The Internet | It's History | Surprising Things! ~~~Nancy

Whether the Internet is truly a democratic forum was called into question this week in a dispute about Internet traffic management between AT&T and the consumer advocacy group Free Press.

The feud boiled down to what it means to have "paid prioritization," a phenomenon viewed as anathema by advocates of Internet openness, and to what extent preferential treatment of content already takes place. The issue is at the very heart of a broader debate about what regulatory steps are necessary, if any, to ensure the Internet remains an engine of economic growth and a platform of equal value to people across the socioeconomic spectrum.

AT&T, in a letter filed with the Federal Communications Commission on Monday, argued that paid prioritization of Internet traffic, contrary to claims made by Free Press, is already a common practice of Web management and consistent with protocols set by the Internet Engineering Task Force. Largely unknown to people outside the technology field, IETF is a professional organization composed of engineers that develop standards for the Internet; for over two decades, it has played an integral role in the management of the Internet.

The current chair of the IETF, Russ Housley, disagrees with AT&T's assessment.

"AT&T's characterization is misleading," Housley said. "IETF prioritization technology is geared toward letting network users indicate how they want network providers to handle their traffic, and there is no implication in the IETF about payment based on any prioritization."

Dedicated lines of service, according to AT&T, are examples of current paid prioritization schemes, a concept Free Press flatly disagrees with.

AT&T constructed "bogus interpretations of 'paid prioritization' that reflect no arguments or statements made by the FCC or any proponents of net neutrality," said S. Derek Turner, research director of Free Press. The group calls paid prioritization an anti-consumer practice where third-party content owners can pay an Internet service provider to "cut to the front of the line" in Web traffic. It's a practice that would lead to a pay-to-play scenario where only big business could afford the premium channels needed to compete, net neutrality advocates say, thereby squeezing the little guys out of the market.

But AT&T dismisses those assertions, saying Free Press' acceptance of dedicated lines of service as a management practice is hypocritical given its stance against paid prioritization.

"We understand why Free Press is upset with our letter," said Michael Balmoris, spokesman for AT&T. "We outed them by shedding light on their inconsistencies. After all, for years Free Press has used empty rhetoric and faux-technical mumbo jumbo to demonize any paid prioritization."

In the conclusion of its letter, AT&T implored the FCC not to limit or ban paid prioritization, positing that it would be "contrary to the goals of innovation, investment, and growth and contrary to the interests of small, medium-sized, and minority-owned businesses."

Most professionals in the telecommunications and Internet field acknowledge that some content already does get right of way on the Web. The debate hinges on to what extent it is appropriate and whether paying for priority empowers networks at the expense of user control.

"Wireless use is prioritized," said Steve Largent, president and CEO of CTIA-The Wireless Association. "Your voice calls take precedence over your data usage, your interactive data usage is prioritized over your standard data usage, and your 911 calls supersede all of it."

For wireless -- which operates on spectrum, a resource with dramatically less capacity than physical cables -- prioritization is a big issue.

"One strand of fiber has more capacity that the entire electromagnetic spectrum," Largent said, explaining the need for prioritization.

With services that require certain speeds to operate smoothly, such as Internet telephony, calls are given precedence over TV, Housley said. Otherwise, the call might be subject to jittery reception. In these instances, Housley notes, the preferred treatment is consumer-driven by the purchase of multiple products that share an access line.

As evidenced by the spat between AT&T and Free Press, whether network providers should be able to charge online companies extra fees for faster delivery of their traffic to consumers is extremely controversial.

The matter is under consideration by the FCC, which issued a formal request for public comment Wednesday on whether open Internet rules should apply to mobile broadband and specialized services.

The notice was released less than a month after Google and Verizon released their proposed policy framework aimed at finding middle ground on the network neutrality debate. Their proposal called for barring wireline broadband providers from discriminating against or prioritizing lawful Internet content, applications or services. However, the framework called for exempting fast-growing wireless Internet services from all the principles except for transparency and allowing for specialized services to be fast-tracked over the Internet.

Public interest groups blast the FCC for stalling on a decision about how to regulate broadband and protect consumers. Industry, including AT&T, Verizon and CTIA, praised the commission for its fact-finding endeavor. ...

(Please click through the heading to this full text and source! ~~~Nancy)

" ...cursory and incomplete history. Much material currently exists about the Internet, covering history, technology, and usage. A trip to almost any bookstore will find shelves of material written about the Internet. 2

 

In this paper,3 several of us involved in the development and evolution of the Internet share our views of its origins and history. This history revolves around four distinct aspects. There is the technological evolution that began with early research on packet switching and the ARPANET (and related technologies), and where current research continues to expand the horizons of the infrastructure along several dimensions, such as scale, performance, and higher-level functionality. There is the operations and management aspect of a global and complex operational infrastructure. There is the social aspect, which resulted in a broad community of Internauts working together to create and evolve the technology. And there is the commercialization aspect, resulting in an extremely effective transition of research results into a broadly deployed and available information infrastructure.

