The *real* Network Neutrality issue: IPTV services
For those of you unfamiliar with Network Neutrality (NN) it is the idea that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) should not be allowed to discriminate packets based on their origin. What does that mean? Here’s an example of how an ISP would violate NN:
Let’s say that you’re google. You compete with services from Yahoo, MSN, and others. Today you pay for Internet access in a typical fashion, “X dollars/month for a connection of Y speed.” You pay for enough bandwidth that you’ll never have to worry about “running out”. No matter who uses google.com they can view the site as fast as their connection allows.
Now some ISP comes to you and says, “If you pay us extra money we’ll give you priority access to our network. That way google.com will always load faster than yahoo.com on our network.” Sounds good in theory, right? Why NOT pay for priority access? Quite simply: To prioritize one site, you must downgrade everything else. Yes, everything. Essentially it is no different than a protection racket (racketeering)… “Pay us or who knows how long your packets will take to reach your customers.”
That isn’t the only problem with it. It also severely discriminates against smaller businesses and provides the means for existing monopolies to prevent new competitors from entering their markets. Imagine if YouTube—being the biggest online video site—started paying for access like this. All other video services would have to compete, auction-style, for enough “priority” to get a quality of service as good as YouTube.
The Content/ISP Conflict of Interest
Now that I’ve explained the basics I want to point out a violation of Network Neutrality that I’m positive most people don’t know about: ISPs that also sell TV services (i.e. content). Consider combined cable TV and Internet services. Both services come into your home by way of a coaxial cable. That coaxial cable has a total amount of bandwidth of about 160 megabits download/120 megabits upload using the latest DOCSIS technology (3.0).
DOCSIS 3.0 uses a technique called, “channel bonding” whereby your cable modem will use more than one channel to obtain that increased bandwidth. What does that mean? Well, a cable TV channel uses up ~6MHz of spectrum on the coaxial cable. That 6MHz constitutes a “channel”. The plan is for each cable modem to use up to four channels simultaneously to send and receive Internet traffic. The current pre-3.0 (it isn’t certified yet) DOCSIS equipment can use a maximum of 96 channels so that means you can have 24 customers using all available channels simultaneously.
The technology allows those 96 channels to be dynamically allocated on-the-fly as customers use up the available bandwidth. The reason for this is so cable companies can over-sell their Internet packages (i.e. more than 24 customers on a local node). That way when 48 people are using the Internet simultaneously they’ll just get half the bandwidth. Since most people aren’t uploading/downloading 24 hours a day, 7 days a week they should be able to over-sell a significant amount before anyone notices (unless something comes along that makes more people use up more bandwidth).
That’s all well and good but there’s another problem: What about Cable TV? In order for a company like Comcast to continue selling traditional “digital cable” TV service customer cable TV boxes will have to be “switched” just like a cable modem. That means that as each customer changes the channel, that channel will be “tuned” on the node as opposed to the existing setup whereby your cable box always has all channels coming into it simultaneously. This way, no matter what the selection of TV channels the cable company offers the customer’s cable box will always use up only one channel at a time. This is a violation of Network Neutrality.
How is a violation of Network Neutrality? Because it provides the cable company with exclusive, priority access to your bandwidth for the express purpose of providing TV service. That is discriminating on packets based on their origin. Under this setup it would be impossible for an IPTV company on the Internet to provide “as good” service as what you’d get from Comcast’s own IPTV service (because that’s really what it is—even though it would be delivered differently).
What I’m saying is that cable companies should not be allowed to cut into your Internet bandwidth to exclusively provide their TV service. It would be one thing if you could subscribe to any IPTV company you wanted by way of this mechanism but you can’t. The people who operate the network (the cable company) will never allow some 3rd party provider access to their data centers to hook up their video service that competes directly with their own.
We need new laws that will prevent this kind of abuse and we need them before cable companies start selling these services. No one wants their Internet bandwidth being taken over by someone else’s TV viewing but that is precisely how the cable companies want it.
Telcos Are Doing It Too
The cable companies aren’t the only ones building out their networks for their own exclusive access. The only difference is in the technology. Verizon has already rolled out fiber-optic service (FIOS) whereby they split the fiber coming into people’s homes into two channels with 80% of the bandwidth reserved for their IPTV service
Verizon thinks this is justified because without that exclusive bandwidth they would not be able to compete with companies like Comcast who will be providing a similar service. So in other words, because the cable companies can get away with it Verizon should be able to as well.
I don’t buy it and neither should you. If their argument is, “It isn’t fair” then they’re right: The cable company arrangement is unfair to IPTV operators of all kinds. However, the solution isn’t to allow companies like Verizon to be equally as reprehensible. It is to make sure everyone competes on a level playing field.
