Does more broadband mean more piracy?

In the $787-billion economic stimulus package enacted in February, Congress told the Federal Communications Commission to create a plan for extending broadband service to all Americans and increasing broadband speeds. It's an apple-pie, chicken-in-every-pot goal -- at least until people see the price tag. Nevertheless, there are plenty of disagreements over the details of the plan. One is a battle between copyright holders and consumer advocates over what to do about all the content that broadband users download or stream illegally. The former want Internet service providers to use technology to filter out unauthorized content flowing over their networks; the latter argue that filters won't work as advertised and will inflict an unacceptable amount of collateral damage on lawful Internet uses. I sympathize with the copyright holders' concerns about rampant unauthorized copying, but I'm not persuaded that filtering is the solution -- or that this proceeding is the place to have that debate.

Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, laid out the case against filters ...

Net neutrality: Let the wild rumpus start

As expected, the Federal Communications Commission agreed today to propose a set of Net neutrality rules based on the six principles that Chairman Julius Genachowski laid out in a speech last month. (For more background, see the FCC staff's presentation on the proposal.) Those principles would bar broadband providers from blocking customers from the content, applications or services of their choice; preventing them from connecting with the devices of their choice; discriminating unreasonably against any specific content, application or service; and concealing network management techniques in a way that prevents Web users from operating freely. There are at least four notable caveats, In a win for Hollywood, the protections would apply only to legal content and services, and Internet service providers would still be able to block the exchange of infringing material. ISPs would still be able to conduct "reasonable network management," including weeding out spam. The new rules wouldn't trump ISPs' obligations to cooperate with public safety officials. And the commission would permit ISPs to dedicate a portion of their bandwidth to "managed" services, such as pay TV channels or Internet phone calls. What services would qualify and how much bandwidth could be reserved remain to be determined, in what may be the most fiercely debated part of the new rules.

Some of the biggest broadband providers and their allies in Congress question whether the commission should adopt any rules, period -- and whether the FCC even has the authority to do so. For example, AT&T tried to derail the proposed rules in advance of the meeting, and its opposition isn't likely to diminish as the formal rule-making process goes forward. These opponents have found a sympathetic audience in the commission's two Republicans, Robert McDowell and Meredith Attwell Baker, who gave only partial support to the notice of proposed rule-making. McDowell and Baker said they welcomed the chance for a thorough public discourse on how best to maintain an open Internet but doubted that government regulations were the right course. They also questioned whether there is a problem here for the FCC to fix, noting that the commission has found only a handful of incidents of ISPs behaving in an anti-competitive way.

In McDowell's view, having more competition among broadband ISPs is the solution, and that competition is rapidly emerging. But the wireless providers he's counting on can't match the ever-increasing speeds deployed by cable TV operators and wired telephone companies. Given that there is virtually no competition within each market -- not many people have more than one cable provider or more than one local telco to choose from -- a duopoly will continue to reign over truly high-speed Internet services for years to come.

One other point emphasized by McDowell is that Internet users want ISPs to prioritize some bits (e.g., video streams) over others (e.g., e-mail). That gets to the question of what constitutes "reasonable" network management, and McDowell offers a useful way of thinking about this issue: what the commission should be concerned about is management techniques that are anti-competitive, rather than those that simply treat one type of traffic differently than another.

I think the commission should also be concerned about management techniques designed to make content, application or service providers pay more for the ability to reach their customers online. It's worth remembering that Web-based companies started lobbying for Net neutrality rules after executives at broadband companies complained about the bandwidth consumed by online video services. They warned that they would need to spend heavily to increase the capacity of their networks, and said that companies like YouTube (now a part of Google) should bear some of those costs. But YouTube isn't a "free rider" -- it has invested heavily in the servers and bandwidth needed to deliver its bits to its customers' ISPs. The problem for those ISPs is that their customers happen to demand a lot of bits from YouTube and other online content providers. In other words, the issue isn't what YouTube is supplying; it's what broadband customers are demanding. Is it really YouTube's or Netflix's or Sling's fault that ISPs are having trouble keeping their bandwidth promises to their customers?

The effect of these rules may very well be that ISPs look for solutions on the demand side of the equation, not the supply side. That could mean higher monthly fees or surcharges for those who are the heaviest users. And with so little competition among ISPs, it's reasonable to worry about gouging. On the other hand, having ISPs deploy a "fast lane" for content providers willing to pay extra for higher priority could be powerfully anti-competitive. Google can afford to pay extra, but can the start-up that wants to be the next YouTube? Universal Music Group could pay extra, but could an indie band? That's why focusing on the companies supplying bandwidth-intensive apps is more problematic than on the consumers demanding them. It's also why the commission's exploration of the "managed services" issue will be so contentious. These services are the ones that would be allowed into the fast lane, making them the exceptions that could swallow the rule.

Photo: FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, announcing his Net neutrality principles in September. Credit: Mark Wilson / Getty Images

-- Jon Healey

Healey writes editorials for The Times' Opinion Manufacturing Division.

