GigaOm

[Commentary] While Google has gone quiet on network neutrality it’s making plenty of waves on other aspects of network management. I don’t think the shift in tactics is mere coincidence. Rather, I think Google, Facebook and other large bandwidth users have decided, like Netflix, that their real fight is not over the treatment of their content over the last mile but over how it gets to the last mile.

For all the sturm und drang over fast lanes and slow lanes, from the point of view of Netflix, YouTube and other video streaming services, it’s a bit of a red herring, as is much of the rest of the substantive debate over net neutrality as it has been defined by the FCC. Nobody’s going to pay for a fast lane on the last mile if they also have to pay a toll just to get their bits onto the last mile. So long as ISPs are able to erect those toll booths and manipulate the traffic around them, fast lanes and slow lanes are irrelevant in terms of their potential impact on a video provider’s business.

There’s another, longer-term consideration, however, that I suspect is also behind the shift in emphasis from net neutrality to peering. Charging for peering doesn’t actually make a lot of short-term economic sense for ISPs, since peering reduces costs for everyone.

By establishing the precedent now that major bandwidth hogs, which for the most part just happen to be major video streaming services, should pay for access to their networks they’re hoping to forestall the day when Netflix can demand payment for its content.

[Sweeting is Principal, Concurrent Media Strategies]

As more broadband networks connect directly to each other via peering agreements, the amount of money paid for Internet transit could fall, according to a report from TeleGeography. That’s good for users of the Internet, but will cut into transit revenue at companies that range from Level 3 and Cogent to ISPs.

Of course, TeleGeography isn’t sure if this will take place.

By cutting out the Internet’s middlemen, peering agreements lower the cost of bandwidth and the cost of IP services. The TeleGeography report lays out the case for peering gaining ground over transit, and shows how it expects peering to grow. This is good for the Internet as a whole, but this anticipated shift to peering over paying for transit has led to some behavior shifts that are causing harms for consumers.

It also means trouble for existing transit providers, especially those without other lines of business. Peering, the practice of two networks exchanging traffic directly either for free or for money, has been going on for decades. Historically, networks of a certain size would sign peering agreements because it would save them money.

Instead of building out an Internet pipeline to every endpoint, two networks meet in the middle and exchange traffic. In 2012, an OECD report found that peering has helped lower the overall cost of providing bandwidth and that most peering agreements are unpaid.

[Commentary] Most people know that Facebook manipulates their News Feed, and a lot of that manipulation is not at all noteworthy (do you really need to see the 892nd picture of the toddler born to the girl who sat next to you in 10th grade biology?).

Go ahead, wander over to Facebook and refresh your news feed eight or ten times in a row: you’ll get a different series of updates at the top of that feed nearly every time.

But when Facebook starts altering the content of your feed based on an emotional social graph it wishes to feed you, that makes a lot of people sit up and take notice. And in an era in which Facebook is one of the largest sources of referral traffic to traffic-starved online publishers struggling to break even in an era of digital pennies, the ramifications of those alterations have a clear impact on how you get your news and the type of news you get.

Slingshot, a local internet provider in New Zealand, wants to give its subscribers a little extra perk: The Internet service provider just added a new “global mode” to its Internet plans that allows its customers to access video services like Netflix or Hulu without getting in trouble for coming from the wrong country (hat tip to Broadband Reports).

Slingshot’s global mode is essentially a virtual private network (VPN), meaning that it reroutes any traffic through servers situated in other countries. Slingshot subscribers using global mode may look like they’re located in New York as opposed to Auckland.

[Commentary] The latest Edward Snowden disclosures show that the National Security Agency vacuumed up far more data on far more Americans. In fact 9 out of 10 of people whose accounts were caught up in the data dragnet were not targets of any investigation.

Now we’ll wait for the reactions to roll in from US tech companies that are trying to paint themselves as worthy stewards of customer information.

Industry execs ranging from Cisco CEO John Chambers, Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith and HP EVP Bill Veghte have all said that US government data collection has put tech vendors behind the eight-ball as they try to sell technology -- from networking hardware to cloud computing.

Google, Facebook and other companies are pressuring the government to be more transparent -- or let them be more transparent -- about what customer data intelligence agencies ask for.

But let’s face it: People who are surprised by the latest Snowden disclosures should not be. Previous NSA whistleblowers already told the world that the NSA has been collecting their email and phone conversations for a quite some time.

[Commentary] Facebook’s 2012 newsfeed experiment has recently attracted the ire of users and even European regulators, who are investigating a possible breach of users’ privacy.

Although Facebook’s tinkering with its users’ emotions was part of a minor sociological experiment, many online companies are dedicated to using personalization to enable serendipity or “accidental discovery” of content by web users.

The Internet has provided the setting for the grandest and perhaps most controversial of experiments in “engineered” serendipity. Search engines, e-commerce and online news publications are all using personalization to enhance user experience by providing the most relevant content.

But is it actually possible to embed serendipity into user experience online? “The notion of ‘designing for serendipity’ is an oxymoron because once we try to ‘engineer’ it into a system, users may no longer perceive the experience as serendipitous,” says Dr. Stephann Makri, a lecturer in Information Interaction at City University in London. “Designers of interactive systems shouldn’t try to offer serendipity on a plate. Instead, they should design tools that create opportunities for users to have experiences they might perceive as serendipitous.”

Nonetheless this reworked notion of serendipity is here to stay on the web. With the rise of machine learning, a growing number of online publishers are using complex algorithms to learn from readers’ viewing habits and provide people with what they want to know before they know they want it. In essence, we get more of the information we want to see.

[Patani is an analyst for EC1 Capital, a venture capital investor in mobile and web companies in the United Kingdom]

[Commentary] As the Federal Trade Commission’s complaint against T-Mobile points out, carriers aren’t the ancillary victims they claim to be. They take a hefty cut of every premium SMS transaction sent their way and therefore have conflicting motives when it comes to cracking down on offenders.

According to the FTC, T-Mobile kept charging customers for these SMS services for years after learning they were fraudulent (T-Mobile said the accusations are unfounded). It seems there’s an easy solution here: just ban these kinds of SMS billing arrangements entirely. The conflict of interest the carriers face goes away, and given the datedness of premium SMS, no one is going to miss it except for scammers.

If there is going to be an exception to that rule, it should be charitable giving. In the last half-decade, SMS donations have had a big impact on donations to non-profits and humanitarian organizations, especially those that respond immediately to global disasters like the Haiti earthquake of 2010. N

An investigation by the German broadcasters ARD and WDR has apparently demonstrated the targeting by the National Security Agency of a German student called Sebastian Hahn, who runs a node on the anonymization network Tor. It has also shown that anyone searching for “privacy-enhancing software tools” online may be marked for surveillance.

Tor (“The Onion Router”) works by bouncing traffic off a series of servers so that it’s near-impossible to trace who’s browsing what. It’s partly funded by the US Department of State because it’s handy for dissidents in repressive regimes, but Edward Snowden’s leaks already showed in 2013 that the NSA has been targeting Tor because it believes terrorists also use it.

Meanwhile, according to an English-language ARD article -- and partly written by members of the Tor project -- the NSA “tracks all connections to a server that hosts part of an anonymous email service at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) in Cambridge, Massachusetts.”

What’s more, the broadcasters reported -- again based on the source code -- that the actual contents of emails sent over the Tor network are extracted for scrutiny, not just the emails’ metadata about senders, recipients and timing.

[Commentary] Broadband connections are supposed to be always-on -- unlike those days two decades back when you had to dial into a service and then hang up when you were done.

The introduction of always-on broadband helped pave the way for services like Napster and Skype and is one of the defining features of many aspects of modern life in first world countries.

Unfortunately, since April my broadband hasn’t been reliable, turning on and off ten to 20 times a day for periods of time that range from a minute to several hours. Given that this intermittent broadband seems to be a common enough problem, I’d like to offer ISPs and the Federal Communication Commission a list of five things I can’t actually do with a dodgy connection:

1. Using cloud office productivity software and writing tools
2. Managing my home
3. Calling a friend or source
4. Watching a movie
5. Playing music at a party

Both my job and quality of life depend on a reliable broadband connection, so it’s frustrating that I can’t seem to get one. I’m glad the FCC is looking at this as part of its Measuring Broadband reports, but I don’t know what the answer is here, in terms of what Time Warner Cable can do.

The Russian parliament, the Duma, has passed a bill that would require web service providers to store Russians’ personal data within the country’s borders.

The bill was passed on its first reading.

This is a similar move to that proposed in other countries such as Brazil, following Edward Snowden’s US National Security Agency revelations. However, Brazil dropped its plans for mandating local data storage.

If approved by the Federation Council, the Russian requirement will go into effect in September 2016, meaning companies like Google and Twitter would need to establish data centers in Russia by then if they want to continue trading legally there.

What is more, those that don’t comply may find their services blocked on the order of telecommunications regulator Roskomnadzor, according to Lenta.ru. In other words, this may be a precursor to the shutting-off of major international web services in Russia at some point in the coming years.