[Cialug] OT: Deep packet inspection meets 'Net neutrality, CALEA

[Dave Weis]

Nathan Stien wrote:
> I know some people here work at or run ISPs, and I'd be extra curious
> to hear their opinions.  Is this something we need to legislate, or
> could the market take care of it?  (Though in most towns there's not
> much of a real market...)  Do you ISPers long for the ability to shape
> traffic and provide tiered service levels?  What about that "pay us
> $10/month and we'll uncripple your VoIP" thing from the article?

I think it's a great solution in search of a problem for the most part. 
I would like to have all connections and all services perform equally, 
but there are legitimate reasons that it doesn't always work that way.

If I offer a VoIP product to my users it would be natural to put some 
QoS on my routers to ensure that my users have a good experience with it 
and don't have voice distortion. The nature of QoS is that something has 
to go slower if something else goes faster. I don't intentionally 
degrade anyone else's service but this could be viewed as degrading any 
other traffic on the line, including browsing, etc.

Putting in a device to put random latency or other problems shouldn't 
happen but seems to periodically at bigger providers. The boxes to do 
that are pretty expensive so it's not as prevalent.

I don't want to explain to a customer why their phone calls with my VoIP 
and my DSL sound like hell because putting on QoS has been outlawed.

> I would imagine most people here, ISPer and non-ISPer alike, would
> prefer that things like CALEA didn't exist.  Anyone have pro-CALEA
> feelings or arguments?  (I myself would prefer complete deregulation
> of strong crypto and more widespread usage of it among everyday people
> for emails, cell phones, etc...)

I'm not a big fan of unfunded mandates. I can understand the logic and 
don't mind helping but it's very expensive to comply.

dave