Posts tagged net neutrality
Should ISP’s be copyright enforcers?
Feb 5th
A few months ago I started this blog entry and then left it sit because I was so angry about what the potential outcome could mean to the ISP industry. Today I read this article on Wired that give me some hope that the world isn’t about to end for ISPs so I decided to revisit this entry and see if it still makes sense. Let’s see…
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We live in a society that has mostly agreed on what is right and what is wrong. We have coined the term, Common Values in order to build communities where we can agree on what is acceptable behaviour. To enforce our safe communal living, we turned these common values into laws. As a society, we have set up governments to enforce the laws (common values) and protect us from those who would harm us.
As members of society, I think we’re all in agreement that theft is a bad thing. No matter what country you are from, it’s pretty much a given that stealing is frowned upon. It’s a pretty common value, maybe even sacrosanct.
Request For Comments
Feb 4th
One of the many terms you’ll hear thrown around an internet service provider is Request For Comments, aka, RFC: “This isn’t per the RFC!” or “We follow the RFC!” or “Read the <expletive deleted> RFC!” So what is an RFC, and why do you want to know what it says.
RFCs are, in a nutshell, the description of how a program, or procedure should work. The history of RFC is long and boring, but basically, they’ve been around since the ARPANET Project began, as written or typed memo that were literally Requests for Comments, open ended questions that someone wanted to solicit answers to. As ARPANET grew, RFCs became the standard way to record procedure, and a way for people to implement the fundamental technologies that make up the Internet as it stands today. Today, RFCs are managed by the Internet Engineering Task Force.
Happy Birthday RFCs!
Apr 7th
Forty years ago today Steve Crocker published the first Request For Comments – beginning the process of creating universal standards for what would become the Internet. At the time Steve Crocker was a graduate student at U.C.L.A. working with a small group of students and faculty on a simple network that linked four computers at U.C.L.A., the Stanford Research Institute, the University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. The development of this primitive, packet switching network, was funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of United States Department of Defense during the Cold War and was named ARPANET.
Because ARPANET was developed at universities and funded by the government instead of private industry, the underlying functionality, processes and standards were developed and discussed openly. When Steve Crocker published RFC 1, his first summary of of procedural rules for the Network Working Group, it was truly a request for comments. This open discussion of standards for creating and managing the infant network was unique and greatly shaped the development of the Internet. The rules for how the network operated, and to a large extent how the Internet operates today, are based on a process Steve Crocker refers to as “rough consensus and running code.”
The Internet was able to become the global network we know and love today in part because anyone could freely access the protocols, follow the published standards or RFC’s and join the network. This openness is still a critical component of how we at ipHouse run our network. We are Internet old-timers. Many of us have been on the ‘net and working in this Industry since the early ’90s. Being honest with our customers is one of our core business values. One that we believe enhances the power of the Internet to bring people together.
Online data privacy?
Jan 26th
Today I spoke at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs regarding privacy of data on the Internet.
One big issue at hand is, what happens to the data that you create when using the Internet. “Data I create? I don’t create any data when I’m on the Internet…do I?” Yes, you do.
Currently when you do any of the following, you are likely creating data that can be tracked.
You create data…
- When you make searches at Google.
- When you look at movies at Netflix.
- When you check scores at ESPN.
- When you read customer reviews on Amazon.
- When you search for someone on Facebook.
- When you watch a video on Youtube.
All of these are innocuous, but together, they create a profile of you, and can reveal some very private data.
Let’s start with the first item: Search terms.
Lets stipulate that the actual search term you use on a search engine is private data, similar to a request you make at the library or at a book store. To follow on, it’s strongly possible that the results that are sent to your browser are private data. Today, it requires a search warrant to see the contents of your computer hard drive so I can infer that the results from the search engine are private data.
“Whew, I’m safe, right?”
Nope. In order to use the search engine, it’s possible that you’ve given “consent” to use the data you supplied and have waived any privacy rights you may have had. Further, the search results are logged before they are sent to you. This creates a big gray area for data privacy that is not currently protected. And from the content providers point of view, It’s NOT private data.
This goes for all type of data you send across the Internet. The search requests you make, the stock quotes you review, the movies you download, the books you buy. The list goes on and on.
“Wait a minute, why would someone even WANT this data?”
The motivation for companies to keep your privacy intact is two fold. Penalties from regulatory bodies and the all important revenue. If a company will face a penalty or lose revenue, they will likely keep your privacy intact. But if they analyze the situation, they may conclude that selling the data is more financially beneficial than protecting your privacy. This is not new to data that companies hold, but it’s new in context to the online world in which we live in.
