Net neutrality

Network neutrality (equivalently "net neutrality", "internet neutrality" or "NN") refers to a principle applied to residential broadband networks, and potentially to all broadband networks. Precise definitions vary, but a broadband network free of restrictions on the kinds of equipment attached and the modes of communication allowed would be considered neutral by most advocates, provided it met additional tests relating to the degradation of various communication streams by others. Arguably, no network is completely neutral, hence neutrality represents for some an ideal condition toward which networks and their operators may strive.

The term was coined in European telecommunications law around 2003 and imported to the US as the FCC commenced consideration of re-classifying residential DSL as an Information Service, consistent with Cable Internet. Advocates didn't dispute consistent regulation, but believed that both should be regulated according to the more strict Telecommunications Service guidelines, which were traditional for services provided by telephone companies.

In order to compete with Broadband Cable TV's Triple Play service, telecommunications companies have begun using Quality of service mechanisms to prioritize non-Internet telephone and IPTV television traffic over Internet subscriber traffic on their residential broadband networks in order to maximize user satisfaction. Since a similar practice is widely used in Cable TV networks, its prohibition on DSL, FTTH and other telephone company-provided networks is seen by net neutrality critics as arbitrary. Accordingly, "net neutrality" has been accused of being, at best, "a solution in search of a problem" and of eliminating incentives to upgrade networks and launch next generation network services . Bob Kahn, the Internet protocol's co-inventor, says the term net neutrality is a slogan. Kahn's view is shared by most senior internetworking engineers, with the notable exception of Google employee Vint Cerf .

However, activists fear that telecom companies may also use this power to discriminate between traffic types, charging tolls on content from some content providers (i.e. websites, services, protocols), particularly competitors. Their worry is that failure to pay the tolls would result in poor service or no service for certain websites or certain types of applications. At least one major American telecommunications company is alleged to support this idea, but the context of their remarks is disputed . Neutrality proponents claim that telecom companies seek to impose the tiered service model more for the purpose of profiting from their control of the pipeline rather than for any demand for their content or services. Others have stated that they believe "net neutrality" to be primarily important as a preservation of current freedoms. Bob Kahn says he fears that the internet could fragment 'anything that will end up [permanently] fragmenting the net I am opposed to'.

Yet a third group finds the terms of both sides of this debate dubious.

See also: Network neutrality in the US

Definitions of Network Neutrality

Advocates offer three principal definitions of Network Neutrality:

Absolute Non-Discrimination

Columbia University School of Law professor Tim Wu: ""Network neutrality is best defined as a network design principle. The idea is that a maximally useful public information network... aspires to treat all content, sites, and platforms equally. This allows the network to carry every form of information and support every kind of application. The principle suggests that information networks are often more valuable when they are less specialized – when they are a platform for multiple uses, present and future."

Cardozo Law School professor Susan Crawford: insist that a neutral Internet must forward packets on a first-come, first served basis, without regard for Quality of Service considerations.

Limited Discrimination without QoS Tiering

American lawmakers have introduced bills that would allow Quality of Service discrimination as long as no special fee is charged for higher-quality service.

Limited Discrimination and Tiering

Sir Tim Berners-Lee: allows higher fees for QoS as long as there is no exclusivity in service contracts: "If I pay to connect to the net with a given quality of service, and you pay to connect to the net with the same or higher quality of service, then you and I can communicate across the net, with that quality of service. That's all.".

Applications of net neutrality

Timeline

• The term "net neutrality" was coined only recently, but advocates argue that the concept existed in the age of the telegraph. In 1860, a US federal law subsidizing a coast-to-coast telegraph line stated that

...messages received from any individual, company, or corporation, or from any telegraph lines connecting with this line at either of its termini, shall be impartially transmitted in the order of their reception, excepting that the dispatches of the government shall have priority.