A Zillion here, a Zillion there [UPDATED]

It looks like the public will have to wait a bit longer for ZillionTV, but when it does arrive, it will be available in more places. CEO Mitchell Berman announced this morning that privately held ZillionTV Corp. had added a new element to its Internet-on-TV distribution strategy: In addition to offering its on-demand programming through Internet service providers, Zillion will serve consumers directly. To promote both approaches, Berman said the company is working with consumer electronics manufacturers to embed enabling technology in their Internet-enabled TV sets and set-top boxes (e.g., Blu-ray disc players). These devices won't become available until the second half of next year, however; nor does the company expect to move beyond trial deployments with ISPs this year.

In an interview earlier this week, Berman said ...

DDOS attack slammed Twitter with 20 times normal traffic volume

Credit: ashpollock / Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

NTT America, Twitter's Internet service provider, confirmed that the DDOS attack against Twitter has continued today, with huge waves of malicious requests crashing up against Twitter's now-activated defenses. The countermeasures seem to be working; on Friday evening, pages loaded on Twitter without an obvious lag. See earlier interview here.

An e-mail from Michael Wheeler, vice president of NTT America's Global IP Network, included the following update:

We can confirm that the attack has been ongoing and has varied in intensity. On Friday morning there was an increase in the intensity and the variables of the attack. At various times during the attack we have seen the levels of traffic rise between 15 and 20 times the normal traffic volume we have historically seen for Twitter.

Wheeler also expanded on Twitter's choice of security level, explaining that different types of business may require different levels of defense against such attacks:

Many Financial clients have regulatory requirements that require them to have certain levels of security, including DDoS related situations. In the case of Twitter, they are not required to maintain those same levels due to the nature of their business. Many clients use their own internal tools, external services, or a combination of services to address DDoS related attacks.

On the question of whether Twitter should have had a higher level of security protection, Wheeler said the following:

There is no way in hindsight to conclude what would or would not have minimized the impact of the attack due to the number of variables involved. Generally speaking, more security is better then less, but DDoS attacks vary in size and complexity so there is no way of knowing what may have lessened the impact after the fact.

-- David Sarno

Follow my variable-rate stream of tech and culture-related musings on Twitter: @dsarno

Interview: Twitter service provider NTT America on DDOS attack

Following an agreement early last year, Twitter's Internet service was taken over by NTT America, a unit of the Japanese telecommunications giant Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. The switch seemed to improve the site's frequently faulty service, and the rate of outages and slowness has decreased considerably. Twitter has weathered major news events such as the 2008 presidential election, this year's election and its aftermath in Iran, and the death in June of Michael Jackson.

The attack yesterday was one of the few major outages the sites has experienced recently. (David Colker has some added details about the attack here.)

Kazuhiro Gomi, NTT's chief operating officer and chief technology officer, agreed to an interview Thursday  night as Twitter was still under siege. He discussed the process that NTT uses to protect Twitter, the intensity of the attack and why Twitter was vulnerable to a DDOS attack.

What happened?

At approximately 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time the attack started coming in. Shortly after that, the Twitter servers became unreachable. At that time we realized it was a DDOS attack. Within the NTT network we have a mechanism to drop the malicious packets of the DDOS. So we correctly tuned it and then turned it on at around 11 o'clock. So that mechanism turned on and the Twitter page became accessible at that time. For the exact time, you'd have to refer back to Twitter's official comment, but by my understanding it was about an hour and a half or two hours that Twitter was inaccessible.

Are there some residual performance issues?

The current situation [as of Thursday evening] is that all the traffic going to Twitter needs to be scrubbed -- basically, filtered -- which was not the case before the incident happened. And another factor is that the attack is still going on -- therefore the traffic needs to be scrubbed continually. That process slows things down a little bit.

So you'll keep scrubbing the packets until the attack stops?

Yes.

How would you characterize the severity of the attack?

That's really hard to quantify, but in my past experience -- that the Twitter page was unreachable is definitely one of the worst-case scenarios. From that perspective, it was pretty bad.

Do you have a sense of how and whether you'd be able to track it back to the source?

To be quite honest, that is very difficult. The nature of a DDOS attack is that it's coming from all over the place, so it's really difficult to identify the source.

In talking to some security analysts, it was suggested that in business-grade applications and online commerce, there's a feature that would automatically protect you from DDOS attacks. Why didn't Twitter have that?

That's purely Twitter's decision and I need to observe their decisions. We are their network provider and we have a mechanism that I explained earlier to protect our customers from DDOS, like we did today. So in one sense they are guarded by using NTT's network -- it's fair to say that. But there's definitely different methods. Like in the financial world, it may be that a quicker response is required -- and [in the financial world] they might have ... a more strict contract to make it happen. 

Is it correct to say that the system that defends against DDOS is not something that's always "on"?

It's pretty much a kicked-on, retroactive system. For this case, we see that the customer is under attack, and we kick it in after the fact.

What can be the motivation of the attacks in these cases?

