[bjnortier_hn]

Why should the priority go to the call? You don't know if the person is watching a Youtube video showing how to give someone CPR, and the person is busy dying. Would you prioritise a call from a telemarketer over that? Tele-medicine is just one example. Who decides?

I completely agree with roc that once you start thinking about it, there are just too many holes in the argument for prioritising on type. "Type" can just be a synonym for "provider". There will be nothing to prevent carriers to push new protocols to a non-priority "type", if they don't pay up.

If voip calls get priority, what prevents me from writing a torrent protocol over voip? That would just be a waste of bandwidth. Prioritising will set off a never-ending arms race.

[lutorm]

As long as bandwidth is a scarce resource, something will happen. Either there's a well thought out procedure, or it's random. I think we can do better than random.

[bjnortier_hn]

I argue that a "well thought out procedure" is not possible for such a complex system as the internet. Every kind of procedure that can be thought of will either have holes in the logic, or will be gamed by users and providers in a never-ending arms-race.

Emergent complexity is not "random", although it can be based on elements of randomness.

Nature is an example of a massively complex system that has evolved on elements of randomness, but the system itself is by no means random. And there's no way that it could have been designed with a "well thought out procedure".

[lutorm]

I don't get your point. The pattern of dropped packets in a network will not "evolve" through some process of natural selection.