1999 Cisco White Paper - Controlling the Traffic

Cisco 1999 White Paper:

Controlling Your Network - A Must for Cable Operators

Executive Overview

This white paper describes how multiple systems operators (MSOs) can control the traffic on their multiservice network to ensure that their users receive consistently high levels of service. In addition, it discusses how to prevent outside content providers from disrupting the cable network by delivering broadband content without authorization granted by the MSO.

The Opportunities for MSOs

Today, the volume of networked data traffic has bypasses that of voice traffic, and the demand for data access is still climbing steadily for both business and residential subscribers. The demand for high-bandwidth video access is beginning to undergo a similar upswing. Further, there is a strong subscriber interest in bundled data, voice, and video services offered by a single provider. MSOs are in an excellent position to take advantage of these unprecedented revenue opportunities.

Such a move requires being able to deliver data, voice, and video to all your subscribers through a single converged network of integrated components designed for this type of service deployment - an Internet Protocol (IP) network.

A converged network delivers substantial benefits, such as resource sharing not only of bandwidth, but also of capital expenditure, operational costs, and training. A converged network gives you the freedom to offer bundles of data, voice, and video services, and today you can offer these services with new confidence in your abilities to control service quality.

And today you can do this with new confidence in your abilities to deliver service quality.

For example, converged network enables you to create "virtual" networks to ensure that different types of traffic do not interfere with each other. You get the advantages of a converged network with the service-delivery confidence of separate networks - but without the gross inefficiencies and future-limiting isolation of separate networks.

Cisco Systems and its strategic partners have made a no-compromise commitment to delivering end-to-end, carrier-class, high-bandwidth IP networks to meet these New World opportunities.

Elements of a Multiservice Cable Network

New World IP networks are the most advanced, flexible, and cost-efficient solution available for delivering data, voice, and video over cable - the types of services your customers want. New World networks are also designed to leverage the common infrastructure you already have to optimize your time to market and profitability in developing, deploying, billing, maintaining, and expanding services over time.

Achieving these cost and quality efficiencies has been possible only by ensuring a high degree of intelligence in the network itself close to the cable plant, where bandwidth control is extremely valuable and efficient. Thus Cisco implemented the cable modem termination shelf (CMTS) of the converged network as a full router (the first qualified DOCSIS-compliant headend router in the industry), designed specifically to control quality-of-service (QoS) issues directly at the cable plant. The level of control and quality assurance available through a Cisco converged network is unparalleled.

The full Cisco cable solution is built on the industry's broadest, most widely accepted foundation of integrated components:

· Cisco IOS software
· Data-over-Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIC) industry protocols
· Dynamic packet transport (DPT) products that redefine metropolitan-area network (MAN) architectures for high-bandwidth, resilient fiber rings optimized to carry large and rapidly growing volumes of packet traffic
· Cisco gibabit switch routers (GSRs) that perform Internet switching and routing at 155 and 622 Mbps
· Cisco universal broadband router (uBR) family for a cost-effective, scalable, and a feature-rich interface between the backbone network and subscriber cable modems
· Cable access routers (uBR 900 series) for all the components needing to build a secure virtual private network (VPN) and as an interface between the MSO's network and subscriber's personal computer
· Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) for the quality, stability, and functionality
necessary for carrier-class, real-time IP communications services
· Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) wide-area network (WAN) connections and management software

Cable operators are successfully using these solutions as a common infrastructure to achieve economies of scale and attract millions of new subscribers from the dialup world today.

The question is, will they be able to maintain control of their networks and content in the face of accelerating growth and competition?

Minimizing the Risk of Adoption

Some MSOs are hesitant to deploy IP-based networks because they fear that they will not be able to control them. They are concerned that other content providers will flood their network with bandwidth-hogging services, particularly video, making it difficult to maintain a balanced, high-quality service delivery for all subscribers.

Sustained service quality over the long term requires IP network control, being able to intelligently segment and manage resources by user type, service, destination, or application so that delivery quality does not suffer with growth or the addition of new services. That is the job of Cisco IOS QoS.

Cisco QoS has made it easy and safe to deploy increasingly rich new services across a common infrastructure while preventing these services from impacting each other in negative ways.

Today, video over IP is just another content-distribution opportunity that does not have to disrupt the quality of your other services. At the same time, video offers considerable potential for revenue growth for MSOs serving as content aggregators and distributors.

Suddenly, Bandwidth Is Here

Until very recently, almost all users accessed the Internet via 28.8K or 56K modems at best, and the demand for streaming media, especially video, was low. The relative popularity of video over the Internet was off to a very slow start, because of the choke point at the subscriber's computer - the dialup modem.

However, with the contagious popularity of cable modems among today's users, demand for video over IP is growing fast, and so is the supply of content to fulfill the demand. Media players are accelerating this appeal. More Internet sites are offering video as a primary attraction. And Web advertisers are discovering the value of engaging viewers through the lively interactivity of rich media instead of static Web banners.

As a result, a broad diversity of video content is becoming available to growing numbers of cable modem users, and the Internet backbone itself is becoming the new choke point. However, as a cable operator, your service offering does not have to be compromised, and you are in an excellent position to profit from the trend.

Absolute QoS Control Is Here Too

Early fears of losing network and content control to service providers within the network were founded in fact. Multiple service delivery over IP networks brings with it an inherent problem: How do these multiple services - packetized voice, streaming media,Web browsing, database access, and e-mail - coexist without competing with each other for bandwidth?

