I heard about “Net Neutrality” a few years back and was not convinced by the main crux of the push for it. The people who want it say that it’s purpose is in case your Internet Service Provider decides to give more bandwidth to bigger companies, who may even pay for improved access to their site, while restricting smaller sites speeds. They want equality in site speed across the internet. It always smelled pretty weak and seemed like a made up “crisis” to me.
You see, if my ISP was throttling my access to anything (especially something specific) and annoyed me, I would switch providers, as I have done before. Not only would Net Neutrality give government more control over something that is very libertarian now, but it would slow down load times for all sites since that is the only way to truly guarantee that times are equal. Enjoy this one:
Net Neutrality {legislation} is stupid and all arguments for it are weak.
As a network engineer and interwebs user, I support the IDEA of net neutrality. See if any-sized telecommunications service provider agrees to provide a certain amount of bandwidth to a customer, that should be provided regardless of the type, source, destination, time of day, etc, but we pretty much sign that all away in the terms of use “contracts” that we agree to upon signing up. We agree to whatever terms the dictate due to the lack of options (and no, 2-3 service providers does not truly encourage openness or competition).
Where this gets worse is that huge ISPs participate in peering. They basically agree to connect their network to someone elses (hence the “inter” part of the internet) They agree with the other company to a certain port/access speeds. If the companies are of equal size, this is often done with no costs. Sometimes the smaller ISPs pay a monthly fee. This can be a mutually beneficial arrangement since both networks gain value by being more interconnected with possibly faster access to resources. Most of the time no issues occur here and the ISPs happily peer all traffic.
But then someone gets greedy. A huge telecommunications provider, like say Comcast, wants to make money off of the recent NBC merger. They’re mad that no one is buying their cable tv offerings anymore. They want to ensure that people are locked into their offerings and they’re afraid of the way the internet, and Netflix, is changing cable.
Netflix in order to push their content closer to their users and enable better/faster downloads has agreed to host their content with a large ISP, L3. L3 and Comcast are peers. They depend on each other. Comcasts users would either not be able to access some content or have much slower access speeds if the L3 and Comcast peering agreement were not in place. L3 needs to be able to send Netflix data to all of the Netflix users or they will no longer be able to fulfill their contract. Comcast sees this and decides that L3 must pay them extra to be allowed to send Netflix traffic to Comcast users (in reality Comcast is just mad that they didn’t get a contract to be a dedicated content provider for Netflix). Comcast wins if Netflix does poorly because now customers will flock back to their cable tv offerings or Comcast’s own hosted content (at much higher prices). Comcast also wins if Netflix does well because L3 has to pay whatever Comcast demands since they are a near monopoly in many parts of the US.
So I’m for it for those reasons and for all of the “silly” reasons that are dreamt up, but I’m not for it being regulated by any one organization – and definitely not the FCC. To me the answer is simple. Require good, clear (maybe even industry standardized) contracts from your internet peers, promote open access policies to unused air space/frequencies, and limit monopolies (I mean seriously, is America better off because Comcast and NBC/Universal merged or that all of the radio is owned by clearchannel or whoever). At least that’s what my limited knowledge and libertarian values lead me to believe…
BTW – see http://freebloginfo.com/tech-news/comcast-netflix-feud-fans-free-internet-debate/
Definitely the IDEA of providing plenty of bandwidth for all equally is good and generally works the way it is. That’s why they call it the happy name “Net Neutrality”. I should be more clear that I mean the “Net Neutrality” legislation wherein the FCC gains regulatory powers over the tubes is stupid and not the basic provided service that should be expected.
To me your solutions sound like great ideas. Seems like they should have already come up with standard agreements between companies that would take care of this(L3/Comcast) kind of dispute already. Although I wonder how many people would dump Comcast if you couldn’t get Netflix through them. Too bad there is money to be grubbed and power to be gained, which will always muck up an issue. I personally find it very saddening that the standard modus operandi for things like this involves a great deal of door closing for smaller companies by bigger companies, many times in coordination with the government. If a huge company or conglomerate could be an honest and fair competitor I am totally fine with it. But crony capitalism, sweetheart deals and other in-beddery just ticks me off. And the proposed “Net Neutrality” laws have this whole aura going on.
After fully reading your link I do have a few problems with many things said in it. These problems can be boiled down to a question of property rights and ownership of the network.
Also, I am not sure about other areas but I can think of 7 different ISP companies in my area. That has made it easy for me to get away from the high prices and awful service offered by Comcast. I use a local wireless internet provider that has no hidden fees is cheap and has the most reliable and fastest speeds I have ever had. I would be interested in how a wireless peer system might operate.
Glad to hear that there is some competition in your area. Wireless peering could really take off, but it probably won’t until IPv6 is the standard and you get a few consumer devices that help you provision a simple “pass through” connection.
I agree with everything else you said too. I don’t want legislation muddying up the waters, and there are already contractual laws that can deal with these issues. If we keep legislation out of things, consumers and capitalism should win out.