The House is currently considering a bill called "Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act of 2006", or COPE.

This bill is currently in a subcommittee and the Democrats just lost a key vote today that would have introduced laws to protect net neutrality - link, however the amount of support is growing for the principles underlying this amendment.

Net Neutrality is defined as:


The bill being considered is backed by telecommunications companies that seek to charge large web sites like Yahoo, Google and Amazon for their traffic and setup "premium" high speed channels. It could even effect sites like potentially.

You can find more information about all this at SaveTheInternet.com (a group fighting against this bill) and from a few bloggers here, here and here.

This opening post certainly doesn't contain all of the facts on this debate, I'm hoping we can explore some of these issues here.

Questions for debate:
1. Do you support the principle of network neutraility? Why or why not?

2. We've basically gone a little over a decade with virtually no regulation of the internet and it looks like that party could be winding down. What needs to be done to ensure it remains the most democratic and powerful form of communication medium while allowing people to fairly profit in the coming decades?

1. Do you support the principle of network neutraility?

Yes.


Why or why not?

Because, if I've understood this matter correctly, whats being proposed is nothing short of censorship


2. What needs to be done to ensure it remains the most democratic and powerful form of communication medium while allowing people to fairly profit in the coming decades?

Exersize common sense and avoid falling further into the hands of the corporate interests which already run America.

Its funny that you posted this thread today CJ. This morning I was reading about how much the USA is in the control of corporate interests and the speaker warned 'the internet was next'. This particular threat wasn't mentioned but its much the same thing. The people of the 'United States of Amnesia' (as it was dubbed) need to seriously wake up as to how little control they retain over their nation.

1. Do you support the principle of network neutraility?

Absolutely.

Why or why not?

The internet is perfect as is, totally perfect Right Now. It is utterly free, probably the last completely free entity we have for information exchange, networking, free from corporate and government control, at least in the western world.
Of Course, governments will want to tax it ( and certainly censor it), corporations will want to control it and I imagine they will in the distant future, they will try from now on.
The beauty is they will not ever be able to truly control it even when it becomes bogged down by beaurocracy, because of the nature of it, all computer literates will always find a way around, but the cost of that freedom will become higher in time spent which I think is the goal of these companies. Keep the sheep tied to their short leashes and short attention span.

Its important to protect Internet freedom from taxation and corporate domination for as long as possible. To me its every persons right to equal access of all Internet information, all the time, but thats just the crazy liberal in me, you know, less government intrusion.



At first I didnt get what you were saying, thinking..if we wake up to how little control we have we will ask for more regulations, not good- but I think that you are saying we should fight corporate interests in controlling our lives. Well, its too late. That hole is dug.
Its a constant battle and a big subject.

Is it different in Denmark MOIF? I mean, how are gas prices going there? Is Dutch oil/ Shell having anything to do with your life? Are you not truly corporate controlled as a nation? Then what is driving your economy and governmental interests? The good will of the people in service industries, tourism and agriculture?
Are you not being a bit disingenuous?

Im not being american defensive on you here, I can only wish it were different, but I think we are all under the same umbrella in this global economy, dictated to by large corporations, some places more obvious than others but all the same.

Hopefully we can stave off corporate takeover of the internet for awhile and enjoy it in the meantime, but I fear between politicians greedy hands and corporate greed, we are right now in the heyday.

Let's see if I have this straight. The internet is currently "net neutral" and we want to keep it that way. In the past, the Internet was net neutral despite there being no laws making it so. Competition ensured that it was this way.

Now, we feel like we need to legislate this concept to ensure it remains the principle that guides the way the Internet is used and operated. Basically, we want to legislate fairness into the marketplace.

Sorry if this sets off alarms in my free market capitalist head.

1. Do you support the principle of network neutrality? Why or why not?

The principle, yes. It seems like a good principle. But it should be voluntary. If a company chooses to limit access to certain content for its customers, either that customer will not mind or he can switch.

What many don't seem to understand is the inherent restraint that the free market places on businesses. Businesses might do all sorts of unethical or damaging things (not just as service providers, but as manufacturers). In general, however, businesses will not do many of the things they could do because of the threat of customers leaving. As long as customers have alternatives, then the free market will restrain this behavior.

The other part of the picture is disclosure. Certainly a customer might never know why he can't access www.dearaol.com if he doesn't know it is being blocked by his AOL service provider. In that vein, I advocate disclosure of any restrictions that the provider might place on its content.

Look at the examples provided by http://www.savetheinternet.org/=faq



Are these really the best examples of "censorship" that these people could come up with? Two of them are genuine, two are not. Charging more or blocking a third party company from using the provider's bandwidth is not censorship, it is economics. Blocking content is more troubling, but if my proposal of disclosure is followed, then the customer would know why they couldn't access some site.

What I don't like is some of the rhetoric being used to advocate "net neutrality". Hyperbolic statements like:





or Red Herrings like:


(quotes from savetheinternet.org)

The problem here seems to be that "net neutrality" advocates are only looking at one side of the equation. Broadband companies have a point when certain sites basically freeload off the network in order to provide services which they charge their customers for.

