Network Neutrality
Peter Shaughnessy
Justin Fromm
Wei Leong Chew
Charles Young
Shante Collins
Brought to you
in part by:
Introduction to Net Neutrality
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The concept of network neutrality is that all packets traveling through the
internet should be treated equally, regardless of origin or content.
As of now there is no legislation in place guaranteeing neutrality.
Current Quality of Service protocols do give priority to some packets based
on their content (for instance streaming video or voice over IP).
We do not believe that these protocols should be abandoned, but rather that
legislation should be enacted to control the ability of ISPs to charge fees for
traffic based on origin or content.
The internet fairly neutral today, but we fear the consequences of not
legislating to keep it this way.
Without legislation the ISPs would be free to charge excess fees, thereby
discouraging start up websites, and hurting the end user.
If it’s not on:
Then you’re wrong.
Negative Scenarios
• Blocking- A start up website pays Comcast for its internet access.
Time Warner happens to disagrees with what this website is about
and decides to block access to it to all of its end users.
• Monopoly- Comcast and Time Warner decide that they both want to
start charging for traffic coming across their network that doesn’t
originate within it. They make an arrangement saying that they will
both carry each other’s traffic, but will charge or block all other
traffic. This would make it extremely difficult to break into the
market.
• Application discrimination- Two phone companies develop similar
voice over IP applications. One controls much more of the end users
than the other. The larger one decides to intentionally drop calls
from the other’s application to bolster use of its own. This
discourages others from trying to develop similar, perhaps better,
applications.
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A Non-Neutral Internet Would Hurt
the End User
• If ISPs decide to charge content providers for
their traffic, they will pass the cost on to the
consumer.
• If a content provider, such as a small video start
up, no longer finds it economically feasible to
offer its videos for free, it would have to charge
the users of its service.
• Large companies, such as Google and YouTube,
could afford to pay without charging users, but
smaller companies could not.
• This would discourage entrance into the content
provider business.
Evidence
• A study by Nicholas Economides of the Stern
School of Business at NYU and Joacim Tåg of
the Swedish School of Economics and Business
Administration showed that “net neutrality
regulation…increases total industry surplus
compared to the fully private optimum at which
the monopoly platform imposes positive fees on
content and application providers.”
• This means that, as a whole, the industry
benefits from having an overall neutral network
rather than a network where fees are charged.
“Freeloaders”
= Not Google
• Opponents to net neutrality argue that, since providers carry other
providers traffic, they deserve to be paid for it. On the surface, this
seems like a logical argument.
• In reality, the content providers are not “freeloading” when it comes
to internet access. Companies like Google pay exorbitant sums of
money to their ISP (or ISPs) to provide the content they do. The
freeloader argument is put forward by the ISPs that aren’t lucky
enough to have a contract with large providers like Google.
• All of the major ISPs carry each other’s traffic, and if one decided to
charge the others would most likely follow. As stated before, these
fees would ultimately fall on the consumer.
• The internet was designed as a neutral environment through which
packets could flow regardless of content, and this design has served
the community very well.
• The only reason ISPs want a non neutral internet is to protect their
right to charge content providers fees without having to do anything
else.
“Last Mile”
• The “last mile” of the internet has relatively
few options for a consumer. They would
have few places to turn if their ISP decide
to slow or block traffic they wanted. In this
way the ISPs already have a limited
monopoly on their consumers, and this
would only give more power to the ISP
who controls the most amount of end
users if they decided to charge content
providers.
References
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutr
ality
• http://www.google.com/help/netneutrality.h
tml
• http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/18/ka
hn_net_neutrality_warning/
• http://timwu.org/network_neutrality.html
• http://www.stern.nyu.edu/networks/Econo
mides_Tag_Net_Neutrality.pdf
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