I have been pretty unambiguous about my dislike of Mr. Trump, both his person and many of his policies. But I also believe in giving credit where credit is due. Today's reversal of the Net Neutrality policies of the FCC is a case in point - sort of.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...=.7ac7a6914d9b
I know a lot of technologist and most people support the concept of Net Neutrality. In a sense - so do I. But the way it was being enforced was the wrong tool for the right job. The way it was being enforced was requiring the Internet Service Providers (ISP) to treat all traffic equally - with the goal of not allowing them to give preferential treatment to one company over another. The fear is that they would then treat folks who pay them extra better than others, and treat their own services best of all. So Verizon, for example, could give preferential network treatment to NetFlix if NetFlix paid, but give the best treatment to their own video services.
This goal is laudable, because it keeps big players from acing smaller players out of the market because they have more cash and more power. This policy SHOULD continue (se we disagree on that point). But the means to that ends was all wrong. Forcing the ISP to treat all packets equally ignores a basic reality: some application types REQUIRE different treatment by the network we know as the "Internet" for them to function reliably. Most notably, any application that has sigificant time sensitivity (e.g., interactive voice - as in "telephone" and most video-related services). Because the providers are prohibited from handling the packets that support these services differently, we all have that experience of our video stalling, or the voice quality going to the dogs, if someone starts a large file transfer or otherwise competes with the bandwidth of our service.
Due to Net Neutrality regulations, we are all still paying (directly or indirectly) for two largely separate networks: the public telephone network, and the Internet. If these regulations are eliminated, voice over the Internet can become more reliable, and the 130 year-old telephone network can die the death it should have died 15-20 years ago.
Net Neutrality HAS to be reframed in terms of laws against anti-competitive practices, rather than rules about the technology of the Internet.
I applaud the FCC shift today.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...=.7ac7a6914d9b
I know a lot of technologist and most people support the concept of Net Neutrality. In a sense - so do I. But the way it was being enforced was the wrong tool for the right job. The way it was being enforced was requiring the Internet Service Providers (ISP) to treat all traffic equally - with the goal of not allowing them to give preferential treatment to one company over another. The fear is that they would then treat folks who pay them extra better than others, and treat their own services best of all. So Verizon, for example, could give preferential network treatment to NetFlix if NetFlix paid, but give the best treatment to their own video services.
This goal is laudable, because it keeps big players from acing smaller players out of the market because they have more cash and more power. This policy SHOULD continue (se we disagree on that point). But the means to that ends was all wrong. Forcing the ISP to treat all packets equally ignores a basic reality: some application types REQUIRE different treatment by the network we know as the "Internet" for them to function reliably. Most notably, any application that has sigificant time sensitivity (e.g., interactive voice - as in "telephone" and most video-related services). Because the providers are prohibited from handling the packets that support these services differently, we all have that experience of our video stalling, or the voice quality going to the dogs, if someone starts a large file transfer or otherwise competes with the bandwidth of our service.
Due to Net Neutrality regulations, we are all still paying (directly or indirectly) for two largely separate networks: the public telephone network, and the Internet. If these regulations are eliminated, voice over the Internet can become more reliable, and the 130 year-old telephone network can die the death it should have died 15-20 years ago.
Net Neutrality HAS to be reframed in terms of laws against anti-competitive practices, rather than rules about the technology of the Internet.
I applaud the FCC shift today.
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