An Essay on Net Neutrality (Part 1)

I wrote this essay a couple of years ago and published it in COFETEL's Bulletin (it was in Spanish though). I have divided it in three parts... Here is the first one:

NET NEUTRALITY

The Concept

Net Neutrality, what exactly does this mean? Well, it may suggest many different things. Perhaps at first glance it proposes that the Internet should be neutral. Neutral to whom or what? Geographically neutral? Language neutral? Open sourced? It may also imply that the Internet should be technologically neutral. Neutral to protocols? Neutral to the broadband access technology? DSL? Cable? FTTH? WiMAX? BPL? Neutral to the device. Laptop? Desktop? Smart-phone? Neutral to the content or application provider? Neutral to the communication it conveys? We are getting closer.

Well, it is simpler than it appears (at least for definition purposes). It is about preserving the end to end principle that has characterized the Internet. Net neutrality is about leaving the final user to freely choose the content available on the web. After all, the Internet has been by definition and architecture "neutral” and one need not seek permission from any carrier to publish anything on the web and make it available to users.

The end-to-end principle is meant to define the interactions between the network and its end points and it may have its origins back in 1981 in a paper called "End-to-end arguments in system design" by Saltzer, Reed and Clark. In this paper, a model is proposed where the intelligence and processing power of a network reside at the outer edges while the inner network itself remains as simple as possible.

More formal definitions attempting to describe the net neutrality concept state that all information networks should aspire to treat all content, sites and platforms equally, or that a neutral Internet must forward packets on a first-come, first serve basis, without regard for Quality of Service (QoS) considerations. The opposite of network neutrality could be defined as network discrimination.

This principle, however, is not new for telecommunications. Carriers are not allowed to listen to your telephone conversations or decide who you should call or who you should not; calls are established as you dial. This may also go even before the telephone was invented. In the age of the telegraph there was some kind of regulation that mandated that messages should be neutrally transmitted in a first come first serve basis.

“...messages received from any individual, company, or corporation, or from any telegraph lines connecting with this line at either of its termini, shall be impartially transmitted in the order of their reception, excepting that the dispatches of the government shall have priority.”

To grasp this concept better perhaps the best thing to do is to follow this link for a very didactic video from Public Knowledge I found in YouTube (of course, if your broadband service provider allows you to do so!).


The Debate

Even though defining the concept was not a difficult task (I hope) understanding the different views and positions towards net neutrality could be really complex.

Embracing the idea of an open Internet is almost a paradigm. Nonetheless, if we analyze in depth what an open Internet means to different stakeholders and how new Internet applications may threat legacy commercial interests, we may well be in front of a very vibrant debate in the core of the digital age.

Some claim that although technological innovations and increased bandwidth have allowed Internet users to access a great new variety of enhanced services and applications, the “best-effort” feature for carrying packages may be insufficient to provide the required QoS. In other words, the supporters of this argument regard differentiated levels of service as an opportunity to build QoS into networks and provide superior quality connectivity for time-sensitive applications such as voice and video.

Following this argument, new technologies that allow for traffic shaping may improve the users' experience on the web by improving QoS. For example, a user may want to prioritize Internet gaming traffic, instant messaging or VoIP over other type of content that is not time-sensitive.

On the other hand, net neutrality advocates stress that analyzing or shaping traffic before it gets to the final user -making changes to the current architectural model- may jeopardize the stability of the business models that have been successful on the Internet or worse, encourage anti competitive behavior for Internet service providers to block or degrade certain types of competitive traffic. And indeed traffic shaping within the network may jeopardize innovation and hamper the development of “the” tool to advance an information and knowledge society.

Tools to prioritize Internet traffic through home routers are also available. These traffic shaping technologies can be an effective tool towards improving QoS on a broadband connection, particularly if they are under the user’s control.

This equipment allows users to establish bandwidth priority levels for common applications and services. These devices are particularly popular with gamers and VoIP users since they allow certain applications to have priority through the router and out to the modem, particularly over other time-insensitive Internet traffic.