Huawei prez: A one-speed internet is bad for everyone Western regulations like the mooted US changes enforcing “net neutrality” will hold back internet development for consumers, Huawei President and board member Ryan Ding told us today. Ding said it was absurd to have a put up with one-speed slow, dumb networks when different consumers and applications had different requirements …
...but customer priority,
This is a basic argument that many pro / con net neutrality people rabidly can't understand.
Common sense says that voice and video real time traffic needs top priority and email less, the issue is should Google's or Microsoft's voice traffic take priority over Fred Smith's voice traffic; should Google's email take priority of Joe Blogg's email. The answer is no.
QoS is not the issue here.
Exactly.
The camp that is most guilty of ignoring this fact is the con-net neutrality camp.
Because they know that if they let on that the ISPs already can and do prioritize traffic based on technical requirements, they lose the argument that the ISPs "have to" do their prioritizing based on source and/or destination.
As Andrew showed with the RFCs, the internet is already built to allow traffic to be prioritized based on need. What the ISPs want to do is to change it to allow traffic to be prioritized based on greed.
"As Andrew showed with the RFCs, the internet is already built to allow traffic to be prioritized based on need. What the ISPs want to do is to change it to allow traffic to be prioritized based on greed."
Paranoia strikes again.
Sadly people are not willing to exercise their power and switch - making life very easy for ISPs. They would rather whinge, or support Net Neutrality's goal of utility-style regulation - would enshrine Comcast forever.
Third rate internet is good news for Europe and Asia, but bad news for Americans.
I have 1.7meg here. Just start downloading a long time before watching. If there are buffering problems its time for a cup of tea or making some popcorn.
Voice is never a problem. In fact the only problem is the time wasted watching so much shit!
"ommon sense says that voice and video real time traffic needs top priority and email less, the issue is should Google's or Microsoft's voice traffic take priority over "
I don't think that this guy is concerned about voice and video taking priority over email. He envisions a day when you sign up for internet service, you will get a basic low speed low priority service. If you want to access Netflix at a watchable speed, you pay $10 extra per month, if you want to access Youtube or use voice or video chatting, that will be an extra $10 per month. In the end, these people who don't support internet equality, envision people who use the internet for numerous application could end up paying
hundreds of dollars extra per month, ether directly or indirectly. They are only interested in profit and that is as far as it goes.
Indeed. QoS is an issue, but that is seen at the customer's endpoint side so that his 10 year old kid doesn't hog all his DSL pipe with uTorrent uploading slowing down TCP ACK traffic.
Your ISP is selling bandwidth to you. If they can't serve it, they are lying in their service terms. They should upgrade their links, end of discussion. And this guy is obviously talking about "smart networks" because he sells the stuff that would do that, not because he actually believes all that crap.
In fact, the Bell phone system is the perfect analogy to the Internet. All in all, everything is simply packet routing from A to B, the main difference being that everything is packet switched instead of circuit switched which allows for far more traffic to go through a single wire. TCP/IP in particular basically builds up a virtual circuit between two endpoints, each side just sees a two-way stream of bytes that will always arrive in order. Connections are similar to phone calls, where instead of phone numbers you have IP+port numbers. Another good thing of using the phone analogy is that it shows the travesty that NAT is, especially "CGNAT" which is how some ISPs get to squeeze their users and save on money by using one single routeable IP to serve hundreds of subscribers. In a Bell phone analogy, you would have the phone company giving you a "outgoing calls only" phone but charging you the same as a "incoming and outgoing calls" phone!!!
Service providers already sell a range of packages where your decision sets the bit rate and download limits. But the key point is once you buy that service, that ALL the internet is governed by that rate. And of course you can switch provider if you want who may offer a better value package or one better suited to someone's need.
So there is differentiation.
Net neutrality simply protects consumers from unscrupulous internet providers who want to interfere with their service by throttling access to a service, or pushing one service in preference to another. They basically want to hold services to ransom unless they are paid more money. Unsurprisingly it is the unscrupulous providers who are braying the loudest about how its a bad thing (it isn't).
Almost all ISPs are also Cable TV companies, or Phone companies, or both.
So they don't what you to buy internet access and watch Netflics, or use Joe's VoIP service. They want you to buy $100 a month cable TV, oh and home phone, mobile phone too.
With the local cable outfit Rogers (aka Robers) the only way to get lots of bandwidth is to have a 3 product bundle.
Switch providers? Where do you live that there is more than one broadband provider?
Maybe in a few extremely high density areas, but in the US, I'd guess north of 90% of folks have no choice for high speed. Your choice is TW, Comcast, or Cox (whichever one has the monoply rights to your area) who do not compete against whatever DSL offering you find at a tenth the speed.
