It is kind of obvious that if the IETF has taken no opinion on an issue then
the only statement that the IETF chair is going to make in his official
capacity is that the IETF has taken no position.
On Fri, Sep 10, 2010 at 6:54 PM, Richard Bennett
<richard(_at_)bennett(_dot_)com>wrote:
Fortunately, Housley's not as recalcitrant about correcting errors as some
hardheads would like. See this article from today, relevant portions
highlighted.
RB
Housely: IETF Has Taken No Position On AT&T Prioritization Assertions Though
group chairman personally thinks AT&T has "jumbled some things together" By
John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 9/10/2010 10:54:17 AM
Public interest groups including Free Press and Public Knowledge have
called on AT&T to retract a letter to the FCC that said the Internet
standards-setting body IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) had "fully
contemplated" paid prioritization, with the groups saying IETF disputed that
assertion. But Russ Housely, chairman of the IETF, says that is not the
case, though he said he personally thinks AT&T has "jumbled some things
together."
Paid prioritization is one of two key issues on which the FCC is seeking
more comment before it proceeds with its effort to expand and codify network
openness principles.
In AT&T's
letter<http://www.broadcastingcable.com/common/jumplink.php?target=http%3A%2F%2Ffjallfoss.fcc.gov%2Fecfs%2Fdocument%2Fview%3Fid%3D7020910396>it
said Free Press was confused about paid prioritization in its own letter.
AT&T has said that paid prioritization was contemplated by IETF, is already
widely available from multiple providers, and is used by small businesses as
well as the handful of giants Free Press says benefit from it. In a blog
posting Thursday, AT&T SVP Bob Quinn, who signed the FCC letter, defined
that prioritization as "providing customers the option of purchasing a
higher quality of service."
Public Knowledge, Free Press and others issued a release this week
headlined "Internet Engineering Task Force Says ‘AT&T Is Misleading' on Net
Neutrality." They argue AT&T is blurring the line between paid
prioritization, which Free Press defined as "speeding up and slowing down"
Internet traffic according to who pays more, and "accepted business-class
network management practices."
The call for a retraction came after Housely told the National Journal that
the AT&T letter was misleading.
"IETF prioritization technology is geared toward letting network users
indicate how they want network providers to handle their traffic, and there
is no implication in the IETF about payment based on any prioritization," he
said.
*But Housely says he was speaking for himself, not IETF. "I want to be
clear that I was speaking as an individual when I spoke to reporters last
Friday," he told the magazine in an e-mail. "The [public interest group]
press release says: 'The IETF, however, disputes AT&T's claims.' The IETF
has not taken any consensus position on this matter," he said, adding in a
follow-up e-mail: "[T]he IETF produces technical specification for the
Internet. The IETF does not make statements about prices for network
services."
*
Compromise language being hammered out by industry representatives,
including AT&T and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, on a
legislative path to clarifying the FCC's Internet access oversight authority
is likely to include an agreement that paid prioritization of service should
be allowed, but with assurances that such prioritization does not come at
the cost of the robustness of the "public Internet."
Housely says the "jumble" comes from the meaning of "paid prioritization.
"[I]t is clear to me that the term "paid prioritization" does not have the
same meaning to all readers," he told *B&C*. "If you read the AT&T letter
with one definition in your head, then you get one overall message, and if
you read the letter with the other in your head, then you get a different
overall message. I tried to make this point."
Housely told *B&C* that AT&T in its letter makes "many correct points"--he
did not specify which they were--but that it also "jumbles some things
together." "[I]n my opinion, a reader will get a distorted impression from
the parts of the letter where things get jumbled," he said.
*
The problem, Housely says, is that the IETF specification at issue is not
about "prioritization," but about quality of service.* "Different
applications need different things from the network to deliver a quality
experience," he said. He used as an example of giving preference to "traffic
associated with applications that require timely delivery, like voice and
video, over traffic associated with applications without those demands, like
email."
Housely says the debate is not about that, but about what happens if, say,
two video sites both mark their packets of info for timely delivery. "If two
sources of video are marking their stuff the same, then that's where the
ugliness of this debate begins," Housley told the Journal. "The RFC doesn't
talk about that...If they put the same tags, they'd expect the same service
from the same provider."
*
*That would be the difference between a tier of service where everyone was
treated equally in that tier, and one in which one company could pay to have
its service get priority over another similarly situated company expecting
equal treatment.
"Clearly, if the two video sources have purchased different amounts of
bandwidth, then the example breaks down," Housely told this magazine, again,
*speaking for himself*. "However, that is not the point in this debate."
Asked to respond to Housely's clarification that his criticisms of AT&T
were his opinion, not IETF's, Free Press's Derek Turner, was undeterred:
"Nothing changes the fact AT&T was caught red-handed misleading the
Commission by conflating the harmful practice it agreed not to use as a
condition of its merger with Bell South, with widely recognized legitimate
network management practices. "Housley is an independent expert in his own
right and his opinion is backed up by several independent sources and
engineers."*
*
Asked about Housely's "jumbled" reference, AT&T referred the magazine to
its original letter to the FCC in which it outlines the IETF RFC (request
for comment) language on which it bases its conclusion that the IETF had
meant to "facilitate paid prioritization as a means for encouraging the
further growth and development of the Internet."
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/456906-Housely_IETF_Has_Taken_No_Position_On_AT_T_Prioritization_Assertions.php
On 9/10/2010 3:43 PM, Bob Hinden wrote:
On Sep 9, 2010, at 4:46 PM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
There are two possibilities here:
1) The Press Release is accurate in its representation of the IETF
No action is required
2) Someone on the Internet is wrong
That never happens! Maybe the IETF should start a working group to insure
that all information on the Internet is correct :-)
Bob
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