The Danger In Exempting Wireless From Net Neutrality

nmpost writes "Nearly two years ago, the FCC outlined its rules for net neutrality. Notably absent were rules for wireless networks. There are several legitimate reasons that the same rules applied to wired networks can not apply to wireless networks. However, the same danger lies in leaving wireless networks unguarded against the whims of its administrators. As we move more and more towards a wireless dominated internet, those dangers will become more pronounced. We are going to need a massive investment in infrastructure in this country regardless of net neutrality rules. Demand for wireless is going to continue to grow for many years to come, and providers are not going to be able to let up. Data caps and throttling are understandable now as demand is far outpacing infrastructure growth. Eventually, demand will slow, and these practices will have to be addressed. This is where allowing internet providers to regulate themselves becomes an issue. Self regulation usually does not end well for the consumer. Imagine allowing power plants and oil refineries to determine what chemicals they could pour into the air. Would they have the population's best interest at heart when making that determination? In the future when the infrastructure can match the demand, what will stop internet providers from picking winners and losers over their wireless networks? As conglomerates like Comcast gobble up content providers like NBC, a conflict of interest begins to emerge. There would be nothing from stopping one of the big wireless providers like AT&T or Verizon from scooping up a content provider and prioritizing its data speed over the network."

Comments

Wireless has congestion

[Anonymous Coward]

Wireless networks suffer from congestion a lot more than wired networks. I don't think it's unreasonable for carriers to want to throttle traffic on wireless mediums to ensure mr tethered torrenter isnt destroying everyone else's connection.

Re:Wireless has congestion

[TheRaven64]

Net Neutrality means nothing anymore. The term was hijacked by strawman proposals that had nothing to do with the original concept. It used to mean that you can't prioritise data based on either the source or origin. The idea was that you couldn't prioritise your VoIP or movie streaming service unless you also prioritised everyone else's. The problem with this was that you could use some custom protocol for your service and then you could prioritise traffic for everyone who used that protocol (i.e. you), and degrade everyone else. So the definition evolved slightly to the requirement that you give equal QoS to all data in the same category. That, unfortunately, is very difficult to implement. With the current trend of trying to stuff everything over HTTP, it's often quite difficult to categorise traffic.

There was also an intentional attempt by ISPs to conflate Network Neutrality and lack of QoS in the minds of users. Network Neutrality did not mean that you had to treat latency-sensitive and jitter-sensitive traffic (e.g. VoIP) the same way you had to treat bulk transfers (e.g. software update downloads). The networks tried to pretend that it did, and so you get the nonexistent problem in an earlier post of porn downloads meaning you can't make telephone calls. In reality, it's fine to reserve, say, 10% of the total throughput for latency-sensitive communications and use that for voice traffic. The people doing the downloading have buffering and so don't notice the slight increase in latency or the extra jitter when people start and stop using the high priority channel. The voice users don't know that their traffic is higher priority, and it abruptly ceases to be if they cross some throughput threshold.

My biggest complaint is that ISPs are not required to publicly disclose their traffic management policy. If they were, then customers could make an informed decision (e.g. this ISP will cost you more because you can't use that VoIP provider with it and get adequate quality).

Ham radio

[girlintraining]

I could solve all the problems associated with these profiteering asshats with a simple solution: Allow people to be licensed to broadcast internet. Right now amateur radio can't offer internet access. If private persons were allowed to do with a larger spectrum space what they can do right now with wifi, I suspect that their entire business model would implode.

Mesh networking is a mature technology -- and it doesn't require the infrastructure these companies offer. Make it legal for people to build wireless communities. But I guess that would be too radical of a concept for the FCC; They seem only interested in appearing to support the common citizen, rather than actually supporting them. There's no profit in handing over spectrum to "the public", the group the FCC claims to represent, and whom the FCC mandate the spectrum is actually owned by, for which the FCC is merely an administrator of.

Re:Ham radio

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Fact is you DO have the WiFi bands open, and yet very few people setup mesh networks.

Another technically true, but misleading statement. The wifi frequencies are "open" they just aren't open enough because transmitter power is still extremely limited. To the point where it is unreasonable to expect a single wifi access point to cover more than an acre of so of open land. Ham radio operators are allowed to transmit at levels of power that are orders of magnitude stronger.

Get back to this argument when anyone can run a wifi base-station that will cover at least 5 square miles.

Are you kidding me?

[The Master Control P]

Demand for wireless is going to continue to grow for many years to come, and providers are not going to be able to let up. Data caps and throttling are understandable now as demand is far outpacing infrastructure growth. Eventually, demand will slow, and these practices will have to be addressed.

Um, NO?

Demand for bandwidth will always exceed supply. Because it's ridiculously easy (more often than not to the point of the application doing it by default) to use more and lower-latency bandwidth, while it is difficult and time-consuming to install more supply. And this becomes ever more true the farther you move up the tiers. Installing new high-quality GigE cards and 8-port switch in my office? Under an hour from opening the NewEgg box to a job well done. Rolling out 10GigE to the whole floor? All week for a crew of guys. Rolling out 100M or 1G fiber to whole cities? Years of work and the job's barely even begun.

And if anyone thinks demand will saturate, there are always applications waiting in the wings to use more bandwidth.