Today, much online content is “free”, with only the hidden cost being you accept some loss of privacy. We are so used to clicking “accept” that we’ve lost track of the value of what we are giving up. It’s compounded by the good track records of the companies that are collecting data. So far, their use of the data has not directly affected us, so who cares if someone knows what movies we like? ”So really, nothing bad has happened so far, right?”
Right. But that’s because the data is broken into chunks that are hard to combine. I would guess that Travelocity and Orbitz and Expedia don’t share too much data because there is probably not an financial model that makes it profitable. But let’s take another model and see what happens… Comcast has an on demand video solution, as does Apple and Netflix. Should Netflix and Apple be worried that Comcast is going to start reviewing what their visitors are doing? Does Comcast wants to have the online video business for themselves?
Luckily or not, each website you visit has only a piece of your online escapades. The New York Post does not know what articles you read at the Washington Times. Fidelity can’t see what stocks you traded at Etrade. From the content providers point of view, you’re a statistic only when you visit them.
Which leads me to the next thought. The ISPs’ point of view.
Above, I talked about data collection from each web site being possibly harmful. That’s nothing. Really.
The real loss of privacy will come when ISPs’ start collecting data on your browsing habits. Think about it. As much as Google knows what you’re doing when you visit Google, your ISP really knows what you’re doing at every website you visit. And they can read your mail (like Google) and track your IM conversations and capture your VOIP calls… They know all that you do online and everything else about you. SCARY.
Thankfully today, ISPs’ do only a little TRAFFIC monitoring. ISPs’ legitimately monitor traffic to:
- To protect their revenue (keep customers online and happy).
- To protect their assets (network).
- To protect their customers (SPAM filtering).
Most ISPs’ don’t monitor the CONTENTS (data) of the traffic they manage except to comply with regulation and law enforcement. Really, most monitoring is often “look at header info and discard”. It’s important here for me to point out that any data collected by ipHouse is not held in order to create profiles of users.
Traditionally, ISPs’ have NOT monitored data because it was just too hard to do. But that’s all changed. Deep Packet Inspection technology has advanced to the point of being able to transparently evaluate traffic for specific patterns and usage without impacting the consumer experience. This allows the ISP to deliver “tailor made” content to users. Remember Travelocity not seeing Orbitz or Expedia data? Forget that. The ISP can now sell all travel related “traffic” from its subscribers to the highest bidder. Or bidders.
Deep Packet Inspection technology allows the management of traffic and/or data according to a set of policies that promote security or revenue or censorship or whatever. The ISP sets the policy according to their desires. “Really? My ISP can just monitor my data if they want to?” Yes. But there may be existing law that prevents the monitoring of data and that needs to be proven.
If the existing law is shown to not be applicable to ISPs’, it might make a lot of sense (and dollars) to monitor customer data. But all things have a cost. One anticipated cost is that spying wouldn’t be done just for profit. How long would it be until ALL data is monitored and reviewed? If ISPs’ monitor data, should they block data based on some policy for decency or obscenity? Who’s policy would that be? Should ISPs’ be responsible for any and all security or ethical breaches (by whos standards?) that occur because of the data on their network? Should ISPs’ send all suspicious activity to some authority for review? Data monitoring could become mandatory.
So, should ISPs’ monitor thier customer data? I say no. This is MY ethical position. It’s ethically wrong to spy on people. Further, I feel it is ethically wrong to profit from spying. ISPs’ should NOT monitor data for profit or for government.
The power and beauty of the Internet is in its ability to bring people together across cultures, faiths and boundaries. Once one group or government starts dictating “inappropriate” content, the Internet becomes simply a tool for that organization to push their own agenda and the “one world” quality of the Internet is lost.
Peace.
-Bil
Thoughts for comments:
- Privacy is not a technical issue and should not be addressed by ISPs’.
- ISPs’ should remain neutral to content of the data streams they manage.
- Our society should rethink privacy from a contextual integrity perspective.
- Online Privacy == Network Neutrality
Further Reading:
Paul Ohm : The Rise and Fall of Invasive ISP Surveillance
Daniel Solove : Understanding Privacy
Network Management & Net Neutrality
Nov 20th
Recently I had an opportunity to speak about Network Management issues for the Blandin Foundation’s webinar on Broadband Policy. The webinar was part of the Blandin Foundation’s continuing effort to help create a broadband vision and strategy for Minnesota. A summary of my presentation follows.
Any discussion on network management these days must include a discussion on net neutrality. Why? Because limiting access to certain types or sources of content is one way to ease resource demands across a network.
What is net neutrality? Net neutrality is the idea that access to content on the Internet should be equal and fair, regardless of the access method or the provider of access. This sounds simple, but it’s not.
