Insight Communications CEO Michael Willner recently launched a new blog discussing his company’s take on telecom policy. In the time the blog has been up, he has tackled issues from cable investment in wireless technology to customer service, and from a la carte to network management.

Yesterday’s post, titled Confessions of a Network Manager (Part I) takes a look at the consumer friendly reasons for network management practices. It’s a good read, and like much of his writing is a candid look at why operators manage their networks, why that’s good for you, and even a frank discussion of why companies would not want to talk openly about specific practices.

Network management is not your enemy — it is your friend, even if you’re a P2P enthusiast. Without network management, everyone’s online experience would melt down to a completely useless exercise. It would reduce the Internet to a chaotic free-for-all as if you built a 10-lane superhighway and didn’t have any traffic laws in place to keep the traffic moving.

The fact is, network management is absolutely necessary throughout the Internet, from the ISP’s all the way through to backbone providers. It happens everywhere on the Internet. And it’s a good thing that it does.

Bandwidth, throughout the Internet, is a shared asset. Accordingly, we all have to learn to live with one other as good neighbors. You don’t go to Joe’s Barbecue, an all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant, and proceed to eat all the food. The goodies are affordable because they are offered under law of averages and a shared economic model. If my brother-in-law, Norman, and a few of his buddies showed up every night, Joe would either have to raise the price for everyone or start charging by the pound.

I guess, to some extent, we created this debate ourselves. Many of us, myself included, didn’t really want to talk about how we managed our networks to keep the traffic flowing smoothly. We simply did it. Frankly, I believed that if we were totally transparent about it, certain people would figure out ways to defeat the rules of the road, making our management practices harder and more intrusive than we were wanting them to be.

Much of his writing is similarly inviting and personal. If you’re not reading it, you should take a look.

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This entry was posted on Friday, May 16th, 2008 at 2:10 pm and is filed under Cable Companies, Insight Communications, Network Neutrality, Tech Discussions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.