Now see, I have a problem with any report as unbiased and impartial that contains commentary like this:

“One of the greatest challenges we face is the perception that our model predicts an Internet failure. This is incorrect. Rather, it predicts the potential for Internet brownouts when access demand is greater than supply. In following on the power grid analogy, most people experience minor disturbances, such as lights flickering, fans slowing, or computers freezing, long before a system-wide brownout or outage occurs. In the Internet, these disturbances may already be occurring, though they are yet to be systemic or even predictable. For example, some access operators are putting caps on usage. The justification is better bandwidth management so the 2% of the population that downloads the equivalent of the Porn Library of Congress each week does not negatively affect the 98% of “normal” users.”

This is full of emotionally charged supposition and judgment, and the only “fact” is that some ISP’s are limiting usage. It is then taken that some ISP are limiting usage is proof that “brownouts” occur, and that brownouts occur is taken as proof that the internet is suffering from overload. This is self referential logic of the worst sort.

The figures for consumer demand seem to be based on theoretical maximums of end user devices. Of course this is like saying that because my car can go 120 mph we will have a crisis if we don’t build residential streets capable of handling 120 mph traffic.

As another example of using self referential and anecdotal evidence to support the conclusions of those that would see “throttling” as preferential marketing strategy…

“Though this traffic load is more than typical, it certainly isn’t exceptional. This type of usage will become typical over the next three to five years. The fact that Comcast’s network is, by the company’s own admission, not able to cope with such usage patterns is a clear indication that the crunch we predicted last year is beginning to occur.”

This is hardly independent rigorous evidence, it is a spoon fed conclusion seeking validation.

“What this summary doesn’t show and what is fascinating about the analysis is that of the 71 peering points observed until mid-2008, 26 of them show an annual growth rate of less than 1.0. This means that more than one-third of the peering points are showing a decreased traffic rate (1.0 would mean no change in rate). These points include major international gateways, including Korea Internet Exchange (KINX), Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX), and London Internet Providers Exchange (LIPEX). It is hard to imagine that these reflect broader traffic trends, especially given that other organizations estimate that global Internet traffic increased at a rate between 50% and 100% from mid-2007 to mid-2008 and globally, MINTS still shows that traffic is increasing at a mean annual growth rate of 66%.”

Here we see a dismissal of truly independent verifiable data with the wave of the hand because you can not “imagine” it to be true, and instead it is replaced with reports of “other organizations” (without proper references) to support your conclusion the internet is under serious stress.

NOTE: not that eventually if supply is not increased it will be out paced by demand – a no brainer, nor that eventually the average user will be using as much bandwidth as today’s “power user”, again, something self evident. No, this is supposed to support your conclusion that the internet is under severe stress NOW and that within 2 years widespread service disruptions – caused not by market driven throttling but by actually capacity limits, will be occurring.

There is one line in the report that is extremely telling, since all your conclusions are assumptions based upon just that:

“Internet traffic measurements that assess overall growth rates based on the public peering point data are insufficient”

In other words, you have no data, you are guessing. It is dressed up nicely, but that “research” would be tossed out of any peer reviewed paper without a second glance.

So Mr Ritter, your organization publishes reports that uses quotes from companies pushing net throttling as “evidence” to support the contention the internet is near breaking point. You accept pay from companies pushing net throttling, and the only verifiable hard data in your report says that the internet is not near breaking point. But you then dismiss this data and replace it with anecdotes and unreferenced sources. These reports are then used by the same companies quoted in the reports as justification for throttling.

Your methodology is poor and yes, your independence suspect.