“The inventor of the WWW has a short, to-the-point post that explains exactly why supporting real, bona fide net neutrality is the Right Thing to Do. I absolutely encourage you to read the entire post, but really he sums up the whole argument for net neutrality in his opening sentence: ‘When I invented the Web, I didn’t have to ask anyone’s permission.’ If you think about it in terms of start-ups having to ask the permission of AT&T to innovate, then the whole net neutrality issue becomes less complicated.”
Sir Tim Berners-lee has always stayed humble. He never declares loudly that he invented the www, he stays out of the limelight most of the time as well as rarely giving interviews (probably because of the dumb questions that can be found on his FAQ).
But for him to be strong worded now, – well that shows the severity of the situation in my mind much more than any news article or slashdot troll can.
I agree with the author who basicly says legal traffic interference from should stop at the connection.
For all the free market enonomists to show up and tell us why we deserve to have un-neutral internet if we can’t cobble together our own company.
—
And yeah, Berners-Lee certainly didn’t mince any words, did he?
I’m forwarding that link to a lot of folks in my address book. I would suggest that it’s a good idea for others to do the same. It’s short enough that non-tech folks may read it and take the time to understand the issue.
Same here, I think this will be important to all that enjoy freedom that the net currently has.
“Same here, I think this will be important to all that enjoy freedom that the net currently has.”
Doesn’t that net freedom you reference include the freedom of internet providers to filter as they like? Freedom is a two way street, no?
I often see people play the Freedom trump card not realizing that freedom goes both ways. For example, freedom of speach means that others have freedom of speach too, not just you. Wow what a concept to allow others to do as they do, including companies building and supporting the Internet to do with their own networks as they see fit.
edit: the Internet is not owned by the public, it is mostly a network of private networks. You use and access the Internet across property that isn’t yours but net neutrality starts to say that no, it’s a public network owned by all? No wonder Hilary is for this craziness – sounds socialist to me.
Edited 2006-06-25 07:15
I do realise that it works both ways.
If my ISP NTL started to filter out say my BOINC connections for some reason (not the best example), I would swich to BT, Bulldog, Wanado or pipex. Ntl would start to loose customers and may reconsider.
Here’s the message I sent to a number of folks:
There’s an issue that’s been in the news (and in Congress) lately
called “Net Neutrality” (as in “Internet Neutrality”). It’s about
Internet service providers not discriminating between the different
sorts of sites you visit or services you use the Internet for. Read
this:
http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/node/144
The guy who wrote that is Tim Berners-Lee — one of the original
designers and implementors of the Internet. Most informed folks in the
tech community agree with him (that we should definitely have “Net
Neutrality”).
The big telecommunication providers are actively lobbying against Net
Neutrality, primarily because of VOIP (“voice over IP” or, using your
computer and the internet to make telephone calls instead of using
your telephone or cell phone). They’re trying to protect their old
business model at the expense of what makes the Internet so great.
With Net Neutrality, they can still charge based on how much you use
(that is, based on “QOS” (quality of service)), which is the way it’s
always been. Without Net Neutrality, they will more vigorously inspect
which sites you’re visiting, and may then make your access faster or
(much) slower to certain sites depending upon which Internet companies
are paying them more.
For everyone’s benefit, you might consider supporting Net Neutrality
in any way you can. I believe it’s quite a big deal. Feel free to forward this
message to anyone you think would be interested.
Feel free to use that text if you like.
The guy who wrote that is Tim Berners-Lee — one of the original designers and implementors of the Internet.
I hope you didn’t send that comment to too many people. Berners-Lee hacked together a protocol once, long after the original designers and implementors of the internet had done their thing.
Of course we all know that www and the internet aren’t the same thing. This however doesn’t apply to ordinary people. They don’t know the difference, the point of the original message was to explain why net neutrality is good using simple language and not to educate the reader about the differences between www and the internet.
PS The original message could have stated that Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web. That would be the best option.
TBL is not one of the original designers of the internet. He created the basis of the web, which is not synonymous with the internet, and which postdates the internet considerably.
I see the need for net neutrality, but, how can the law be framed in such a way that QoS can be implemented also?
Maybe there’s a piece of information I am missing that someone can point me to.
