The term “net neutrality” has been defined and redefined and undefined and double-defined so many times that it doesn’t mean anything anymore. Half the people using it mean one thing, and half the people using it mean exactly the opposite. As a result, politicians are doing more harm than good by calling something “pro-net-neutrality” or “anti-net-neutrality”, because no matter which label is chosen people will interpret it the wrong way.
So, let me define what I mean when I say “net neutrality”, so there’s no confusion for the rest of this post: “net neutrality” is the idea that the internet should be treated as an impartial communication medium, just like a telephone network. ISPs should not be able to prioritize one type of traffic over another for any reason other than traffic management (which I’ll get back to in a moment).
“Big deal,” you’re thinking. “Why does it matter?” Perhaps this image can illustrate (click to enlarge):
If you can see what’s going on in this (fake) ad, you’ll see the problem: the ISP (”Telco”) is charging you extra for faster access to various content providers – and limiting your access to everyone else. (It would be similar to the per-minute and per-text rate ripoffs that cell phone companies are guilty of right now, but that’s a rant for another time.)
So what’s all this about “net neutrality” legislation? Well, there are two kinds of “net neutrality” legislation. The first kind (which is being pushed by Senator McCain, unfortunately) is an attempt to prohibit federal legislation regulating internet access. At first glance, that might seem like a good thing – but it’s exactly what will enable the situation pictured in the mock ad above.
The second kind of legislation is what we really need if we want America’s internet service to catch up with the rest of the world. That is, there are proposals that would regulate internet access, thus guaranteeing equal access to all internet content. Regulation is key to preserving the status quo with respect to free access to all content. That is exactly what is so confusing to many people – it seems backward that we have to add regulation to preserve freedom.
So what kind of freedom am I talking about? Well, if I sign up for internet access, I should be signing up for one thing and one thing only – a particular connection speed, optionally with a transfer quota. I should not have to pay extra to get “priority” access to YouTube – something we get right now by default. All traffic should be delivered to me as efficiently as possible, whether that traffic is a YouTube video or an online game or an obscure discussion forum.
Earlier I mentioned that the only permissible reason an ISP should prioritize one type of traffic over another is for the purposes of traffic management. What I meant by that is simple: the ISP should do its best to keep the network as usable as possible for everyone. Sometimes that will mean prioritizing VoIP traffic over P2P traffic; however, the ISP should never arbitrarily throttle one type of traffic in the absence of network congestion. Furthermore, the throttling should not occur network-wide unless the traffic causing congestion is network-wide; for example, if Jim is downloading the latest Linux ISO via BitTorrent and it’s making things slow for everyone, his ISP should not throttle everyone’s BitTorrent; they should only throttle Jim’s. Even better, they shouldn’t throttle other things Jim might be doing (like gaming).
I realize that’s easier said than done. But it’s the only way the internet (as a communication medium) can remain truly neutral.
Well since WordPress apparently doesn’t want me editing this post, I’ll just mention here that the fake ad comes from this reddit post.
Isn’t traffic management, particularly with respect to VoIP and P2P, the practice that is seen as the slippery slope toward the fake ad you showed? Isn’t the ad about the idea that Jim can pay a little extra to get his Linux ISO faster? However, Jim is statistically more likely to be using BitTorrent to download copyright-controlled media content, which further complicates the issue from a political lobbying standpoint.
I’m also interested in reading your thoughts on Bob Cringely’s latest blog post on the subject. You pointed out that phone networks are content and customer neutral, but Bob points out that it hasn’t always been that way. His argument is that it became a non-issue for phone services, so he thinks it will become a non-issue for ISPs.
It depends on what type of traffic management they’re trying to do (I guess I wasn’t clear enough).
In fact, Bob Cringely himself illustrates the difference in the article you linked to:
There are two kinds of traffic management. One gives priority to certain types of traffic when the network is congested – this is perfectly fine. VoIP becomes unusable if its packets are delayed too long; P2P works just fine with some added delay. This isn’t breaking neutrality, it’s merely maintaining the usability of the network.
The other traffic management solution is to unilaterally throttle (or worse, block, as in Comcast’s case) one particular kind of traffic because it’s a “problem”. That’s what Comcast was caught doing; they weren’t raising the priority of other traffic, or even merely lowering the priority of P2P; they were stopping P2P from working correctly. That does break neutrality, because it specifically attacks one type of traffic.
That’s the difference. You can’t successfully run an ISP without the first type of traffic management (barring major infrastructure upgrades), but the second type of traffic management makes the network not neutral.
Without regulation, ISPs will continue to degrade certain types of traffic because they don’t want to upgrade their infrastructure. That’s the real root of the problem; if Comcast would spend just $6 per customer, they’d have very little problem handling everything their customers do. Trouble is, they have no incentive to upgrade; it’s cheaper to
tell their customersdecide “we’re going to block P2P” than to upgrade their network.As far as what people actually use BitTorrent for, it’s helpful to point out that Blizzard uses a custom BitTorrent-enabled downloader to distribute World of Warcraft and its patches; the game has eleven million active subscribers. Blocking P2P prevents World of Warcraft patches from being distributed quickly.
Cringely’s article is basically an assertion that “we should do nothing, and it will probably work out how we want it to anyway.” In a perfect world, I would agree, but these companies are notoriously greedy, and they have a habit of not caring what their customers think. As a result I’m not comfortable letting the future of U.S. internet access rest on the result of a “probably”.
Even if we do nothing, and fifty years from now all we have are people selling switched pipes (i.e. what we want), in the intervening years we will see large companies doing exactly what I’ve talked about, and that’s something I want to avoid.