Politics

I’ve posted this as an update on the original post, but it’s also worth bringing out as a separate posting. I’ve made a few minor changes here (e.g., to insert the point about Cable America that is made elsewhere in the original post). Douglas Ross (directorblue) has called this list “bogus” and claimed that only two of the options (Qwest and Cox) actually count. He rightly dismisses Cable America from the list on the grounds that Cox entered into an agreement to acquire them in January of this year–I grant his point and that reduces the number of broadband providers by one. He dismisses Covad because it uses Qwest last-mile wires, but goes on to say, inconsistently, that he would count other cable resellers if the Brand X decision had gone the other way and providers like Cox were forced to enter into relationships like Covad has with Qwest. My observation is that if those reseller relationships exist and the reseller provides access to its own Internet network, then that is enough to foster a competitive environment. It doesn’t matter whether it’s government-mandated, it matters whether it exists. Doug rejects all the wireless options out of hand on the grounds of Verizon’s EVDO terms-of-service. (His section about why WiMax isn’t viable doesn’t actually discuss WiMax at all, only EVDO terms-of-service.) He misses the point that Sprint Broadband and Sprint EVDO are two different services–he doesn’t actually give a reason to reject Sprint Broadband. He says he doesn’t understand why I put the City of Tempe’s municipal WiFi network in the list–I did so because Tempe is right in the middle of the Phoenix metropolitan area (and noted Chandler’s metro WiFi in-development, which is just south of Tempe, for the same reason). These are real options for people moving to the Phoenix area and for anyone who is willing to move to get different broadband service. (And certainly broadband options in an area are an important factor in choosing a place to live.) Finally, he rejects HughesNet because it is unsuitable for VOIP or P2P. At least he doesn’t say that HughesNet should be mandated to change the laws of physics in order to provide those services under net neutrality. Doug’s position on net neutrality appears to be that nothing counts as broadband unless it supports every application he wants to use. But it’s important to note that the net neutrality bills in Congress do count all these options and place regulations on them–they count anything as broadband that is greater than 200kbps in one direction, whether wired or wireless. I don’t see Doug volunteering to exempt things he doesn’t count as valid broadband options from broadband net neutrality restrictions. It appears to me that Doug’s position is that whoever builds an infrastructure capable of supporting what he wants has to provide it to him, without recovering the costs of that infrastructure by charging any third parties. But I bet he also is unwilling to pay an unsubsidized rate to use such a service. (UPDATE: I was just looking at Doug’s blogroll, and he’s pretty strong evidence that net neutrality positions don’t necessarily correlate with political positions. Doug’s political blog links include Michelle Malkin, Little Green Footballs, and the dishonest nutcases at “Stop the ACLU.”) ...

Dave Siegel has given a very brief introduction to QoS (with some specifics about how it’s engineered into Global Crossing’s network today) and chimed in on the net neutrality debate. A bit more detail about how QoS has been a problem in some networks but successfully engineered into Global Crossing’s network can be found in this presentation by Dr. Xiao Xipeng of Alcatel, “The Elusive QoS” (PDF). Xiao Xipeng was one of the designers of QoS for Global Crossing and is the author or co-author of numerous IETF standards for QoS.

As the InOpinion blog has pointed out, Save the Internet-generated form letters have been published as letters to the editor here, here, and here. This is ironic given their complaints about astroturf by “Hands Off The Internet." InOpinion has a project to identify astroturf where it appears, which appears to be nonpartisan.

