# Presentation: 495067

## Network Management and Consumer Expectations 

- Robert M. “Robb” Topolski
- robb@funchords.com

## Hello, I’m Robb Topolski...

- 25 years, **Amateur Radio Operator**
- Public Service: Disaster recovery, Navy MARS, USAF MARS
- Digital modes, RTTY and packet, PBBS, NET/ROM, Digipeaters
- Southern California Digital Communications Council member
- 15 years, **Software Quality Assurance and Testing**
- Networking products and platforms
**Internet “Settler” (early 1990s)**
- Both for work and personal research
- Known by my own name; signed the Nat’l Science Foundation AUP
- The WWW just starting and it was a fun “Information Dirt Road”

- Network Management and Consumer Expectations

- April 17, 2008

**Notes:**
Thank you for inviting me to speak on this panel. 

I owe my interest in technology and networking to Amateur Radio, where as a teen I was supervised by mentors “Elmers” who introduced me to digital modes over radio.  Indeed, my interest in communications, protocols, and networking “physics” is deeply rooted in the concepts that I learned in those first days as a “Ham.”

For the last 15 years, I’ve been working on Networking products and platforms, ranging from “Video Phone” software to scalable data-center servers.  

(Note: My professional bio is on file with the original Free Press, et. al. filings in this case.  

Not surprisingly, then, I took those basics with me when I became interested in an emerging medium known as the “Internet.”  I didn’t invent it, nor were any of my innovations one of the Internet’s core protocols.  But when I arrived, it wasn’t yet the “World-Wide-Web” or an “Information Superhighway,” either.  We all used our real names, many of us signed a National Science Foundation agreement promising to keep to certain standards.  One of my favorite pages sat on a server called akebono.stanford.edu – known either as Jerry’s List or Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle – later to change its name to, simply, YAHOO.  So perhaps you might think of me as an stagecoach Settler.  

One of my first projects on the Internet was the commercial development of the NCSA Mosaic browser. Most recently, I was responsible for oversight of multiple development and testing projects concerning datacenter servers.  Over the years, I have been responsible for ensuring that my company’s numerous networking products behaved according to established Standards.

## ...and I am a Comcast Customer.

**I could not upload** certain legal and historical Tin-Pan Alley and Barbershop Quartet era content – 24 hours a day, for months

- Network Management and Consumer Expectations

- April 17, 2008

**Notes:**
My work is also one of my hobbies.  I have been a presenter at several software quality and testing conferences, I’ve worked on anti-spam and anti-phishing projects.  I have helped numerous end-user consumers put together their wireless networking projects. 

Another hobby of mine is music.  Since coming to Oregon.  Nine months out of the year, people in my part of the Pacific NorthWET look for ways to stay dry.  I became interested in four-part barbershop harmony.  

Over the years, I had collected some nice samples of printed and recorded musical history, in the old-time Barbershop Quartet style.  While trying to use the Peer-to-peer networks to share this with others, I found that I was completely unable to upload any of it on the Gnutella network.  This confused me, because, months earlier, an earlier attempt to share other files like these worked fine.

## ...and I am a Comcast Customer.

**I could not upload** certain legal Tin-Pan Alley and Barbershop Quartet era content – 24 hours a day, for months
**I posted a technical report** about it on “DSL Reports,” a long-standing bulletin-board service shared by Broadband enthusiasts
**My reports were independently confirmed** and widely reported in the blogs and print media: _Comcast injects forged packets to tear down established connections_

- Network Management and Consumer Expectations

- April 17, 2008

## The Simple Problem

- Consumers, developers, content creators and service providers all **expect and depend** upon **network operators** using the **same standardized set of protocols and principles common to the Internet.**

- Network Management and Consumer Expectations

- April 17, 2008

**Notes:**
As I told the Free Press when I agreed to sign on to their FCC filing, the implications of an ISP behaving this way strikes at the heart of the freedom to innovate on the Internet.  

On February’s technical panel, Dr. David P. Reed said it very well: “Providing Internet Access implies adherence to a set of standard technical protocols and technical practices that are essential for the world-wide Internet to work for all its users.”

I have to know, as a developer, that the Web Browser that I am developing in a lab in Santa Monica, California will work on an ISP anywhere in Africa.  As a consumer, I expect that Slingbox, which was developed in Israel, will work on my Cable ISP in Hillsboro, Oregon.  Each of these may have certain minimum System Requirements about the connection speed, but world-wide, developers assume that the word “Internet” means that same set of protocols and operating principles.
------------------------------------------------------------
When you pull into a station, and fill your tank with Unleaded Gasoline, you need only concern yourself with the volume and the price.  You need not concern yourself with the fundamental formula. Otherwise, the job of owning, manufacturing, repairing, or making products for cars would be much more complicated. The “Internet” has a similar quality.  Since the consumers, developers, content providers, and network service providers all share a common understanding of the “Internet,” there is no need to define it any further.  Network requirements for currently-shipping products need not mention the various protocols presumed to be allowed across the ‘net. 

