Exactly voldenuit. I read a frightening acticle the other day regarding a push by the telecom companies that not only want the "tiered service" points, but they also want to control prioritized pricing on sub-levels of those tiers. Bascially, they'll be able to not only "tax" people for using the Internet, but they'll further tax you depending on the type, amount, size and content of the data.

Obviously with the latest passing of the Net Neutrality Bill, this idea has bee somewhat throw by the way side. However, just the thought that the big teleco's were even thinking of such a thing just makes you realize that they are not in this for anything other that the money. Its amazing how so many people have become infected with the sickness of greed. It makes you wonder what life will be like in 20 years. Somewhat scary, I suppose.

Net Neutrality isn't a law yet, correct?

This stuff scares me as well. It makes me think of Verizon blocking bluetooth file transfer on their phones so you have to buy ring tones, etc. from them. What would stop Comcast, Qwest and all the others from doing the same? Nothing would. Right now everyone has to be competitive in price and service and when your the best that sells your product.

I just read this commentary subtitled: "Newsnight's ubergeek talks to BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen and finds him distinctly equivocal about fears of a two speed internet." Interesting alternative viewpoint on Net Neutrality.

There are a couple of problems with this article:

1
It insinuates that some traffic (in this case bit-torrent) is less worthy than others.
Neither BBC-reporters nor ISPs don't get to make such decisions. Their customers pay them to pump packets from A to B as fast as humanly possible.

2
It reads like decentralised caching was a recent invention and problematic in terms of net.neutrality.
For web-content, Akamai-like services have existed for quite some time now and there is exactly no problem at all with the fact that big companies pay extra to get their contents to their customers worldwide by using such setups.

It is sad to see that respectable mainstream press often lacks the most basic understanding of even moderately technical subjects.

Sad, perhaps; but come now - surely you weren't surprised?

I agree entirely with your analysis, however. If you've followed how Google does its thing, it's quite similar - they cache all over the world. That big companies want to pay extra to get more bandwidth doesn't bother me either as long as the solution is external to the backbone and they use the same backbone as everyone else does.

A fight for the backbone
 

And that is the crux of the matter. If they left it at that, there would be no problem. But as far as I can see, this is a fight for backbone -- and that scares me.

More about Bram Cohen:

"Why Bram Cohen Isn't Actually Against Net Neutrality"

Cluelessness is not reserved to journalists, Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) just managed to make a complete fool of himself:

http://blog.wired.com/27BStroke6/?entry_id=1512499

It's ok that elderly senators don't know exactly how the internet works, but shouldn't they get staff capable of explaining it to them to a point where at least they don't embarass themselves when talking about it ?

It certainly is hard to have an informed opinion on the wide variety of subjects they get to vote on, but it's their job after all and blunders such as this are not really encouraging voters that they're competently represented.

In all fairness, he's great at going to the zoo ;) :

http://stevens.senate.gov/gallerydisplay.cfm?gid=27

.
Ideology is one thing, but there are many astonishing instances of technological ignorance in the legislative debates -- and I’m sure it comes in all political colours. Mr Ted Stevens adds his amazing example to a very long list.

In Norway the newspapers had a field day after our Parliament (Stortinget) voted on a bill that had implications for making MP3 copies of legitimately purchased music in order to play on iPods and similar devices.

If I was to dig up copies of those articles and translate choice quotes, I am sure there would be howls of laught from many Forum members. Not to mention some worries along the lines “Hey, are these the people who make decisions for us?!”

This problem isn't limited to technology. We have quite a number of legislators who have never driven a car, and don't even have to use household appliances because they have maids to do that. They don't have to worry about security because they have bodyguards.

These people are legislating on things they have no clue about, from technology to appliances to defensive weapons to cars. The only way to stop this is to replace them with people who have life experience and common sense, but those people don't have enough money to get elected.

Three Norwegian Ministers...
 

A side note from overseas: One of our recent Ministers of Transportation, Odd Einar Dørum, did not have a driver’s license, and he publicly acknowledged a severe fear of flying. He was, however, an excellent minister – approaching the job with a humble open mind and a solid dose of self-irony.

He is not alone in his open mind. Norway has had the only openly gay Finance Minister that I know of, Per-Kristian Foss. In fact he won a standing ovation from his political party (the Conservative Party) when he announced his orientation.

Rolf Presthus, another of our Conservative Finance Ministers, had a very interesting angle on the long-discussed simplification of the tax reform:

“Actually, we can reduce the Income Tax Form to three questions:
– how much do you have?
– where do you keep it?
– and when can we come and pick it up?”

I think that’s pretty darned good irony for a Finance Minister! No, I am definitely not trying to start a political debate. I just thought it might be a worthwhile digression. :cool:

Best regards,
ArcticStones

There was a related article in New Scientist magazine, 1 July 2006 "The Net Reloaded" that basically dismissed the idea that the net could be brought down by destroying a few key nodes. Essentially there are enough alternative routes to mean that any destruction would be localised.

I would be very interested in that article! I’ll try the local library, but not sure they subscribe. If you happen to have an Internet reference, I would be very grateful. :)

I would have to agree. Even if things did slow down tremendously. There are SO many possible routes, that a full failure is almost impossible. It might take a few minutes of reconfiguration, but there are lots of alternates.

Surviving an EMP attack on DNS root servers?
 

Are they saying the Internet would still be well-functioning even if 4–6 DNS root servers, which handle virtually all Internet traffic, are taken out by coordinated Electro-Magnetic Pulse weapons (EMPs)? Or are they only dealing with less radical scenarios?

By "a few key nodes", do the authors of the New Scientist article refer to the 13 DNS root servers? If the Internet has that kind of robustness, then I am both surprised and reassured. I do note Vol de Nuit’s earlier post in this thread:

Just 13 DNS root servers – that’s not an awful lot! Even though it may, perhaps, be more appropriate to use the terms “server systems”. Here is an expanded presentation.

The internet would continue to function if the root servers imploded right this second, due to DNS caching by all of the ISPs and most independent networks. What would not work is the addition of new DNS entries until new root servers were created (or elected from existing servers).

There is a web site www.newscientist.com but you have to subscribe to see the full article. That's why I didn't post it.

Princeton professor Ed Felten published a rather interesting paper titled
"Nuts and Bolts of Network Neutrality" that should definitely be read by Senator Stevens and everybody else interested in net.neutrality:

"Network neutrality is a vexing issue. Proponents of neutrality regulation argue that the free, innovative Internet of today is threatened and government action is needed to protect it. Opponents argue that regulation is not needed, or will be flawed in practice, or is a bad idea even in principle. One of the reasons the network neutrality debate is so murky is that relatively few people understand the mechanics of network discrimination. In reasoning about net neutrality it helps to understand the technical motivations for discrimination, the various kinds of discrimination and how they would actually be put into practice, and what countermeasures would then be available to users and regulators. These are what I want to explain in this essay. It’s not my goal to answer every question about net neutrality—that would require a book, not an essay. What I want to do is fill in some of the technical background in a way that illuminates the core issues, in the hope of providing a little clarity to the discussion."

Complete ten-page pdf here:
http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/pub/neutrality.pdf

His conclusion is rather surprising, but makes a lot of sense, read the paper to find out ;) .

Excellent analysis and explanation - well worth the read. :)

Musings of Doctorow & Co
 

.
There is an excellent article on BBC’s website, essentially summarizing the expectations of our foremost Internet experts. It makes a fascinating starting point for dwelving into the topic. Many of those interviewed, such as Cory Doctorow, expand on their thoughts elsewhere.