Cisco QoS has solved the problem by putting absolute control, down to the packet, in your hands.

The role of QoS is that of providing ways to prioritize the relative need for
bandwidth of each service in response to the overall flow of network traffic at any given moment.

The ability to prioritize and control traffic level is a distinguishing factor and critical difference between New World networks employing Internet technologies and "the Internet."

But beyond that, new, advanced QoS techniques give you the means to maximize revenue generated through bandwidth capacity by providing the highest quality for your most valuable services.

Four-Way Network and User Control The QoS available for New World networks can ensure that you have control of all service events on the network by four general means:

· Network engineering
· Traffic-type identification
· Admission control and policing
· Preferential queuing

Network engineering is fine-tuned methodology of specifying and predicting the link bandwidths required in each segment of your network based on the services you want to offer. If, for example, as a cable operator, you want to generate additional revenue as a telephony service provider, network engineering is the first step to deciding how much bandwidth you will need for the minimum levels of service for a given number of potential subscribers. Cisco has resources to help cable operators calculate capacity requirements and return on investment based on your particular regional mix of target
subscribers thorough [sic] an economic analysis of the opportunity.

Next, traffic-type identification allows you to isolate different traffic types in your IP network. Through Cisco QoS, you can identify each traffic type - Web, e-mail, voice, video. Tools such as type-of-service (ToS) bits identification allow you to isolate network traffic by the type of application, even down to specific brands, by the interface used, by the user type and individual user identification, or by the site address.

Admission control and policing is the way you develop and enforce traffic policies. These controls allow you to limit the amount of traffic coming into the network with policy-based decisions on whether the network can support the requirements of an incomingapplication. Additionally, you are able to police or monitor each admitted application to ensure that it honors its allocated bandwidth reservation.

Preferential queuing gives you the ability to specify packet types - Web, e-mail, voice, video - and create policies for the way they are prioritized and handled. For example, although voice and video traffic are intolerant of delays and drops, you still might want to ensure that lower-priority residential Web browsing is allocated enough bandwidth to deliver an acceptable level of service during peak usage.

Ensuring Cooperation between the Network Edge and the Backbone

The ability to flexibly and effectively scale usage between millions of subscribers and thousands of network node elements requires cooperation between the network edge at the user end and the backbone at the core pipes. The Cisco uBR7200 CMTS products, which work with any type of DOCSIS-based cable modems, are the key to obtaining the QoS that lets you specify, coordinate, and enforce policies that can operate across your entire network from the backbone to the edge.

Cisco QoS distributes functionality and control uniformly between the edge and the backbone of the network, thus allowing for wide-scale deployments of network services while concurrently providing backbone scalability to meet extremely high packet throughput requirements (see Figure1).

Edge function control allows you to deal with each subscriber as an individual entity, assigning access authorizations, bandwidth allocations, and security filters for each address. Edge function processing thus off-loads the backbone from the overhead of processing user assignments in real time. Instead, the backbone is allowed to switch and transport packets at full speed based on header information independent of the specific users that make up the traffic.

(Figure 1 Omitted)

In addition, the backbone is empowered to enforce higher-level QoS policies, such as overall bandwidth contention between voice and video traffic, as well as QoS internetworking - coordinating gateway specifications between backbone providers, for instance, Spring and UUNet.

Cisco IOS software and QoS enable service providers to distribute network functionality and responsibility between edge functions and backbone functions. This distribution of functionality enables simultaneous performance and services scalability. At the edge of the network, Internet service providers (ISPs) gain the capability to flexibly:

· Specify policies that establish traffic classes and service levels
· Specify policies that define how network resources are allocated and controlled to handle these traffic classes
· Efficiently map packets into the traffic classes
· Apply policies and "high-touch" services to meet customer application and
security requirements
· Collect and export detailed measurements concerning network traffic and service resource utilization

In the backbone of the network, Cisco IOS software, QoS, and supporting technologies provide the capabilities to:

· Scale the network to provide extremely high capacity, performance, and reliability
· Provide policy administration and enforcement
· Provide streamlined queuing and congestion management

In the backbone, Cisco IOS software and QoS provide the capability to effectively control, manage, and scale the high-bandwidth network necessary to handle the demands of Internet traffic growth while meeting the QoS requirements of business and consumer applications. Cisco IOS software, QoS, and supporting technologies deliver backbone functionality focused on extremely high throughput and capacity scalability as well as policy administration and enforcement. The backbone is relieved of the responsibility of implementing high-touch services on high-speed interfaces, thus contributing to the reliability and stability of the network.

QoS Control Mechanisms

Caching Is the Relief Valve

Caching is the cost-effective and widely popular method of storing frequently accessed Web content regionally, near the users, to off-load the backbone of duplicated, same-page traffic. Whether it's Web-page caching or the newer streaming-media caching, the idea is the same. Both are effective ways to optimize the bandwidth of the backbone by moving some of the content to the edge of the network in stored caching servers.

As a leader in the caching market, Cisco created the Web Cache Communication Protocol (WCCP) to allow Cisco Cache Engines and other cache products to communicate with Cisco routers. WCCP, built into a wide variety of the Cisco IOS-based networking products, enables the transparent, scalable, and secure introduction of caching technology into networks.

Selectively Limited Access Rates Committed access rate (CAR) is an edge-focused QoS mechanism provided by selected Cisco IOS-based network devices. The controlled-access rate capabilities of CAR allow you to specify the user access speed of any given packet by allocating the bandwidth it receives, depending on its IP address, application, precedence, port, or even Media Access Control (MAC) address.