— An act to facilitate communication between the Atlantic and Pacific states by electric telegraph., June 16, 1860

Strowger is said to have invented the automatic exchange because telephone operators were non neutral

• The automatic telephone exchange was created by Almon Brown Strowger in 1888 as a way to bypass biased telephone operators who diverted unsuspecting customers to his competitors. This automating created a "neutral" environment that was freer from unseen tampering to telephone users. .
• The early roots of the Internet were created by DARPA with ongoing support from government officials as a United States-funded (hence publicly funded) research network governed by an Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) prohibiting commercial activity. In the early 1990s, it was privatized and the AUP was lifted for commercial users.
• The end-to-end principle of Internet networking, coined as early as 1983, argued that network intelligence didn't preclude the need for intelligence in end systems, which allows the network to be both "dumb" and functional for many purposes.
• The Internet2 project concluded, in 2001, that QoS protocols were probably not deployable on the Abilene network with equipment available at the time.
• In 2003 Tim Wu published and popularized a proposal for a net neutrality rule, in his paper "Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination." The paper considered Network Neutrality in terms of neutrality between applications, as well as neutrality between data and QOS sensitive traffic, and proposed some legislation to potentially deal with these issues.
• In early 2005, in the Madison River case, the FCC for the first time showed a willingness to enforce its network neutrality principles by opening an investigation about Madison River Communications, a local telephone carrier that was blocking voice over IP service.
• On August 5, 2005, the FCC adopted a policy statement stating its adherence to four principles of network neutrality.
• In November 2005 Edward Whitacre, Jr. then CEO of SBC stated 'there's going to have to be some mechanism for these [internet upstarts] who use these pipes to pay for the portion they're using', even though both the users and Google were paying for their usage of the Internet already, and that 'The Internet can't be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment'; sparking a furious debate. SBC spokesman Michael Balmoris said that Whitacre was misinterpreted and his comments only referred to new tiered services.
• 2006- over 1,000,000 signatures were delivered to Congress in favor of a network neutrality
• The Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act of 2006 would have made it a violation of the Clayton Antitrust Act for broadband providers to discriminate against any web traffic, refuse to connect to other providers, block or impair specific (legal) content; would have prohibited the use of admission control to determine network traffic priority. Approved 20-13 by the House Judiciary committee on May 25, 2006 but was never taken up on the House floor and therefore failed to become law.
• A bill called Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act of 2006 was introduced in the US House of Representatives, which referenced the principles enunciated by the FCC and authorized fines up to $750,000 for infractions. It was passed 321-101 by the full House of Representatives on June 8, 2006 but failed to become law when its companion measure was filibustered in the Senate.
• The Center for American Progress held a 90 minute debate on Monday July 17, 2006 in Washington.
• Bob Kahn, coinventor of TCP/IP and one of the fathers of the Internet, declared his opposition to Net Neutrality legislation in a talk at the Computer History Museum in January, 2007

Technology trends

Some contemporary trends in the use and provision of internet services addressed by the debate are:

Users

• The requirements of Voice over IP and online games for low latency bandwidth.
• The increasing use of high bandwidth applications, such as online games, and music and video downloading.
• The increasing use of wireless home networks, which allow for neighbors to share an Internet connection, thereby (in some cases) reducing revenues for the service providers. In urban areas this factor can be very large, with a large number of people sharing one individual person's connection, although performance often is poor.

Service providers

• Increasing use of traffic shaping by many or most broadband providers to control P2P and other services.
• Improvements in networking technology, which make providing broadband service, on the aggregate, cheaper.
• High bandwidth video and audio telecommunications over the Internet (including Voice Over IP technology) which threaten the land line revenues of Telco Internet service providers.
• Deploying content filtering technology to stop spam and other attacks.[6]

Governments

• The trend of governments funding the construction of high-speed networks in countries like South Korea and France, and for cities to build their own wireless networks, and their more gradual deployment in many areas of the U.S.

Quality of Service and Internet Protocols

Main article: Quality of service

Internet routers forward packets according to the diverse peering and transport agreements that exist between network operators. Many networks using Internet protocols now employ Quality of Service (QoS), and Network Service Providers frequently enter into Service Level Agreements with each other embracing some sort of QoS.

There is no single, uniform method of interconnecting networks using IP, and not all networks that use IP are part of the Internet. IPTV networks such as AT&T's U-Verse service are isolated from the Internet, and are therefore not covered by network neutrality agreements.

The IP datagram includes a 3-bit wide Precedence field and a larger DiffServ Code Point are used to request a level of service, consistent with the notion that protocols in a layered architecture offer services through Service Access Points. This field is sometimes ignored, especially if it requests a level of service outside the originating network's contract with the receiving network. It is commonly used in private networks, especially those including WiFi networks where priority is enforced. While there are several ways of communicating service levels across Internet connections, such as SIP, RSVP, IEEE 802.11e, and MPLS, the most common scheme combines SIP and DSCP. Router manufacturers now sell routers that have logic enabling them to route traffic for various Classes of Service at "wire-speed".