Say, I’m on Comcast, and Comcast have peering agreement with Verizon and AT&T. There are two .pango files, one on each network (used in the text example). Just happnes that the pipe between Comcast and Verizon is bigger than the one between Comcast and AT&T. By default there is already a difference in service levels. How do we maintain “neutrality” in this case? It’s not equal to begin with.
In my mind it’s very difficult to draw the line between QoS and bias/discrimination for/against a particular service/provider.
This whole “debate” is based on a flawed premise: that the net is free to begin with. It’s not. Not only do we not have a free market in the utilities industry, we never have, and we never can.
I’ve been doing some research on the subject, and it appears that the state’s protection of telcos runs quite deep. Did you know that in most US states, including my home state of Virginia, you need to call an agency for permission before digging on your own property. If I dig without permission and destroy a phone or power line, I could face a stiff fine. According to common definitions of “abandoned property”, phone lines qualify abandoned property whose ownership transfers to the finder. However, I can’t dig up the phone line sitting in my yard and use it for other purposes, because the state has passed laws against it.
Property rights are the bedrock on which the free market rests. The simple fact is, that the current system of utilities is based on a subversion of property rights by the state. It is therefore not a free market system, nor can it be. Since it is not a free market system, calling for its regulation is not a subversion of the free market. It’s just a prudent action to ensure that our surrendering of our property rights to these companies is reciprocated by service that serves the good of the public, not just the profit motive of the company.
i think your right there but the WTO World Trade Oraganation offers a free maerket system which the U.S. and China are now a part of. I agree that this might be out of the scope of the U.S. congress. The U.S. is a tax macnine and that’s what it will do. That’s why I am more into the WTO and free trade these days. It just covers more ground.
According to common definitions of “abandoned property”, phone lines qualify abandoned property whose ownership transfers to the finder.
I want to know what world you live in that would think so? Nobody would agree that phone lines are “abandoned property”.
In the US, the prerequisites for abandoned property are:
1) Somebody leaves some of their property on someone elses property intentionally;
2) That person does not intend to return to reclaim that property.
Ie. If I park my car on your lawn, and never plan to come back to pick it up, its now your car. Phone line laid on your property meets both of these requirements. The reason it isn’t considered random property is because the local governments subvert your property rights to give telephone and cable companies the privlege of leaving stuff on your property without you being able to claim it as our own.
The phone monopoly as it exists is absolutely based on a subversion of property rights. Google can’t come over to your house and dig up your lawn, but Verizon can. Google cannot leave network equipment on your property without you being able to claim it, or paying you rent, but Verizon can. That’s why they’re called “utility monopolies”, because the local governments give them special monopoly privleges in return for them providing a public service. For this reason, they need to remember that they are indeed providing a public service, that their networks are not theirs to do with as they please, because without the peoples’ surrendering of their property rights, they’d have no network.
You may want to talk to a lawyer about “active use” before you attempt to declare phone lines abandoned.
“does not intend to return to reclaim” isn’t an accurate summary of what qualifies as abandonment in the US.
Also, “…leaves…” although relevant to phone lines, isn’t an accurate description of the condition either, as that would make it impossible to abandon real estate.
Utility lines aren’t qualified as abandoned, because they meet the requirement for use.
Tim Berners-Lee is not being helpful when he writes
Net neutrality is this:
If I pay to connect to the Net with a certain quality of service, and you pay to connect with that or greater quality of service, then we can communicate at that level.
Because he completely misses what the issue with net neutrality is. As a minimum, he’s confused bandwidth with quality-of-service. It’s not the same thing.
I see the need for net neutrality, but, how can the law be framed in such a way that QoS can be implemented also?
The law should say that you may continue to offer different levels of service (bits/second, latency) for different prices, but what I think NN is about is: once you’ve paid for a given QoS, the ISP cannot then give certain packets preferential treatment (for example, you can browse the web, but no using bittorrent, or you can go to amazon but not bookpool, or you can visit the Microsoft homepage, but access to eff.org is strangely slow for some reason).
The law should say that you may continue to offer different levels of service (bits/second, latency) for different prices, but what I think NN is about is: once you’ve paid for a given QoS, the ISP cannot then give certain packets preferential treatment (for example, you can browse the web, but no using bittorrent, or you can go to amazon but not bookpool, or you can visit the Microsoft homepage, but access to eff.org is strangely slow for some reason).
There is a few problems here. One is that there is no “given QoS” for non-enterprise level broadband connections.