Net neutrality advocates claim that telcos (meaning the local telco providers) have a “virtual monopoly” on consumer broadband, or that they have a duopoly with the cable companies. In many regions, this is true, or nearly so (thus the “virtual” qualifier). (Note, however, that the statement becomes transparently false if it’s not restricted to consumer broadband. There are far more options for Internet service for businesses, especially businesses that can put equipment into colo facilities.) But if you look at the metropolitan Phoenix area, there are quite a few competing consumer broadband providers, e.g.: * Qwest, the Regional Bell Operating Company formerly known as U.S. West, provides DSL services (as well as higher bandwidth wired connections from fractional T1 and up, and I think they still offer ISDN). This is one of the evil telcos that is enemy number one for many net neutrality advocates. * Covad, a DSL provider that uses Qwest’s last-mile network in Phoenix. In 2003 Covad acquired all of Qwest’s business DSL customers, and it appears that they will or have exited the consumer broadband market–however, they can provide business-class DSL service to my residence (which is interesting because Qwest says they can’t). Covad is also actively pursuing WiBro (wireless broadband, a Korean standard) and WiMax (wireless broadband, an Intel standard that will now be compatible with WiBro). * Cox Communications, a cable company, provides cable modem services. (They also have higher speed connections for businesses.) Cox has done very well in recent years in taking away customers from Qwest for voice telephone services, as well as out-competing Qwest’s DSL offering for consumer Internet access. I currently use Cox Business Services to my home. * Cable America, a competing cable company, provides cable modem services in parts of the east Valley. (UPDATE May 27, 2006: As Douglas Ross (directorblue) has pointed out, Cox entered into an agreement to acquire Cable America in January 2006, so this doesn’t really count as an independent broadband provider.) * Sprint Broadband, a long distance and wireless provider, offers a point-to-point wireless broadband service (previously People’s Choice, which Sprint acquired). Sprint also offers EV-DO mobile wireless service. * Alltel, a wireless provider, offers EV-DO mobile wireless service (which is actually using Sprint’s EV-DO network). * Verizon Wireless, a wireless provider, offers EV-DO (3G) mobile wireless service. * HughesNet, a satellite-based wireless provider (previously DirecWay, and DirecPC before that), offers satellite connectivity (with high latency as a drawback imposed by the laws of physics). * City of Tempe municipal wireless service, provided and managed by NeoReach. Similar service is being deployed to the City of Chandler, also by NeoReach. There are no doubt others I’ve missed–if you’re willing to pay for business service, many providers can get that service to your home, which includes services like a T1 connection (where your provider, if not Qwest, will have to pay monthly local loop charges to Qwest and pass that along in your bill) and may include other sources of wireless service. When I had a Global Crossing T1 to my home, the local loop costs were slightly over $200/mo–consumer broadband, by contrast, costs substantially less for more bandwidth, at least in the downstream direction, when delivered to a residence. On the other hand, bandwidth costs in a colo facility can be as low as $10/Mbit/mo, in quantity, i.e., $1000/mo for a 100Mbps Ethernet port. You pay more per Mbit to get data to your residence because of the costs of getting the data out to all those residences and the overhead of dealing with a lot more customers whose individual bills are much smaller than those of a business, and who, on the average, need a lot more hand-holding and support. Salt River Project, a power generation and transmission company (and a water delivery/irrigation company) that operates in Phoenix, also has about 1,000 route-miles of fiber throughout the city. It resells its excess capacity to businesses (including Qwest) from the entity SRP Telecom. I don’t know if they would ever consider using their network to provide consumer services themselves, but there’s clearly the potential for a consumer broadband provider to purchase capacity on their network in order to move data around the city. In Phoenix, if one provider decided to start blocking access to or degrading certain kinds of services that their customers want, there are multiple alternative options. Any provider that engaged in such behavior would see an increase in churn, to the benefit of its competition. UPDATE (May 27, 2006): Douglas Ross (directorblue) has called this list “bogus” and claimed that only two of the options (Qwest and Cox) actually count. He dismisses Covad because it uses Qwest last-mile wires, but goes on to say, inconsistently, that he would count other cable resellers if the Brand X decision had gone the other way and providers like Cox were forced to enter into relationships like Covad has with Qwest. My observation is that if those reseller relationships exist and the reseller provides access to its own Internet network, then that is enough to foster a competitive environment. It doesn’t matter whether