With the emergence of multimedia, VoIP, and other applications that benefit from low latency, various attempts to address the inability of some private networks to limit latency have arisen, including the proposition of offering tiered service levels that would shape Internet transmissions at the network layer based on application type. These efforts are ongoing, and are starting to yield results as wholesale Internet transport providers begin to amend service agreements to include service levels.

Network neutrality has no history in the design documents (RFCs) describing the Internet protocols. Advocates claim it represents an undocumented property of protocol layering in which higher-layer protocols may not communicate service requirements to lower-layer protocols, a highly idiosyncratic interpretation of protocol engineering. (In conventional network engineering practice, each protocol in a layered system exposes Service Access Points to higher layers that can be used to request a level of service appropriate to the needs of higher-layer protocols.)

Over-provisioning

If the core of a network has more bandwidth than is permitted to enter at the edges, then good QoS can be obtained without policing. The telephone network employs admission control to limit user demand on the network core, but packet networks employ a different technique, statistical multiplexing, which seeks to provide more core bandwidth than is typically demanded by end systems. Over-provisioning is a form of statistical multiplexing that makes liberal estimates of peak user demand. Over-provisioning is used in private networks such as WebEx and the Internet 2 Abilene Network, an American university network.

The internet is actually a series of exchange points interconnecting private networks and not a network in its own right .

Quality of Service Procedures

Over-provisioning is not above controversy. Unlike the Internet 2 Abilene Network, the Internet's core is owned and managed by a number of different Network Service Providers, not a single entity. Hence its behavior is much more stochastic or unpredictable. Therefore, research continues on QoS procedures that are deployable in large, diverse networks.

There are two principal approaches to QoS in modern packet-switched networks, a parameterized system based on an exchange of application requirements with the network, and a prioritized system where each packet identifies a desired service level to the network.

On the Internet, Integrated services ("IntServ") implements the parameterized approach. In this model, applications use the Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP) to request and reserve resources through a network.

Differentiated services ("DiffServ") implements the prioritized model. DiffServ marks packets according to the type of service they need. In response to these markings, routers and switches use various queuing strategies to tailor performance to requirements. (At the IP layer, differentiated services code point (DSCP) markings use the first 6 bits in the TOS field of the IP packet header. At the MAC layer, VLAN IEEE 802.1q and IEEE 802.1D can be used to carry essentially the same information.)

Quality of service versus Network Neutrality

It is often claimed that network neutrality is incompatible with quality of service.

However, this depends on the definition of network neutrality used. For example both Tim Berners-Lee and Google's definitions appear to permit it, provided that users that have paid for higher prioritization are not blocked in any way from being able to intercommunicate.

Tim Wu's position seems to be more ambivalent, but allows it provided that is the best way to implement functionality.

Susan Crawford's definition apparently precludes it, except for overprovisioning schemes that provide the same high Quality of Service to all packets at all times.

Pricing models

Broadband Internet access has most often been sold to users based on Excess Information Rate or maximum available bandwidth. Some argue that if ISPs can provide varying levels of service to websites at various prices, this may be a way to manage the costs of unused capacity by selling surplus bandwidth (or "leverage price discrimination to recoup costs of 'consumer surplus'"). However, purchasers of connectivity on the basis of Committed Information Rate or guaranteed bandwidth capacity must expect the capacity they purchase in order to meet their communications requirements.

Current practice in interconnection

While the network neutrality debate continues, network providers often enter into peering arrangements among themselves. These agreements often stipulate how certain information flows should be treated. In addition, network providers often implement various policies such as blocking of port 25 to prevent insecure systems from serving as spam relays, or other ports commonly used by decentralized music search applications (often called "P2P" though all applications on the Internet are essentially peer-to-peer). They also present "terms of service" that often include rules about the use of certain applications as part of their contracts with users. Most "consumer Internet" providers implement policies like these.

However, the effect of peering arrangements among network providers are only local to the peers that enter into the arrangements, and cannot affect traffic flow outside their scope.