For example, if a "push" information service that delivers frequent broadcasts to its subscribers is seen as causing a high amount of undesirable network traffic, you can direct CAR to limit subscriber-access speed to this service. You could restrict the incoming push broadcasts as well as subscribers' outgoing access to the push information site to discourage its use. Atthe same time, you could promote and offer your own or partner's services with full-speed features to encourage adoption of your services, while increasing network efficiency.

CAR also lets you discourage the subscriber practice of bypassing Web caches. It gives you the ability to increase the efficiency of your network by allocating high bandwidth to video and rich media coming from a Web-cached source and low bandwidth to the same content coming from an uncached source.

Further, you could specify that video coming from internal servers receives precedence and broader bandwidth over video sourced from external servers.

With CAR, the choice is yours, and it's easy to make constant revisions and adjustments as traffic patterns shift.

NetFlow Switching for Added Revenue

NetFlow Switching provides high performance for network-layer services and fine-grained data collection at the edge of the network. It also puts a host of Cisco IOS network services such as security and traffic accounting under your control.

NetFlow exports extensive flow-by-flow measurements for collection, postprocessing, and usage by accounting and billing, network planning, and network monitoring. The data collected for each flow includes the following:

· Source and destination IP address
· Start-of-flow and end-of-flow timestamps
· Packet and byte counts
· Next-hop router address
· Input and output physical port interfaces
· Source and destination Transmission Control Protocol/User Datagram Protocol (TCP/UDP) port numbers
· IP protocol type
· Type-of-service field
· TCP flags
· Source and destination autonomous system numbers
· Source and destination subnet masks

This highly granular NetFlow data serves as a key metering mechanism for introducing and monitoring differential service charges based on parameters such as time of day, class of service, application usage, or traffic usage.

IP Precedence for Traffic Classification

IP Precedence provides the capability to partition traffic at the edge into multiple classes of service. In fact, it lets network operators define up to six separate classes of service and employ extended access control lists (ACLs) to define network policies in terms of congestion handling and bandwidth for each class.

The IP Precedence feature uses the three precedence bits in the ToS field appearing in the IP header to specify a class of service for each packet. This scenario provides considerable flexibility for precedence assignments, including customer assignments (for example, by application or access router) and network assignments (for example, by IP or MAC address, physical port, or application).

It can act either in passive mode (accepting precedence assigned by the customer) or in active mode utilizing defined policies to either set or override the precedence assignment. IP Precedence can also be mapped into adjacent technologies-such as Tag Switiching, Frame Relay, or ATM-to deliver end-to-end QoS policies across a heterogenous network environment.

Reserving Bandwidth

An important protocol is Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP), Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) RFC 2205, which can provide bandwidth "reservations" in the regional and HFC cable networks. Devices that send video over the backbone can use RSVP to signal the bandwidth and QoS requirements to the network, which will then either allocate the bandwidth along the path, or signal that inadequate capacity exists. For example, when delivering a high-bit rate video signal over an IP network that should not
be interrupted, RSVP can be used to set up a "circuit" over the IP network that guarantees bandwidth will be available for the entire video transmission. A primary feature of RSVP is its broad scalability, especially in multicast environments.

Token Bucket Measurement

Bursty traffic can affect the QoS of all traffic on the network by introducing inconsistent latency, also known as "jitter." This jitter can cause problems for some applications, such as desktop vidoeconferencing and high-speed video servers. Cisco offers a popular method of curbing sudden bandwidth-hogging spikes of large traffic, known as bursts, at the backbone through a technique known as token bucket measurement. Conceptually, this technique of burst control is illustrated by a continuous, but regulated, stream of tokens spilling into a bucket. As network packets pass by the token bucket, each packet must pick up a single token to "conform," or move forward in the network. The flow of tokens into the bucket is controlled by your burst-control policies, such as "allow bursts of 500 kbps for no more than ten seconds."

When a policy-busting burst of traffic arrives at the bucket, individual packets are allowed to pass as long as the supply of tokens in the bucket is available. When the burst of packets depletes the momentary token supply, those packets left sitting without tokens are considered "out of policy," exceeding the burst rate. Their fate depends entirely on your prespecified configurable action polices. You can specify either that packets without tokens must wait until more tokens are fed into the bucket, indicating refreshed bandwidth availability, or that they can proceed optionally at a low-bandwidth level. This
way, you can color (set precedence) or recolor (modify existing packet precedence) for each nonconforming packet. You can even drop the packets altogether. The choice and the control is entirely yours.

Preferential Queuing Backed by Weighted Fair Queing

Another backbone-based control capability offered by Cisco QoS is the combination of preferential queuing (PQ) and weighted fair queuing (WFQ).

PQ ensures that important traffic gets the fastest handling at each point where it is used. Because it was designed to give strict priority to important traffic, PQ can flexibly prioritize according to network protocol, incoming interface, packet size, source, or destination address.

In PQ, each packet is placed in one of four queues-economy, standard, medium, or premium. Packets that are not classified by this priority-list mechanism fall into the medium queue. During transmission, the PQ algorithm gives higher-priority queues absolute preferential treatment over low-priority queues. This approach is simple and intuitive, but it can transfer queuing delays from higher-priority traffic to the lower-priority traffic, increasing jitter on the lower-priority traffic. Higher-priority traffic can be
rate limited to avoid this problem.

