even though the weather was nothing like Paradise Island Saturday, we got up at 9 and munched down some oats with apple and syrup and almonds, and got ourselves off to the Gardens Lawn Tennis Club. we go there because they have a general attitude best embodied by this sign:

of course, Rei and I are not actually members. this is not on purpose - every time we arrive someone official-looking just buzzes us in and never asks us for money. who are we to make conversation with someone we don't know, let alone make conversation about tennis club payments?

after a few games and some rallies and a lot of chilly cloudy air blowing on our sweaty hocks, we thought we'd better go home and get changed so we could go shopping. this was to be a big shop since our cupboards have been bare for quite some time. this is due to the fact that there's a recession so the money we'd normally spend on food has been cut out of our budget, which now looks something like this:

Wallpaper Magazine ********** R5 000

Monocle Magazine************R4 000

iPhone 3G x 2****************R10 000 (we have both broken the ones we got free from Apple - hey who knew touch-screen Mario could be so addictive)

Medium broadband connection****R15 000 (South African internet prices tsk tsk)

3rd World Ambient Trauma Counselling (it's the latest thing, helps you stop worrying about crime and getting hijacked or diseased or when Horlicks will finally become affordable here)************R20 000

Parking Retainer outside The Waiting Room on Long Street (a new thing, so we don't have to drive around the Long Street block over and over on a Saturday night) *******R2 000

Flickr Pro Accounts*********$50 (don't know how much that is in Rands)

So that pretty much uses up our disposable income, which is why this shop had to be good and last us at least a week or so until we can sell some art on Etsy or sell our friends taste in fashion and music out to some market research company in order to earn some extra monies.

Shopping took a lot out of us, so we napped a large part of the afternoon away. Then Rei got down to making dinner while I took photos of him, and then me and him.

I moved house recently and figured that being sent to jail is easier. You don't have to life a finger when you go to jail, unless of course some Tongan giant named Gus wants you to digitally penetrate him.

I digress. Moving house sucks shit. Four football ovals worth of PNG rainforest was cleared to make the stack of cardboard boxes in my garage. But that's small hassle compared to having to deal with every cunt who provides you with your essential services.

 I won't go on about my electricity being connected a day late, that's old news and I'm over it, but I tell you now, everyone who works at Tru Energy and their families and friends and go and and eat shit and die as far as I'm concerned.

Then there's Telstra, who connected me on time but then charged me the connection fee for a new dwelling, rather than an existing home - a couple of hundred bucks' difference. I made a call to correct this error and was told the department that handles this is "not open today" and to leave my number. No cunt has called me. I'm sure the department that will call me when the bill I refuse to pay is overdue is always open. Fuckers!

But the most frustrating thing about all this is trying to get Broadband connected. I have posted before about the third-world broadband conditions that exist in outer Melbourne. Optus, bless them, the Singapore-owned cunts, wouldn't transfer my Optusnet Broadband because I don't have an Optus phone account. Fuck Optus.

Thinking my only hope to get a broadband connection was to go with Telstra who own the phone lines and broadband nodes and obviously have a relationship with the ACCC that sees Graham Samuel turn up for weekly anal sex over a fucking barrel, I bit the bullet and applied for Telstra Bigpond broadband, with the added incentive of having it half price because I have a landline and mobile phone account with the national telco. Like Graham Samuel I am their arse slave.

First signs were good. An email from Bigpond confirming my application for ADSL2. Then nothing. When I called Telstra about the bullshit connection fee mentioned above, the lovely lass in Darwin checked my Bigpond application and said there were "several errors" which she said she fixed. I had to wait another 10 working days for confirmation - what errors? How hard is it?

Then 10 working days later I get an SMS to call Bigpond, which I did only to be told I can't get ADSL2 in my area. Fair enough I said, "give me ADSL1".

"You'll have to reapply," Margaret in Perth told me. Knowing that it's futile to ask why anymore. I reapplied on the spot and was told to expect a new modem in the post within the magic 10 working days - which sounds a lot less than two weeks.

What I got instead was a letter saying "Unfortunately, our tests have indicated that Bigpond Broadband ADSL is not currently available on (03) XXXX XXXX. If you have another telephone on that premises, ADSL technology may be available on that number.

