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How SOPA Will Destroy The Internet

• Comment posted Dec 30, 2011 10:49 am PST — by Richard Bennett
  If you can't do the time. The whole idea is to reduce traffic to criminal sites, after all.

• Comment posted Dec 30, 2011 5:50 am PST — by Richard Bennett
  At most, you're pointing to a minor issue.

• Comment posted Dec 29, 2011 12:15 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  Wrong, Charles. The section you're reading titled CONSIDERATION pertains to how court orders to sanction a domain can be reversed; it's a subsection of Sec. 102(d) MODIFICATION OR VACATION OF ORDERS. It's saying that a domain formerly sanctioned can be…

• Comment posted Dec 29, 2011 5:20 am PST — by Richard Bennett
  Each sovereign nation passes its own laws and enforces them within its borders. The Internet is not a sovereign does not have the right to impose its own norms on anyone who doesn't care to play along. If the Internet…

• Comment posted Dec 29, 2011 4:25 am PST — by Richard Bennett
  Bonnie and Clyde had a successful run at robbing mom & pop grocery stores (and three banks) because they had better technology than the cops: V8 Fords and Browning automatic rifles. To stop them, the cops had to up their…

• Comment posted Dec 29, 2011 3:27 am PST — by Richard Bennett
  You're commenting on the first draft of the bill, not the current version amended on Dec. 12th. The current bill is here: http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/pdf/HR 3261 Managers Amendment.pdf The first draft broke DNSSEC because it called for redirection, but the amended version…

Technical Comments on Mandated DNS Filtering Requirements of H. R. 3261 ("SOPA")

• Comment posted Dec 14, 2011 12:00 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  OK, I get that you're in love with the sound of your heart pounding from your vast moral outrage and aren't capable of focusing your mind on anything relevant to PIPA and SOPA. You're carrying on about people doing things…

• Comment posted Dec 14, 2011 4:29 am PST — by Richard Bennett
  Yes, we would have less crime if we defined fewer things as crimes. That's first grade arithmetic and you get no points for it. Similarly, changing the "business model" of content-creating industry to give more stuff away for free will…

• Comment posted Dec 14, 2011 4:12 am PST — by Richard Bennett
  Your last comment reminds me of the infamous "he needed killing" defense that used to be recognized by the Texas courts. You highlight some speculation about business practices and the small number of screw-ups in an enforcement regime that's generated…

• Comment posted Dec 14, 2011 3:42 am PST — by Richard Bennett
  You're almost there, keep trying.

• Comment posted Dec 14, 2011 3:14 am PST — by Richard Bennett
  I['m surprised you can find the keys with that big smirk on your face. Let me know when you're ready to stop auditioning for the Daily Show and want to have a serious discussion.

• Comment posted Dec 14, 2011 12:46 am PST — by Richard Bennett
  The banks and credit union provisions have been amended out, and the Verisign thing is existing law. All that leaves is ISP domain editing, and that has been amended as well. In any case, it is something that could only…

• Comment posted Dec 13, 2011 11:44 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  You've made a nice little strawman and you're having fun roasting marshmallows on it as it burns. Don't let me disturb you.

• Comment posted Dec 13, 2011 11:11 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  Thanks for reminding me why the DVD player took over from the VCR. And yes, I recognize that bots are bad for the Internet as a whole. I don't think DNSSEC addresses that problem, however.

• Comment posted Dec 13, 2011 11:09 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  SOPA doesn't apply in the situation where the cops are going to show up at your door, it only applies to foreign web sites clearly violating US law in a blatant attempt to reap financial rewards by selling stuff that…

• Comment posted Dec 13, 2011 10:52 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  Look, Karl, the Internet works because a bunch of people have chosen to cooperate with each other to make it work. It has a very challenging technical structure that requires massive cooperation. This is called the "multi-stakeholder approach" and it's…

• Comment posted Dec 13, 2011 10:35 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  I've always been amused by the fixation that Internet people have with the phone company. Circuit switching was the best that could be done in one era, and packet switching was the best that could be done in another era.…

• Comment posted Dec 13, 2011 10:27 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  Karl, really. Any law can be misapplied, so if all you have is slippery slope and over-zealous prosecution you've got nothing. Innocent people go to prison for murder all the time, but we don't repeal murder statutes as a consequence.…

• Comment posted Dec 13, 2011 10:15 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  Gee, Karl, you should have been on the panel. Most of what you say has been said before, so there's no need to respond in detail. I accept that people who think copyright law is wrong aren't going to be…

• Comment posted Dec 13, 2011 9:37 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  There's not much reason to offer elaborate explanations about why DNS takedowns won't deter dedicated consumers of pirated content or to forecast great harm to the DNS. The most plausible reaction is for the consumers in question to edit their…

