[governance] Re: Re: [WSIS CS-Plenary] Fwd: Comcast Blocks Some Internet Traffic

[Avri Doria]

On 22 okt 2007, at 18.55, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:

>
>> Networks have a right to manage their bandwidth.
>
> This is a very vague statement. Is tearing down BitTorrent connections
> (what Comcast does) "managing bandwidth"?
>

It depends.  If what they are selling is best effort service of a  
specific bandwidth then they need to treat all traffic within that  
service pipe equally.

sure they have a right to do traffic shaping in terms of balancing  
the expected use of best effort against the premium QoS services they  
sell - and if they don't want to resorts to over provisioning as  
their primary means of bandwidth control (as so many still do) they  
do need to do some shaping.  The problem comes in when they will bar  
traffic on certain ports or introduce latency in VoIP or Skype  or  
when they decide which hosts they will give preferential or  
detrimental treatment within the best-effort service (basic Internet)  
they sell to the regular users.

The issue of net neutrality has long been confounded by mistaking it  
as a QoS issue.  And is now being further confounded by bringing in  
Traffic Shaping.  As I understand it, the primary issue would be  
about how traffic is treating within the best-effort service that is  
the service that most of us buy when we pay for our home service.

So yes, blocking Bittorrent traffic or introducing latency into VoIP  
on a best effort pipe is counter to net neutrality as I understand  
it.  And while it could be called managing bandwidth, it would be  
doing so as an obfuscation and at the expense of Net neutrality.

a.