Net Neutrality: It’s Much More Important Than It Should Be

By: John Shepler

The Internet has been my life for the last 20 years or so. Oh, it’s been around longer than that. I only got on when they released it to the public commercially in the mid-90’s. Back then it was all dial-up modems and make-your-own websites. One ad that ran at the time sticks vividly in my mind. It said something like “What’s different on the Internet about IBM and a kid with a science fair site about ducks?” The answer: “Nothing.”

On the Internet, the World is Flat
What didn’t soak in to many of us when we started communicating over computer networks was the inherent democracy, the equality of it all. Distance disappears. At the speed of light, the printer in the next room and the one on the other side of the world are equally close. You can locate team members anywhere and they forget they aren’t all in one big building… co-located, but just too far to walk over for a visit. Video conferencing takes care of that need for face-to-face.

The Internet is based on this idea of one big network that anyone can join anywhere in the world and be electronically in the same room as anyone else. I’ve gotten comfortable on Facebook with a circle of friends who collaborate on projects, but also share our personal lives. It wouldn’t be much different if we all worked in the same building or hung out at the same coffee shop. We share our joys and sorrows as if we were neighbors.

Bless the Level Playing Field
I got my feet wet online with Prodigy, then AOL, then Netscape over a local ISP. I built my first website using Adobe Pagemill and a floppy disk with some graphics that I bought at an office supply store. I wanted a place to showcase magazine-type articles that I was writing so I could also display affiliate banners to generate income to pay for the Internet connection. It had a tilde in the URL that looked a little weird on a business card, but getting a real domain name was pricey back then.

Yeah, I had a duck site. My wife and I still call amateur looking websites “duck sites”, after that commercial I mentioned earlier. The honest truth was and still is, as of this writing, that getting to my duck site was just as easy as getting to the IBM corporate site or Amazon, or the White House or anyplace else on the Web. The Internet is flat. It is level. It is democratic. It is egalitarian. The DOD that funded the genesis of the Internet, called ARPANET, built it with the best of American principles… they designed it to be free. That freedom is called neutrality: Net Neutrality.

Power to the People
Let me just say this first. I am a capitalist and proud of it. Capitalism has been very, very good to me. Better for some than others, I understand. But for most of us in what’s called the American Middle Class, we’ve grown up and aged with the opportunity to make something of ourselves by selling our skills to employers and building our own businesses. The Internet has added a whole whole new dimension of virtual business opportunities that cost little or nothing to enter, with rewards based more on sweat equity than the need for heavy debt to get started. The capitalistic opportunity of the Web has been more of a job creator, in the sense of people creating their own jobs, than any of the actual “jobs” programs that are being touted.

Having said that, I must admit that I’m horrified by what’s being promoted as capitalism these days. There seems to be a strong move afoot to return to the “Gilded Age” of the post Civil War era when the famed “robber barons” of industry and the railroad trusts lived like kings and most people lived like paupers. The game of Monopoly was actually invented as a cautionary tale to demonstrate what happens when there are no checks and balances in society. Players may start out on an equal footing, but in a few or more than a few hours, one person has everything and everyone else is flat broke. In real life, we don’t even start out equally advantaged.

Does It Have To Be All or Nothing?
This brings us back to net neutrality. For years, I was on the fence about whether to maintain all Internet traffic perfectly equal or allow some prioritization. A lot of VoIP phone calls on the internet sound like crap. It’s because real time packets of audio signals are highly sensitive to latency, jitter and packet loss. The least bit of congestion in the network turns a clear call into a distorted mess. There are ways to improve this, such as running your own voice network or having a dedicated access line to the core of the Internet. Not as good or easy, though, as if there were protected channels just for voice over the net.

Forget it. We don’t live in a world run by volunteer Internet engineers whose morals are driven by ensuring excellence and justice for all users. What we’re faced with now is dominance by large corporate entities that, despite expression of high minded intentions, will be driven by ruthless competition and demanding shareholders to maximize returns, if not immediately, then a quarter or two down the road.

Without any constraints at all, the era of duck sites will be over and only those with the big bucks will have unfettered worldwide visibility. It could be like a scene from those depression era films: “Nice web site you got there. Be a shame if nobody could get to it.”

Protect Your Freedom or Lose It
I’m not normally given to scare mongering, but I’m very much concerned that we’re looking at the end of the bootstrapping entrepreneur and even the end of unfettered freedom to explore and utilize the wealth of diverse resources available around the world. The farmers market, the arts and crafts festival, the country roads, the public bulletin board in the hardware store and the political stump in the town square are all about to be replaced by the toll bridge and the parking meter. Is that what we want?

Here’s what you need to do before it is too late. Voice your opposition to losing net neutrality and with it your personal freedom to post anything you want and go anywhere you want to go without having to pay extra fees or switch service providers. Use the resources you have now to Google your senators and representatives. Send messages through their websites. Get their office phone numbers online or call the US Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121. You don’t need to make a speech. Just say you are opposed to destroying net neutrality and want them to intervene.

