New Network Neutrality Squad — Users Protecting the Net

Lauren Weinstein writes in to announce the new "Network Neutrality Squad" — NNSquad. Joining PFIR Co-Founders Peter G. Neumann and Weinstein in this announcement are Vinton G. Cerf, Keith Dawson (Slashdot.org), David J. Farber (Carnegie Mellon University), Bob Frankston, Phil Karn (Qualcomm), David P. Reed, Paul Saffo, and Bruce Schneier (BT Counterpane). The Network Neutrality Squad ("NNSquad") is an open-membership, open-source effort, enlisting the Internet's users to help keep the Internet's operations fair and unhindered from unreasonable restrictions. The project's focus includes detection, analysis, and incident reporting of any anticompetitive, discriminatory, or other restrictive actions on the part of Internet service Providers (ISPs) or affiliated entities, such as the blocking or disruptive manipulation of applications, protocols, transmissions, or bandwidth; or other similar behaviors not specifically requested by their customers.

That's not Net Neutrality

[norminator]

It's not about how fast your general Internet service is... that already works the way you want.

It's about how fast the sites you're getting your content from are, based on how much they pay your ISP. Want to buy TV shows and movies from iTunes? Better hope they paid off your ISP, and if customers in general want good service, Apple would have to pay all of the ISPs. Want YouTube? Better hope they paid up. BitTorrent? Games? Good luck.

Net Neutrality does not mean that the ISP doesn't discriminate against you based on how much you pay. It also doesn't mean that the ISP can't give certain types of traffic higher priority. It does mean that the ISP can't discriminate against traffic based on what site the content is coming from, and I think it doesn't suck, and is very important to understand.

expand their mandate

[FLoWCTRL]

The formation of this group is an excellent idea.

Once they start finding and pressuring individual ISPs found guilty of "non-neutral" behavior, it will create incentive for customers to leave that ISP and go to a competitor. Sometimes there won't be a competitor, such as in many rural areas.

The logical progression is to encourage consumers to form their own local groups and move to community-owned Internet access [google.ca]. This new NNSquad should expand their mandate to provide resources that help and encourage communities to achieve network independence.

Re:Network Neutrality != good

[MonGuSE]

Network Neutrality doesn't really mean government regulation at all. It just means that all packets have as much right to the road as any others. If you try to block your competitors packets you get slapped, if you try to use anticompetitive practices you get slapped, if you act in a monopolistic manner you get slapped. However you are free to do whatever else you please beyond that. If you want to charge ridiculous amounts to all of your customers fairly you can, if you want to drop all of your peering agreements feel free, if you don't want to invest in your infrastructure and continue wringing every last dime out of your existing infrastructure go ahead... What we need to be regulated better is public rights of way and who has access to them until wireless is mature enough to handle broadband in large deployments.

How does Google find access to pipes that don't exist? There are basically 3 or 4 major players that everyone relies on and you can't just lay new pipe on rights of way that you don't own. Then there is the matter of incumbent telecoms and cable co's and their regional monopolies. If you want high speed internet you deal with 3 companies, Time Warner, Comcast or AT&T. There is nothing stopping time warner sticking up a roadblock to Google, Yahoo and MSN and say go here instead. In fact they already do that to a degree by taking over your browser settings with their client software. They have a portal that is steadily growing in size and services that is being supported by their near monopolies in what 40% of households in the US? Most of the US population isn't dense enough to attract a lot of competition because of the cost of laying cable. Ironically a lot of that cable laying is subsidized by tax payer money but is granted for sole use to one company. In a couple of years if we don't stand our ground on network neutrality we will have a cell phone esque market place for our internet services where we have to pay 10cents a search and 5 cents a dns lookup and 25cents an email and yadda....

Right now the major players are sitting on their pipes wringing as much money as they can out of them and doing the minimum amount of upgrades necessary to maintain the status quo. That is why the telecom companies are having bandwidth issues. The rest of the world is eventually going to surpass our pipes and offer a ton of dynamic content that we can't access because the infrastructure in the US can't handle it. Just like the cell phone industry is leaps and bounds ahead of the US industry in the rest of the world. Same in the console market and hand helds. I could go on but I digress.

Re:Net Neutrality Sucks

[doas777]

I think you guys need to read up on the topic. Teired service is NOT like your first class/economy example, though it may head that way eventually.

ok heres the deal. AT&T is mad because Google is making money off selling ads to THEIR users without writing a check to AT&T. the users paid for their access, as did google, but AT&T wants to double-dip, and charge Google for access to THEIR subscribers.

so lets say AT&T and Yahoo! entered into an agreement whereby Yahoo would be the default search provider for AT&T networks. AT&T could then degrade or eliminate traffic to google, in an attempt to sway user preference. would you keep going to google if it took 35 seconds to load, while yahoo comes up at lightspeed?

Teired service comes in two flavors. one is paid for by web providors, the other by customers.
1) Google pays AT&T for perfered access to THEIR customers. google would have to pay off every ISP nation wide if that were the approach.

2) create user packages where the user would pay extra for access to sites that AT&T does not have deals with. For $19.95 you get yahoo, and email. for 29.95 you can get google (but not any of the sites linked therein), and for 59.95 you can get access to the internets 200 most popular sites. full access to the internet available for $.20 per site hit. be sure not to hit reload...

neither gives you any more than you have today, all it does is take away. I pay my bill. if that isn;t enough for them, then they either need to raise their prices, or live with it.

I heard Tim Berners-lee came down on the anti side of NN. I read his arguments and while they are valid from a network engineers perspective, he's completely missing the consumer protection aspect, which is the whole reason the rest of us are discussing NN.

I am not a commodity that AT&T can buy and sell. if AT&T wants to charge companies for access to AT&T subscribers, then they owe us subscribers a check, not the other way around.

Natural Monopoly

[blitzkrieg3]

Have you guys heard of the term Natural Monopoly? [wikipedia.org] The telcom infrastructure is a classic example. I know everyone here on slashdot likes to think less regulation solves everything, but some cases require it. There is NO free market solution to this problem because there will never be enough competition, so we need the government to step in and protect the consumer. Otherwise, the monopolies (telcos) are free to go on limiting capacity, price gouging, and (just now) implementing packet filtering if they don't start getting kickbacks.

Re:Network PRIVACY might be better than NN...

[PopeRatzo]

There's a whole lot more to Net Neutrality than just privacy. To me, they are two completely separate issues. Naturally, we should be able to have some confidence that our use of the internets is private.

But Net Neutrality to me means much more that once you are on the Internet, one packet should have the same access as any other. I don't want anybody's advertisement to get higher priority than an email from my wife, and I don't want the performance of any website to be governed by the carrier. As long as someone has paid for a fast server and lots of bandwidth, the telecom should move their packets the same way it moves anybody else's.