it’s government-mandated, it matters whether it exists. Doug rejects all the wireless options out of hand on the grounds of Verizon’s EVDO terms-of-service. (His section about why WiMax isn’t viable doesn’t actually discuss WiMax at all, only EVDO terms-of-service.) He misses the point that Sprint Broadband and Sprint EVDO are two different services–he doesn’t actually give a reason to reject Sprint Broadband. He says he doesn’t understand why I put the City of Tempe’s municipal WiFi network in the list–I did so because Tempe is right in the middle of the Phoenix metropolitan area (and noted Chandler’s metro WiFi in-development, which is just south of Tempe, for the same reason). These are real options for people moving to the Phoenix area and for anyone who is willing to move to get different broadband service. (And certainly broadband options in an area are an important factor in choosing a place to live.) Finally, he rejects HughesNet because it is unsuitable for VOIP or P2P. At least he doesn’t say that HughesNet should be mandated to change the laws of physics in order to provide those services under net neutrality. Doug’s position on net neutrality appears to be that nothing counts as broadband unless it supports every application he wants to use (even though the proposed net neutrality bills count anything as broadband that is greater than 200kbps in one direction–they don’t restrict it to wireline services), and that whoever builds an infrastructure capable of supporting what he wants has to provide it to him, without recovering the costs of that infrastructure by charging any third parties. But I bet he also is unwilling to pay an unsubsidized rate to use such a service. ...

Craig Newmark of Craigslist and Mike McCurry of “Hands Off the Internet” debate “Should the Net Be Neutral?” at the Wall Street Journal. I’m struck by a number of things that Newmark says: Do you believe Yahoo should be allowed to outbid Google to slow down Google on people’s computers? That’s the kind of thing that the big guys are proposing.In fact, nobody has proposed slowing down anything–the consumer broadband telcos have proposed adding new, higher-bandwidth physical circuits (fiber to the home) which contain virtual circuits dedicated to content with requirements for higher bandwidth and low latency and jitter, for which the primary application they have in mind is IP television. And they want to charge content providers to use those virtual circuits. Now, one can argue that dedicating bandwidth to new applications that content providers have to pay for will have a future consequence that Internet bandwidth will be consumed and not upgraded, leading to degradation for best-effort Internet services, but that requires argument to support the likelihood of that outcome in the face of competition from cable companies and wireless providers. With all that empty fiber, bandwidth is not an issue. A bigger issue is that we’re running out of [Internet protocol] addresses. The new net protocols, IPv6, address that, but the big telecoms are already very late implementing that. (Hey, I’m an engineer, and their engineers talk to me.)Newmark is confusing Internet backbone bandwidth with last-mile consumer broadband bandwidth. I’ve addressed this confusion at length. BTW, IPv6 is rife with difficulties and not quite ready (or useful) for the average consumer, but my employer, Global Crossing, has been one of the first to make it widely available to its customers. (I run IPv6 on my home network via a tunnel to Global Crossing.) No one’s talking about “government lawyers and regulators engineer[ing] the future of the Internet,” except, well, you, Mike. We’re trying to prevent that, and trying to get Congress to maintain the level playing field we have right now, that the FCC just tried to ruin. We’re just asking everyone to play fair. … I’m being completely straight: no one’s interested in regulation in the sense you’re thinking, we just want the existing level playing field to continue… Beyond that, we’re not interested in mandating performance criteria, none of that stuff. … What we’re looking for is just fairness, a level playing field, no regulation or stuff like that. In America we believe that if you play fair and work hard, you get ahead. We don’t want the government to give special privileges to the big guys, particularly not at the expense of small business and consumers. We don’t want more regulation and we don’t need lawyers involved where the free market functions well. I guess we’re for capitalism. Here, Newmark is simply failing to recognize what’s in the actual network neutrality bills in Congress, which have unintended consequences about how networks are engineered, what can be in acceptable use policies, what kinds of contracts network providers are permitted to enter into with their customers, and how they can charge for access to different services–rules that to date have not existed for Internet services. Today, many Internet providers have acceptable use policies that prohibit spam, going beyond the requirements of the relatively weak federal CAN-SPAM law. Under all of the net neutrality bills I’ve seen, providers must permit customers to send or receive any “lawful content,” which forces them to reduce their AUPs to the lowest common