Net Neutrality

[varjohaltia]

Background

Here's how the Internet currently works:

A number of incumbent telecommunications carriers that have done this for a while, or have acquired companies that have done this for a while, have the infrastructure -- fiber optic links, transmission facilities, routers -- that comprise the bulk of the internet backbone.

These companies also have the majority of peering arrangements -- free or not-free interchange of traffic with other carriers, well-known AS numbers and other intangible bureaucractic and institutional capital.

The companies described above are called tier-1 companies. They are the ones Microsoft and Google and large ISPs may go to to buy Internet service from. It is very difficult, if not impossible, for any new company to become a tier-1. The spat between Level 3 and Cogent a while back was Level 3 telling Cogent that they really weren't a tier-1 and needed to fork over mucho cash if they wanted access to the Internet served by Level 3. Cogent disagreed, and the Internet more or less split for a while.

Consequently, the carriers on top of the pyramid, the tier-1s, pass traffic between each other without charge and arbitrary speeds, after all, each have customers that want to talk to the customers on the other carriers.

Then there are tier-2 companies. These are large ISPs, who may resell Internet service and other telecommunications services, but have to pay one or more tier-1 companies for their own access. They buy Internet service in bulk, chop it up, add services and value, transport it closer to the user, and resell it for a margin. Large corporations and institutions, including small ISPs go to tier-2 companies for their services.

Finally, there are tier-3 companies. These can be regional ISPs, or just smaller telecommunications firms. They pay a tier-2 (or, sometimes, a tier-1) for their service, and resell it to individual end users and small companies, perhaps building wireless point-to-point links or free space optics within a metropolitan area or do more specialized stuff. An ISP in a mountainous region in north Georgia serving a few counties, for example, would fall into this category.

Who Pays?

The end user, such as myself, pays a cable modem provider for internet access. The cable modem provider uses some of that money for its own expenses, some for its own profits, and some of it to pay for its own internet service from a tier-2 or tier-1. In the case of a tier-2, rinse and repeat.

The large content providers, such as web hosting companies or Google, pay for their own internet service just the same as the end user. If Google wants a gigabit link to a bunch of their servers, there's a going rate for that. You can get a carrier to provide gigabit Internet connectivity to your house too, but it's not going to be cheap.

Current Debacle

Tier-1s are arguing that they're not seeing their fair share; that although they are charging Google and such, they are using too much resources. They want to be able to sell "better" and "normal" (a.k.a. crappy) service, to milk companies that want to stream video or other bandwidth intensive content. Opponents are claiming that this will destroy democracy.

My Take

The debate is almost as much poppycock as the current immigration discussion. Nobody's getting a free ride. If a carrier thinks Google isn't paying it enough, they need to hike Google's rate. Except at that point someone else offers Google a better deal, and there it goes. Ooops. Even if Google were to magically get free Internet, all the end users are paying for their service! Nobody's giving any part of that away for free either! It's like a phone call where both the caller and callee are paying a fee; now the phone company wants to charge you extra for good voice quality.

Caveat: I'm perfectly okay with a carrier charging extra for service that has quality of service quarantees--low jitter or delay, for example; and there is a thicket of impossible and archaic telecom legislation making everything unnecessarily complicated.

Troubling corollary: If major carriers begin to treat traffic differently depending on source, destination or content, it enables the framework necessary for censoring or prioritizing content. Having that inherent ability means that it will be, sooner or later, used. I'd rather not see that happen.

Homework

Class, discuss. Point out where I'm going wrong, or where I'm being unclear.

Comments

[dracosphynx.livejournal.com]

No, you're right on target. Most of the 'noise-makers' squawking about the issue from one side or another are far removed from the reality of things. The network was never perfectly neutral -- heck, the "Terms of Service" bit fields have been in there for a long, long time. People envisioned there will be different priorities/categories of service from the start. A lot of folks seem to have convienently forgotten this.

I think what's happening is due to the lack of network innovation and the commoditization of network access, that the issue of network bandwidth and traffic is becoming a matter of economics, not a matter of technology -- a matter of supply and demand, and resource prioritization and distribution.

My guess: the business-minded folks are (consciously or not) applying capitalistic methods (pay more to pay more) to solve the problem, but may not fully understand the implications of applying this to the technology. The tech/net-utopia folks, still thinking they can solve this with more/better/faster technologly (not realizing this is not just a computer to computer technical issue, but a person-to-person issue with the attendant matters of economics, trade, discrimination, education, etc.) and get upset when the technology doesn't magically solve the people problems.

I've got no problems with paying more for better service, either -- however, if I pay more and my service doesn't get better, I'm going to want my money back. I don't think the carriers fully have thought out the issue of "best effort" vs. "better than best effort (?!)" from a contractual standpoint. What, precisely, are they going to offer beyond "We tried real hard!" short of making some sort of guarantee? Once they have capability, they get responsibility, too.

(Making the end users pay (whether in real money or zennies or some artificial allocation units) for the amount of access/priority they want is the *ultimate* network adminstration policy tool. It forces the end user to set real priorities on things. Then the network administrator does not have to try to try to prioritize things based on the type of traffic/application, or even worse, try to do some sort of content analysis to figure out what sort of priority should be given to a traffic stream. It gives real feedback on what people really think is important. Users hate it, of course, and it certainly has a huge useability impact, but from the network admin point of view, nothing else comes close.)

I am Liana's unintelligent comment.

[playfuleye.livejournal.com]

i liek intarnets.

Re: I am Liana's unintelligent comment.

[varjohaltia.livejournal.com]

They're for pr0n.

[drakemobius.livejournal.com]

The real issue is overselling, where ISPs sell you 6megabit bandwidth and then actively sell more bandwidth than they actually have available, knowing that most people don't use up all their bandwidth at any given time. Then they QoS it so nobody completely loses internet due to bandwidth dropping. They are upset now because more and more people are actually using that 6mbps (or 50mpbs, or whatever). They got used to overselling when all people ran was ftp sites with static bandwidth limits and web servers (or browsers, on the home end).

Now they want you to buy 6mbps, which isn't really 6mbps, and pay more if you actually want to USE 6mbps.

note: I use 6mbps because it's what my ISP supposedly provides. I frequently max it out.

[varjohaltia.livejournal.com]

It just occurred to me that this happened before.

When dialup was the most common way of getting to the 'net, this led to problems. Telephone use patterns are predictable, and the call lengths follow a nice distribution, thereby making it easy for phone companies to "oversell" and provision their networks very accurately, yet with nobody getting a busy signal except in uncommon circumstances.

Modem calls, however, are long, and tie up circuits for hours on end; this clogged phone switches, and phone companies, I'm pretty sure, were trying to push for a modem call surcharge for this reason.