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This is one small (but quite interesting) story in the growth of the net: Bypassing the Phone Company (via David Isenberg).
The company, Skybeam sells broadband services to businesses and individuals. The idea of bypassing the phone companies by using relatively inexpensive COTS microwave technology is a growing force, one the vendors who assume some sort of queen status are going to need to deal with. If there is any way at all to get around the tolls, someone will find a way.
But I found something else interesting there too...
Changing the network infrastructure from bridged to routed and adding bandwidth limit queues increased the capacity of the access points from about 20 customers per radio to 80 customers per radio. Limiting peer-to-peer and other undesirable traffic cleaned up the networks further and we were able to deliver better service to business customers.
Providers shouldn't really be allowed to make value judgments on IP traffic.
In this particular case they can do so (Skybeam's current customers are most likely long term clients and businesses with very specific [and limited] needs). In the long term they'll need to come to terms with customers who want everything. If the customers don't get what they want, they'll eventually route around Skybeam somehow and then Skybeam will be just like... the phone companies.
There seem to be at least a couple of basic rules here:
