ISPCON: Keynote kicks off the convention and kickstarts neutrality debate
One of the highlights of ISPCON (for me at least) are the keynotes. They provide a chance to hear some of the biggies in the Internet sector present their case on a variety of topics. The speaker for the first keynote of this ISPCON was Dave Schaeffer, CEO of Cogent Communications Inc. who spoke on the topic, “Neutrality’s Linchpin: Is bandwidth a commodity?” Schaeffer brought some strong opinions on the topic of net neutrality, and spoke a bit about the unique approach that Cogent has taken to providing Tier I network service.
Cogent is known around the world for very aggressive pricing and a unique approach that treats bandwidth as a commodity product. Cogent is the largest ethernet service provider in the U.S., and consistently ranks in the top five worldwide.
Schaeffer’s main point was that there needs to be a separation between the network and the application layers. So access providers should focus on providing high-quality Internet access to consumers, and not concern themselves with how the network is being used.
On the flip side, application providers, those building services that do things like provide video via the Internet, or voice communications, should focus solely on building the best possible applications without having to worry about competition from the access providers, or worrying about having their packets de-prioritized.
Schaeffer’s take on net neutrality boils down to this – provide more than enough bandwidth and each and every packet is treated as important as opposed to spending time and money trying to determine which packets need special treatment.
In his opinion, core network providers need to focus on providing high-quality bit transport at low costs, with no concern for how the bits are being used. For access providers that means coming to terms with a change in the business from selling a service over a dedicated network (like television channels or a dial-tone and minutes) to selling access to the Internet alone.
It means a pretty big shift in the communications sector, where access providers like the cable companies and telcos have been used to providing high-margin services through their networks while attempting to prevent other services from competing using that same network.
All in all it was a compelling discussion that kicked off ISPCON and will most likely kick-start some conversations at the bar and around the show floor in the coming days.
