I have to respectfully disagree with your example of Akamai for a nonneutral network. While it is a very useful service, it has many flaws, and as we saw after Christmas, when the iTunes Store crashed, it does not make a good replacement for the neutral internet

First!

I agree with you completely. I'm not brave enough to say it non-anonymously, but I also think network neutrality is a bad idea.

When was the last time Congress did not screw something up? Or, as you put it, distributed decision making has merits that centralized does not.

I also do not believe in solving future problems. 95% of those never materialize. We can solve the other 5% as they come.

I appreciate this argument and line of reasoning as a thought exercise. In fact though, there is a subtle but critically important difference between the relationship that Akamai has with content providers and the relationship ISPs have with content providers. There is also a huge difference in the customer's role in those 2 relationships.

Akamai provides optimization for content, but the financial scope of the relationship with Akamai and the content provider does not extend to include the consumer. Akamai in that sense could be seen as providing a service to the consumer which is subsidized directly by the content provider. The playing field is level, anyone can pay Akamai to distribute their bandwidth usage. There is no gatekeeper for the content, it can never become about limitation of the availability of other content, and thus it's hard to imagine how it could become anti-competitive or bad for the consumer.

If we were to allow an ISP to charge content providers for "bandwidth optimization," there is an immediate conflict of interest there. This is because the content consumer is *already* paying the ISP for that bandwidth and therefore must be provided bandwidth neutrally with no favoritism, secret or overt. If ISPs could legally optimize certain content and throttle other content, I think it's easy to imagine how that would immediately get out of hand, hurt the consumer and become anti-competitive. I can already hear my mom saying, "I just gave up on Google after a while because Yahoo was so much faster at my house."

Were it technically possible, we would never consider allowing the electric company to take money from GE to provide more power to GE appliances in your home and less power to your off-brand appliances. We would probably even characterize that as racketeering. It would also be easy to recognize that relationship as anti-competitive and immoral given that the consumer is already paying for the power in the first place. But even if electricity were government subsidized and provided free in every home, we as consumers would still frown on the electric company forming financial relationships with particular manufacturers for preferential treatment.

Professor Yoo should stick to law. He has made technical mistakes that make him look like a fool.

First, Mr. Yoo states that technologists believe TCP/IP is obsolete. He seems to have made that up, which brings his credibility into question. I can't even find a single article that mentions that concept in a search. As a technology, I can assure him that TCP/IP is considered robust, and pointing out it's age doesn't change that.

Next, Mr. Yoo's describes why network neutrality might hold things back, but gives an example that has nothing to do with Network Neutrality. Akamai caches data and routes it efficiently, which is something these "obsolete" protocols like TCP and HTTP have special provisions for. None of that violates network neutrality in any way.

Lastly, Mr. Yoo underestimates the value of standardization. He states that "...standardization by itself runs the risk of becoming an obstruction to technological progress." We are very fortunate that Mr. Yoo does not hold a position in government policy, or we would all have incompatible TVs, electrical outlets, and the cohesive internet of today would not exist at all.

If Mr. Yoo wants to build his own private network on his own non-standard protocols, I invite him to try. In the mean time, my company will continue to operate using the efficient, standard, neutral internet we have today.

William Garrison
Moby Disk Consulting
http://www.mobydisk.com

The problem here is that the article does touch on any important issue of net neutrality. Here's two:

1. Censorship. Let's say your provider is in bed with a politician, so you can't get to the opponent's website(s). Maybe your provider or someone with tires to them is being sued, and you are not allowed to properly research this while on their network. Like say, this, from http://www.savetheinternet.com/=faq:
"# In April, Time Warner's AOL blocked all emails that mentioned www.dearaol.com — an advocacy campaign opposing the company's pay-to-send e-mail scheme."

2. Limiting your choices and performance for the provider's gain against competition. Great example from Save the Internet: "In 2004, North Carolina ISP Madison River blocked their DSL customers from using any rival Web-based phone service."

Another one, from way up north, where the said ISP harmed performance of competition if a fee was not paid:
"Shaw, a big Canadian cable TV company, is charging an extra $10 a month to subscribers in order to "enhance" competing Internet telephone services."

Caching of content is a must, and has nothing to do with net neutrality until it causes some form of censorship, including actively degrading the performance of certain connections.

Likewise, paying a premium for a premium-performance service is the norm. That's why dial-up is practically never over $10, yet DSL and cable do very well charging more.

VOIP and other latency-sensitive techs should be put first, and that is not a concern, as long as Vonage, FI, doesn't work worse over Cox due to Cox wanting the customer to not use them (since they have their own VOIP service). As long as all SIP, H.323, etc., are given the same higher priority over other traffic, based on the protocol (or port range, or however else it can be done effectively), and not based on the source, route, or destination, then all is well. If that deviates from proposed laws to reimpose net neutrality, those bills need revising, not the concept.

The technological aspects, like the end-to-end principle, are not a concern; the political aspects are. It's about free speech.

Net neutrality is not about not given priority to certain types of data or protocol. E.g. VOIP/gaming lower latency then downloading. It is about not given priority to services from certain locations, e.g. MSN vs google, the ISP's own VOIP vs a competitor's one.