For example: Let's pretend that I come up with a revolutionary new idea for streaming new movie releases directly to people's laptops. Instead of going down to the local movie theatre to see "Harry Potter 9: Harry Gets Married" you can stream it to your desktop (or home theater) and watch it at home. I charge people $10 to stream the movie once. Now all of this data is going to be added to the network traffic of Verizon, AT&T and other providers. They get nothing for transporting this traffic and yet I get $10. Their costs have increased because of increased traffic, but their revenues are the same. One of two people should pay for this increased traffic: the site that provides the content (me) who can then add that incremental cost to the cost of my movie streams, or the end customer. Currently, ISPs don't charge for total data transmitted, only for bandwidth. In the current model, the ISP would need to increase everyone's monthly charge in order to pay for these people that are using my new service. OR, the ISPs could change their model and charge for actual data transmission to each customer (sort of like a cell phone company does).

The networks do have a point that they are forced to pay for additional traffic without additional compensation. Someone should be charged for this additional traffic: either the site (which seems to be what is being proposed here) or the end user.

2. We've basically gone a little over a decade with virtually no regulation of the internet and it looks like that party could be winding down. What needs to be done to ensure it remains the most democratic and powerful form of communication medium while allowing people to fairly profit in the coming decades?

First of all, this puts the Internet up on a pedestal. There is no "right to Internet access": you buy it. What we should do is set up a system where the consumer has the maximum amount of information about his or her choices of service providers. What are the costs, what are the restrictions? When consumers can make informed decision, the system works.

I do think that the way things are today are changing. In the future, we may be charged for the amount of content we receive (ala cell phones) and not simply a flat monthly fee for unlimited content. But as traffic increases, the service providers need a way to be compensated for traffic moving over their network or a way to charge customers for received content.

There is a middle ground here. We just need to find it.

I'd like to know what Internet Service Provider you use, because I pay 40some dollars a month for my service. So, for some of us, the internet isn't "free".

When I had dialup, I paid 10 bucks a month or something like that. And at 56KBS, it was pretty slow. When I went up to roadrunner, I paid a lot more and got a lot more data faster. So, haven't the Telcos already been doing this?

I'm as quick to jump on the corporate monsters as anybody, but so far, this seems to be a hysteria for something already going on.

But that's just my opinion.

It isn't additional/increased traffic in contractual terms. The broadbandcustomer have paid their internet serviceprovider for a specified bandwith - the cost of all traffic that is generated and sent to the customer falls under the payment for that specified bandwidth. If the service provider feels the price the customer pays for that bandwith isn't sufficient, then they are free to raise the price - they can't go to the other party and say they should pay for that bandwith, since they have already been paid for the usage of said bandwith - by their customer. Lets not forget, that content providers usually also pay a service provider for bandwith - why should the service provider on the recieving end be allowed to charge the sender of data once more?

And what do you think I pay my dsl service provider for? the shiny modem under my desk? no - I mainly pay them for the ability to send and recieve datapackets (as many as my bandwith allows) over their network and to ensure that my datapackets gets to and from the internet.

I did a thread a long time ago (about 2 years ago or more) stating that the US Planners will have no choice but to regulate the internet to create an aura of control over the sometimes dangerous information the internet provides. I took lots of punches for that one but not long ago I came to realize how correct I was. We need look no further than Iraq and Iran to see that the truth is a dangerous thing to the Planners. There's good reason why the US military in Iraq does not allow free rein on personal blogs anymore. The Planners can't have a GI saying they're killing babies. They need them to either say positive PR garbage or nothing at all. The internet is too dangerous to those who wish to conceal facts. Look at the Holocaust revisionist movement. If anything, that will be one of the biggest reasons for anyone to limit information on the internet. The truth is too damning and we know that because of how the alternative internet media sites have maintained a good track record as far as reporting the news is concerned. It's inconceivable that the MSM and their multi billion dollar budgets could miss the facts that penny-pinching alternative internet media sites were able to crack.

I'll have to get to the rest of your post later because I'm short on time, but this isn't really accurate.

It is the telecommunications companies that are seeking to create this tiered internet through legislation and that is what has prompted this. The response by Democrats and internet advocates has been the introduction of legislation to try and sabotage this bill in the House. Like many bills this one was written by the industry to serve the industry.

Disingenuous? Yes, in that I know that provoking Americans can generate somedebate.

No, in that we Danes, do have more control over our nation. Mostly because we're a small country with a very politically motivated population.

That doesn't mean we're immune to the threats (and benefits) posed by large corporations but the point is though, the world, and the internet doesn't change because of laws passed in Denmark... but it does change when the USA makes laws that effect the internet.

For example, a recent US copyright law has changed how several sites I know allow images to be posted. Thats fair enough if it protects people's rights, but it also illustrates how little control we have as opposed to how much control the USA has.

If the USA cracks down on the internet, it will effect me in Denmark.

