The Dynamic Internet

How Technology, Users, and Businesses are Transforming the Network

By (author) Christopher Yoo

Publication date:

14 September 2012

Length of book:

184 pages

Publisher

AEI Press

ISBN-13: 9780844772271

The Dynamic Internet: How Technology, Users, and Businesses are Changing the Network offers a comprehensive history of the Internet and efforts to regulate its use. University of Pennsylvania law professor Christopher S. Yoo contends that rather than engaging in prescriptive regulatory oversight, the government should promote competition in other ways, such as reducing costs for consumers, lowering entry barriers for new producers, and increasing transparency. These reforms would benefit consumers while permitting the industry to develop new solutions for emerging problems. It is fruitless for government to attempt to lock the burgeoning online industry into any particular architecture; rather, policymakers should act with the knowledge that no one actor can foresee how the network is likely to evolve in the future.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
List of Acronyms
Introduction
Part I: Changes in the Technological and Economic Environment
1. Increases in the Number and Diversity of Internet Users
Growth in the Number of Users and Computers
Connected to the Internet
Changes in the Nature of Users
2. Changes in the Nature of Internet Usage
Bandwidth Intensiveness
Sensitivity to Jitter, Delay, and Unreliability
The Shift from Person-to-Person to Mass Communications
The Emergence of Peer-to-Peer Applications
Cloud Computing
The Emergence of the App Store and the Changing Nature of the Essential Platform
3. The Diversification of Transmission Technologies
and End-User Devices
The Growing Diversity of Transmission Technologies
Broadband Technologies’ Technical Differences
The Economics of the Next Generation of
Bandwidth Expansion
The Growing Diversity of End-User Devices
4. The Upsurge in the Complexity of Business Relationships
The Topology of the Early Internet
Private Peering Points
Multihoming
Secondary Peering
Content Delivery Networks
Server Farms
Implications
Part II: Policy Implications
5. Changes in the Optimal Level of Standardization
The Impact of Increasing Heterogeneity of
Consumer Preferences
The Impact of Increasing Heterogeneity in Technology
6. The Inevitable Decline of Informal Governance
The Importance of Close-Knit Communities
Spam Control
The Domain Name System
Congestion Management
7. The Migration of Functions into the Core of the Network
Network Security
Congestion Management
8. The Growing Complexity of Internet Pricing
Deviations from Flat-Rate Pricing for End Users
The Importance of Investment Incentives and the
Insights of Ramsey Pricing
The Impact of Peer-to-Peer Applications on
End-User Pricing
Paid Peering and the Economics of Two-Sided Markets
The Benefits of Permitting Greater Variety in
Pricing Relationships
9. The Inevitability of Intermediation
The Benefits of Intermediation
The Supreme Court’s Embrace of Intermediation
Implications
10. Incomplete Convergence and the Myth of the One Screen
Reliability, Network Performance, and Cost Reduction
Differences in Technological Capability and Services
Implications
11. The Maturation of the Industry
Supply-Side Theories
Demand-Side Theories
Transaction Cost Considerations
Implications for Business Strategies and Internet Policy
Conclusion
References
Index
About the Author

This provocative monograph begins by summarizing the evolving Internet from the mid-1990s when it transitioned from an academic and research network to its modern mass-market form. Yoo (Univ. of Pennsylvania School of Law) cites the four key changes that occurred during this period as the diversity of users, applications, technologies, and business relationships. Next, he suggests that these usage changes may require architectural restructuring and lists seven policy elements for possible adoption. Two parts follow an introductory chapter. The first part contains four chapters elaborating on the key user, usage, technological, and economic and business changes. The second is divided into seven chapters, each respectively expanding on one of the policy element implications. Among these are the level of standardization, governance, an increase in network core functionality, and pricing issues. In the book's final chapter, Yoo stresses the importance of basing policy on the future rather than the past, and recommends how best to proceed with the Internet's ever-evolving future. He uses frequent citations to support his analysis and includes an extensive reference list. The work is clearly written and easily understandable to general readers, offering a very thoughtful, well-documented case for the future of this important system. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Academic, general, and professional audiences, all levels.