HOW? WHY? WHAT'S THE FUCKING DIFFERENCE?

This is fucking extortion! Do they expect me to fork out more money on a second phone just to get a service these cunts are too fucking useless to provide to a phone that's less than a kilometre away from old house that had perfect ADSL access? Like fuck!

Then they rub it in by telling me about the other services available like Bigpond Broadband Cable - yeah fuck off!. Telstra decided it couldn't be fucked rolling out fibre-optic cable in a brand new suburb while all the pipes were going in. If I had cable do you think I'd be wasting a month of my fucking life trying to get ADS-fucking hell?

This is a severely fucked up state of affairs. Imagine I had a small business or wanted to run a porn server. Fuck, what if I want to watch porn?

I blame that fucked up, little, bald, four-eyed, snivelling, racist, cricket tragic, cunt John Howard for this - the fucking bushy-eyebrowed, spawn of Satan, fuck-monkey shit head.

What shits me is I can't get broadband by normal means, so I have to fork out more for wireless broadband or heaven forbid satellite broadband, which costs more than snorting cocaine off the right arse-cheek of a high-rent New York prostitute.

Am I eligible for a subsidy for these more expensive forms of broadband because the normal means are not available to me. Am I fuck! I would if I was a farmer though.

Farmers, fucking farmers, always fucking farmers get everything. Steve "God-bothering Cunt" Fielding blocked the luxury car tax not because it may have affected families who may have wanted to buy a safe, fuel efficient car, but because of farmers want a fucking top of the range Toyota Land Cruiser with leather seats, cruise control, GPS and in-seat DV-fucking-D from which to chuck hay at sheep. No mention of the family man who needs an expensive vehicle to ply his trade - no, like every other shit sack in Canberra he jumps on the rural bandwagon to suck the cock of whingeing farmers who get everything handed to them on silver cunt-soaked platter.

Next time a farmer whinges because Coles and Woolworths made him use their fruit crates, forced him pay for transport and demanded they fuck his wife, tell him to get in his luxury four-wheel drive and fuck off, along with those anti-pipeline and desalination-plant cunts. I've enough of you all, you country bastards.

So here I am on dial-up, waiting 10 minutes for Facebook to load just to see what shitful application my so-called friends demand I join. The Age web site takes ages to load its ads and Redtube is definitely out of the fucking question.

My life is shit and it's all Telstra's fault.

In the high-stakes broadband game, DOCSIS 3.0 has been an ace in the hole for the cable industry, and this year that card will be on the table as MSOs start to roll out faster broadband services by using DOCSIS 3.0’s wideband downstream channel bonding.

The DOCSIS 3.0 specification first came to light in August, 2006 when CableLabs outlined the methodology for downstream and upstream channel bonding, along with other features such as IPv6, IP multicasting and AES encryption.

DOCSIS 3.0 can achieve downstream speeds of up to 160 Mbps by bonding 6 MHz channels together (or in the case of Europe and some parts of Asia and Latin America, 8 MHz channels). DOCSIS upstream channel bonding can provide up to 120 Mbps of shared throughput for cable operators.

While there’s more to the DOCSIS 3.0 specification than just increased downstream speeds into customers’ homes, increased downstream speeds through wideband deployments allow cable operators to better compete against fiber-optic providers while providing a better service to subscribers.

source: cedmagazine.com

Global providers of telecommunications, cable, wireless and satellite services are unlocking the new and lucrative revenue stream provided by Video on Demand consumer services. Video on Demand service represents a new opportunity to monetize existing infrastructure, currently used for voice, data or broadcast services. Delivery of television, movies, media, advertising or other popular content to a set-top box through a broadband, wireless or satellite network connection also helps service providers round out their "triple-play" service offering, and to remain competitive in a rapidly evolving marketplace.

With the continued global growth of broadband access, Video on Demand services quickly follow. This revolutionary service transforms the viewer's experience by allowing not only "time shifting" - choosing when to watch (a la TiVo), but can also eliminate many of the regional, national or global limits of the traditional broadcast cable or satellite architecture. Video on Demand allows service providers to offer an endless array of specialty content to consumers who are willing to pay to watch what they want, when they want it.