WFQ, on the other hand, adds the capability to provide expeditious handling for high-priority traffic requiring low delay while, fairly sharing the remaining bandwidth between lower-priority traffic sources: WFQ divides link traffic into high-priority and low-priority flows (based on metrics including IP Precedence and traffic volume). High-priority flows receive immediate handling, whereas low-priority flows are interleaved and receive proportionate shares of the remaining bandwidth.

Random Early Detection for Congestion Management

Random early detection (RED) gives you the ability to flexibly specify traffic-handling policies to maximize throughput under congestion conditions. RED helps you intelligently avoid network congestion by implementing algorithms that provide a host of protections, including the ability to:

· Distinguish between acceptable temporary traffic bursts and excessive bursts likely to swamp network resources
· Work cooperatively with traffic sources to avoid TCP slow-start oscillation, which can create periodic waves of network congestion
· Provide fair bandwidth reduction to reduce traffic sources in proportion to the bandwidth being utilized
· Set minimum and maximum queue depth thresholds as well as packet drop probability

Thus, RED works with TCP to anticipate and manage congestion during periods of heavy traffic to maximize throughput via managed packet loss.

Go Forward and Grow with Safety and Control

Cisco QoS gives you complete control over all your content and services while at the same time protecting your available bandwidth and minimizing delays for time-sensitive voice and video applications.

QoS can also propel you forward by giving you the information you need to offer advanced differentiated services at a profit. For example, time-and usage-based billing via NetFlow measurements provide you with a means of encouraging (or shifting) demand during periods of light network loading by offering off-peak discount pricing.

Traffic classes and prioritization allow you to encourage business subscribers to classify their traffic and transport only the highest-value bits during peak usage periods and heavy congestion conditions.

Bandwidth allocations via the CAR feature let you carefully engineer network capacity to meet bandwidth commitments during periods of congestion.

With QoS, you can optimize service profits by marketing "express" services to premium customers ready to pay for superior network performance. Enterprise customers are already leveraging virtual private networks (VPNS) and other advanced services provided by broadband MSOs to optimize communications with customers, suppliers, branch offices, and mobile/telecommuting employees.

Cisco QoS services help you pursue a New World Internet business model for profitable revenue growth by:

· Offering and charging for targeted, differentiated services
· Maximizing network utilization
· Maximizing revenue per carried bit
· Generating incremental billing for new services

Every competitive MSO has been challenged to plan and build an IP infrastructure that can deliver a full range of differentiated network services and provide absolute network control, from the edge to the backbone. Now, that's exactly what you can do.

1999 Cisco White Paper Analysis

What the Market Will Bear:
Cisco's Vision for Broadband Internet

There is little doubt that online service will continue to improve in the coming years--as connection speeds increase, as audio and video offerings expand, and as new cable broadband networks bring many more Americans into the Digital Age. But there will be a price to pay for such improved service, a price beyond that of monthly access fees or pay-per-view charges. For the very same technology that will guarantee full-motion video and interactive programming will also usher in a new era of controlled, monitored, and differentiated Internet service, with implications for producers and consumers alike.

Online traffic control is an inevitable by-product of the increasing popularity of the Internet, of course, especially as high-bandwidth multimedia content becomes more common. If a network is to operate efficiently, it must have some means of distinguishing between data that are time-critical (e.g., voice or video) and those that are not (e.g., e-mail or Web content).1 Given the growing popularity of streaming audio and video, moreover, there are instances in which mediation between competing claims for bandwidth becomes necessary, and experiments are already underway to determine the most effective means of keeping traffic flowing smoothly.2 At some point efficiency and economy give way to manipulation and exploitation, however, and that is the danger that the new network architecture poses.

Cisco Systems, one of the leading suppliers of both hardware and software for network operators, provided a glimpse of the new "architecture of control" in a recent series of unusually frank "white papers," a forecast that should give pause to those who eagerly await the deployment of the new cable broadband networks. Stated simply, the increase in online efficiency that these networks provide will be offset by a marked decrease in online democracy. Using Cisco's technology, network operators for the first time will be able to "direct traffic" on the Internet, distinguishing among different content types, origins, and destinations, for example, in order to grant fast passage to some packets while relegating others to slower lanes. In the process, what was once a comparatively level playing field--a public Internet in which all bits are created equal--will be tilted in favor of distinctly private interests.

This new online aristocracy will assume a number of guises, including Cisco's "New World" network, in which "Quality of Service" (QoS) becomes the euphemism for "membership has its privileges." As Cisco's documents reveal, "The control and visibility provided by QoS enables Internet service providers to offer carefully tailored grades of service differentiation to their customers."3 By identifying not only specific data packet types (e.g., Web, e-mail, video, or voice) but also their origin and/or destination, and by assigning priority based on the network operator's own criteria, the flow of traffic will conform to a particular network's pricing scheme. This new level of control, Cisco assures its clients, is what separates its carefully monitored system from the open-ended, even-handed Internet: "The ability to prioritize and control traffic levels is a distinguishing factor and critical difference between New World networks employing Internet technologies and 'the Internet.'"4 And the real point of that distinction, Cisco is quick to add, is that the "new, advanced QoS techniques" give network operators "the means to maximize revenue generated through bandwidth capacity by providing the highest quality for your most valuable services." The same kind of "personalization" that is driving online marketing, in other words, will also drive the new networks, as cable ISPs, armed with Cisco's technology, will be able to "deal with each subscriber as an individual entity, assigning access authorizations, bandwidth allocations, and security filters for each address."