Other aspects of neutrality

Columbia University Law School professor Tim Wu observed the Internet is not neutral in terms of its impact on applications having different requirements. It is more beneficial for data applications than for applications that require low latency and low jitter, such as voice and real-time video: "In a universe of applications, including both latency-sensitive and insensitive applications, it is difficult to regard the IP suite as truly neutral." In presenting this analysis Wu shifts focus away from the design of the network for application flexibility. He has proposed regulations on Internet access networks that define net neutrality as equal treatment among similar applications, rather than neutral transmissions regardless of applications. He proposes allowing broadband operators to make reasonable tradeoffs between the requirements of different applications, while regulators carefully scrutinize network operator behavior where local networks interconnect.

In Wu's view of net neutrality, the network should adapt to the diverse needs of emerging applications; in Crawford's view the network's traditional service structure provides a flexible transport designed to support a broad variety of applications.

Professor Rob Frieden of Penn State University [7]offers an assessment of the network neutrality debate with emphasis on the business and operational orientations of managers of telephone and data carriers' physical networks. Professor Frieden also assesses the strengths and weaknesses of positions articulated by Professors Tim Wu and Chris Yoo. .

Changes in carrier technology regulation

The topic is further complicated by the differences between the Internet and earlier communications systems in their regulatory histories. Essentially no new regulations accompanied the Internet when its technology was first made available to private carriers and the public, while the technical operations of most telecommunications services were regulated from their beginnings.

Some of the arguments associated with network neutrality regulations came into prominence in mid 2002, offered by the "High Tech Broadband Coalition", a group comprising developers for Amazon.com, Google, and Microsoft. However, the fuller concept of "Network neutrality" was developed mainly by regulators and legal academics, most prominently law professors Tim Wu and Lawrence Lessig and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell most often while speaking at the Annual Digital Broadband Migration conference or writing within the pages of the Journal of Telecommunications and High Technology Law, both of the University of Colorado School of Law. It is worth noting, however, that the ideas underlying Network Neutrality have a long pedigree in telecommunications practice and regulation.

Proposals for network neutrality laws are generally opposed by the cable television and telephone industries, and some network engineers and free-market scholars from the conservative to libertarian, including Christopher Yoo and Adam Thierer. Opponents argue that (1) Network neutrality regulations severely limit the Internet's usefulness; (2) network neutrality regulations threaten to set a precedent for even more intrusive regulation of the Internet; (3) imposing such regulation will chill investment in competitive networks (e.g., wireless broadband) and deny network providers the ability to differentiate their services; and (4) that network neutrality regulations confuse the unregulated Internet with the highly regulated telecom lines that it has shared with voice and cable customers for most of its history.

According to this view, the Internet has succeeded in attracting users and applications because it has been an oasis of deregulation in the midst of a highly regulated telecom market. Critics of Internet regulation in the name of "net neutrality" also say the Internet is much less neutral than proponents claim, pointing to such practices as the Type of Service header in the IP Datagram, the practice of active queuing described in RFC 2309 and the existence of Integrated Services and Differentiated Services enabling Quality of Service over IP. According to this view, the Internet is still very weak at meeting the needs of real-time and multimedia applications, and its continued evolution is stymied by the onerous regulations proposed in the name of network neutrality.

These views may be said to contrast with the historical development of network neutrality, which involves a retreat from intrusive regulation, and expanded investment in network construction, consumer and business subscriptions, and the technology sector which requires an open and neutral platform for its business model; they may also be said to more accurately describe the Internet as it has been and may become if not stifled by overly-zealous regulation.

There is also the issue of regulatory capture, where the supposedly regulated entities manipulate the system to their advantage (through political power gained by campaign contributions or independent expenditures), either over competitors, or in collusion with them, largely to increase profits and/or exclude market entrants (particularly those employing new technologies). This exclusion and control by various means has been shown historically to be to the ultimate detriment of consumers, both from higher cost and from slowed innovation.

Monopolies and competition versus Network Neutrality

Generally, a network which blocks some nodes or services for the customers of the network would normally be expected to be less useful to the customers than one that didn't.

Therefore for a network to remain significantly non neutral requires either that the customers not be concerned about the particular non neutralities or the customers not have any meaningful choice of providers, otherwise they would presumably switch to another provider with less restrictions.

Given this, some commentators have suggested that network neutrality violations can be enforced under antitrust/anti-monopoly legislation, and that no specific laws or regulations are needed.