 

The Internet today is a widespread information infrastructure, the initial prototype of what is..." (continued below ...)

" ... Internet of today. Licklider was the first head of the computer research program at DARPA,4 starting in October 1962. While at DARPA he convinced his successors at DARPA, Ivan Sutherland, Bob Taylor, and MIT researcher Lawrence G. Roberts, of the importance of this networking concept.

 

Leonard Kleinrock at MIT published the first paper on packet switching theory in July 1961 and the first book on the subject in 1964. Kleinrock convinced Roberts of the theoretical feasibility of communications using packets rather than circuits, which was a major step along the path towards computer networking. (continued below...)

"...The other key step was to make the computers talk together. To explore this, in 1965 working with Thomas Merrill, Roberts connected the TX-2 computer in Mass. to the Q-32 in California with a low speed dial-up telephone line creating the first (however small) wide-area computer network ever built. The result of this experiment was the realization that the time-shared computers could work well together, running programs and retrieving data as necessary on the remote machine, but that the circuit switched telephone system was totally inadequate for the job. Kleinrock's conviction of the need for packet switching was confirmed.

 

In late 1966 Roberts went to DARPA to develop the computer network concept and quickly put together his plan for the "ARPANET", publishing it in 1967. At the conference ..."

The most pressing question for the future of the Internet is. ...

 

(Please click on the heading to this full text and source)

In 1973, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) initiated a research program to investigate techniques

and technologies for interlinking packet networks of various kinds. The objective was to develop communication protocols which would allow networked computers to communicate transparently across multiple, linked packet networks. This was called the Internetting project and the system of networks which emerged from the research was known as the "Internet." The system of protocols which was developed over the course of this research effort became known as the TCP/IP Protocol Suite, after the two initial protocols developed: Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP). In 1986, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) initiated the development of the NSFNET which, today, provides a major backbone communication service for the Internet. With its 45 megabit per second facilities, the NSFNET carries on the order of 12 billion packets per month between the networks it links. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the U.S. Department of Energy contributed additional backbone facilities in the form of the NSINET and ESNET respectively. In Europe, major international backbones such as NORDUNET and others provide connectivity to over one hundred thousand computers on a large number of networks. Commercial network providers in the U.S. and Europe are beginning to offer Internet backbone and access support on a competitive basis to any interested parties.




"Regional" support for the Internet is provided by various consortium networks and "local" support is provided through each of the research and educational institutions. Within the United States, much of this support has come from the federal and state governments, but a considerable contribution has been made by industry. In Europe and elsewhere, support arises from cooperative international efforts and through national research organizations. During the course of its evolution, particularly after 1989, the Internet system began to integrate support for other protocol suites into its basic networking fabric. The present emphasis in the system is on multiprotocol interworking, and in particular, with the integration of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) protocols into the architecture. Both public domain and commercial implementations of the roughly 100 protocols of TCP/IP protocol suite became available in the 1980's. During the early 1990's, OSI protocol implementations also became available and, by the end of 1991, the Internet has grown to include some 5,000 networks in over three dozen countries, serving over 700,000 host computers used by over 4,000,000 people. A great deal of support for the Internet community has come from the U.S. Federal Government, since the Internet was originally part of a federally-funded research program and, subsequently, has become a major part of the U.S. research infrastructure. During the late 1980's, however, the population of Internet users and network constituents expanded internationally and began to include commercial facilities. Indeed, the bulk of the system today is made up of private networking facilities in educational and research institutions, businesses and in government organizations across the globe. The Coordinating Committee for Intercontinental Networks (CCIRN), which was organized by the U.S. Federal Networking Council (FNC) and the European Reseaux Associees pour la Recherche Europeenne (RARE), plays an important role in the coordination of plans for government- sponsored research networking. CCIRN efforts have been a stimulus for the support of international cooperation in the Internet environment.

Internet Technical Evolution

Over its fifteen year history, the Internet has functioned as a collaboration among cooperating parties. Certain key functions have been critical for its operation, not the least of which is the specification of the protocols by which the components of the system operate. These were originally developed in the DARPA research program mentioned above, but in the last five or six years, this work has been undertaken on a wider basis with support from Government agencies in many countries, industry and the academic community. The Internet Activities Board (IAB) was created in 1983 to guide the evolution of the TCP/IP Protocol Suite and to provide research advice to the Internet community. .... (Please click through the heading to this full text and source! ~~~Nancy)

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