The empire strikes back: WITH QoS
This was sent in and I have posted it here as it gives a rather coloured and yet refreshing angle on the issue of quality of service (QoS):
Back-drop
“So what” …is Quality of Service (QoS)? The constant use of the term reminds us of the Chicken Little cries that the sky is falling …but this time it is true in the case of the ITU circuit based business models! So let’s start with the circuit based business model. Recall that a circuit is a particular bit rate; say 64kbps – no more and no less. For decades Internet Service Providers have been buying circuits and putting packet switching gear at the circuit termination points and then sending connectionless IP packets over it. Voila, the Internet!
Today the entire planet is getting on the IP packet “OPEN” Internet bandwagon and its enabled cornucopia of services. In fact by being OPEN the Internet has enabled the greatest creation of shareholder value in shortest time in history! Of course the operators have noticed, but don’t want a pieve of the action they want all the action. Their problem is “how to co-opt the Internet?”. Since there are NO circuits within the Internet, how does the telephony cartel recreate circuits to reinvigorate their business model and control all the new cool services emerging from the Internet? The answer is a fictional problem solving but user abusive rate limiting mechanism called QoS that allows the Telco’s to provision traffic flows that enforce a particular packet bit rate; say 64kbps – no more and no less (see “MaxBitRate” definition in 3GPP TS23.207). It’s obvious: the telephony cartel wants the world to evolve from the packets over circuits infrastructures of today to circuits over packets infrastructures tomorrow, enabled by QoS. But where is end-user value in the operator plans?
The IP packet technology driven services situation today is painfully obvious to the Telephony cartel. The Internet has hugely succeeded and IS our future in spite of the fact that no one in the telephony world, for decades, believed in its connectionless packet based protocols and technology. An open Internet giving each end user freedom to access the services he wants and the huge constantly expanding value delivered by the Internet have backed the telephony crowd into a corner and now they are desperately trying to CLOSE the Internet and turn it into something they can control! QoS is a lynch pin of that strategy.
Recent telephony cartel activities focused on rolling back time to the circuit world of yesterday (prior the popularity of Internet) are rooted in the 3G and IMS standards that are part of the general ITU, and now ETSI, reaction to inspect, control, inhibit and charge for all data traffic, and therefore “own” the Internet. The clear telephony cartel direction is to create a walled garden environment for application development and combine that with levying toll charges, via QoS, for end users to get outside the walled garden. This one two punch is expected to fend off future as well as existing Internet based threats such as Yahoo, Google, Skype and others.
More specifically, QoS from the ITU and ETSI cartels is a reaction to the immediate VoIP (Skype, Vonage, etc.) threat to existing telephony business models. Because voice is today’s killer application it has become the first battleground for operator monopoly business model protection. Expected data revenues are not materializing to off-set declining voice revenues. Note that 3G might be “almost” here, but it has failed miserably in achieving its data business objectives. 3G-only operators continue to struggle to find a workable business model and continue to compete on the declining price of voice. The sooner the telecommunications operators realize the need to start driving towards their final bit pipe future, the sooner they can halt their wasteful spending during their inevitable decline and ensure their survival (just look at the pathetic history of AT&T).
Pipe Dreams?
Will QoS, without assistance from today’s regulators and political lobbying, help the Telco industry survive the Internet assault on its business model? Technically No! – not directly, because unfortunately operators and their associated vendors are learning that voice is highly compressible, and so low in bandwidth (voice traffic is negligible on WANs, and as LANs as well) that customers can use it over today’s Internet without any Telco operator involvement.
The real problem is no VoIP revenue flows to the operator. Instead, I suspect paying for QoS guarantees will be forced on the customer to bypass secret business model protection plans sometimes called “p2p mitigation”; In other words, artificially created IP traffic disruptions. The general idea of these business model protection plans are to add latency and obstructions to network infrastructures to cause quality problems for Skype, AOL, Apple, Google, IBM, MSN and Yahoo (they all have voice as a free add-on) and/or other VoIP activities and in general prevent competition via the Internet protocols unless you pay more for bypassing these artificially constructed latency or congestion constraints. Sometimes this situation is called traffic “modulation” which is really the creative introduction of jitter into traffic flows. This behavior is similar to gang activity that will leave your business alone when you pay protection money.