• Comment posted Dec 13, 2011 7:50 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  Yeah, I saw that two guys from Paramount were in the audience. Allowing them to attend is not exactly the same as having them on the panel, is it? Movie Labs is located in Palo Alto, it would not have…

• Comment posted Dec 13, 2011 1:50 am PST — by Richard Bennett
  It strikes me as fairly cowardly not to include any anti-piracy advocates on the panel at Stanford. What do the organizers have against free speech, open debate, and real discussion? Stacking the deck is something people do when they're unsure…

No Spectrum Shortage, Just an Allocation Problem

• Comment posted Oct 07, 2011 8:15 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  The spectrum claims - the fact that LTE networks need twice as much spectrum as the mobile operators have today - are uniform around the world and are not at all exaggerated. The claims that I find impossibly naive are…

• Comment posted Oct 07, 2011 7:52 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  Amateurs don't seem to realize that the process of buying spectrum at auction, clearing it of existing users, and deploying equipment for the new use is not as simple as buying a Wi-Fi access point and turning it on. In…

Google Finds Nothing is Shovel Ready, Not Even for Free Fiber Build

• Comment posted Sep 30, 2011 8:54 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  Despite the enormous power of the FCC, control over antenna siting, access to ROW, and pole attachments are controlled by local officials with limited perspectives. Look at any American city where people complain about poor cell service, and you'll find…

No Spectrum Shortage, Just an Allocation Problem

• Comment posted Sep 30, 2011 3:48 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  The raw data is useful, but has to be taken with a grain of salt. It shows that 280 MHz is currently in use by the four major carriers, and incorrectly lumps in the Clearwire and 700 MHz spectrum (264)…

America Planning for the Closure of Its Copper Network

• Comment posted Jul 12, 2011 4:33 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  It may be a bit early to be touting the Aussie NBN as the be-all and do-all of network infrastructure. It's only running in three test sites and has a long way to go before it's anything but a lab…

Comparative Broadband Speeds - US Loses Again

• Comment posted Jun 24, 2011 1:28 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  I'm going to need some data from a responsible source, Brough.

• Comment posted Jun 24, 2011 12:26 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  OK, I think I see what's going on with your pricing figures. Owners of urban apartment buildings in Stockholm are getting into the business of supplying "fiber Internet connectivity" to their residents as a sweetener to help them rent apartments.…

• Comment posted Jun 23, 2011 2:03 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  According this this OECD report, http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/22/42/39574970.xls , the cheapest broadband plan of any type in Sweden is $21.34, and the most expensive is $116.69. Comparable figures for the US are $24.95 and $144.95. These were taken before the $9.95 broadband…

• Comment posted Jun 23, 2011 1:51 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  According the OECD, the average monthly price for broadband service faster than 45 Mbps in Sweden is USD $55.96. Source: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/10/52/39575077.xls I don't find any sources to support the $13 claim that don't cite Brough Turner.

• Comment posted Jun 22, 2011 9:53 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  If you want to compare apples to apples, it seems to me you either compare countries or you compare cities. In the US, we have a long-standing public policy to the effect that people who live in densely-populated urban centers…

• Comment posted Jun 22, 2011 8:57 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  "The apologists for the US's poor showing usually start by pointing out that the US has much lower population density than South Korea, Sweden or Bulgaria. Of course that doesn't hold water if you compare Seoul, Stockholm and Sofia to…

LTE Insufficient from the Start, Boingo IPO Propitious

• Comment posted May 04, 2011 9:55 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  1. CSMA systems allocate bandwidth according to the consumer appetites rather than to any well-accepted notion of fair (or "contructive") allocation. Wi-Fi has some prioritization features from 802.11e, but these can easily be abused by aggressive users. There's nothing in…

• Comment posted May 04, 2011 9:25 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  Two of your claims got my atention: 1. "WiFi hubs are designed to compete constructively with adjacent hubs;" Nope. There's not a single protocol feature in Wi-Fi for inter-access point coordination (unless you count the feature that advertises associations by…

Paid Peering: Issues and Misunderstandings

• Comment posted Apr 30, 2011 5:25 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  I don't think there's any great misunderstanding about terminology. It's generally understood that network interconnection more or less breaks down into three modes: SFP, Paid Peering, and Transit. Historically, Internet interconnection has been unregulated, and in that respect is very…

• Comment posted Apr 29, 2011 9:24 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  You seem to be saying that regulation of interconnect isn't necessary if there's last mile competition. When there is competition, you're happy to let the parties come to an understanding. You don't say what should happen if there's not competition;…

• Comment posted Apr 27, 2011 10:41 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  American network policy hacks like to blame the company that has to present the final bill to the consumer for all the upstream costs. If ESPN raises their carriage fees to Comcast, it's Comcast's fault (according to this logic.) Hence…

• Comment posted Apr 27, 2011 8:51 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  ...an American MVPD CAN'T offer such low prices…

