Net Neutrality: Why it matters

You may have read about the discussions of "Net-Neutrality" in congress recently.  If you've missed the debate (perhaps on purpose) I'll provide a high-level review of the issue and throw-in my .02.

Net-neutrality refers to legislation being debated in Congress that would keep the internet free.  This activity is in response to cable and telephone companies lobbying Washington to create two access-levels to the internet--  large websites that pay large fees would get priority over smaller sites.  The impact?  Small (business) websites would load more slowly and be harder to navigate.

Who does your customer blame when their experience on your website becomes harder and slower?  Comcast?  SBC?

That would be nice, but no.  They form the impression that your business is harder to work-with.

A few companies would make a windfall, like internet service providers and telcoms, but the small-medium enterprise would pay the price.  This issue has joined the left-leaning moveon.org with the conservative Gun Owners of America, as wild as that sounds.  What's more, a Democrat and Republican have teamed-up to draft a net-neutrality bill.  This issue has created strange bedfellows.

I suppose my .02 is clear:  Let's hope the lobbying skills of a small group of companies don't win-over our Representatives in Washington.

Additional ideas in the NY Times here.

Comments

[Michael Rolph]

FOLLOW UP:

The issue also popped-up in the SF Chronicle online on Friday in a gathering of news from Tom Foremski:

'With the telephone and cable TV companies owning the "last mile" connection to the home, there is concern that they could block or slow down traffic from any non-partner or competing internet sites. For example, Ebay's Skype, which provides free phone calls, could be blocked. And so could the huge number of online video services potentially competing with the cable TV companies.'

-mr

[Scott Matthews]

The problem with coming to an opinion on 'net neutrality' is that it's not quite clear what the term actually means.

For example, take a look at Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality
and, specifically: "Non-discrimination means that all traffic over the network (typically or exclusively digital packets or bits) is treated the same by the network, including the traffic originating with the network operator. This principle of 'bit parity' means that all bits are treated as 'just bits', and no bit traffic is prioritized over other bits, and none is hampered or disabled."

Now, the problem with that is my VoIP provider (Speakeasy) specifically markets their service as giving priority to VoIP packets, theoretically improving the quality of calls. So, a literal read of Wikipedia's definition of net neutrality would seem to say that Speakeasy is in violation.

So, my point is: 1) we need to know what definition of net neutrality to use, and 2) if it's the Wikipedia definition, I'm not so sure we should say that all packets should be treated with equal priority.

-Scott