As with QoS there are always “corner cases” of abuse that p2p mitigation advocates will try to generalize across the entire Internet population. The p2p mitigation advocates are implying we are all bad (illegally downloading music, videos and other dubious content). Therefore we need to be “mitigated” and also pay for the privilege of being “mitigated” because we are likely to consume the advertised bandwidth we actually paid for with our illegal activities. But you should note that p2p activity includes Skype and other valuable edge to edge services which is something p2p mitigation advocates conveniently fail to mention. The claims of illegal activity are just another thinly veiled excuse to exercise more control over Internet without any end user benefit.
“p2p mitigation” is what I call QoS+EL = Quality of Suppression with Enhanced Latency. Available bandwidth, latency and packet loss can have significant impact on the perceived quality of any service. With today’s technology it is a small step for an operator to badly impair traffic unless you give in to their extortion demands for QoS protection. The idea is to provide a premium service and the appropriate premium will be set by how much pain end users would suffer without the QoS premium service.
We have already seen service providers blocking Vontage and their anti-competitive extortion motives are clear. The most plausible future scenario for end user abuse is an IMS or TISPAN operator blocking, interfering with traffic and/or providing lower quality connections for Skype traffic or to Google or any other “outside the walled garden” service on the Internet. “p2p mitigation” by any operator without the user being informed and gaining his consent seems to be an obvious abuse with the malign intent to extort money from the end users (at both ends of the connection), via QoS, as well as prevent competition. In summary, QoS strategies fall into three categories (1) a DOS attack on customers who don’t pay extra, (2) to extort content companies, (3) to suppress competition.
Moore is Always Better
Looking back over nearly 50 years of networking technology progress, the networking industry (following Moore’s Law) has always improved bit rates and consistently reduced network latency seen by applications and the end user. This is simple to do and is a good thing as “speeds and feeds” continuously improve. In fact, light wave and radio technologies are adding capacity even faster than Moore’s Law predicts today!
In the past, Operators just blindly following their business model and provided connectivity. They didn’t pay any attention to what it was being used for, and never really looked for better ways to serve the public. So over time, improving capacity and reduced latency allows cool new things to come out of the Internet eco-system and this almost always bypasses the operator. Why? Because operators are simply NOT networking people they are telephony application people that just sell switched circuits. They have blinders on and can’t see technological or networking change coming, when they do, they react too slow, or react with disbelief as they continue with insulated group think activities at the ITU-T and ETSI lemming races.
Unbelievably, the telecommunications industry now wants us to believe that they need QoS because Moore’s law isn’t providing capacity fast enough, which we all know is nonsense. So out of one side of the Telephony face they imply Moore’s Law is broken when it comes to capacity, while the other side of their face seems to be quite happy proposing they use all the on-going new technology break-throughs (thanks to Moore’s law) to do real time deep packet inspections that enable controlling content access, micro-bill, dynamically reduce bit rates or increase latency and/or construct impediments to end user traffic flows. The rational for QoS is clearly backed up by hypocrisy with a topping of ultra-thin marketing arguments. But today’s reality of a vibrant Internet eco-system without QoS clearly shows the lack of any need for QoS. If QOS really did something useful, like providing end user value, then the economics would have forced it into widespread use by now. Let’s face it, the only ROI for QoS is extortion! In fact this pathetic attempt at controlling the Internet while extorting the end user or content providers is really hard to do, complex, expensive, and has ramifications on innovation and the future health of the Internet.
Drinking Kool-Aid at Camp
Today there are two QoS camps. Which one do you think is looking out for the end user?
