How Fast is Internet Traffic Growing?

It depends on whose numbers you like. Andrew Odlyzko claims it's up 50-60% over last year, a slower rate of growth than we've seen in recent years. Odlyzko's method is flawed, however, as he only looks at public data, and there is good reason to believed that more and more traffic is moving off the public Internet and its public exchange points to private peering centers. Nemertes collects at least some data on private exchanges and claims a growth rate somewhere between 50-100%. more»

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

This morning, the CRTC issued its much-anticipated ruling in the CAIP v. Bell case, the first major case to test the legality of Internet throttling. The Commission denied CAIP's application, ruling that Bell treated all of its customers (retail and wholesale) in the same throttled manner. This points to the challenge in this case -- it was not about discriminatory network practices per se, but rather about wholesale shaping in a specific context. more»

Susan Crawford, Kevin Werbach Named Obama's FCC Review Team Leads

We'd like to congratulate our long time CircleID participants, Susan Crawford and Kevin Werbach for being named today as Obama-Biden FCC Transition Team Leads. Susan Crawford, is a professor at the University of Michigan Law School who recently ended her term as a member of the Board of Directors of ICANN and is the founder of OneWebDay. Kevin Werbach, is an Assistant Professor of Legal Studies at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He is also the founder of the Supernova Group and the organizer of Supernova, a leading executive technology conference. more»

Net Neutrality Advocates: Wireless Carriers' Network Management Must Be 'Reasonable'

Emboldened by their summertime victory against Comcast, advocates of network neutrality said Thursday that the next front in battle for the principle would be against wireless carriers who make "unreasonable" network management decisions. In a panel discussion on managing wireless networks at the Wireless Communications Association conference here, Free Press Policy Director, Ben Scott and Google Telecom Counsel, Richard Whitt said that the FCC's Net neutrality principles would bar discrimination over wireless networks -- while conceding that the networks are, for the time being, more bandwidth-constrained than wired-based network. more»

Vint Cerf Short Listed as Obama's Chief Technology Officer, Say Washington Insiders

The proposed Technology Plan of U.S presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama includes a section titled "Bring Government into the 21st Century" which aims at using technology to reform U.S. government and enhancing the exchange of information between the federal government and citizens while ensuring the security of the nation's networks... om Lowry of BusinessWeek reports: "Among the candidates who would be considered for the job, say Washington insiders, are Vint Cerf, Google's (GOOG) "chief internet evangelist," who is often cited as one of the fathers of the Internet; Microsoft (MSFT) chief executive officer Steve Ballmer; Amazon (AMZN) CEO Jeffrey Bezos; and Ed Felten, a prominent professor of computer science and public affairs at Princeton University" more»

Net Neutrality an 'American Problem', Australians Suggest Alternatives

Head of leading ISP's in Australia believe Net Neutrality is a U.S. problem and the country should take a look at the Australian market for better ideas on how to address bandwidth issues. Brett Winterford and Julian Hill of ZDNet Australia reporting from London: The debate was sparked after several American and British service providers offered to charge a premium to prioritize traffic connecting with some sites over others. "The U.S. have got a problem," weighed in Justin Milne, group managing director for Telstra Media and former chief of Australia's largest ISP, BigPond. "Their problem is that unlike Australia, they (offer) truly unlimited plans." more»

Comcast is Right, the FCC is Wrong

A fellow named Paul Korzeniowski has written a very good, concise piece on the Comcast action at the FCC for Forbes, Feds And Internet Service Providers Don't Mix. He manages to describe the controversy in clear and unemotional language, which contrasts sharply with the neutralists who constantly use emotionally-charged terms such as "blocking," "Deep Packet Inspection," "forgery," and "monopoly" to describe their discomfort. more»