Secondly, the things that was mentioned seems to argue for “equal QoS for same/similar service”. In that case, we have a big problem on our hands with what’s “equal”. Amazon and bookpool sells books. But Amazon may sell a category of item C that bookpool does not carry (be it music or video or whatever). It happens that some other shop EFG sells item type C. And then you have another shop that sells the cateory of item C. Can you say that the shop provide the same “service” as Amazon? What happens if this becomes 10-15 degrees separated?
I just can’t see this can work. It boils back down to everyone gets the same service and no one gets QoS.
I think you’re missing one crucial fact: we already have QoS.
People with DSL/ADSL service have a higher QoS than people with 56k modem access. Sites with mirrors and fast internet connections also have a higher QoS than sites that have no mirrors and/or sites that have slow internet connections. What we have now works and mirrors the real world. If you live near a transporation hub, you get a higher QoS than if you live in the middle of nowhere. If you have your stor near a transporation hub, you get more walk-in business than if you’re in the middle of no-where.
“Secondly, the things that was mentioned seems to argue for “equal QoS for same/similar service”. In that case, we have a big problem on our hands with what’s “equal”. Amazon and bookpool sells books. But Amazon may sell a category of item C that bookpool does not carry (be it music or video or whatever). It happens that some other shop EFG sells item type C. And then you have another shop that sells the cateory of item C. Can you say that the shop provide the same “service” as Amazon? What happens if this becomes 10-15 degrees separated?”
If USPS were to treat a package from Amazon.com better than a package from bookpool, we have a problem. If they treat them equally well, we still the kind of neutrality that is being saught, and has simply “been” for over a decade.
The shop is not relavent. The shop is there, away from you. Your ISP is analogous not to the shop, but to a shipping service, like USPS, UPS, Fedex, or DHL. You choose based on what services, the quality thereof, they offer.
For a much better analogy, think about how banks used to be. A note from bank A might not be worth anything at bank B, or it might be worth much less. That is not allowed, now; as it is with communication over the internet.
“If USPS were to treat a package from Amazon.com better than a package from bookpool, we have a problem. If they treat them equally well, we still the kind of neutrality that is being saught, and has simply “been” for over a decade. ”
I like that description a lot!
If they treate them equally well or equally poorly then it is stil neutral because it is fair.
You could also use luggage at a airport….
Oh we dont like blue luggage (for any number of reasons) so we will discrimnate against the blue luggage.
Or big heavy luggage or some blondes 500 little pieces of luggage that is flooding our belt.
bit non-discrimination is what net neutrality is all about IMO and it expands beyond just what someone charges others. Treat bits fairly- they are just little bits after all and they need love too…
IMHO this issue has blown way out of proportion. Are ISPs detrimentally filtering traffic now? I’ve not seen anyone complaining about it as a real reality.
What if ISPs could offer free limited Internet access to commercial content only? Wouldn’t this net neutrality law make that illegal? Isn’t free TV over the air waves a similar type of distribution? They give you free content for commercials, etc..?! OMG people just love finding new problems to get all worked up & stress over.
IMHO there will always be a market for unrestricted Internet access.
edit: also, the Internet has never been neutral anyway. If a web site is hosted far away or over a flooded connection, or by an overwhelmed server then it’s going to be slower. But a premier site that is hosted well will perform better. That’s NOT neutral. The net by its very nature is not neutral.
Edited 2006-06-24 23:11
“IMHO this issue has blown way out of proportion. Are ISPs detrimentally filtering traffic now? I’ve not seen anyone complaining about it as a real reality.”
Go to http://www.dslreports.com/ and look on the Shaw forum for complaints about restrictions on bittorrent upload traffic. Last year, Shaw introduced so-called ‘intelligent routers’ in some areas of their network which heavily restrict the upload bandwidth allocated to Bittorrent traffic, and many users were not at all happy about it. So yes, this is happening, now.
Yes, I’m a Shaw customer, and they also throttle Vonage customers traffic, even though I use far more bandwidth on non-Vonage activities than on Vonage activities, my bandwidth is only throttled for Vonage. This never used to be, so why have they done this? Well, because they have introduced their own VOIP service, so they are trying to either make you switch, or else make you pay a QoS fee for a service you had mere months ago.
Telus, Shaw’s biggest competitor in this region, recently completely blocked access to their employees’ union’s website while the employees were on strike. You literally could not access it if you were a Telus customer, but it ran just fine if you were a Shaw customer.