## The Simple Problem

- Consumers, developers, content and service providers **expect and depend** upon **network operators** using the **same standardized set of protocols and principles common to the Internet.**
**Consumers** and the **Internet community** were **harmed** when **Comcast offered “High Speed Internet”** yet **secretly** delivered **something **much** less and different.**** **

- Network Management and Consumer Expectations

- April 17, 2008

## The Simple Problem

- Consumers, developers, content and service providers **expect and depend** upon **network operators** using the **same standardized set of protocols and principles common to the Internet.**
**Consumers** and the **Internet community** were **harmed** when **Comcast offered “High Speed Internet”** yet **furtively** delivered **something **much** less and different.**** **
- The interference remains **unreasonable**, undisclosed, arbitrary, and unauthorized. It **constantly** attacks **both ends** of TCP links established by **P2P applications** in a way that **hides the source** of those attacks and **prevents customers** from uploading.

- Network Management and Consumer Expectations

- April 17, 2008

## The Simple Solution

_**Immediately stop the interference**_
- It is no different than any other malicious interference (jamming) case affecting authorized communications; the FCC takes quick action to stop jamming.

- Network Management and Consumer Expectations

- April 17, 2008

**Notes:**
As a ham radio operator, I see this simply as – without regard to the Network Neutrality implications – a jamming complaint.  

The FCC usually does a fantastic job of putting active jamming activity on the top of their list, however this period of jamming has continued from sometime in 2006 until present day – and the “Jammer” assures us that he’ll stop when he’s damned good and ready to change his ways – hopefully by the end of the year.  This is both unprecedented and unacceptable.

The FCC probably should have acted already.  Nevertheless, the FCC should take immediate action, today if possible, to enjoin Comcast from employing this technology any longer.  

Just as there is no reasonable excuse for intentionally jamming authorized communications, forging RSTs to tear down authorized, working communication links between peers is likewise without excuse.

## The Simple Solution

_**Immediately stop the interference**_
- It is no different than any other malicious interference (jamming) case affecting authorized communications; the FCC takes quick action to stop jamming.
- Begin the process of granting relief
- ISPs who under-deliver should pay fair restitution
- ISPs who conspire to secretly deliver less service than was sold, should also be punished with greater severity
- ISPs who compound the problem by unethically diffusing, denying, or deflecting the truthful examination of their acts should face compounded punishment as a result.

- Network Management and Consumer Expectations

- April 17, 2008

**Notes:**
Aside from stopping the interference, the various complainants in this case have asked for certain relief.  Considering those requests seems to be the appropriate and logical next steps in this case.  

In such that we have a case of under-delivery of services – regardless if malicious or not – capture and restitution of customers’ subscription fees is in order. 

The government should duly investigate and determine if there are further findings of a violation of certain assurances Comcast provided to the government, or criminal acts committed, or securities-related ethical lapses, and upon such finding deliver appropriate consequences.  

## The Simple Solution

_**Immediately stop the interference**_
- It is no different than any other malicious interference (jamming) case affecting authorized communications; the FCC takes quick action to stop jamming.
- Begin the process of granting relief
- ISPs who under-deliver should pay fair restitution
- ISPs who conspire to secretly deliver less service than was sold, should also be punished with greater severity
- ISPs who compound the problem by unethically diffusing, denying, or deflecting the truthful examination of their acts should face compounded punishment as a result.
- Establish proactive oversight: *today, DPI ... Tomorrow?*
- Create improved processes, rules, or procedures for the future
- Obtain appropriate access to technical and complaint data

- Network Management and Consumer Expectations

- April 17, 2008

**Notes:**
Finally, the FCC needs to understand that the advent of high-speed Deep Packet Inspection hardware opens up a whole new set of capabilities – 

Some are good.  Deep Packet Inspection might be employed by a lab or a business to prevent employee theft of Intellectual Property by  looking for key words in incoming or outgoing communications.  It might be specifically requested by customers who want additional parental controls to monitor participation in chat rooms and to avoid dangerous content. 

It’s when these new abilities challenge the bedrock principles of the Internet that require the FCC to prepare.  These devices are still very new, but are currently being tested and marketed for:

Intercepting a subscribers’ incoming web pages and changing their content, such as an ISP inserting their own ads or messages so that they appear within the web pages fetched by the consumer.
Passively monitoring the activity of users, without their explicit consent, and selling that information and/or delivering customized marketing campaigns based on the results.

Situations like these are extremely difficult for an end user to detect, and they’re appearing in the marketplace now.  A grass-roots concern known as the Network Neutrality Squad (www.nnsquad.org) is collecting such reports. 

For the integrity of the Internet “product,” the FCC needs to have sufficient access to the appropriate business and complaint records as well as access to “the product” to determine the validity of those complaints.