Early experiments by content providers worldwide are clearly demonstrating that loyal fans are willing to pay premium prices to have early access to content (such as TV shows) or to download the content to mobile devices that allow the consumer to "place shift" to mobile devices (Apple Video iPod or Slingbox) that make Video on Demand content portable.

Additionally, Video on Demand services are empowering new revenue streams for service providers by allowing highly-targeted rich media advertising to be pre-positioned at the consumer device, delivering a precisely targeted advertising demographic based on consumer specific data. Service providers can also enhance recurring revenue by offering Personal Video Recorder services (PVR) and online game distribution and play services. Providers can use Video on Demand service to encourage consumers to upgrade to "premium" levels that provide fixed IP addresses, guaranteed bandwidth levels, and efficient access to their premium Video on Demand content.

While Video on Demand can be hugely successful, what challenges are involved in this market?

source: stratacache.com

While the conversation flitted from topic to topic, the main question they asked me was this: Can innovation survive against the backdrop of a broadband duopoly? Can we innovate when the plumbing of the network is controlled by only a handful of players, even when it comes to selling connections to corporations? Those are the very same questions that I have raised on numerous occasions, and you very well know that I am quite alarmed by new impositions such as silly bandwidth caps and attempts to do away with Net Neutrality.

The answer to that question isn't that simple. However, as I told Vinnie, the incumbents are fighting a losing battle. It is obvious that Comcast's 250 GB cap is a blatant attempt by the cable company to save its own video-on-demand franchise. It wants to make sure that video watchers buy video from Comcast (CMSCA), instead of Netflix (FLIX), Apple (APPL) or anyone else.

But Comcast has an indefensible position. Why? Because the innovators are going to figure out a way to beat those caps. Take Roku, which is making a special video player for Netflix. Tim Twerdhal, Roku’s VP of consumer products, told Chris Albrecht over on NewTeeVee, "We’ll be introducing same visual quality at lower bitrates in the future....There are lots of things going on with codecs and bitrates that make caps not as relevant as they may appear to be." What will Comcast or any other incumbent do then? Lower their bandwidth caps even further? In all likelihood that is how they are going to react -- a futile exercise, in my opinion.

Of course, you might have an entirely different opinion on the question. Will incumbents stifle innovation? Care to share with me?

I thought high speed Internet was available everywhere now, with services like Hughes DirecTV using satellite connections. This article proves me wrong.

A NEW STUDY says that many Americans are still using dial-up out of choice, not because they lack access to broadband services.

The findings, from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, contradict the idea that broadband providers should offer service to more areas to meet demand.

Thirty-five percent of dial-up users say they prefer it because of the lower price. Nineteen percent say that nothing could persuade them to upgrade. Only 14 percent say they are stuck with the older, slower service because of a lack of broadband availability.

The study shows, however, that lack of availability is still a problem in rural areas, where 24 percent of dial-up users say they would upgrade if they could. Only 11 percent of those in the suburbs and 3 percent of those in urban areas say they would upgrade.

The poll found that 55 percent of American adults use broadband at home, an increase from 47 percent a year ago. Only 10 percent of Americans use dial-up.

About a third of Americans with no Internet access say they have no interest in logging on at any speed. About 20 percent of non-users had Internet access but dropped it.

Computer Shopper, September 2008

Hughesnet Sucks

Yeah, maybe that's blunt, but if you were ever curious about it, don't be, I can quell your curiosity. I spsent like 400 bucks up front for all the equipment. There is an option where you pay for it over time as part as your monthly payment, but I thought what the heck, and paid for it up front. At first, as a chronic dailup user, I was thrilled with the speed, but then I found out something that they don't mention in their commercials. They call it their Fair Access Policy (FAP). What that means is that if you buy their cheapest access plan, which is by no means cheap at 60 bucks a month, you are limited to 250 MEG upload/download bandwidth in a 24 hour period, and that's it.

As little as five years ago, that would've been a fairly generous plan because high speed was just coming into its own and becoming affordable for people who used to pay 30 bucks a month to AOL for dialup access. But today, when programs are downloaded from the Internet and can be huge files, some even close to the 250 MEG cap, then their access policy is anything but fair. That's not even counting if you'd like to buy a movie download from Netflix. That flatout ain't happening. It's like their view of the Internet is a decade out of step with reality.