denominator of whatever is prohibited by law in the jurisdictions where they provide service. These bills prohibit providers in the United States from setting the conditions of contract with their customers regarding activities they consider abusive which are not codified in law. The “pink contract” would thus become a government mandate. UPDATE: FCC Commissioner Michael Copps and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas back up McCurry’s statement in this debate that the FCC already has authority under Title I to prevent anti-competitive discrimination without the need for new statutory powers from Congress. McCurry at the WSJ: And doesn’t the FCC have authority already (under Title I) to step in and act if necessary?Copps: The Federal Communications Commission has authority under current law to ensure that broadband-access providers – currently mainly cable and phone companies – do not discriminate against Web-based providers of content, search services and applications, FCC commissioner Michael Copps said Tuesday.Thomas: “The [FCC] remains free to impose special regulatory duties on facilities-based [Internet-service providers] under its Title I ancillary jurisdiction,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in National Cable & Telecommunications Association vs. Brand X Internet Services.This means net neutrality advocates who support the bills in Congress don’t think this is enough, and owe an explanation of specifically what powers they want to add to the FCC, what rules they want the FCC to make, and how those rules will be enforced.

Jim Durbin writes that he supports net neutrality because of fears about companies blocking access to certain websites at the enterprise. In his opinion, apparently, net neutrality not only means that ISPs can’t block access to lawful content, neither can employers. No net neutrality bills would take away the ability of enterprises to restrict corporate Internet access to business-related content and use products like web proxies, but it’s a symptom of the fuzziness of “net neutrality” that Mr. Durbin thinks this is a reason to advocate it. What’s next, a claim that the use of firewalls is contrary to net neutrality principles? Durbin approvingly links to an article by Glenn Harlan Reynolds about employees using pirate WiFi or resorting to bringing in personal equipment with EVDO cards in order to get their Internet or blogging fix at the workplace. Reynolds and Durbin both seem to think that companies should have no right–or at least no ability–to ban such things from the workplace unless they have “big trade-secret issues” or involve national security. Now, there’s a big distinction between pirate WiFi (connecting an unauthorized device to a company’s internal network, most likely exposing its internals to the outside world) and using your own equipment over a wireless connection to a provider that you pay for yourself. In the former case, it’s making unauthorized changes to the company’s own network and security mechanisms, while in the latter the issue is more an issue of whether you’re doing the job you’re being paid to do. But none of this should have anything to do with the “net neutrality” debate.

Ed Brayton points out a paragraph from an AP story that says: The Bush administration has urged a judge to dismiss a similar case, saying it threatens to divulge state secrets and jeopardize national security. The government argued in briefs that the courts cannot decide the constitutionality of the president’s asserted wartime powers to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants.As Ed observes, If the courts cannot decide the constitutionality of such programs, then we might as well not have a constitution or courts at all.

The little cartoon movie from “Hands Off the Internet” (an organization funded by member organizations that include major telcos and equipment vendors) has led to a response from “Save the Internet” (advocates of net neutrality funded by MoveOn.org and others). “Save the Internet” claims that the cartoon is “a clever piece of industry propaganda that is riddled with half-truths and outright lies.” It then quotes a few passages from the cartoon and offers responses. Unfortunately, it is “Save the Internet”’s response that contains misinformation, and it fails to point out any alleged lies. In what follows, I’ll quote directly from the “Save the Internet” response (including the quotes from the “Hands Off” cartoon they are responding to) and then respond to each point. The big telecom companies say: “Is the Internet in Danger? Does the Internet need saving? It keeps getting faster. We keep getting more choices." The truth: Right now AT&T and others want to take away your choices and control what you can do and watch online. They’re on their best behavior while trying to convince Congress to hand over the Internet. But if their high-priced lobbyists get their way in Washington, the Internet as we know it will be gone. Network Neutrality has always curbed the control of the network owners, invited competition and encouraged innovators. It’s what made it possible for entrepreneurs and creative thinkers to prosper online. None of the big ideas that made the Internet the innovative engine it is today came from the cable or telephone companies. ...