• People SELLING gear and SELLING services based on that gear to the operators for imaginary, but revenue generating, quality problems. One characteristic of these QoS religious zealots is to find a corner case, like a 256 kbs link to a distant land, and tout them as the main situation. Without artificially constraining bandwidth, today’s QoS supporting arguments seem more like religion and are simply not convincing. The zealots are simply trying to sell QoS gear and traffic shaping devices. It’s just sly marketing.
• People who like the simplicity, honesty and freedom of the sticking more closely to the architectural principles of the existing Internet. The simple fact is the Internet has become extraordinarily valuable to everyone, except the carriers. The Internet generates enormous wealth and associated tax revenue. The Internet is extremely useful for information and a key part of the global economy. The fact that it is hugely important to so many people without QOS says volumes about those pushing the QoS Kool-Aid.
What Does the “I” in “IETF” Mean?
Can we look to the “ITU Engineering Task Force” for help? Many believe the IETF needs to do a deep dive on the question whether QoS is desirable or not and if so, what form it should take. Remember that QoS does not create bandwidth and is not a substitute for bandwidth. So investments in bandwidth will still be necessary. But, today too much of the IETF is moving forward with the assumption that complex expensive QoS is needed in lieu of simple increased capacity. This flies in the face of Internet history which has taught us that as capacity increases new ideas and innovation takes root and the Internet increases in value. An ITU-T (carriers and legacy vendors) revenue agenda is behind the motives of those trying to move us away from this tried and true formula of Internet success.
In fact better solutions than QoS exist today! For example, DiffServ applied by the end user can be effective and lightweight (much less complex) to implement. DiffServ allows all the different
traffic types to share the same link and assure that each traffic type enjoys the bandwidth and latency required for it to provide a good end user experience.
If DiffServ works then why use QoS mechanisms that are very complex, extremely awkward, heavy-handed and prone to abuse? QoS discussions deserve a much broader treatment in the IETF and the IAB. But I am especially concerned about the increase in IETF attendees that:
- are not at the IETF as individuals but instead “hum” the company revenue tune.
- don’t have product responsibility. Instead they just write theoretical RFCs designed to pad their own resumes or get brownie points in their companies. - run back and forth as errand boys between the IETF and the ITU-T, ETSI, OMA and any other Telco dominated standards body or consortium (most notably 3GPP and 3GPP2), - don’t understand the Internet (especially the cellular people) and may be openly hostile to important Internet guiding principles like providing end user value and non-interference to the end user ability to consume the services they want.
This brings up a significant concern. Will the current mix of the IETF attendees result in the proper outcome of any QoS debate? Is the IETF up to the challenge to develop a mechanism or policy to fix this, and at the same time successfully deal with Internet neutrality and phantom QoS benefits incessantly hyped by marketers?
Share the QoS Love
Many of us heard about the IETF “love fest” at the ITU-T a while back. In fact, the love can still be felt as 3GPP meets at IETF meetings with IETF leadership with non-advertised regularity. What ever happened to the idea of IETF transparency and more importantly being a gathering of individuals and not pandering to organizations? …you know “…no queens…” and all that rhetoric? Today many of the IETF working groups are just doing work for 3GPP and other ITU-T bodies. If you require more convincing of the cozy ITU-T and IETF relationship please check the IETF web site (http://www.ietf.org/meetings/IETF-xx.html, where xx is the latest IETF meeting number, try 64 or 65 for example) for a list of host and contributor companies for the latest and previous meetings. You can argue against this perspective but many have been there …and that perception is reality!
Sales and Shills
I am afraid the IETF has become a shill for the ITU-T and 3GPP/3GPP2 by adopting the ITU mindset and a telephony cartel revenue agenda simply because they are being over run by Telco people? For a few IETF data points (and there are lots more), consider the ongoing lemming race for complexity between DIAMETER and RADIUS proponents to see who can best monetize services and micro bill the end user. Also consider proposals at the “Layer 2 control mechanisms BOF” to standardize additional complex end user rate restriction mechanisms. Notice that new activity for peer to peer SIP is attempted but constantly delayed in spite of clear support in IETF BOF sessions. IETF: WHERE is this needed SIP P2P WG?
