[AusNOG] [Internet Australia - members] Net neutrality

[Mark Newton]

There is rather a lot of somewhat questionable nonsense here. I almost feel cruel to pick it apart.

Almost.

On 24 Nov 2015, at 4:46 PM, Paul Wilkins <paulwilkins369 at gmail.com> wrote:

>  - A CDN represents a considerable private investment in infrastructure. The benefits are passed to the customer at no cost to them. Smaller players may not like it, but it will happen, because the big players want it to happen, and there's a clear benefit to the majority of customers. The best argument against CDNs is that giving something away for free amounts to an antitrust action. Good luck with that.

I’m yet to find a “small player” who doesn’t like CDNs. 

Small content providers have wholesale access to the likes of Akamai and Cloudflare, and their service offerings are so much better for it.

Small access providers can bolt CDN nodes, paid for by their operators, into their networks to minimize their costs. Takeup in Australia of Akamai and GGC has been excellent.

It’s all win-win.

Which smaller players don’t like CDNs?


>  - QoS - net neutrality never answers the question, if you prioritise traffic, who pays?

The anti-net-neutrality people have a fine answer to that question: “The people who want assured forwarding.” It’s hardly a mystery.


> And without funding, you'll never get QoS in the internet backbone.

I don’t believe there is such a thing as an “internet backbone,” insomuch as there are several of them, operated by private concerns, in parallel. 

They already run QoS for various reasons disconnected from this discussion. Those who don’t like their QoS policies overbuild with their own networks so they can implement different QoS policies of their own, then we end up with yet more internet backbones.


> This is a huge impediment for voice and video.

The single largest application on the internet today is streaming video, on a QoS’less internet, and it has enjoyed that status since well before Netflix came onto the scene. Seems to be doing okay. Spectacularly successful, one might say, given their “huge impediments."


>  - TCP vs UDP - TCP is social. It plays by the rules. UDP elbows its way through. There's no choice here. Eventually there will be different treatment within the backbone of TCP vs UDP. People will be willing to pay for uncongested UDP bandwidth, and people will be happy to route it, at a price.

Why do people want to pay for uncongested UDP? If they want congestion control, aren’t they supposed to be using TCP in the first place?


>  - Content vs "services". If you provide a service, you get remunerated for that by the customer, and consequently, you're willing to pay for bandwidth as a business expense. So service providers would typically benefit from transit QoS.

The operation of the internet today seems to reject that model, but okay, it’s perhaps possible.


> If you provide content, your business model is based around advertising, and there's no mechanism to pass charges to customers.

Firstly: Netflix, a content provider who isn’t based around advertising, disagrees.

Secondly: You’re confusing “users” with “customers.” If your business model is based on advertising, your “customers” are the advertisers, and you pass charges on to them by sending them bills. The service you are providing is one of eyeball-aggregation, bringing an audience to their advertisement. So in that sense, the “users” are your stock on the shelves, and it’s quite reasonable to expect that you’ll pay wholesale to acquire them.

The cost of sending content to users is how you buy your stock; you sell that stock to your customers, who are your advertisers.

That model does not appear to involve or invoke any network neutrality concepts, unless and until access providers start to interfere with your business by going out of their way to prevent you from acquiring stock.


> In fact your business relies on content being free.

No, the content is very definitely not free — it’s paid for by those who are using it to advertise.


> If services traffic is prioritised over yours, it hurts your business. Either you accept that, fight for net neutrality, or you build a CDN.

What is this “services” traffic of which you speak, why would it be prioritized over the content providers’ services, and why hasn’t the content provider already provisioned CDN capacity in the first place?


>  - DOS. In light of the persistence of DOS attacks, [ … ]

>  - Security. Currently, a disproportionate number of attacks emanate from [ … ]

It’s well accepted that operational responses to security threats are beyond the scope of the network neutrality debate, and you’re being mischievous by including them here. 


> Obviously longer term there is going to be a negotiation around charges for transit QoS that balances the needs of customers, service providers, content providers,

Maybe, but none of them are going to cover the territory that you’ve covered in this email.

The net neutrality debate is going to be fought over the access network, as a direct consequence of NBN’s CVC revenue model. The CVC charge creates a congestion point (which everyone agrees to call the “last mile,” even though it isn’t), and Ziggy knows it.


> To conclude, I doubt an argument against CDNs can be won.

Who’s trying to make an argument against CDNs?


> I do think all TCP should be equal priority. But it should be possible to charge a premium for UDP transit (which won't be CDN traffic).

Who’d want to buy?

  - mark


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