Some countries, like the UK make it relatively easy to change ISPs and dozens of options are available, whereas in the U.S. and many other countries only one or two local network providers are available. It would be expected that any NN issues would be more common where monopoly or duopoly providers exist.

Law in the US

See Network neutrality in the US.

There is ongoing legal and political wrangling in the US regarding net neutrality. In the meantime the FCC has claimed some jurisdiction over the issue and has laid down guideline rules that it expects the telecommunications industry to follow.

Law outside the U.S.

Net neutrality in the common carrier sense has been instantiated into law in many countries, including Japan.

In Japan, the nation's largest phone company, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, operates a service called Flet's Square over their FTTH high speed internet connections that serves video on demand at speeds and levels of service higher than generic internet traffic.

In the South Korea, VoIP is blocked on high-speed FTTH networks except where the network operator is the service provider

Debate

The Center for American Progress held a 90 minute debate on July 17, 2006 in Washington DC with Google Vice President and "Chief Internet Evangelist" Vinton Cerf, and David J. Farber, Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University.

For network neutrality

Protecting control of data

Advocates of network neutrality contend that any non-neutral scheme could allow ISPs to unfairly discriminate and control which data they prioritize, such as data from their own sponsors or media interests:

"[These companies] want to be Internet gatekeepers, deciding which Web sites go fast or slow and which won't load at all"..."tax content providers to guarantee speedy delivery of their data."..."to discriminate in favor of their own search engines, Internet phone services, and streaming video — while slowing down or blocking their competitors"..."to reserve express lanes for their own content and services.[8]

On February 7, 2006, Vinton Cerf, a co-inventor of the Internet Protocol (IP), and current Vice President and "Chief Internet Evangelist" at Google, in testimony before Congress, said "allowing broadband carriers to control what people see and do online would fundamentally undermine the principles that have made the Internet such a success." Critics regarded Dr. Cerf's testimony as hyperbolic, since only one example of the abusive behavior he decries has ever been recorded in the US (see the F.C.C. Consent Decree in In the matter of Madison River Communications, LLC).

Claims of data discrimination practices

Save The Internet, an advocacy organization led by media critic Free Press, has cited several situations as examples of discrimination by ISPs, including some in the US:

• In 2005, Canadian telephone giant Telus blocked access to voices-for-change.ca, a website supporting the company's labour union during a labour dispute, as well as over 600 other websites, for about sixteen hours.
• Shaw Cable, a major Canadian internet provider, offers a "quality of service" upgrade for their VoIP service. A number of competing VoIP providers have issued complaints that Shaw may be downgrading competitor's traffic No evidence has been offered to support any such claim.
• In April, Time Warner's AOL blocked all emails that mentioned www.dearaol.com, an advocacy campaign opposing the company's pay-to-send e-mail scheme. An AOL spokesman called the issue an unintentional glitch.
• In February, 2006, some of Cox Cable's customers were unable to access Craig's List because of a confluence of a software bug in the Authentium personal firewall distributed by Cox Cable to improve customers' security and the way that Craigslist had their servers misconfigured. Save the Internet said this was an intentional act on the part of Cox Cable to protect classified ad services offered by its partners. The issue was resolved by correction of the software as well as a change in the network configuration used by Craig's List. Craig's List founder Craig Newmark stated that he believed the blocking was unintentional.

Violations of the principle of network neutrality also occur in the censorship of political, immoral or religious material around the world.[9] For example China [10] and Saudi Arabia [11] both filter content on the Internet, preventing access to certain types of websites. Singapore has network blocks on more than 100 sites. In Britain and Norway telecommunication companies block access to websites that depict sexually explicit images of children. Germany also blocks foreign sites for copyright and other reasons.

In the U.S. in 2004, a small North Carolina telecom company, Madison River Communications, blocked their DSL customers from using the Vonage VoIP service. Service was restored after the FCC intervened and entered into a consent decree that had Madison River pay a fine of $15,000.[12] The FCC retains this authority under all telecommunications legislation pending in the US Congress, with or without "net neutrality" amendments, with an increase in fines to $500,000 under the House bill and $750,000 under the Senate bill.

Worldwide, the Bittorrent application is widely given reduced bandwidth or even in some cases blocked entirely.

In the United Arab Emirates as of 2006, Skype was being blocked.