• Comment posted Apr 27, 2011 8:50 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  YouTube runs on Google's CDN, so I think you are talking about CDNs. The difference between the network that Google and other CDNs operate and the ones that say, Tata and Global Crossing operate is very clear from the ISP…

• Comment posted Apr 27, 2011 12:55 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  Traditional peering agreements involved networks of similar size and scope. They represented the mutual benefits of sharing similar facilities. The disputes between CDNs and ISPs have a different character, insofar as the ISP doesn't gain any direct benefit from the…

Moore's Law and the Economics of Abundance

• Comment posted Apr 05, 2011 4:32 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  Moore's Law is a wonderful thing, but it doesn't apply to specialized analog chips or to trenches and towers. I've been forced to take this article apart: http://www.hightechforum.org/misunderstanding-moores-law/

On Mandated Content Blocking in the Domain Name System

• Comment posted Mar 21, 2011 12:11 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  Paul, I don't know if anyone told you, but young Mr. Watson is CircleID's resident troll; he's some sort of grad student with amazing keyboarding skills who loves to harass the bloggers.

• Comment posted Mar 20, 2011 2:30 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  You're complaining for the sake of complaining. That's also not interesting.

• Comment posted Mar 20, 2011 12:02 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  Legal doctrine is fine and dandy as long as the cops are legal scholars and everyone has deep pockets for a courtroom defense. In the real world, however, people often have to prove that their exercise of self-defense as they…

• Comment posted Mar 19, 2011 10:51 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  Governments don't generally appreciate the fact that the Internet is a multi-stakeholder system that runs on consensus, and neither do the industries whose history predates the Internet. The solutions to many of the problems that policy makers have with the…

• Comment posted Mar 19, 2011 10:47 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  There is always something to fear, is'nt there? Some new reason to give up more of our freedoms ..... For our own good ..... Unfortunately, yes. The laws against murder curb the self-defense right, for example. That's a trade-off societies…

• Comment posted Mar 19, 2011 9:07 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  Pardon me if I seemed to suggest you're an "information wants to be free" guy, Paul; of course, I know you're not. The EFF is full of them, however, and many of the people who signed their anti-anti-piracy letter feel…

• Comment posted Mar 19, 2011 7:39 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  I understand that some people believe "information wants to be free" and want nothing to do with any measure that seeks to reduce Internet piracy. So leave that aside. Internet crime is still a significant problem: Extortionate DDoS attacks, phishing,…

• Comment posted Mar 19, 2011 4:53 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  I suppose they're both right, actually. I take your point that the Internet only works because so many people want it to work; the collaboration is much more important than any of the technologies, which tend to be pretty weak…

• Comment posted Mar 19, 2011 4:45 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  Yesterday's Paul Vixie post on COICA and DNS doesn't exactly jibe with today's post, so I wonder which one is right.

Lessons from Egypt: We Need to Protect Our Connected Minds

• Comment posted Feb 02, 2011 10:30 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  There's no guarantee that the new regime in Egypt will be any better than the old one, so I'm reserving judgment for the moment. Having lived in North Africa as a child, it's pretty clear that things can always get…

• Comment posted Feb 02, 2011 9:55 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  In the US, we call this "Preaching to the Converted". The only nations that might be willing to declare X a human right are those who would never dream of using X for political purposes in the first place.

• Comment posted Feb 02, 2011 9:40 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  Declaring connectivity a human right doesn't amount to anything in the face of regimes that don't care about human rights in the first place. During the Indian Emergency of 77-78, Indira Gandhi cut off the supply of newsprint to critical…

• Comment posted Feb 02, 2011 9:38 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  The evidence from Egypt suggests that the network isn't at all essential to a popular uprising: The regime fell after taking the desperate measure of unhooking the nation from the Internet. It's probably the case that SMS and the general…

Internet Census: 4 Billion Addresses Just Not Enough for 7 Billion People

• Comment posted Feb 02, 2011 3:19 am PST — by Richard Bennett
  We seem to be able to address all the buildings in the world with street addresses of 5 digits or less. It seems the Internet architects failed to understand how addressing relates to naming.

Cable Trounces the Telcos

• Comment posted Feb 02, 2011 3:10 am PST — by Richard Bennett
  The Netflix data raises more questions than it answers regarding the capacity of their own servers, the encodes they support, and the transit/paid peering services their CDNs employ. Given that NFLX changes CDNs every six months, they're certainly aware of…

Lessons from Egypt: We Need to Protect Our Connected Minds

• Comment posted Feb 02, 2011 3:06 am PST — by Richard Bennett
  Oh, let's do, let's pretend that all nations and all governments have the same disregard for freedom of expression that Mubarak's Egypt has. Any regime can cut off the electricity to a nation's border routers and take it off the…