While these may be poor examples because these are Canadian Telcos, trust me, the issue is very alive and well. The only two high-speed internet providers in my area have both interfered with my bandwidth in one way or another, what’s to stop them from doing it again? What’s to stop American companies from doing the same thing if there is no net neutrality?
EDIT: And to add to this further, even with Vonage, I am still transfering less data per second than Shaw “guarantees” me and transferring less data per month than Shaw “allows” me. In other words, they are selling me a service, but then not fully providing it. I really wish someone would slap Shaw upside the head for their behaviour. However, Telus’ service isn’t that great, so I am sticking with Shaw.
Edited 2006-06-25 01:33
Yes, I’m a Shaw customer, and they also throttle Vonage customers traffic, even though I use far more bandwidth on non-Vonage activities than on Vonage activities, my bandwidth is only throttled for Vonage. This never used to be, so why have they done this? Well, because they have introduced their own VOIP service, so they are trying to either make you switch, or else make you pay a QoS fee for a service you had mere months ago.
I’m not on Shaw, but I thought that there was some sort of complaint made to the CRTC about that, and Shaw confirmed that they were not throttling VoIP, just giving higher QoS to customers paying the premium.
If that’s the case, I don’t see anything wrong with customers paying a premium to get guarantees on reduced latency, but I do see an issue with impeding latency to encourage upgrading. It’s a fine line though, and ripe for exploitation.
Either way, I’m just waiting for Rogers to try the same thing, but so far my Vonage service has worked fine, though the bastards block Bittorrent unless you’re using encryption. Of course, they’re under the microscope right now with the feds over their monopoly on GSM and they’re also challenging Bell/Telus as a CLEC, so could be they’re minding their Ps and Qs for now.
Telus, Shaw’s biggest competitor in this region, recently completely blocked access to their employees’ union’s website while the employees were on strike. You literally could not access it if you were a Telus customer, but it ran just fine if you were a Shaw customer.
While I objected in principle, it was hard to feel sympathetic considering how the striking workers were sabotaging fiber lines and leaving thousands of people without service, including emergency ones.
Reinforcing your point though, the Union website was hosted and when Telus blocked access, they also blocked access to hundreds of legitimate sites as well. So I do think it’s a perfect example of why the telcos need guidelines enforced upon them.
The VOIP thing doesn’t seem to affect me personally – I use Primus over Shaw and it seems OK – but those who are affected say that service on non-Shaw VOIP services was absolutely fine until the Shaw home phone service showed up, at which point it suddenly got very patchy, and paying the extra “QOS fee” restores service to the levels they were getting without paying any kind of extra fee, before the Shaw service came in.
Nothing conclusive, but this is exactly the kind of shenanigans a tough, well-policed net neutrality law would make definitively impossible (or at least more difficult).
i can second that.. on my campus (UCSD), which is a major hub and role player in internet2 and other internet research, filtering already goes on throughout the entire campus and also throughout the internet. Since a large majority of internet traffic flows through our campus, there have been attempts to do things such as stopping viruses by identifying their signature and blocking all traffic that happens to flow through our hub with that signature. Yes, it does significantly slow down virus propagation.
however, as you can see in the above example, this same technique can be used to block almost any other kind of information, and thus lowering the QoS for certain types of data, at the will of the university.
I firmly believe that the internet should be free and open to all types of data without restrictions, otherwise SOMEBODY has to make a judgement call that ultimately we cannot all agree upon.
I have lived on campus for two years now and they (UCSD’s internet department) selectively filter out certain types of traffic based on packet signature. Of course their excuse is that they need to maintain a high QoS for research, therefore they need to lower the priority (and sometimes outright block) of data that matches things such as Bittorrent and other P2P (high bandwidth users).
anyways, this is happening already with many ISP’s. When I purchase internet access, I expect equal access to all types of data and port ranges.
Unfortunately, there are many situations where there is no choice for the end user who wants internet access and there is only one ISP available.
I honestly think no one will realize the full impact until it happens. Your ISP limiting your upload bandwidth for bittorrent DOES NOT COMPARE to what will happen.
Thanks for the info and good reply. Internet providers have been filtering in other ways too. For example many isp’s don’t allow standard www (port 80) requests inbound to customers, etc.. This is all standard fare and has been going on for years. Only now the difference is that the press is hyping the issue a lot more.