I could go for a multi tiered internet IF their was some real competition. Sadly that doesn't exist for most of us...
Hmm, telecommunications company says Net Neutrality is bad for "everyone", what a surprise.
Meanwhile, of course, he makes a flawed analogy, it's not a comparison between ordinary letter post and FedEx, it's where everyone *had* FedEx type speeds, but then got told "If you're trying to ship certain types of package, then we're going to slow them down to letter post speeds".
"bandwidth would have to catch up with anticipated demand. Even 20 Mbit/s downstream was barely enough for one channel of 4K TV, he told us."
While 8kbit/s is still enough for one phone conversation and has been since the telephone was invented. The rate a human can absorb data is limited, 4k video already exceeds that limit (especially for my old eyes) and no one is going to spend all day watching video so being able to stream at that rate is nice but not essential.
I am not particularly for a one speed internet the same as I would not be for one speed cars. The problem is if I buy a fast car I want it to go fast everywhere. I don't want to buy a car which only goes fast on some roads where I (directly or indirectly) have to pay an additional toll.
Actually maybe I am for a one speed internet - it depends what you think internet and speed means.
"no one is going to spend all day watching video "
Do you have kids? Have you heard of YouTube?
Although in one aspect you are correct. Whilst kids will watch Youtube all day ignoring basic bodily functions in the process, they don't care too much about it being 4K.
But by default YouTube serves up the highest quality video that your connection can support, so they will end up watching 8K Minecraft videos all day anyway if you have a nice fat pipe.
Sometimes I want a cheap flight so I fly EasyJet or Ryanair, other times I need a convenient flight so I go BA or whatever. The distinction here is that I am free to choose whichever airline I want for each flight, but with the typical UK ISP I am saddled with a one year or even two year minimum contract. Given that ISPs are utilities just as much as gas and electricity companies, when am I going to be able to switch whenever I want with no penalties?
A better analogy in any case IMO would be a little different.
It would involve paying Ryanair or BA for the flight and then having to pay again a second time - either in lost time or increased costs based on whose airspace they fly through.
And worse: not being able to know beforehand whether it will be slower or more expensive before you actually fly...
The whole Net Neutrality Debate is a symptom of a much bigger problem. Capitalism has always required regulation and competition. Regulation stops companies from harming customers, competition keeps companies motivated to offer the customer a good deal.
It appears to me from what I've taken in over the debate that effective monopolies in ISPs are rife in certain areas, covering a very substantial number of people. Competition has been eliminated in some areas and no regulators seem to be up in arms. Of course when you find out the head of the FCC is a former lobbyist for the cable companies it's not a long leap to imagine that the regulator is corrupted.
One of the safeguards appears to be completely gone, that being competition. Now the other safeguard, regulation appears to be under attack.
The whole Net Neutrality Debate is a symptom of a much bigger problem. . . . One of the safeguards appears to be completely gone, that being competition. Now the other safeguard, regulation appears to be under attack.
I think you nailed it. I would add that without competition, net neutrality is actually a red herring.
"Capitalism has always required regulation"
Commie !~!!(j/k)
The way the world operates now is in defiance of facts, and the reality is that they want unfettered Capitalism without any oversee and regulations and that's worked out so well Consum...er....
....for polluters, Banks and Manufacturers.....
If you want low latency, get a plan that advertises low latency. If you want high bandwidth, get a high bandwidth plan. There's your tiered Internet right there. Have a plan for whatever combination of lower latency, higher throughput, and more connections you want. ToS/QoS data can handle the rest.
Are comedians arguing against QoS so the Huawei boss can't bring home the bacon with his shiny equipment? No, it looks to me they are talking about rival sources of the same type getting a speed bump/decline, because they paid or didn't pay somebody, or because ISPs are selling more content (Comcast merging Time Warner).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_of_service
"A best-effort network or service does not support quality of service. An alternative to complex QoS control mechanisms is to provide high quality communication over a best-effort network by over-provisioning the capacity so that it is sufficient for the expected peak traffic load. The resulting absence of network congestion eliminates the need for QoS mechanisms.
...
The Abilene network study was the basis for the testimony of Gary Bachula to the US Senate Commerce Committee's hearing on Network Neutrality in early 2006. He expressed the opinion that adding more bandwidth was more effective than any of the various schemes for accomplishing QoS they examined."
Either way you go on QoS, Huawei can still make money (by selling switches and other network equipment). I thought Huawei was good at turning out cheap kit?
"That's needed, said Ding, because bandwidth would have to catch up with anticipated demand. Even 20 Mbit/s downstream was barely enough for one channel of 4K TV, he told us. 'For 8K, we have found you need 115 Mbit/s.'"
