On Sun, Jul 27, 2014 at 10:53:51PM -0700, Richard Bennett wrote:
In fact Netflix is asking to connect to eyeball networks for free:
http://blog.netflix.com/2014/03/internet-tolls-and-case-for-strong-net.html
" Strong net neutrality additionally prevents ISPs from charging a toll for interconnection to services like Netflix, YouTube, or Skype, or intermediaries such as Cogent, Akamai or Level 3, to deliver the services and data requested by ISP residential subscribers. Instead, they must provide sufficient access to their network without charge."
The important phrase there is "requested by ISP residential subscribers". You will see this material again.
This isn't the traditional understanding of net neutrality, but this is the beauty of murky notions: they can be redefined as the fashions change: "You've designed your network to handle the traffic demands of web browsing? That's cute, now rebuild it to handle 40 times more traffic while I sit back and call you a crook for not anticipating my innovation."
A more accurate phrasing would be, "You've designed your network to handle the traffic demands of web browsing, while *telling your customers they can stream video*? That's cute, now provision a few more circuits to your upstreams to handle the traffic that you said you could handle, instead of trying to leverage your monopoly position to rent-seek off me." Entrenched monopoly is what this is all about, ultimately. Nobody in Australia (my home town) talks about Net Neutrality. We don't care. We don't *have* to care. Because no ISP over here currently has a sufficiently captive market to permit them to play chicken with a content provider. Any ISP who did, and held their customer base to ransom, would very quickly find themselves losing customers -- at least that segment of the market that used the relevant content provider's services. Perhaps that wouldn't be a bad thing for the ISP -- less traffic, lower costs, better margins... but at least customers would be able to choose. No such luck in the US, where some eye-wateringly high percentage of users have no choice in who provides them a given service. - Matt