Net Neutrality - Just The facts

It's always been said that the only people that make it to DC are the ones that can't hold down a regular job.  If people watched the government channels it would scare them to voting correctly. That was hilarious that he didn't even know email?

Mitchell this is very much like the fairness doctrine governing the airwaves.  Once that was done away with, the money began talking.  I would be surprised if Net Neutrality was gutted, but then these days nothing surprises me anymore.  Thanks for the concise information on the topic.

The net is already suceptible to domination by those that have the biggest SEO budget or those that are the most tech savvy, not that I'm against techies, but corporate control would devastate this great marketing and free speech frontier. I'm glad you re-posted your thoughts, are you aware of any progress made by the corporate lobbyist?

Hi Mitchell ~ Thanks for posting this - it really helps clear up some of the confusion out there.

Liz

Mitchell - as opposed to form VP Gore, I actually was there at the start of the internet (ARPANET), what you presented as facts,  was never the agenda. As a matter of fact, it wasn't even in the dreams. Even Cerf didn't foresee the explosive growth and interest in the internet.

With the advent of TCP/IP and other protocols, such as routing, it became possible to open the networks up to the public, as opposed to government institutions. It was this investment by private companies that made the internet available to almost everyone. The majority of internet transmission is on private infrastructure using private equipment. Not allowing the private investors to control their traffic, under this net neutrality proposal, is basically making them responsible for the quality of service delivered to their end users by dictating how they can manage QoS (Quality of Service) which is internet traffic management. The government proposal puts all of the expense on the provider and the benefits to those that make little or no investment into the infrastructure.

Net neutrality had nothing to do with the inovations that happenned because of the internet. That's kind of like Gore taking the credit for creating the internet. It was happenning without him.

The only way this can succeed, so that this forced egalitarianism on the internet will allow clear voice calls, video and audio with out interference, et al, will be for the end users to be charged more for access since the providers will not be allowed to charge the originators for the volume and type of traffic that they dump onto the network.

Perhaps you will be happy with mediocrity of service, and higher costs for end users so that apps like Skype, which chard end users for their service can make $billions off of end users while consuming anothers limited resources. However, having evolved for the world of 1200 bps internet access to megabit rates, I don't want to take steps back to the transmission congestion that will slow things down for everyone. I don't want Skype traffic interfering with my internet access. I don't want to pay more for my access so that someone else can dowload movies at high speed.

Wait!  Wait!  Did Ted Stevens get sent back to Alaska?  Or is he still being scary as hell in the Senate

Mitchell - I never said I created it, I worked on getting it running with the folks from LLL (I was a contractor specifying, installing and testing the equipment) in 1978 - 1982.

I also spent from 1986 to 1993 (except for a couple years where I was on a consulting project with Boeing) helping transit to IP capable networks from proprietary and developing the tools and infrastructure that enabled those such as Prodigy, Compuserve, AOL, and other ISP's up and running providing service to both residences and businesses.

Most people are not stuck with or limited to cable internet, almost anywhere. I had charter cable here. It sucks. So now I have a different system that is terrific, costs less and doesn't use cable (except for distribution throughout my home). There are different options almost anywhere, and I would expect certainly in Manhattan. I know plenty of people that have wireless to the home at not much higher costs than cable or other services.

As for your last question, aren't we already? What I am saying is that if a company, whether small business or large, decides that it wants to stream terabits of data across the internet, and that streaming interferes with people getting to my website, or me getting my mail, and ISP should have the right to manage their networks so that I can get my 10 meg throughput that I am paying for. Why should I subsidize Skype users to screw up my internet access just so they can have a phone call.

I can see rules that do not allow content blocking, I can even support them. However, traffic management should be allowed so that the end users are not hosed because of stupid concepts of content egality.

Also, there is no provision (unless it has been rewritten) to account for internet access in places like hotels, convention centers, Starbucks, etc. These kinds of locations are, in effect, ISP's. If these places start having to provide "net neutrality" they will have to start charging for it.

This attempt, in it's current form, is going to make the internet more expensive while lowering quality of connection. But then, doesn't government interference almost always do that? (Remember the expensive and in many places crappy phone service we used to have under a strictly controlled government supported monopoly). We would not have this internet that we do if we still had that same monopoly.

Mike- You are correct, the free market is the reason the Internet has made its gains over the last 25 years or so.  Adding the govt will only slow things down and make it more expensive!

It reminds me of obamas health care, spreading the wealth to the lazy.

Mitchell, at least we can be assured of Net Neutrality -for now. BigCorp usually gets what it wants, and this maybe no different.

It's funny everyone is for Net Neutrality - its how we get there is where we disagree. We want the government to garauntee it will never be tampered with. Others say, it will stay free if we just leave it alone. We know that won't happen. Eventually BigCorp gets its greedy little fingers into everything.

It's a series of tubes man!