Re: [Tsvwg] Re: terminology issues in draft-floyd-tsvwg-besteffort - flat monthly pricing

[Bob Briscoe <[e-mail]>]

Dimitri,

At 04:22 27/07/2007, dimitri papadimitriou wrote:
>bob
>
>you wrote:
>
>"so there won't be sufficient incentives for anyone to invest in more 
>capacity for those of us who want to use the Internet responsibly."
>
>this might be indeed a concern
>
>but as shorter life socialist ;-) i do also strongly believe that before 
>discussing the solution space we should first within the IETF community at 
>large come with a good, clear, and common understanding whether this is a 
>concern or not, if this is the case how important & urgent it might be, 
>have better understanding about of some of the root causes, etc.

I've been working in non-IETF fora where that issue has been debated for 
some years. That would be difficult for the IETF to do. It's difficult for 
economists to come to any conclusion on that issue. Partly because it gets 
convolved with monopoly issues in access networks.

But in my view, the problem is a lot more basic - in the current Internet 
architecture there isn't even the basics of a mechanism to support resource 
allocation: accountability. That sounds like billing, but that's not what I 
mean. I mean being able to attribute a cost to a user or network 
(irrespective of what you do with the information).

It would be equivalent to a supermarket not being able to tell who had 
taken stuff off the shelves. I think most economists would agree that lack 
of accountability removes most incentives to invest if demand doesn't 
easily satiate (e.g. a provider has the incentive to keep investing in 
supplying all-you-can-eat buffet to people with limited stomach capacity, 
but if faced with a range of customers with huge stomachs, they tend to 
find other ways to limit demand - e.g. one plate each).


Bob


>-d.
>
>Bob Briscoe wrote:
>>Sally,
>>I just realised that I should have added a very important point about 
>>"who controls the choice" to the rather philosophical response below.
>>I'm trying to make sure we at the IETF don't have to decide whether the 
>>Internet more favours rich people, malicious people or selfish people. 
>>I'm trying to make it so what you think or what I think about this 
>>doesn't matter (at least any more than what everyone else in the world thinks).
>>Firstly, what I'm proposing would sit alongside the current Internet 
>>(re-ECN packets are distinguishable from non-re-ECN packets, so they 
>>effectively partition all traffic orthogonally to Diffserv).
>>Secondly, one partition would be the current Internet, with all its 
>>vulnerabilites to selfish and malicious users as well as all its 
>>strengths. The other partition would be this new proposal where the 
>>market and social governance can control the way the Internet shares out 
>>resources.
>>At a grander level, the choice of how much resource each of the two 
>>partitions gets would be under the direct control of ISPs, but in turn 
>>their choices are also affected by the market and perhaps by social 
>>control through government regulation.
>>I know this fits your preferred model of how new resource allocation 
>>strategies should be added to the Internet. The question is whether it is 
>>sufficiently important to use IP header space to provide this choice. We 
>>don't need to decide that now, but we do need to debate it widely - more 
>>widely than tsvwg.
>>
>>Bob
>>At 18:16 24/07/2007, Sally Floyd wrote:
>>>>3/ User pricing: Flat monthly (in our simplest effective proposal).
>>>>
>>>>Please don't imply we're advocating user congestion pricing, given the 
>>>>whole reason we brought re-ECN to the IETF back in 2005 was because we 
>>>>found a way to limit congestion without constraining how operators 
>>>>price their services to their customers. Specifically, re-ECN is 
>>>>designed to work with flat monthly pricing.
>>>
>>>This draft is not about re-ECN.  It is about the usefulness of
>>>"simple best-effort traffic", and the usefulness of flow-rate fairness
>>>for simple best-effort traffic.
>>>
>>>This draft is not about the presence or absence of flat monthly
>>>pricing for users.  One could have flat monthly pricing with no
>>>other limitations, one could have flat monthly pricing with volume
>>>limits, or one could have flat monthly pricing with some form of
>>>"you get what you pay for".  The first two forms don't result in
>>>"rich" users getting all of the bandwidth in times of high congestion
>>>(e.g., after the earthquake).  The third form easily could.  E.g.,
>>>if all of the traffic was "you get what you pay for", even with
>>>flat monthly fees, then it could be really expensive to send packets
>>>in the time interval after the earthquake, or some other highly-congested
>>>period, and only the rich would be able to send packets.  I would
>>>be opposed to setting such a "you get what you pay for" goal as the
>>>overriding goal for the global Internet, with or without flat monthly
>>>fees.
>>I know. It's distasteful to me to (I am a life-long socialist). But the 
>>alternatives are worse. I have thought about this long and hard.
>>On the demand side: If the rich don't get to be able to buy the right to 
>>use capacity, the alternative is that the malicious and selfish get to 
>>drive out those trying to be sociable in their use of the Internet. And 
>>that's for always, not just during earthquakes. Also, the lack of any 
>>resource sharing arbitration will lead to a vacuum that will be filled by 
>>the rich and powerful (which is what deep packet inspection represents - 
>>those with power and influence controlling what can and can't be done on 
>>the Internet).
>>On the supply side: The malicious and selfish will use the Internet 
>>excessively, but not pay their share, so there won't be sufficient 
>>incentives for anyone to invest in more capacity for those of us who want 
>>to use the Internet responsibly.
>>In summary, a knee-jerk reaction against a market mechanism needs to be 
>>tempered by the thought of what will otherwise fill the vacuum - the 
>>lesson of the Soviet Union?
>>However, you will notice in my draft on fairness (and in my design of 
>>re-ECN) that I have been careful to enable more equitable resource 
>>allocation schemes locally. This can give _true_ equality, whereas flow 
>>rate equality is just a license for the selfish and malicious to take 
>>what they want.
>>Overall, I put my hands up and admit it: we don't have a better system 
>>for allocating resources on planet scale than a market. I wish we did. We 
>>do have better resource sharing capabilities locally though, and I want 
>>to enable them.
>>
>>Bob
>>
>>>- Sally
>>>http://www.icir.org/floyd/
>>____________________________________________________________________________
>>Notice: This contribution is the personal view of the author and does not 
>>necessarily reflect the technical nor commercial direction of BT plc.
>>____________________________________________________________________________
>>Bob Briscoe,                           Networks Research Centre, BT Research
>>B54/77 Adastral Park,Martlesham Heath,Ipswich,IP5 3RE,UK.    [phone]
>>
>>.
>
>____________________________________________________________________________
>Bob Briscoe, <[e-mail]>      Networks Research Centre, BT Research
>B54/77 Adastral Park,Martlesham Heath,Ipswich,IP5 3RE,UK.    [phone]