Re: <nettime> Olivier Auber: Network symetry and net neutrality

[olivier auber <olivierauber2@gmail.com>]

Dear Florian,

Concerning, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8c0sX6j5D_c , I think you
missed the key message of this prostatic guru. The question is not
whether the multicast protocol is working or not, and why (I'll talk
however of this issue below) but to clarify the notion of "symmetry"
(of protocols), and to show that an asymmetrical network leads
AUTOMATICALLY to current state of the Internet, that is to say, a
centralized network, near to implode. Not to question the economic and
money paradigm, GAFA seem to be going straight for what the guru
called a "triangular trade of personal data" between them and States
on the backs of enslaved users. Thus we see how might look like
transhumans that Google makes us sparkle, to say nothing of
immortality ...

Regarding multicast, you mention a paper written by a DARPA-funded
scientist who can not imagine one second that the peers of P2P
networks may well become also kind of multicast routers, which would
transform the said P2P networks to P2P^10 networks!

Second, the concept of multicast is older than the Web (Steve Deering
1989) and began to be implemented on the Mbone also before the web:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbone

Finally, yes, the prostatic guru tells the truth: the multicast
protocol is artificially used in an asymmetric fashion for IPTV.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPTV

Why multicast has not survived to the web? This is a complicated issue
that probably has common points with the VHS war of the 70s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videotape_format_war

You might be too young to have experienced the Multicast/web war of
the 90s. To my knowledge, nobody has written about that war, probably
because it is too recent and it is far from being over. However it is
real, with real victims, including scientists who worked on multicast
networks all over the world, who have seen their budgets cut to zero
(with the exception of those who have agreed to work on its adaptation
to crappy TV apps), and then all of us today, who are the playthings
of a network that claims there is no alternative and that leads us
into the wall.

Van Jacobson, one of the main promoters of Multicast has written in
1995: "How to kill the internet? Easy! Just invent the web !"
ftp://ftp.ee.lbl.gov/talks/vj-webflame.pdf
Berners Lee in some of his recent statements, is not far from agreeing with him.

Van Jacobson is still active. Here he admits that the multicast is not
"scalable" in the current economic rules. However, he seems to refrain
from thinking of new rules in the sense that the prostatic guru
indicates (symmetrical monetary creation such as http://openudc.org).
http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-6972678839686672840

There, he worked with others to develop some patches inspired by
multicast, that would differ the collapse of net. But, AMHA, it's just
DIY ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content-centric_networking

-- 
Olivier


====

     On Sat, Feb 23, 2013 at 4:06 AM, Patrice Riemens <patrice {AT}
     xs4all.nl> wrote:

     > Networks symmetry and Net Neutrality
     > by OlivierAuber
     [...]

     > However, there are also symmetrical protocols on the Internet.
     > One may think about peer-to-peer protocols such as the ones used
     > over mesh networks, but more fundamentally, the general model
     > of it is called "Multicast", defined as a part of IPv6, which
     > allows "all-to-all" relationships without the intervention of any
     > particular center, if it is the Internet in its entirety.

     To my knowledge, the opposite is correct. Multicast
     one-to-many transmission of network packets, effectively the
     same as broadcasting. It's the opposite of peer-to-peer.
     (Here is a technical paper on that difference:
     http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~rmartin/teaching/fall08/cs552/position-pape
     rs/004-01.pdf )

      <...>


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