No law passed here in Denmark though, will ever effect your ability to surf in freedom.

The more I read on this, the more skeptical I get.

Net neutrality advances on Capitol Hill



I wonder what they think of tiered DSL service? Should I be able to get a T-1 if I am willing to pay more?

Isn't that what hosts pay for when they pay for more bandwidth...a faster and stabler connection?

It seems to me that this ropes everyone into the lowest common denominator. No one can go any faster, even if they are willing to pay for it. A controlled economy (of speed) for the internet, what a concept!

Just thought I'd throw in that I've been a victim of lack of net neutrality several times. First, many ISP's now restrict the use of VPN connections...which are the primary reason many IT people get high speed connections. For work, I need to setup and use IIS and Exchange....ISP's frequently tried to charge me more because of this. I found both of these restrictions highly unfair...I travel a lot, and so am seldom home. My Exchange system would transmit little to no traffic...it's just there. In short, I use up a lot less traffic than the typical 'home' user who is donwloading large files or playing network games would, yet I was the one they were trying to charge more. I haven't looked at the specifics of this bill to see how it would address these things...but don't doubt for minute that there's a lack of neutrality out there currently.

Technically more bandwidth is neither faster nor more stable.
1 bit sent on a 1 mbit connection will arrive just as fast as one sent on a 200 mbit connection. Of course we experience the added bandwidth as increased speed, becuase webpages load faster and files download faster, but that is because we are recieving a lot of bits simultaniously, and the bandwith controls the amount we are able to receive at the same time. On slower connections bits are not nesscarily slower, they are just not sent from the sender before they can be recieved by the reciever. Enough of the techincal bable though...

What the big service providers wants to do is to decide which packets that gets priority in the network. That means that when I connect by vpn to my employeer (which I do) or when I connect to the local libraby, I may need to wait a long time to get data, because some companies are paying big money to get their website traffic or voip traffic prioritized. The problem here is, that I paid my service provider for the bandwidth I am using, and my employeer is paying for their bandwidth too, and now the service provider wants to charge the one thats sending the data a second time. If they are allowed to do that, then it certainly doesn't have anything to do with free markets - quite the opposite in fact.

For all practical purposes, bandwidth is the same as speed. And different sites already pay more for higher bandwidth. Why is it that some sites you connect to are "slow" and some are not? Their bandwidth to data transfer ratio.



To which I say: why limit the business model that a company can use.

For example: you say that both you and your employer pay for service (bandwidth) so why should your employer have to pay more for a prioritized connection? My answer is: why shouldn't he be allowed to do so? Plus there is little guarantee that your provider and your employer's provider are the same company.

All this is is a paradigm. The "net neutrality" advocates want things to stay like they are with unlimited data transfer at a set speed. The networks, who actually pay for total traffic loads, want to be able to recoup costs incurred from large data transferred initiated by certain sites which are probably not hosted on their network. In other words, they receive no compensation at present.

Currently, with relatively small amounts of data being sent to the average user, this isn't a problem. But imagine when television data is streamed to homes. Either the networks must charge their end users a huge fee (prompting irritability at the ISP) or they can charge the source of the stream to use the network. Which would you rather have: the data transfer costs incurred on the source of the data (who then charges relatively higher for the service he provides) or the network charging individual customers more, bringing down their wrath on the ISP who is simply trying to recoup his costs? The additional cost is incurred because of the source of the data (a subscription cable TV stream, for example, presumably on a subscription basis). The end user pays the source, but not his network carrier.

One way or another, network service providers will charge more in the future for higher loads and not merely for higher bandwidths. It just remains to be seen if they charge their subscribers or the sources of the data.

This is not true at all. When you connect to any website, it's not a straight shot. The packets go through many different servers and take many different routes to get there and it's not always (probably rarely) the same path. If a router goes down, the packets maybe sent over to a server in France from the US and back to the US to subvert the down server. Then you have the amount of data that is returned, web services, current traffic/users, database calls, application speed...it all affects how "fast" or "slow" a site is.

This is where I loose you. If I or my employer pay for a specified bandwidth, what right does the service provider have to say they want more money for routing said traffic at a "higher priority"? In essense, every datapacket I send or recieve over the bandwidth I have purchased should be prioritized as highly as possible - if I want to prioritize it differently I can do that myself. Nowhere in my contract or in the contract of my employeer I bet or any standard contract probably does it say, that if I want to be sure that I can use the bandwidth purchased then I have to pay additional fees - the service provider is in essence already being paid to prioritize my traffic as best possible. Im not going to accept them downprioritizing my packets and in essence limiting the bandwidth I have already paid for, just because they want to make more money.


The networks, ie service providers, charge customers for the traffic they generate. both to and from.Wether they charge flat fees or per mb is up to them - if they don't think they price they are asking is enough to pay the costs, then they should simply raise the price. I would rather that everyone, persons and companies, paid the costs of their connection, rather than the companies with a lot of money getting to take over all the bandwidth on the internet.


