Non-PC Geeks

Net Neutrality - It’s being argued heavily in congress, in the trade journals, and many message boards. Everyone has their own opinion on the subject. I’m not going to try to convince anyone towards one side or the other here. Instead, let’s try to get some of the issues out on the table and then I’ll explain where I stand.

“What is Net Neutrality, and why should I care?”

Well, this is a good question, and (like all politically heated questions) it depends a lot on who you ask. To some people, Net Neutrality means that companies that provide internet connectivity (both your local ISP and the big backbone telcos) will treat every packet flowing through their lines the same, no matter what the content, be it game data, bittorrent, streaming video, VOIP, forum posts, or standard browsing. To other people, Net Neutrality means that packets will be given equal access on the network, no matter who the provider is (for example, the ISP won’t block Yahoo but will block Google.)

In the first case, anyone who thinks that all data traffic moves through the internet without preference based on content type is clueless about how routers work. For a LONG TIME routers have been prioritizing data according to QoS needs. For instance, VOIP traffic gets more priority than IM chat messages because if they didn’t, your VOIP calls would s-o-u-nd—– li–k–e—th—-is. The key here is that ISPs don’t differentiate between Skype or Vonage or any other VOIP package. You should be totally AGAINST this kind of “Neutrality” as it would totally destroy the Internet as we know it.

In the second scenario, ISPs are complaining that a huge amount of their bandwidth is taken up by users accessing content from sites such as YouTube or Google or Yahoo, and so those ISPs want to charge the content provider extra to allow that provider’s traffic to flow on the ISP’s. It’s this second scenario that has so many people up in arms.

Local ISPs do have a bit of a point. They’re constantly having to upgrade their mainline connections (which is EXPENSIVE) to support the huge increase in data traffic caused by users accessing these popular online services. For smaller ISPs this cost can be prohibitive. Considering how slow the USA has been in rolling out high speed connectivity, such costs only serve to slow down the roll out.

At the same time, however, one has to question what the real motivation of ISP companies is. Let’s face it, every company exists to ATTEMPT to make a profit (I’ll explain why I said attempt in a minute.) What is keeping a small ISP from holding a company like Google hostage and demand that Google pay up or else they won’t allow Google’s traffic on their network? What happens when users of that ISP go to hit their GMail one day and find that they can’t get to Google because it’s not a “preferred partner” site, and are instead told to go to Yahoo or Altavista or some other competing service because the ISP got a huge payout by them? Or better yet, what about when you go to log into World of Warcraft and find out that Blizzard didn’t pay their blood money to your ISP this month and all traffic from Blizzard has been blocked? A user revolt you say? I would agree, except that in large portions of this country users are lucky to have one high speed service provider servicing their area, let alone two! Without a choice, these users would effectively only be able to access a subset of the Internet. Behavior like this would basically amount to corporate extortion of the content provider, and there’s nothing the end users can do about it.

Additionally, it’s not like big companies like Google don’t pay a small fortune to put their services on the Internet either. Google has to build massive data centers around the world and pay for huge internet pipes to connect to those data centers, and then pays the backbone providers for every piece of data put out on the wire by Google. Likewise, the ISPs pay for all the traffic coming off the backbones going into and out of their networks. That’s the way it is. That’s how it’s always been. Why should the ISPs get money from the content provider directly when the content providers are already paying?

Ok, so, they COULD go after the content requesters (aka, the users) for more money. In fact, in many areas, users can buy at graduated service levels. In my area you can get DSL Lite (256K down), normal DSL (1.5M down) or DSL Extreme (3M down). Cable modem offerings are similar. So, if I’m a user who cares about how fast my massive downloads will take, I pay more to the ISP to get the fastest connection I can. Grandma, on the other hand, who only uses her computer to play online BINGO would only have to pay for the cheaper 256K connection. Mind you, there is NO metering on how MUCH data you pull/push through those big or small pipes, only how quickly you can move a set amount of data. Considering that most of us work or go to school or have lives away from our PCs (ok, who are we kidding?) even those of us with the highest end service leave the lines basically idle a good portion of the day (well, maybe not you torrenting fools out there!)

Instead of going after the content providers, why don’t the ISPs go after the users who abuse their networks and pull massive amounts of data non-stop? Back in the dialup days, this sort of “metering” took place, and it often involved users screaming bloody murder when they received bills for several hundred dollars. Many Internet-via-cellphone data plans still use this “by the MB” metering. More often than not, when a user gets a huge bill like this, they either freak out and cancel their service, or end up spending the extra $$ every month to get the “unlimited” plan.

Personally, I don’t mind the ISPs going after the service abusers, or at least having some sort of reasonable “metering” system. The problem is, who determines what a reasonable level of use is? Why not throttle bandwidth dynamically when users go above a specific usage level per hour? This would allow for short term burst of bandwidth initially (say I’m streaming some video for 5 minutes, it’s a short time, so it’s ok, I get my full speed.) I might not do anything else on the computer for an hour. Later I go to download the demo of some hot new game. For the first hour I get full speed, but then I reach the usage threshold. At that point, my bandwidth gets cut in half. Ok, so the download takes longer, but it still comes. Maybe keep reducing it down every half our that the user’s bandwidth stays above 70% utilization for that half hour until some lower minimum service speed is reached (say 128K).

Earlier I said “ATTEMPT” to make a profit. Companies go into business in the hope that they can sell a good or service for more than it costs them to produce that good or service. Sometimes, because costs go up, or competition forces a company to lower their prices, selling for a profit isn’t possible. That’s business. It’s a risk. Companies seem to have this expectation that it’s their god given right to turn a profit every quarter and make an increasing profit quarter on quarter, year on year. I’m sorry, but that’s neither realistic nor reasonable! If you own an ISP and you can’t keep costs in check while producing a service at a price that people will both buy and cover your costs, then you lose money and should consider selling that business to a competitor or somebody else who can. PERIOD.

Personally, I’m all AGAINST Net Neutrality in it’s first form. I’m all FOR it in the second form. If the ISPs don’t like it, they should figure out another way to make money. In the mean time, they can go pound sand!

What do you think?

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