[governance] Re: "gentle" governance of internet tech?

[Karl Auerbach]

Dan Krimm wrote:

> ... issues
>> such as access might become non issues if we can oversee and gently
>> govern a few aspects internet technology (such as end-to-end
>> connectivity and service levels) so that it becomes ubiquitous and
>> inexpensive.

> This seems to discount the efforts by telcos and cable cos in the US
> explicitly trying to make Internet access more expensive (by abandoning
> open end-to-end and even eroding the market for flat-fee and unlimited-use
> service).

Let me explain my sense of the word "gentle" - I didn't mean something 
that is lacking compelling force.  I'm helping to restore a 1923 
mainline steam locomotive and sometimes we have to "gently" coerce a 
bolt to turn - often with a 16# sledge hammer and a gasoline torch.  The 
gentleness comes from the fact that the force is applied with care; but 
that bolt *will* turn (else we drag out the cutting torch.)

What distinguishes institutions of governance from ordinary institutions 
is that governance bodies are entrusted with extraordinary coercive 
powers.  These powers can be applied as blunt instruments, a la ICANN, 
or can be applied with finesse and discretion.  I consider the latter to 
be "gentle".  But like my 16# sledge - either way, the object the 
coercive power is expected to conform, else even stronger measures are 
warranted.

Now, in the area of the end-to-end principle I agree that here in the US 
the telco/cable duopoly is using all means fair, and more often foul, to 
obliterate any and all threats to their position and profits.  Their 
behaviour is outrageous.

But the answer to that is not a blanket statement that differential 
pricing or differential serves are banned on the net - that would be non 
gentle, and also a failure to recognize that some net services (e.g. low 
jitter transport of packets) does incur real costs (such as leaving 
links underutilized so that they have the capacity to handle traffic 
bursts, or doing the complex work of traffic engineering.)  A "gentle" 
kind of governance would be something that tries to find guiding 
principles and finds the right balance.

It's sort of the difference between the way a skilled diamond cutter 
might find the plane of cleavage and split the crystal with a gentle tap 
versus the way I might smash the diamond with a blow from my 16# sledge 
- either way the diamond is partitioned, but the results of the former 
method are usually more beautiful.

Yes, politics can resemble war without blood and physical mayhem.  Which 
is yet another reason why I cringe when the word "stakeholder" is used, 
as that is a phrase that gives power and authority to some groups, 
typically industrial interests, and diminishes the power and authority 
of those who don't receive the mantle of stakholderhood.

And yes, I agree we are building political institutions for the 
internet; they will not be free of strong interests and minipulative 
methods of expressing those interests.

The 18th century had a lot of smart people thinking about how to handle 
that kind of thing.  We should make sure that any institutions we build 
incorporate the ideas of those people.

I often use this as my prototype of the kind of problem we should take 
up as one of our first concrete issues of internet governance:

Suppose that someone (a country, a corporation, a school, a person) 
wants to make a VoIP call that will span many providers (for example a 
call from an African nation to one in North America).  VoIP does not 
require a lot of bandwidth, but it does need low delay and not a lot of 
variation of that delay (i.e. low jitter).  So how does that someone say 
"I would like to buy [yes, I assume that the transfer of money may be 
required] 64K bit/sec connectivity with low delay, low jitter for the 
duration of my phone call."?  And how is that request manifested into 
the reality of an assurance (not a guarantee) of such an end-to-end path?

To my mind that is a complex enough topic, rich in troubles, rich in 
technology, and rich in economic pressures, to form a good case for 
internet governance, but one that is simple enough to be solved, perhaps 
albeit, with the cooperation of technology creators and standards bodies.


> Now Cisco is building routers for clients who want smart pipes, not for any
> standards body that is concerned with open end-to-end dumb pipes.

Even though my comment here is off topic, this is something near and 
dear to me.  I was at Cisco, part of the Advanced Internet Architectures 
Group.  My personal project (aside from network video - I wrote the 
thing that is trademarked "IP/TV") was "smart networks".  This was a 
control plan for the net that fed service level agreements (much like my 
VoIP phone call example previously in this message) into a modeling 
system that resulted in router provisioning by goals (rather than 
tweeking individual control parameters) and giving routers some degree 
of autonomy to locally adapt within defined constraints.  When those 
constraints could not be met, an exception kicked out to troubleshooting 
systems.  This was hardly the kind of fully dumb pipe network that many 
think the internet should be.  But, being the grandson of a radio 
repairman and the son of a TV repairman, and myself being often a 
network repairman, it is my strong contention that the internet is very 
weak on monitoring, management, fault detection and isolation, and 
repair.  I am very aware of, and very much believe in David Isenberg's 
"stupid network" - http://www.isen.com/stupid.html.  (Also see my paper 
at http://www.cavebear.com/archive/rw/Barnstorming-to-Boeing.ppt with 
the accompanying notes at 
http://www.cavebear.com/archive/rw/Barnstorming-to-Boeing.pdf)

What Cisco is doing, I believe, is recognizing this weakness, not to 
mention the near stasis of the IETF in these areas, and responding.

		--karl--
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