New, Old and Forgotten Frames in the Network Neutrality Debate

• Comment posted Jan 09, 2011 1:04 am PST — by Richard Bennett
  I don't think you're getting my point. People who favor unbundling claim it will create competition among ISPs, which will magically lower prices, increase speeds, and spread virtue and goodness throughout the blogosphere. But the example of the UK I've…

• Comment posted Jan 08, 2011 10:13 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  Most economists would say that a market with 3 or more major players is competitive, so it's not clear where you're drawing the line, Rob. Tell me if this market is competitive if you please: A 26% B 23% C…

• Comment posted Jan 08, 2011 8:07 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  I thought the NN debate was about free speech, democracy, virtue, and innovation, not just cheap broadband. Anyhow, I haven't noticed any lack of discussion around competition at the many NN panels I've attended, there's always the obligatory statement that…

Has the FCC Created a Stone Too Heavy for It to Lift?

• Comment posted Jan 01, 2011 11:42 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  Netflix is a highly asymmetrical application that sends much more data downstream than upstream. Vonage is a highly symmetrical application, but its upstream volume isn't that high because it's a narrowband app. A competent network engineer can isolate differential congestion…

• Comment posted Dec 29, 2010 9:16 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  [I don't work for Comcast, never have. I pay Comcast for Internet service, which work fine for me.] For those who may not have noticed, we have a net neutrality law in the United States now that prohibits most forms…

• Comment posted Dec 29, 2010 12:37 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  Reading this comments thread has inspired me to look at the correlation between the rise of America's therapy culture with the decline in American technological competitiveness. I'm sure there's a time lag, but the acceptance of narcissistic styles of thought…

• Comment posted Dec 29, 2010 12:15 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  Boring.

• Comment posted Dec 29, 2010 3:12 am PST — by Richard Bennett
  Follow this link, read the material, and drop this nonsensical line of personal attack.

• Comment posted Dec 29, 2010 1:05 am PST — by Richard Bennett
  ITIF is a tax-exempt, 501(c)(3), not-for-profit, public policy think tank, not a lobbying shop. Anyone who knows the first thing about the American political process understands the difference between advocating policies that are beneficial to the nation and lobbying for…

• Comment posted Dec 28, 2010 8:01 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  Your fantasies are of no interest to CircleID, so if you can't stay on-topic and factual, I suggest you not comment at all. ITIF is non-profit think tank, not a lobbying shop.

• Comment posted Dec 28, 2010 1:59 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  Your first sentence in your first comment was: "Bennett is of course a K-street lobbyist rather than a scholar." After making a libelous slur like that, you forfeit any presumption of a respectful response; respect is a two-way street.

• Comment posted Dec 28, 2010 12:22 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  That seems like you're trying to mount some sort of obscure personal attack, and a very tedious one at that. I don't play that game, sorry.

• Comment posted Dec 28, 2010 10:15 am PST — by Richard Bennett
  You're in luck, Mr. Hallam-Baker. No longer do you need to scratch your head over the mysteries of network engineering, you can now turn to the FCC to resolve your Vonage problem. Simply fill out Form 2000B, available on the…

• Comment posted Dec 27, 2010 9:45 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  Now that 20% of Comcast's network is servicing Netflix users, might it be that the remaining capacity isn't enough to provide low latency transport to Vonage? I say this because the reason that Comcast throttled P2P in 2008 was that…

• Comment posted Dec 27, 2010 1:59 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  I wouldn't worry too much about the status of RFC 2475. All architecture RFCs are classified as informational in the RFC Editor's quirky system since they haven't got around to creating a special classification that reflects their actual significance. So…

Open Internet and Democratic Principles Under Attack

• Comment posted Dec 11, 2010 3:43 am PST — by Richard Bennett
  WASHINGTON — Julian Assange, the beleaguered founder of the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, has threatened to release many more confidential diplomatic cables if legal action is taken against him or his organization. Mr. Assange’s threat poses a problem for the Obama…

• Comment posted Dec 10, 2010 10:57 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  I'll point out one obviously dishonest statement in your post as I don't have the time to go through it point-by-point. You say Assange is involved in a "sexual harassment case" when he's been actually been charged with rape and…

Singapore's Fiber Infrastructure Beginning to Pay Off

• Comment posted Oct 26, 2010 9:53 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  Roughly 85% of Singaporeans live in public housing, so it's not surprising that the republic would have a public network. When I lived there in 1986-7, they were already planning an all-fiber telephone network, looks like they're finally getting around…

Network Neutrality in the Wireless Space

• Comment posted Aug 26, 2010 11:05 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  It's not really satisfactory to offer a defective analysis of a technical subject such as traffic engineering and then try to paper it over with "but I'm not saying anyone should ACT on what I've just said." In fact it's…

• Comment posted Aug 26, 2010 10:27 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  The Internet as we know it today "works fine" for some applications, and doesn't work at all for others; and some applications are sometimes usable on the Internet and sometimes not. One application that doesn't work at all on the…

