Quote:
Originally posted by Bungleau:
I didn't get that the issue was whether or not people would be able to see your content. What I understood was that they were considering offering services to their customers such that they provided a faster pipe to their sites than they would to other sites. So it wasn't a question of visibility, but of speed of access.
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I think visibility is simply the flip side of the coin.
Prioritising content according to the wishes of the infrastructure provider is the first enabling step towards the possibility of denial of service.
If we consider Ironworks and an imaginary competitor Steelworks. Lets say AT&T decide that Steelworks should have priority because they have the cash to pay a premium, so they ensure that packets to/from Steelworks take priority and travel at a faster speed.
Faced with longer load times and possibly even dropped connections, is this any different in practice to a denial of service on Ironworks? Speed of access is directly related to visibility.
As for MS et al - as a Linux user who constantly is annoyed by their boneheaded and anti-competitive software, I am the
last person to side with them normally. In this case however, they're right.
[ 06-23-2006, 09:56 AM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]