6:00 pm First Discussion Panel (introduction by Sharon Gillett)

David Clark, Senior Research Scientist, MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

QoS is not inherently opposed to innovation. But QoS causes fear. Don’t want fear to dominate hope. QoS was originally intentionally application blind. QoS field is not the same as the application field. User should be able to pick QoS of applications they want.

How do you get QoS in interconnection across Internet; problem of interconnection on Internet. I am not encouraging FCC to regulate interconnection. ISPs have to figure this out but ISPs have concern about antitrust. Need not regulation but facilitation.

Look at all the actors. This is a balancing act to make sure everyone can innovate. There are very few absolutes. The Internet is not absolutely open. It is not absolutely for the benefit of the ISPs.

Need facilitation across actors. Previously done through IETF.

6:06 pm

Tim Berners-Lee, Director, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

I invented the Web 20 years ago and it was really nice that I did not have to ask anyone’s permission. The Web was an innovation on top of the Internet. It has become a platform on top of which people innovate. EBay happened on top of it. HTTP also was not designed for a specific application or for a specific company.

I have spoken out previously about packet discrimination. Example is the delivery of packets to the shoe store of choice. Without neutrality, could use discrimination to control what sites you reach to find out information about religious information or information about evolution.

I have benefited very much from the Internet as it originally was, where I did not have to ask anyone for permission. I know that the Internet had little regulation but it was originally done through good will. There are some times when you have to have rules – may they be simple – because they are essential to the way that the thing works. We may need regulation if we cannot assure it without it.

I would not use network neutrality to mean QoS. Neutrality means ISPs cannot use what it knows about me to control what applications I use or content I see. Non discrimination does not mean that you cannot have QoS; but there is a fine line where I cannot download a video because the network service provider is also a cable video service provider.

6:13 pm

Susie Kim Riley, Founder/CTO, Camiant

I agree with Barbara that openness is critical. The ability to try lots of different things and then try them to see what sticks. What has enabled a lot of these innovations to take off is the investments that networks have made in their infrastructure. Investment has enabled access to these applications. If  a network blocks access to applications, then they will lose subscribers. They invest because they want to roll out new services like video conferencing. By doing this, they collapse many networks / services (telephony, video) to one IP platform. Because they invested in this network, it benefited many applications that leverage this platform.

We need openness and transparency because people need to know what their service is and how the network will perform during congestion.

But one aspect of network neutrality has dampened investment. This is the non discrimination requirement that does not allow network services to provision QoS. Some of the applications that operators are talking about differentiated applications where subscribers can pick and choose what applications they want differentiated with QoS. In Europe these type of services are starting to roll out. These services are innovated, give consumers choices and provide differentiated services for consumer. This allows, for instance, a gamer, to differentiate gaming for QoS.

Application and network innovation are not mutually exclusive. Operators cannot keep adding capacity for the same price. With the non discriminatory provisions of network neutrality, you prohibit network innovations in differentiated service.

6:21 pm

Aaron Ahola, Akamai

Openness of Internet has been crucial to success. Akamai came about because the centralization approach of early Internet led to congestion. Originally people thought WWW meant “World Wide Wait”. Akamai solution was to make content more accessible in a more diverse way. Solution was to deploy servers at edge of the network and cache content, along with easy synchronization with original source. Bypass the choke points of the Internet. Now have about 70,000 servers. Today, we accelerate 15-20% of world’s web traffic. What we have seen from our customers is that customers are investing in the web and it is for a couple reasons: common standards, global nature of the Internet, how quickly you can change or adapt things on the web.

6:34 pm

Barbara van Schewick: There is a real need for regulation to draw the line on what the rules are; the uncertainty as to rules has led some to be hesitant to innovate.

6:58 PM Break

FCC Workshop January 13