• Comment posted Aug 26, 2010 9:32 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  This post is largely fanciful. Most obviously, Cooper's Law forecasts a doubling of data rate per hertz every 30 months. In optical systems, the doubling time is every 8 months. The gap between wireless and wireline is permanent and will…

Net Neutrality: A Net-Head View

• Comment posted Aug 06, 2010 10:58 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  If you were familiar with the nature of this debate in the United States, you would be aware that advocates of net neutrality - such as Free Press - are arguing for principles of non-discrimination that would forbid network operators…

• Comment posted Aug 06, 2010 8:55 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  The author doesn't understand the way the Open Internet debate is taking place in the USA, although he may be correct vis a vis similar issues in New Zealand. What generally happens when people enter into this from an ideological…

The Broadband Adoption Rate

• Comment posted Jul 22, 2010 8:32 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  The FCC report obscures the important distinction between broadband availability and use. As Commissioner McDowell said, it's *available* to 95% of Americans even if you don't count satellite and 3G as broadband options; the FCC report doesn't count them. The…

Comcast v. FCC - "Ancillary Jurisdiction" Has to Be Ancillary to Something

• Comment posted Apr 07, 2010 10:57 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  The court told the FCC's bumbling lawyers that their best source of ancillary authority was paragraphs 706 and 230 of the Comms Act. But the FCC didn't use 706 in the Comcast order, and abandoned 230 in oral arguments in…

American National Broadband Plan Good First Step

• Comment posted Mar 11, 2010 1:06 am PST — by Richard Bennett
  There's a broad consensus in the US that there's much to be gained in positive externalities from higher-speed and more ubiquitous broadband, greater adoption, and more effective use of broadband networks by service industries and the government. That consensus doesn't…

• Comment posted Mar 11, 2010 12:29 am PST — by Richard Bennett
  You get the cheapest networks by applying price controls as France has done, you don't get fiber to the home that way. Japan has unbundled DSL but effectively bundled fiber, so that motivated NTT to string fiber. They also got…

• Comment posted Mar 11, 2010 12:06 am PST — by Richard Bennett
  The US has the most inter-modal competition, not intra-modal. We invented the latter and then abandoned it.

• Comment posted Mar 10, 2010 11:42 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  I get the fact enabling more services on the broadband infrastructure lowers the cost of providing access to each service, but that doesn't lead inexorably to local loop unbundling. Triple-play services lower the cost of access for each service by…

• Comment posted Mar 10, 2010 8:13 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  You lost me in the second paragraph, where you wrote: Obama and his small team of technological experts were aware of the developments in Australia—particularly in relation to the need for trans-sector policy on broadband infrastructure." What on earth is…

Absolutely No Wireless Spectrum Shortage in 2010

• Comment posted Feb 16, 2010 2:26 am PST — by Richard Bennett
  Here's what the Campbell report actually says: We expect the toll road for mobile data will remain in place, with usage based pricing (or usage caps) and traffic prioritization. We see no alternatives to manage what would otherwise be insatiable…

Dr. Peering Commits Malpractice on Net Neutrality

• Comment posted Dec 10, 2009 7:40 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  See Clark's bio: "Since the mid 70s, Dr. Clark has been leading the development of the Internet; from 1981-1989 he acted as Chief Protocol Architect in this development, and chaired the Internet ActivitiesBoard. Recent activities include extensions to the Internet…

• Comment posted Dec 10, 2009 3:01 am PST — by Richard Bennett
  Another source on the paid peering question is a paper written by David Clark, a number of his colleagues at MIT, and Patrick Gilmore of Akamai in 2007 for TPRC. The paper discussing the "emerging phenomenon" of paid peering in…

• Comment posted Nov 25, 2009 3:03 am PST — by Richard Bennett
  I don't see any conspiracies, and don't know (or care) whether you personally have any conflicts of interest; you're not relevant my argument at all, and have no significance in the net neutrality debate. My issue is that the broad-based…

• Comment posted Nov 24, 2009 10:49 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  So this is where we are. The FCC is floating some rules, some people are constructing scenarios and discussing implications, others are trying to stifle discussion by various means. Do what you want, but don't kid yourself: there's a lot…

• Comment posted Nov 24, 2009 10:48 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  Is this what CircleID has come to, a place where people discuss GigaOm discussions? Here's a comment I posted at GigaOm on the discussion around my article: * Nobody has offered any information to show that the article is flawed…

Are the FCC Workshops Fair?