That varies. I think more recently there's some political parties unhappy with something and do a DDOS attacks to kill servers -- that happened at many U.S. government sites and so forth. I'm not in the position to determine that this is another case of such, but that's one likely scenario. But it's too difficult to determine what that was.

-- David Sarno

Follow my variable-rate stream of tech and culture-related musings on Twitter: @dsarno

How Obama's lifting of rules for Cuba might affect telecom companies

People using phones in Cuba. Credit: Paul Keller via Flickr

The Obama administration said today that it was changing some U.S. policies toward Cuba, hoping to, among other things, "promote the freer flow of information and humanitarian items to the Cuban people."

The news could create some major changes with regard to cellphones, computers and broadband in Cuba. The administration proposes to let telecommunications companies establish fiber-optic and satellite links between the U.S. and the island, let U.S. carriers enter into roaming service agreements with Cuba's carriers, let U.S. satellite radio and TV companies provide service in the country and allow people to donate consumer telecommunication devices to Cuba without a license.

“This is a big deal. It’s a significant change in U.S. policy,” said David A. Gross, a partner at international telecom firm Wiley Rein who was until January the U.S. Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy.

The administration's decision means that Cuban Americans can send ...

In-flight wireless Internet to expand to hundreds of American Airlines planes

The future of air travel? Credit: Bekathwia via Flickr.

Flights are getting canceled and you have to pay to check a bag. But, hey, at least you can now obsessively check your Gmail on more planes than ever. American Airlines plans to announce Tuesday that it's installing Gogo Inflight Internet service on 318 of its domestic aircraft, up from the 15 planes that currently allow customers to wirelessly access the Internet.

American isn't the only airline ramping up wireless service. Gogo, provided by Illinois company Aircell, is also available on about 80 Delta/Northwest aircraft and some Virgin America planes. Aircell says it is working on making the in-flight wireless service available on United Airlines and Air Canada as well. 

“We’ve really just been charging forward since August,” said John Happ, a vice president at Aircell. American launched the company's in-flight service on Aug. 20, 2008. So far, the airline has focused the service on routes connecting New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Miami.

The network operates through an air-to-ground system that uses three small antennas installed on the aircraft to connect to Aircell's mobile broadband network, which has 92 cell towers ...

Verizon Wireless completes Alltel purchase, becomes No. 1

Verizon Wireless will become the nation's largest wireless provider today with a whopping 83.7 million customers as it completes its acquisition of Alltel. That means about 28% of people in the U.S. are Verizon customers. It also means that yes, Verizon, we can hear you now.

Verizon said in a release today that it would keep using the Alltel brand for the next few months and that it would begin rebranding in the second quarter. Sadly, that probably means slapping Verizon names on the Alltel properties, rather than some strange combination such as AllVerizon, Veritel or Allizon. Too bad they don't want to use an anagram of Verizon Alltel: the best one we could find was Viral Tell Zone, which seems fitting for a wireless company.

The merger was announced in June, when Verizon said it would pay $5.9 billion for Alltel and acquire even more billions worth of debt to add 13 million customers. It took months to clear regulatory hurdles, but the deal received Federal Communications Commission approval in November and Federal Trade Commission approval this month. The FCC had also cleared a merger between Sprint and Clearwire that was completed last week.

Under the terms of the deal, Verizon has to divest overlapping properties in 105 markets. Many of those are in rural areas in South Dakota, Kansas and Montana.

-- Alana Semuels

Photo: Maybe Verizon bought Alltel so it could own this cool car. Credit: szkea via Flickr

Lose your Time Warner Internet connection (again)? You could try Open DNS

If you live in Greater Los Angeles and are fed up with Time Warner Cable, there's probably not much you can do about it (unless you're the L.A. city attorney, in which case you can sue). The frequent outages, slow customer service and small number of high-definition channels are a fact of life. But the next time your Time Warner Internet goes down, wait a moment before you shout expletives at your modem. There may be a solution, albeit an unauthorized one.

This week, when an outage prevented some L.A. customers (Time Warner told NBC News it was 1.2 million but told us it was a "small number") from accessing the Internet, a few sages on Twitter suggested checking out OpenDNS. The San Francisco company is a DNS provider, which means that when Time Warner's DNS server is down, Open DNS can help you access the Internet.

Here's how it works: DNS servers convert IP addresses (those numbers formatted something like 123.456.78.90) into domain names. They are basically the "directory assistance" of the Internet, according to Allison Rhodes, a spokeswoman for OpenDNS. Time Warner and other ...

Column: Filtering Internet porn isn't the government's job

Universal Internet access sounds great. But not the way the head of the Federal Communications Commission envisions it.

FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin is proposing that free wireless Net access be made available to everyone as part of a sale of public airwaves. At the same time, he wants filters put in place so that no smut slips through to impressionable young Web surfers.

This would be the first time such filters have been imposed by an Internet service provider rather than individual users, allowing government officials or a private company to decide what can and can't be seen online.

"It's very troubling," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a digital-rights watchdog. "A government-mandated filter at the network level means the government can block anything it finds objectionable."

Read the rest of the column here.

-- David Lazarus