Comments on: Net Neutrality: Why you should care

By: Ethan

Ethan — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 23:47:22 +0000

Is anyone else rather disturbed by this as I am?

Surely freedom of speech is equitable to freedom of what websites you look at?

I have had a few discussions with friends about Orcon’s O-Zone, which without paying does give obvious priority to certain sites, is that a breach of net neutrality? How does everyone else feel about this?

I do not look forward to a future where my ISP controls where I browse in the same way as a school/university does! (wait, is that a breach too? )

By: Ben.geek.nz » Net Neutrality is Dead. Long Live Net Neutrality

Ben.geek.nz » Net Neutrality is Dead. Long Live Net Neutrality — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:47:47 +0000

[...] while back, I wrote an impassioned post about net neutrality, why it matters, and why you should care. The truth is, net neutrality is already dead in New [...]

By: Net Neutrality » Things I am interested in…

Net Neutrality » Things I am interested in… — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 04:45:49 +0000

[...] This article from Ben.geek.nz gives an easy to understand illustration of what an internet without net neutrality might be like… [...]

By: JC

JC — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:36:24 +0000

@Ben
At the end of the day, it comes down to what kind of traffic you want. If sites like youtube which use UDP and don’t give a care as to the order of packets arriving can survive in a purely best-effort environment – they will.

Voice and live video will require more nimble and latency-nazi style flows, and we *will* end up paying more for it, it’s the nature of economics. The sad fact is that where money is to be made, even in the open and free wilds of the internet, it will be made.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the future of the net will be a bit of a debacle, it’s not an easy thing to explain and switched on companies will be taking advantage of that fact.

Blergh, I have to get my head away from work and go see Evil play. Woooh!

By: Chainsaw

Chainsaw — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:52:47 +0000

I didn’t see ben.geek.nz on those “ads”! We’re doomed!

By: Ben

Ben — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:44:20 +0000

You make an interesting point. Voice is already heavily prioritised, and bittorrent is likely de-prioritised on most networks.

My personal opinion: as long as traffic type prioritisation is completely up front and transparent, and not filtered by destination, then it’s not entirely evil. You still have the option of choosing a neutral ISP.

But what about backbone providers? If I choose an ISP that does not prioritise anything, my traffic still gets shaped by those providers. It’s a proverbial can-o-worms.

By: JC

JC — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:08:54 +0000

People (well, businesses at least) can already pay for assured or expedited forwarding from tier 0/1/2 providers. While the risky business ethics of pay-per site (I need a better name for it, but it’s 6am) is a worry, QoS measures for large chunks of the interbutt already remove pure neutrality – for the best in most cases. What I mean is there is hope than your ISP ends up shifting the proposed (have any been proposed yet?) costs of PPS onto themselves. It will require a bit of re-organisation, but to keep the whole net ticking into the future (bearing in mind the limited infrastructure some networks have), a bit of non-purely neutral routing and other such jiggery-pokery will be required.

/has the feeling reading this in 6 hours time will be a laugh