Scott Bradner and Steve Crocker are two of the tech geniuses who built the Internet in an open way and built it to be open. Now they have both published instructive columns recounting the thinking behind the Net that has been responsible for its success . I highly recommend both.

From Scott‘s:

The IETF has interpreted the “End to End” paper to basically say that
the network should not be application aware. Unless told otherwise by
an application, the network should treat all Internet traffic the
same.

…this design philosophy has led the IETF to create
technologies that can be deployed without having to get permission
from network operators or having to modify the networks.

…Last year I was worried about what rules regulators and politicians
were going to impose on the Internet. This year, my pessimism is
focused at a lower level in the protocol stack: I’m worried about what
kind of network the network operators will provide for the IETF to
build on, for me and you to use, and for tomorrow’s enterprises to
depend on.

From Steve‘s:

…we always tried to design each new protocol to be
both useful in its own right and a building block available to others.
We did not think of protocols as finished products, and we
deliberately exposed the internal architecture to make it easy for
others to gain a foothold. This was the antithesis of the attitude of
the old telephone networks, which actively discouraged any additions
or uses they had not sanctioned.

As we rebuild our economy, I do hope we keep in mind the value of
openness, especially in industries that have rarely had it. Whether
it’s in health care reform or energy innovation, the largest payoffs
will come not from what the stimulus package pays for directly, but
from the huge vistas we open up for others to explore.

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There are many ways to boil down today’s upcoming FCC rejection of Net neutrality (which they did in the guise of supporting Net neutrality). Here’s one:

The end of Net neutrality means that those who provide access to the Internet — to our Internet, for it is ours, not theirs — have every economic incentive to keep access scarce. By not providing enough bandwidth, they can claim justification for charging users per bit (or per page, service, download, etc.), and justification for charging Net application/data providers for the right to cut ahead in line.

This is ironic — in the not-funny sense — since the access providers’ stated justification for opposing Net neutrality is because to do otherwise would discourage investment. But, why are they going to invest in providing more bits when they make more money by throttling access? (Competition? Sure, that’d be great. Let’s require them to rent out their lines. Oh, I forgot.) Abundance would turn access provision into a profitable commodity business, which is exactly what users want, and what would stimulate innovation and economic growth.

So, now that Net neutrality is going to be overturned, the access providers will make money by preventing access. Anyone want to bet that the U.S. is now going to climb the charts of average national broadband rates and of lowest average cost? Does anyone think that we haven’t just moved back by decades when we’ll have, say, gigabit access common across the country?

For shame, FCC.

[Later that day] The FCC has clarified some of what it means. For example, they are not going to allow access providers to charge companies for fast lane access. It seems that Commissioners Copps and Mignon nudged the regulations in the right direction. Thank you for that. (Also, see Harold Feld’s take.)

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Barbara van Schewick has posted two brilliant posts (1 2) about the practical effects removing Net neutrality would have on innovation. Now David Reed, one of the authors of the original argument for the Net’s neutral architecture, has responded, in agreement, but with a shading of emphasis.

David’s point (as I understand it) is that we should remember that Net neutrality isn’t something that we need the law to impose upon the Net. Rather, the Net was architected from the beginning to be neutral. The Internet as a protocol explicitly is designed to move packets of bits from source to destination without knowing what information they contain, what type of application they support, or who created them. All packets move equally in those regards.

So, David asks, “[W]hat do we need from the ‘law’ when the ‘code’ was designed to do most of the job?” After all, he writes, “merely requiring those who offer Internet service to implement the Internet design as it was intended – without trying to assign meaning to the data content of the packets – would automatically be application agnostic.”

In particular: We don’t need a complex rule defining “applications” in order to implement an application agnostic Internet. We have the basis of that rule – it’s in the “code” of the Internet. What we need from the “law” is merely a rule that says a network operator is not supposed to make routing decisions, packet delivery decisions, etc. based on contents of the packet.

David along with Barbara disputes the claim that the need to manage traffic to avoid congestion justifies application-specific discrimination. The Net, David says, was built with traffic management in mind:

… network congestion control is managed by having the routers merely detect and signal the existence of congestion back to the edges of the network, where the sources can decide to re-route traffic and the traffic engineers can decide to modify the network’s hardware connectivity. This decision means that the only function needed in the network transport itself is application-agnostic – congestion detection and signalling.

