Comments on: Does Akamai Violate Network Neutrality? http://techliberation.com/2008/01/09/does-akamai-violate-network-neutrality/ Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology Sun, 27 May 2012 07:12:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Richard Bennett http://techliberation.com/2008/01/09/does-akamai-violate-network-neutrality/comment-page-1/#comment-40368 Richard Bennett Fri, 11 Jan 2008 00:31:06 +0000 http://techliberation.com/2008/01/09/does-akamai-violate-network-neutrality/#comment-40368 <p><i>Network neutrality is about the routing of packets. </i></p> <p>Nope, it's about the free and democratic flow of infomation. Harold Feld can't tell the difference between packets and peanuts, but he rants about free speech all day long.</p> <p>Factually, Akamai is a means of speeding up information delivery for a fee. It's good, but speeding up the delivery of information for a fee paid to a carrier is deemed to be not good. That's silly.</p> <p>Network neutrality makes no sense on its own terms, and the pseudo-technical terms its advocates use are typically not understood by anybody, least of all the advocates.</p> Network neutrality is about the routing of packets.

Nope, it’s about the free and democratic flow of infomation. Harold Feld can’t tell the difference between packets and peanuts, but he rants about free speech all day long.

Factually, Akamai is a means of speeding up information delivery for a fee. It’s good, but speeding up the delivery of information for a fee paid to a carrier is deemed to be not good. That’s silly.

Network neutrality makes no sense on its own terms, and the pseudo-technical terms its advocates use are typically not understood by anybody, least of all the advocates.

]]> By: Richard Bennett http://techliberation.com/2008/01/09/does-akamai-violate-network-neutrality/comment-page-1/#comment-46238 Richard Bennett Fri, 11 Jan 2008 00:31:06 +0000 http://techliberation.com/2008/01/09/does-akamai-violate-network-neutrality/#comment-46238 <p><i>Network neutrality is about the routing of packets. </i><br><br>Nope, it's about the free and democratic flow of infomation. Harold Feld can't tell the difference between packets and peanuts, but he rants about free speech all day long.<br><br>Factually, Akamai is a means of speeding up information delivery for a fee. It's good, but speeding up the delivery of information for a fee paid to a carrier is deemed to be not good. That's silly.<br><br>Network neutrality makes no sense on its own terms, and the pseudo-technical terms its advocates use are typically not understood by anybody, least of all the advocates.</p> Network neutrality is about the routing of packets.

Nope, it’s about the free and democratic flow of infomation. Harold Feld can’t tell the difference between packets and peanuts, but he rants about free speech all day long.

Factually, Akamai is a means of speeding up information delivery for a fee. It’s good, but speeding up the delivery of information for a fee paid to a carrier is deemed to be not good. That’s silly.

Network neutrality makes no sense on its own terms, and the pseudo-technical terms its advocates use are typically not understood by anybody, least of all the advocates.

]]> By: Don Marti http://techliberation.com/2008/01/09/does-akamai-violate-network-neutrality/comment-page-1/#comment-40367 Don Marti Thu, 10 Jan 2008 23:48:04 +0000 http://techliberation.com/2008/01/09/does-akamai-violate-network-neutrality/#comment-40367 <p>If the ISP is paying for transit to the original site, and lots of customers want the same files, the CDN saves it money directly.</p> If the ISP is paying for transit to the original site, and lots of customers want the same files, the CDN saves it money directly.

]]> By: Don Marti http://techliberation.com/2008/01/09/does-akamai-violate-network-neutrality/comment-page-1/#comment-46237 Don Marti Thu, 10 Jan 2008 23:48:04 +0000 http://techliberation.com/2008/01/09/does-akamai-violate-network-neutrality/#comment-46237 <p>If the ISP is paying for transit to the original site, and lots of customers want the same files, the CDN saves it money directly.</p> If the ISP is paying for transit to the original site, and lots of customers want the same files, the CDN saves it money directly.

