The Future of the Internet

bariswheel writes "An important piece written by a Columbia Law professor addresses sensitive questions about the future of the Internet: "Is it a problem if the gatekeepers (i.e. a duopoly of the local phone and cable companies) discriminate between favored and disfavored uses of the Internet? How would you take it if AT&T makes it slower and harder to reach Gmail and quicker and easier to reach Yahoo! mail? What if I-95 announced an exclusive deal with General Motors to provide a special "rush-hour" lane for GM cars only? Is there something special about "carriers" and infrastructure--roads, canals, electric grids, trains, the Internet--that mandates special treatment? Should content providers like Google, or subscribers like us, pay for the bandwidth consumed?" Here's hoping that sites like Google Techtalks and Channel 9 remain 'free' and available for the next 10 years."

Comments

Canadian ISPs already discriminate

[Kombat]

I'm not sure if similar actions are widespread in the US yet, but up here, Canadian ISPs already discriminate based on content. Ports used by popuplar P2P software is throttled to the point where throughput is almost choked off completely. Many Rogers subscribers have found a way to "hack" their torrent bandwidth back to normal, at least temporarily, by using the same port Rogers is using for their new VOIP service.

Resistance seems futile, as no ISP wants their users using P2P apps. What can we do? We used to threaten to cancel our services with providers guilty of bandwidth throttling, but now they all do it, so what options are left, besides simply accepting that this is how the future of the Internet will be? Normal access to "preferred" sites that make the ISP money, and discouraged (throttled) access to sites and services that cost the ISP money. It sucks. I'm open to suggestions.

Re:Canadian ISPs already discriminate

[tacokill]

And what difference is that?

Blocking is blocking. Period. When you start saying "well, in this case, blocking is OK", then you open up the door to what we have in front of us. It doesn't matter whether its a site, a port, or a specific protocol. In all of those cases, the ISP has inserted themselves between you and your endpoint site/host so they can make decisions for you as to what does and does not get passed between you and the other party.

One could certainly argue that there are real positive uses of this model -- like closing port 25 on residential IP's -- but by doing this, don't forget that you give the ISP's a slippery slope that they can travel down. The way IP is designed, I should be able to get a packet of content (ANY content) from point A to point B, as long as both of those points exist. The travel route and the content of the package are irrelevant.

That's it. That's the internet in a nutshell. Anything that is done between point A and point B (filtering, spoofing, blocking, whatever), is by nature, altering the transmission. So if you want to block, fine, but don't call it the INTERnet. Call it a "bunch of networks that might be able to talk to each other, if allowed"

We know that every single packet from every single customer CAN be inspected and approved or denied by anyone in the middle of point A and point B. The question is: Are we, as a society, going to allow our Internet Providers to selectively choose what can and can not be sent between the endpoints?


(I didn't mean to but I think I just gave a resounding support post for net-neutrality.)

Bandwidth is already paid for

[rueger]

"...Should content providers like Google, or subscribers like us, pay for the bandwidth consumed?""

Again, both consumers, via the monthly charges to their ISP, and Google, via the presumably large charges from whoever provides their bandwidth, are already paying for bandwidth consumed.

Why do people keep repeating this absurd claim?

Re:Bandwidth is already paid for

[eyrieowl]

Amen. I got some nasty responses to a similar comment I made on a net-neutrality post on digg. We pay for bandwidth consumed. In fact, most of us, the VAST majority of internet users, pay for MORE bandwidth than we actually consume. Now, I'm sure that the prices reflect that to some extent, but, there is no escaping the fundamental fact that this whole debate is not about fairness, it is simply about greed. I have not heard anything remotely convincing that the network providers are *losing* money...if they were, they would be sure to charge the users more money. But they aren't, and this isn't about them needing to rescue their business model somehow. It would be a terrible thing if *any* societal infrastructure were made non-neutral. There is no way that this would benefit consumers, it would ONLY benefit corporations.

Re:Bandwidth is already paid for

[mrchaotica]

Why do people keep repeating this absurd claim?

"Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it"

(I'll skip the attribution to avoid invoking Godwin's Law. Besides, the original context isn't important in this case anyway since it applies regardless.)

Another one that speaks in a field with no clue

[unity100]

Just another persona totally irrelevant to internet and speaks on things he has no clue about.

Can you imagine what would happen if such things, filtering, seperate pricing, access procedures etc should be done, with hundreds of thousands sites erected each day, maybe 20 thousand and more isps active around the world, hordes of networks, satellite and telecom operators, datacenters ?

The result would be an INFINITE and ever increasing number of protocols, prices, agreements, disagreements, filters, etc and stuff !!!

How much cpu power would the operators need to determine what goes to where and what goes not if such mess was introduced ? Google would have to erect a new server farm to process 'filters', and it would be one that is comparable to the one it uses for search processing.

'Pay for bandwith' my arse. The profits from bandwidth would go to maintaining endless server farms all around the world to process access limitations.

I repeat : people should not be allowed to propose laws in an area they have no expertise, training or experience in.

Will it play this way?

[GPLDAN]

Do this: Traceroute to your favorite sites. Understand that traceroute is no longer the tool it once was, ICMP ttl-exceeded messages are not always handled, and you aren't seeing things like paths over MPLS where there are tags that created switched paths across the net. But... it's the best thing the end user has, unless your broadband provider or ISP disallows it.

On average, how many carriers did you cross? What would happen if a carrier started using Class-Based Queueing techniques just across their sections? What if they started creating tariffs, quotas, import fees of classified "bulk traffic', or started using the differentiated services model at internet peering points? I'm not talking about rate-queues and other things that guys on NANOG routinely do now, I'm talking about corporate sponsored refusal to carry types of traffic.