Worldwide, under heavy attack from spam email, many email servers no longer accept connections except from white-listed hosts. While few care about the rights of spammers, this means that legitimate hosts not on the list are often blocked.

Protecting small providers

Some claim that collecting premium fees from certain "preferred" customers would distort the market for Internet applications in favor of larger and better-funded content providers and against small providers. They argue for banning such financial arrangements, even if those payments might offset total network operating costs ultimately charged to consumers.

Protecting consumers

There is also the question of the service impact on the end user who has purchased broadband access from a carrier, only to experience differing response times in interacting with various content providers, some of whom paid the carrier a "premium" and some who did not.

Preserving internet standards

Numerous commentors have cautioned that authorizing incumbent network providers to override the separation of the transport and application layers of the Internet signals the end of the authority of the fundamental Internet standards and indeed, of the standards-making processes for the Internet themselves.

Advocates of network neutrality observe that any practice that shapes the transmission of bits in the transport layer based on application designs will undermine the design for flexibility of the transport.

The end-to-end principle

One specific aspect of the internet that some advocates say network neutrality is needed in order to insure is the end-to-end principle. Under this principle, a neutral network is a dumb network, merely passing packets according to the needs of applications. This point of view was expressed by David S. Isenberg in his seminal paper, The Rise of the Stupid Network to wit:

A new network "philosophy and architecture," is replacing the vision of an Intelligent Network. The vision is one in which the public communications network would be engineered for "always-on" use, not intermittence and scarcity. It would be engineered for intelligence at the end-user's device, not in the network. And the network would be engineered simply to "Deliver the Bits, Stupid," not for fancy network routing or "smart" number translation. . . . In the Stupid Network, the data would tell the network where it needs to go. (In contrast, in a circuit network, the network tells the data where to go.) In a Stupid Network, the data on it would be the boss. . . .End user devices would be free to behave flexibly because, in the Stupid Network the data is boss, bits are essentially free, and there is no assumption that the data is of a single data rate or data type.

These terms merely signify the network's level of knowledge about and influence over the packets it handles - they carry no connotations of stupidity, inferiority or superiority.

Critics charge that Isenberg reads too much of philosophical significance into a a principle of a purely technical nature. The seminal paper on the End-to-End Principle, End-to-end arguments in system design by Saltzer, Reed, and Clark , actually argues that network intelligence doesn't relieve end systems of the requirement to check inbound data for errors and to rate-limit the sender, not for a wholesale removal of intelligence in the network core. End-to-end is one of many design tools, not the universal one:

The end-to-end argument does not tell us where to put the early checks, since either layer can do this performance-enhancement job. Placing the early retry protocol in the file transfer application simplifies the communication system, but may increase overall cost, since the communication system is shared by other applications and each application must now provide its own reliability enhancement. Placing the early retry protocol in the communication system may be more efficient, since it may be performed inside the network on a hop-by-hop basis, reducing the delay involved in correcting a failure. At the same time, there may be some application that finds the cost of the enhancement is not worth the result but it now has no choice in the matter.

The appropriate placement of functions in a protocol stack depends on many factors.

Level playing field

Savetheinternet.com has argued that the internet currently serves as a "level playing-field," in that end users and content providers are charged a flat fee for access to the entire highspeed infrastructure. They claim that regulations maintaining this dynamic would reward the best ideas rather than the most well-funded ideas. Amounts and type of bandwidth usage need not be specifically charged for, beyond the basic and minimally discriminatory fees for access to ISP servers.

Tiering ineffective at guaranteeing bandwidth

Gary Bachula, Vice President for External Affairs for Internet2, asserts that specific QoS protocols are unnecessary in the core network as long as the core network links are "over-provisioned" to the point that network traffic never encounters delay.

The Internet2 project concluded, in 2001, that the QoS protocols were probably not deployable on its Abilene network with equipment available at that time. While newer routers are capable of following QoS protocols with no loss of performance, equipment available at the time relied on software to implement QoS. The Internet2 Abilene network group also predicted that "logistical, financial, and organizational barriers will block the way toward any bandwidth guarantees" by protocol modifications aimed at QoS. In essence they believe that the economics would be likely to make the network providers deliberately erode the quality of best effort traffic as a way to push customers to higher priced QoS services.