But isn’t SIP already peer to peer? It seems telephony restrictions on SIP have resulted in Skype envy and renewed the desire to get out from under ongoing telephony suppression of SIP flexibility. But this doesn’t stop the SIP and SIPPING WGs from their not so well hidden agenda of endlessly setting up billing possibilities for Telco’s. For example, sipping is proposing SIP changes that supposedly allow end users to accept or reject content transfers but have the real motive to facilitate operator billing and then use the excuse of “managing” SIP entities behind NATs and Firewalls to accomplish a form of electronic home invasion (other WGs such as hip, have similar agenda’s). Next, look carefully at all the past and present IETF and Internet leaders now working in or beholden to the ITU or Telco cartel eco-system for revenue. Listen carefully to whether these Internet pundits support the end user, avoid the QoS debate so they are not exposed as hypocrites, evade QoS questions possibly due to pangs of conscience, or simply find excuses to follow the telephony cartel revenue agenda so they can enjoy the rewards of hobnobbing with bureaucrats at the ITU as they abandon founding Internet principles.
The IETF is at a cross roads and must decide either in supporting the end user or driving a revenue agenda. This boils down to two crucial choices. The first choice is between (a) simple standards developed for end user value which is root of the IETF success or (b) complex standards developed for Telco cartel restrictions and revenue agendas. Note the revenue agenda for creating standards have been an ITU specialty with well a known result: complex expensive systems that fail expensively in the market. The other key choice is between accepting standards written (c) by product developers or from a research project …you know “running code” or (d) by professional standards meetings attendees which is another ITU specialty.
I think that many of us are worried that QoS just represents another example of the IETF leaning towards the telephony cartel strategy of developing standards for a revenue agenda, market control and innovation threat suppression. Just look for innovation at the IETF today. Do you see any? Has it stopped because the Telco money at the IETF wants a closed system to suppress innovation threats and provide for business model protection while aided by the short term Wall Street focus of the technology sector? There is not much time left to correct the situation before the IETF goes completely over to the ITU dark side. But I have to wonder if the IETF can return to its core belief that successful standards are made for the end user. The ITU has already learned that end users always vote with their wallets and losing standards are made with the agenda to make money without caring for the end users. Is it necessary for the IETF to also learn the same painful ITU lessons?
Those supporting QoS make a lot of noise, but real support for QoS is far from convincing. Notice that not everyone has drunk the QoS Kool-Aid. All the public VoIP providers such as Skype, Vonage, and Google etc. are doing just fine without QoS. Please note that public VoIP providers can’t use QoS, even if they wanted to, since they don’t control the network. In fact, no single VoIP provider (including those that do own the network) can control QoS end to end anywhere across the world. So why try? …except to exploit its rate limiting date flow suppression properties. For an example of the lack of need for QoS, consider earlier this year the U.K. carrier British Telecom announced that it intends to target its BT Fusion converged service at larger businesses and offer VoIP calling when WiFi-enabled handsets become available. QoS wasn’t even mentioned and it is not a big deal for BT. Statements were made that transmitting VoIP over WiFi hotspots isn’t that big of a deal. They just transmit VoIP traffic like any other data. What NO QoS!?!! …Gasp!
Quality of What?
What is the real QoS (+EL) motivation? I think the answer can be found in the numerous interpretations of the letters “QoS”. Consider the following meanings of the true definition of QoS by analyzing all the alternatives the acronym really stands for.
• Quality of Suppression. Let’s face it. QoS is just a rate limiter. The term QoS is a great marketing ploy to “infer” that some kind of “quality” is provided to the end user. This is a great way to deceive and simply build rate limiting mechanisms. Since rate limiting is the case, then Quality of Suppression should be the proper label. But you know operator and vendor marketing departments will never go for that! But this is simply truth in advertising. Consumers pay for Internet access and bandwidth and also expect “neutrality” which allows usage of the bandwidth they paid for along with unimpaired access to any resources on the Internet.