A complex system of MPLS paths based on traffic types would result, BGP tags would get processed to have implied meanings (i.e. AT&T won't carry my SMTP messages unless they are destined for email servers in the AT&T network) and on the whole, it would get pretty messy.

Now, the economic result of this would be that carriers would set up trade barriers to each other, not unlike nations do. And the net-net would be... market consolidation. How could it not? The small ISPs and regional carriers would eventually fall prey to larger groups who would create mutually beneficial arrangements to carry traffic and create cartels to approach the major websites, esp. the search engines, and demand that they pay up. Google would need to pay into formed groups like "the Consolodated Tier-1 providers of North America" to allow broadband users to reach Google services.

The end result would be the fragmentation of the internet. Large parts of it would be unreachable from certain parts of the world. And that's over and above national firewalls like the Chinese have, this wouldn't be censorship - this would just be business. The board at AT&T now has the technology to really implement differentiation, and now they want to use it. To make money, at the expense of content providers and value-add information sites. I don't see how that is a good thing.

I don't get it....

[PFI_Optix]

I pay my ISP to provide me with a connection to the internet.

Google pays their ISP to provide them with a connection to the internet.

Why exactly should either ISP be allowed to charge extra for me to connect to Google?

Look at it this way: If I pay for a 3 Mb connection and Google can deliver a 3 Mb downstream, I expect my ISP to allow that. Otherwise, I am NOT getting what I pay for. So basically what a number of ISPs want to do is promise their customers a connection which they will not deliver unless a given website *also* pays for their customers to get that connection.

Roads...

[mobby_6kl]

From the summary: What if I-95 announced an exclusive deal with General Motors to provide a special "rush-hour" lane for GM cars only?

I think they already do this in some states, except they discriminate by how many blow-up dolls you are transporting in your vehicle.

Re:Govt interference more likely

[Austerity Empowers]

To qualify to use an HOV lane, you must have the requisite number of people in your car. You're given entitlement to use this lane because you are trying to help reduce congestion, help save gas, help reduce pollution, etc. There's no extra charge and no vendor lock in. It works mostly because many people would rather get to work fast, even if it means sharing their car with others.

It's not at all a parallel situation with what AT&T wants to do. Your analogy may call attention to the one value of tiered interenet, but completely ignores that they way in which a greedy monopoly will use it as a weapon to lock down consumers. The government, the only authority for HOV lanes, may be a useless bureacracy but we can control the proliferation and governance of HOV lanes easily with our votes and angry protests. We have absolutely no control at all over AT&T...unless we want to live without a phone or internet.

Lovely idea, but wrong

[Billosaur]

This is the basic case for network neutrality--to prevent centralized control over the future of the Internet. But there's a long-standing rebuttal that goes like this: A broadband company already has incentives to make the network neutral, because it's a better network that way. If AT&T makes money on an exclusive deal, they'll lose it somewhere else. Whatever money AT&T earns by prioritizing Google rather than Yahoo!, it will lose by making its product--broadband service--less attractive to consumers. By this logic, regulating the Bells is a waste of time. AT&T and Verizon also say that they must be free to discriminate to justify their investments in building networks. If you don't let us discriminate, they say, we won't build.

That would assume that "consumers" actually had a choice, but as we all know, competition is a misnomer. With acquisitions and mergers, the number of carriers continues to shrink. And while you might think you can get whatever phone company you want wherever you are, think again. My folks in North Carolina have one carrier available: Sprint. They can't switch phone companies. They use calling cards for long distance, so they don't have to pay Sprint's outrageous fees or deal with their crappy customer service.

Think cable's a good alternative? Bah! I have to use Optimuj Online through Cablevision, because I can't get Comcast (not that I really want to). There's no competition -- in my area its Cablevision or satellite, take your pick.

If you think the Bells and or cable giants stand to lose by restricting service or charging more to some comapnies than others, think again. The customer doesn't have much of a choice in most cases.

My prediction

[bunions]

is that gradually the internet will become TV. ISPs already provide massively asymmetric connection with far higher down than up speeds. The EULAs already prohibit you from serving content - eventually someone'll start enforcing that. They'll start refusing to relay traffic that might expose them to liability, such as p2p networks and usenet.

I also predict a return to BBS-like behavior based on wireless mesh networks, but that's another post.

If this comes to pass, you all owe me a dollar.

Calling Eliot Spitzer - enforce common carrier!

[zerofoo]

Common carrier status, in the telco world, affords some protections to carriers regarding the use of their networks. Carriers can not be held responsible for the content that crosses their networks, but in exchange, they must carry each other's content.

Law makers should allow carriers to decide if they want to be "net neutral". After all, businesses don't like to be told what to do, so let businesses decide.

Lawmakers should offer a choice to carriers:

1. Claim common carrier status, and carry all traffic equally.

2. Refuse common carrier status, carry any traffic you like, in any manner you choose, - but be held responsible for all illegal traffic and use of the network.

You can't have it both ways. You can't pick and choose the data that crosses your network, but claim you know nothing about the data.

-ted

Re:What if

[quentin_quayle]

"What if... The biggest ISP decided to partner with a lot of content providers and limit that content to their customers only? I think it would be called AOL and people would jump ship and go to smaller ISPs.

"Doesn't the same apply here?"
-- missing000

What if, in a few years, a few giant ISPs are the only ones left for 99% of USians to choose from, and they all discriminate by content, protocol, and application? Then where will people "jump ship" to? How will we even get news or viewpoints that don't conform to the commercial interests of the few big ISPs?

Very slowly, I think, if at all.