One of the key concepts in yesterday’s opening session at the CRTC’s network management hearings was Sandvine’s statement that an unmanaged network is not neutral. I preferred that quote to a Commissioner comment about drowning cats.

Since the transcripts are not yet available, let me paraphrase: In the early days of the internet, all participants had similar, shared interests in the operation of the network. That is not the case today, where some actors placed their selfish interests ahead of the common good of all users and all applications.

So managing traffic restores the balance of neutrality.

John Lawford, representing a variety of consumers groups in the hearings, is quoted asking rhetorically:

If three per cent is causing a problem, how finely tuned is your network?

But as I mentioned last week, peer-to-peer doesn’t require a high percentage of capacity consumption to have its bad behaviour impact the network.

Picture a wide-load truck driving down the highway blocking all the lanes. The truck isn’t using a significant percentage of the road’s capacity; it doesn’t represent a measurable amount of total traffic.

You can follow the hearings with live audio from the CRTC website, or for play-by-play, check out the National Post live blog.

I noticed a story about Joost having trouble maintaining its model of offering free content and it takes us over to a debate between Malcolm Gladwell and Chris Anderson over the evolution of Free in a digital world.

Gladwell’s review of Anderson’s Free: The Future of a Radical Price includes the following quote from the book:

Distribution is now close enough to free to round down. Today, it costs about $0.25 to stream one hour of video to one person. Next year, it will be $0.15. A year later it will be less than a dime. Which is why YouTube’s founders decided to give it away. . . . The result is both messy and runs counter to every instinct of a television professional, but this is what abundance both requires and demands.

However, as all of the major ISPs understand so well, there is a big difference between “free” and “close enough to free to round down”. Gladwell puts it eloquently:

Although the magic of Free technology means that the cost of serving up each video is “close enough to free to round down,” “close enough to free” multiplied by seventy-five billion is still a very large number. A recent report by Credit Suisse estimates that YouTube’s bandwidth costs in 2009 will be three hundred and sixty million dollars.

As we head into the CRTC’s network management proceedings this week, these principles are worth keeping in mind. There is a significant difference between absorbing costs that are “close to free” as a small company and taking these up to mass market scale.

Anyone else get extra telemarketing calls on the Canada Day holiday – from companies that probably knew more people would be at home?

Here is an idea to help stop unwanted calls from duct cleaners who are ignoring the do not call list.

Just say “yes” to the call centre. Don’t provide any payment info. Schedule an appointment.

Have the crew show up and then turn them away at the door. After all, you couldn’t have booked an appointment, because they couldn’t have called you in the first place.

Increase their cost of doing business and maybe then they will get the message.

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Update [July 3, 12:30 pm]
One of my legal advisors cautions against today’s suggestions. As satisfying as this may seem, he warns that lawn care companies may do the service first and then hassle you for the rest of your life trying to collect. Others may hit you for a service call and again create a collection nightmare.

So, please be careful. Consider this to be the fine print warning on the ad.

Next week, the CRTC’s hearings into ISP network management practices opens.

Dave Caputo had a great set of animations to illustrate the challenges in operating a network that delivers fair usage to its subscribers.

The graphics used the highway metaphor for the ‘net, but he described the impact of a truck that suddenly got to be four lanes wide, consuming all the capacity that was available to it.

The percentage of the total highway capacity that is used by the truck wasn’t relevant; the issue was the behaviour of the truck that didn’t restrict it to stick to its own lane. Adding more lanes wouldn’t relieve congestion. It would simply allow the truck to expand even wider.

That is how peer-to-peer file transfer applications work. By design, they expand to consume all the capacity that is made available. The analyses that look at peer-to-peer as a percentage of total traffic tend to ignore the behaviour of the applications.

Happy Canada Day! Summer schedule for this blog begins this week.

Blog traffic is already down a little as many of you start to enjoy some vacation time. I have set up my northern office. I’ll continue to post a few times a week – and between time toiling at the keyboard and time on the water, if I happen to land that elusive pike, I’ll provide a photo.

The challenge will be figuring out a connection between the picture and telecom policy.

Keep those cards and letters coming.