]]> By: ed costello http://techliberation.com/2008/01/09/does-akamai-violate-network-neutrality/comment-page-1/#comment-40366 ed costello Thu, 10 Jan 2008 15:05:44 +0000 http://techliberation.com/2008/01/09/does-akamai-violate-network-neutrality/#comment-40366 <p>I'd argue that it's not a violation of network neutrality since the CDN is operating under contract to one of the two parties involved. But wait, what about the ISPs one might ask, what benefit do they receive? Less congestion across their networks and better response time to their customers (on either end of the connection). It's not a direct monetary benefit, but happier customers are usually better customers.</p> <p>If the ISP chooses to interfere in the communication between client and server, that interference serves primarily to benefit the ISP, regardless of the motivation.</p> <p>Around 1999-2000 there was a (brief) panic at the rollout of (allegedly) transparent caching proxies at the ISP level. The concern from a content server perspective was the loss of pageview and traffic stats as well as control over the content appearing to be served from a given site. ISPs wanted to reduce latency and bandwidth utilization across the network. Consumers just want the site to load faster and didn't (then) seem to care who fixed the problem.</p> <p>It became moot as the crash of 2000-2001 freed up bandwidth, in parallel AKamai and other CDNs stepped up efforts to place edge servers inside ISP's head ends, resulting in the same solution (placing caching servers at the edges of the network) but now content providers retained control over their presence, instead of losing that control to ISPs.</p> I’d argue that it’s not a violation of network neutrality since the CDN is operating under contract to one of the two parties involved. But wait, what about the ISPs one might ask, what benefit do they receive? Less congestion across their networks and better response time to their customers (on either end of the connection). It’s not a direct monetary benefit, but happier customers are usually better customers.

If the ISP chooses to interfere in the communication between client and server, that interference serves primarily to benefit the ISP, regardless of the motivation.

Around 1999-2000 there was a (brief) panic at the rollout of (allegedly) transparent caching proxies at the ISP level. The concern from a content server perspective was the loss of pageview and traffic stats as well as control over the content appearing to be served from a given site. ISPs wanted to reduce latency and bandwidth utilization across the network. Consumers just want the site to load faster and didn’t (then) seem to care who fixed the problem.

It became moot as the crash of 2000-2001 freed up bandwidth, in parallel AKamai and other CDNs stepped up efforts to place edge servers inside ISP’s head ends, resulting in the same solution (placing caching servers at the edges of the network) but now content providers retained control over their presence, instead of losing that control to ISPs.

]]> By: ed costello http://techliberation.com/2008/01/09/does-akamai-violate-network-neutrality/comment-page-1/#comment-46236 ed costello Thu, 10 Jan 2008 15:05:44 +0000 http://techliberation.com/2008/01/09/does-akamai-violate-network-neutrality/#comment-46236 <p>I'd argue that it's not a violation of network neutrality since the CDN is operating under contract to one of the two parties involved. But wait, what about the ISPs one might ask, what benefit do they receive? Less congestion across their networks and better response time to their customers (on either end of the connection). It's not a direct monetary benefit, but happier customers are usually better customers.<br><br>If the ISP chooses to interfere in the communication between client and server, that interference serves primarily to benefit the ISP, regardless of the motivation.<br><br>Around 1999-2000 there was a (brief) panic at the rollout of (allegedly) transparent caching proxies at the ISP level. The concern from a content server perspective was the loss of pageview and traffic stats as well as control over the content appearing to be served from a given site. ISPs wanted to reduce latency and bandwidth utilization across the network. Consumers just want the site to load faster and didn't (then) seem to care who fixed the problem.<br><br>It became moot as the crash of 2000-2001 freed up bandwidth, in parallel AKamai and other CDNs stepped up efforts to place edge servers inside ISP's head ends, resulting in the same solution (placing caching servers at the edges of the network) but now content providers retained control over their presence, instead of losing that control to ISPs.</p> I’d argue that it’s not a violation of network neutrality since the CDN is operating under contract to one of the two parties involved. But wait, what about the ISPs one might ask, what benefit do they receive? Less congestion across their networks and better response time to their customers (on either end of the connection). It’s not a direct monetary benefit, but happier customers are usually better customers.

If the ISP chooses to interfere in the communication between client and server, that interference serves primarily to benefit the ISP, regardless of the motivation.

Around 1999-2000 there was a (brief) panic at the rollout of (allegedly) transparent caching proxies at the ISP level. The concern from a content server perspective was the loss of pageview and traffic stats as well as control over the content appearing to be served from a given site. ISPs wanted to reduce latency and bandwidth utilization across the network. Consumers just want the site to load faster and didn’t (then) seem to care who fixed the problem.

It became moot as the crash of 2000-2001 freed up bandwidth, in parallel AKamai and other CDNs stepped up efforts to place edge servers inside ISP’s head ends, resulting in the same solution (placing caching servers at the edges of the network) but now content providers retained control over their presence, instead of losing that control to ISPs.

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