Both far short of the gigabit/s that Google and others can apparently provide from $70-200/month at a profit. And that's with almost no 4K content out there, low adoption of 4K, and 8K far into the future. Cisco has guesstimated that global traffic is going to triple over 5 years or so. I'll bet that rate begins to slow down soon. If 4K content rolls out slower than H.265 capable equipment, 1080p and lower streams can shrink in size!
Nice try...but the thing is, people *have* the choice of *using* a normal delivery and a fast delivery, paying more it has nothing to do with net neutrality.
I hope to be wrong, but the tone that Andrew put between a engineering major and the other majors it's very worrying...or is it that he is surprised to see non tech people be more vocal about net neutrality?
The point is absolutely, like the fedex analogy, that the receiving customer pays once for the kind of service they want.
The net neutrality arguments are all about if the ISP, who's already getting paid by the customer for access to the Internet at large, can charge again for this service they are already being paid for, and the answer has to be very clearly: no you can't. You break the entire idea of the Internet if you do that.
Many here are mis-reading what Huawei are saying! The first sentence says it all: "When [YOU] try to send a letter in China it can take several weeks." (my emphasis).
What Huawei is talking about is the content originator's viewpoint. To some extent we already have a two (or more) tier/speed internet: A content provider can make their content available via the public access internet (ie. the Chinese post office service) or they can subscribe to a content delivery network provider (ie. Fedex). What Huawei are saying is they don't see why what is available in the world of "ordinary logistics" ie. different classes of delivery (at different prices) should not also be available in the internet world. Looking forward to the potential mass market demand for 4K TV streams, Huawei are clearly aware that the current Internet (regardless of IPv4/IPv6 and existing content delivery networks) will be found wanting. They clearly envisage that new backbone infrastructure and content provider upload connections will be needed and will be operated in parallel to the existing internet and content provider networks; hence why they are investing in relevant R&D and why they are against a single speed internet because they foresee their potential customers will want to recoup their overlay infrastructure investment.
From a net neutrality viewpoint, the Fedex example used still holds, regardless of how the content provider sends the package it is still delivered to your door, I (the recipient) don't have to pay Fedex or some third-party to have Fedex deliver the package to my door. Where the analogy falls down, is that with many special deliveries because they occur when most people are at work and they don't just push stuff through the letterbox, special arrangements have to be made to have the package delivered at a specific time...
“For 8K, we have found you need 115 Mbit/s"
Seriously ? they're worried about 8K streaming?
http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.html
We went through that same crap with 3D TV's and that fad is dead now.
8K HiDef TV's are not, and will never be mainstream, so there's no need to worry about
bandwidth for them, and if you're still on a low end connection (1.7 megs ?) you shouldn't expect
to watch anything at all...
“When you try to send a letter in China it can take several weeks. But FedEx style services can deliver a package in 24 hours parts of the country."
The problem is that "parts of the country", whichever end of the chain they're on, can get 24 hour service, while others can't.
A bit like being able to get 100Mbs+ service offered by the big names in the areas where competition exists, and pigeon post where there isn't a choice...
Irrespective of how neutral what I pay for is, what's the Great Ideological Problem with letting some providers pay for faster/better connections to me, at least as long as every provider is given the same options?
No-one is asking me to pay for better service explicitly even if they may roll costs into things I (or a pool of people nominally including me) may pay for.
If I buy stuff by mail order, some suppliers may do free UPS delivery, others might not, but as long as UPS isn't cutting exclusive deals and refusing to deal with some suppliers, what's the problem?
If someone chooses to stick with regular post and I choose not to deal with them as a result, where's the foul.
If someone chooses to build a convenience store on the box at the end of my street my phone line runs through, if anyone else also could do that if they paid a fair fee, why should I declare it Wrong?
So someone can sit on their arse ten miles away and expect me to pretend all shops should be equally inconvenient?
Surely the point about a digital landscape is that 'land' isn't a limited resource in the same way that actual land is. If company A chooses to spend money to give me a better service than company B, if A isn't cutting an anticompetitive deal to exclude B, why should I see B's complaints as more than sour grapes from someone who wants my custom but wants to spend less in giving me a service?
The only obvious point is that ISPs shouldn't unduly throttle everything in order to wring money out of content providers. But since that seems basically the same as 'overcharging end users for a service', they could (and maybe do) that already where there is insufficient competition. The issue there is whether there is competitive choice, rather than issues around Net Neutrality.
No surprises here. As someone else wrote, "Guy who sells equipment to created a tiered internet is against net neutrality!"
However, that doesn't mean we have to allow it to happen. Businesses adapt to whatever regulatory environment they have to operate in. Net neutrality is just one more thing Huawei will have to learn to live with.
Life is tough. Get over it.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
