[e2e] Skype and congestion collapse.

[Jon Crowcroft]

a university in the UK that will remain nameless 
blocked access to the web in the early days
coz they said the use of the net would bankrupt them
for no good ends

of course the argument about preventing books (e.g. early translations of the bible 
into a third language like english) getting into just anyone's hands were probably 
rooted in similar cost/control debates (that are all greek to me)

anyhow, to return to the original debate,
the skype may be falling
but it aint the sky that is falling - 
and (to address someone else's email)
what is more
an aggregate of n Mkbps constant bit rate flows is NOT 
the same as an aggregate of a lot of mice nor would it approximate
an elephant - the equations are different 
and we dont have enough experience of very large numbers of voip calls 
(whether p2p or just straight unicast point-to-point udp) 
in the public internet yet to say how a multiplex looks

for example, as the loss rate goes up, how do the +set of+ users behave 
in terms of quality tolerance? 

the solution to the IT department problem you mention below is simple - explode your organisations
IT provisioning - just give each sub-componenet the right to buy internet acces, computers and 
support from anywhere - there are loads of places way more competetive than most large outfits
own IT departments - once they have to compete, they soon stop obstructing the primary business...

they just arent that important compared with buildings and food, or power and transport, any more:)

In missive <16940.50537.388530.399520 at roam.psg.com>, Randy Bush typed:

 >>> In other words, the IT department is under the illusion that they should 
 >>> be "in control" and the second illusion that blocking connectivity is 
 >>> always a net benefit to the company, because all communications is "bad".
 >>
 >>the root of the IT problem is that they are given the goals of and
 >>are measured by, minimizing overall costs.  this they achieve
 >>through control, restriction of function, and homogenization.
 >>they are not given the goal of maximizing the users' productivity.
 >>
 >>randy
 >>

 cheers

   jon