Thursday, November 13, 2014

Net neutrality

The concept of Net Neutrality has been brought up by Obama and the FCC.
I am a techie- I am a webpage developer and a software development student at ITT.
These are my concerns with FCC mandated net neutrality
The idea behind Net Neutrality is that all internet traffic should be treated the same.
First with net neutrality- an ISP can not filter out content.
The problem here is the fact that some customers might want to have adult content filtered out and will net neutrality laws prevent this?
I know there are products like net Nanny that offer filtering on the client side but server side solutions can give users benifits like filtering out viri and possibly a faster internet connection sine you could be down loading a page from a proxy server located in your town instead of some web server located farther away that needs more hops.
Next an ISP can not give a specific sight a speed boost under net neutrality.
If a site like accounts for a large percent of internet traffic with out net neutrality an ISP could sell them a dedicated line could benefit consumers by speeding up the network over all as a netflix movie won't have to compete with cat photos on Icanhazcheezeburger.com
Then there is the fear that an ISP might try to throttle Netflix down so they can offer their own competing media service.
There are only two ways this scheme could work- first the ISP would have to be the only one in town in order to prevent people from seeing their friends get a faster Netflix connection and second Netflix would have to be kept in the dark.
There a few ways Netflix could counter- they could start their own ISP, change their business model and provide content and not a server.Also unless the company was clear on their network policies they could be sued since the average customer was expecting unfiltered internet.
If a neutral internet is what the public desires- then we should be asking- what are the hurdles to starting an ISP and will rules prevent people from getting a filtered internet if they wanted?
Is it simply it will cost tons of money- or are there any regulations that are hurdles. There is indication from Google Fiber that in some cities regulations are still a major issue-
http://www.broadbandforamerica.com/blog/regulatory-concessions-paved-way-google-fiber
Google isn't their name but also the size of their bank account so it only shows problems when you have the cash not how much cash is needed.
If some one wanted a filtered internet- and one that is clearly not neutral the issue that matters is how well the ISP communicates how they manage their network the option should not be removed.







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