Backbone/network filtering
Drumbeat. Drumbeat.
Verso announces ways they want to help networks filter out Skype (my school has already done this to me quite successfully).
Michael Geist lets us know that Telus (Canadian backbone provider) has blocked more than a million people from seeing a Telecommunications Workers Union site.
We still haven't seen the FCC order confirming that network providers can do anything they want to in the course of their efforts to monetize the internet. But it's coming.
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7 Responses to “Backbone/network filtering”
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Susan,
There are three points in your post: your school blocking something, an ISP blocking access to certain information and the potential for ISPs to block certain services. I
Ren — these are different examples of a larger trend. Blocking a service and blocking access to a site are both examples of network providers going up the protocol stack in discriminatory ways. A service is one level below the content of a site — but they're both above the level of transport. Many people think that network providers should stick to nondiscriminatory transport of bits. The network providers don't agree.
Susan
OK, If you want to frame it in terms of protocol stack levels, fine (though I think that blocking an IP address is actually a Network layer change which is below Transport, but I take you point that, in this case, its impact is higher /geek-ing).
Though I think my question still stands: are you suggesting that any discriminatory acts above the transport layer should be regulated equally. Or are acts that discriminate against particular sites / people etc, different from those that discriminate against services?
In the examples you give, is stopping people from seeing a union site just the same, in regulatory / legal terms, as stopping people talking
More importantly, why are you always championing the freedom of the user and the openness of the internet to do whatever you want in terms of putting your little server out there to do anything you can dream of - but if a provider of some service (who I contend is just an ordinary user gone bigtime) starts restricting access in some way through his domain you think it is a mortal sin?
For someone who seems to decry any kind of regulation of the net you always want to see some efforts being made to keep service providers from mucking around with the status quo. Although, I admit you don't want regulatory bodies doing this, you prefer a consensus model etc. But the upshot is the same I think.
Hi, Jon —
If there were many providers of network access, I'd agree with you. The market would allow people who want choices about publishing their own things and accessing any service they want to do that.
But in a world of highly constrained network access, where the providers are ganging together to make sure they can monetize their networks, those choices won't be available.
So what changes this situation for me is that these network providers aren't just offering services through “their domain,” they're mandating them for all users.
I'm uncomfortable, as I've said before, with “network neutrality” regulation. It seems pernicious to me (for the reasons you understand!). But there need to be adequate choices of access, including plain-vanilla but highspeed access. Right now, that seems impossible.
Susan
Susan > where the providers are ganging together to make sure they can monetize their networks
Is it the
Suppose that a bunch of railroads got together and decided that they wouldn't accept passengers who were enroute from a non-railroad carrier destined to transfer to another non-railroad mode of travel? Wouldn't that be interesting, if not different. Or, try substituting airlines for railroads.
Its not only wrong, but providers doing this do in fact pay a noticable performance penalty. Having done things like this, its definetly not free with respect to performance. The further up the protocol stack you go and the more you filter, the bigger a penalty you pay. Also, you can't always throw harware (aka “Moore's law”) at the problem to solve it, either. End users, like businesses running commercial web sites with hundreds of millions of hits a day can *easily* tell if one provider is having a performance issue, and drop them fast.
Further, to throw water on conspirancy theories, I've seen these major providers (Sprint, MCI, TimeWarner, IBM, etc) try to cooperate to solve simple bread-and-butter types of problems, and fail until someone tells each player along the way exactly what to do in order to accomplish some larger goal. The bigger the players, it seems the poorer they are at actually cooperatively getting things done. If big providers did 'gang up', I can see where they could easily agree on what they wanted (like preventing anyone but themselves from providing VOIP), but I have a hard time believing them capable of working together to accomplish it.
Just thought I'd provide a perspective from someone who's implemented things like this…