Again, it doesn't matter how much bandwidth the customer uses - if he paid the asked price for the bandwidth that he uses, then he can use it. He pays for the ability to retrieve packets from any server on the internet. The service provider then wants these servers to pay too. Its exactly the same as charging twice for the same product - if the abilitiy to that is entered into the law, then I say again, it has nothing to do with free market economy.


The costs of the ISP should be recouped in the price they ask of their broadband customers. If that doesn't cut it, they should raise the price, cut costs or go out of business. The option should never be to charge two times for the same product. The sender of the data, no matter if it's another broadband customer, or a server in Murmansk, already pays to send the data - they don't have some magical connection to the internet, where they can just send trillion of terabytes without incurring costs. When the datapackets leave their networks and come over into the network of my service provider, then the costs of that transmission falls on me and noone else. In essence, if I pay for a flat fee 100 mbit line to the internet, I should expect to be able to put 100 mbit of load on the network of my service provider 24/7 without them bitching about it one iota and without asking the person in the other end for cash too.


Well, they certainly will try. And they already charge the sources of the data on both ends.

"Just because they want to make more money" or "just because they want to recoup the cost of transmitting data"?

This is the basis of the disagreement. As data transmission increases, cost increases. Someone has to pay for it. If the network charges the customer, the customer may view this as an unfair rate hike. However, the content provider (a business) will see this as a cost of doing business.

Why do you suppose giants like Amazon.com, EBay and google are against the way things are headed: because they will bear the cost of providing content. Their charges will go up.

I am sure that network providers look at average data transmission rates when determining fees and determining how much infrastructure they need. They need to ensure that they can handle the loads at peak time. If loads spike, you temporarily get the infamous "Website cannot be contacted" page.

What I envision is the network providers building a separate "premium" network that they will guarantee the speed and reliability of by accurately gauging the loads carried. This would include streaming media services, like movies and TV.

I would bet that many companies would pay for such a service. The cost of providing the content to you should be included in the price just as the cost of shipping a refrigerator from the Maytag factory to Best Buy is included when you buy that refrigerator. Otherwise it should be included as a separate, easily identifiable fee.

I agree with you, in essence, that when you purchase a network connection, you are entitled to certain benefits, including bandwidth. However, as the internet usage grows and there are stratified layers of usage (those with streaming television versus those without such a service) I think networks should be free to determine how to allocate the charges for the extra service they provide. Either they can charge all their customers, they can specifically upcharge the receiver, or they can specifically upcharge the sender. This is a business decision, not a regulatory one.

You say "simply raise the price" but this isn't the only solution. Why should I pay $100 a month if all I want to do is access www.americasdebate.com?

Keep in mind that the paid content providers are probably on someone else's network. In other words, if you have Verizon broadband, Verizon isn't getting paid to have www.moviedownload.com provide streaming movies to you. And yet your choice of getting www.moviedownload.com's service is causing an increase cost to Verizon for transmitting that data. Charging you (or everyone at Verizon) is one solution. Charging www.moviedownload.com a fee to ensure a stable, fast connection is another. (Who would buy a service where the movie "hangs" in the middle?)

Going back to big sites versus blogs and other "little sites" I think we would find that the big sites are benefitting more than the little ones. Yes, www.americasdebate.com is just as available as amazon.com, but who benefits more? I submit that Amazon is benefitting more and that they would be willing to pay to ensure that their site is accessible and fast. Why? Because they make money off of their site being available.

Need I say yet again that they get paid already?


Of course somebody has to pay for it - the person paying for the internet connection.


Of course their charges will go up, but thats hardly the biggest problem for me as a simple internetuser, even though the cost will be passed on to me in the end anyway. The problem for me will be those sites that can't afford to get their traffic prioritized, and which I then in turn will find it hard to access. I visit a lot of sites that will not be able to pay a double fee for their internet connection to me, and then I will have to accept a slow or in worst case maybe no connection to these sites, even though I pay for a specified bandwidth to the internet, thats the internet, not what my ISP decide is the "internet".....


I know for a fact that they look at average data transmission rates - its hardly a secret, but how is that really relevant in this discussion? If the cost of providing the average data transmission rates are above the price they ask for the product they should raise the price, cut costs, accept the losses or go out of business. They can't and shouldn't be allowed to charge for the same product twice. If I go to a car dealership and buy a new car at half the normal retail price, meaning the dealership can't cover their costs to the car manufacturer, then thats not my problem, nor is it the problem of the car manufacturer. The only one to blame is the company that sold the car - if they are unhappy with loosing money, then perhaps they shouldn't sell their product at such a low price.


Haha, but that would be the same as admitting that they are not currently correctly estimating the average data transmission rates. Im certainly not going to pay for any internetsubscription at a company that cant provide me with the bandwidth I pay for. And ISP's will never be able to guarantee my connection to a 3rd party, unless they are that 3rd party, in which case I again don't see the need to pay extra for the same product I already have. Using my car analogy again, that would be the same as the car dealership expecting me to pay a premium to be allowed to drive on highways.


