TechNotes #8: Net Neutrality, Part 2
Written by Matthew Stein Tuesday, 17 August 2010 02:40
In Part 1 I talked about pieces of information (packets) traveling from point A to point B on the Internet, and how their journeys are a bit like cars on the roads and how Internet routers are a bit like intersections.
With the huge increase in traffic on the Internet, one of two things needs to happen: 1. we build new infrastructure to handle the increased load, or 2. we prioritize the traffic to make sure the most important things have the best chance of getting where they need to go.
Nerd Stuff:
The Internet protocol doesn't actually guarantee that any packet you send will get where it's going. It uses a delivery scheme called "best-effort." In other words, the various routers along the way will try, but they make no promises. It's up to your applications to make sure they get all the data they need.
The Proposal
But if new infrastructure needs to be built, who pays for it? And if we're prioritizing traffic, who decides what packets get priority?
The solution proposed by telecom companies* actually addresses both problems: the content providers—who for years have been making money off of the telecoms' infrastructure—should pay a fee to get their traffic sent more quickly. The thought is that if a company (say YouTube) is going to use up a lot of bandwidth streaming videos to the world, then they should share in the cost of that effort, instead of just profiting from it. To the telecoms, this is the ideal solution: some traffic gets priority and they get the capital they need to expand their infrastructure.
But there are also some issues with this. First, we'll return to our analogy of roads and intersections. All the traffic travels down the road at the same speed limit (in wires, that's the speed of light). The only thing you can do to get more traffic down the road in a short time is to make the road wider, and make the intersections larger.
Assuming we can't make or haven't yet made the roads and intersections wider, the only thing to do is control what traffic goes through the intersection when. On most roads, that means a traffic light instead of stop signs, but that solution doesn't take into account what traffic is going through the intersection, just how much. That won't work for prioritizing.
So in order to prioritize we need something more like a traffic cop, who will assess what traffic is in the intersection and decide who gets to go and when. Traffic that's been prioritized higher will get to go through first, and lower-priority traffic may have to wait a little longer if the intersection is busy.
Priority and Privacy
Those who advocate net neutrality see two problems with this. First, the fact that the telecoms want use money as the basis for priority. In other words, whoever is willing—and able—to pay gets to go first. So our traffic cop is not simply waving through traffic of logical priority, like emergency vehicles, but letting those who have paid the fee go through before those freeloaders who expect to use the roads for free. And given the players we're talking about (Google, Yahoo, CNN, and many more big names) the fee is not going to be cheap. Imagine having to pay $5,000 per week to get priority at intersections. That's not something many can afford, and it raises some serious questions in terms of free speech.
The second problem is more subtle, and involves a battle being waged not just in the realm of net neutrality, but privacy. Packets have layers, and as a general rule, any device (router, switch, computer, etc.) that sees a packet only peels back enough layers to send it where it needs to go. Typically this means that all those routers that bring your data to you don't ever actually look at the content of the data, because they don't need to know. But prioritizing traffic requires routers to look deeper (it's actually called "deep packet inspection") to see what's inside in order to know if it should be given priority. And while there's never been much keeping your internet service provider from looking at your data, this would be a huge blow to the existing culture of privacy.
Net Neutrality, or Back Where We Began
So what is net neutrality? Essentially, it's what we have now. It's a system where the intersections don't care who's driving the cars (or what kind of data is in the packets); it's first-come first-served. All packets are treated the same, and nobody gets priority because they have more money.
But what about the infrastructure? That question is a bit murkier.
Telecoms say that if content providers don't chip in to the cost then it'll just mean higher prices for consumers. Some suggest that the telecoms are merely trying to increase their profit margin. There are other nations in Europe and Asia that have higher broadband speeds but pay less for it on average than we do, so where does the money go? And lots of government subsidies have been provided over the years for broadband internet infrastructure, but not much has come of it (Verizon, for example, has now ended their supposedly massive, nationwide push to provide consumers fiber optic service, FiOS).
The argument of who should pay and how much in order to build our national infrastructure will probably continue for some time, whether we have net neutrality or not. But I for one prefer the Internet to act as it was designed and always has, providing equal access to all users and all content.
*A brief explanation of a couple terms, for clarity.
The telecom companies are the people that own the phone, fiber-optic, and cable lines around the country. In large part we're talking about the biggest ones, like Sprint, AT&T and Verizon, who own the lines that run the "backbone" of the internet: essentially really fast connections between larger areas that send the data across the country and around the world, but local ISPs are included even if they're not one of the big corporations.
The content providers are the people who publish information, music, movies, and any other data for people. This means Google, YouTube, The New York Times, Hulu, and even me—really anyone who has a web site. We put the stuff up on the net for people to access, and we rely on the telecoms to deliver our content to the people who want to see it.
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