Akamai vs. net neutrality is apples vs. oranges. My ISP controls the ONLY way to get data into my home -- they choose which packets make it onto the congested last mile first. Akamai does not. While a vendor's use of Akamai may make that data arrive at my last mile sooner and more reliably, my ISP, and ONLY my ISP says what it does from there. They have the power to undo everything else out there on the 'net -- including Akamai. Net neutrality is about preventing ISPs from using this absolute power to derive protection money from threat of degrading service. Remember -- whenever you prefer one service, you degrade another.

Now consider this -- prioritizing packets isn't inherently bad. I see the badness coming in in the choice of *who* gets to choose the priority. I'm all for my ISP prioritizing packets on exactly two critical conditions:

1) I, their customer, and **ONLY** I, their customer choose which packets coming down the pipe to my house get priority and which don't. Packets are prioritized on MY request.
2) I, their customer, and **ONLY** I, their customer get billed for the priviledge of that prioritization.

Those two conditions keep the Internet fair. The users decide for themselves which traffic is worth paying extra for expedited delivery. And each user can make a different choice, according to their unique situation and desires. When a tiny startup comes out with a new service, the entrenched players can't squash them by throwing money at the problem. The new service succeeds or fails based on the merits its users see in it. If the users like it enough that they want to pay extra to give it priority, they will, and the service will succeed. If not, they won't. It's the invisible hand of Capitalism at work. We like Capitalism in the marketplace; why do we want to promote monopolistic and extortionistic practices on the Internet?

Akamai is a great example of DISTRIBUTED serving. Not net -neutrality or otherwise. The point of net neutrality is to allow fair access to the guy that CAN"T afford 14,000 servers, but just 1 or 2 sites nation wide.

If two sites are on the same segment of the net and pay for the same amount of bandwidth, one should not be given priority over the other for political reasons or to encourage a monopolistic net.

If Akamai builds 14,000 servers, great. They are just like McDonald's, billions and billions served, awesome and great for them. But if Bob's Burgers joint wants to open up shop in a city, the city counsel should not be saying no to the business owner because they already have a McDonald's. Do you get the picture? The city (in this analogy the carriers) is required by law to provide fair access.

I am very struck by the analogy that can be drawn between the internet as we know it today and the much older road system used by everything from pedestrians, every type of car or automobile lorries and trucks of many different sizes and weights right through to the largest unusual loads such as 200 ton transformer. These started with old rustic lanes designed centuries ago, (here in Europe), for the traffic of cows and sheep to market, and eventually developed right through to the new arterial motorway and interstate road systems. So we ought to look back to the improvements we made there for a better idea of where we go from here.

The rules are very clear; most can travel down any road capable of taking the traffic. No one can be refused entry, except under very unusual circumstances. Overlaying this structure are some other rules; particularly, those relating to the delivery of the post. You cannot interfere with the delivery of the post. It is a crime to even try to do so. So the matter of AOL blocking of email traffic should be brought to a court of the law and a ruling must be written down making it clear that such action will deliver the executives responsible to prison. Period! The executives at AOL should be put into prison for that action. That will eliminate that part of the debate as it did in the past for the post.

We accept that roads are developed for us as we need them where we need them and that the type of vehicle we use is, to a large extent, entirely at our choice for the use we want to put the vehicle to. Freedom of choice to use a major transport system as we will must be allied to freedom to develop many different ways that a consumer can use that system. So the idea that a corporation would be able to force you from having access off the freeway or motorway to a town because they wanted you to go only to THEIR town would be seen as a joke in today’s transport world. The same must apply to the internet.

We simply need to look at history to see where the internet will go and the decisions become much easier to make for a sound development of the future use of the system.

I must agree with Professor Yoo.

Thirty years ago, the ‘Big Three’ networks controlled the airways and AT&T controlled telecommunications of this country until new technologies and policy innovations broke the hold that these corporations had held onto for so long. Markets, services and competition grew exponentially and the new giants have struggled fiercely since to regain that power that the Bell System once held. With SBC’s recent purchase of what used to be AT&T Longlines, the cycle has come just about full circle.

Now the turf wars are continuing under the banner of ‘network neutrality’ and Congress is being asked to decide about who will control the Internet. Should it be network owners in an anti-competitive market? I don’t think so! That would clearly be a step backward.

The network owners should be putting their emphasis on security and investing in bandwidth! The only action Congress should be taking is to make sure that such investments takes place! Is there no sentiment for the consumer anywhere?”

Bob Magnant

I agree with William that the questioning of the robustness of TCP/IP is wrong, since most of the "enhancements" of TCP/IP are essentially based on it with them having different signals for congestion.

On the issue of Akamai though i must say that Dr Yoo has put forward a good eye-opener in the sense that Akamai provides a bandwidth optimization alternative to websites which is non-network-neutral in the abstract sense.

If ISPs wish to provide this kind of service themselves (by whatever means - caching, priority traffic, etc), then i feel it should be allowed. However, the fear here is that ISPs will not provide any kind of optimization for the traffic but instead will extort money from the content providers to ensure that their traffic gets through, which is not optimization but extortion. Hence, any case for non-network neutrality will require regulations to ensure that such cyber-extortion does not take place.
Else, most ISPs and content providers would be embroiled in court cases asking for fair service and the only winners in that situation would be the lawyers and not the consumers of internet content!

We may go ahead with network neutrality but then there is low economic incentive for carriers to innovate and the infrastructure will continue to remain backward.

So, i feel it is pretty complicated and doesnt have a single solution.

Whatever Congress does, it should proceed by ensuring that the consumers receive the best possible service and fastest possible innovations in technology.