But why should I be expected to pay for the traffic twice? Please answer that.


Streaming television doesn't have to be a special service provieded by the ISP's - they just send that packets like they are any other data packets, it doesn't really matter. Why should they be allowed to charge more for some packets, seemingly because there tend to be more of them, than for others? Surely if an ISP wants to provide internet TV to their customers they can charge for that, since that is not normally part of an internet subscription, but the traffic that is generated is already covered by the internetsubscriber.


Wasn't it you who said something about changing ISP if you don't like their product? A $100 price seems like a good incentive to change provider. The grudge I have is not about the product, its about the ability to charge two times for the same product. If ISP's are allowed to prioritize traffic based on who pays the most, then maybe down the line you will have a hard time connecting to americasdebate.com and many other interesting sites, no matter what amount of money you pay your ISP.


I already answered this. Just because moviedownload.com are sending me data, doesn't mean they have to incurr the costs all the way. I incurr the costs of transferring that data on the network of my ISP, from the time they recieve that data from another subnet to the time it reaches my pc. IT IS WHAT I PAY THEM FOR.


Of course they will be willing to pay more to ensure a fast and accessible site - in fact, surprise surprise, they already do. Sites like Amazon pays millions of dollars each year to maintain their connection to the internet and for traffic. But like me, sites like Amazon doesn' want to pay twice for the same product. Its not like ISP's are loosing money by the truckload, quite the opposite in fact, so not only do I not see any moral or ethical right to charge for the same product twice, I also don't see any desperate need to do so to ensure survival of faltering ISP's (not that that would make it better).

Again, I will say that this requires a different paradigm: a different way of looking at things.

I think we can both predict that internet traffic will increase in the future. The average internet user will go from being an email and IM user to streaming movies and other video and audio content. In other words, data transmission is going to go up by an order of magnitude.

What you have described is how things are handled today. ISPs charge users for access to the network. They do not charge by total data downloaded, but by bandwidth or speed of connection. Theoretically you could download your maximum bandwidth times 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

I think ISPs want to change how they do business. Instead of simply charging end users more, they want to charge content providers a fee for using their networks. Of course, these content providers would still need to pay for access to their LAN, as they do now, but they may also have to pay other LANs to ensure quality connections (as you described it prioritized datapacks).

The problem I foresee is the stratification of internet users. Some users will stay in today's mode: simple browsing and e-mail, IM applications. They use little total data transferral but prefer a always-on connection and the speed of broadband. There will be a second type of user who gets his TV, radio, and movies streamed to his PC. These users will require high bandwidth, but will also increase the average data transmission rate: because they transfer a lot of data and do so often.

Currently, ISPs cannot discriminate between these users. They only offer bandwidth options (speed options).

To discern the difference, they would need to individually track data packet rates (and total packet transfer) on a user-by-user basis. Not good from a privacy stand point. They would then need to retroactively bill for the used data transfer (like cell phones are done now). I would assume you'd still have a basic plan with a certain amount of transfer floor and then a surcharge for data transmitted (or received) above that.

The alternative to this future billing scheme would be to charge content providers. Tracking traffic on the provider side does not have the privacy implications that doing it on the receiver side does. Of course, if you charge them in this manner, you might as well add the potential benefit of allowing them to pay for higher priority over the network. I don't see this as a huge issue unless ISPs maliciously route certain traffic through slow conduits (i.e. intentionally allocating too much traffic to one conduit). Of course, doing this will harm the ISPs reputation for reliability and performance and thus any ISP that chose NOT to engage in malicious practices would have a competitive advantage.

You may call this "paying on both ends" but as you say, data transmitters and receivers already pay for access. The only change here would be how much of the burden would be on the relatively low packet receiver and how much is on the relatively high packet sender.

As you say, someone has to pay. But I'd rather it be on the content provider who has no privacy concerns rather than on the individual whose anonymity might be compromised.

I don't understand the confusion. People pay more for prioritized service ALL THE TIME. In fact, I struggle to come up with a situation in which they don't. Why can airlines charge mor for first class seats, when all passengers have a ticket? Or, perhaps more appropriate...why were tickets on the Concorde more expensive than tickets on other airplanes? Prioritized service always involves higher fees. What's the difference between this, and, say, paying more money for closer seats at a sporting event. One could argue that they're all seats, the vendor shouldn't be allowed to charge more for the closer seats. However, demand is higher for the closer seats, so the vendor should be allowed to charge more for them, should he not? Ditto for bandwidth. Charging more for higher priority traffic doesn't mean that anyone isn't allowed into the stadium...it just means that those who pay more get the better seats. Preventing that is preventing the free market from functioning. Why is that a good thing?



Why not let the market sort this out as well? I'm not sure why any legislation on this matter is necessary at all. If anyone disagrees, perhaps if you could come up with a scenario in which the market wouldn't come to an equitable state all on its own? Senders and providers should be both be free to spend more money for higher priority service. ISP's should be free to charge for this if they wish. As Amlord states, any who abuse this situation should suffer through the market...customers won't tolerate unaccpetable service...lack of such will only create a market opportunity for someone else.

