[e2e] Re: crippled Internet

[Henning G. Schulzrinne]

Jon Crowcroft wrote:
> 
> god forbid anyone provide CONTENT if they are not a
> specially HI paying customer :-)
> 
> god forbid anyone serve public domain MP3s, just in case they migh
> accidentally serve copyrighted ones too
> 
> god forbid the users actually use bandwidth. might mess up the
> business caswe for reselling it for a profit even
> with IP header overheads
> 
> btw: define "visible performance degradation" without defining
> _multiplexing_ :-)

To tie this to another discussion, I think part of the problem is that
the current rate structure (plus fear of RIAA litigation, I suppose)
forces ISPs to divide the world into "business" and "residential" users,
since a reasonable claim can be made that charging a web site operator
$50/month for a T1 line is not going to be a viable enterprise. 

It appears that telephone companies also tried to do this, where a
business line was significantly more expensive than a residential line,
with no difference except a one-line listing in the yellow pages. My
perception is that this is also not enforced in practice, at least for
small businesses.

If there was a more load-sensitive charging scheme, where you could pay
on 95th percentile or some peak-hour load or some other variation of
congestion pricing, there would be less perceived need to force every
residential user into web-browsing-only, please, mode. (The freebie
ISPs, whichever ones are left, also seem to have abandoned their
unlimited-use model, since they discovered that a very small fraction of
their customers accounted for a very large fraction of their bandwidth
and modem-connect-time costs.)

> 
> i dunno......seems to me like these AUPs are approaching telco-ville
> at an alarming rate....
> 
> note: i dont think someone provides an IP (or "Internet Service") if
> they don' allow symmetric connection setup -  is this one for the
> "trades description" again?
> 

There was discussion at some point to have somebody (IETF? ISOC?) define
the term "Internet service", so that you could get companies that sell
anything less for false advertising. I don't think much came of it.


> (would someone like to start a phone company that allows outgoing
> calls only  -? not much of a business case:-)
> 

Yes, these are called "pay phones" and in the U.S., there was a
once-thriving industry called COCOTS (customer-owned coin operated
telephones), where you could pay $2/minute to make a call. With the
advent of calling cards, the COCOT providers seem to have joined banks
and operate ATMs instead, so that you can pay $2 you get your own money.


-- 
Henning Schulzrinne   http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs