Kyle Brady: A Blog

Thought of the Day- Mastodon FUUUUUU

Kyle Brady — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 07:15:36 +0000

[source - warning: occasionally NSFW]

Thought of the Day- God Is a Sock

Kyle Brady — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 07:15:54 +0000

[source - warning: occasionally NSFW]

Thought of the Day- Not … Harry Potter?

Kyle Brady — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 07:15:06 +0000

[source - warning: occasionally NSFW]

Incorrect Base Assumptions About Network Management

Kyle Brady — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 07:05:20 +0000

IEEE recently ran a lengthy article in the latest (July 2009) issue of Spectrum, their major monthly publication, called “A Radical New Router” – essentially describing and promoting a smarter network router to better manage traffic. Overall, an interesting piece that could prove highly useful in the industry, but throughout, the author and inventor of the technology, Dr. Lawrence G. Roberts, makes references to the so-called need to filter, augment, and otherwise monitor certain kinds of traffic – specifically, peer-to-peer (P2P) content. This base assumption from which he operates over many sequences of logic is incorrect, despite producing good insights into the current state, and possible future, of the modern global network. Not to mention having participated in its invention.

Whenever the subject of bandwidth usage and availability comes up in any public forum, P2P traffic is inevitably blamed with “hogging” bandwidth, “clogging pipes”, and other such euphemisms that imply wrongdoing and questionable use. The reality, no matter what the telecommunications or cable companies say, is that bandwidth is not disappearing into the ether due to the massive usage of protocols like BitTorrent. These myths and halftruths are perpetuated by internet service providers (ISPs) because they can produce a better bottom-line by spending less on equipment and infrastructure to support their userbase – as well as the copyfight-abuse organizations like the RIAA and MPAA because, when taking the longview, they have the same goals: reducing P2P traffic by any means necessary in order to potentially achieve higher profit margins.

Consider, for a moment, the issue most often cited for “traffic shaping”, the practice of filtering a users traffic based on the type and source: legality of content. While there is an abundance of content with questionable copyright origins based on the current interpretations of the DMCA (in America), there is also a sea of legal content being acquired by the same means: Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead, and a number of other musical artists have experimented with a freely available online distribution method, in addition to countless young movie producers that are only interested in their content being available and seen.

How can network monitoring practices differentiate between “legal” and “illegal” P2P traffic? Filtering by content source, such as a band’s official website vs. IsoHunt, is impractical – the content available via the official source is likely licensed for free distribution and sharing by other means. Filtering by traffic size, as in number of bytes transferred, is a gray area at best – setting an arbitrary size for acceptable P2P traffic, or any type of traffic, creates artificial pricing levels, not to mention potentially endorsing the acquisition of questionably sourced content. There is really only one option left, and it is what most ISPs choose in such cases: filter by traffic type.

Examples abound of ISPs delivering the speeds expected, or close to expected, for common traffic like web-browsing, email, and IM conversations, but getting heavily choked to lower levels (sometimes resembling dialup speeds) when a Torrent file is active – regardless of legality, content, or source. When the ISP will even admit to doing so, which is rare, they tend to blame their need for such filtering based on total bandwidth availability – “5% of the users in some networks [consume] 75% of the bandwidth”, to quote Roberts’ article. While it is hard for the ISPs to support such claims with hard evidence, this is improbable at best – how can a user consume that much bandwidth when they are prevented from doing so in the first place?

Yes, the internet, and networks of all types, are seeing explosive growth. And, yes, it will present some challenging problems in the coming years. But the true bandwidth capacity of the current infrastructure, which is constantly being expanded and optimized, is not anywhere close to being “full” – let alone full because of P2P traffic. The tech community likes to think that “the cloud” is the future of computing, meaning accessing remote rich applications via a web browser, and this means an increase in network traffic, purely by default – this is already being seen thanks to Facebook, Google, and countless others. Include Voice-over-Internet-Protocol applications like Skype, instant messaging, videoconferencing, remote desktop access, and numerous other now-standard types of network traffic, and the reason for the massive increase in bandwidth use becomes clear. P2P traffic is a part of it, but is by no means the singular culprit.

