bigmacbear (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bigmacbear) wrote2006-08-10 08:13 am
bigmacbear) wrote2006-08-10 08:13 am
Net Neutrality
On the way to work yesterday, Thom Hartman had a guest on his show who was representing the interests of the telecom companies who own the Internet infrastructure on the topic of Net Neutrality. As a computer professional I listened to the topic with some interest, and it prompted me to give the matter some thought.
The phrase that came to mind was "Quality of Service vs. Freedom of Speech".
First off, what is popularly known as Net Neutrality I understand to mean "bits are bits and all bits are created equal" -- that Internet service providers (such as the telecom and cable companies) should not be allowed to charge content providers (such as Google or LiveJournal) for priority access by or to their subscribers.
Basically, the telecommunications industry is making the technical argument that enshrining the status quo will prohibit the implementation of IP Quality of Service, which will prevent the creation and further development of services such as Internet video delivery (to replace cable television, for instance) and IP telephony over wireline and wireless services. I am currently working for Cingular Wireless and they are taking the position that Net Neutrality is, for these reasons, bad for business.
On the other hand, as a maintainer of a personal website, a reader of several activist sites such as MoveOn.org, and a LiveJournaller, I have heard the argument that if Net Neutrality is not enacted, ISPs could basically price grass-roots activist sites out of business, block access to content services that compete with their own offerings, and other such dire consequences.
On balance, I think QoS vs. FoS (;-) is a false dilemma. It's perfectly reasonable to expect that a way can be found to use Quality of Service features without shutting off the grassroots efforts that have been enabled by the Internet as it is today.
Without a technical reading of the legislation, I can neither recommend for or against the current Net Neutrality proposal. However, a poorly written bill will do more damage than no bill. The best practices of Internet routing should, on balance, not be the subject of legislation, as it's far more likely for Congress to get it wrong than right.
Net neutrality should be defined and enforced through the RFC mechanism which has been the time-honored method of governance of the Internet ever since Al Gore invented it. ;-) The peer-pressure method of enforcement of RFC's worked quite well when VeriSign decided to unilaterally change DNS a couple of years ago. The question is, what should go into the definition?
In my opinion it's perfectly OK for ISP's to prioritize traffic by its need for high speed and/or low latency, which is what QoS is intended to provide. It's not OK for ISP's to block or throttle all traffic from sources they do not control (such as their competitors and those competitors' subscribers). Blacklisting sources based on prior bad behavior is problematic, as it is an effective tool to reduce spamming but it has been misused, and it punishes large numbers of people for the actions of a few bad apples.
So a more useful definition of Net Neutrality is that while different types of service have different needs for priority, equivalent traffic from different sources (provided they are well-behaved, which excludes spammers and other net abuses) should be carried equally across all the carriers that make up the Internet. It's a better technical implementation of the common-carrier principle (which has other legal implications) than a blind "all bits are created equal" policy enshrined in law.
My take: QoS vs. FoS is, as so many political issues are, a false dilemma. On balance, Net Neutrality, properly defined, is a really good idea but it really ought not to be a law. And rather than say "all bits are created equal", a more useful definition of Net Neutrality is "all sources are created equal", with some carefully crafted exceptions for bad behavior.
The phrase that came to mind was "Quality of Service vs. Freedom of Speech".
First off, what is popularly known as Net Neutrality I understand to mean "bits are bits and all bits are created equal" -- that Internet service providers (such as the telecom and cable companies) should not be allowed to charge content providers (such as Google or LiveJournal) for priority access by or to their subscribers.
Basically, the telecommunications industry is making the technical argument that enshrining the status quo will prohibit the implementation of IP Quality of Service, which will prevent the creation and further development of services such as Internet video delivery (to replace cable television, for instance) and IP telephony over wireline and wireless services. I am currently working for Cingular Wireless and they are taking the position that Net Neutrality is, for these reasons, bad for business.
On the other hand, as a maintainer of a personal website, a reader of several activist sites such as MoveOn.org, and a LiveJournaller, I have heard the argument that if Net Neutrality is not enacted, ISPs could basically price grass-roots activist sites out of business, block access to content services that compete with their own offerings, and other such dire consequences.
On balance, I think QoS vs. FoS (;-) is a false dilemma. It's perfectly reasonable to expect that a way can be found to use Quality of Service features without shutting off the grassroots efforts that have been enabled by the Internet as it is today.
Without a technical reading of the legislation, I can neither recommend for or against the current Net Neutrality proposal. However, a poorly written bill will do more damage than no bill. The best practices of Internet routing should, on balance, not be the subject of legislation, as it's far more likely for Congress to get it wrong than right.
Net neutrality should be defined and enforced through the RFC mechanism which has been the time-honored method of governance of the Internet ever since Al Gore invented it. ;-) The peer-pressure method of enforcement of RFC's worked quite well when VeriSign decided to unilaterally change DNS a couple of years ago. The question is, what should go into the definition?
In my opinion it's perfectly OK for ISP's to prioritize traffic by its need for high speed and/or low latency, which is what QoS is intended to provide. It's not OK for ISP's to block or throttle all traffic from sources they do not control (such as their competitors and those competitors' subscribers). Blacklisting sources based on prior bad behavior is problematic, as it is an effective tool to reduce spamming but it has been misused, and it punishes large numbers of people for the actions of a few bad apples.
So a more useful definition of Net Neutrality is that while different types of service have different needs for priority, equivalent traffic from different sources (provided they are well-behaved, which excludes spammers and other net abuses) should be carried equally across all the carriers that make up the Internet. It's a better technical implementation of the common-carrier principle (which has other legal implications) than a blind "all bits are created equal" policy enshrined in law.
My take: QoS vs. FoS is, as so many political issues are, a false dilemma. On balance, Net Neutrality, properly defined, is a really good idea but it really ought not to be a law. And rather than say "all bits are created equal", a more useful definition of Net Neutrality is "all sources are created equal", with some carefully crafted exceptions for bad behavior.