• Quality of Stupidity is the propensity of the IETF, government regulators and uninformed end users to swallow this QoS FUD and not puke. Telephony operators and vendors have come to rely on the “masses are clueless asses” strategy as a key means to protect their empire and financially stick it to the end user. This ITU strategy is being applied without prejudice to the IETF, world governments and all end users. How long is the end user going to accept the short end of the stick and both the IETF and governments continue allowing them to be restricted and financially abused?
• Quality of Secrecy is all about getting billed for advertised capacity and really not having it. The operators are on a path to deliver as little value as possible to the end user and work diligently in the background to construct impairments and other obstacles for service access outside their walled gardens (for paid QoS to eventually alleviate).
• Quality of Surprise is the look on the end user face when things are slower than before or his voice or video over IP sessions stop working. Of course this can be turned around by paying for QoS and then asking your carrier to prove to you that you are getting the QoS they promised. Then look at who is surprised!
• Quality of Shocked occurs when you find out the Telco’s are still trying to protect a 100+ year old monopolistic circuit based business model and the end user is paying more for less.
• Quality of Suck is the sound of your money is being pulled to the Telco’s without providing any value. This behavior can also referred to the Quality of Separation, as money is separated from end user wallets without any value being returned.
• Quality of Senselessness is the result of the ITU suppressing innovation and the occurrences of exciting new services as well as reducing overall wealth and world wide tax revenues from Internet activities. Hasn’t the ITU figured out that an OPEN INTERNET generates fantastic amounts of wealth and tax revenues?
• Quality of Silliness is the activity focused on protecting a dying circuit business model and then perpetrating monopoly abuses, such as QoS, against the Internet end users.
• Quality of Scared is the operator and ITU reaction to the inevitable conclusion of becoming commodity bit pipes. On an up note, their desperation in the marketplace, standards bodies, regulatory venues, press, legislatures and the courts should be “fun” to watch 
• Quality of Stunned is the inevitable vendor reaction to the drop in sales and stock prices as they continue to perpetuate the fantasy that QoS does anything useful for the end user and to the ITU lemming crowd that continues to build complex and expensive gear no one will buy.
• Quality of Sanity is for all those who challenge the QoS myth.
Special Packet Handling
QoS is an extremely complex subject and I can’t do it justice in this short article so please refer to any number of appropriate texts for more detailed information. So rather than getting into details, I’ll focus on the main problems of rate limiting and traffic modulation by QoS mechanisms. Rate limiting and traffic modulation is what is the most attractive to the Telco cartel since these mechanisms can be used to disrupt outside the walled garden services and also dial back bandwidth. Reduced bandwidth, in particular, creates artificial constraints. QoS can then be used to shake down any end users who wish adequate Skype or other p2p services.
If QoS marketing shills were truly worried about the end user experience, and not just focused on inward looking business model protection, then the recommendation they should make is for better queue positioning mechanisms for network traffic classes and not rate limiting by individual traffic flow. Rate limiting wastes bandwidth and artificially suppresses demand and reduces investment in capacity! …or is the real end goal of a fabricated bandwidth constrained network to be used as an excuse for operators to increase prices?
Queue positioning techniques can help with latency control. These mechanisms can favor one traffic type over another at a congested location if implemented correctly. This differs from rate limited QoS in that it only comes into play when it is needed during periods of congestion and not mindlessly suppressing traffic rates all the time on underutilized links. Another key difference is that queue positioning schemes aren’t tied to individual users or individual services. The cost of the wire running into your home or business should not depend on what Internet services are running over it. The fact that you have already paid for Internet access is ignored as the telephony cartel wants you to pay twice so QoS can some how make some packets get to you “better”. In this case “better” is a secret revenue code for getting around artificially constructed p2p mitigation or traffic modulation impairments as well as artificial rate limited bandwidth constraints.