But if P2P isn’t inherently illegal or “bad”, can it be a large part of the future? It has been used to distribute video games, distribution of multimedia content from a United States government agency, and as a means to alleviate server stress for video playback for a major news outlet. These examples are merely the world-at-large testing the waters for this relatively new type of traffic, and the future may contain exponentially more – assuming the network connections don’t arbitrarily prevent users from connecting to such rich experiences. In the days of Usenet and bulletin board services, who could have predicted a common, open, and mostly free global network? If the network administrators of the time had decided to prevent an evolution of protocols, merely on the basis of profit, the modern Internet would not exist.

This is not to say that prioritizing network traffic, as the majority of the Spectrum article addresses, is not valuable. Packaging data streams such as video and audio together for processing and transmission could have substantial benefits on network stresses and overall activity patterns – evolving from “dumb” to “smart” routers is a necessary step in expanding the capacity, functionality, and ability of the Internet. However, there is a considerable difference between “prioritizing” and “filtering” – prioritizing means temporary delays that the end-user will never notice, on the scale of milliseconds, while filtering is restricting or preventing entirely the transmission of data.

Such Old World assumptions about the proper use of the Internet need to be discarded in order to allow it to continue the evolution into a more complex and useful tool – this is the basis of Net Neutrality, an area which the United States Federal Government is finally getting involved in. Lawrence G. Roberts, the IEEE, and hardware developers the world over would do well to take note: network management may be difficult at times, but the answer will not be found in restricting the freedoms of users. Many Internet users know this, the Federal Government appears to be slowly awakening to a similar realization, and it is time network operators joined the rest of the world in acknowledging what amounts to a Rights and Freedoms issue for the modern, digital age.

OpEd pieces are published on Mondays and Thursdays, and usually have to do with politics or other pressing and relevant issues in America.

— — —

Update (7/9/2009 10:50am PST): Quoted in a Net Neutrality piece by p2pnet.

Update (7/9/2009 4:14pm PST): I exchanged emails with Dr. Roberts himself regarding this, and the direct communication seems to help clarify – heavy editing may have been a culprit for some of the confusion on P2P traffic. A position of “fair and equal traffic” is much better than “regulate the unwanted traffic” – apparently Dr. Roberts and I are in agreement on this topic. Here’s his clarification, unedited and printed with permission:

Perhaps the IEEE article was not sufficiently clear due to significant editing. However, I have never claimed P2P file sharing was bad. However, any multi-flow application is likely to consume far more than its fair share of the capacity an ISP allocates to a DSLAM or cable channel (often about 1000 subscribers). What most people don’t understand is that the capacity for those 1000 subscribers is shared and not equal to 1000 times the peak capacity advertised. Often the ISP is at fault for misleading advertising but no ISP allocates much more than the statistical peak usage created by 1000 normal users. Unfortunately, IP networks today, using TCP, provide about equal capacity per flow, not per subscriber. Thus a multi-flow application using 100 flows will consume 100 times the capacity available to the normal user who is using one flow. Thus, if even 1% of the users are using certain P2P applications that open many flows, they will consume 60%-90% of the shared capacity of the DSLAM or cable channel. This reduces the capacity available to the other 99% of normal users to a small fraction of what they paid for. That is the problem. What I am recommending is for the network to adjust the sharing process such that when congestion occurs, capacity is allocated so that it is “equal capacity for equal pay”, not equal capacity per flow. This means the multi-flow user gets their fair share in peak hours without hurting their neighbors, and in off hours get all they can use.

P2P happens to be the current main multi-flow application. However, cloud computing appears to be the next big multi-flow application and there will be others. My goal is to keep the Internet working smoothly and this requires it be fair, even under overload. Equal capacity for equal pay accomplishes this where today there is serious un-fairness. It is also important that this be accomplished not by picking on any specific application (like P2P) as DPI devices do, but by fixing the basic sharing process. P2P is not bad, and as you say no-one can tell if the file is legal or illegal. But any multi-flow application can produce unfairness due to the current structure of the network and it is this un-fairness that is the problem.

