Hi fellow PLUG members, A friend and I were discussing Net Neutrality and wanted to research the topic a bit more. The more I read about Net Neutrality the less I feel I actually know what the issue is. I believe what the proponents want are:
* fair bandwidth for all * no destination/source discrimination * no data discrimination * no tired service Does this correctly sum up the wants? I have seen numerous threads all touting the brilliance and benefits of Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality has become a banner for great Internet ideology, but it begs the question, what does the opposition actually want to change? From what I can tell the opposition wants to solve some fundamental problems, mostly revolving around resource allocation (ie. "bandwidth hogs"). Overuse tends to happen with any perceived "unlimited" resource, utility or service. The problem is these resources, utilities and services are never "unlimited" in reality. I can sympathize with this, which leads me to wonder if the opposition to Net Neutrality may have some valid issues that need to be resolved. Regarding fair bandwidth for all. If everyone were a good net citizen and shared the bandwidth respectfully, I would agree with fair bandwidth. Unfortunately, there is a problem of "bandwidth hogs". For example, if 10 people on the block all use an ISP, and 1 user is a "bandwidth" hog, consistently slowing down the 9 other connections, and the ISP wants to "manage their network" by limiting the one "bandwidth" hog, is this an okay practice? Me being one of the other 9 would really like to not have the 1 slow my connection down. This is what Comcast did with the torrent problem. Should Comcast not be allowed to manage their networks to keep the 9 other people happy? Regarding destination/source and tired service discrimination. Don't we already have this in place. The more you pay the higher the bandwidth you get. This works the same way on both ends of the connection. Is Net Neutrality advocates pushing to make all Internet free, or one price for all? Regarding data discrimination. This leads to the realm of Quality of Service. Certain traffic needs to have better QoS to work properly. Web traffic, Games and VoIP need low latency, but push through relativity low bandwidth traffic. File serving doesn't is not as greatly affected by, but needs higher bandwidth. Should ISPs not be able manage their network to give Web Traffic, VoIP and Games a higher QoS? Is there a critical point about Net Neutrality I am missing? Please educate me if I am incorrect. Thank you, Kenneth /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
