Re: [NNagain] Some backstory on the nn-again mailing list

[Sebastian Moeller <moeller0@gmx.de>]

Hi Roland,



> On Oct 2, 2023, at 14:36, Bless, Roland (TM) via Nnagain <nnagain@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> 
> Hi Dave and all,
> 
> my view is that a net neutrality purist's view like
> "all packets, contents, and services must be transported equal"
> does not make sense from a technical viewpoint as there are services
> such as VoIP and other interactive applications that require
> prioritized forwarding to work properly [*].
> 
> However, there are ways to do it correctly:
> 
> 1.) the provider should be transparent about which packets/services are
> handled differently from best-effort.
> 
> 2.) the user should also have a choice, e.g., in case an ISP prioritizes
> VoIP packets, other VoIP providers and VoIP applications should also
> be able to use this preferential treatment, ideally, the end-user can
> "signal" which applications should get the better/worse treatment.
> Furthermore, some other network management techniques must be permitted
> to deal with DDoS and other forms of attacks.
> The old FCC rules from 13.4.2015 were quite reasonable, which I would summarize as:
> * No Blocking
>   - No blocking of lawful content, applications, services, and non-harmful devices
> * No Throttling
>   - No provider-based throttling of lawful content, applications, services, and non-harmful devices
> * No paid Prioritization
>   - No preferential treatment of certain lawful content over other lawful content by payment
> 
> * Goals
>  - ISPs should not disadvantage users or edge providers
>  - Achieve larger transparency
>  - Permit reasonable network management -> without direct commercial intents
> 
> Since I'm not a U.S. citizen I did not follow any recent debate on NN,
> but I found the above rules quite sensible.
> However, the EU rules were actually worse as they left a loophole
> in EU regulation 2015/2120 article 3 paragraph 5.

[SM] Here is the relevant text:

"5.   Providers of electronic communications to the public, including providers of internet access services, and providers of content, applications and services shall be free to offer services other than internet access services which are optimised for specific content, applications or services, or a combination thereof, where the optimisation is necessary in order to meet requirements of the content, applications or services for a specific level of quality.
Providers of electronic communications to the public, including providers of internet access services, may offer or facilitate such services only if the network capacity is sufficient to provide them in addition to any internet access services provided. Such services shall not be usable or offered as a replacement for internet access services, and shall not be to the detriment of the availability or general quality of internet access services for end-users."


	After reading that I thought it depends on how the regulators are going to police and interpret the last sentence. My gut feeling always was that this is intended for stuff like offering real-timish deterministic networking for e.g. autonomous vehicles. While I am not sure 'autonomous vehicles' in dense traffic areas on earth are that great an idea (unlike on Mars, where they are an excellent idea! but there traffic density is not an issue, nor are pedestrians) I am not aware that any ISP so far has actually made use of this option, so it seems unclear to me whether this will end up a real loophole or not. Are you aware of any existing use or abuse?

Regards
	Sebastian

> 
> Regards,
> Roland
> 
> [*] At least I know the case of a large German ISP and VoIP
> provider that needed to prioritize VDSL VoIP traffic by using DiffServ
> marking from an RTP relay in downstream direction. Without DiffServ
> prioritization VoIP quality was not satisfactory during simultaneous
> up-/downloads as the one way speech delay exceeded 110 ms.
> However, that preferential treatment is only used for their own VoIP
> service (and they are providing the RTP relay server), which is
> problematic from a net neutrality point of view as it should
> be usable for other VoIP/WebRTC traffic from other providers, too.
> 
> Regards,
> Roland
> 
> On 01.10.23 at 19:15 Dave Taht via Nnagain wrote:
>> I am pleased to see over 100 people have signed up for this list
>> already. I am not really planning on "activating" this list until
>> tuesday or so, after a few more people I have reached out to sign up
>> (or not).
>> I would like y´all to seek out people with differing opinions and
>> background, in the hope that one day, we can shed more light than heat
>> about the science and technologies that "govern" the internet, to
>> those that wish to regulate it. In the short term, I would like enough
>> of us to agree on an open letter, or NPRM filing,and to put out a
>> press release(s), in the hope that this time, the nn and title ii
>> discussion is more about real, than imagined, internet issues. [1]
>> I am basically planning to move the enormous discussion from over
>> here, titled "network neutrality back in the news":
>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/pipermail/starlink/2023-September/thread.html
>> to here. I expect that we are going to be doing this discussion for a
>> long time, and many more issues besides my short term ones will be
>> discussed. I hope that we can cleanly isolate technical issues from
>> political ones, in particular, and remain civil, and factual, and
>> avoid hyperbole.
>> Since the FCC announcement of a proposed NPRM as of Oct 19th... my own
>> initial impetus was to establish why the NN debate first started in
>> 2005, and the conflict between the legal idea of "common carriage" vs
>> what the internet was actually capable of in mixing voip and
>> bittorrent, in
>> "The Bufferbloat vs Bittorrent vs Voip" phase. Jim Gettys, myself, and
>> Jason Livinggood have weighed in on their stories on linkedin,
>> twitter, and elsewhere.
>> There was a second phase, somewhat triggered by netflix, that Jonathan
>> Morton summarized in that thread, ending in the first establishment of
>> some title ii rules in 2015.
>> The third phase was when title ii was rescinded... and all that has
>> happened since.
>> I, for one, am fiercely proud about how our tech community rose to
>> meet the challenge of covid, and how, for example, videoconferencing
>> mostly just worked for so many, after a postage stamp sized start in
>> 2012[2]. The oh-too-faint-praise for that magnificent effort from
>> higher levels rankles me greatly, but I will try to get it under
>> control.
>> And this fourth phase, opening in a few weeks, is more, I think about
>> privacy and power than all the other phases, and harmonization with EU
>> legislation, perhaps. What is on the table for the industry and
>> internet is presently unknown.
>> So here we "NN-again". Lay your issues out!
>> [1] I have only had one fight with the FCC. Won it handily:
>> https://www.computerworld.com/article/2993112/vint-cerf-and-260-experts-give-fcc-a-plan-to-secure-wi-fi-routers.html
>> In this case this is not so much a fight, I hope, but a collaborative
>> effort towards a better, faster, lower latency, and more secure,
>> internet for everyone.
>> [2] https://archive.org/details/video1_20191129
> 
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