Larry

Update (7/9/2009 6:15pm PST): I only just noticed (sorry Cory!), but I was mentioned on BoingBoing for this.

Thought of the Day- Fundies Say the Darndest Things!

Kyle Brady — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 07:15:35 +0000

[source - warning: occasionally NSFW]

Thought of the Day- Texts to DVD? Awkward Smile!

Kyle Brady — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 07:15:27 +0000

[source - warning: occasionally NSFW]

Online Journalism Ethics

Kyle Brady — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 07:05:45 +0000

Inspired by a recent ArsTechnica article on blogger ethics, which in turn was inspired by Tim O’Reilly a long time ago, I’ve put together a list of the principles that my online journalistic efforts operate by, available below and on its own page for clarity and posterity:

Cleanliness, Professionalism, and Appropriate Content

The goal is for content to be well written, intelligent, and thought-out, and as unbiased as possible, in order to better communicate issues to the general public. Foul language, racist material, and otherwise offensive content is neither acceptable nor used, as it can be seen to detract from the value of the post itself.

Editorial Pieces

Most posts are of an editorial nature, offering opinions, viewpoints, and analysis of issues, rather than pure news. “Breaking News” is typically avoided, but a distinction is made, via category/topic classification, between news breaks and opinion-editorial in order to clarify the purpose of each piece for readers.

Sources and Linking

Sources will be given to claims, facts, and figures, referencing valid and legitimate data, rather than expecting readers to take all non-opinion content as truth by default.

Updates, Edits, and Accountability

If a piece is updated or edited significantly (i.e. for reasons other than spelling, typos, grammar, etc.), it will be noted. Furthermore, updates will be given on issues as they develop, at the bottom of the piece, with timestamped material.

Original content is fully accountable to the authors, and will not be removed, significantly edited, or otherwise doctored-in-place as an attempt to hide previously accessible material. If a cited source is found to be in error, or information is otherwise incorrect, it will be rectified with a note of accountability.

Representation and Presentation

All issues, people, and otherwise foci of pieces will be presented in a reasonable and fair manner, never misrepresenting, misquoting, or otherwise falsely presenting material in an incorrect or untrue manner.

Communication Publication

In certain situations, publication (in part or whole) of communication may occur without consent – purely for reasons of transparency and otherwise righteous purposes. In all other cases, permission will be requested before publishing private communiques.

Attacks

Exempting expose pieces, attacks on persons, organizations, or groups and people otherwise will not occur. Doing so for means other than exposing controversial actions, issues, or policies is unprofessional and shall never appear.

“How to Really Celebrate Independence Day”

Kyle Brady — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:30:19 +0000

New guest post at the Inquisitr:

Life is about much more than the latest episode of a TV program or stalking celebrities – attention needs to be given to the critical issues at hand, and consideration given to the proper place of the general public’s obsessions. This is why the way to truly celebrate the American Day of Independence, on July 4th, is to read, consider, and discuss politics. Real political issues, not merely the party favorite one-liners of menial consequence.

Go check it out.

Thought of the Day- Dog Racing

Kyle Brady — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 07:15:17 +0000

[source - warning: occasionally NSFW]

The GOP May Write Itself Out of the Future

Kyle Brady — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 07:05:07 +0000

Republicans, in general, have been having a hard time relating to modern America and its citizens, as their ideas, policies, and politicians fall flat, one after another. The choice of John McCain as their Presidential Candidate in the 2008 election was their first misstep, after having such a hated President in Office, and the months since McCain’s loss to Barack Obama – in no small part thanks to the choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate – have been painful to watch, as their decline from relevancy continues at an accelerated rate.

The GOP’s insistence on fighting any and all policies of President Obama, or other Democrats, is embarrassing given their unilateral unconcern for the issue at hand – claiming said policy will be a reversal of what the party has worked for is not a sufficient argument in a disaster-ridden time that was largely sparked by Conservative rule. Additionally, the majority of Republican politicians continue to use defense arguments laughably based on policy cost, without considering their own expenditures for war and other party-line failures, and anti-American ideals, hoping to rally and inspire the American people to their side.

