[governance] Re: Comcast Blocks Some Internet Traffic

[Karl Auerbach]

Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 22, 2007 at 07:16:31PM -0400,
>  Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu> wrote 

>> Is the diffserv protocol of the IETF, a violation of net neutrality?
>> Is any use of QoS inherently bad?
> 
> The diffserv protocol is a _tool_. As most tools, it can be used for a
> lot of different things, some being bad.

I agree.

No matter how the news hypes the latest fattest network pipe, there will 
always be points of congestion - most frequently at places where those 
pipes converge into routers and on the local lines to people's homes.

To my mind the question is not of pure unadorned "neutrality" but rather 
a question of who has the ability to control the knobs and levers that 
define what traffic gets priority and which traffic is left to best 
effort (or worse.)

The attempts by the US telcos are an attempt to take that control out of 
the hands of network users (except in the most gross sense of paying 
more money or switching providers) and use that control to promote the 
telcos' products over those of competitors.

I, personally, am not adverse to differential pricing by the providers, 
as long as it is done to manage resources without bias for or against 
any particular product.  I realize that in the telecom space that this 
has historically been a hard thing to do - the telco's are just too 
imaginative, well financed, and persistent and the regulators too 
stodgy.  But I have hope that perhaps we might do better.

(By way of disclosure, I build a device that tries to put some of that 
control back into the hands of users - http://www.ispeedbump.com/ )

Now, what comcast did was apparently to forge TCP Reset packets using 
the IP addresses and TCP connection sequence information obtained by 
spying upon the traffic between the two ends of the TCP connection.

To my mind that is simply overt fraud, the intentional usurpation of 
another's fundamental internet identity - the IP address they are using. 
  It is no different than email forged with my name as the sender.

I've been stressing that in these internet governance debates that we 
are galloping far to quickly towards specific problems and not spending 
enough time formulating guiding principles.

Well, one such principle ought to be that absent a compelling reason the 
internet should not be a home for those who use it under an identity, 
whether it be an IP address or domain name or email address, that they 
know is being used by another who has a viable color of right to use 
that identity.

		--karl--
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