User controlled DiffServ (which by the way is a more benign form of QoS) can provide significant end user value by treating time sensitive traffic differently than other traffic at the usual point of constrained and sometimes congested edge capacity on the upload link leaving the home or business. I stress “user controlled” QoS because even queue positioning mechanisms can be abused by the operators who will continually look for ways to induce artificial bandwidth shortages thru perhaps shorter queues and/or higher drop probabilities if they can make a buck.
DiffServ marking under control of the end user can assist the positioning of packets at congested queues leaving or entering his home basically allows his network access link to run at a much higher utilization levels without impacting time sensitive traffic flows. This is a clear win - win, for the end user AND the operator because the operator can transmit more bits and makes more money with his infrastructure. But these useful queue positioning techniques are rejected by the telephony cartel because it doesn’t allow the operator to make more money by delivering fewer bits and charging premiums for QoS to alleviate individually rate limited end users.
All the QoS mechanisms being proposed today at numerous standards bodies is all about access and rate limiting with Telco cartel encouragement to tie it to individual users. At best it is a poor attempt to do some latency control by constantly restricting lower paying user traffic flows which lowers overall utilization. The net result is that overall, less bits are moved and therefore operator applied QoS not only discourages network use it also wastes capacity. QoS complexity, just like 3G is likely to become an unsustainable subsidized model marred by too high implementation and deployment costs.
Bandwidth Bandwagon
Bandwidth is usually enough! But, if you insist on using some form of QoS, perhaps the most intelligent thing to do today is to use the proposed Differentiated Service Code Points (DSCP in http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-tsvwg-diffserv-service-classes-01.txt) BUT only under control of the end user for the following reasons:
- DiffServ is scalable,
- DiffServ is stateless,
- DiffServ works across ISPs
- DiffServ works equally well on access links and in the backbone,
- DiffServ has all the needed flexibility to work per hop or end to end,
- DiffServ works for both unicast and multicast traffic,
- DiffServ works for all types of IP traffic, not just voice.
Most importantly, DiffServ is an honest and proven technology. It was not invented by ITU shills to fill the role of a QoS telephony cartel revenue engine. IETF tradition requires trials of alternatives with running code, followed by testing for interoperability and finally a proposal for a standard. DiffServ should be the beginning and the end of the QoS debate.
Intellectual Property Restrictions
Maybe QoS complexity is really a hidden goal destined to further stifle Internet innovation because complexity is an ideal basis to drive Intellectual Property rights into the hands of a few companies serving their telephony masters. If looking at past behavior is any indicator, then QoS technology will surely degenerate into IPR as yet another means of market protection by setting the license costs for QoS technology at inordinate levels. As an example, GSM IPR is already high at a cost of 8-10%. For 3G it is over priced at 15-20%. ITU-T IPR behavior is simply designed to kill off any newcomers to the market who can’t bring their own essential IPR. QoS IPR will in turn help the Telephony cartel to remain in control. What could be better for the telephony cartel: invent controlling and rate restricting QoS technology that no end user wants or needs, force it into standards, control the QoS IPR, provide no end user value and in fact discourage network usage, and finally to add insult to injury extort money from the end users if they want adequate Internet service? The best outcome for the end users is for QoS to be defeated and not force the Internet to carry its burdens technically and - above all - economically.
Fundamentally, QoS as envisioned by the Telco cartel is about restricting and rate limiting the end user unless he pays extra and at the same time provides a means to charge content providers twice for the same bit hauling service. This also restricts capacity usage. Simple queue positioning techniques don’t care who is paying and enhances capacity usage. This puts the two schemes in proper perspective. Queue positioning mechanisms (such as user controlled DiffServ vs. carrier controlled rate limiting) are better because those of us with computer science or engineering backgrounds well accept the truth of the statement that work conserving scheduling disciplines, like using DiffServ for queue positioning, will outperform non-work conserving approaches such as rate and access limited QoS. In the end, they are both limited in what they can deliver and usage growth will eventually require additional bandwidth. But operator driven QoS is so much more complicated and expensive to deploy because extensive controls are needed end to end to maintain traffic preferences in the face of congestion, transport variations, equipment failures as well as mobility between network access points, to name a few.