Harri Hursti of Black Box Voting has released a report (PDF) on yet more flaws (on top of others reported back in December) in Diebold TSx and TS6 Direct-Recording Electronic (or DRE) voting machines. Having a few minutes of physical access to a machine makes it possible to install software, using simple, easily available tools, which will completely compromise the machine in such a way that it will be impossible to tell whether future software updates are successful or not. Ed Felten and Avi Rubin give more detail at Felten’s blog, Freedom to Tinker, and question whether it makes sense to build voting machines based on commodity hardware and operating systems due to these risks. This certainly seems like an application where you’d want hardware-enforced verification of a stripped-down trusted computing platform. Hursti’s report says that there are three layers of software in the Diebold machines: a boot loader, an operating system (customized Windows CE), and an application program (the voting software). Each of the three layers has backdoors which allow bypassing security controls. The report states that “Different files on the system carry various subsets of the following features: Signature check, mode check, and integrity check. None of these can be considered security features against tampering. For example, the integrity check is [redacted]. This check can be equated to a very crude spell-checker. It is effective against accidental typing errors but not deliberate attacks." The redacted portion, based on the description, is apparently a weak checksum such as CRC (cyclic redundancy check), rather than a cryptographically stronger checksum like MD5 or SHA1 (both of which have weaknesses of their own). The Hursti report describes how an attacker could exploit the weaknesses at multiple levels to prevent the removal of malicious code. One such flaw (the details of which are redacted from the report) is that inserting a standard PCMCIA memory card into the machine containing a file with the appropriate name will cause the boot loader to reflash itself, installing the code in that file as the new boot loader on the system. As Hursti points out, “Due to the fact that the boot loader is the primary mechanism for its own reprogramming, if the boot loader is compromised with a deep attack, using the boot loader itself to install a known clean version of a boot loader is no longer a viable option as a recovery path to clean the system." The report goes on to show similar flaws in replacing the operating system image, and points out a voter-accessible hidden button (labeled “battery test”) that could be exploited by malicious code as a trigger for an attack. The recommended defense against attacks is to physically protect the machines–as a machine can be compromised with less than five minutes of physical access, chain of custody evidence must be maintained from the machines’ origin to final use, with no unsupervised access.

Suppose we live in a world with no private automobiles. There are still airports, bus stations, and sea ports, and these are places with diverse carriers and services, giving you many options for traveling long distances to other locations. But to get from your home to these travel hubs, your options are limited to between one and three cab companies; most people have access to two, RBOC Cab and Cable Cab. Both cab companies own all of their own cabs, but RBOC Cab has been legally required to allow independent operators to rent their cabs. Those independent operators have been permitted to repaint the cabs, furnish the interiors differently, and offer additional services to customers within the content of the cabs, but the cabs are owned by RBOC Cab and are of the same size, and the radios are standard equipment owned and maintained by RBOC Cab. Cable Cab, by contrast, has never been required to allow independent operators to use its cabs, and has never done so. (UPDATE 11 May 2006: This is because Cable Cab pays 5% of revenue to local governments as part of their franchise agreement, while RBOC Cab, by contrast, has had government monopoly protection until 1996, has free access to rights of way, and receives government funding via “universal service” fees in order to provide service to rural areas. While Cable Cab funded its own purchasing of cabs and infrastructure, RBOC Cab built its infrastructure without risk as a result of the government support.) They initially didn’t come with radios at all, but have recently furnished their cabs with radios. The rules have recently been changed so that RBOC Cab will no longer be required to allow independent operators to rent their cabs. They’ve stopped allowing new independent operators to rent cabs, or existing independent operators to take on new customers, and have announced that they will be ending all of the independent operator contracts. RBOC Cab has also announced that they intend to build larger cabs, in which some of the additional space will be used to provide new services, such as a fully stocked bar, refrigerator, and high-definition