>> ^Tymbrwulf:

quality
Goddamnit this shit pisses me off. Data is data. It's all a bunch of 1's and 0's moving through the backbones and pipelines of the Internet.


I disagree with this to some extent, and that is why I'm sympathetic to charliem. Some data needs to pass with minimal interruption to provide a satisfactory user experience. Which is why it is correct to say that some level of traffic shaping is acceptable. For instance, there is an obvious advantage to prioritizing streaming video data over downloaded video data, or text data. Still I think it's important that they legislate those switching priorities so that it only cares about the type of data, not the source of the data.

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>> ^charliem:


These net-neutrality pundits seem to be making out that the big companies want to abuse the way that QOS is assigned....ie. identifying streams from providers that pay a premium and giving them a higher priority, irrespective of the traffic class.
Is this whats actually happening?

No, but that's because the internet has always had Net Neutrality regulation up to this point, through FCC fiat.

Net Neutrality advocates want new legislation that enshrines the de facto FCC policy in law, so that it's not subject to the whims of whoever is FCC chair (or put another way, so that Internet regulation isn't dependent on the honesty of the occupant of the White House).

As for whether the companies would do the things the Net Neutrality activists say they would, the telecom companies are openly saying they need to do things like bandwidth metering, and selling prioritized traffic rights because otherwise they simply won't be able to afford expanding their networks to meet demand.

>> ^charliem:


If thats the case, then the only regulation that needs to be passed is one that enforces the correct application of QOS categorization...ensuring that Voice gets Voice level QOS tagging, video gets video tagging, generic content gets no real priority, and network management protocols get highest (routing / switching protocols).
I dont see how they could make that political at all....present it to congress in that way, and enforce correct prioritization as law. No problem.


Thinking as a technical guy, I agree, that would be ideal. The problem is, who decides what "correct" application of QoS is? The FCC? A standards board dominated by representatives of the telecommunications committees? The network providers themselves?

There's also a problem with enforcement. That doesn't go away under pure neutrality, but at least then you're just testing to see if the service providers are doing any traffic shaping, rather than having to get into the nitty gritty of the specific shaping logic, and then trying to discern whether the intent of each rule was noble (traffic optimization) or criminal (anti-competitive business practice, or an attempt to limit free speech).

Smart companies could and would easily muddy the waters in the second system. (e.g. We're not limiting bandwidth to Netflix because we have a business agreement with Hulu, it's because Netflix is a huge resource hog that's causing slowdowns for our other customers...).