Fashionably Late

[Ice Czar]

Dawn has slowly broken over Wall Street as the financial powerhouses have come to realize exactly what is at stake in the ongoing net neutrality debate. With an investment of some 117 Billion dollars into IT infrastructure this year and billions more in transactions in the years to come they may be late to the party but are likely to wield the congressional influence necessary to settle or at least delay the current crop of bills.

While the clock is already ticking as telecommunications bills work their way through both the House and the Senate the major players are “studying” the issue, but it appears likely they will come down on the side opposed to the Telecoms.

"If the industry does not engage quickly, it may find that the matter has been decided without its input and that the fallout will affect the industry's cost structure and customer relations for years to come."

ArsTechnica offers an interesting glimpse into Verizon's attempt to lull the sleeping behemoths back to sleep.

If your new to the net neutrality issue, it boil down to the Telecommunications industry attempting to offer a tiered access to content. Threatening the current model of how the internet works.

Source:InformationWeek & ArsTechnica

[Thermopylae_480]

Haven't they kind of already done this to some extent? You pay more for a quicker connection speed, nothing physical changes. You just call your ISP and say, "hey I want to spend more money and go faster." So neutrality seems to be slightly corrupted already, although I hope it doesn't get much worse.

[Ice Czar]

On the client side yes, but there isn't an intelligent router (or five) examining the packets and saying
Oh well TechPowerUp isnt a premium content provider, we are just going to delay those packets till all the MSN traffic rolls through.

Meaning of course that your "premium" connection becomes just one of many proposed new "toll gates"

Basic theory (see link for embedded links)

Network Neutrality is closely related to the end to end principle. Under this principle, a dumb network merely connects devices, and is insensitive to the needs of applications running on those devices. Contrast this with an intelligent network, for example an analog network, that distinguishes between the types of data carried on the network and treats each one differently due to the necessary differences between data formats. We'll channel the traffic to those that can pay us.

Underlying the theory of the benefits of network neutrality is a belief that a neutral network promotes innovation (Schumpterian), or evolutionary innovation of information technology. In order to promote innovation, network service providers such as telephone and cable internet companies should not be permitted to dictate how those networks are used (i.e., not permitted to ban certain types of programs, to ban certain types of devices connecting to the network, or to favor carriage of traffic to certain web sites over others).

There is currently a level playing field when it comes to traffic "in" the net, it's routed and transmitted as fast as possible given how fast it's served on one end and how fast it can be received on the other, what they are proposing now is to add new governors\control throttles\valves in between.

Go to MSN or a first tier "entertainment channel" and your on broadband, go to some upstart video service like Guba your suddenly back at dialup, regardless of how fast the end connections are. This is all about entrenched interests attempting to remain entrenched. "This uncontrolled experiment was nice while its lasted, time to carve it up and regulate it like we did the electromagnetic spectrum (TV & Radio)". The owners of the physical connections want to cash in now, they have milked the public for as much as the market will bear, now its time to milk the creators of the content. "We'll channel the traffic to those that can pay us".