The impact of such technology is twofold. First, network operators, possessing much more knowledge of their users' needs and interests (and their ability to pay for services related to those needs and interests), will be able to exploit that market accordingly. "QoS can ... propel you forward by giving you the information you need to offer advanced differentiated services at a profit...," Cisco explains. "With QoS, you can optimize service profits by marketing 'express' services to premium customers ready to pay for superior network performance." Second, these operators will have new means to thwart competition by distinguishing between affiliated and unaffiliated online programming: "The controlled-access rate capabilities ... allow you to specify the user access speed of any given packet by allocating the bandwidth it receives.... You could restrict the incoming ... broadcasts as well as subscribers' outgoing access to ... [a competitive] site to discourage its use. At the same time, you could promote and offer your own or partner's services with full-speed features to encourage adoption of your services, while increasing network efficiency."

Cisco is nothing if not candid in its appraisal of the new broadband cable landscape, and the underlying message seems obvious: let the browser beware. "One way to achieve high revenue per subscriber," Cisco declares, in perhaps the clearest expression of its strategy, "is by segmenting the market and charging what the market will bear within each market segment. It is not enough, however, for marketing to devise different service offerings. The network must be capable of supporting these offerings through meaningful policing and enforcement mechanisms."5 Coupled with the current FCC policy that grants cable operators a monopoly in broadband Internet service, such "policing and enforcement mechanisms" are more than mere corporate PR. They represent a real threat to the future openness of the Internet.

We've long been accustomed, certainly, to distinctions in the way we access various means of transport. The fortunate few fly first class, drive expensive automobiles, watch wall-sized TVs, and receive their mail and phone calls at vast estates. The rest of us travel and communicate much more modestly. And yet the underlying architecture of all of these systems is more or less democratic. Those who fly coach and drive second-hand cars arrive at their destinations at pretty much the same time as their well-heeled counterparts, and broadcast, mail, and telephone service work pretty much the same for everybody. Until now, the Internet has shared that basic egalitarian outlook (once the initial barriers to access have been scaled, that is), and its potential to serve democracy in entirely new ways-providing a platform for expression and a means for civic participation to those who have traditionally lacked such tools-is vast. But all of that is threatened by the new network technology that Cisco and others are introducing, and that AT&T and others will be able to deploy, under current regulations, in a closed, competition-free environment. With its emphasis on traffic control and the maximization of profits, the new broadband architecture will alter the fundamental nature of the Internet for millions of Americans. What Cisco holds out as a real promise to its customers--"higher subscription fees, increased advertising, and percentage of commercial transactions"--should be seen as a real threat to the rest of us--and to the future of online communications. And that's simply too high a price to pay for a faster, flashier, more colorful Internet.

1 For a discussion of the future of differentiated service (or "DiffServ," in Netspeak), see Brian E. Carpenter and Dilip D. Kandlur, "Diversifying Internet Delivery," IEEE Spectrum, Nov. 1999, 57-61.

2 The most pressing matter at the moment involves streaming-media data that does not conform to the existing transmission control protocol (TCP). Proposed solutions range from routing such traffic around the Internet's main arteries, to various data queuing mechanisms, to charging more for extra bandwidth. See Sara Robinson, "Multimedia Transmissions Drive Net Toward Gridlock," New York Times, 23 Aug. 1999.

3 Cisco Systems, "Quality of Service (QoS) Networking," available online (here).

4 Cisco Systems, "Controlling Your Network-A Must for Cable Operators," 1999. Unless otherwise noted, the statements attributed to Cisco are from this document. For a more detailed, technical discussion of Cisco's hardware and software, see Cisco Systems, "New Revenue Opportunities for Cable Operators from Streaming-Media Technology," 1999; Cisco Systems, "Quality of Service in Cable Data Networks," available online (here); and Keith Travis, "IP-ATM CoS: Providing Differential Class-Based IP Services on ATM Fabrics," available online (here).

5 Cisco Systems, "Cable for a New World: A Cable Provider's Guide to Digital Broadband Deployment," n.d.

 

Life in the Slow Lane: A Guide to the Un-Neutral Net

Life in the Slow Lane: A Guide to the Un-Neutral Net

 

After more than a year of debate in Washington, the fate of Network Neutrality--and with it the future of the Internet--remains unresolved. A strong tide of public opposition to new telecommunications legislation in both the House (H.R. 5252) and Senate (S. 2686), led by Save the Internet.com and other advocacy groups, forestalled what would have been a major victory for a relative handful of cable operators and telephone companies. Had Congress completed its rewrite of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, broadband network operators would have been free to institute new "tiered" or "differentiated" levels of service, based on discriminatory, fee-based traffic-management schemes.

The matter will now be taken up anew in 2007 in the 110th (and now Democratic-majority) Congress. At stake is nothing less than the future of the Internet. In particular, Congress's handling of the network neutrality issue will determine whether network operators will have the ability to discriminate in their carriage of the data that comprise a major part of society's "central nervous system"--the news and information, emails and websites, that have become a part of everyday life. Instead of the common-carriage, all-data-are-created-equal tradition of the Internet, the new, Un-Neutral Net will allow operators to favor their own content and that of their affiliates, while relegating competitive and unaffiliated content to the slow lanes of the Internet.

