Net neutrality—where we go from here: The Federal Communications Commission voted as expected to overturn net neutrality rules, prompting a blizzard of media coverage and chatter on social media. Supporters of net neutrality, which compelled ISPs to treat all legal Internet traffic the same, say the rules' absence will lead to higher costs for customers, data throttling and content discrimination. Opponents of the rules contend that net neutrality inhibited free market competition and getting rid of the rules will be better for customers. There are many moving pieces to the net neutrality debate with valid arguments to be made from both sides. Here's a look at some key points to absorb as it enters its next chapter.
- The rules change will reclassify Internet traffic as an information service, putting it under the purview of the Federal Trade Commission. This is a good thing, as the FTC has a good track record of defending consumer rights and is a powerful agency in its own right. Consumers will not be left in the wind and rightfully so. The Internet is one area that needs regulations that define the playing field for competition and innovation.
- It's possible the rules change won't stand. There are ample lawsuits underway from both consumer advocate groups and state and local lawmakers seeking to get them overturned. A key point of contention lies in federal law stating that agencies such as the FCC cannot make major decision like this one in an "arbitrary" or "capricious" manner. Given that net neutrality rules only went into effect in 2015, a court may be sympathetic to the notion of the FCC's action being in violation of that law. Meanwhile. even if the lawsuits fail, Congress could pass a bill restoring the rules or putting a modified set in place; with the midterm elections coming in 2018, a shift toward a Democratic majority would make this more likely.
- In many markets, Internet customers pay according to connection speed. Data caps are becoming increasingly common as well. But not every customer is a streaming video fanatic. Why should the customer who wants a fast connection to read websites, but comes nowhere near their data cap, pay the same amount of money per month as a chronic Netflix binge-watcher? It's a valid question and market competition could lead to more diverse pricing models. It could also lead to ISPs passing more costs onto subscription content providers, who would then likely pass them onto consumers in the form of higher pricing. (Which leads to the last point.)
- ISPs have clout and influence over the Internet, that is for sure. But they're increasingly not the only game in town. Google, Microsoft and other large tech vendors are building out their own networks. OneWeb, a startup building a global network powered by more than 600 satellites, looks like it could shake up the game. That being said, there needs to be much greater diversity in the choices consumers have in an ISP. The free market competition envisioned by the FCC commissioners who voted down the rules can't really exist if the current landscape, where many U.S. citizens have only one choice of ISP in their home market, remains the status quo.
Ellison, Hurd bang the database drum: Oracle reported second-quarter earnings this week, with revenue up 6 percent to $9.6 billion and net income up 10 percent to $2.2 billion. The company showed continued progress in cloud sales, with IaaS and PaaS revenue growth lagging that of SaaS. The full numbers are here for those inclined to go through them; as usual, we will focus on key commentary from Oracle executives during the earnings call. The most heated topic regarded Oracle's database and the competitive landscape. Here are the highlights.
- Oracle's autonomous database, announced earlier this year, will arrive in January, CTO and executive chairman Larry Ellison confirmed. Taking aim once again at Amazon Web Services, Ellison said that customers who move a workload from AWS's Redshift service to Oracle's database and IaaS, their costs will drop by 80 percent. Oracle will also offer SLAs guaranteeing customers who move from AWS to Oracle that their database bills will be cut at least in half. What wasn't clear from Ellison's remarks is whether the cost savings refer to just to underlying IaaS resources or the cost of database subscriptions as well.
- Oracle's database competitors are sticking with its platform with no sign of moving off, Ellison said: "A company you’ve heard of just gave us another $50 million this quarter to buy Oracle database and other Oracle technology. That company is Amazon. They’re not moving off of Oracle. Salesforce isn’t moving off of Oracle. ... Let me tell you someone else who’s not moving off of Oracle: SAP. They had that database called HANA they’d like to move to. SuccessFactors, they’ve been trying to move off of Oracle for five or six years. SAP is running on Oracle. Ariba runs on Oracle. All SAP large customers run on Oracle."
- Speaking of customers, many are waiting to upgrade until the autonomous database arrives, Ellison said. Those who do so will be required to purchase certain database options, including Real Application Clusters and multitenant, he added. Oracle is in a good position to retain its dominant market share in database, Ellison contended: "There’s been no big migration anyplace of Oracle databases into anyone’s cloud, including ours. There’s been some, but it’s a relatively very, very small business. This all begins to happen starting in January, where the capabilities of cloud are so much better. The economics in the cloud are so much better than what’s available on premise, that we think our customers are going to move very, very rapidly to the cloud."
"Mirai" IoT botnet co-creators plead guilty: Two men who created the "Mirai" botnet, which used malware to infect thousands of Internet-connected devices to launch massive distributed denial-of-service attacks, have pleaded guilty in U.S. federal court. Paras Jha and Josiah White face up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine under the plea deals.
Jha, White and a third man, Dalton Norman, also pleaded guilty to involvement in a "clickfraud" scheme wherein the botnet was used to generate website advertising revenue. They face similar sentences in that case.
Mirai's creators released the botnet's source code in 2016, leading to a series of large-scale DDoS attacks, including one on DNS provider Dyn that brought down the likes of Netflix and Twitter.
POV: It's fitting in a way that the DOJ unsealed the plea deals now, just over a week before the Christmas holiday, when untold millions of new consumer IoT devices are opened up and logged into the Internet. Come December 25th, the attack surface for IoT botnets like Mirai will get a whole lot bigger, and there's absolutely no indication that product manufacturers have improved IoT device security to an appreciable degree. The new year will undoubtedly bring more major DDoS attacks via IoT, but the question is whether they will finally be damaging enough to force crucial improvements in IoT device security.
