The Dynamic Internet

Christopher Yoo

Description

The Dynamic Internet: How Technology, Users, and Businesses are Changing the Network offers a comprehensive history of the Internet and efforts to regulate its use. University of Pennsylvania law professor Christopher S. Yoo contends that rather than engaging in prescriptive regulatory oversight, the government should promote competition in other ways, such as reducing costs for consumers, lowering entry barriers for new producers, and increasing transparency. These reforms would benefit consumers while permitting the industry to develop new solutions for emerging problems. It is fruitless for government to attempt to lock the burgeoning online industry into any particular architecture; rather, policymakers should act with the knowledge that no one actor can foresee how the network is likely to evolve in the future.

Sujets

• Business
• Economics
• Gestion et management
• Information Management

Informations

• Publié par: AEI Press
• Date de parution: 14 septembre 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780844772295
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Dynamic Internet: How Technology, Users, and Businesses Are Transforming the Network
The Dynamic Internet: How Technology, Users, and Businesses Are Transforming the Network
Christopher S. Yoo
The AEI Press
Publisher for the American Enterprise Institute
WASHINGTON, D. C.
Distributed by arrangement with the Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706. To order, call toll free 1-800-462-6420 or 1-717-794-3800. For all other inquiries, please contact AEI Press, 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036, or call 1-800-862-5801.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Yoo, Christopher S.
The dynamic internet : how technology, users, and businesses are changing the network / Christopher S. Yoo.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8447-7227-1 (cloth)—ISBN 0-8447-7227-5 (cloth)—
ISBN 978-0-8447-7229-5 (ebook)—ISBN 0-8447-7229-1 (ebook)
1. Internet industry. 2. Business networks. 3. Internet industry—Prices. I. Title.
HD9696.8.A2Y66 2010
384.3'3—dc23
2012015322
© 2012 by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Washington, D.C. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission in writing from the American Enterprise Institute except in the case of brief quotations embodied in news articles, critical articles, or reviews. The views expressed in the publications of the American Enterprise Institute are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the staff, advisory panels, officers, or trustees of AEI.
Printed in the United States of America
For my sons, Marshall and Brendan
List of Illustrations
F IGURES
1-1
U.S. Internet Users and Broadband Subscribers (millions)
1-2
U.S. Internet Users and Broadband Penetration
1-3
Global Internet Hosts (millions)
2-1
Growth in U.S. Internet Traffic (petabytes/month)
2-2
Annual Growth Rates for U.S. Internet Traffic
2-3
An Illustration of Jitter
2-4
Peer-to-Peer as a Percentage of Consumer Internet Traffic
3-1
U.S. Subscribers to High-Speed Lines by Technology (millions)
4-1
The NSFNET Backbone, Circa 1992
4-2
The NSFNET Three-Tiered Network Architecture
4-3
The Hierarchical Structure of the Internet after Backbone Privatization
4-4
The Network Hierarchy Depicted as a Series of Concentric Rings
4-5
Private Peering
4-6
Multihoming
4-7
Secondary Peering
4-8
Content Delivery Networks
8-1
Transit, Peering, and Flat-Rate Pricing
8-2
Inefficiencies of Peak-Load Pricing
T ABLES
2-1
Growth in International Internet Traffic and Capacity
2-2
Variations in Applications’ Needs for Different Types of QoS
3-1
Number of Wireless Providers by Census Block, 2010
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank the Milton and Miriam Handler Foundation, the New York Bar Foundation, the National Research Initiative, and the Center for Technology, Innovation and Competition at the University of Pennsylvania for their financial support.
The manuscript benefited from presentations at the Wharton Communication and Media Law Colloquium, the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy, the Columbia University chapters of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and Scientists and Engineers for a Better Society, the Penn Intellectual Property Group, the Earle Mack School of Law at Drexel University, and the Annenberg School for Communication.
The book draws on material from the following publications:
Yoo, Christopher S. 2008. Network neutrality, consumers, and innovation. University of Chicago Legal Forum (2008):169–262.
———. 2010. Free speech and the myth of the Internet as an unintermdiated experience. George Washington Law Review 78 (4): 697–773.
———. 2010. Innovations in the Internet’s architecture that challenge the status quo. Journal on Telecommunications and High Technology Law 8 (1): 79–99.
———. 2010. Product life cycle and the maturation of the Internet. Northwestern University Law Review 104 (2): 641–70.
List of Acronyms
ADSL
asymmetric digital subscriber line
AOL
America Online
ARPANET
Advanced Research Projects Agency Network
BGP
Border Gateway Protocol
CAGR
compounded annual growth rate
CAN-SPAM
Controlling the Assault of Nonsolicited Pornography and Marketing (Act)
CDN
content delivery network
ConEx
congestion exposure
DARPA
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
DBS
direct broadcast satellite