Although the technology that underlies the principle of network neutrality is complex, the basic concept itself is simple. As Craigslist founder Craig Neumark has observed, "Net neutrality is just about fairness and a level playing field." In the absence of an enforceable policy of network neutrality (encompassing nondiscriminatory transport of all data, unfettered access to all Web content, and open interconnections to all networks), the full promise of the broadband era will never be realized. Especially now that residential Internet access has been reduced in most communities to a choice of one of two providers--the local cable monopoly or the local telephone giant--the diversity and openness and competition that characterized the Internet in the dial-up era faces four major threats:

• Data Management: involving the use of type-of-service (TOS) and quality-of-service (QOS) provisions of the Internet protocol (IP) to favor some data traffic over others. Instead of resolving disputes between competing claims on network resources in an evenhanded, equitable fashion, policy-based routing will be employed to expedite the delivery of content affiliated with the network owner, while relegating competing content to slower lanes of traffic.

• Proprietary Content: involving the use of a variety of enhancements (e.g., fiber optics, local caching, navigational aids, menus, program guides, start screens) to highlight the network operator's own and affiliated content at the expense of other fare (including noncommercial programming), which will be excluded from proprietary delivery systems and from on-screen menus and program guides. Even when such enhancements are made available to other programmers, the cost involved will be prohibitive for most nonprofits and many smaller businesses.

• Differentiated Access: in which (as the local telephone giants have made clear) an entirely new class of premium data delivery will be introduced, giving priority service to those content providers willing to pay fees for such treatment. Even while these broadband providers have vowed not to block, degrade, impair, or otherwise discriminate against non-premium (i.e., non-sponsored) content, the result is the same: some online programming, including information vital to our democracy that derives from noncommercial sources, will be relegated to the slower lanes of these new broadband systems.

• Differentiated Service: in which the broadband access environment is characterized by tiered levels of service, subscription plans, and pay-per-click programming, lending a much more commercialized quality to the Internet and introducing a general distinction between the "haves" and the "have mores"--a new version of the digital divide that will affect all of us in one way or another.

Taken together, these developments threaten to undermine the "level playing field" that Neumark and others justly celebrate, in which all content providers are accorded equal treatment in the online environment, and all users enjoy access to any Internet resource, service, or application. Instead of the open, diverse, two-way communication system in which innovation and alternative viewpoints have long thrived, the Internet will become a closed, proprietary system. Dominated by the cable and telephone company giants that control the vast majority of last-mile connections, the new Internet will be everything that the existing Internet is not--discriminatory (with premium service for network-affiliated and sponsored content, and degraded service for everything else), expensive (with higher prices for basic service and a new range of on-demand and "pay-per-bit" transactions), and invasive (with tracking and analysis of our every move online).

A key to understanding what will happen to the Internet here, as well as with the emerging interactive digital TV system and wireless, mobile communications, are the online control technologies racing off the assembly lines. With names such as "NetEnforcer," "Service Control Platforms," and "Bandwidth Manager," these technologies are designed to empower a Comcast, AT&T, or Verizon to exert much tighter control over the flow of data coming into our homes, businesses, and wireless devices.

One refrain often heard from the opponents of network neutrality is that there isn't any evidence that the cable and phone companies actually intend to discriminate. Never mind that such corporate giants as Microsoft, Yahoo! and Google are sufficiently concerned about the prospects of a discriminatory Internet to call for legislation guaranteeing network neutrality. And contrary to the claims of net neutrality opponents, there is mounting evidence of the existence of new products that will give the major broadband providers the power to control the once free-flowing Internet--to slow down or speed up access to online content; to track user movements online; and to impose a raft of new fees for content providers and consumers alike.

Listed below are ten ways in which the Un-Neutral Net will stifle diverse voices, widen the Digital Divide, and violate our right to privacy in shocking new ways.

 

1. Detour Ahead

Over half of the Web's estimated 600-plus billion pages derive from nonprofit sources. With the cable-telco duopoly's plans for tiered access (i.e., charging content providers for guaranteed high-speed delivery), all of that noncommercial content, along with perhaps three-fourths of commercial programming whose producers either cannot or will not pay the operators' extortionate rates, will be squeezed onto the digital equivalent of a dirt road. Traffic on this last vestige of the erstwhile "public" Internet will move at a crawl, leaving most users with little alternative than to turn to broadband's new private, premium lanes, where Network Neutrality is no longer the rule of the road. As MoveOn.org noted in an alert circulated among millions of Internet users in 2006, "Net Neutrality prevents AT&T from choosing which websites open most easily for you based on which site pays AT&T more. Amazon doesn't have to outbid Barnes & Noble for the right to work more properly on your computer."

For information on industry's plans for a tiered, private Internet, see Motorola's "MultiProtocol Label Switching" (MPLS.pdf below) white paper, which tells phone and cable companies how they can "achieve their aggressive revenue targets" by creating a "tiered" Internet (with "Gold, Silver, and Bronze…pricing schemes…," and "… bandwidth limits to ensure that services do not receive more than their committed bandwidth levels"). See also Cisco Systems' white paper, "Cisco and the Service Provider IP Next-Generation Network Journey," (CiscoNextGen.pdf below) which describes "the transition from a basic highway to a value-added, personalized toll way"; and Operax, "Efficient Network Resource Control--A Source of Competitive Advantage," (OperaxNRC.pdf below) which explains how "...bottlenecks are a tactical tool and ... [how] efficient control over bottlenecks is necessary to create financial value from scarce network resources."