Hughesnet does have a free zone where you can download to your heart's content, that is if you are up between the hours of 3 and 6 AM, but they're also careful to point out they can't guarantee connection speeds at those hours. Now imagine a household with three computers hooked via router on that stingy plan and you can see how easy it is to acceed that limit within a couple of hours. So, what happens when you dare to acceed the FAP? Well, they punish you and cut you back to what they say is dialup speed. As a lifelong member of the dialup community, let me tell you, even in the 1990s I never experienced dialup speed as slow as what Hughesnet punishes its customers with.

You can always upgrade to the next highest plan, i.e. start spending twice what it costs to have cable broadband and they'll give you a 100 or 150 more MEGS to tease out that FAP demon, but alas, it still happens and suddenly a download that would've taken ten minutes will take ten hours.

Bottom line? If you want to pay twice as much as cable and three times as much as AOL and you live alone and only surf the net, answer email and never go to youtube, or download programs, software, games, TV shows or movies, Hughesnet is the connection plan of yor dreams.

I found myself at the master's thesis of Fred Benenson -- a VoIP-based program called Cause Caller that mixes IP telephony and activism. At the site you can enter your telephone number and Cause Caller makes a VoIP call to one of a randomized list of Congressional reps. So far 11 people have made calls on behalf of the Google campaign, which is exactly where things stood on Tuesday when Google provided the link. On the site Benenson said he funds the project himself, so I wondered if an influx of Google calls might bankrupt him, or if Google had volunteered to help offset costs.

Apparently the answer to both is no, and since few calls have been made so far, Benenson may not have to worry. So far Benenson says his most expensive cause has been an effort to impeach President George W. Bush that generated 1,000 calls, but also says he pays less than 3 cents a minute for VoIP and uses Amazon's EC2 for his servers and Asterisk for the PBX. The EC2 is the most expensive part of the project, which in total has cost him about $500 so far. Benenson has a day job at Creative Commons, so he's not looking for a revenue model, and says he doesn't mind footing the bill so far.

"I keep it alive because it's a fun hobby," Benenson says. "I basically did the whole site by myself from the design to the VoIP programming, so I kind of took a long hiatus, but now I'm ramping up and starting to blog about it again. The Google notice is like a shot in the arm."

Cause Caller strikes me as one of the more interesting ways that technology can intersect with politics, with the potential to make a greater impact than emailing petitions and encouraging voter engagement by texting a candidate's running-mate announcement.

Hasil test speed di www.cbn.net.id tidak pernah kelar malam ini menggunakan Broom saya. Saya coba test speed pada www.speedtest.net juga tidak mau jalan hingga nunggu 5 menit akhirnya saya close Firefox saya. Jadi curiga sama browser saya atau laptop saya neh, kok parah amat tidak ada yang mau jalan. Membuka blog aja setengah jalan.

Ditunggu sekitar 5 menit tidak mau jalan-jalan itu speedo meternya. Ada apa gerangan?

Akhirnya berbekal punya account server di kantor, coba-coba menggunakan ssh tunnel untuk sock proxy pada firefox, How-to nya bisa di lihat di . Login server, pasang proxy, wuzzzz mau jalan browsing semuanya. Test speed jalan walaupun jadi timbul tanda tanya lagi dah. But, ya sutralah, kain sutra mahal hargannya.

Kecurigaan terhadap signal HSDPA jadi surut atas berhasilnya menggunakan ssh tunnel sebagai sock proxy. Lalu apa dong masalahnya? Sepertinya ada permasalahan dengan besarnya paket yang lewat kali yah. Atau link wireless yang bikin congest?

Hasil menggunakan sock proxy bikin ketawa, upload speed bisa 3x lebih cepat daripada download speed. Enaknya bikin webhosting aja nih. Masak iya mo bikin webhosting pake IM2 Broom?

Something wrong deh ih. Akhirnya HSDPA saya matikan dan sementara pake Firstmedia dulu untuk melakukan komperasi. Yess! problem pada koneksi IM2 Broom malam ini. My laptop and my web browser fine-fine aja.