IMHO the Internet is more resiliant to things like this. I also don’t find torrent traffic limiting a big deal. My guess is if this continues and/or grows, the BT protocol will be modified to use different/random ports, etc.
IMHO the biggest threat to the Internet is government regulation, censoring, taxation. These are real threats that are a MUCH larger threat to the Internet.
The irony of this whole issue is that we are using the wolf (government) to address this issue. Of course there are ambitious politicians and beaurocrats who would love to get their hands on controling the internet while chanting good intentions! That’s how governments these days steal freedoms! They convince us that their actions will protect us. This was what one German Nazi said in the Neuremburg trials (forget his name).
There needs to be a level playing field or it will create chaos and disparity.
Where talking about free as in freedom not in price. It’s more of an ethic and law. Free Trade means the ability to trade without extra costs that are unnecessary only for the purpose of stacking someones wallet. This severely inhibits market growth and traders rights. It would be like creating an Encyclopedia without having resources.
So about controlling the Internet, we are talking about the Internet as a whole not parts of it. Companies cheating by messing with other companies traffic and our ISP controlling their traffic at their whim. Their job should be simply to allow you to access to the Internet then what is fair is that the companies that you access compete over speeds. It’s like a hierarchy thing.
ATnT s job as an ISP is not to restrict your boat in the water, they should just give you the water unless they can’t afford something, like you have to pay extra for overall faster speed. Those are reasonable bells and whistles.
If you’re driving and there are speed limits that’s fine but when someone blows out a tire on your car that’s another thing entirely.
I hope I answered your post right.
Why is this a political issue? I see this as strictyl a techincal problem.
There seems to be a lot of confusion about what the phrase “net neutrality” means to the legal folk.
Wikipidia has a good summary at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality which
sums up network neutrality nicely:
As originally defined, the principle of network neutrality would forbid discrimination based on IP addresses, ports, domain names, or cookies but allow discrimination based on bandwidth usage, to implement quality-of-service guarantees, or to prevent net abuse.
Er, I really hope no-one wants a law to be passed which says “we shall have net neutrality!”, because it’s something that no two lawyers would ever agree on. For any law to be practicable the definition, which really isn’t agreed on by all parties yet, would have to be written into the law.
a bit is a bit sums it up fairly well
No network bias with regard to originating network, type of traffic, application used, etc….
If I pay for my $30 3meg unlimited broadband then I pay for that pipe, what I send and how much I send thru that pipe is my business. When my data has to go thru another companies pipe then my data should get the same treatment as any other data, not be throttled simply because I am using up a lot of traffic, not because I get my pipe from XYZ etc….
maybe?
Whilst ISP greed is naturally part of the equation there are also other parts, particularly BitTorrent. I don’t know how accurate the figures are but I’ve recently seen several reports saying that BitTorrent currently accounts for over 30% of all Internet bandwidth usage, and growing. If that is the case it is a serious problem — VoIP probably comes a distant second — and unless ways can be found to radically increase overall Net bandwidth to the point that even something like BitTorrent can be handled easily ISPs are naturally going to do anything they can to deal with it.
If you look at it from the ISPs’ point of view it’s very easy to see why they are reacting as they are. Of course they’re going to leverage the situation to try to pump even more money out of the system, they are business people (i.e. by definition primitively focused on short-term benefits for themselves), but they also have a real problem to deal with. A type of service usage is emerging that is making it more and more difficult to maintain their own QoS in other areas. This will apply in particular to smaller ISPs who have a more limited amount of overall bandwidth to spread betweeen their customers.
Imagine that you are an ISP in this situation. Then add the perception — which may or may not be entirely true — that the majority of BitTorrent traffic consists of pirated material, then your response is obvious: You must find a way to limit the traffic that is burdening your systems. If you can make more money in the process then, heck, the more the merrier. And if you have to push through legislation to help you do this, then heck, you’re going to do that too, if you can. As a short-term personal-advantage profit-making animal you aren’t going to worry about the long-term ramifications for society or Net culture.
However, it’s also possible to make a case that the users are actually behaving pretty much the same as the ISPs. They are just as greedy and have just as little awareness or concern about the long-term consequences of their actions.
What we really have is the clash of two greeds: The greed of the ISPs for more money and control, and the greed of equally thoughtless users for more and more free stuff. Personally, I don’t think there’s all that much to choose between the camps, both are equally guilty. And if the final result is that the Net becomes a less free and less useful place then both sides are equally to blame.
