Monthly Archive for June, 2006

Net Neutrality:

This is a term coined by Columbia University Law Professor Tim Wu which orginally identified network bias toward or against particular classes of application or providers of content or services. According to Wu’s analysis, the Internet is not neutral but should strive to be. He points to bias in TCP against real-time applications to support this point.

In simple lay man’s terms it means that as networks proliferate to higher speeds, the content service providers could act as “choke points” to throttle the flow of information. As the mainstream media and the telecom giants converge, often with malicious intent in the name of business interests, the desire to control the flow of ideas would be irresistible.

In effect, this would be, what I call as “Google Effect”; they would seek to lord over the content that you and me seek to inform/ entertain/ consume et al.

This is a far fetched “conspiracy theory” though. I would like to link to two interesting thoughts on the same issue. First one comes from David Sugar, who writes in for Free Software Magazine. He says: (emphasis mine)

In the beginning, the internet was a peering arrangement where all nodes were treated equally, and anyone could interconnect from any one node to another. This was the network of peering built upon public standards that anyone could freely implement…The internet eventually spread to the general population through modem dialup. This changed the internet from being a semi-closed environment connecting just a few hundred or thousand commercial and government institutions into something interconnecting millions. The speeds and bandwidth of analog modem dialup naturally limited what individuals could do over dialup links, but outside of technological limitations, the internet imposed no additional discriminatory practices nor did those ISPs who offered direct internet access through dialup at the time.

With the widespread introduction of broadband, over cable and DSL, came the first real discrimination on the internet. Just when finally there was enough easily deliverable bandwidth to go around to enable the millions of dialup users to more directly participate on the internet, it was closed off from them. At the physical layer, peering was closed by artificial uplink “bandwidth caps”, which restricted their ability to produce and distribute. At the application layer, broadband providers actively discriminate by blocking certain ports and services, particularly in regard to email. At the legal layer, broadband service agreements offered through monopoly telco and cable companies restrict what services and applications people can run.

Can we see a hint of what BSNL does to the “broadband” subscribers?

Robert Cringely has a different take on the net neutrality issue:

Those opposing Net Neutrality have in mind VoIP, and nothing but VoIP. Those in favor of Net Neutrality seem to think it means equal treatment under the Internet, which it doesn’t really….The Net Neutrality issue rests, in part, on the concept of the Internet as a “best effort” network. Best effort, in the minds of the Internet Engineering Task Force, means something slightly different than we are being told in the general press. It means that all packets are treated equally poorly in that no particular efforts are made to ensure delivery. The Net, itself, performs no packet life-support function. This is in keeping with the concept of the Internet as a dumb network. So even in cases of transport protocols that DO attempt to perform reliable transport (protocols like TCP), those recovery measures are negotiated between the server and the client, not by the network that connects them, simple as that.

Robert details about the various issues that determine the transfer of the packets from one node to another; from one server to another. The final nail in the coffin is about VoIP.

Where this Net Neutrality issue will hit home is for Voice over IP telephone service, which becomes pitiful if there is too much latency. That’s what this is all about, folks: VoIP and nothing else. The telcos want to use it to keep out the Vonages, Skypes, and Packet8s, and the cable companies do, too. It is a $1 trillion global business, so we shouldn’t be surprised that the ISPs will do anything to own it.

It all boils down to using the networks to bypass Plain Old Telephone System (POTS) and hurting their revenues via VoIP. No doubt, this is BIG bad news for the telecom operators as far as big paying customers are concerned. For individual subscribers, this has to reach any critical mass before it starts pinching them in any real manner. The way Broadband is spreading (at a slow pace indeed, despite the claims to the contrary), I don’t see any wild fire growth of VoIP in the future. However, point is that this issue of Net Neutrality is relevant to us for the same reason as it is to any other developed nation. VoIP is being embraced by companies across the board to cut down on the operational costs.

Interestingly, there are assinine restrictions in the licensing norms which would make it prohibitively expensive for the likes of Skype to enter Indian market. The exact details elude me though; Skype is restricted to a few thousand (lucky) Indians though.