Ada yang bernasib sama malam ini?

This may sound like a ploy to charge its customers overage fees, but the truth is that the vast number of broadband internet surfers only use about 3 GB. Comcast states that 99% of their customers stay well below that limit.

Read the full story at TMCnet.com. You can also read Comcast's Terms of Service.

Both cable TV and telephone companies are using HFC in new and upgraded networks and, in some cases, sharing the same infrastructure to carry both video and voice conversations in the same system. Scientific Atlanta lists four reasons why cable TV and telephone companies are upgrading facilities to HFC:

1) The use of fiber optic cable for the backbone paths allows more data to be carried than coaxial cable alone.

2) The higher bandwidth supports reverse paths for interactive data flowing back from the user.

3) That portion of the infrastructure with fiber optic cable is more reliable than coaxial cable. Reliability is perceived as more important in an interactive environment.

4) Fiber optic cable is more efficient for interconnecting cable TV or phone companies that are consolidating with geographically adjacent companies.

source: searchnetworking.techtarget.com

http://www.itpro.co.uk/605733/group-test-mobile-broadband

IT Pro magazine has reviewed the options for mobile broadband in the UK. To save you reading the article, Vodafone comes out on top.

Personally, I have also had success with Three mobile broadband, in fact I currently have a small business running their office over a shared Three mobile connection, as they were unable to get ADSL broadband.

Some people are now choosing mobile broadband as their main broadband connection at home, although the connection is still not as smooth as ADSL, and is probably not the best option if you need to share your connection with other people.

Whether it's an external cloud such as those offered by Amazon.com or an internal cloud operated by a Wall Street investment bank, connecting the applications running on those pools of compute power to the employees using them is going to be an integral part of a company's wide area network, or WAN. And that has venture firms taking a fresh look at an already mature industry known as WAN optimization.

There's nothing terribly exciting about making sure the pipeline that delivers applications between various corporate branch offices and data centers keeps moving and the software gets delivered as quickly as possible, but it's a multibillion-dollar area of spending for corporations intent on squeezing every bit of efficiency from their broadband connections. Players in the WAN optimization market include Riverbed, BlueCoat, and Packeteer, which BlueCoat agreed to buy back in April, as well as Citrix, Cisco and Juniper.

Despite the relative maturity of the market, venture dollars are still coming in, with two fundings in August alone. On Aug. 18, Ipanema Systems, whose tactic of selling to service providers could be used to offer WAN optimization to providers of computing clouds, said it raised $7 million from Noble Ventures. About a week later, Expand Networks said it raised $8.5 million from Intel Capital, one of several rounds of funding the company has raised since its 1998 formation. On Wednesday, Expand purchased software provider NetPriva, a move that will deepen Expand's visibility into data networks.

Both Expand and Ipanema are smaller players, says Tracy Corbo, an analyst with Gartner. She says these firms have niche products but aren't likely to take a lot of market share away from the existing vendors. Meanwhile, there is also venture interest in creating and finding startups that might use the building blocks of WAN optimization as a launchpad for better cloud utilization and pricing. As Ryan Floyd, a general partner with Storm Ventures, says, "There are opportunities in this space for connecting two types of compute clouds and using WAN optimization to ensure reliability so outages don't happen."

What's so interesting for venture firms (and eventual corporate customers) is the type of knowledge some WAN optimization startups have on hand. That visibility into a network and the servers running applications make it possible to track the delivery of cloud-based services and offer service-level agreements. Many offer compression that could reduce the costs of delivering data from a cloud. For consumers it means Twitter may become more reliable while for corporate users, it means one less strike against cloud computing. It's also why Expand bought NetPriva and why David Asprey is starting a new company called Cloud Nines.

Asprey plans to launch within six months and doesn't yet have venture backers, but as a veteran of Citrix, Akamai and Exodus, he's familiar with some of the problems facing cloud providers. "The reason people care so much about WAN optimization now is that cloud computing is coming up, and clouds remove the barriers and policies an IT department has in place. So now visibility of the network traffic has become very important," Asprey says.

