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

Sat Apr 16 16:22:01 EDT 2011

George, the whole point of NN is to prevent discrimination based on the ownership, content or origin, not on service type.
Any carrier who discriminates in the treatment of different applications based on their bandwidth needs in order to optimize service is not violating net neutrality norms. This is what is called "reasonable network management" and it is allowed in both countries that already have common carrier obligations for their ISPs (Canada) and those that don't but are trying to (US).

Comcast's famous blocking of BitTorrent, e.g., was not reasonable NM because it was done regardless of the level of congestion. No way you can justify that, and Comcast backed off it a few months after the whistle was blown because it could not be justified.

And Parminder, the standard is not "public interest," as this is a completely vague term that allows anyone to make an argument about anything, so let's hope that public interest never becomes the standard for determining what is and is not "NN". Making a public interest argument is a way of begging the question. We need to know what makes action X "in the public interest" and action Y "not in the public interest." At best, regulatory and legal precedents will establish clear criteria for what "public interest" means, but more specific standards such as reasonable network management are preferable.

--MM

From: governance at lists.cpsr.org [mailto:governance at lists.cpsr.org] On Behalf Of parminder
Sent: Saturday, April 16, 2011 12:03 AM
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org
Subject: Re: On NN workshop RE: Re: [governance] Three IGC workshops ) NN FYI DIPLO

Regarding the distinction made between participant and service neutrality, FCC regulations as well as Norway's guidelines (as any other serious attempt at codifying what is NN) clearly makes allowance for different treatment for different kinds of services, if so required for 'public interest', this term being key. So, there is considerably less confusion about what constitutes NN than is often made out to be. About whether NN should be applied fully, or not (as in case of FCC's treatment of mobile Internet) remains contested though. This is not the same as having confusions about what NN means. I think this latter debate needs a rest for us to really look at why NN and the nature of public interest involved.

(As for the below discussed case about participant neutrality being masked as service neutrality, any kind of serious application of a social regulation - as opposed to technical ones - will require looking at such one off cases as one off cases, tested against larger basic principles involved, in light of what is public interest. It is impossible to fix all such thing with complete precision in advance in any social law or regulation, something I do understand doesnt sit very well with minds trained for technical levels of precise clarity, . So lets not keep blaming an insufficient definition of NN  for not going forward on this key global and national IG issue.)

Parminder

On Friday 15 April 2011 11:19 PM, George Sadowsky wrote:
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><mailto:ajp at glocom.ac.jp> wrote:
>> Foo
>>
>> On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 4:42 PM, Fouad Bajwa
>> <<mailto:fouadbajwa at gmail.com><mailto:fouadbajwa at gmail.com>fouadbajwa at gmail.com<mailto: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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