Friday, October 10, 2008
Understanding why Network Neutrality is Misunderstood
When I read Geoff Daily's most recent blog posting, I realized that his misunderstanding of network neutrality came, in part, from a lack of appreciation of option value. [Here's my previous post on Geoff's take.]
Now, let me declare right up front, Geoff is a great guy, and a true friend. He has the energy of any other half-dozen Internet activists. He organized the remarkable "Camp Fiber" gathering in Lafayette last Saturday, which I had the good fortune to attend. And he is ever-willing to engage forthrightly when we disagree. However, he's been traveling in close company with Bell heads and old-school network managers, and he's unconsciously adopted several of their core assumptions.
It is telling that Geoff was surprised that, in his own words, "It's not about filling the pipe." He writes:
I think he heard. For example, he now notes that once fiber became available, Lafayette's library system's throughput grew, "from a few T-1s to 35Mbps over the last few years." This wouldn't have happened if bandwidth was scarce and priced accordingly. Also, he notices that even when developers aren't explicitly building big-bandwith apps,
Now, let me declare right up front, Geoff is a great guy, and a true friend. He has the energy of any other half-dozen Internet activists. He organized the remarkable "Camp Fiber" gathering in Lafayette last Saturday, which I had the good fortune to attend. And he is ever-willing to engage forthrightly when we disagree. However, he's been traveling in close company with Bell heads and old-school network managers, and he's unconsciously adopted several of their core assumptions.
It is telling that Geoff was surprised that, in his own words, "It's not about filling the pipe." He writes:
"I went into Saturday's CampFiber in Lafayette with the belief that the primary topic of discussion would be how to fully utilize the 100Mbps intranet LUS subscribers will have access to, but then a funny thing happened: that wasn't what everyone else was interested in . . . figuring out what to do with 100Mbps was a secondary issue at best."In his previous post, Geoff spoke of the need for special mechanisms to allocate bandwidth for video-conferences and to throttle excessive P2P use. In Lafayette last weekend I explained that categorizing applications and distinguishing among different kinds of users destroys the very property that made the Internet the success that it is today -- its option value.
I think he heard. For example, he now notes that once fiber became available, Lafayette's library system's throughput grew, "from a few T-1s to 35Mbps over the last few years." This wouldn't have happened if bandwidth was scarce and priced accordingly. Also, he notices that even when developers aren't explicitly building big-bandwith apps,
. . . not having to worry about capacity constraints can free the minds of developers to worry less about compression and squeezing things down and more about the functionality, usability, and overall impact of their apps on improving society.Isaac Asimov observed that discoveries are more often heralded by, "That's funny . . . " rather than "Eureka!" I think Geoff's frank surprise, and his subsequent analysis, is evidence of an open mind.
Technorati Tags: Content-Conduit, End-to-End, FTTH, GeoffDaily, Infrastructure, LafayetteLA, NetworkNeutrality
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