Net Neutrality Specifics (Part 2 in a Mutli-Part Series)

In my last post I talked at a very high level about the policy debate currently raging around net neutrality. It might help the reader to have a better understand of what exactly is being debated. And to do so, we need a better understanding of how the Internet works.

To most users of the Internet, the net is one, amazing end-to-end system that allows us to access google one minute, a florist in NYC the next, and a tailor in London the next. In truth, however, the Internet is actually composed of a number of smaller networks that work together almost seamlessly to get traffic from our computer to servers around the globe. You're probably fairly familiar with your Internet Service Provider (ISP), mine is Comcast (though on my mobile phone Verizon connects me to the Internet). When go online, what I'm doing in essence is sending a request (a packet of information) from my computers web browser onto Comcast's network where it is routed through their servers and then passed off to other ISP's servers until it ultimately reaches the servers at Google (or wherever I'm trying to surf to). The Google servers then send back packets of information across their ISP (and very likely other ISPs and backbone networks) to Comcast and ultimately back to my computer where my web browsers turns the packets into the Google homepage. (It's all entirely more complicated than that, but that's the basic idea).

So, if all of this works fine right now, why the debate about net neutrality? Well, the simple fact is that each day we're accessing more and more content online. We watch more movies, download more music, play more online games, make more VoIP calls. All of this puts a strain on the networks that make up the Internet and eventually, it means the ISPs need to install more capacity. Thinking back to the plumbing metaphor, imagine if you continually increased the amount of water flowing through your pipes. At first all is well, but eventually you'd need bigger pipes. Well, same thing on the Internet. And the ISPs are the ones who own the pipes and, in general, the ones responsible for maintaining and upgrading those pipes. What they are arguing is that if they should be able to charge customers different rates based on the type and/or amount of traffic they 1) Generate and 2) Consume. Obviously, the content owners like the current system where the pipes are "dumb" and treat all traffic the same.

We'll explore ways the ISPs can profit and manage traffic in the next post.

Good Talk,
Tom