The Root is the Problem for Net Neutrality Advocates

Monitoring Dave Farber's IP group is always fascinating.  Sometimes, I appreciate the insight, sometimes I curse at the screen.  

One thing that is coming out of the Net Neutrality discussion is a great use of the analogy of a tree for the role of the Internet. You see, the Internet was built to ride on top of networks and not to be part of a network. Over the top, was the very nature of the architecture and the end points could be considered leaves. If we need to talk specifically about packets, perhaps we should use bugs as the analogy of what sits on the leaves.

Now over the years as we stopped talking about the Internet and started talking about the cloud, the branches of the tree and the trunk of the tree started to get clusters. Perhaps we should think of these clusters as ant colonies. The point is the leaf structure became part of a larger support analogy. And end to end was no longer the architecture of record.

Now comes the problem; the tree architecture is a good analogy, but it should be remembered that we’re talking about a forest and not a single tree. Net Neutrality advocates start to think that they are stuck on a specific tree, and find fault with either the size of the tree, or the proximity to other trees. They start to talk about the US being a third world nation in terms of access (our trees are too small) or our sparse forest (really only two kinds of trees -- cable and phone -- in their mind).

However, back to the origin of the architecture, it was to accept the fact that the Internet could exist on old growth, even if it was dying (like the PSTN).

So the reality is that the Internet is not designed to be part of the regulatory model.

The problem of access should not be discussed as part of the Internet but as something independent of the architecture. Otherwise we are going to end up with a structure in place that tries to manage the Internet at the root (yes there is fun with the homonym route, at least for US citizens).

If you want to find a path to promote competition, the answer is not in the old growth. It's in trying to understand how to make more colonies deploy closer and closer to the edge.

They are the competitive market, and what we should want is for them to get bushier with more leaves, and not focus on the trunk.