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Father of Internet Warns Against Net Neutrality
An anonymous reader writes "At a recent talk at the Computer History Museum Robert Kahn, co-inventor of TCP/IP, warned against net neutrality legislation that could hinder experimentation and innovation. Calling 'net neutrality' a slogan, Khan also cautioned against 'dogmatic views of network architecture.' A video of the talk is also available."
So we should allow the highest bidder to choke off the bandwidth from their less wealthy competitors? Honestly, can someone explain to me how this would be a good idea?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Wouldn't net neutrality help to stop the ridiculous arbitrary blocking of ports that many ISPs impose, which basically keeps people from using the Internet as it was intended?
Any legislation will hurt the ability of people to innovate.
Not true. The regional broadband duopolies can do far more to hamstring innovation than net neutrality legislation would*. For example, with net neutrality, anybody is free to innovate in the fields of VoIP and VoD. But if the broadband companies had their druthers, they'd be the only providers of those services to their customers. How does that help innovation?
* Yes, it's possible to craft legislation that would do more to hamstring innovation and then label it "net neutrality", but then, at its core, it wouldn't strictly be net neutrality legislation.
"Net neutrality" requires that the government first define "neutral".
Follow that to its logical conclusion and you can only conclude that passing "net neutrality" will end up resulting in government regulation of the internet.
Does anyone here that's a good idea?
So, can you explain to us why government regulation of the internet is a good idea?
My stance is that, since the experts are disagreeing over the issue, the worst thing to do is to write something into law.
In fact, I believe the only reason the issue is so important is because too many things have already been written into law. Specifically, existing laws make it difficult to set up ones own telecom operation. This is what makes the incumbents so powerful, and this is why we need to be worried about them locking people out or providing suboptimal service.
If the barriers to entry were lower, perhaps we could have different carriers for different niches, rather than what is basically a yes/no proposition.
If you _really_ want to know my opinion about whether there should be net neutrality or not, I would say there has never been, nor will there ever be net neutrality. There are always some who get better service than others, even if nobody is making a specific effort to make it that way. While I think ensuring everyone can have a certain minimum level of access to information has some merit, network neutrality is either a misnomer or taking things waaaaay too far.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Using this definition, I am very confused, as I would expect Kahn to support this type of thing. He talks about innovation a lot. I always thought the prevailing consensus was that if ISPs have their way and quash NN, little companies would be effectively "locked out" of the Internet.
Am I wrong here?
When people talk about Net Neutrality, do they mean ISPs can't do any packet shaping at all?
I am, for example, all for ISPs giving lower priority to VOIP if they need to. What I am not OK with is some VOIP company paying an ISP to give them greater priority priority, while the company that can not afford to pay gets shafted.
Working in this article like "the ability of systems engineers to improve latency and jitter issues" make it sounds like no packing shaping at all is allowed. Is that right?
With all due respect to Mr.Kahn, who I am told invented TCP/IP: Just why should we give any weight to his notion of the best way to keep the Internet from becoming just another channel for corporate interests, instead of the wide-open agora of information and ideas that it has become.
We have lived during a rare time, when such a powerful medium has somehow managed to keep from being completely commercialized past any recognition of the fragile and open universe it was for its first decade. There may be no way to stop the dictates of the almighty "marketplace" from having its way with the Internet like a brute with a virgin child, but I give credit to those who are trying to think of ways to keep it free for a few more years.
If we ever see the full-out commercialization and commoditization of the 'net, we will have lost something precious - something that made the turn of the millennium a great time to be alive.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Pretty easy... just look at cable TV.
Amazing how all the cable people required monopolies to run cable but no one needed a monopoly to run high speed internet.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
And more with QoS would be allowing the usage of 1 line...
.5 MiB/s for (video)phones and 1.5 MiB/s for data, or any combination therof. If you needed a few phone lines more, just dedicate more bandwidth up to your total pipe.
Think of this: You have a big pipe CAPABLE of total 2 MiB/s up and down. You could section that off so that you have
The key would be if YOU could control your OWN QoS, not if the companies force it towards you....