I suspect what the issue is that those opposed don't want to have to pay more for higher priority service. Understandable...but getting something for nothing is not part of free market economics. As the net becomes more crowded, offering different levels of service is probably the only way to prioritize traffic. Companies do this internally all the time. I'm really not seeing why it is a big deal, or why we shouldn't just let the market sort it out.

Yes, people already pay for prioritized service in essence, when they are paying for more bandwidth. If I buy a 100 mbit internet connection, I will expect to be able to download with 100 mbit from the internet when the sender of that data support such speeds. I pay more for the 100 mbit connection than I do for a 2 mbit connection, so I would already be paying more for a better experience, and most ISP's today have special subscriptions, aimed mainly at businesses, that guarantee better uptime and support, but in these cases they charge more because of addon products to the normal internet subscription, and that is of course fair enough.

What the ISP's wants to do now is to charge again for the same product, namely sending a packets to me on their network, which is the thing I already pay them for. There is no such thing as "closer seats" on a network... either you get the bandwidth you pay for (kB of data per second to and from the internet) or you don't. If you don't get the speed you pay for, because other peoples traffic are getting priorititzed, then you are not getting what yo have paid for and that the problem of the ISP, not me. They will have to change their subscriptionmodels, so they no longer claim a specified bandwidth, and I doubt customers will accept that.

Isn't all this sort of missing the point? Prices will always fluctuate for various reasons.

The real issue here is who decides what I can and can't see. I don't care if a service provider ups their charges, if I'm suddenly being asked to pay twice for something I was already receiving, then I'll just take my custom else where, to one who is cheaper, as will most people I suspect.

What bothers me is when some one else denies me a service I'm already paying for, either by laws passed in other countries or through corporate interests, or both.

Essentially I agree that the internet does not need regulation, nor does it need to be quartered up for corporate gain. I've browsed the big media company sites and for the most part, they suck. The quality of the internet is found in its smaller spaces but I won't pay more than I have to or put up with some one else telling me what I can or can't see based on what they think I ought to be looking at.

I read everything posted, so might I ask a 'possibly' stupid question to all you techies?

Dont heavy outlayers, like Amazon, Google and Yahoo already pay higher costs for increased bandwidth output? (and shouldnt they?) And they do that because they have increased benefits and PROFITS when promoting their product and advertising? And those of us who have a 'need for speed' pay dearly for the priveledge of access as well. Whether its just email, surf or games or a corporate network, we still pay on a sliding scale depending upon need.

And if you want to rent 'movies' you pay extra for them, and if you want to download games you also pay to play?

In lay terms, and correct me if Im am wrong, TODAY, if a retailer wants to send out high bandwidth videos or tv spots ect, they already pay higher costs for higher bandwidth, and they should, because they are the retailer. The receiver either has enough speed to accept, or does not, paying as well.

Im not sure where the system is broken enough to fix it? Or change it.

Is there anyone losing money on the system as is? Google stock trades at $600 a share with expectations of gain, they are not suffering. Yahoo showed huge profits in this last quarter as well.

With 'priority' we are slowing down not only our own access to sites that cannot afford big pricing, but the cost of priority will certainly be passed down to us. It appears to be like voting yourself a price increase on multiple levels while receiving weakened and eventually bottlenecked services. Nevermind what this means to News and Corporate News providers, each competing for funds for priority sending, ripe for those with the most money to take over in access.

Finally we have something open and free to choose and 'be the decider!'. LOL.
Why would anyone choose to corrupt it by corporate interests as 'priority'?

Artemise


Because it is some people's interest to make rich people richer at any cost.

I agree with Carlsen.

When I go to an ISP I am paying for, in essence, a open highway for my data. The higher my bandwidth, the wider my highway and the more cars(data packets) can get through.

What I get is that companies are complaining that some people have more cars on their highways than others... so let's start charging for the amount of cars and the open highways.

In terms of prioritizing.... they are not speeding others up they will just be slowing most of us down.

AMLord


AMLord, and I believe Hobbes, continue to talk about some increase of costs. My question to them is... What increase?!?!?! Put out some figures What is causing the increase of cost... do they need to hire more gerbils for electricity. Are there people in a sweat shop demanding more money for hand delivering data packets? What is this increase of cost and what is it's monetary value?

And if you don't know stop making a sympathetic argument that poor old business's are being screwed by the current laws.


I think MOIF is right, in the sense this debate is going a little off topic when talking about speed and paying to prioritize.

Should companies be able to block traffic of say rival companies??



I think these are all good examples except for the Shaw cable company one. The other three are forms of censorship, while the fourth one was merely corporate racketeering
(maybe a big deal in Canada, but a common practice here in the states)

We have to fine companies heavy for preventing any site, unless it is illegal by federal law.