So, the only law we need, David is saying, is that which lets the Net be the Net.

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Brad Burnham, a well-known and thoughtful venture capitalist — I know him a bit, and like and respect him — has posted a letter to the FCC explaining why it ought to reject Chairman Genachowski’s compromised version of Net Neutrality (AKA “I can’t believe it’s not Net Neutrality”) in favor of something more clear and powerful.

Barbara van Schewick, an authority on Net Neutrality, has posted about a very specific example of the harm that would be done if the Chairman’s version becomes public policy: Zediva is a online DVD rental start-up that needs Net Neutrality to be viable. Zewdiva says in their own letter to the FCC:

By enabling users to watch new DVDs online, our service may be perceived to directly compete with the VideoLonLDemand service, PayPerView or other PayTV services offered by cable providers and, in some cases, the providers of fiber networks and wireless networks. At the same time, we depend on the broadband Internet access service offered by these providers to reach our users. In the absence of strong nonLdiscrimination rules and meaningful restrictions on what constitutes “reasonable network management”, these competitors will be able to exploit their control over the provision of broadband access to put us at a competitive disadvantage.

Here’s hoping that Chairman Genachowski can put on a pair of man pants and propose some real Net Neutrality (while maintaining his sense of humor).

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I was once privileged to have lunch with Michael Copps, the FCC commissioner. He was quiet, inquisitive, polite. A listener. But when he speaks, he is a fearless defender of the well-being of the interests of those his office is intended to advance.

Commissioner Copps has come out against Chairman Genachowski’s “Gosh, honey, I can’t believe it’s not Net Neutrality!” plan. Without Commissioner Copps’ vote, the Chairman does not have a deal.

Julius Genachowski should be thanking Michael Copps for giving him an opportunity to rescue his legacy.

(via Chris Bowers at the DailyKos.)

Also, a shout-out to Senator Al Franken for arguing for an open Internet as if our economy, our educational system, and our democracy depended on it … because they do.

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While FCC Chair Jules Genachowski has hesitated so long on Net Neutrality that he’s lost his legislative majority, explaining that he’s trying to balance the financial interests of providers who have already been heavily subsidized and given near monopolies, and who nevertheless have given us an unevenly distributed sub-par infrastructure, one of the other four commissioners is standing up without equivocation for an Internet equally open to every idea.

Commissioner Michael Copps calls for re-classifying the Internet as a telecommunications service, undoing the mischief of classifying it as an information service. “[Let’s] actually call an apple and apple!,” he says.

Commissioner Copps also excoriates the Google-Verizon proposal because it excludes wireless and because it would create “tiered Internets”: “‘Managed services’ is what they call this. ‘Gated communities for the Affluent’ is what I call them.”

You can read Commissioner Copps’ comments here (pdf). (via Slashdot) [Me on Googizon, and an interview with Rick Whitt, Google lawyer.]

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I’ve signed onto a filing to the FCC that encourages it to continue to distinguish the Internet from the special services carriers want to offer. The Internet is only the Internet if it is open and does not prefer some applications, sites, or content.

David Reed brilliantly articulates his reasons for signing. Here is a chunk:

the Internet was created to solve a very specific design challenge – creating a way to allow all computer-mediated communication to interoperate in any way that made sense, no matter what type of computer or what medium of communications (even homing pigeons have been discussed as potential transport media). The Open Internet was designed as the one communications framework to rule them all. Very much as vocalizations evolved into a universal human communications framework, or ink on paper evolved into a universal repository for human knowledge. That’s what we tried to create when we designed the Internet protocols and the resulting thing we call the Internet. The Internet is not the fiber, not the copper, not the switches and not the cellular networks that bear its signals. It is universal, and in order to be universal, it must be open.

However, the FCC historically organizes itself around “services”, which are tightly bound to particular technologies. Satellite systems are not “radio” and telephony over radio is not the same service as telephony over wires. While this structure has been made to work, it cannot work for the Internet, because the Internet is the first communications framework defined deliberately without reference to a particular technological medium or low-level transport.

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