This is not happening, nor will it in the foreseeable future.

President Obama was elected because the country was largely interested in a change of political ideals, and the very vocal minority of disgruntled Americans screaming about socialism, fascism, or whatever the smear du jour may be are not changing the minds of those that voted. Obama is not perfect, nor is he a political savior, but he’s managing to do enough things properly to keep most people happy – whereas the Republican party continues to degrade itself.

Recent history has demonstrated this very party degradation, as Senators have converted to Democrats and the Democratic stronghold within Congress grows – which the Republican minority battles with filibusters, threats, and smokescreens. Even further loss of relevance and respect comes via the very figureheads and posterchildren of the party itself: the list starts with Sarah Palin and Mark Sanford, continues with the likes of Michael Steele, and adds to itself on what seems to be a daily basis.

These politicians are not just ruining their own careers, but are, in fact, taking down the party in piecemeal fashion. Sarah Palin was the Vice Presidential candidate just a year ago, Mark Sanford was a possible candidate for 2012 (along with Sarah Palin), and Dick Cheney, the former Vice President, is publicly defaming Obama via any method possible. These are the individuals the American people are supposed to trust and endorse? Many more examples can be found of sexual hypocrites, unintelligent ramblings, and incoherent policies – most non-FOX News outfits will provide easy access to this information.

However, the degradation comes not only from politicians, but from the pundits and talkshow hosts who consider themselves essential to their political party. Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck are the easiest three to recognize, but the number of such public figures using media access to push “extreme right wing” Republican rhetoric is astonishing. These talking heads may have large, and growing audiences, but they will always cater to the American minority: the less educated, the unintelligent, and the racially biased population that is easily swayed by big words and scary propaganda. While the politicians are making fools of themselves via policy, the conservative media is largely doing the same, thanks to conspiracy theories, inaccurate “facts”, and manipulation of their guests – all of this can be countered with a dose of intelligence and a small amount of fact checking.

As the sex scandals continue, the political rhetoric becomes more heated and embattled, and the party continues to alienate entire swaths of demographic targets (young adults, non-whites, gays and lesbians, etc.), the question of whether their current irrelevance may turn into complete disappearance becomes pertinent. How can a party that has little-to-no support from the voting public continue to exist, let alone have any hope at regaining power (in any fashion) without changing their ways? Such actions are no better than political suicide – yet they continue.

American Democracy has relied on what amounts to a two party system for almost its entire history, but it does not require that the most modern incarnation of Democrats and Republicans has to continue. Parties have risen, grown, and died many times over the last two centuries, sometimes with the party continuing to exist while changing nearly every facet of their ideology. If the GOP’s current pace of self-destruction continues, the 2012 Presidential Election may prove to be the watershed event that allows another party into the spotlight while the old and tired Republicans fade not-so-quietly into the night.

When rooting for the Republicans to fail as a party, it is important to remember two crucial points. First, if the Republican Party can reinvent itself into a relatable, sensible, modern political party, they can then once again become relevant and acceptable. It remains to be seen, however, whether they are willing to do so. Second, it is absolutely crucial that the Democratic Party is not allowed to run unopposed in any level or form of government – a viable party, or candidate at a minimum, needs to be seated in direct opposition. Modern Democrats are fairly reasonable, sometimes progressive, and occasionally intelligent, but all such qualities can be quickly shed in order to protect themselves and their interests in what would amount to an American form of despotism.

It is high time the GOP recognize their defeat by their own hands, and take prepare for their future – this would require reigning in the loudmouthed pundits spewing nonsense across America, replacing the unfavorable and aging politicians with their younger counterparts, and reforming their party-line politics into a cooperative group of individuals that are interested in a core set of values truly for the betterment of the American people. If this cannot, or will not, be accomplished within the coming months and years, they will likely continue to fail in their political endeavors, until they have written themselves out of existence, and the deadline is both very tangible and very close…

Early November, 2012.

OpEd pieces are published on Mondays and Thursdays, and usually have to do with politics or other pressing and relevant issues in America.

Kyle Brady: A Blog

Thought of the Day- Mastodon FUUUUUU

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