Actually that isn't what this is about at all. Both consumers and businesses already pay for the bandwidth they use. You and I pay a small amount a month for either DSL or Cable and a business can pay tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars for the bandwidth they use.

What this is about is the fact that the very same companies calling for this bill over-invested in bandwidth and infrastructure in the run up to the dot com crash. When the crash happened suddenly they had hundreds of miles of expensive bandwidth (fiber, etc) that wasn't being used. This basically went for fire sale prices to a few companies after bankruptcies ensued. That bandwidth is now coming closer to being used and there is a need for further expansion because of all of the multimedia being transmitted right now. Instead of facing the fact that they will need to pay for this either with increased subscription fees or money that would normally be profit they want to setup this tiered internet concept.


They already pay for this content, they have HUGE bills for the bandwidth they use. What this will do is force them to pay more for "priority" bandwidth so people can still access their sites. If they don't pay for the priority bandwidth and their competitor does then guess who consumers will use...



And this pretty much violates the spirit of the whole net neutrailty principle. You should not have to pay "extra" or a "premium" to ensure that people can see your content. Let's use the example of AD. Right now the cost of the traffic here is covered through the server bill Mike and Jaime pay each month. Each of us also pays for this bandwidth through our respective ISP. Now let's say this tiered internet thing passes. That would mean that unless AD pays a "premium" they could be at risk for not being able to deliver content at adequate speeds for their members, the site might load slower than it does currently. For small sites/organizations this can effectively be a form of censorship. Is that really what you want to see in the future?

I am wondering how this debate got dropped, its like Peak oil. Its going to be ignored until its too late.
Blogs will no longer be available easily, Ad will no longer be available easily. It will be a PR network of who's who and Faux News will be King.
The problem is in the marketing. Net Neutrality is confusing. The facts are, do you want to only get what providers want you to get, what they pay for, or do you want what you want?

Hobbes, this is not paying for priority, this is OTHERS deciding what is priority for you and slowing down your access to your decisions because the Big Players have paid for premium access or hooked up with your network provider giving you limited access. Its about getting force fed what premium payers want you to see and making it more difficult for you to get to where you want to go, if its not on A-list.

Net Neutrality needs to be renamed so people understand it better.

We all pay for bandwidth at varying tiers as it is. Yes? I can get a T1 line or a T3 line or a basic dial-up connection, or whatever. Everyone who has a connection pays for it... me, you, the content providers. We should all pay what ever it takes to maintain and improve the network.

The pay per bit sent/transmitted model has been tried and failed... people went with companies that had unlimited access (or high enough limits that it made no difference). Any attempt to use this model again will simply fail.

If the Telco's and network builders want to charge more for bandwidth, then we as both the senders and receivers of that bandwidth should pay for it. Personally, considering the cost of internet access elsewhere, I think we're being gouged as it is and this is more about greed than anything else.

The only trouble I see with the lack of network backbone regulation is the censorship issue. If network builders also provide content, they can block competing content and that is not a free market.

*Puts on Nerd Glasses*

To begin with, I need to clear up some misconceptions that I believe some of us are
operating under.



As I stated earlier yet did not do a good job explaining, this is not the case. While my previous response to this still holds, it's only part of the issue. To those unfamiliar with the intricacies of networking it is easy to confuse capacity and speed. Bandwidth is the capacity, latency is the speed. Latency is generally defined (in networking terms) as the amount of time it takes a packet to reach its destination from the source. Latency is affected by the medium in which the data is transferred as well as the routing (number of hops or servers hit). If you have more hops, it's going to take more time to get from the source to the destination and thus you'll have a higher latency.


Bandwidth on the other hand is the amount of data that can be transferred during a second. It's the combination of latency and bandwidth that determine how fast your webpages load. The best way to describe it is to think of a pipe carrying water. The size of the pipe is the bandwidth. The pressure pushing the water along is latency. More bandwidth == fatter pipe (or more pipes). More pressure = lower latency. So when those Telcos and cable companies claim, "High speed broadband connections" they are misleading you. They should be saying, "High capacity broadband connections."

The combination of latency and broadband define the capacity of a network and allow you to define how fast your download your ph4t p0rn. If broadband becomes congested due to me playing capacity intensive World of Warcraft and chatting to my guild mates while getting the latest linux distro off bittorrent, the latency will increase. However, let's say their is no congestion on the line and you send an email, the latency does not decrease (meaning, the speed does not increase) as the speed is limited by the capabilities of the medium (copper or whatever). So latency can't be increased while broadband can.

Quality of Service
DSL and Cable Internet have numerous QoS issues, mostly due to obsolete standards incapable of providing statistically controlled and capable services. Their is finite limit to the increase in QoS that the cable companies can offer. Packets are going to get dropped, routers will crash, traffic is going to be rerouted. Internet Protocol (IP) lacks a true mechanism to guarantee QoS. IP adopts the "best-effort" approach which means deliever the most amount of packets you can in the shortest amount of time. This way, IP can run over 56K, OC 192 lines, cable, DSL and so on.

