Policy Wonk Castigates Net Neutrality

An anonymous reader writes "Tom Giovanetti, president of the Dallas, Texas based public policy think tank Institute for Policy Innovation envisions a chaotic world as a result of Net Neutrality. He says a flood of undiscriminated traffic to and from Youtube, Coldplay, and Victoria's Secret will bring down the Internet, leading to failures of IPTV, VOIP, and emergency services which depend on VOIP. Is he right or wrong?." From the article: "... government should be about fostering a dynamic and risk-taking economy, not preserving the certainty of anyone's business models. Net neutrality regulations would severely restrict broadband providers' right to enter into contracts and to try new business models while protecting the business models of Google and Ebay." Compare this with George Ou's commentary on this subject from yesterday.

Comments

Multiple observations:

[plasmacutter]

First off.. they have been saying one thing or another would "overload the internet" for ages and it has yet to happen.

second. i want to know what his stance on music downloading is given this quote:

"government should be about fostering a dynamic and risk-taking economy, not preserving the certainty of anyone's business models."

if he's against "online piracy" than he is a hyppocrite.

MY HEAD ACHES NOW

[unity100]

Over a day and a half of fury about how the internet is being sold by the u.s. house to the big bucks, my head now aches.

I f.ckin do not believe how you, u.s. people can ALLOW for such debate to even take place, such s.hit rule the agenda, and do not blow your congressmen's senator's ears off about the matter.

The biggest revolution, since the french revolution, the internet, is being handed over to the minority elite.

This is our 'thing'. This is the 'thing' of our times. This is one of the most important thing in our times.

My head really aches, and im weary.

TCP backs off; UDP does not

[Russ Nelson]

VOIP uses UDP. When you get network congestion, you simply get packets dropped and your -oice get- littl- ch-ppy. TCP stacks will send fewer packets per second when packets get dropped.

Ignoramuses keep bringing this issue up as if it's going to KILL THE INTERNET, so we MUST CHANGE INTERNET POLICY. They tried this back in the early 90's when IBM was running the T-1 Internet backbone through some subsidiary. What didn't work back then still won't work today. For an arbitrary packet on the Internet, you cannot tell in which direction the value is flowing; thus you cannot figure out who to charge.

Disincentive to increase bandwidth

[pyza]

Let me see if I'm understanding this.

If there is enough bandwidth then everyone's traffic will get through regardless of Net Neutrality. If there is congestion though, without Net Neutrality only traffic from sites that paid the extortion fee will get through.

Does this not lead to a situation where it is ideal for an ISP to maintain a certain level of congestion at all times in order to ensure that there exists a reason to pay the extortion fee?

One the other hand with Net Neutrality in place it's in the ISP's best interest to maintain an adequate level of bandwidth to make sure everyone's traffic gets through.

Re:Justifiable Reasoning

[CDarklock]

Hi Russ... I read you regularly, even though we don't always agree.

On this, we do. Right now, the commercial internet works because I pay someone to connect me to the internet and give me a certain amount of bandwidth. I do this for my connection at home, because I want bandwidth to get what I ask to see. I do this for my server at a data center, because I want bandwidth to get to people that ask to see me.

When I use bandwidth to my own server, like when I get my email, I pay twice for that bandwidth. I pay for sending the email from my server, and I pay for receiving the email at my desktop. And that's fine. It makes perfect sense to me.

What isn't fine is that now someone in the middle is saying that I should have to pay them extra so I can use the bandwidth I'm already paying to have. They seem to be of the opinion that I need to pay THREE people for the bandwidth I use. I understand that there are two ends to the connection, so I need to pay people on both sides. But this third charge is someone in the middle. How many "third" charges *are* there? How many networks does my data traverse on the way from point A to point B? Can they all charge me? When? If I go from network A to network B and then back to network A, do I have to pay network A twice?

This is a big-ass can of worms. We need to keep it well and truly sealed.