I\’ve always been a fan of watching you on the sidelines, both to see how exicted you get when the Mavs win and how pissed when the Spurs sink a three in the last minute… but c\’mon, this is a load of horsesh*t and you know it. This isn\’t about the weight of high-end internet applications as much as it is about gaining competitive advantage in the service provider marketplace. Bell has even attempted to argue that NN violates their right to free speech by allowing (by default on the current infrastructure) bandwidth to viewpoints Bell may disagree with! What a crock! It is a MISTAKE to put tiered service in the hand of those who have no concern for what type of information is proliferated… the internet will become TELEVISION! What\’s profitable remains. You make us believe that the goal of internet cultural progress, and the measure of its modernity, is the availability of bandwidth-heavy streaming data… as if being able to stream Mavs games in high-def is a greater cultural acheivement than a user-edited, user-maintained, and FREE encyclopedia. Just to make sure we\’re on the same page, Mark, it is NOT! No telecom is losing money providing internet service (imagine how much quicker Vonage would have gone under without net neutrality!), they\’ve just been gradually realizing that they\’re players in a game in which they didn\’t write ALL the rules. Stifling technological progress? Get creative. Build a new fibre-optic infrastructure and sell it to the highest bidders. Let the telecoms launch the \”new internet\” and see what it becomes. Seems like the people already have gotten creative, and spoken.

Sorry but I’ve got to disagree with you on this one, from both a business and a technical perspective. When you get into SLA territory, you find that price goes up way faster than the payback for each “nine” you get (99% versus), and uptime is always a legally fenced-in concept which isn’t going to cut it if someone’s life is riding upon it

I think that in the aggregate, same applications by different end users must have equal priority at the CO unless explictly chosen otherwise (and thus priced the same), but bigger users of bandwidth must pay more – which is the case even today – but not to the extend that accounted for priority differentiation at all endpoints. There’s a lot of bandwidth in the carriers’ pipes, but not at the last mile for all the subscribers of a CO to do VOD at the same time. Even without common agreements by the ISPs, shaping the traffic at this last mile will achieve a great deal. The ISPs will be compared by how well an user’s highest priority applications perform.
A sticky point is how should applications be prioritized: by providers or by end users? The second option is available to enterprises (with MPLS VPN, etc.) but that doesn’t help the masses; the first option can be a business opportunity for ISPs and this may be what the telcos should be doing before adding more bandwidth. The problem is they probably have little motivation to do this because it costs them money too without reaping the reward — unless the problem is understood and they are able to charge accordingly.
On the other side of the picture, it would be unreasonable to charge content providers with higher rate since they already have to pay for the bigger pipes.

In getting access to the internet through many networks (ISPs, hotels, etc.) there are companies that provide “bandwidth control” or “equalizing” appliances and have “fairness algorithms.”

That would seem to be the future. At least then it would not be based solely on money.

If these are regulated by the government, then they WILL be used against the VoIP providers by the telcos as the telcos have bigger lobbies.

Newsflash:

Google pays for all of that bandwidth from its respective ISPs. The ISPs pay the telco for the pipes. That’s how this works.

The consumers pay for the bandwidth on their end.

Who, exactly, is getting free bandwidth? There is no such thing as a free lunch.

Creating prioritized traffic lanes on the net will be a grave mistake it would take years to recover from.

The internet is a success as it is. Let’s not go messing it up with, what I’m afraid is, a really bad idea on the part of the Telcos and Mr. Cuban here.

Mark, you usually have some great ideas, but you are way off on this one.

A tiered-service network will drive us right back into the 1980s with the modern equivalent of “calling plans”, on-peak/off-peak hours and worse.

I’m not ignorant of the fact that individual ISPs and transports are already doing things like MPLS, QOS and other forms of prioritization, but this is a far cry from what BellSouth and the rest are itching to do.

Anybody who thinks otherwise is either kidding themselves or a shill for Big Telecom.

regards,Spetra
http://www.spetra.ru/

His idea of a multitiered internet is a good idea for a short term answer. It will get the bandwidth to those that want to pay for it quickly. The guys that are willing to pay $5 for a movie or $1 for a TV show will gladly fork out another $50 a month to be the only one on the block to be able to see a film at home the day it hits the theater.

BUT they will be the only one on the block. The rest of us, in my case the entire country, will have to wait until the internet becomes fast enough at a price we can afford.

Will Mark Cuban’s multitiered internet help us? NO. Will it help the independant video or movie producer? NO. IMHO it will hurt us.

Once the die is cast, there is no turning back. Having the ability to charge different rates for different service levels will stay with us forever, like having to pay more for calls to cell phones than landline phones (common outside the U.S.)

It’s a quick fix that will cause more problems in the future than any gain that will be realized.

As I say in my internet .sig, “The trouble with being a futurist is that when people get around to believing you, it’s too late”. Lets hope they believe you Jeff, not Mark Cuban.

Drug
http://drugstown.com/blog.html