Limit traffic that is burdening your systems? Why did you sell a unlimited 3mb connection to someone for $30 a month then? If there is too much traffic in general on the net then who is to blame? Me for using what I was sold or someone else for selling me something they cant provide? The internet is not a delivery guaranteed medium anyway so if my traffic gets dropped FAIRLY then so be it but if I am being dropped/blocked because of traffic type, bandwidth usage(paid for remember), or simply because I come from a network that is a strong competitor to another network then THAT is the problem.
Exactly, amount of traffic is a measurable resource… just like minutes you talk on the phone. I’d hate to go back to that system, but it’s the only one that’s truly fair. It kinda wrecks the “always on” feature of DSL but they’re saying it’s really expensive. The proper way would be to figure out how many hours at 3Mb they can afford and charge accordingly. Then you could choose between a higher bandwidth for Bittorrents, or a lower bandwidth and more time available on line. In reality, MOST people only NEED 256Kb up/down for daily tasks to seem “instant”… the internet servers like email, web pages, shopping site and such can’t really sustain much more than that anyway. Even video is fairly useful at 256k… you might have to download it first, not real time.
The whole argument is quite silly, the real resource the telcos sell are sending your electrons/or photons across the wire… that ability IS a finite resource. Instead of the current practice of trying to give away the world, then make it up on “premium” services, they need to be focused on their business of running the wires. It’s true, IP traffic is more expensive than cable or tv signals… it’s not efficent to dedicate electronics to every connection to watch TV. That said, HDTV and HDRadio fix a lot of the problems with those formats and make them comparable to there cable/satellite equivalents. It’s all about using tools appropriately.
What we SHOULD be asking for from Congress is more wireless bandwidth to be given to the people. Whole TV channels are being re-licensed in the next years… the people deserve one of those for next gen wireless tech.. the industry has proven that Wi-Fi can be implemented safely, fairly, and is phenomenally successful in the limited space we’ve been given for “free”. The real crime would be not to reward the People for their innovation and instead give all that new bandwidth to corps for money. Hopefully, Google could get in on that auction and really be disruptive.. if it comes to a corp having to do what the govt won’t.
Why did you sell a unlimited 3mb connection to someone for $30 a month then?
This post, as do many in this thread, completely misses what the current issue over net neutrality is. This is not about your final-mile provider providing you 3mb/sec to the dslam or not.
It is about tier 1 providers charging different peers different rates for the same quality of service on the backbone. (I simplify, but it’ll do.)
You don’t pay your provider for 3mb/s to the internet. You pay them for 3mb/s to the edge of their network.
If your traffic has to leave your provider’s network and travel to another provider’s network, then your provider is paying for the traffic across the backbone between them.
Let’s say you’re on SBC and your buddy is on Comcast. Suppose SBC uses AT&T to talk to Comcast. You pay SBC for the pipe to your house. Your buddy pays Comcast for the pipe to his. SBC and Comcast pay AT&T for the traffic that goes between them. It is this last bit that the current issue about Net Neutrality is over.
I agree the PART that you decided to quote isn’t because it was a response to another post, but if you fully quote my post then that is exactly what I go on to try and discuss.
QoS is another term that depends on context so I think instead of just saying it is about Qos we need to define it a bit more in normal terms. QoS could be discussing packet priority, traffic shaping policy, guaranteed routing along reserver routes.
Charging different rates would be one way to descriminate but another would be to charge everyone the same rate and block everyones voip coming thru your network. Everyone would still be getting the SAME QoS but it would still not be net neutrality because they were still descriminating against a certain type of traffic.
That is why my post goes on to talk about…
“if my traffic gets dropped FAIRLY then so be it but if I am being dropped/blocked because of traffic type, bandwidth usage(paid for remember), or simply because I come from a network that is a strong competitor to another network then THAT is the problem”
Thats right i pay for a 3mb connection on my providers network but the purpose of that connection IS to get internet. I never said that I expected 3meg connection to the whole world. But if I get dropped unfairly due to type of traffic, too many requests, application type, or because my network is on the shit list then YES that is exactly what net neutrality deals with.
I consider any descrimination of traffic to start to encroach on net neutrality.