A neutral network is free of restrictions to all Internet content and is also free of restrictions on the equipment used to access the content. A partially non-neutral network would be a cellular phone company. They restrict what equipment you use to get access to the content. You typically must buy a phone they provide. A neutral network will let you use any equipment you choose when connecting to the network.
What’s the big deal? When Internet access companies are also content providers, net neutrality issues come to the forefront. A great example of this is Time Warner. Time Warner owns and produces content as diverse as Bugs Bunny videos and CNN. They also own Time Warner Cable. If you’re a Time Warner Cable subscriber, chances are that you will have unrestricted access to Bugs Bunny videos, but if you subscribe to DSL from a phone company, Bugs Bunny videos may not even be available to you. Now take the Time Warner Cable subscriber who wants to watch a video on the Fox News website. Fox News is a direct competitor of CNN. Is it in the best interest of Time Warner Cable to restrict or filter the access to the Fox News website in order to get their subscribers onto their own website (CNN)?
But the market will win, right? Maybe. It is obvious that not all content will be owned by one access provider. That’s not the issue with net neutrality. Net neutrality is about allowing unfettered access to all types of content, regardless of ownership, viewpoints, opinions, or criticisms. It’s my opinion that net neutrality can be legislated, but access providers will find ways to show preferential access to certain types of content no matter what the regulations say, thus bypassing regulations. The reason Access providers will bypass regulations is simple, the demand for bandwidth is skyrocketing.
Unprecedented demand for bandwidth. Access providers are seeing explosive growth in bandwidth utilization. Access providers are supplying larger connections and oddly enough, consumers are using them. The old adage is, “On the Internet, content is king and the king is damned fat”.
Recently the iTunes store started offering both high definition and standard definition formats for episodes of this season’s television shows. You might say hurray, but the Access providers are saying OUCH! A standard definition episode might be 300 Megabytes, but a high definition episode will be anywhere from 1 gigabyte to nearly 3 gigabytes. iTunes is only 1 reason Access providers have seen a huge jump in bandwidth utilization over the last 18 months.
We at ipHouse have seen a 35% increase in the bandwidth utilization from our individual accounts over the last year. During that time we have transferred over 4 petabytes (4,000,000,000,000,000 bytes) of email, pictures, videos, songs and who knows what else. When I divide this into my subscriber base, the numbers are staggering. It means that every single one of my subscribers is downloading 1 Megabyte of data every day, even when they’re not online! But this is not a true representation of what is really happening on the network. Statistics show that most subscribers are downloading less than 200 kilobytes a day.
The majority of bandwidth is being consumed by a few individuals who are transferring an unprecedented amount of data. These individuals pay their bills on time, do not utilize tech support and are advocates in the market place by praising us to their friends. Still, they’re consuming a large amount of technical resources… We categorize the top 5% of our individual subscribers as “excessive” utilization users, regardless of other business metrics.
“Excessive” utilization? Access providers are focusing on these heavy users, creating their own definitions of excessive utilization. This month excessive utilization might be 250 gigabytes. Next month it might be more, less, or the same. The Access provider holds all the cards when it comes to defining Excessive utilization. The Access provider can restrict when a subscriber can get full or limited bandwidth, what services are available (for example, bit torrent or file sharing), and how many bytes can be transferred in a given period. Access providers are already providing Quality of Service on their networks, so restricting “excessive” utilization is just another metric that becomes automatic.
Coincidently, Quality of Service also creates what appears to be a neutral network while still meeting the business objectives of having preferential content delivered to subscribers. By defining the Quality of Service for a given set of content, or services, it becomes easy to show Net neutrality, while delivering something completely different. Net neutrality only works when bandwidth is not limited or when bandwidth paid for on a consumption basis which leads me to…
Time based vs. consumption based markets. Consumers of services are used to two basic billing models. The first is flat rate but time based. We are all familiar with this model. You can rent a movie for 24 hours for 99 cents. The second model is a variable rate, but purely consumption based. The water company or the electric company charge based on a small but measurable variable rate and the consumer pays for the amount of service consumed. There is also a hybrid model of time and consumption. An example of the hybrid model is a car rental that is a $39 dollars per day PLUS mileage.
Access providers had originally chosen the hybrid time/consumption model, as an example – $19.99 for 100 hours per month. The heavy costs to provide the service were tied to acquiring and supporting customers, not in the technical resources the customers used. Access providers quickly abandoned the hybrid model for fixed rate service offerings with “unlimited” access. Access providers quickly learned that the demands of some subscribers would heavily tax the infrastructure they share with other subscribers. Limiting the heavy users proved problematic as those subscribers cried foul and demanded that the Access provider provide what they were sold. Access providers have no choice but to either jettison “Excessive” users or bill those users based on what they consume. It’s probably too late to change the model one more time and I doubt subscribers would be accepting of a model based purely on consumption. Instead Access providers are looking for ways to offer “full spectrum” services while limiting what is being consumed in some fashion. The cable operators that provider Internet access were the first to move in this fashion. AT&T recently joined the pack in limiting the data transfers available with each access account.