• Comment posted Aug 14, 2009 7:52 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  His comments at the mobile wireless session on European hobbyist networks were quite entertaining, although not particularly serious. Claiming that “hub-and-spoke” networks are less scalable and efficient than wireless meshes is not credible. See the video at: http://www.fcc.gov/realaudio/mt081309b.ram

Obama's Missed Opportunity

• Comment posted Mar 27, 2009 9:37 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  I made a case for Crawford's unsuitability to advise the president on science, technology, and innovation on the basis of her failure to meet the minimum requirements for the job because that's the first question that I ask about any…

• Comment posted Mar 26, 2009 9:10 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  I've raised questions with Crawford face-to-face and on her blog about congestion, RED, DiffServ, QoS, latency, ECN, and jitter, and in every instance I got a blank stare. Her writing about Internet management contains no meaningful detail, and relies heavily…

• Comment posted Mar 26, 2009 5:15 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  The president has policy advisers on all sorts of subjects, and each of them has more than a passing knowledge of the issues in their area. Crawford understands the Internet in metaphoric terms, not as a real thing. She argues…

• Comment posted Mar 25, 2009 5:50 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  What's the point of creating a job for a special adviser on science, technology, and innovation if you don't intend to fill it with a person who knows something about science, technology, and innovation? This smacks of Bush's crony appointments.…

Exploring the Roots of Wireless Spectrum Controversy (eComm Panel)

• Comment posted Mar 24, 2009 7:20 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  Thanks for posting this, Ali. I misspoke about the hourglass model: it was Steve Deering, not Vint Cerf who pointed out the fact that IP is much less diverse than the functions above and below it, and that there's another…

DPI is Not a Four-Letter Word!

• Comment posted Mar 17, 2009 3:39 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  You don't have time to check the SSL button in Thunderbird (or the equivalent) but you do have time to draft a meritless lawsuit? Damn, you must write fast.

• Comment posted Mar 17, 2009 2:33 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  Personally, I use port 465 to send e-mail from my Comcast account at home and 993 to receive it, so any use of port 25 on my home router would be a solid indication of a bot infection. As I…

• Comment posted Mar 17, 2009 1:09 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  There is something in the world called Spam, most of it sent from computers that have been infected by things called "bots." When the volume of your outgoing mail gets to be quite high compared to the average user, a…

• Comment posted Mar 17, 2009 1:04 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  But it's noble of you to try to spread a little light.

How Fast is Internet Traffic Growing?

• Comment posted Nov 27, 2008 12:08 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  S&D;'s overall numbers don't simply agree with Odlyzko, they are Odlyzko's numbers. They're only in a position to report what they actually see, so their global numbers come from somebody else. Odlyzko may be right, but it would be a…

CRTC Denies CAIP Application on Throttling, But Sets Net Neutrality Hearing

• Comment posted Nov 21, 2008 10:24 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  The CRTC is obviously not as beholden to Google as the American FCC is. The CRTC saw through the smokescreen to the underlying fact that networks have limited capacity. The issue that traffic management addresses is the fair sharing of…

Fiber Optics: Thinking It Through

• Comment posted Nov 17, 2008 2:12 am PST — by Richard Bennett
  I seem to recall reading that Verizon had reduced their cabling costs to around $700 per home passed, presumably in typical suburban neighborhoods, but I'm not sure about that. There are around 120 million homes in America, about 75 million…

Comcast is Right, the FCC is Wrong

• Comment posted Sep 30, 2008 7:37 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  P2P works perfectly fine on the Comcast network, and always has. Any harm to the protocols is strictly theoretical.

• Comment posted Sep 30, 2008 7:33 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  The fact remains that none of the applications Comcast targets for throttling are harmed by the Reset packets. They typically open thousands of TCP connections, leaving them open until they're closed by network management. This is actually one scenario where…

• Comment posted Sep 30, 2008 1:32 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  The virtue of header inspection is that it works on legacy applications that don't happen to be on-board with whatever future agreement the Industry wants to reach about packet classification. It's a practical approach, in other words, and not simply…

• Comment posted Sep 29, 2008 11:33 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  And inside the secure bunker, Sarah Palin lectures about QoS. Comcast doesn't retain any customer information obtained by the Sandvine deep header inspection system, and in fact touts the fact that it's completely anonymous. But don't let me confuse you…

• Comment posted Sep 29, 2008 10:53 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  Most American broadband consumers choose DSL or cable, but that's not because they don't have other choices. There are at least two national wireless broadband systems, Verizon and AT&T;, and their user base is growing. In fact, most of the…

• Comment posted Sep 29, 2008 6:28 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  Diffserv has never been widely adopted, and until applications mark their packets consistently, it doesn't address the problem at hand. Header inspection works just fine.

Net Neutrality an 'American Problem', Australians Suggest Alternatives

• Comment posted Sep 29, 2008 9:51 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  NNSquad is a group of hysterics and alarmists, best ignored.