It certainly starts with providers getting into pissing matches about how much one charges another one but certainly does not end there. I mean if I am XYZ and I only send 1gig of traffic a hour should I really pay the same as ABC who sends a 100gigs of traffic a hour across your network? Should they be charging by the amount? SHould they be able to partner? All of that is still just the tip of the iceberg and THAT is nothing but a pissing match that will simply go around and around. I personally could care less who charges who what and so forth because as long as competition exists then I will likely win and as long as A pays B who pays C who pays D who pays A then it is just a game they play. What I am concerned about is descrimination based on the app type, the traffic type, the point of origin, the point of destination, the type of connection and so forth.
I mean right now cable and satelite are not real good friends. I certianly would be charging them the same…but my routers would know what traffic got high priority and which traffic got LOW priority.
Maybe the RIAA has good connections with CharterCable so they manage to work a deal where all napster traffic is blocked or something? All of a sudden my data is not treated fairly. The net is no longer neutral, it is no longer a level playing field for bits and bytes.
oh well….whatever you say dude
Maybe tommorrow XYZ will decide that all POP traffic is spam and block it. I guess that will be all right since they are charging every other provider the same amount?
Well, you may have meant to say those things, but they certainly weren’t in the rest of the post I quoted.
I consider any descrimination of traffic to start to encroach on net neutrality.
That’s an unusual view. From the introduction of the “type of service” field in the original TCP design, traffic discrimination was part of the net.
As I pointed out elsewhere in the thread, typically, “net neutrality” means a particular type of discrimination. (Tim Wu’s original description is still the easiest to understand.)
What I am concerned about is descrimination based on the app type, the traffic type, the point of origin, the point of destination, the type of connection and so forth.
This is closer to the common understanding of the term. (without the ‘and so forth’.)
You can’t operate a network without some discrimination. Discrminating against DoS attacks is a good thing, for example. QoS based discrimination is an economics thing and makes sense: if someone wants atypical SLAs they should have to pay more.
disrimination – Treatment or consideration based on class or category rather than individual merit.
As stated a bit is a bit and nothing should be evaluated beyond that. DoS is a pattern attack that can still have neutrality but will be filtered due to a obivous pattern that is used for nothing except a DoS.
type of service flag would be individual merit, and would be fair IMO because it is simply evaluation based on a bit and nothing else like who paid what, who is hoggin what, who is not friends with whom, who partnered it who and so forth. Also the sender is the one “asking” for a certain level of service or priority and nothing says they get that level.
As (I THINK) I also stated it is a VERY hard subject to discuss unless you are face to face and banter back and forth to understand the context of all the terms. I just dont think we need to simplify it and make it about any one thing right now because it will still be manipulated in other ways. So to truly adopt net neutrality we have to go back to my premise that a bit is a bit and nothing else. Every bit is treated the same. The if data is dropped because of, for example congestion, then if it is done fairly without discrimination then nobody can complain because the internet isn’t guaranteed delivery BUT it also shouldnt be about someone controlling something else. IMO
And my original post stated
“… if my traffic gets dropped FAIRLY then so be it but if I am being dropped/blocked because of traffic type, bandwidth usage(paid for remember), or simply because I come from a network that is a strong competitor to another network then THAT is the problem.”
Which I thought implied that a bit should be treated as a bit and that would be true net neutrality. I think that paying for a 3mb connection would guarantee something since it didnt say I have a connection to PART of the internet that they can afford due to discrimination against their network since a lot of their users are heavy voip users.
“I’ve recently seen several reports saying that BitTorrent currently accounts for over 30% of all Internet bandwidth usage, and growing. If that is the case it is a serious problem”
Why?
I’m sure you could pull some figures out of somewhere that say 10 years, ago, 30% of all internet traffic was FTP. So what?
omg, the internet is soo slow, we need restrictions so i can pay more and get in front of the line!!
Who will win in that scenario? No one,, everyone will loose in the long run, and prices will only get higher for “privilege”
Edited 2006-06-25 07:59
This is what happens when you leave infrastructure in the hands of companies instead of the hands of the people, where it belongs.
I swear people these days have forgotten why we even have a state.
Without Net Neutrality, they will more vigorously inspect
which sites you’re visiting, and may then make your access faster or
(much) slower to certain sites depending upon which Internet companies
are paying them more.
I believe this has been happening already in the Internet, only few people really notice it.
