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Friday, January 19, 2007 Net Neutrality: Far from a Done DealLegislation and industry concessions won't guarantee equal access to the Internet. By Wade Roush
So far, 2007 has been a jubilant year for proponents of network neutrality--the principle that Internet operators should handle all the data they transport the same way, without special "fast lanes" open only to those who can afford them. After a legislative stalemate in 2006, activists from groups such as SavetheInternet.com are celebrating new efforts in Congress to make network neutrality into law. They're also celebrating an unexpected pledge from leading backbone operator AT&T to honor the principle, at least temporarily. But the fight isn't over. It's still possible that certain types of tiered Internet access will emerge in the near future. That's partly due to political and business realities: no bill is assured of passage in the still fractious 110th Congress, and AT&T's concessions contain loopholes that allow the company to move forward with premium services such as U-Verse, which is all about extending fiber-optic fast lanes to customers' homes. But the situation is also a consequence of the march of technology. New bandwidth-intensive applications such as YouTube-style video downloads and peer-to-peer file sharing are clogging the network so quickly, researchers say, that service providers may be forced to start charging more to carry certain types of data. Public discussion of net neutrality dates back to 2002, when Columbia law professor Tim Wu, Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig, and others warned of the growing business pressures on Internet service providers (ISPs) to restrict less lucrative types of Internet usage and charge more for others. But the threat was largely theoretical until late 2005, when Ed Whitacre, CEO of SBC (soon to be renamed AT&T), implied in a Business Week interview that SBC wanted to charge Internet companies such as Yahoo, Google, and Vonage extra for carrying their data over SBC's network to SBC broadband customers, even if the companies had already paid access fees to their own ISPs. "Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain't going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it," Whitacre said. The remarks galvanized online content companies and free-speech advocates to push for legislation enshrining network neutrality, including provisions to prevent ISPs from treating data differently depending on its source, as Whitacre seemed to be proposing. SavetheInternet.com, a coalition of strange bedfellows including MoveOn.org, Common Cause, the United Church of Christ, and Gun Owners of America, spent much of 2006 lobbying to get network-neutrality protections into major bills overhauling the Telecommunications Act of 1934. The phone and cable companies fought back, spending millions on lobbying efforts, and House and Senate Republicans repeatedly blocked the network-neutrality amendments. But in the end, Congress adjourned without acting on a final telecommunications bill.
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Comments
VCRAGAIN on 01/19/2007 at 8:34 AM
34
theradicalmoderate on 01/19/2007 at 12:01 PM
5
1) Eventually, bandwidth will become scarce, not only on the edge of the network but in the core as well. Right now you've got tier 1 ISPs swimming in dark fiber, which can be captialized into real core bandwidth for a fraction of its sunk cost. This won't last forever.
2) Realtime traffic (voice and video telephony, data conferencing, surveillance, telemetry, etc.) is fundamentally different from non-realtime traffic (email, podcasts, HTML, etc.) and simply cannot work without differentiated services. You need the ability to classify and expedite traffic to meet the time constraints for applications like this or they are completely useless.
The idea that a bunch of politicians are going to legislate the economic value of diffserv just gives me the creeps. You can make a law that pi is now equal to 3.0, but you'll wind up with funny circles if you follow that law.
It's certainly legitimate to ensure that all content providers and all consumers get equal access to those differentiated services, so Google can't put some guy in his garage out of business. But if the guy in his garage wants to pump out realtime video, he probably ought to pay more than his neighbor, who's downloading the latest podcast of "Lost" overnight.
jsmith on 01/19/2007 at 3:25 PM
1
theradicalmoderate on 01/19/2007 at 11:12 PM
5
However, there are **lots** of proposals out there that effectively outlaw charging for different classes of service. Enacting such a proposal would be disastrous.
ms on 01/19/2007 at 1:30 PM
65
theradicalmoderate on 01/19/2007 at 11:20 PM
5
Also, the OAM&P systems required to charge by the bit are a nightmare. There's a reason why ISPs can roll out new services faster than old-style public switched telephony providers. When you meter your service, things get really complicated to deploy. Flat rates are good for everybody, even if they're tiered by class of service.
gabrielg01 on 01/20/2007 at 4:07 PM
298
If I put up a JPEG image or PDF document on the net, and I have some financial incentive to inflate the bits, then I can do that easily without providing real value for the users. Extra bits don't always add up to extra content for the users, and this inherent weakness in the system would be exploited.
ventsyv on 01/20/2007 at 2:13 AM
5
It is my belief that large companies such as Google and Vonage do pay for such high speed access.
Well, if you are selling such high speed access, it is to be expected that it would be utilize 100%, so then you can't really complain, if your core is blogged down.
T3 prices run between &5000 and $15000. Companies that pay for such access in my opinion do not have to pay any payments for "priority" treatment. It is the ISP's fault if they are over selling their core capacity. They ought to install more capacity, and/or raise the price of the T3 lines.
Which will never happen given the growing competitiveness in the field. Cable and phone companies and soon utility companies (power line Internet) are crowding the field, delivering lower prices for everyone.
I can see why ISPs are trying to push this thing, but I'm absolutely sure it will never work.
theradicalmoderate on 01/20/2007 at 8:25 PM
5
In order to get realtime stuff delivered, you have to be able to guarantee that a steady flow of packets arrive within a regular time interval. For voice, this time interval is usually one packet every 20 ms. For video, it's often multiple packets every 33 ms.
Furthermore, the flow has to be end-to-end. So, to take your Google example, they may have multiple OC3's flowing into some tier 1 ISP, but that ISP still has to absorb that load and route it through their network, hop-by-hop. Each router may be congested, requiring special queuing to meet the demands of the realtime traffic. That special queuing reduces the aggregate bandwidth that the router can handle, requiring more routers, more links between routers, etc. And the problem gets even worse when you hit the edge of the consumer's network.
Result: more cost to the ISP, who needs to recoup the investment.
gabrielg01 on 01/20/2007 at 4:19 PM
298
Instead of wasting the money on the Iraq war, we should build our internet infrastructure.
kalocin73 on 01/21/2007 at 1:45 PM
1
davelax40 on 02/01/2007 at 9:46 PM
1