In the past couple of months, a number of people have asked me to explain net neutrality to them. Unfortunately I have never been able explain it well enough for anyone to truly understand why it’s important. So if I can’t do it, leave it to the professionals!
Last week, John Stewart’s Daily Show had a great comical skit explaining net neutrality. Not only is it down right hilarious, but it has great visuals and makes the concept easy enough for anyone to understand. If John Stewart can’t do it for you, you can always leave it to a ninja. Ask A Ninja’s ninja does an awesome job explaining it by making it so obscure, it just makes you burst out laughing.
If comedy isn’t working for you, you can always listen to the round table discussion the TWiTs had. The first half of episode 60 is filled with a great discussion of what exactly net neutrality is and why it’s important to you. If audio isn’t your thing, you can always read the Wikipedia article. However be forewarned, it’s a lengthy, complex read.
I hope one of these many great sources can lead you to understanding net neutrality. If you’re still puzzled, feel free to ask questions. It’s important that everyone knows what net neutrality is, and why we need to prevent any action to break it.
3 Comments
Let me take a crack, because I still don’t know if I fully comprehend this.
Net neutrality (NN, for time’s sake) would cause all network traffic to be processed equally?
Since the bill was rejected, we do not have NN?
So smaller companies must pay larger ISPs to forward their traffic normally?
If that’s right, seems like it’s Capitalism at its finest. But I don’t know why it would make a major difference if we had NN or not. Would NN raise internet prices? or something else?
No, we currently have net neutrality and all traffic is processed equally. Since the last bill has been rejected, all that did was stall the decision process.
To understand NN you need to know how are current system works. Consumers pay ISPs to get a connection to the internet. ISPs pay and work deals with internet backbones to connect their subscribers to the rest of the web. On the other end of things, companies like Google pay the internet backbone companies to get their content on the internet. On a smaller level, I pay my host which pays the internet backbone companies for a connection to the Internet.
So, if something would go through against net neutrality, that would allow ISPs to double dip. They could charge Google for any traffic Google sends through the ISP’s side of things. If Google fails to pay, they won’t be accessible to that ISP’s users, even though they’re already paying for a connection to the Internet. It doesn’t make sense at all from a technical standpoint.
The reason this is coming up is because ISPs are starting to want to push their own services. They want people to use their bandwidth for services on which they own and not someone else. So, by charging the other content providers, they are making up money even if a person doesn’t pay for the ISP’s service. That is not capitalism. That’s called greed.
You’re right, it’s not capitalism, but it’s not greed either. It’s abusing monopoly position in addition to collusion between key players.
I’d like to know about what the people who support this would say to the electricity companies deciding different rates for electricity should apply to different devices connected to the network.
Post a Comment