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Re: the iab & net neutrality

2006-03-24 03:00:50
Tony,

I agree completely and believe the IAB has, of late, been altogether too timid in this area.

I think you know all of what I'm about to say, but your note is, IMO, easily misread, so an additional observation about 4084 and its potential relatives: In this sphere, a document that says "XYZ is evil" is essential worthless. The companies considering XYZ will almost always say "hmm, there is a tradeoff here. One possibility is that I can increase profitability. The other is that I can pay attention to that group of geeks who are living in some other reality." Guess which wins, almost every time?

There are two strategies that make more sense and have more chance of success. One is precisely what 4084 attempted to do: lay out categories and boundaries that, if adopted, make better information available to potential users/customers and provide a foundation for regulation about what must be accurately disclosed (as compared to what is required). That said, I've been quite disappointed with the results of 4084: from the comments and input I got before we did the work, I was optimistic that we would see at least some ISPs, and maybe even some regulators, pick the concepts and terminology up. To put it mildly, it hasn't happened.

The other approach, with thanks to Dave Clark for pointing it out to me a few years ago, is to carefully write a neutral and balanced document whose theme is "of course the Internet architecture permits you do this, but, if you do, it will have the following good and bad consequences which you should understand in making your decisions".

Either approach requires serious work and people on the IAB who are interested, willing, and have the skills to do it. I can't speak for the current IAB at all but, if the sort of output Tony and I are talking about is wanted, then people need to tell the Nomcom(s) that the ability and willingness to generate it should be an important candidate selection criterion.

     john


--On Thursday, March 23, 2006 20:20 -0600 Tony Hain <alh-ietf(_at_)tndh(_dot_)net> wrote:

I didn't make it to the mic fast enough at the end, but
Brian's comment about the proposal to outlaw diffserv actually
gets to the heart of why the IAB needs to take specific stands
and make public comments. Telling the telco's they are evil is
not the point. General statements of principle or observations
of past behavior like 'walled gardens are not conducive to open
application innovation and frequently result in additional
layering complexity to traverse the walls', or 'allowing
people to elect going to the head of the line is what the QoS
toolset is about'. I am not sure what the right language is
but there is probably something the IAB could say about
misusing the tools to effectively set up an
extortion/protection racket being a possible side effect that
regulators might want to consider, but that cutting off the
tools outright would actually hamper some potential new
service and application development.

The point is that if the IAB stands back without making any
statement there will be no guidance about the impacts of
various business/deployment models. Something along the lines
of 4084 that takes no particular position of right or wrong,
but identifies the consequences of potential actions might
help to stabilize the public debate. After all even open
application development might be considered wrong by some, but
when coupled with the observation that it happens anyway with
more complexity and cost might get all the fundamental issues
on the table.

Tony



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