EPTThis seems pretty important (net neutrality) - Page 4
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Night[Mare
Mexico4793 Posts
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StarN
United States2587 Posts
I fell for the same trap. | ||
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Funchucks
Canada2113 Posts
On June 11 2008 05:40 HamerD wrote: AGAIN! Please can one of you naysayers actually tell me WHY YOU ARE NAYSAYING! He starts out by talking about a grand conspiracy where you'll only have access to a small number of commercial websites, like a cable package, and you'll have to subscribe individually to each other website you want to see. I don't even know where to start criticising that. It has nothing to do with anything and absolutely no basis in reality. He just pulled it out of his ass. Net neutrality is the new name for QOS (quality of service). The internet is based on a fairly simple protocol: IP (Internet Protocol). At any node on the network, you can emit a packet (piece of data) with a label for any other node, and the network tries to deliver it to the intended destination. All packets are treated equally. If there's any problem, the network just throws the packet away, and the computers at each end have to use a higher-level protocol to deal with lost packets. All packets being treated equally is called "net neutrality." It has advantages and disadvantages, and shouldn't be oversimplified. A QOS extension to IP would allow packets to be marked as high priority (presumably packets from someone paying extra, or a business partner, or something like that). When a conflict arises, normal-priority packets would get thrown out in preference to the high-priority packets. There could be other means of special treatment, such as sending high-priority packets along reserved physical links. The strongest argument against QOS enhancements is that they could be abused by internet service providers (ISPs). The idea is that rather than just using the extra money from QOS payments to provide a higher level of service (for instance, high-definition Youtube for subscribers, or perfect low-ping online gaming), they would simply lower the performance of non-QOS-enhanced sites (Youtube takes 2 hours to load a 5 minute video unless you subscribe, bittorrent stops being worth using, all websites that haven't made a deal with your ISP will slow to a crawl, etc.). Right now, there is nothing enforcing net neutrality. ISPs and backbone service providers are free to implement QOS enhancements if they want. So far, they haven't accomplished anything of note along those lines, although they've long wanted some kind of juicy premium service income stream. They've had trouble coming to agreements, and there isn't all that much interest in paying premiums. The status quo is: we have net neutrality, we have no legislated enforcement of net neutrality. This is the way it has worked all along. So far, so good. Some people are worried that we have no legislated enforcement of net neutrality. Other people are annoyed at the thought of government action blocking all of the improvements QOS enhancements could offer. It's a complex issue, and ignorant people getting very excited about it won't help anything. | ||
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