Most of all, call the FCC who actually makes the rules. Here’s the number: (202) 418-1000 Take 10 seconds and leave them a voice mail. While one voice may not make a difference, thousands or millions of one voice each certainly will. Will you join me before it’s too late?


Note: Net Neutrality logo courtesy of Camilo Sanchez on Wikimedia Commons.

Why Choose Dedicated Internet Access

By: John Shepler

The Internet has evolved from a curiosity to a utility. You would no sooner give up your Internet connection than you would turn off your electricity or heating. Yet, the Internet remains a frustration. The business advantages in using it are immense. If only that link was more stable and reliable. Well, it can be. Let’s see how.

Internet vs Internet
The Internet isn’t the same for everyone. Is that shocking, considering all the recent debate over net neutrality? We keep hearing that every Internet connection is just like every other one. So, how can it be that some users get better performance than others?

The highest performance of the Internet, which really is neutral, occurs on the network backbones. This is the extensive web of fiber optic cables that span the globe. These links feature high bandwidth with low latency.

Your connection up and down to the Internet backbone is another matter. One company’s traffic may not get prioritized over another’s, but there’s no law that says everybody has to get as much as they need whenever they need it. There are Internet connections and then there are Internet connections. They are definitely not all the same.

Cost vs Performance In The Last Mile
“The Last Mile” is the name of your connection to your Internet Service Provider. Note that you are connecting to a provider and not the Internet directly. Only the highest level of network operators, called Tier 1 networks, actually have direct connections with the Internet backbone. They also have arrangements called “peering” that mean they share traffic with each other on a no cost basis. Everybody else pays to get to the Internet.

What you are paying for is the cost of the actual fiber, copper wireline or wireless link from the ISP to your location plus another fee for access to the Internet. There is a huge variation in both price and performance in those last mile connections. As you might suspect, the least expensive options have compromises that might affect your operations.

What Affects Connection Performance?
There are various factors that come into play in the last mile. First is the nature of the link itself. It can be traditional twisted pair copper used for DSL or T1 lines, coaxial copper used by Cable companies, fiber optic strands, two-way satellite, point to point microwave, or 3G or 4G cellular.

Bandwidth is limited on copper infrastructure because the lines can only handle so much speed over distance. Cable has more available on coax. Any wireless technology is bandwidth limited, although the point to point microwave links can rival fiber if you have a direct line of sight between the provider and your building. Satellite and cellular are quite limited and generally have a monthly usage limit that you don’t see on wireline and fiber.

Satellite has a special issue regarding latency. The “bird” is parked in geosynchronous orbit and radio waves can only get up there and back down so fast. That results in hundreds of milliseconds of delay or latency that you can’t do anything to improve.

Another major effect comes from the way the line is used. It can either be for exclusive use, called dedicated, or it can be multiplexed among many users, called shared.

The Most Important Key to Better Internet Performance
You might think that dedicated vs shared is almost a moot point because the backbone of the Internet is inherently shared. That’s true and the reason why the highest performance option is to get off the Internet completely and use a dedicated point to point link between two locations. A direct connection to your cloud provider is an example. Another is a dedicated line between your own data centers.

What about connecting to other companies or the general public? That’s where the Internet is a must. In practice, you can make this work quite well with a judicious tradeoff of cost vs performance.

As long as you have enough bandwidth, you’ll see the most benefit by choosing dedicated over shared connections. The lower priced services are that way because they are shared. What the ISP does is buy a dedicated Internet connection and then use a multiplexer to allow dozens or hundreds of customers to access that connection at will. The cost of the ISP's dedicated connection is spread out among many users to offer a lower price.

Consumers aren’t going to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars a month on their own dedicated connections no matter what the performance improvement. Businesses have a choice. If you mostly use the Internet for email, browsing websites, and maybe backing up your PC to a cloud service, and low cost is critical to your budget, then something like business cable broadband can be your best compromise. This is especially true if what you are doing isn’t all that time critical.

Should You Go Dedicated?
Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) is generally the best tradeoff for most businesses between the high cost of a private line and the performance limitations of the Internet. You treat it like any other business expense. There is a value to be gained as well as a price to be paid. DIA minimizes the limitations of the last mile connection. DIA is even better if you can connect with a Tier 1 or Tier 2 Internet Service Provider. T1 lines work well in rural areas, Ethernet over Copper gives you more bandwidth in-town, and fiber is best of all.

Which type of Private Line or Internet Access is best for your business? Compare prices and performance from a number of service providers and get expert consultation now.

Unlimited Internet's Days are Numbered

Remember the days when you could saunter into an airport, buy a ticket to anywhere, and be treated like a king on your flight? Nowadays you better get there a couple of hours early to hurry up and stand in line, only to sit and wait on the plane, packed in with the other sardines. The royal treatment? You'll get the royal something else if you don't go along with whatever they care to dish out. Well, guess what? That same wonderful experience is coming soon to the Internet.