Best effort is BEST!
The operator controlled QoS challenges and associated expense dramatically increase when you consider providing consistent QoS behavior, via policy, across multiple technologies, service providers, applications and devices. It is delusional to think that network service providers will share their policy information which they all view as a competitive advantage. This leads to the conclusion that best effort is fundamental for competitive behavior and makes end to end QoS an unreachable goal.
QoS is in fact open research, which means there is no accepted solution. There is also a clear danger that the cost of the QoS mechanisms needed, including their operation and management will far exceed what is required to provide ample non-QoS service, or simply bandwidth. The effort for QoS is like having multiple supervisors for every worker (just deploying any QoS scheme today is past the point where the law of diminishing returns negates the usefulness of control and therefore there is no ROI outside of extortion). The only view point without debate is that vendors pushing QoS love the complexity and know that it will drive additional product and services sales. Why not? There is always money for vendors to make by leveraging as well as contributing to increased network complexity.
Attacks on the anti-QoS perspective often center on the claim that the anti-QoS crowd want “infinite bandwidth”. This and similar statements by the QoS advocates are nonsense! Adding more bandwidth has always been more cost effective than QoS. Others also agree, please see http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/internet.economics.pdf Think about this, if adding bandwidth wasn’t effective, then how come QoS isn’t widely deployed today? A look at QoS, past the hype, reveals numerous issues. As an Internet user, all I care about is that I have enough capacity so most things run nicely. Just give me my advertised bit rate and I am happy. I don’t need to be controlled or mitigated! In fact 600Kbs or so runs all the Internet stuff I want to do, which is a far cry from infinite bandwidth and I already pay for more than 600Kbs capacity today.
Investigation of Telephony cartel QoS propaganda reveals they provide no end user value and are part of the frankly appalling business models and inflexibility that incumbent Telco’s are forcing upon consumers and enterprise customers. In fact, QoS has lots of other known issues such as how it reduces reliability due to the excessive amount of state needed, it introduces enormous complexity, it has unknown impacts to security, it does not cooperate with admission control, it is even open research down to the meaning of the term “quality” applied to networking, vendor gear variations, lack of useful standards …etc. Basically QoS is not ready for prime time! Then why are some people trying to drive it into networking when it is not fully baked? This all begs the question: If QoS is so hard to do, reduces reliability, adds complexity, causes migration issues, etc. etc. etc, what could possibly be the motive of QoS advocates? So let’s think about this… It’s just a rate limiting and traffic modulation extortion attempt. It really doesn’t have to work, just limit rates and block competition, unless you pay a lot more of course!
Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics
In conclusion, QoS is all about telephony operators putting rate and access limiting mechanisms into the network to control the Internet, overcharge the end user with traffic surcharges, and restrict competition to simply line their pockets. I can’t blame the operators since monopoly protection results in insulated thinking; causes power induced greed, and clearly lowers business IQs which all lead to abuse (consider the parallels in operator arrogance shown by past “hush-a-phone” and now present municipal WiFi suppression activities). The really pathetic and distasteful part is that cartel (and increasingly Internet) vendors will support the QoS myth, co-opt standards and basically say, fabricate, and do “anything” for the anticipated future QoS product sales. But most troubling is; why won’t the government stand up for and protect the end user? Who by the way, vote! Maybe it’s time for true Internet advocates to use the powerful Internet tool they love and open web sites, blogs and information portals to bring this debate to the average American and especially to our government officials to clarify what an open Internet means to our freedom and to the global economy.