John Leslie wrote:
Richard Shockey <richard@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
<snip>
But I did run across one item, near the beginning of Appendix A:
]
] 8.2 Definitions
] Broadband Internet access service. A mass-market retail service by
] wire or radio that provides the capability to transmit data to and
] receive data from all or substantially all Internet endpoints,
] including any capabilities that are incidental to and enable the
] operation of the communicatitons service, but excluding dial-up
] Internet access service. This term also encompasses any service
] that the Commission finds to be providing a functional equivalent
] of the service described in the previous sentence, or that is used
] to evade the protections set forth in this Part.
Since no current ISP "provides the capability to transmit data
to and receive data from all or substantially all Internet endpoints,"
it's hard to see what the folks who wrote this think they're going
to regulate.
Wait a minute... isn't the Internet "capital I" defined precisely by the
collection of IP addresses that are reachable from each other? If you
can't exchange IP packets with an endpoint, is it really on the
Internet? (Yes, NAT confuses things a bit - but arguably it's the
public address of a NAT device that's the "Internet endpoint"). And yes,
firewalls also complicate matters - but, the "Internet wallplug" in my
office has the "capability" to exchange packets with all other IP
addresses on the net - but that doesn't require that they be willing (or
able) to respond.
Miles Fidelman
--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra