Re: [p2pi] Follow-Up from Comcast Presentation

Robb Topolski <robb@funchords.com> wrote:
> 
> Best-effort is the baseline expectation of innovators creating products
> for the Internet -- even with some congestion thrown in.  They design
> their products to work in such a network.  They cannot expect that
> network operators will invent worse-than-best-effort class that
> dramatically changes the characteristics of the network from one moment
> to the next.

   I strongly recommend we avoid the term "worse-than-best-effort" --
it is unlikely we can agree on a common meaning for it.

   Obviously Robb likes the connotations it brings (and dislikes the
idea of such a beast); but others are using the term to mean something
which _could_ be reasonable.

   Rather than try to agree on a term, I suggest we instead invest the
time to write words that say what we actually mean.

> According to the NCTA, this is a problem caused by a very few users.

   That's at least partly true -- today.

   Part of our job is to convince them that only a sucker would bet it
will still be true six months from now.

> I think that the market demands and competitive abilities for more
> symmetrical connections in the last mile have outstripped Cable's
> ability to keep up with it.

   I wouldn't put it quite that way. However, market demand is already
seriously taxing Cable ISPs' _practices_ for keeping up with it.

> I think that these are not technical problems, these are willful
> business choices in approaching the market: Cable Internet is shaping
> the future by shaping the traffic in the present because it serves
> many of their business interests to do so.

   That bears repeating.

   Cable ISPs don't enjoy great support from Corporate management. Most
sales are for combinations of services, and Corporate management is used
to thinking ten-year depreciation schedules which can be stretched to
twenty to improve quarterly profits.

> Perhaps the business interest is simply to avoid increasing costs
> related to bandwidth growth...

   Absolutely.

> The ISPs control the sizes of the shared pools of bandwidth, the
> number of consumers who share it, the prices of admission, and the
> size of the pipes between a subscriber and the pool. They have total
> control and purview over those variables. Controlling these variables
> to ensure that everyone has a good experience is Reasonable Network
> Management.

   ... but what Corporate management wants is to serve a mass market.

> A major ISP offering Internet service that fluctuates wildly between
> working and not-working well is bad for the entire community!

   Correct!

   So long as Corporate management believes they can avoid those
fluctuations by eliminating "bad users", they will try to do so.

> Today, common advice in VOIP forums is to not rely on your provider
> for 9-1-1 calls. Regardless of the actual soundness of such advice,
> we should be working toward a day where such advice is universally
> dismissed due to the actual increased reliability of Internet
> services and infrastructure.

   I'm not sure that is a reasonable goal for Cable ISPs. Telco ISPs
can certainly get there, and independent ISPs are already there; but
Cable ISPs are perceived as cost centers, not profit centers.

> Even the most savvy network developers expect that once the network
> is accurately detected or described into its configuration, that it
> does not change from moment to moment.

   Another misconception we should try to cure. (I'm not holding my
breath!)

> Some congestion on the Internet is expected from time to time, and
> developers work in enough robustness.  But, nothing is really
> expected to work well through a system that is *cronically clogged*.

   Nonetheless, chronic clogging has been a local feature as long as
there has been an Internet.

> Comcast is not talking about relieving spikes of congestion.
> Instead, they are moving toward *prolonged congestion as a planned
> operational mode*.

   Actually, I disagree: they are perfectly willing to shed the
customers they believe are causing congestion.

> As I pointed out, they have announced that they are tripling their
> upload speeds

   (because that's what a DOCSIS upgrade promises for "free")

> (presumably even though the underlying shared pool of bandwidth
> has remained the same as these increases are not related to DOCSIS3
> deployment).

   Upstream _transport_ (to the "backbone") is pretty cheap. Last-mile
upstream is congested because of design choices (the technical term
IMHO is "mistakes") of DOCSIS upstream scheduling). I am not privy to
actual DOCSIS 3 specs; so I don't know whether these "adverse features"
have been fixed.

--
John Leslie <john@jlc.net>
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