The underlying question is, can the demands of more and more bandwidth by subscribers be in concert with network neutrality?
The marriage of network policy and business objectives The answer to the above question is YES – IF subscribers are willing to pay for it. I believe that the typical Access provider wants to offer neutral access to content. Most Access providers do not own content and are interested in allowing their users unfettered access to content. The problem is who is going to pay for the bandwidth? Some access providers are forming alliances with content providers to support their bandwidth needs. These alliances can create sticky situations for the Access providers though. I think the better answer is simple Quality of Service offerings that manage the bandwidth demands on the network. By keeping this issue as a technical problem, a technical answer can be found. If bandwidth demand becomes a financial issue, then the logical course of action is to implement a hybrid time/consumption billing model. While a small number of subscribers may be dismayed by the new billing model, only the excessive users will actually be impacted. But what about access to content regardless of where it originates and how much bandwidth it uses? This raises the question of regulation of Access providers…
Regulation preventing access to networks, prevents network neutrality. Most small Access providers are not worried about getting access to the content kings of the Internet such as Google/YouTube, but Access providers are worried about the old media empires restricting access to content. Regulation now prevents small Access providers (like ipHouse) from accessing the cable and phone company physical networks for providing network access to our subscribers. Since we’re locked out of the telecom side, the next logical step is for the content companies, (who own the cable companies) to restrict content access to their own Internet access subscribers.
Time will tell, but net neutrality is a war that is likely to be lost by consumers and small Access providers. Even though most of the individuals battles are winnable, the small Access provider just doesn’t have the resources to win this war, even if we have legislation on our side.
I was also asked to talk about managing data content as an Access provider. within the following topics:
File sharing / Individual Privacy: Should access providers become data managers? I think this question is best asked, why should Access providers become data managers for content owners? I cannot find an analogy in any of the historical media distribution systems that is similar to the models that have been proposed for Access providers. One model makes the Access provider responsible for their subscribers’ file downloads, with the Access Provider paying the Content Owner for all downloaded media. That’s similar to the old C.O.D. model used for shipping chattels. Why on earth would Access providers want to collect revenues for a third party?
Another model is a $5.00 per month ISP tax for music. The Access provider collects a tax and sends the revenue to someone to be distributed to someone else, thus adding a middle man. Huh? Do they think Access providers are a replacement for the jukebox companies of yesteryear?
The answer is no. Access providers are not data managers for Content Owners, nor should they become data managers by legislation. Still, stranger things have happened. It’s been more than a decade since the Internet Revolution and people are STILL trying to figure out how to munge their old business model, be it music distribution or classified ads, into the Internet connected world.
Who would pay for such management? Ok, lets say either model gets some foothold. Access providers are acutely aware of bandwidth and resources required to shape bandwidth as it is delivered to subscribers. The infrastructure required to measure file downloads is technically available, but the cost to implement such a system is not worth the costs when divided into the number of subscribers. Assuming the Access provider is collecting transfers or a flat tax, who will pay the Access provider for the infrastructure to measure and tabulate the data? Adding systems adds costs and managing data is not a cheap cost. So the question should really be, why are old world Content Owners forcing their old business model into the new world? Update the business model and the question of who will pay becomes moot.
What about the privacy of subscribers? Who will protect them? Part of the problem with monitoring subscribers use of Internet access is just the “Big Brother” aspect of snooping into innocent and private communications. What do Access providers do when they stumble upon a discussion about a possible transportation strike or a shortage of a flu vaccine? Are Access providers responsible for monitoring the activities of their subscribers? Are telephone companies responsible for the drug deals that are setup via the telephone network?
Today, Access providers are bound by existing law to protect consumer information and are treated as publishers and as carriers without liability to the content that traverses their networks. Assuming Content Owners get their way, this will all change and your tastes and interests will become just another metric Access providers will have in their database. Access providers need to manage their subscribers to the benefit of their own business, not the business of Content Owners.
Where does that leave net neutrality? As much as you might think that Content Owners want net neutrality, think again. Dedicated partnerships between Content Owners and Access providers might force subscribers to pay for content, fully to the benefit of Content Owners and logically, Access providers can restrict the choice of the content available. Legislating net neutrality might be a good thing or it might not. Consumers need to speak out and make sure their voices are heard before they don’t have a way to speak out.
Peace.
-Bil
