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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Two Tiered Internet
At 05:54 AM 12/14/2005, [email protected] wrote: Actually, the cable providers have an alternative. Since the cable network really is "broadband" in the meaning from before it was coopted to mean "high speed", cable operators are able to utilize many channels in parallel. If they want their voice traffic to be unimpeded, they could certainly pick up an IP address on a private network space on a different cable channel (i.e. frequency pair) and make use of that. The consumer's Internet service, being on other channels, is unaffected. Yes, the backhaul fiber network would need to be using multiple paths as well to make that work. I have no idea to what extent present cable plants make use of the ability to use multiple channels for data service. Clearly they use it for video carriers, and where there is/was telephone over cable before the present VOIP-based offerings, those also appear to have used separate channels.> There are two possible ways of having a tiered system > - one is to degrade competitors/those who don't pay, > and the other is to offer a premium service to those > who do pay. The only way I know of to offer a premium service on the same network as a non-premium service is to delay non-premium packets. This artificial packet delay is known as "Quality of Service" or QoS because it degrades the quality of service to some users in order to allow other users unobstructed use of the network. So, there is a method possible other than packet prioritization. Just tossing a fatter pipe at the customer isn't a solution, however. It'd still get clogged with p2p traffic pushing pirated music and videos among residential users.
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