Being able to measure the availability and costs associated with delivering every byte of data will benefit corporate users, but it should help the providers of clouds squeeze the lowest costs and most utilization out of their networks as well. Google has talked about such network-aware pricing, as have other service providers. Given that providing the basic pools of servers that comprise a computing cloud is a fairly low-margin business, finding pricing models that can take into account cheaper routes for data is a compelling way to shave costs.

Since you have to be able to see the network -- a capability some of these WAN optimization firms have -- in order to determine the best way to traverse it, expect older players to try to enhance their visibility across the network and newer players to try to usurp their dominance with a cloud-specific model.

This article was also published on BusinessWeek.com.

But first, like in any courtroom drama, there are a lot of procedures to get through. First, since other groups are appealing the FCC order in three different circuit courts around the country (mostly for letting Comcast off too lightly), the courts will hold a lottery to determine which circuit court gets to hear a consolidated appeal. Then that court will set up a pleading schedule and the parties will make their arguments. Getting to the arguments could take months.

Judging by its previous filings with the FCC, Comcast will likely argue two main things: One, that the whole process was invalid because the terms of the complaint shifted midway through the proceeding; and two, that if the FCC wants to implement and enforce some sort of "reasonable network management practice," it needs to do so with a formal rule-making process.

In those earlier filings with the FCC, Comcast argued that the Free Press, which originally filed a complaint against the ISP last fall, asked the commission to investigate Comcast based on a previous FCC policy statement. The FCC started the investigation, but later in the game the Free Press changed its terms, prompting the FCC to investigate Comcast under a section of the Communications Act. The Free Press says it was using shorthand in its first filing, but when it comes to lawyers, shorthand is no excuse. Anyhow, Comcast argues that even if the terms didn't matter the FCC still overstepped its bounds.

In a later filing, Comcast went to great lengths to explain how the FCC overstepped its bounds. In particular, it said that unless the commission sets up a formal rule-making proceeding (which Comcast is happy to be a part of), the FCC can't just turn around and admonish Comcast for throttling traffic because at the time, there wasn't a rule against it.

In the same filing, Comcast belittled the Free Press and anyone silly enough to want some form of FCC rule-making to protect consumers from overzealous network management. Comcast offered a series of slippery slope arguments about how making the FCC judge network management practices would lead to micromanagement by the agency, and fear on the part of ISPs to make investments in their networks if the FCC didn't like the ISP's methods. Comcast also argued that, as an Internet provider, it should be free of federal regulation.

As if we're not already feeling a little sullied by the entire argument -- after all, Comcast did throttle P2P traffic while not telling consumers -- Comcast thumbed its nose at the proceeding by pointing out that during the two financial quarters that the FCC investigation took place (along with all the negative publicity), Comcast added nearly 1 million high-speed Internet customers. Sometimes the market doesn't give a damn about the spirit of the law.

The former adware company said this morning that its deal with BT is going ahead, while its deals with Virgin Media and TalkTalk will proceed later. From its filing with the AIM market on the London Stock Exchange:

Since that time, the Company has been working closely with BT to prepare its network for a trial. Whilst this has taken longer than originally anticipated, significant and accelerating progress has been made. The trial will commence as soon as these preparations are complete.

In addition, Phorm expects that Virgin Media and TalkTalk will commence consumer trials in due course. Following successful completion of these trials and an appropriate planning period, it is currently expected that Phorm's platform will be rolled out across these networks.

It's hardly a ringing endorsement of the firm's success (and looks a lot like NebuAd's statements when Congress initially started sniffing around its deals), but spokeswoman Stephanie Willerton said Phorm still plans to pursue ISP customers both in the UK and in the U.S. It has a New York office, which it opened earlier this year with an eye to North American expansion plans. Willerton also said the company has adapted its technology to address privacy fears, referring me to the opt-in page on the Phorm web site to learn more.

But the proposed opt-in plan suffers from some of the same problem's NebuAd's system did -- namely that you opt out once on a machine, that the opt-out is only targeted at the machine, not the person. If I visit other computers that have been opted in, I'm still being tracked. Willerton didn't dispute this but said that once someone opts out, Phorm doesn't track anything further.