Comcast is Right, the FCC is Wrong

• Comment posted Sep 29, 2008 9:49 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  The more significant point is whether it's reasonable to prioritize applications according to their unique requirements at all. That point so dwarfs the pedantic discussion of one technique over another as to render it moot. Neutralists argue, for the most…

Hunting Unicorns: Myths and Realities of the Net Neutrality Debate

• Comment posted Aug 06, 2008 3:39 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  Hardware-based DPI is at least 10 years old, Robb, flow managers, accelerators, and caches have been part of the middleware for a long time. People use them because they eliminate some of the waste and redundancy that's epidemic to IP-based…

Another Wrong-Headed WSJ Editorial

• Comment posted Aug 04, 2008 7:23 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  Let's just say that no network management technique should be ruled out a priori. I'll leave it as a exercise for the student to discover the utility of TCP connection pruning.

• Comment posted Aug 03, 2008 6:32 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  BitTorrent is an innovate new application that presents a new and different pattern of traffic to the Internet access network relative to other applications. Therefore, it stands to reason that it might need to be managed by different means than…

• Comment posted Aug 02, 2008 11:20 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  I don't propose a complete free pass for ISPs, and have actually proposed a regulatory framework to the FCC. Maybe I'm more of a regulator than you are.

• Comment posted Aug 02, 2008 10:18 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  I was specifically referring to the popular movement for a regulated Internet, Rob, and I don't consider you a part of it. Am I wrong?

• Comment posted Aug 02, 2008 6:50 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  There are many things that need to examine session state, and NAT is certainly one of them. Flow-management gear would be another. Don't confuse the academic accounts of Internet architecture with the actually deployed architecture. Similarly, let's not be naive…

• Comment posted Jul 31, 2008 11:22 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  And the one by Commissioner McDowell in the WaPo was also quite good. BitTorrent does two strange things to ISP networks: opens an enormous number of TCP virtual circuits and puts a ton of data on the upstream path. Both…

Customer Owned Fiber in Ottawa

• Comment posted Jul 31, 2008 11:17 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  I don't think the average consumer wants to be a network administrator, so this experiment is bound to fail. But that's OK for Google, since they're just looking to score some public relations points, as they did in the D…

Vint Cerf Caught Off Guard, Nevertheless Says What Needs to Be Said About Our Misguided Policy

• Comment posted Jul 31, 2008 11:15 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  And also yes, I've read several of Lessig's books and find them generally appalling. His grasp of networking technology is weak, and his attempt to extract principles of network design and impose them on human societies is scurrilous. I regard…

• Comment posted Jul 28, 2008 9:30 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  Professor Google, Larry Lessig, has been promoting a more regulated Internet since 1999, James, the debate didn't just start in 2006. What happened then was Google paid to have the issue become a hot political topic as opposed to private…

• Comment posted Jul 28, 2008 11:09 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  I don't recall the statement by the Verizon SVP, but in context it probably had a different meaning than you attribute to it. If you have a link to the actual story, I'd like to see it, as even Whiteacre's…

• Comment posted Jul 26, 2008 12:45 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  No, James, you're confused. The former CEO of AT&T;, Ed Whiteacre, said that he didn't want Vonage and Google to "use his pipes for free" once upon a time, but the president of Verizon said no such thing. Whiteacre's statement…

• Comment posted Jul 25, 2008 11:30 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  James, there is no reason to believe that either Verizon or Google wishes to charge the other for access to its network. That would be commercial suicide for either. Nobody in his right might takes speculations like this seriously.

• Comment posted Jul 25, 2008 6:38 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  It's not clear that the American public harbors a secret, burning desire for hundreds of megabits per second of Internet access bandwidth. Surveys has consistently shown that demand for the highest tiers of bandwidth is modest, so the risk for…

• Comment posted Jul 25, 2008 2:06 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  Vint Cerf's comments offering the British model to the US are actually quite odd, as Britain is moving in a direction that's more US-like, where the next-generation fiber infrastructure will be funded by services. The general idea is that British…

No Fines for Comcast

• Comment posted Jul 14, 2008 11:05 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  Here's part of an e-mail I got the other day from Larry Roberts, the designer of ARPANET, that helps explain the problem, Brett: "...P2P expands to fill any capacity. In fact, as I have been testing and modeling P2P I…

• Comment posted Jul 14, 2008 1:53 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  I'm yet to read a comment from you, Brett, that puts forward a serious argument. Making personal attacks may be amusing, but it doesn't advance the debate. The law professors who started the net neutrality campaign make a fundamental mistake…

• Comment posted Jul 13, 2008 6:06 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  I have all sorts of financial interests in this debate, the primary one being that I make my living doing network engineering and I don't want my profession equated with dealing drugs. That's why I've been active in the debate…

• Comment posted Jul 13, 2008 10:39 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  In a recent Blog Maverick post, Mark Cuban said: I just want to put it out there to save everyone and anyone who deals with me time. If at any point in time you utter the words "Just Don't Get…

