we lose the benefits of 
packet networking in the burst scenario and most of the economics go 
down the tube as well. So rather than back off statistical multiplexing, 
it strikes me as more beneficial to develop some standard metrics that 
enable consumer advocates, if not consumers themselves, to evaluate 
different services.

These metrics would include "mean information rates" at various levels 
of latency, the critical piece of a "buckets of packets" system. I'd 
like to be able to shop for an Internet access account that provided me 
with a bandwidth/latency profile that enabled me to successfully get one 
VoIP session through at the same time that three people surfed the web 
and four video stream downloads are in progress. There's no technical 
barrier to building such a network service, once the video stream 
downloads are managed as scavenger class activities (less that BE) and 
the VoIP is managed as a better-than-BE service.

But how would the ISP advertise this service? The terms that are needed 
aren't part of the marketing lexicon at the moment, so they really do 
need to be developed.

I mention this here because the next step after developing standards for 
P2P Infrastructure improvements, whether the system is based on optimum 
route discovery or caching, will be to communicate to the market that 
the system is in place and working at ISP XYZ. Are they going to say 
"Blazing Internet Service, now with Oracles and Scavengers!!!", or what?

RB

-- 
Richard Bennett