On NN workshop RE: Re: [governance] Three IGC workshops ) NN FYI DIPLO

[Lee W McKnight]

Agreed Dave's distinctions are helpful.

There's still another possible dimension AT&T has pushed at times - 'search neutrality;'  which may relate to the current EU competition policy investigation of Google.

Lee


________________________________________
From: governance at lists.cpsr.org [governance at lists.cpsr.org] On Behalf Of George Sadowsky [george.sadowsky at attglobal.net]
Sent: Friday, April 15, 2011 1:49 PM
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; McTim; Adam Peake
Cc: governance at lists.cpsr.org
Subject: Re: On NN workshop RE: Re: [governance] Three IGC workshops ) NN  FYI DIPLO

All,

I'm not sure if what I'm going to insert below pertains directly to the discussion on this list, but I found it useful.

Dave Crocker makes a differentiation between two different concepts of what is called net neutrality:

Discussion about "neutrality" needs to distinguish between Service Neutrality and Participant Neutrality.


Participant Neutrality means that email from or to me gets treated the same as mail from or to you. Equally, web pages I retrieve from Google get treated the same as web pages I retrieve from Yahoo! or from ietf.org<http://ietf.org>.  Differential handling is based on IP Address or Domain Name.

Service Neutrality means that email, web, voip telephone calls, real-time remote sensor data, and every other type of "application" get treated equally. Differential handling is based on the IP Protocol field or the TCP/UDP Port number.  Real service neutrality means that it is not possible for the network infrastructure to support quality of service guarantees, such as inter-packet arrival times (jitter.)

The challenge of service neutrality is technical, such as dealing with the potential that preference for one service will destroy the ability to use another service.

The challenge of participant neutrality is political, since it relates to potentially unfair treatment of different people or organizations.

An example of Participant Neutrality that can be masked as Service Neutrality is when two organizations have competing application protocols and one is given preference.  The preference appears to be based on the protocol but is really concerned with who is operating the service.
Discussions about net neutrality typically fail to make this basic distinction and therefore typically wind up with people talking past each other or, worse, imposing policies that really do restrict the ability of the Internet to properly support adequate operation of a service.

Further, it may be the case that you can have one or the other, but not both simultaneously.  I haven't thought that through, but if it's true, then there's a whole space of net neutrality components that need more detailed analysis.

George Sadowsky

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

At 6:25 PM +0300 4/15/11, McTim wrote:
On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 9:52 AM, Adam Peake <ajp at glocom.ac.jp> wrote:
>> Foo
>>
>> On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 4:42 PM, Fouad Bajwa
>> <<mailto:fouadbajwa at gmail.com>fouadbajwa at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> It would be advisable that for once, this workshop should only give the
>> developing world perspective.
>>
>>
>>
>> Is there such a thing?
>>
>> I've never seen one.  Here in Africa, it's just not on many agendas.
>>
>>
>
>
> Interesting point.  McTim, how about asking on the kictanet list and see if
> people there (various stakeholders) think it's an issue worth discussing,
> perhaps some might support the workshop.

NB: this is the same point made by PJS, just comes at it from a
different perspective.

Sure I can do that.  How shall I/we define what we mean by  NN??

I think we are all for NN, just some of us have different definitions.

--
Cheers,

McTim
"A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A
route indicates how we get there."  Jon Postel
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