Despite the British government's assurances of legality, the European Union hasn't been as impressed and is asking its own questions as to how legal the Phorm web tracking is. Additionally, since Phorm still plans to market its services in the U.S. (currently is says it has no U.S. customers), Congress may have to be appeased as well. Meanwhile, BT customers should prepare for more scrutiny on their surfing habits, especially once "significant and accelerating progress has been made."

This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. Comcast was going to appeal. Moreover, FCC's order was legally toothless. Nevertheless, it did get the point across, though it doesn't chastise other carriers for indulging similar behavior. Comcast has released the following statement attributed to David L. Cohen, Executive Vice President of Comcast Corporation:

Although we are seeking review and reversal of the Commission’s network management order in federal court, we intend to comply fully with the requirements established in that order, which essentially codify the voluntary commitments that we have already announced, and to continue to act in accord with the Commission’s Internet Policy Statement. Thus, we intend to make the required filings and disclosures, and we will follow through on our longstanding commitment to transition to protocol-agnostic network congestion management practices by the end of this year. We also remain committed to bringing our customers a superior Internet experience.

We filed this appeal in order to protect our legal rights and to challenge the basis on which the Commission found that Comcast violated federal policy in the absence of pre-existing legally enforceable standards or rules. We continue to recognize that the Commission has jurisdiction over Internet service providers and may regulate them in appropriate circumstances and in accordance with appropriate procedures. However, we are compelled to appeal because we strongly believe that, in this particular case, the Commission's action was legally inappropriate and its findings were not justified by the record

Update: Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press, the organization that filed the original complaint against Comcast last fall, calls for Congress to get involved while Comcast's appeal wends its way through the court system:

"Presented with an open-and-shut case that Comcast was secretly blocking Internet traffic, the FCC took action on behalf of Internet users everywhere. All the FCC required was for Comcast to disclose the details of its secret blocking and tell the FCC how it will end this harmful practice.

"The future of the Internet is too important to let Comcast tie it up in legal limbo. Congress should act now to pass Net Neutrality laws that clear up any uncertainty once and for all."

You can read the actual filings and related documents by clicking on these links.

Once big reason for the upgrades at the core is the increase in fiber and other fat pipes closer to the consumers -- in some cases directly to the home. Philippe Morin, president for Metro Ethernet Networks at Nortel, points out that those links are driving innovation and services such as HD video, which are prompting providers to upgrade their core networks.

Bell Canada and Alaska Communications join 21 other carriers that have taken up Nortel's 40 G equipment since it was launched in April. Nortel competitors Ciena and Cisco are also gaining customers for long-haul equipment, but despite a brighter outlook for such sales, the low margins associated with the products won't help Nortel's troubled financials. Wall Street certainly isn't impressed -- Nortel's stock has been trading below its $3.1 billion in cash (as of the end of June) several times in the last month.

"In addition to existing customer-specific challenges, we have recently begun to experience order delays from many of our Tier One service provider customers, which we attribute to their guarded approach to capital expenditures given the uncertain macroeconomic environment. While we've seen no project or order cancellations, sales cycles are lengthening and some deployments are slowing."

Yesterday Qualcomm sent lower the shares of fellow chip maker Texas Instruments, as well as those of handset maker Nokia, after Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs said the replacement cycle for cell phones in developed countries was lengthening. If phone sales drop, chipmakers, handset makers from Motorola to Samsung, and carriers will lose. Worries from the carriers will also affect Ciena's competitors, among them Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent and the troubled Nortel, which has been trading below its cash value intermittently throughout the last month.

Preparations for a downturn began earlier this year at Cisco, but it still reported record-breaking sales for its second quarter earlier this month, and CEO John Chambers said any economic downturn would be short lived. However, it did lower its revenue forecasts slightly for the second half of the year. With consumers tightening their belts, an industry that has grown to rely more heavily on the Average Jane and Joe forking over money for the latest gadget might find themselves doing a little belt-tightening of its own.

