Dear [Your boss’s name],

November 16th through 20th, Teracom is holding one of their famous BOOT CAMPs: a full week of training on telecom, datacom, networking, IP and VoIP in Dallas. Registration is only $1995 for the full week, a savings of $395!

Why should you send me? In a nutshell: productivity, accuracy and efficiency... and money.

As you no doubt know, I have learned many things technology-wise "on the job"; but am frustrated by gaps in my knowledge, especially when technical types start speaking in jargon and buzzwords at project meetings then ask me if I agree.

Teracom specializes in telecommunications training for non-engineering professionals, starting at the beginning and building a solid foundation in the fundamentals, demystifying jargon and buzzwords, explaining mainstream technologies and most importantly, the underlying ideas, and how it all fits together.

From understanding telecom fundamentals, the telecom business and how to take advantage of competitive service providers on the first day, through packets, frames and the network cloud on the second day, IP networks and MPLS on the third day, VoIP fundamentals and technologies on the fourth day, and VoIP implementations and case studies on the last day, this is the training I need.

Besides alleviating this frustrating situation, it makes good business sense for me to attend. This training will make me more accurate - understanding the big picture, the ensemble of technologies and how they relate - and this can only make me (and therefore you) more productive and save the organization money.

The in-class discussions and case studies at the end of the week are an excellent opportunity for me to discuss our situation and identify the best solutions with the very experienced instructor (who is a Professional Engineer with 30 years experience working for Southwestern Bell in the field by the way) and other participants. This can't help but be a good thing for helping ensure we make the right decisions.

Seriously, let’s not get left behind on this opportunity. (Did I mention - there is a $395 savings for signing up for the full week, making the price only $1995 for five days of professional training? Other companies charge $4995 for the same thing!)

Teracom is a recognized leader in this kind of training. Type "telecommunications training" or "voip training" into any search engine like Google or Bing and Teracom is ranked #1 in the organic search results. They've been doing this kind of training since 1992 and by all accounts are very good at it. Here are a couple of clips from their DVD courses if you want to see the quality of Teracom training:
Tutorial V4: The OSI Layers: The FedEx Analogy    Tutorial V9: QoS and Traffic Conditioning    Tutorial V1: PSTN and Loops

We'll get a full WEEK of this, instructor-led, complete with two high-quality course manuals totaling 688 pages (!), with copies of all graphics plus detailed notes, sure to be a valuable reference for years to come. There is even an optional companion reference textbook we could order for you as part of the deal.

The web page describing the full-week BOOT CAMP is http://www.teracomtraining.com/boot-camp.htm.
The first three days are Course 101 Telecom, Datacom and Networking for Non-Engineers.
The last two days are Course 130 Understanding Voice over IP.

I’ve included more detail below, if you need it.

Thanks,
[your name]

Day 1: Fundamentals of Telecommunications
 •  The telephone network, loops and trunks, POTS
 •  Analog, the voiceband, SS7
 •  LECs, CLECs, IXCs, POPs and telecom industry
 •  IVRs, ACDs, modems, DSL, call centers
 •  Digital: DS0, DS1, DS3, T1, SONET, optical, DWDM
 •  Overview of wireless: cellular, 3G, LTE, Wi-Fi

Day 2: Understanding Data Communications
 •  Datacom basics: DTEs, DCEs, LANs and WANs
 •  IP packets, LAN frames; ASCII, binary and hex
 •  All about modems: voiceband, DSL, cable, wireless
 •  Digital data services and equipment
 •  All about LANs: Ethernet, hubs, switches, routers

Day 3: Understanding IP and Networking
 •  OSI model, layers, protocol stacks, standards
 •  IP addresses: static/dynamic, public/private, NAT
 •  Routers, bandwidth on demand and packet networks
 •  TCP/IP over Frame Relay; ATM
 •  MPLS and Quality of Service (QoS)
 •  TCP/IP over MPLS
 •  Voice over IP
 •  The Internet: ISPs, DNS, HTML, the Web
 •  Practical networking solutions

Day 4: Building a Solid Understanding of VoIP
 •  Demystify jargon and buzzwords
 •  Fundamental ideas, components, implementations
 •  Voice packetization, codecs, softswitches, gateways
 Learn All About SIP
 •  Understand how SIP works and IP call setup
 •  How SIP fits in with soft switches and call managers
 Understand VoIP Networks and Services
 •  PBX replacement vs. hosted PBX vs. IP Centrex
 •  Connection to carriers, QoS, Service Level Agreements
 •  MPLS, VPNs, Megaco and Session Border Controllers