Perhaps this seems a little far fetched. After all, we've been dining at the all-you-can-eat Internet buffet for over a decade. You can go anywhere, anytime, download as much as you want and there's always more. Even better, the ISPs keep increasing their connection speeds so you can do more and more, faster and faster. What parallel does this have with big jets morphing into flying cattle cars?

The deregulated nirvana that was the airline industry also sowed the seeds of its demise. Cheap readily available air travel got us to fly more often. It was so easy and so inexpensive that we shunned automobiles, trains and ocean liners in favor "hopping on a plane." Decades later we wonder why airplanes are so full and the runways so congested. What happened was that demand caught up to supply. The hubs in the system that make it possible to go anywhere are enormous investments that are hard to site and take years to expand or construct. The recent run-up in fuel prices cut the profit right out of the business, resulting in fewer, not more, planes available to sate the demand of more people who want to go more places but not pay any more.

Still, what's that got to do with the virtual world of the Internet? Behind the scenes it's not all that virtual. There's a physical Internet out there consisting of fiber optic cables, routers, telephone lines and TV cable drops. Anything physical has limitations and the Internet is getting crammed full. Full of what? Video mostly. Traffic growth was easy to manage as long as there was a steady stream of new adopters moving first into dial-up and then broadband access. Prices of the services and the business case for the build-outs were based on oversubscription formulas that assumed casual browsing and email. In these modes, there are bursts of traffic followed by long periods of inactivity while users compose their messages or read the content of Web sites. Video throws everything into chaos.

What's so different about video? Be it streaming or downloaded, video files are huge packet collections that take minutes and hours, not seconds, to traverse the Internet. Audio has the same problem, but it's a lower rate bitstream and the files are smaller. Music and high resolution images brought dial-up access to its knees. Video put the nail in the coffin and is now chewing up the available capacity on broadband.

The Internet is getting congested, but less at its very core than at the edges. Tier 1 carriers have been lighting up formerly dark fiber and installing faster switches and routers. There's even new undersea cable being installed to Europe and Asia. The providers really in a pickle are the Cable MSOs. Cable TV and Internet service shares a common line that feeds multiple drops to individual households and some businesses. The telcos have it a bit easier in that each location has a unique copper pair that goes all the way back to the central office. Both types of providers have expensive backbone connections that have to be amortized over many users. If some users are pushing the limits with heavy video activity and others are typical Internet surfers, the few will limit the bandwidth to the many. Time Warner Cable believes its just 5% of the users that are causing the majority of the congestion.

The first idea about how to deal with this dilemma was to identify the traffic burdening the networks and either block it or slow it down. In corporate networks, it is common to give preferential treatment to time sensitive or high priority data packets at the expense of other packets in order to keep the network from overloading. ISPs, especially the beleaguered Cable companies, would love to put the squeeze on pervasive BitTorrent streams. But that flies in the face of net neutrality. Net neutrality, the principle that all traffic on the Internet must receive fair and equal treatment with no discrimination, is sacred among watchdog groups looking out for the public interest. Violate it and you may find yourself in front of a Congressional hearing.

If all data must be treated the same but your network is about to buckle under the weight, then your only choices are to increase backbone and last mile bandwidth to such a level that there can be no congestion, an expensive and long term proposition, or throttle the users themselves. The principle of unlimited bandwidth for all is not nearly as sacrosanct as network neutrality. Better to have a few disgruntled users who probably have nowhere else to go than thousands of unhappy campers who can barely run Google searches.

This is exactly what Time Warner Cable and Comcast are experimenting with. In select markets they are setting monthly bandwidth limits, such as 5 to 40 GB, with extra charges if you go over. Sound similar to most cell phone plans? In this case it's gigabytes, not minutes, but the principle is the same. Just like cellular, the idea is to keep a few people from hogging the network and limiting the access of others.

This isn't a unique idea. Web hosting companies routinely impose monthly download limits on their service packages. But those are professional users. How the general public will react to limited access remains to be seen. Right now it may be just a relative handful of video aficionados who are affected. But what happens when YouTube clips become passe and we're all engaged in getting our full length TV shows and new release Blu-ray movies online?

In fairness, ISPs are working with private content delivery networks to have video streams hosted as near to the end users as possible. Build-outs of FTTP (Fiber to the Premises), such as Verizon's FiOS, will relieve that last mile congestion in a least some areas. But the fact remains that we are a bandwidth limited nation. Technology advances such as Internet-based video on demand may well be thwarted until network capacity catches up.

In the short term, bandwidth demand may well outstrip supply. A quick solution is to reduce demand by imposing a cost penalty for exceeding average usage. How successful this will be is likely dependent on where the limits are set and how much extra it will cost to get the content you can't live without. It could be that many users will be delighted by faster downloads while only a few will be stifled by limits on their consumption. But there is also the possibility that tiered service will result in more Internet haves and have nots, as only the well-heeled will be able to enjoy the benefits of high demand technology services.