television. They will supply all of the contents of the bar and refrigerator, as well as what is shown on the TV, by entering into arrangements with suppliers, whom they intend to charge a fee for the privilege of using the facilities to reach their passengers. Passengers will not be permitted to use the refrigerators to store items that they’ve supplied, though they will still be allowed to bring along their own cooler, snacks, or video equipment, provided that it fits in the remaining space in the cab (which will be more space than in previous cabs). Both cab companies reserve the right to deny transportation for certain kinds of items that they consider harmful or dangerous, or which impact their ability to function–items that stink up the cab, that could catch fire or explode, etc. Cab Neutrality advocates argue that the Department of Transportation needs to create additional regulations which require the cab companies to allow passengers to carry whatever items they want, to use the radios to listen to whatever stations they want (whether the driver likes it or not), to put their own items in the refrigerator, and to allow all snack, beverage, and video providers to make use of the new equipment that RBOC Cabs plans to put into their cabs. They also want to require that the cab companies send cabs at the same speed to every travel hub, regardless of the hub’s size or amount of demand for its services (or what the passengers want), and that all costs should be borne by the cab company, not the hub. RBOC Cabs responds by saying that in order to fund the building of the new cabs, they need to be able to charge the snack, beverage, and video providers to use the new equipment (in addition to the fee charged to the passengers, which is not enough to cover the actual cost), but that passengers are still free to bring their own snacks. Cab Neutrality advocates worry that unless they are allowed to bring whatever items they want, they might be prohibited from bringing their own snacks, beverages, and videos. RBOC Cabs have also claimed that they need to be able to build these larger cabs in order to travel longer distances, and suggested that their ability to carry snacks, beverages, and videos over long distances is part of the costs they need to recoup (when, in fact, the long distance transportation of even their snacks, beverages, and videos is provided in the highly competitive environment of the multiple transportation hubs, where there are no issues of capacity and costs per mile are significantly lower). This is not a precise analogy, but I think it captures the highlights. To make it more precise, I’d need to actually talk about the roads, perhaps making the last mile owned by HOAs that are analogous to RBOCs and cable companies, with the HOAs placing restrictions on the size and type of vehicles that can move on those roads and creating new lanes for their own vehicles, which they want to rent out to third parties or make available for higher priority services that might need them for emergencies. What’s right about “Cab Neutrality” is that passengers want to be able to get to every travel hub and they want to be able to choose what food, beverages, and entertainment they get on the way. But the specific proposals they make are too specific, go beyond these basics, and create limitations in what new services and business arrangements can be developed. As I see it, the biggest problem here is limited competition among cab companies–a situation which was alleviated to a large extent by the requirement that RBOC Cab lease out cabs to independent operators–a requirement that should have applied to Cable Cab as well. (If we had a way to purchase or rent our own vehicles from competitive sources, all of the worries about what the cab companies might do would be eliminated.) A requirement on the cab companies that requires passengers to be able to carry whatever they want would have the unintended consequence that some malicious or unthinking passengers would carry items that the cab companies want to prohibit for good reason–harmful and dangerous materials, materials which disrupt service for other passengers. (E.g., spam, malware, denial of service attacks.) A requirement that all cabs must travel at the same speed means that if I have an emergency where I want to be able to pay more to get to my travel hub faster, I can’t do it. Passengers carrying organs for transplant surgery don’t get to travel any faster than passengers going on vacation. A requirement that all costs must be borne by the cab companies (both for transportation to the hubs and for the new cabs and equipment within them) limits the possibilities of new business arrangements between third parties and the cab companies. There might be a possible business model where a travel hub pays a fee to get more frequent cab services, with a lower cost to the cab passengers, subsidized by the long-haul transportation services. Or where video providers can supply services at different costs, with lower-cost services subsidized by advertising revenue.