Did Internet Founders Actually Anticipate Paid, Prioritized Traffic?

[owen at delong.com (Owen DeLong)]

On Sep 16, 2010, at 10:57 AM, George Bonser wrote:

>> I DO have a problem with a content provider paying to get priority
>> access on the last mile.  I have no particular interest in any of the
>> content that Yahoo provides, but I do have an interest in downloading
>> my Linux updates via torrents.  Should I have to go back and bid
>> against Yahoo just so I can get my packets in a timely fashion?
>> </end user>
>> 
>> I understand that the last mile is going to be a congestion point, but
>> the idea of allowing a bidding war for priority access for that
>> capacity seems to be a path to madness.
>> 
>> --Chris
> 
> Hi Chris,
> 
> Since prioritization would work ONLY when the link us saturated
> (congested), without it, nothing is going to work well, not your
> torrents, not your email, not your browsing.  By prioritizing the
> traffic, the torrents might back off but they would still continue to
> flow, they wouldn't be completely blocked, they would just slow down.
> QoS can be a good thing for allowing your VIOP to work while someone
> else in the home is watching a streaming movie or something.  Without
> it, everything breaks once the circuit is congested.
> 

It depends. If you're talking about prioritization of the end link, then,
that's one thing... If the ISP wants to implement prioritization there
based on the END USER's preferences, that's a nice value-add
service.

If you're talking about the aggregation point of several customer's
links, then, prioritizing customer A's Yahoo traffic because Yahoo
paid over customer B's torrent traffic when customer A and B have
paid the same for their connection is not so good, IMHO.

Owen