The internet is over!

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

If you would have been able to comprehend my post, you would have understood that this was exactly my point. I would send both VoIP packets and ICMP packets, and then compare the two; since as I noted, a hardware or routing problem would affect both. If only the VoIP packets were affected, I would know the source of the problem, right? Ya follow buddy?

And what would you know? Somehow the VoIP packets are sometimes taking different routes? Or that some switches sometimes handle VoIP packets differently (in time, routing, etc) from ICMP packets? And if you do see service degradation, then so what? How do you explain why the condition does not exist one hour later as service degradation is applied intermittently. Maybe larger VoIP packets are suffering more from S/N problems? That particular characteristic being how that switch deals with higher S/N problems when internet traffic is heavier. How would you know? What are you going to do - sue? Meanwhile the consumer would assume you (Skype) software is to blame. The technical study has too many variables. The consumer does not care. He just goes with someone who provides better VoIP - such as Comcast.

In short, even if you do identify symptoms in a location where packet skewing exists, well, its legal. And you still have not proven that it is packet skewing - or other internet problems. IOW so what? You have identified where service is inferior. Now what does Skype do? Cry? It's all legal.

[Undertoad]

They can target Skype all they like. They can't target them all. They would be trying to build a sandwall against a tsunami.

Their target would be a moving one, too; Skype controls its own software, so skype can look like something else, if it wants to. It can hitch itself to different ports. It can route through proxy servers. It can pretend to be other data. It can encrypt differently.

And say, who loses the game if Google blocks Verizon?

What history do you care to look at? Examine the history of every company that's planned to 0wn the net in any similar way. This is the Internet, this is the place where hackers found an innocent chat protocol to be the ideal place to swap pirate files. This is the place where people figured out how to send secret messages inside JPG files with no visible difference in image. Legality doesn't enter into it. If I can connect to you, and ship you two 100GB movie files at the same time, I can figure out a way to use 16kb of that traffic for voice. Nobody can stop us. Period.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Nobody can stop us. Period.

I'm sorry. But that reasoning sounds too much like a Mussolini speech. I must be in a funny mood because it drove me to laughing. It sounded too much like a 'mouse that roared'. And now our children will march off to rescue the Holy Lands. You gotta love the spirit.

[tw]

From Washington Post of 10 Feb 2006:

Charge E-Mailers, but Keep Pipeline Open
A lot of the companies involved in our online experiences must be running short on pocket change this month, because so many of them have been doing the equivalent of looking under the sofa cushions for quarters. To be exact, they're looking under each other's sofa cushions.

Executives at telecom giants such as AT&T and Verizon Communications are talking up the idea of inviting popular Web sites and services to pay extra for better access to their lines -- and some are going further, suggesting that they would demand compensation from the likes of Google and Yahoo for all the bits they send down their lines. Yahoo and America Online, meanwhile, are rolling out plans to charge companies that send large quantities of e-mail to their users. ...

But when some of the largest, most deeply entrenched Internet service providers in the United States alternate between griping about how other firms sponge off their bandwidth and suggesting that they'd merely give Web sites the chance to buy higher-priority access, we have a different situation. ...

Second, these mainstream Internet service providers should think about what, exactly, their customers are going online for in the first place. To use the great search engine Verizon's developed? To get directions and satellite photos using AT&T's brilliant mapping site? To buy songs at BellSouth's wildly popular music-download store?

[Undertoad]

/. reports today that Microsoft has developed a Skype-style free internet voice service for mobile phones. Who will mess with Microsoft's packets?

[glatt]

Here's a neat looking map of the internet backbone and who owns/controls each leg. Via Boing Boing.

[Undertoad]

Outstanding glatt! My point exactly, and this only covers the routing and not the software aspects. Nobody owns the net, nobody CAN own the net.

[tw]

From CBSMarketWatch.com of 23 Mar 2006:

Battle over Internet fees unsettled
The long-simmering debate over Net neutrality burst in public view last December after AT&T's CEO said it would be "nuts" for his company to allow firms like "Google or Yahoo" to use big chunks of "bandwidth" on the phone company's network for free.