What, Precisely Is Needed
Codifying Network Neutrality into law isn’t easy. ISPs already discriminate packets based on the kind of packets they transmit and this is actually quite a good thing. If a virus is working its way around the Internet it would be pertinent for an ISP to block that traffic. The same goes for prioritizing voice-over-IP (i.e. real-time) traffic over bulk peer-to-peer traffic (i.e. not so real-time).
The law must differentiate between good discrimination and bad discrimination. It must also create a level playing field for all manner of services provided over the Internet; whether they be web sites or IPTV services. Here’s a start:
- No Internet Service Provider (ISP) may degrade, slow, or otherwise purposefully interfere with Internet traffic based on that traffic’s origin or destination.
- No Content Provider may offer their service(s) exclusively to any ISP or group of ISPs.
- No Content Provider may prioritize or optimize their services for a single ISP or group of ISPs.
- No ISP may offer content or content services in an exclusive or prioritized arrangement to their own customers.
- Content providers must utilize open-access networks (e.g. the Internet) to provide their service. Exceptions will not be provided for broadcast TV and radio (they should have to offer their content on the Internet along with their traditional methods).
Note: I tried to write this in such a way that a cable company couldn’t claim its content service was not IP-based and therefore could be exclusive.
3 Responses to 'The *real* Network Neutrality issue: IPTV services'
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on June 2nd, 2007 at 9:02 pm
“Why NOT pay for priority access? Quite simply: To prioritize one site, you must downgrade everything else. Yes, everything.”
Unless you add the word “relatively speaking” the above is incorrect.
If I’m going 55 in a Honda and you fly by in a Porche at 75, I’m still getting to my destination at the same time, and you’re paying extra to get to yours faster. Nothing unfair about that.
I work on this issue for Hands Off the Internet, and there are other points I’d like to address here, but I’m afraid my guess for the captcha question is going to be off. Here goes nothing…
on June 2nd, 2007 at 10:02 pm
Your analogy is severely flawed: Network connections aren’t like roads. If I were to make a road analogy it would be more akin to lanes than speed.
The amount of lanes is fixed and all vehicles must contend for that space. If you dedicate two lanes for Google trucks that means that there’s two less lanes left for everyone else to use. There *is* something extremely unfair about that.
I’ve worked as a network administrator before and I can say from both expertise and experience that you absolutely *cannot* prioritize one source or kind of traffic without de-prioritizing it for everything else. It is just the way it works. Here’s a technical explanation if you want:
Assume you have two servers and two clients. Server A, Server B, Client C, and Client D. They’re all connected via the same network (the Internet). If I configure the routers between theses systems to prioritize A’s traffic over B that means that if C is sending/receiving data from A the data sent/received between B and D will take a back seat to the connection between A and C… Even though D may never connect with A.
If you add in hundreds of other clients who also don’t communicate with A they will still suffer the same fate: Their packets will always be put at the back of the queue behind the packets of A and C. Thus, you have a very inequitable situation where Server A slows down everything for everyone else.
On a local network you want this sort of behavior. If you’re talking on the phone (over VoIP) you want that to take priority over *all* other traffic on the network. You don’t want your wife’s web surfing to interfere with your conversation so her packets will end up being delivered a little bit slower as a result. You want this same effect to apply to all systems on your network. Thus; you’re prioritizing VoIP traffic (your phone, specifically) at the expense of _everything else_. On the Internet at large, however, this is exactly what you *don’t* want to happen.
The impact of such a configuration scales with the size of the network. At home the latency increase and speed loss are barely noticeable but on larger networks (such as in an office building) packets can become severely delayed or slowed. This is why good network admins *always* have separate networks for things like VoIP devices (besides being more secure). If you scale this up to be the WHOLE INTERNET you can have some major contention and packet sorting issues. The more companies pay for such a priority access the less efficient the network becomes as a whole. Also, the more companies are paying the more non-paying sites will suffer.
Hopefully that better explains it for you.
FYI: I also have another major bone to pick with this issue: It is completely unjust and anti-competitive for an ISP that is also a content provider to prioritize its own content or to dedicate huge swaths of its network to that content. You could say, “but they own the pipes” but they actually don’t… U.S. taxpayers shelled out billions and billions of dollars to these companies to lay the lines. Not to mention the right-of-way grants, the fact that ISPs are a “natural monopoly”, or that we as citizens own the land with which all their networks are run.
-Riskable
“Want is a fish that grows with its habitat.”
on July 26th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
[...] We’ll pick up mid-way through some dude named Riskable’s blog entry: [...]