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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical RE: Creating a crystal clear and pure Internet
No offense, but I think this is an overly political topic, and we just saw that politics are not supposed to be discussed. There is a huge political debate on what ISP's should and should not be doing to traffic that flows through their systems. There are other groups, like NNsquad, where these types of conversations are welcome, but even there on the forums, not the mailing list. But, if it's not viewed as political then... Your analogy is flawed, because the Internet is not a pipe system and ISP's are not your local water utility. And, there are many different ways that water utilities are handled in different parts of the world. In the US, most if not all water utilities are handled by the government, usually the county government where I'm from. ISP's are not government run, and can't be compared to a water utility for that simple reason. They don't have the same legal (again, an issue that is not supposed to be discussed, according to the AUP) requirements nor the legal protections available to governments (you can't sue most governments). And my personal opinion is that ISP's should not do anything to the traffic that passes through their network as far as filtering. The only discriminatory behavior that should be allowed is for QoS, to treat specific types or traffic in a different manner to give preferential treatment to specific classifications of traffic. My definition of QoS for the purposes of this discussion, if it is allowed to continue, would not include shaping or policing. If an ISP says you have a 5Mb downstream and a 512K upstream, you should actually be allowed to send 512K upstream all the time. However, that's not to say that an ISP should not be able to classify traffic as scavenger over a particular threshold, and preferentially drop that traffic at their overprescribed uplink if that is a bottleneck. The end user should also be allowed to specify their own QoS markings, and they should be honored as long as they don't go over specific thresholds as imposed, and documented, by the ISP. For example, the customer should be able to self-classify certain traffic as high priority (VoIP) and certain as low (P2P), but if the customer classified all traffic as high priority the ISP is free to remark anything over a set threshold (say 128K) as a lower priority, but NOT police it. If you want to use an analogy, ISP's are more like >private< road systems and owners, using >public< lands that have been given a right to use said >public< lands for >private< profits with specific restrictions. Some restrictions may be that you can't discriminate on the payload (and kind of identifying category for passengers, such as race, ethnicity, gender, etc, which in the network world would map to type of protocol or payload content, such as P2P traffic or email), but that you can create an HOV lane for high occupancy vehicles (QoS). Of course, ISP's are allowed to make sure the vehicles are in proper working condition (checking that various layer headers are in compliance). Much like with the self-marking of traffic with QoS tags, the customer should also be able to make their own decision and pack two other people in the car in order to get into that HOV lane. However, if the users of the road try and pack everything into the HOV lane, they can be reclassified (busses may have to pay a higher fee to use the road). However, in this world of religious warfare (another banned topic, I'm sure!) it is recognized that a certain level of profiling is acceptable. So, it may be O.K. for ISP's to profile and deny traffic depending on the payload only for specific types of traffic that have been shown to cause issues, and/or only be present for nefarious reasons. Examples may be known signatures for virus attacks, worms, or Trojans. Other examples may be identifying characteristics for SPAM (I'm reluctant to say "excessive email traffic" because I don't believe that is a proper identifying characteristic, I should be able to run my own SMTP server and send out as much legitimate email as I want). I realize that my views probably won't be shared by the vast majority of ISP's, and hence are overly political for this group. That's why I think any discussion is not necessarily on-topic. Thanks, Fred Reimer, CISSP, CCNP, CQS-VPN, CQS-ISS Senior Network Engineer Coleman Technologies, Inc. 954-298-1697 > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] > On Behalf Of Sean Donelan > Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2007 9:39 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Creating a crystal clear and pure Internet > > > > Some people have compared unwanted Internet traffic to water > pollution, > and proposed that ISPs should be required to be like water > utilities and > be responsible for keeping the Internet water crystal clear > and pure. > > Several new projects have started around the world to > achieve those goals. > > ITU anti-botnet initiative > > http://www.itu.int/ITU- > D/cyb/cybersecurity/projects/botnet.html > > France anti-piracy initiative > > http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/actualites/index- > olivennes231107.htm Attachment:
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