Quote:
Originally Posted by powerclown
Question: How could the ISPs and hardware companies legally prohibit access to a site such as this one, and is that even whats at stake here because I was under the impression it was more a matter of controlling the amount of bandwidth available to end-users. If it is the latter, and the stated explanation for it is to finance the physical expansion of the infrastructure of the internet for future innovation and new technologies, then whats the problem with that?
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This question has already been addressed, but I'd like to expand a bit and go more in-depth.
Net neutrality demands that all transit networks be both content agnostic and protocol agnostic.
Content agnostic means that the providers will not tamper with traffic in any way, regardless of where it's coming from or what information it contains.
The example of making a site disappear, while technically possible, is a bit extreme. Imagine, though, that Roadrunner signed a deal with Yahoo. I don't know about in the US but there's a strong precedent for those kinds of deals in Canada. And imagine that as part of the deal, Roadrunner delayed all traffic going to Google and Bing.
It restricts consumer choice, it's easily possible from a technical standpoint and as far as I'm aware under the current framework it would be perfectly legal for them to do so.
Protocol agnostic is another can of worms, and might be why you're getting confused. Protocol agnostic means that the consumer has the choice of how to use their connection, and the ISP doesn't get to pick and choose what programs the consumer can and cannot use.
Sound out there? It's happening here in Canada right now. The major ISPs have all installed deep packet inspection equipment in their network, and are applying heavy throttling to any and all traffic sent and received via bittorrent or other filesharing media. The downside is that this filter will actually throttle all encrypted connections that aren't using specific whitelisted ports, so it can and has interfered with VoIP services, VPN's and all manner of other connections.
Between 4 pm and 2 am my 5mbps connection is slowed down to 512kbps for the purposes of any of these programs. Furthermore, due to the nature of TCP/IP (and specifically the redundancy built into this protocol) this throttling could actually cause me to send up to four times the number of packets I would otherwise. Since monthly usage quotas are also common practice in Canada, this can potentially have very real financial consequences for me.
Consumers in Canada are attempting to fight against this now, but it's an uphill battle.
Net neutrality is good, and acting to preserve before these corporations start tampering with your data is a very good idea.
There is no reason for the average individual to oppose net neutrality.