A complementary article posted earlier on Lirneasia's site itself points to an approach by Vint Cerf that provides useful food for thought on the Net Neutrality debate. Cerf's agrees that broadband networks need to be managed, but he differs with Chanuka (and perhaps Lirneasia) on how. As opposed to usage based billing, Cerf proposes a transmission rate cap where users can "purchase access to the Internet at a given minimum data rate and be free to transfer data at at least up to that rate in any way they wish." (Cerf's original post on Google which fleshes this idea out can be read here). 

My concern here is with the appropriation of the Net Neutrality debate by ISPs - both State and Private - under repressive regimes to covertly clamp down on communications used by human rights defenders and peace activists. 

For example, I have been reliably told, though not verified, that a well-known ISP in Sri Lanka (not SLT) is blocking P2P traffic, including Skype. This creates significant problems for some HR org's and activists on it who use Skype to communicate and collaborate securely. Ironically, some actually switched over to this ISP from SLT because they thought it afforded greater security and Quality of Service. EFF's Switzerland tool, if Lirneasia or any other organisation ever get around to using it in SL, may offer some insight in this regard.

The point is quite simply this - net neutrality is not just about the minimum or maximum transmission rates, but about the way IP packets on a broadband pipe are managed. If ISPs, under their own misguided policies or those covertly imposed by a repressive regime begin to selectively prioritise and monitor traffic on their networks, it forces those who use the Internet for highly sensitive communications and advocacy to re-think the tools and services they access, and how. And sometimes, there's no other option for tools used by HR defenders - as in the case of Skype. Despite recent concerns over privacy, there is no other encrypted, free and widely used VOIP tool. And once you start going down this path, it soon becomes clear that traffic discrimination can selectively target other tools, web services and platforms used by HR defenders against a regime to capture, generate, disseminate and archive inconvenient truths - such as human rights abuses. This includes video streaming sites like YouTube.

A final word on economics. As Ars Technica notes,

As unattended apps like P2P and network backup utilities tie up a portion of bandwidth for ever longer periods of time, the old solutions aren't working as well and congestion is one result. Cerf's idea would take us back to the old "circuit-switched" days in the sense that each Internet user would instead get a guaranteed line with a minimum guaranteed rate at all times. This would answer consumer complaints about "not getting what I paid for," but would cost ISPs more cash.

Emphasis mine. Lirneasia's research in Sri Lanka suggest deplorable QoS across all "broadband" ISPs. Not a single ISP in Sri Lanka guarantees minimum transmission speeds and often advertise speeds that paying customers simply don't get, or even come close to. Convincing them to upgrade their networks to go down the path Cerf suggest may be impossible, given how enticing the economics of a metered data transmission model looks and sounds, on paper. 

The problem of course is that this doesn't address the problem of pissant data rates for all. A pay-for-megabyte model will see that though the heaviest users pay up (corporate consumers) and the economic disincentive for individuals to become high volume users will simply not be enough to improve transmission speeds (particularly if, as I suspect, our ISPs will do little or nothing to improve network capacity). The net result will quite simply be more or less the same old, glacial data transfer rates which will anger even more those who can are willing to pay more (like myself) for better connectivity. 

There's one ISP in the UK offering something I've not seen anywhere else - a meaningful IP traffic prioritisation / management plan. It's from Plusnet. Check it out here. Their explanation uses the same metaphor as Chanuka uses in his Lirneasia post,

Think of it this way, the broadband network is like a motorway. When the traffic is light, all vehicles can move at the national speed-limit. Some lanes of the motorway have been reserved for important traffic, such as buses or emergency vehicles. During rush hour, most vehicles are forced to slow down. However, the traffic on the reserved lanes can continue to travel at their full speed.

Google itself has promised a tool that helps end-users / consumers to see how ISPs manage traffic. No date for the release of the tool, but a more user friendly Switzerland or Google's tool would be a huge asset for those of us who use the Internet for peacebuilding and ODR, if only to see which ISP we should avoid.

Update - 5 September 2008

Comcast, the cable operator and ISP in the US at the centre of the Net Neutrality debate, has sued the FCC over a decision it made on Comcast's network management techniques. Ars Technica has the story here.

I'm also wondering if anyone reading this has ever had a problem with the site. I can't recall one time that it ever failed to load for me. Being someone who works in an internet-related field, I appreciate the simple design of the site. I do think they could improve on their search functionality, however.