Generally most analysts don't think net neutrality to be at risk. But there is this fine line between protecting net neutrality and stifling innovation. From The Economist of 11 Mar 2006

… bad, say proponents of net neutrality, since some data packets - from those agreeing to pay extra - would be favoured over others. Once one music-download service paid up, its rivals would have to do the same ... Yet some packets are already favoured even on today's internet. Businesses routinely pay a premium for fast, secure "tunnels" through the network. ... Big companies already pay extra for hosting and "content delivery" services to make their websites download faster. ... Telecom operators insist that they have no intention of blocking or slowing existing traffic.

So why did they buy that software that can do just to Skype and other selective VoIP packets?

The internet map shows so much distant traffic across the net is transferred from little providers to the big carriers. There are numerous little carriers. But most of their traffic outside of their little regions gets carried eventually by the big carriers. Also what that map does not show is whose hardware carries those 'grey' lines. Often the XYZ Internet Company uses Bell South, Verizon, Level 3, Alternet, or Qwest lines. That map would not show whose hardware is being used. And one final point. Who controls the last mile. This was the problem that a myopic AT&T management just could not comprehend and solve. The last mile - again what that map does not show - is carried mostly by Qwest, Bell South, and Verizon. You want to service your customers? There is a separate door in every Qwest, Bell South, and Verizon facility labeled ILEC so that the independent - with permission from the big last mile provider - can service his customers via their hardware, their services, and at their prices.

Currently, the 'powers that be' are not concerned by AT&T’s threat to destroy net neutrality. But it would be so easy for them to do so once we include all those other facts not found in that colored (*.PDF) internet map. Not shown is whose hardware carries so much of that other (grey colored) traffic, who carries most long haul traffic, AND who controls the last mile.

[xoxoxoBruce]

No, it's not over....just being censored for content like TV.

[Ibby]

Man, after reading all this and the thread on bush...

HOW long have you put up with tw?

and WHEN is he coming back? Arguing with him is almost like a sport, it seems, and I want to be, if not a player, then a spectator!

[wolf]

How long? Since 1992 or 3, I think.

[Undertoad]

Six months later, how has tw's conspiracy prediction held up?

I'm reminded of this thread by this story in which people are trying and think they have figured out how to interfere with Skype. But not for profiteering purposes - it's for Euro regulatory and security purposes.

With my ear to the ground I have not heard of one example of VoIP traffic being interfered with for profiteering.

Meanwhile, Vonage had an IPO but continues to be hurt by the market noticing that, while Vonage charges $24.95, others charge $0. Google put "Chats" into Gmail. A bunch of hardware manufactures including Philips and US Robotics have come out with VoIP phones for the consumer market. And the carrier fight remains one of providing the most possible and most perfect connectivity and bandwidth, of which all voice over IP requires a tiny, tiny fraction.

It's not looking good for tw's predictions. Luckily he didn't suggest a wager for the Cellar calendar. But I won't bring up his mistakes here in any other threads. That would be unfair.

[Flint]

It is true that the companies that provide infrastructure for the internet are considering making changes that will possibly affect the basic functionality of the net as we know it, right ??? I could almost swear I heard that on NPR. Was NPR lying?

[Undertoad]

That's the net neutrality question, which is different from the blocking voip question. Net neutrality is providers wanting to make extra profit by giving some packets priority so that streaming movies, etc., operate as expected.

Net neutrality is like making the passing lanes and driving lanes a different speed limit. But voice takes so little of the road that it can live on a bicycle on the shoulder lane.

[dar512]

Originally Posted by Flint

It is true that the companies that provide infrastructure for the internet are considering making changes that will possibly affect the basic functionality of the net as we know it, right ??? I could almost swear I heard that on NPR. Was NPR lying?

I'm sure they are trying to figure out how to do it. But they would all have to enforce it. Otherwise downstream isps will just move over to the ones who don't.