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

Mon Oct 2 02:06:20 EDT 2023

Hi Frantisek,

> On Oct 1, 2023, at 20:56, Frantisek Borsik via Nnagain <nnagain at lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> 
> OK, so I will bite the bullet! I have invited Ajit Pai and Martin Geddes to join us here and let's see if they still have some time and/or even stomach for current round of NN discussion.
> 
> Anyway, here is my bullet. I will argue with Martin, that - Net Neutrality CAN'T be implemented: 
> 
> Whilst people argue over the virtues of net neutrality as a regulatory policy, computer science tells us regulatory implementation is a fool’s errand.
> Suppose for a moment that you are the victim of a wicked ISP that engages in disallowed “throttling” under a “neutral” regime for Internet access. You like to access streaming media from a particular “over the top” service provider. By coincidence, the performance of your favoured application drops at the same time your ISP launches a rival content service of its own.
> You then complain to the regulator, who investigates. She finds that your ISP did indeed change their traffic management settings right at the point that the “throttling” began. A swathe of routes, including the one to your preferred “over the top” application, have been given a different packet scheduling and routing treatment.
> It seems like an open-and-shut case of “throttling” resulting in a disallowed “neutrality violation”. Or is it?
> Here’s why the regulator’s enforcement order will never survive the resulting court case and expert witness scrutiny:
>  
> https://www.martingeddes.com/one-reason-net-neutrality-cant-implemented/
> 
> 
> I hope you will read the link ^^ before jumping to Martin's conclusion, but still, here it is:

	[SM] So I did my best to follow the link with an open mind, but I did not find a reasoned logical argument at the end but a fallacy. That article fails to understand that discrimination by ISPs is primarily a (problematic) economic/business move and as such will have a money-trail to follow. ISPs, and here I do not want to insult anybody on this list are typically not Dr. Moriarty type evil geniuses that hide their traffic management in a way that is completely untraceable (which also runs counter to their business interest, if they discriminate against service X than typically because they either want X to pony up extra money or they want to stack the deck in favor of competing service Y). If you end up giving Y a 5% edge over X, honsetly non of the eye-balls are going to notice and the whole endeavor was futile, for this to make business sense* eye-balls/end customers need to be able to easily perceive the difference, and at that point the results of that scheme are traceable, which for regulatory action is enough, nobody really cares about how te ISP discriminates as long as the resulting discrimination is openly visible.
	Also in essentially all regulations laws, "perfection" is not required, "good enough" ist good enough. By the same token (perfection is unachievable) we might as well scrap all penal law, because we always have cases where a criminal gets away with their crime.... 

*) It is not a testament for our regulators in general that we have to consider such predatory business practices as being "expected" but that is where we are...

>  
> So if not “neutrality”, then what else?

	[SM] So let me ask, are you for ISP being allowed to openly discriminate against any traffic source they please? If yes why?

> The only option is to focus on the end-to-end service quality.

	[SM] But Martin, I say, this is exactly how we would go and assess discrimination, we would measure end to end performance of different services and see whether they end up with roughly equal experiences. 

> The local traffic management is an irrelevance and complete distraction.

	[SM] This is both true and false IMHO, for the regulatory assessment it is irrelevant, as long as there is no observable discriminatin, the ISP can do what ever they please, and if there is observed discrimination there surely is some way this was implemented somewhere in the network s this is relavant to some degree, even though the regulator does not need to prove any specific malevolent configuration.

> Terms like “throttling” are technically meaningless. The lawgeneers who have written articles and books saying otherwise are unconsciously incompetent at computer science.

	[SM] I really think that an article using made up terms like "lawgeneers" essentially disqualifies itself as objective data point in an good faith discussion, especially one that is essentially a Nirvana fallacy (perfection can not be reached, so do not even attempt an intervention).

> We computer scientists call this viable alternative “end-to-end” approach a “quality floor”.

	[SM] I am not a computer scientist, but I have never heard that term...

> The good news is that we now have a practical means to measure it and hard science to model it.
> Maybe we should consciously and competently try it?

	[SM] If I am generous, I do not think that M. Geddes is truly arguing for discriminatory practices by ISPs, he really only seems to argue against on specific form or network neutrality policing/enforcement, that I would respectfully consider a strawman anyway. But I might well be wrong here, as I have not read much of hid editorials on the NN topic.

Regards
	Sebastian

> 
> 
> 
> All the best,
> 
> Frank
> 
> Frantisek (Frank) Borsik
> 
>  
> 
> https://www.linkedin.com/in/frantisekborsik
> 
> Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp: +421919416714 
> 
> iMessage, mobile: +420775230885
> 
> Skype: casioa5302ca
> 
> frantisek.borsik at gmail.com
> 
> 
> 
> On Sun, Oct 1, 2023 at 7:15 PM Dave Taht via Nnagain <nnagain at lists.bufferbloat.net> 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
> -- 
> Oct 30: https://netdevconf.info/0x17/news/the-maestro-and-the-music-bof.html
> Dave Täht CSO, LibreQos
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