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| Can someone explain network neutrality? I am having a difficult time getting a good understanding of the issue at hand. Are the telephone and or cable companies suggesting that if content and or service entities like Google do not pay them money that they will affect a change to their subscribers on the local loop, the upstream (backbone), or just the feed they have control over for those they host?
Its interesting to think that anyone would affect a change for the QoS to a new yet lower state, because this would mean they would either have to go out of their way to make worse access to a certain IP block (e.g. those used by Google, for instance), by routing them through less than stellar routes.
But, wouldn't this depend (if only in part) on the ISP's DNS? So, how does this affect subscribers using someone else's DNS? Also, I am surprised that the topic hasn't reached feverish pitch as yet with threatened entities publishing this on their main webpages.
Now, if the intent is to make a better QoS than what is already in place, this is another matter. For instance, let's say the telephone and cable companies have the means to implemented limited CBR (Constant Bit Rate) for up to 256Kbps, and thus make VoIP to third parties more appealing to their customers.
But, it is no surprise, and shouldn't be, that a network provider will do everything within their abilities to protect their stockholders, no? I would imagine this would include making the competition's life difficult while offering similar content and or services with better results.
And its all about choice. | | |
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| "Are the telephone and or cable companies suggesting that if content and or service entities like Google do not pay them money that they will affect a change to their subscribers on the local loop"
What the telcos are proposing, in plain english, is very simple to understand.
1: You, the customer, pay for a 10mb connection to 'the internet thingy'. It promises that you can download at 10mb/sec
2: Google, which provides stuff you want to download, also pays their ISP for a 10,000mb/sec link. It lets them send stuff to you as fast as you can recieve it (i.e. 10mb)
3: Greedy telco's want google to pay more for using 'their' wires. The wires that YOU paid for. So, the greedy telcos limit googles ability to send to you at 56kb/sec. So instead of your being able to download movies at 10mb/sec from google (the speed you AND google paid for), you can only download from google at 56kb/sec (modem speed).
Where's the problem with this? The problem is that Verizon is NO LONGER THE INTERNET. Period. The internet has WELL DEFINED RULES as to how something should work. This has NOTHING to do with QOS. The #1 tenet of the internet is that ALL packets make a 'best effort' to get there. QOS is the equivlant of a private toll road, where it's NO FASTER than regular, it just doesn't have to deal with congestion. What the telcos are proposing, is that they take their 10mb/sec highway (10 lanes), and make it 9 lanes of QOS (extra money toll roads) and 1 lane of 'public' traffic. So in effect, they ARE NOT selling you 10mb/sec, they are selling you 1mb/sec + 9mb/sec 'extra fee' access. This is a violation of the tenets of the internet, called 'net neutrality', which states that ALL TRAFFIC must be given best effort. It's greed, and an attempt to define the internet the way the telcos want it. Guess what, like Al Gore, the telco's didn't 'invent' the internet, nor did they 'build' the internet.
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Sure the internet has lots of porn and piracy, but I'm sure there's a downside to it. | |
| I just hope that major players like google don't take this bent over. I mean we have corporations servicing corporations that's got to amount to some kind of tension. If the telcos get this passed and it has a serious effect on what the consumer does with their connection there will be uproar either that or the cableco just found themselves the key to competing with a better infastracture than their own. So far TW roadrunner has been great about no caps nor port blocks and I will gladly stay with them over even Verizon fios if Verizon implements this donkey shit. This corporate America crap has gotten ridiculuous in the last 10 years, I mean I'm all for capitalism and the free market, but it's going backwards... | |
| reply to G_Poobah
A minor detail in #3. I don't think the telecos are suggesting slowing down websites. (At least not publicly suggesting that though they may be thinking it.)
What it basically boils down to is that they're putting some "next generation" bandwidth technology in place. Using just the existing bandwidth, Joe Surfer would have a 5Mbps connection. But add in the new technology and he would get a much faster connection. For the sake of argument, let's call it 50Mbps. The telecos are saying that if websites (Google, Yahoo, BBR), don't pay them then they just go along the existing bandwidth and don't get to take advantage of the new bandwidth.
The problem here is that large sites would be able to pay each and every ISP for the fast bandwidth. Meanwhile, small sites would find it hard to pay and would wind up in the "slow lane" of the Internet. As more large sites paid for "fast access", customers would come to expect such speeds and would feel that sites operating on the 5Mbps segment were "slow." This would lead to smaller websites losing visitors and possibly going under (or being bought out by larger websites).
This could also lead to "exclusivity deals" where a company pays a teleco to be its "Official XYZ." (For example, Yahoo might pay extra to become the "Official Search Engine of BellSouth.") Then, if any other competing company tried to pay for "fast lane access", they would be turned down and forced to operate on the slow lane. Google, for example, might be forced to operate at 5Mbps because Yahoo paid the ISP first.
IMO, ISPs should act as "dumb pipes." They should receive traffic from the upstream and send it on down to the user. I might allow them some leeway to take actions to preserve network integrity (e.g. selectively blocking ports if a client is found to be sending out spam e-mails or blocking worms from spreading). But these actions shouldn't take into account what company the user is contacting. (All VoIP connection attempts should operate at the same speed whether it's from Vonage or the teleco's own VoIP service.)
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-Jason Levine
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 calvoiper
join:2003-03-31
Belvedere Tiburon, CA | reply to grandpinaple
As Jason Levine does a good job of pointing out below, the large content providers might even like this type of arrangement--it results in a world where payments "under the table" set up a world of the big players who make payments to each other, thereby raising the barriers to competition from smaller players--in both the content and ISP sectors.
Without net neutrality, we could see a day where breaking into either the content or ISP businesses would be as difficult as entering a Japanese business dominated by keiretsu.
calvoiper
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VoIP--the death knell of remaining voice monopolies! | |
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