Day 5: The Practical
 •  How VoIP saves money and increases productivity
 •  Why phone companies are converting to VoIP
 •  Cost savings for small, medium and large organizations
 •  Converged applications and sophisticated call handling
 Readiness assessment, case studies, vendors
 •  Identify and discuss key issues that must be evaluated
 •  Business and deployment cases: PBX replacement, IP Centrex, multi-location networked cases
 •  Vendor and product reviews
 •  Project management
 •  Requirements analysis, RFPs, running trials, selecting a vendor, rollout, maintenance
 •  Practical templates and checklists you can use

Here are a couple of the typical comments and responses:

[comment]
You said: "If "net neutrality" principles were applied to electricity, it would be like having no electricity meter."

My comment is: No. The antithesis of net neutrality applied to electricity would be like an electric company being able to tell what types of things you're powering, and be able to throttle your use of your videogames consoles so that everyone on the block can power their refrigerators.

If "net neutrality" principles were applied to electricity, it would be what we have right now. You pay based on how much you use, not what you use.

A pipe is just a pipe. I, and every other person paying for the same service in my area, should get N Mb/s, regardless of what I'm using. Period. If I paid for N Mb/s (perhaps with a transfer cap of M gigabytes of data per month), I should get N Mb/s until those M GB are reached.

I should be able to use that on mission critical business applications or on X-box Live. I already pay for my electricity which powers my X-box *and* my IBM Thinkpad. How you can *POSSIBLY* compare "net neutrality" with "no electricity" meter is the most absurd thing I have read recently.

[response from author]
The premise of the "no electricity meter" analogy is that there are a significant number of people in the "net neutrality" camp who are very much opposed to usage-based pricing or monthly download caps. If they have their way, there would be no transfer caps allowed, no meters.

"would be like an electric company being able to tell what types of things you're powering, and be able to throttle your use of your videogames consoles so that everyone on the block can power their refrigerators". That's not correct. It would be much more like the electric company throttling your use of 200 amps 24/7/365 for the halide lighting system for your basement marijuana grow-op so that everyone on the block can power their refrigerators. The thing that is being restricted is bandwidth-hogging bittorrent used for unlawful activity: stealing copyrighted content. Let's not pretend otherwise lest we forget the whole reason for the problem.

"A pipe is just a pipe". That's not correct. You are confusing access line speed with a service level agreement based on a traffic profile. The capacity to a network is designed based on statistical multiplexing, meaning that the internal capacity is less than the total of the access line speeds. How much less can be calculated knowing the historical demand statistics, i.e. how often people transmit packets at their access line speed, hence the term statistical multiplexing.

The internal network capacity is certainly not designed for people to transmit packets at their access line speed 24 hours a day which you seem to be suggesting by saying the service is just a pipe.

Since the internal network capacity is purposely designed to be less than the total of the access line speeds (lowering the cost to the users!), then there have to be mechanisms to ensure that the traffic experienced by the network is actually within the design parameters, the usage statistics.

The mechanism for that is to define a traffic profile and sell a service level agreement. The traffic profile specifies the "statistics": the maximum average number of bits per second, maximum number of bits per second, maximum burst size. The service level agreement is between the network and the user: if the user agrees to transmit at or below the traffic profile, the network agrees to guaranteed transmission characteristics like maximum delay, maximum number of dropped packets.

When you pay $50 per month for network service, you are not buying a "pipe" at your access line speed. You are buying a residential-user traffic profile, which is an agreement for considerably less than transmitting at your line speed 24 hours a day.

If you want a network service that is a "pipe", i.e. where you can transmit at your line speed 24 hours a day, that can certainly be purchased. But it wouldn't cost $50 a month. It would cost $500 to $1000 a month.

Complaining because you aren't getting a $500/month service for $50/month?

Last point: if we change your statement "perhaps with a transfer cap of M gigabytes of data per month" to "with a transfer cap of M gigabytes of data per month", that would fix part of the problem. But...

(a) There are many people in the "net neutrality" camp vehemently opposed to limits. They want to pass laws to force traffic profiles to be an unlimited "pipe", i.e. a $500/month service mandated for everyone.

(b) If monthly caps or limits continue to be legal, what happens if everyone tries to transmit and receive at their line speed starting at 00:01 on the first day of the month until they reach their cap a few days later... and they all do this at the same time... and it is illegal for the network to enforce traffic profiles?

