[video-l] Net Neutrality...

[Stef van der Ziel]

Hi list,

As discussed in the previous meeting: Net Neutrality is an important  
part of the discussion of volume streams. In the US the congress  
steered away from legislation. See http://www.theregister.co.uk/ 
2006/06/09/net_neutrality_nixed/
Lobby cartoon: http://www.internetofthefuture.org.

Basically, Net Neutrality:
- Pros: more reliable services for telephone and television
- Cons: risk of capping, blocking or degrading third-party services  
in favor of network-owned services (or overcharging third parties for  
their services compared to internal charges for network-owned services)

IMHO QoS, scaling and cost reduction can also be achieved without  
building separate lanes for volume and critical traffic, but can be  
achieved using smarter distribution. With positive results for  
network provider, services provider and consumer.

I often compare this situation with a similar method with a long- 
lasting track record: national postal services. (See http:// 
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail if you have some spare time ;)

Imagine the chaos if every Dutch citizen had to drive to Amsterdam  
each morning to pick up their mail. Your driveway and streets in the  
suburbs are relatively usable. But it will get very crowded on the  
city roads. The city speed lanes are extremely crowded and jammed. 6,  
10, or even 50-lane highways through the country, even mail-only  
special lanes would be completely jammed. You'll never get to  
Amsterdam. You'll never get your mail.

Postal services to the rescue, since scaling and efficiency is  
historically not achieved with cold infrastructure, but with  
intelligent logistics. Mail is distributed to regional distribution  
hubs. And further distributed to local post offices. On a macro  
level, it's even more economic to have distribution hubs, trucks,  
postal offices, logistic planners and dozens of postmen than to keep  
scaling highways.

With a postal-like service for streams, Net Neutrality is not much of  
an issue (at least not on network level). Postal trucks and couriers  
share highway lanes with other cars, motorbikes and trucks (even slow  
grandma) and still can deliver a reliable, efficient, cheep and fast  
delivery of your daily mail and packages. The road owners can still  
exploit their roads (taxes and toll) and the couriers and postal  
services get paid for their services by the end-users (stamps and  
bills).

Now compare this model to our proposed model of distributed media  
networks... ;) Glad to hear your response!


p.s. we updated our tech demos page, with an updated demo on smart  
CDN redirection services, HD demo streams (yes that's 720p High  
Definition @ 4Mbps) and a historical timeline on the advance in  
scaling streaming distribution:
http://www.jet-stream.nl/samples/index.html


p.s. Unfortunately, it looks like the Net Neutrality discussion is  
mainly focussed on the fibers and the networks. I think this is  
because the discussion is driven by network owners. They ignore(?)  
that, you need active components such as servers, applications, and  
of course the content. Which (in the case of Internet audio and  
video) is mainly offered by broadcasters, publishers and third-party  
distributers. Who also have influence on net neutrality! These chain- 
partners have the power to block their content to a certain network.  
Or downgrade the quality. And use their marketing power to steer  
broadband users to content friendlier networks...

Cheers,

Stef



Stef van der Ziel - stef at jet-stream.nl - 06 234 06 348
Ma & Vr: Groningen & Di: Hilversum, Mediapark

Jet Stream BV - www.jet-stream.nl - 035 677 23 00
www.streamstat.nl - www.vodcast.nl - www.streamzilla.nl - www.vdo-x.net


This message is confidential and may be privileged. Any review,  
retransmission, dissemination or other use of, or taking any action  
with reference to this information by persons other than the intended  
recipient is prohibited. If you received this message in error,  
please notify the sender by reply e-mail and delete this message from  
all computers. Please note that e-mails are susceptible to change.  
The sender will not accept liability for the improper or incomplete  
transmission of the information contained in this message.







-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://melix.ams-ix.net/pipermail/video-l/attachments/20060622/ca1120e1/attachment.htm>