From an European perspective some ISP portals simply doesn’t fully open when you are using an ISP that is competition (speccially cable and ADSL) for more clients with the other ISP. Other restrict email access, YOU name it.
Also, if you start using you connection for heavy downloads w/ P2P or other donkies the ISP will strangulate your account deliberatelly. How can you prove that in a Court House ? It’s difficult. The ISP will argue it’s “the NET” not our (ISP) fault.
_______________________
(As a side note, I still think pornography should be banned or restricted to pay per view access with no explicit materials that kids can click and view.)
http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/index.php/Image:Internet_busin…
At the risk of being labeled a Socialist (which I am not) or dismissed as naive (to which I will make no claim, yay or nay), I have to say that I believe that certain necessary services are too important to be entrusted to the greedy hands of business. For me, water and electricity are two such services. Given the Information Society in which we live, I believe internet access is fast becoming another such service.
These businesses that want to change the current playing field with regard to the internet and the WWW are the same companies that will do whatever it takes to stop cities like Philadelphia from providing WiFi to its citizens. Why? Because that’s their golden goose. Apparently, gold isn’t good enough; now they want platinum.
For those who argue that I can change providers if I begin to see adverse effects from the behavior or my ISP, I would say a couple of things. First, changing ISP is all well and good if you live in a major metropolitan area with maybe half a dozen choices. However, many people have at best one or two choices. What are they supposed to do? Second, maybe you are independently wealthy, but if I change from cable to DSL, I need to buy or lease a new modem. Since I already own a cable modem, having to change my equipment seems an unfair burden on me. It may be only a few dollars a month, but it is a few dollars a month I should not have to pay.
I personally believe in the need for more regulation of ISPs, not less. I used to work in television, and I have seen what has happened since the rules were relaxed. Can you honestly argue that television and radio have gotten better? At one time, television and radio stations and networks were licensed to use the airwaves as long as they served the public interest. Part of that meant providing a certain amount of locally produced programming, including news and public affairs. These days, the only locally produced programming on some stations is the commercials – if you’re lucky.
Edward R. Murrow once said that television has the power to educate and illuminate but only to the extent to which we are willing to use it for those purposes. He might just as easily been speaking about the internet (the original purpose of which, as I recall, was to enable the transfer of information, not to enable a select few companies to line their corporate coffers). If I am paying for a certain level of service, then I should receive that level of service regardless of which sites I visit. My ISP should not then be able to restrict the loading of certain sites in favor of others that are willing to pay extra. That strikes me as double dipping on the part of the ATTs and Comcasts of the world and will result in a form of payola in order to get your “message” out there first and fastest.
As an aside, if you have not yet seen “Good Night and Good Luck,” do so. Murrow’s words are as relevant now as they were when he first said them 50 years ago.
murrow turning over in his grave
Might be able to stop cities but cannot stop peopleI dont think. So I personally think when business has taken over the internet or drove it into a failed mess then we will simply move the “internet” over to wireless where we setup communities and a brige over to the next community and so forth….
The internet may die, the “web” will not I dont think….no matter what! We will adapt!
I think the core of the issue is not so much that of QoS, but *artificially* modifying and tampering with the network’s implementation to limit/encourage certain traffic for the network owner’s financial or political gain.
In other words, if you’re trying to access a site on a bad link, then it’ll be slow, that’s the way it is. If you’re using VoIP and requesting a certain QoS then you’ll get granted or not that level of service depending on the network’s capability of providing such. BUT if the network owner is deliberately tampering with traffic systems such that a given QoS (or even access at all) is provided or not based more on financial arrangements (or political expediency) than the network’s ability to provide it then that is discrimination and IMHO wrong. If you can’t get decent access to a certain website and the provider is perfectly capable of giving decent access, yet access to a partner’s site is fine, then the providor is being non-neutral. Note that I mean site in the broader sense of services-available-through, not in the sense of “website”.
Discrimination on the basis of being a “good net citizen” is a grey zone. DoS attacks, etc… there probably isn’t a right answer here, like with many grey issues.
The backbone issue:
There are cases, maybe or maybe not in america, but certainly elsewhere, where there is only a fuzzy distinction between the ISPs and the backbone providers. Telstra in Australia is a prime example. This means that it’s just as much an ISP issue as a backbone provider issue. Your ISP is just as capable of expediting access to affiliated networks at the expense of others as backbone providers are.
Yes, I’m rambling slightly. Hopefully you all get what I mean