2. We Interrupt this Program…

The future of the Internet is video, and the future of video is peer-to-peer (P2P), which harnesses the power of individual PCs to create ad hoc distribution networks that rival the mainstream media in their reach. But the Un-Neutral Net has an answer for P2P--shifting it to the slow lane or blocking it altogether--and in the process the videos we've enjoyed on YouTube, Ourmedia.org, and dozens of other sources of independent media will look more like slide shows (if we can still see them at all, that is). For insight into industry's plans to throttle the Internet (under the guise of maintaining "quality of service" [QoS], no less), see Juniper Networks' "Building the Next Generation Multi-Service Broadband Network," (JuniperBroadband.pdf below) which features "bandwidth control to facilitate service level[s]..., Lawful Intercept, billing, and access controls...," including QoS ("a critical tool for network control") to limit "... packet flows that are not desirable in the network, such as peer-to-peer ... application flows."

3. First-Class Postage

Both AOL and Yahoo have already unveiled plans for new charges for e-mail, and, as noted in "The End of the Internet?," under the new pricing schemes of the cable-telco broadband cartel "…all of us--from content providers to individual users--would pay more to surf online, stream videos or even send e-mail." Depending on the volume of e-mail we send and receive (and nonprofit organizations that depend on e-mail to reach their members will be particularly hard hit), new charges for such online communications could reach hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month. As e-mail incorporates more multimedia aspects and features, moreover, the tiered pricing schemes of the Un-Neutral Net will favor those corporations that can afford to pay for such services, giving an unfortunate new meaning to the term "rich media."

4. The Purloined e-Mail

Charging for e-mail is one thing, but blocking e-mail altogether is another, and that's precisely what happened in 2006 at AOL. As reported by CNET News.com, "the Internet service provider, which has roughly 20 million subscribers in the United States, began bouncing e-mail communications with the URL "Dearaol.com…." Although this act of e-pistolary censorship was only temporary, in light of the emerging climate of coercion and control online, with personal files routinely turned over to government agencies (and shared with marketers, as noted below), we can expect further incursions like the e-mail blockage perpetrated by AOL, with e-mail filtering based on content as well on the origin or destination of such traffic. So, too, will e-mail be analyzed ("anonymously," we'll be told) for keys to the kinds of advertising content to which senders and recipients are most likely to respond. In its comprehensive Privacy FAQ concerning Google's Gmail service, for example, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) explains that "Gmail is supported by advertisers who buy keywords, much like the Google search engine's AdWords advertising program. Gmail uses 'content extraction' (the term used in Google's patents) on all incoming and outgoing e-mail in order to target the advertising to the user. For example, if the user is having an e-mail conversation about applying for a job, Gmail might present the user with ads about online job search sites and resume writing services." While Gmail subscribers might be aware of such surveillance techniques (at least those subscribers who manage to plow through Google's 1,800-word Privacy Policy and its 1,000-word Privacy FAQ), non-subscribers who send e-mail to a Gmail address receive no such warning. As EPIC points out, "Gmail violates the privacy rights of non-subscribers. Non-subscribers who e-mail a Gmail user have 'content extraction' performed on their e-mail even though they have not consented to have their communications monitored, nor may they even be aware that their communications are being analyzed."

5. Hijacking the Net

Although broadband providers such as AT&T and Verizon have vowed that they will not block any websites, they have also made clear that there will be no free rides on the Un-Neutral Net. As a preview of things to come, a small North Carolina network operator blocked competitive Internet phone traffic in 2005, and in 2006 Cox Interactive, the third-largest cable company's broadband division, blocked access to Craigslist. Cox claimed the problem was due to technical issues related to new "security suite" software. But, as others noted, the blocking of Craigslist by Cox went on for a number of months.

For a view into the future of such behind-the-scenes machinations, see Allot Communications' "NetPure Policy-Based Internet Filter" (NetPure.pdf below) and "Service Control Solution Benefits for Carriers," (AllotControl.pdf below) whose broadband management technology "allows carriers and service providers to have greater visibility into the network to inspect, identify and analyze hundreds of applications and protocols, track subscriber behavior, prioritize traffic and shape traffic flows."

6. The New Digital Divide

Broadband prices in the US are already among the highest in the world on a megabit-per-dollar basis, some 10 to 25 times what broadband users pay in Japan, for example. Even though the average Internet access fee today (around $30 a month for DSL, $40 for cable broadband) is far below the early days of metered pricing (e.g., CompuServe's $22.50 per hour for 9,600-bps access in the early 1990s), we can expect prices to skyrocket once the new cable-telco regime has completed building out their tightly controlled dynasty. Not only will basic access rates increase (with the tiered levels of pricing mentioned above), but a range of new on-demand fees and pay-per-bit schemes will drive premium service beyond the reach of all but the wealthiest families. See, for example, Alcatel's "Broadband Applications Fueling Consumer Demand," which explains how the phone industry is being urged to make money from video, gaming, home networking, and audio-on-demand. See also Alcatel's "A Guided Approach to Broadband Entertainment Services," which divides the Internet into a "public garden," a "walled garden," and a "gated garden"; and Cisco Systems' "Deploying Premium Services Using Cisco Service Control" (CiscoPremiumServices.pdf below) shows how new business models to "meter" online communications will profoundly affect the Internet's future.