Vint Cerf Comments on Government's Role in Internet Broadband Access

• Comment posted Jul 07, 2008 10:33 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  The regulatory model Cerf seems to be endorsing is indistinguishable from government ownership, because it's total government control. It does not appear that Cerf was misquoted in any significant way. What on earth distinguishes a "wholesale Internet service" from a…

Broadband Internet Adoption Stalls in United States, Says Report

• Comment posted Jul 03, 2008 3:29 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  It actually says broadband adoption has stalled for the very rich and the very poor, but that it's continuing to grow for middle-income families, and shows lots of charts to that effect. I suggest you read the study and correct…

Introductory Remarks from Innovation '08

• Comment posted Jun 17, 2008 2:57 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  Controlling usage by cost strikes me as using a blunt instrument, so I'd like to refine that approach just a little. My ideal system is one where each user has the right to send a certain quantity of packets each…

• Comment posted Jun 17, 2008 1:59 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  Would you say there's some point at which a network has so much bandwidth that it's immune to congestion, Milton? I wouldn't, because whatever technology you use to transport packets can also be used to supply them. So incremental increases…

• Comment posted Jun 17, 2008 1:54 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  You're a bit off the track here. The previous question was about adding bandwidth to eliminate congestion. Before we go off on this tangent, do you agree with my arithmetic on that point? The QoS issue is complicated by the…

• Comment posted Jun 17, 2008 1:05 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  The demand for bandwidth comes from the network edge, Mike, so adding bandwidth at the edges simply increases supply and demand in equal parts. That doesn't actually affect congestion at all. What you have to do to reduce congestion is…

• Comment posted Jun 17, 2008 12:29 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  One proof of the assertion that adding bandwidth to Internet access links doesn't solve the congestion problem is the experience of countries that have already tried that experiment, such as Japan and Korea (that's two proofs, but who's counting?) Adding…

• Comment posted Jun 16, 2008 6:02 pm PDT — by Richard Bennett
  My comments about jitter were a response to some things one of the other panelists had written, to the effect that all apps care about latency. While it's true that we all want all our stuff to run fast, it's…

Will Technology Solve Network Neutrality?

• Comment posted Apr 03, 2008 3:42 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  There are actually a number of people working on variations of this technique. The basic idea is to give the end-user the ability to tell the ISP about the latency requirements of his various streams, so that his own BitTorrent…

In Praise of Relatively Dumb Pipes

• Comment posted Dec 04, 2007 4:16 am PST — by Richard Bennett
  You seem confused about TCP, making the common error that it's a network protocol. It is, in fact, an *INTERnetwork* protocol, good for moving data between one network and another. It has an ancillary function, protecting the Internetwork from congestion.…

• Comment posted Dec 03, 2007 7:02 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  Brett, you're repeating yourself. We know empirically that RST works as a traffic shaping mechanims on the Comcast network, its effectiveness has been observed by multiple parties. If you need to know why it works, perhaps you can re-read some…

• Comment posted Nov 29, 2007 10:59 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  RED and packet dropping affect the rate at which TCP hosts transmit data over an established connection. For these to be effective in a multi-connection system like BT, we have to drop packets on all open connections. What these techniques…

• Comment posted Nov 29, 2007 7:27 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  People like Scott Cleland and the doezen’s of “astroturf organizations” that particpate in the network neutrality discussion never fully disclose their agenda, or their benefactors. The “disclosure” sites you reference raise two questions:1) is the disclosure complete, or representative? and…

• Comment posted Nov 29, 2007 5:49 am PST — by Richard Bennett
  The validity of RSTs has been discussed to death in several venues, perhaps most intelligently by George Ou. In essence, Comcast isn't concerned with controlling congestion on the Internet (which is what RED and other forms of packet drop are…

• Comment posted Nov 29, 2007 3:01 am PST — by Richard Bennett
  Hands Off the Internet's member page lists the companies which support it, as does Scott Cleland's Net Competition member page. That's full disclosure in any rational person's book. You're busted.

• Comment posted Nov 29, 2007 2:08 am PST — by Richard Bennett
  As far as I know, I don't link to a single site that gets undisclosed financial support, and if you have a specific instance I'd like to know about it. Otherwise, kindly correct your false charge. Your argument against Comcast…

• Comment posted Nov 28, 2007 9:38 pm PST — by Richard Bennett
  There are so many errors and false assumptions in this post I don't know where to begin critcizing. For one, Verizon offers a faster service than Comcast: nominally, 15 Mb/s downstream and 5 Mb/s upstream compared to 4 Mb/s and…

Comcast's Wrong Approach

• Comment posted Oct 30, 2007 3:36 am PDT — by Richard Bennett
  I'm not impressed with this line of attack, and here's why. In essence, Tom is repeating the same hollow criticisms that have already been made by the lawyers and wannabe Internet regulators, and they don't wash technically. We're not allowed…