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Network Neutrality
It's everyone's favorite topic: Network Neutrality!
I'll start this topic off right away by pointing out that I work in Telecom. Take everything I say and remember my background.
1) The idea that an ISP would purposefully block or degrade a web companies access to it's subscribers is falacious at best. to do so would result in a lawsuit from the degraded company and a shrinking subscriber base as people do not want to pay for access to only "some of" the Internet.
2) Owners of the Network have peering agreements with other backbone owners. These are similar to the agreements Telcos had in regards to passing long distance phone calls. Essentially they boil down to a set number of bits that can be passed between networks (sometimes different numbers based on direction) and include a fee for overages.
3) The Big ISPs want to offer different "classes" of service. Class of service in the "latency" department that is. They want to do this because they want to offer new services, using the Internet as the transport medium, and they feel they need to gaurantee a lower latency for these services to work. They do not want to "give it away" to their competitors.
4) I, personally, feel that the core problem here is that the big telcos have now become big backbone and they want to compete with their customers. I feel the Telco infrastructure should be split between wholesale and retail. The wholesale company will own the hard equipment and infrastructure and will then resell access to this infrastructure to the retail outfits that will resell to the general public.
5) The problem with the Telecom act of 1996 is that is forced the incumbant Telecoms to lease access to their lines for less then cost in order to "create competition" with the "hope" that competitors would then use their profits to build infrastructure but it never happened. They just kept taking the creame off the top and gave nothing back.
6) The "pizza analogy" is very expressive of this in that the government forces the local pizza parlor to allow a competitor to resell it's pizzas while using the local parlors ingredients, cooks and drivers. All this is done to create "compition" but only creates a false competition as the reseller has nothing but a phone center.
I'll start this topic off right away by pointing out that I work in Telecom. Take everything I say and remember my background.
1) The idea that an ISP would purposefully block or degrade a web companies access to it's subscribers is falacious at best. to do so would result in a lawsuit from the degraded company and a shrinking subscriber base as people do not want to pay for access to only "some of" the Internet.
2) Owners of the Network have peering agreements with other backbone owners. These are similar to the agreements Telcos had in regards to passing long distance phone calls. Essentially they boil down to a set number of bits that can be passed between networks (sometimes different numbers based on direction) and include a fee for overages.
3) The Big ISPs want to offer different "classes" of service. Class of service in the "latency" department that is. They want to do this because they want to offer new services, using the Internet as the transport medium, and they feel they need to gaurantee a lower latency for these services to work. They do not want to "give it away" to their competitors.
4) I, personally, feel that the core problem here is that the big telcos have now become big backbone and they want to compete with their customers. I feel the Telco infrastructure should be split between wholesale and retail. The wholesale company will own the hard equipment and infrastructure and will then resell access to this infrastructure to the retail outfits that will resell to the general public.
5) The problem with the Telecom act of 1996 is that is forced the incumbant Telecoms to lease access to their lines for less then cost in order to "create competition" with the "hope" that competitors would then use their profits to build infrastructure but it never happened. They just kept taking the creame off the top and gave nothing back.
6) The "pizza analogy" is very expressive of this in that the government forces the local pizza parlor to allow a competitor to resell it's pizzas while using the local parlors ingredients, cooks and drivers. All this is done to create "compition" but only creates a false competition as the reseller has nothing but a phone center.
Comments
8) I believe "most" businesses are self-regulating in that selling overpriced goods will put you out of business.
9) I am also concerned that most ISP/Telecoms may not realize that by no longer being considered a "common carrier" they lose some protections. For instance, if they can track what a packet holds and rout it differently then... can't they be held liable for the contents of that packet if it is illegal in some manner?
10) Even network admins like to use bittorrent and see intraweb pr0n. Though the big high-paid people in the company may open their mouths and insert their feet, it still has to be implemented by the workers who may not like implementing it and provide hacks for those who want them. In any group of four or more people you can bet one of them will leak...