What is Network Neutrality?

First off, the term network neutrality is a term used in political and legal theory, not in network design or engineering. Basically it means that a network is open to three principals of neutrality: non-discrimination, interconnection, and access.

Non-discrimination means that all traffic over the network is treated the same. None of the 1s or 0s are any more important than any others. This is known as 'bit parity'.

Interconnection means that network operators have the duty of interconnection and a right of interconnection to any other network operator. You have to connect to your rival and your rival has to connect to you. Without a right of interconnection their is no network.

Access means any end user can connect to any other end user. End user can be a person, a modem, a server, router etc. Basically this is saying traffic can begin at any point on the network and be delivered to any other point.





First of all, let's look at the situation currently and what it would be if the telcos had it their way:

The Economics Net Neutrality

Here's what happens currently:
1. All companies pay for the bandwidth they use.
2. All consumers pay again for the bandwidth on the consuming end.


Here's what the telcos want:
1. All companies pay for the bandwidth they use.
2. All consumers pay again for the bandwidth on the consuming end.
3. Companies pay again to get "higher priority" for certain types of data they're sending. (This is what we nerds call, total crap)


Interesting that you bring up free markets. The service providers have mini-monopolies in the locations so that pretty much throws out the idea that "market forces" will regulate things. The government allowed the monopolies and even subsidized the building of infrastructure in order to bring "broadband to every door step." Do you have the 45MB/S YOU paid for through taxes? We're talking to the tune of 200 Billion dollars here. You can read more about that in Bruce Kushnick's, "The $200 Billion Broadband Scandal." Or you can read this.

Anyways, the fact of the matter is, if people don't like it, they can't just switch (it's a monopoly remember?). Mediums such as DSL are constrained by distance from the switching station so often times you'll only have one DSL provider in city. And no company is going to spend the money to run copper out to Podunk USA which has a total population of 300 if some company already beat them to it.

The alarms should be going off in your free market capitalist head, just for different reasons. The fact of the matter is, a lack of Network neutrality will actually hurt innovation and kill off any chance of "the markets" working in the web application development arena. You said that the proponents of network neutrality aren't looking at it from the telco's point of view. Well, you're not looking at it from the network/web application developer and business point of view. This point of view also would include their potential customers. So that pretty much makes up everyone except the telcos. And it is actually a failure of the telco's business model and in my opinion a lack of foresight that has put them in this position. Basically it's their own fault. (more on that later)

The basic principle behind network anti-discrimination is to give users the right to use non-harmful networking attachments or applications, and give innovators the corresponding freedom to supply them. The underlying theory of the benefits of network neutrality is that a neutral network promotes innovation or evolutionary innovation of information technology. The technology sector is based on the assumption of an open and neutral platform for its business model.

On the internet, applications like streaming video, bittorrent, online games, email, and websites are all in competition for user's attention, clicks, views and money. In order to keep the playing field level among these competing services, a network must remain neutral. A discriminatory network will distort markets that depend on a level playing field and could/will stifle innovation. For instance, if a network favors technology A over technology B, A may become dominate even though technology B is better. Or adopting something as a standard may keep other future more advanced technologies from catching on. This obviously is a dis-service to all users of the internet. Furthermore, if telcos were able to have such control over the networks, then all the IT companies will have to develop applications and services based on the confines of the limitations set by the telco's actions.

Now you may say that these are extreme examples and that innovation wont come to halt if the telco's have their way. However, their track record doesn't bode well for this argument. At one time (like around 2001) setting up a server in your home or having more than one computer connected to the internet via a router was considered "theft of service" by AT&T the biggest cable provider. These people were threatened with civil and criminal penalties! Please! VPN, bittorrent, peer to peer networking, home networking, wi-fi; all have been restricted or banned and had to fight to become standards and these are some of the most exciting technologies to date. Now VoIP is going through it.

Now, as I said earlier, the telco's got themselves into this mess. It's obvious that the new technologies are going to be more resource intensive and require more bandwidth in order to run. What I don't understand is why the telco's didn't plan for this. They knew it was coming. So here we are and costs are increasing for the telcos and they don't want to raise their rates to the customers so instead, they decide they'll charge the content providers. Both people are already paying though. Well, the solution to this problem is that the business model of the telco's have to change. See, the telco's oversell their bandwidth in order to get more money. Basically what this means is, they'll sell more bandwidth than they actually have in order to get more customers. In theory, principle, and about 10 years ago this was fine. The internet wasn't as popular then as it is now, and we didn't have as bandwidth intensive web applications. It was reasonable to assume that not every customer was going to be on the line chewing up the 6MB/s that you contractually agreed to give them all at the same time. All the telco's have to do is be able to provide reasonable connectivity during "peak hours". So telco's began selling at 20, 50, 100 times actual capacity and they were in the clear. Now days things have changed and they want to keep this same model. Well, they can for the most part, they just have to keep the overselling to between 2 and 4 times actual capacity.

CNN/PopSci just had an article about a Tiered Internet




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