It would be legally required that the network support everyone transmitting at full line speed. The network would have to be designed to allow everyone to transmit at line speed continuously at the same time, even if it were only used that way for a few days a month. The cost of the network would be 10 times higher. Cost of Internet service would have to jump from the current $50 per month to $500 per month to support it.

No thanks.

[response from author]
Does spending six years at University to get a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, then a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering, both specializing in communications count?

Does authoring this course count?
http://www.teracomtraining.com/courses/110/IP-VoIP-MPLS-training.htm

Net neutrality means people can get any content they want, and companies cant brainwash them with their "preferred channels".

[response from author]
If that was all that "net neutrality" advocates were trying to make illegal, I would agree with you. Unfortunately, they also want to make usage caps, traffic profiles and even the freedom to define terms of private service contracts between networks illegal too. No thanks.

[comment]
You must work for a big cable / telco. Remember if you are receiving any compensation from them, its now required by law that you as a blogger disclose that to your readers.

[response from author]
You assume that anyone who disagrees with you must work for a network service provider?
If you did a bit of fact-checking, you would discover that I work for myself. My personal website is http://www.teracomtraining.com if you want to learn more about me.

No, I disagree with you because you and people like you want to pass very poorly-thought-out laws that in addition to all the noble things like preventing brainwashing and anti-competitive practices, would also have the effect of:
- dramatically raising the cost of Internet service for the populace,
- dramatically lowering network speeds for typical users doing web surfing and email, and
- curtailing the freedom of businesses to define the terms of private contracts,
not to mention supporting thieves stealing copyrighted works using bittorrent.

[response from author]
If that was all "net neutrality" meant, then I would almost* agree with you. However, the fact is, different advocates of net neutrality also want to variously make traffic profiles and caps illegal, traffic shaping and policing illegal, multiple service levels ("tiers") illegal, and even the freedom of businesses to define terms of private contracts illegal. These are very poorly thought-out ideas. They would lead to serious increases in the cost of internet service and serious reductions in service speeds. No thanks.

*The part where I would still disagree with you is related to the statement:
"the ISP's systems won't ask 'what kind of packet are you', it'll ask 'who is going to get this packet'. The former would be neutral and allow proper QoS, the latter would ignore real QoS and would be anti-competitive."

This is also related to the statements I've made along the lines of "want to make the freedom of businesses to define terms of private contracts illegal."

Here's the thing:
The Internet is a business. It is not implemented by the government and paid for by taxpayers. The internet is a collection of Autonomous Systems (ASs) that are interconnected. An Autonomous System is a group of interconnected routers that are controlled by the same organization. A university is an AS. An ISP is an AS. Google has an AS.

One method of interconnection between ASs is called "peering". This is where two ASs, for example, two ISPs, notice that they have fairly equal volumes of traffic going to and coming from each other's networks, that is, the rate of packets where the source IP address is on one ISP's AS and the destination IP address is on the other ISP's AS is equal to the rate of packets the other way around. So these two ISPs, even though they may be competitors, enter into a very confidential agreement to connect a router of ISP "A" to a router of ISP "B" and exchange packets. No money changes hands except for the cost to install and maintain the connection.

That's all fine. It is in fact a fundamental part of the internet.

The problem happens a bit later. What happens if ISP "A" begins to transmit packets to ISP "B" over this peering link where the destination IP address is not on ISP "B"s network, but on ISP "C"s network.

In the absence of any discrimination based on source and destination, ISP "B" would be obliged to carry these packets from ISP "A" over its network and deliver them to ISP "C" somehow... at the expense of ISP "B".

Does that sound fair to you?

Would it not be fair for ISP "B" to verify that the destination IP address on the packet was in fact on ISP "B" network, and if not, treat the packet differently? Like discard it?

Would it be fair to pass a law that made it illegal for an ISP to discriminate between packets based on source and destination IP address? I don't think so.

But wait, you say, of course that would be OK, it's other kinds of discrimination between packets based on source and destination IP address that we would make illegal.

Which brings me to my problem with "net neutrality" advocates. Certainly, some of the ideas are laudable. Some of them are not, and would result in huge cost increases and slowdowns for typical users.

But even if we could get rid of the "no meters" faction in the "net neutrality" camp, the devil is in the details. The "no source/destination discrimination" faction in the "net neutrality" camp wants to pass very poorly thought-out laws that would have unintended consequences, not least of which would be restricting the freedom of businesses to define the terms of private peering contracts... and who knows what else?

No thanks.