The Abilene network study was the basis for the testimony of Gary Bachula to the Senate Commerce Committee's Hearing on Network Neutrality in early 2006. He expressed the opinion that adding more bandwidth was more effective than any of the various schemes for accomplishing QoS they examined.

Bachula's testimony has been cited by proponents of a law banning Quality of Service as proof that no legitimate purpose is served by such an offering. Of course this argument is dependent on the assumption that over-provisioning is always possible. Obviously factors like natural disasters, delays in installation caused by zoning, domestic politics, and construction permits all affect the ability to pursue an over-provisioned network. Note however, that these are all short term and temporary set backs.

Proponents

Network neutrality regulations are supported by large Internet content companies (e.g., Google, Yahoo, and eBay), consumers-rights groups such as Consumers Union, some high-tech trade associations such the American Electronics Association (AeA), politically liberal blogs, and some elements of the Religious Right.

In April 2006 a large coalition of bloggers, educators and citizen/consumer-oriented advocacy groups -- such as Free Press, American Library Association, Consumers Union and MoveOn -- created "Save The Internet," a grassroots coalition supporting network neutrality regulations. Within two months of its establishment, over 1,000,000 signatures were delivered to Congress in favor of a network neutrality.

A coalition including Steve Wozniak, Susan Crawford, and David Reed has endorsed a distinctive legislative proposal for net neutrality. Most of the major internet application companies are advocates of neutrality regulations, including IAC/InterActiveCorp, Ebay, Amazon, Yahoo!, YouTube, Earthlink and especially Google. Software giant Microsoft has also taken a stance in support of neutrality regulation. Non-profits in support include Moveon.org, Consumer Federation of America, AARP, American Library Association, Gun Owners of America, Public Knowledge, the Media Access Project, the Christian Coalition, and TechNet. Tim Berners-Lee (the inventor of the World Wide Web) has also spoken out in favor of net neutrality.

Cogent Communications, an internet service provider, has made an announcement in favor of certain net neutrality policies.

Against network neutrality

Telecommunications companies, having invested billions of dollars from consumers and government subsidies in new network infrastructure, claim the right under U.S. law to operate the network with minimal government interference. Anti-tiering regulations may indirectly prevent the expansion and improvement of Internet access for their customers, who have used an increasing amount of bandwidth. The telecommunications corporations also claim that a lack of differentiated funding sources has slowed their own corporations' implementations of new technologies and also resulted in elevated prices for many of their customers.

Counterweight to server-side non-neutrality

Those in favor of forms of "non-neutral" tiered internet access argue that the Internet is already not a level-playing field: companies such as Google and Akamai achieve a performance advantage over smaller competitors by replicating servers and buying high-bandwidth services. Should prices drop for lower levels of access, or access to only certain protocols, for instance, a change of this type would make internet usage more neutral, with respect to the needs of those individuals and corporations specifically seeking differentiated tiers of service.

Tim Wu, though a proponent of network neutrality, claims that the current internet is not neutral as, "among all applications", its implementation of best effort generally favors file transfer and other non-time sensitive traffic over real-time communications.

Encouraging investment

Opponents of network neutrality regulations claim they would discourage investment in broadband networks:

"Sweeping and rigid net neutrality legislation could: hinder public safety and homeland security; complicate protecting Americans privacy; erode the quality and responsiveness of the Internet; limit consumers' competitive choices; and discourage investment in broadband deployment to all Americans."[13]

Some argue that the Internet is in the midst of tremendous change due to fiber to the home, peer-to-peer applications, VoIP, and IPTV, and regulations offered to date are potentially damaging to network operation and investment.

Ensuring bandwidth availability

Advocates of "non-neutrality" regulation (or allowance) point to advantages with respect to rationing what perhaps will be scarce bandwidth. Indeed, the topic was opened because of what may be a substantial increase in bandwidth consumption as multi-media uses of the Internet expand. Carriers want content providers who support bandwidth-intensive multi-media Internet traffic to pay the carriers a premium to support further network investments.

A Wall Street Journal op-ed described the amount of data produced globally in exabytes, calling the potential bandwidth crunch the "exaflood" [14].

At times internet traffic has already caused internet services to fail (see congestion collapse and slashdot effect). In such cases, high latency connections result in interruption of services. An environment in which a content provider can provide a guaranteed quality of service to all customers could allow independent content providers to compete with traditional content providers in areas such as television and music broadcast, telephony, and video on demand.

