Robert Cringely: "Net Neutrality -- what does it really mean and why do some telecommunication providers seem so opposed to it? The answers are neither as clear -- nor as evil -- as partisans on both sides of the aisle in Congress are suggesting. Those opposing Net Neutrality have in mind VoIP, and nothing but VoIP. Those in favor of Net Neutrality seem to think it means equal treatment under the Internet, which it doesn't really. The only thing we can be sure of, in fact, is that Congress doesn't get it and has a fair chance of making it worse.
"The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed legislation allowing Internet Service Providers to do traffic shaping, giving some priority to certain types of content, which would presumably be either the ISPs' own content or that of ISP customers paying a premium for such access. The U.S. Senate is considering similar legislation, as well as other legislation designed to do exactly the opposite -- guarantee that all data packets receive equal service. The prevailing assumption, by the way, is that right now all packets ARE created equal, which of course they are not.
"The Net Neutrality issue rests, in part, on the concept of the Internet as a 'best effort' network. Best effort, in the minds of the Internet Engineering Task Force, means something slightly different than we are being told in the general press. It means that all packets are treated equally poorly in that no particular efforts are made to ensure delivery. The Net, itself, performs no packet life-support function. This is in keeping with the concept of the Internet as a dumb network. So even in cases of transport protocols that DO attempt to perform reliable transport (protocols like TCP), those recovery measures are negotiated between the server and the client, not by the network that connects them, simple as that.
"But all packets aren't created equal. TCP packets over longer distance connections, for example, are effectively at a disadvantage, because they are more likely to have data loss and require retransmissions, thus expanding their appetites for bandwidth. By the same token, packets of all types that originate on the ISP side of its primary Internet connection have the advantage of functioning in an environment with far greater bandwidth and far fewer hops. Perhaps the best example of this disparity: packets that pass through private peering arrangements, versus those traveling from one backbone provider to another through one of the many NAPs, with their relatively high packet loss.
"This 'to NAP or not to NAP' issue has been with us for a long time. Smaller and poorer ISPs that can't attract peering deals with their larger brethren are stuck with communicating through the NAPs, which requires more time and bandwidth to transfer the same number of data packets successfully. This has long been a marketing point for bigger and richer ISPs. But beyond marketing, this disparity hasn't received much public notice. There are many ISPs that have both private peering and inter-NAP connections, yet whether they send a packet through the NAP or not hasn't been a huge public issue. Perhaps it should be. It has certainly been possible for ISPs to pretty easily put a hurt on packets, and they probably have been doing so, though most pundits assume that we are still living in the good old days.
"One thing ISPs supposedly aren't allowed to do is to ban packets completely. If they tried that by, for example, restricting all Internet video or VoIP phone service to a particular provider, the courts would fill with lawyers filing Restraint of Trade lawsuits. So the ISPs take the air carrier approach of not denying passage to anyone, but wanting to give priority boarding to their most loyal frequent fliers. That's the heart of their argument.
"But the other position ISPs like to take is that of the common carrier, which supposedly doesn't know the difference between one packet and the next, and is therefore not liable if some of those packets carry kiddie porn or terrorist communications. The ISPs, you see, want it both ways.
"And they'll probably get it, because they have the lobbying clout.
"But it is important to also keep in mind just how much damage there is to be done here. The biggest culprit in terms of sheer volume of traffic is undoubtedly Bit Torrent, but the failure of Net Neutrality isn't going to have much of an effect, if any, on Bit Torrent, because if your bootleg copy of The Sopranos arrives 10 minutes or even 10 hours later, is it going to matter all that much? No.
"ISP high jinks will have little impact on video and audio downloads.
"They won't have much effect, either, on search, because the dominant search vendor -- Google -- is working so hard to optimize backbone routes that inserting one slower hop at the ISP will probably STILL leave Google faster than everyone else. That's part of the reason that Google has been buying up all that fiber.
"Where this Net Neutrality issue will hit home is for Voice over IP telephone service, which becomes pitiful if there is too much latency. That's what this is all about, folks: VoIP and nothing else. The telcos want to use it to keep out the Vonages, Skypes, and Packet8s, and the cable companies do, too. It is a $1 trillion global business, so we shouldn't be surprised that the ISPs will do anything to own it, but it isn't about movies or music or even AJAX apps -- at least, not yet."
"2008 pres"
6:06:54 PM 
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