7. The Transparent Network

At the heart of the Un-Neutral Net and its discriminatory practices is a technology known as "deep packet inspection" (DPI), which allows broadband operators to analyze the traffic in their networks and to route it accordingly: affiliated or sponsored content into the fast lane, unaffiliated content into the slow lane, and competitive or "undesirable" content into oblivion. Thus Allot's DPI technology enables broadband providers "to analyze network usage; to control service delivery; to ensure quality of experience; to maximize ROI on infrastructure investments; and to increase average revenue per user." Sandvine (SandvineNetworkManagement.pdf below), similarly, offers "new strategies and technologies that can characterize, quantify and help price subscribers' online behavior--opening a window that reveals which subscriber applications offer the greatest potential for profitability." See also Cisco Systems' "Cisco Service Control: A Guide to Sustained Broadband Profitability," (CiscoBroadbandProfit.pdf below) which details how network operators will know "who" you are, "what" you are doing, and "where" you reside.

8. The Prying Eyes of Interactive Television (ITV)

Both the cable and telephone industry are working to transform television into a two-way medium better able to deliver personalized advertising. Their broadband connections will be primarily used to generate enormous revenues by selling advertisers, marketers, and programmers access to individual viewers. There will be ads for each of us—based on the tracking of our online and offline activities, including what our TV viewing habits are. As one ad-tracking firm executive recently remarked about interactive TV, "…when you combine the emotional power of television with the targeting capability that is not unlike the Internet, it really is a very powerful proposition for advertisers." To see what the next generation of targeted TV looks like, see Comcast Spotlight's Addressable Advertising service and the Visible World interactive advertising demo.

9. The One-to-One Paradigm

One of the main reasons that network operators favor an Un-Neutral Net is the opportunity such a system will offer for personalized, addressable advertising--zeroing in on individual users based on their real and perceived interests, needs, and preferences. Consumer privacy on the existing Internet is already under duress, and if the cable and telco broadband duopolists have their way, we'll have even less protection in the future. As U.S. PIRG and the Center for Digital Democracy made clear in their November 2006 Federal Trade Commission complaint, the policies governing consumer privacy on the Internet have failed to keep pace with the developments that continue to re-shape the online world. Privacy policies designed for a largely static, text-based World Wide Web offer little protection in the dynamic Web of the present. The data collection and interactive marketing system that is shaping the entire U.S. electronic marketplace aggressively tracks us wherever we go, creating data profiles used in ever-more sophisticated and personalized "one-to-one" targeting schemes. Thus one of the hidden costs of the Un-Neutral Net (in addition to all of the inflated real costs) is the loss of privacy we'll suffer, as the erstwhile level playing field is increasingly tilted in favor of invasive advertising and marketing practices.

10. Lo-Fi Wi-Fi

The Wi-Fi revolution, releasing broadband from its wired tethers and bringing the Internet to airports, coffee shops, and other public gathering spots across the country, has been an unprecedented success. So much so, in fact, that the immediate response of cable and telephone companies to the specter of municipally run, wide-area wireless networks was to attempt to have them outlawed. Cable and telco lobbyists sought legislative protection from community Wi-Fi at the state and federal levels, enjoying some success in the states (e.g., Texas, Pennsylvania) but failing (thus far) to persuade Congress that municipal broadband is the latest incarnation of creeping socialism.

The less-good news, however, is that Wi-Fi is still crammed into the crowded 2.4 GHz band (which it shares with garage-door openers, baby monitors, and a variety of other devices), and the prospects in Washington for the designation of additional unlicensed spectrum are uncertain. And while come cities are still undertaking city- or nonprofit-run networks (e.g., Boston), the most popular model appears to be joint ventures with commercial access providers (e.g., the Google/EarthLink alliance in San Francisco). These mixed-use projects, unfortunately, are proving to be a mixed blessing, with free or reduced-cost access limited to the lower rungs of the broadband ladder (a mere 300 kbps for advertising-driven free access in San Francisco, for example, while 1 Mbps service--still modest by broadband standards--will cost $20 a month). Thus the same tiered service and aggressive advertising of the Un-Neutral Net, it appears, will afflict many community broadband projects as well.

Many observers believe, moreover, that the future of wireless broadband lies in more robust WiMax implementations, which permit wider range access and even connectivity to users in transit. Unlike Wi-Fi, however, WiMax operates in licensed bands, such as the 2.5 GHz spectrum, where Sprint Corp. already holds licenses and leases for channels that reach 80 percent of the US population. "Unfortunately," as wireless expert Sascha Meinrath points out, "unbeknownst to most consumers of these technologies, control over wireless technologies is quickly and covertly being consolidated under the oversight of a few enormous corporations whose main interest is bolstering their profit margins, not building telecommunications systems for the public good." The Un-Neutral Net, in other words, may soon be coming to a wireless network near you.

 

Network neutrality, it is clear, is more than an idle concern. It is not, as the network owners and their well-paid consultants suggest, a "solution in search of a problem." Rather, the principle of network neutrality represents our last, best hope of preserving a vital noncommercial, civic core in an online environment that grows more commercialized every day. As we have noted elsewhere, the possibilities for democratic discourse, for educational advancement, and for cultural expression will be greatly reduced in a delivery system that favors big business over small, e-commerce over e-democracy, and public relations over public service. Free of such market-based controls, on the other hand, the new broadband networks could bring a vast array of new programming to the home, at once extending the reach of the high-speed Internet (which currently reaches less than half of the nation's households) and enhancing its content (much of which is currently constrained by the bandwidth limitations of inferior broadband service). But for the full potential of the broadband era to be realized, we will need to have a strong policy of network neutrality in place.