Bram Cohen believes that the next generation of BitTorrent technology being developed by him and Cachelogic may violate some definitions of net neutrality[15].

One of the clearest examples of the need for a highly reliable, low latency, high bandwidth connection, is the developing technology of Remote surgery, where a surgeon can use robotics and communications technology to operate on a patient thousands of miles away. Using dedicated circuits is highly desirable in this situation as the penalty for a communications failure could be death, so they are used in all cases; if they weren't available, prioritized bandwidth would be preferred to normal bandwidth. In a similar category are emergency calls to fire and police.

Residential broadband providers such as Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T claim that as bandwidth-intensive peer-to-peer applications such as BitTorrent become commonplace, the traditional Internet congestion management system, which was not designed to handle continuous, high-bandwidth usage, may no longer be viable, so alternate methods may become necessary. These alternate methods include bandwidth limits and priority-based Quality of Service for voice and video.

Free speech

The Bell companies and some major cable companies view non-discrimination as compelled speech prohibited by the First Amendment because they think that cases like Chesapeake and Potomac and even Turner Broadcasting v. FCC stands for the rule that Telcos and Cablecos are First Amendment speakers, and as such cannot be compelled to promote speech they disagree with.

Skepticism of goverment regulation

Given a rapidly-changing technological and market environment, many in the public policy area question the government's ability to make and maintain meaningful regulation that doesn't cause more harm than good.[16] For example, fair queuing would actually be illegal under several proposals as it requires prioritization of packets based on criteria other than that permitted by the proposed law. Quoting Bram Cohen, the creator of BitTorrent,"I most definitely do not want the internet to become like television where there's actual censorship... however it is very difficult to actually create network neutrality laws which don't result in an absurdity like making it so that ISPs can't drop spam or stop... (hacker) attacks." [17] A laissez-faire approach would instead let the market enforce the desires of Internet users through the standard tools of consumer choice and contract law.

Proponents

Opposition to network neutrality regulations comes from leading Internet inventors such as Bob Kahn and Dave Farber, large communication carriers, manufacturers of network equipment such as Cisco, free-market advocacy organizations such as the Cato Institute, other high-tech trade groups such as the National Association of Manufacturers, and pro-business and pro-minority advocacy organizations such as the National Black Chamber of Commerce and LULAC.

The service provider groups, including "Hands off the Internet," have been labeled "Astroturf" for accepting corporate money to create the false appearance of grass-roots support for their issue.

Non-profit pro free-market organizations, including the Freedom Works Foundation, National Black Chamber of Commerce, Progress and Freedom Foundation, New American Century (also referred to as PNAC), and the Ludwig von Mises Institute oppose neutrality regulations.

Finally, network equipment manufacturers such as Cisco, 3M, and the National Association of Manufacturers believe neutrality regulations are premature.

Robert Pepper

Robert Pepper is senior managing director, global advanced technology policy, at Cisco Systems, and is the former FCC chief of policy development. He says: "The supporters of net neutrality regulation believe that more rules are necessary. In their view, without greater regulation, service providers might parcel out bandwidth or services, creating a bifurcated world in which the wealthy enjoy first-class Internet access, while everyone else is left with slow connections and degraded content.

"That scenario, however, is a false paradigm."

Bob Kahn

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Bob Kahn

Bob Kahn, one of the fathers of the Internet, has said net neutrality is a slogan that would freeze innovation in the core of the Internet.

Mixed

Some cable operators, like Comcast have taken a somewhat mixed position -- they have repeatedly affirmed that they consider neutral networks desirable, but think regulation is a mistake. Journalist Andy Kessler has argued this point, stating that the threat of eminent domain against the telcos, instead of new legislation, is the best approach.

Some U.S. technology trade associations have remained noncommittal on the issue. The U.S. financial sector has similarly remained neutral.

Journalist Jeffrey Birnbaum has called the debate overhyped, saying the claims of both sides are "vague and misleading".

Cultural References

Two 2006 episodes of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart discuss the proposed act. In the latter, John Hodgman made an appearance to discuss the purpose, being lead by Jon to utter his "I'm a PC" line from Apple's Get a Mac advertising campaign.

See also

• Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act of 2006
• Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act of 2006
• Common Carrier
• End-to-end principle
• Dumb network
• Series of tubes
• Traffic shaping
• Censorship