I am having difficulty understanding what this is about, who is who, what are the institutional affiliations and potential biases, etc. Can someone explain it to me:
Net Neutrality: Undifferentiated Networks Would Require Significant Extra Capacity:
Using computer models, the researchers compared the current "best-effort" approach with a tiered model that separates information into two simple classes -- one for most types of information and another for applications requiring service level assurance for high-bandwidth content like video games, telemedicine, and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).
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"Clearly, an undifferentiated network in this context is less efficient and more expensive," said coauthor K.K. Ramakrishnan of AT&T Labs. "We believe understanding the real impacts of the alternative strategies is important as the debate about network architecture unfolds."
Value of Class-of-Service (CoS) Support in the Internet Backbone:
The user expectation of Internet use has moved from best-effort connectivity to an expectation of reasonable performance & capacity for all types of applications. QoS-sensitive applications like IPTV, gaming, and VoIP could be offered over such a converged IP broadband end-to-end network. Network service providers also would like to support such applications effectively. They need to provision their networks to meet the service level agreements (SLAs). Customer experiences need to be protected and predictable despite network failures and changes in demand as well as application mix.
Currently there is a wide ranging debate on the issue of ââ¬Ånetwork neutralityââ¬Â which involves both economic and technical aspects. One key aspect of the net neutrality debate is whether best effort application traffic should be carried along with other (so-called ââ¬Åpremiumââ¬Â) traffic for which SLA commitments have been made (or are expected, either explicitly or implicitly) without differentiation. An assertion often made in this context is that over-provisioning is an economically viable strategy due to the declining cost of capacity, instead of incurring the complexity and operational costs of running a differentiated-services network. Our study focuses on this specific question within the larger debate. We compare a classless network which is over-provisioned against an engineered network using per-class queuing to offer Class-of-Service (CoS) (i.e., differentiated-service) and meet user expectations and SLAs. In most situations a differentiated network can save significantly over a classless network.
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Hmm. I wonder if it's got anything to do with doings in the United Kingdom.
Basically, a fundamental principle of Internetworking is that the network knows nothing about the data carried across it, the sender, or the receiver. Hence the diversity of possible applications - David Isenberg's "principle of the stupid network".
This position is also defended to some extent by law. In the US, the Telecoms Act '96 required ISPs to treat all IP traffic on public networks alike, in a similar fashion to the common carrier principle for phone service. This is "network neutrality".
Now, various people - Big Telecom, principally - would quite like to be able to sort IP traffic by type, by customer, or what you will, and assign differential quality-of-service. Then, they could charge more for preferential service.
However, the flaw in this is that, as John Waclawsky, Motorola's chief software architect, pointed out, if there is no additional capacity, assigning one customer preferential QOS is directly equivalent to assigning everyone else *worse* QOS.
If you're Amazon.com, this isn't so much of a problem. But if you're Scienceblogs.com, will you be able to pay the greenmail? (You could use Google as the example here, but they are strongly opposed to discrimination among packets.) Obviously there's also a civil liberties issue.
It is true that you might be able to conserve bandwidth by doing QOS, but why would you do that? Bandwidth is abundant. Gilder's law shows it becoming cheaper much faster than processing power under Moore's law, so doing this isn't going to conserve money, either.
Thank you. That is sorta what I was expecting.
What it really comes down to is profit. As Alex pointed out, if there's no additional capacity, or if capacity is not in short supply, the telecom would be essentially be charging to NOT limit your QOS. In other words, the preferential service is just your normal level of service right now. Its like those software download sites that have their "member only FAST connection" or the "free public slow" connection.
Maybe, but the limitations on bandwidth are artificial. See here and here (among many other places). These are recent articles. You get poor bandwidth in the US because of a combination of greed and incompetence.
For many people, the problem is more political. When you implement "net neutrality" -- which has come to mean the opposite but is conveniently monikered to confuse -- there may be strong political ramifications. Everything from moneyed interference into access, knowledge and collaboration, to political access to websites. Obama and the Democrats are doing great -- courtesy of netroots and an existing infrastructure, and the powers that be aren't too keen on the masses actually having an influence proportionate to access. Special interests want to protect their position of power, and they'll use smooth sounding language coated in marketspeak.
Additionally, one should wonder how things will turn out during periods of crisis -- once quality of service becomes ubiquitous mantra -- will the government use it to restrict and choke off media and dissenting voices during times when it's most needed? During the run-up to Iraq there was very little mainstream opposition, but some opposition on the net. Now it's a lot more organized and if net neutrality creates chokepoints, I can see many of those voices silenced during the next crisis given net neutrality passing in its current incarnation (Get much Al-Jazeera on cable in the US? -- The reason you don't must be the market, right? Yeah, I'm subsidizing 12 channels of shopping networks because I WANT to.)
Remember, the reason that the government is doing poorly in this war is because they've lost control of the message. It's all about message control -- be it Microsoft against OSS, a corrupt government against change, oil against ecology, Phrma against the activist, etc...
(Strangely enough, infrastructure shortages, when they happen can also be used to advantage by the special interests. Remember high gas prices? Infrastructure shortcoming addressed by drilling in ANWR and blaming those with an energy policy.)
The network providers have an unhealthy relationship to the government -- one can view them as semi-nationalized in some ways -- for example the surreptitious installation of black boxes into network choke points to fight TGWT and the subsequent defense of providers by the government's disallowing privacy violation lawsuits against the network participants.
It should also be noted that net neutrality is an issue only because of the concentration of consumer access by telecoms and cable companies due to a failure of the telecom act of '96 to achieve on of its goals: the seperation of the telecoms into ILECs and CLECs in order to prevent the ILECs from leveraging their subsidized infrastructure monopoly into a service monopoly. Now with essentially one or two options for most residential customers, these companies can threaten to degrade service in a discriminatory manner without the risk of the consumer having the option of a service provider that doesn't similarly degrade service.