DiffServ
differentiated services
DNS
domain name system
DOCSIS
Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification
DSL
digital subscriber line
DTC
(University of Minnesota’s) Digital Technology Center
ECN
Explicit Congestion Notification
FCC
Federal Communications Commission
FIND
(NSF’s) Future Internet Design
FiOS
(Verizon’s) Fiber Optic Service
FTTH
fiber to the home
Gbps
gigabits per second
GENI
(NSF’s) Global Environment for Network Innovations
IANA
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
ICANN
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
IPv4
Internet Protocol version 4
ISP
Internet service provider
ITU
International Telecommunication Union
kbps
kilobits per second
LEDBAT
low extra-delay background transport
LTE
Long Term Evolution
Mbps
megabits per second
MPLS
MultiProtocol Label Switching
NAP
network access point
NewArch
(DARPA’s) New Architecture
NSF
National Science Foundation
NSFNET
National Science Foundation Network
PC
personal computer
QoS
quality of service
RED
Random Early Discard
RFID
radio frequency identification
TCP
Transmission Control Protocol
UDP
User Datagram Protocol
URL
Uniform Resource Locator
VCR
videocassette recorder
VDSL
very high bit rate digital subscriber line
VoIP
voice over Internet Protocol
WiFi
Wireless Fidelity
WiMax
Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access
Introduction
When I took office [in January of 1993], only high energy physicists had ever heard of what is called the World Wide Web. Now even my cat has his own web page.
—William J. Clinton (1996)
The mid-1990s represented the seminal moment in the history of the Internet. Spurred by the invention of the World Wide Web in 1989, the launch of the first browser capable of supporting graphics in 1993, and the privatization of the Internet backbone in 1995 (and the accompanying removal of all restrictions on commercial use), the Internet ceased being the plaything of the high-tech community and started to become part of almost everyone’s daily life. A medium that began as a way for academics to exchange e-mail and transfer files has now transformed virtually every aspect of most people’s everyday lives, putting a previously unimaginable range of information at their fingertips and changing the way they work, play, learn, and vote.
Many policy advocates argue that the Internet of the mid-1990s was built around certain architectural principles that created a uniform, level playing field that provided everyone with nondiscriminatory access to the network. These advocates regard these principles as critical to the Internet’s past success and have called on Congress and federal regulatory agencies to mandate that those principles remain in place (see, for example, Lessig 2006; FCC 2009).
Leading technologists have challenged the historical accuracy of these arguments, pointing out that they presuppose a golden age that never really existed (Crowcroft 2007; Clark 2008). 1 As the inclusion of a “type of service” flag in the original Internet Protocol header demonstrates, the ability to prioritize particular traffic based on its need for throughput, delay avoidance, and reliability has been one of the Internet’s central design features from the very beginning. Moreover, because the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) initially created the Internet to be a military network, it placed a high priority on considerations that have little relevance to commercial networks (such as survivability in the face of attack) and placed a low priority on considerations that are critical to a commercial network’s success (such as efficiency and cost accountability) (Clark 1988).
Setting aside whether the above accurately describes the Internet when it first emerged as a mass-market phenomenon, the policy debate has largely overlooked the extent to which the technological and economic environments surrounding the Internet have changed since the mid-1990s. Specifically, four major changes that have forced the network to evolve remain underdiscussed: Increase in the number and diversity of end users : What was once a small population of technologically savvy scientific researchers based in universities and research institutions has been replaced by a user base that is much larger, more diverse, and less technologically sophisticated and that receives less institutional support. Increase in the diversity and intensity of applications : Early Internet applications, such as e-mail and file transfers, required relatively little bandwidth and were not particularly sensitive to variations in network performance. Modern applications, such as videoconferencing and online gaming, often demand greater bandwidth, security, and performance. Other applications, such as peer-to-peer technologies and cloud computing, create traffic patterns that are fundamentally different from previous mass-market applications. Increase in the variety of technologies : When the Internet first arose, almost everyone connected to it via a desktop computer that was attached to a connection provided by the local telephone company. Dial-up modems have now given way to a wide array of last-mile networking technologies, including cable modem systems, digital subscriber lines (DSL), fiber-to-the-home, and wireless broadband. In contrast to the relative uniformity of wireline connections, these new technologies vary widely in terms of their available