Comcast's Network Management Practices: A Brief Analysis

Late last week, Comcast officially disclosed to the FCC details of its network management practices which have been a subject of considerable discussion here on CircleID. (My thanks to Threat Level from Wired.com for providing a convenient copy of Comcast's "Attachment A" in which this disclosure is made.) There's not a lot of startling disclosure in this document, but it does provide some useful concrete facts and figures. I'll quote the more interesting parts of the document here, and offer comment on it. more»

The Wall Street Lesson for Net Neutrality

As the institutions of Wall Street continue to crumble one after another, there's a lesson to be learned for those of us who want to make sure the Internet remains as free and open in the future as it has been in the past. The collapse of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, AIG and the rest didn't happen overnight. The situation has been brewing for years. The subprime mortgage crisis may have precipitated the immediate tragedy, but underpinning the whole mess is a philosophy about business and government. more»

ISP Deep Packet Inspection Remains a Probable Option, Despite Controversies

A US firm was among ISPs operating in Argentina that recently received orders from the country's Department of Justice to put a stop to all local traffic visiting a particular gambling website operating without a license. An anonymous source, according to Ian Lamont of The Industry Standard, has said that Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) was floated as a possible option to accomplish this task although later not implemented due to high costs. Lamont reports: "The DPI approach would be troubling on a number of levels. First, any ISP using DPI is going beyond a government mandate to simply block traffic to a particular site. The ISPs would actually be peering inside their customers' Web traffic without their knowledge." Although DPI wasn't used in this particular case, "it will probably be considered in the future as a way to take offensive or illegal sites offline." more»

Hunting Unicorns: Myths and Realities of the Net Neutrality Debate

In many ways, the emotionally charged debate on Network Neutrality (NN) has been a lot like hunting Unicorns. While hunting the mythical horse could be filled with adrenalin, emotion, and likely be quite entertaining, the prize would ultimately prove to be elusive. As a myth, entertaining; but when myths become reality, then all bets are off. The Network Neutrality public and private debate has been filled with more emotion than rational discussion, and in its wake a number of myths have become accepted as reality. Unfortunately, public policy, consumer broadband services, and service provider business survival hang in the balance. more»

FCC's Comcast Ruling Inconsistent and Incoherent

After voting on the Comcast order today, Kevin Martin and his Democratic Party colleagues issued press releases telling us how they saved the Internet from Comcast's discriminatory practices, but they've failed to release the actual order they adopted and subsequently re-wrote. Commissioner McDowell wasn't allowed to see the revised order until 7:00 PM the night before the meeting. Rumor has it that high-level spin doctors are still trying to remove all the rough edges, inconsistencies, and factual errors. more»

Comcast and the Internet

Today the FCC is condemning Comcast's practices with respect to P2P transmissions.I'm happy for FreePress and Public Knowledge today, and I know they have achieved a substantial change in the wind. The basic idea that it's not okay for network access providers to discriminate unreasonably against particular applications is now part of the mainstream communications discourse. That has to be good news. I'm concerned on a couple of fronts. The FCC has taken the view that it can adjudicate, on a case-by-case basis, issues that have to do with "Federal Internet Policy." They used that phrase several times... more»

Google's Cerf Offers Alternate Strategy to Metered Broadband Billing

In follow up to Friday's FCC ruling against Comcast, Vint Cerf, Google's Chief Internet Evangelist questioned what a reasonable approach would be for broadband networks to manage their Internet traffic? "The real question," he says, is not whether broadband networks need to be managed, "but rather how." Cerf has also expressed concerns over metered billing and suggests "transmission rate caps" instead. more»

Another Wrong-Headed WSJ Editorial

Those wacky editorial writers at the Wall Street Journal just cannot seem to get the facts straight about network neutrality and what the FCC has done or can do on this matter. In the July 30, 2008 edition (Review and Outlook A14), the Journal vilifies FCC Chairman Kevin Martin for starting along the slippery slope of regulating Internet content. The Journal writers just seem to love hyperbole, and are not beyond ignoring the facts when they do not support a party line. Here are a few examples from the editorial... more»