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Net Neutrality a Threat to Online OSes?
tomtechie writes "OSWeekly.com talks about net neutrality and how it would impact the world of operating systems, both online and offline. The author states, 'I know of a couple of people who support the legislation despite the fact that it could possibly enable ISPs to restrict access for those who are not willing to pay a premium fee for broader access. They have a strong belief that it is needed in order to make sure that ISPs have the tools and funds to expand their already overtaxed networks. Keeping in line with their belief system, this allows ISPs to make sure that developing connectivity can in fact, keep up with the explosive demand for broadband in more places. In other words, it allows for fatter pipes.'"
Right now, QoS (RSVP) isn't part of IPv4 and doesn't progress outside of a LAN... So if the possibility to enable QoS over the Internet makes some packets more valuable at a cost premium (to the sender or reciever? With snailmail it is the sender who pays for first-class rather than third-class) regarding traffic control, the results are the others will become less valuable.
Look at RFC 791 and the Type of Service field. QoS has been built into IP since the beginning, and its implementation just left up to individual networks. If people want QoS on the Internet, they should force their ISPs to form contracts with each other to respect the QoS bits that customers set, and adopt pricing schemes for everyone to pay for the QoS packets they send. There shouldn't need to be any distinction between what traffic is marked for QoS, so long as the ISP maintains enough reserved bandwidth to send all the QoS they sell to customers.