Technology

Network Neutrality

By skenmy ⋅ April 23, 2008 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

This has suddenly become a big issue again. And when I say big issue, I mean that it has suddenly recieved a lot of media coverage. I’m slightly late in getting involved in the debate, but it’s better late than never.

We all know that some of the major connectivity providers (I’m looking at you, Comcast, and you, BT) have already started to filter out some traffic. Comcast calls it “delaying”, but in reality they have already started to throttle down BitTorrent connections. I’m not going to close my eyes and say that this is legal traffic - you and me both know that most of it isn’t. The point is that they are unrestrictively filtering traffic over the BitTorrent protocol - legal or not. BT throttles *anything* that isn’t HTTP! And there has been a major uproar over the introduction of the BBC iPlayer - many providers are simply not willing to allow their precious bandwidth to be used to transmit 100% legal television programs (which, when viewed / filtered at packet level, are indistinguishable from illegal downloads / uploads). And now a major UK company has caused an uproar. Cue you, Virgin.

Virgin Media’s CEO, Neil Berkett, has stated in an open interview that “Net Neutrality is a load of bollocks”. If that were the only thing he said - I’d have to agree with him. We live in an age where anyone can put up a website, and immediately have the same level of accessibility as any other website, no matter how big or small. Nothing should change that, and it should never be an issue. But Mr Berkett seems to think otherwise. Apparently, Virgin Media is already in “talks with unnamed content providers to deliver their content faster”. Rumour has been about that this is a prod towards Google (flamed solely by their recent April Fools joke named “Virgil” - that one backfired on you guys). Google has long been an advocate of Net Neutrality, and rightly so.

What kind of an Internet would it be if we could load Yahoo! in a second, but we had to wait 5 minutes for YouTube to load? Or if we could download the latest version of America’s Army (a government funded game being my point here) in mere minutes, but have to wait for hours to get the latest patch for your grassroots game, purely because they are unable to pay the extortionate “increased bandwidth charges”. Or perhaps it could go further? You, the user, could be made to pay more to access the sites you want on a sort of “tiering” system - £19.99 gets you access to Google, YouTube, and 50 other sites at high speed! £29.99 gets you access to another 50! And for only £39.99, you can have access to 150 sites at high-speed! Unrestricted internet would become a thing of distant memories - because once one goes, the rest will follow.

The outlook, to me anyway, looks good at the moment. There is currently no threat of there being any restrictions put in place - and with the massive uproars being caused in the media, in efforts to maintain Net Neutrality, and on just about any blog / site that has anything to do with the Internet, I don’t see it happening soon. But the threat is real - and I suggest you get well informed before it’s too late.

Suggested Reading

• Network neutrality on Wikipedia
• Save The Internet
• Open Internet Coalition
  

Tags: bittorrent, bt, comcast, internet, net neutrality, virgin