For the past 10 days or so, a debate has been raging (see CNET, Free Press, AT&T, and the IETF discussion mailing list) in the techiest, wonkiest corner of the Internet policy universe about whether the Differentiated Services (DiffServ) standards developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) were designed to facilitate the ability for content providers to pay ISPs to prioritize their content as it is delivered to the ISPs’ subscribers. My CDT colleagues and I wrote a letter to the FCC yesterday to explain that the IETF does not endorse business models of any kind, and that DiffServ therefore does not endorse paid priority. While IETF standards have a crucial role to play in ensuring the continued interoperability and evolution of Internet networks, to ascribe some business or policy position to them is a mistake.
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