Politicos divided on need for 'net neutrality' mandate

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You're drifting off subject again.

The law has not even been written. Your claim that "If the law is inacted (regulation) the issues I mentioned will come about" is speculation at best, and based on a faulty assumption. Remember, the ones who want net neutrality are Google, Vonage, etc. If the law were written the way you imply, their business models would be severely impacted. They would immediately drop their support and either push to have those flaws fixed before it was passed, or begin lobbying against it. The law would not pass if it contained those flaws.

You commented "With this law, you could not even throttle down or shut off a threat", which is along the lines of another comment I made in another thread on this talkback. It is a legitimate concern, and would need to be addressed in any proposed legislation. It's the one item you've mentioned where I would see a risk and would want to see the actual text of any bill that is written related to net neutrality.

You asked "What if a service uses multiple streams for better performance and bogs down your pipe provider's servers". It comes back to if the broadband provider needs to limit packets of a particular type in order to maintain performance; then all packets of that type, regardless of its source should be equally effected. The consumer has paid for a pipe of a given size, and the broadband provider is expected to provide a best effort to meet that. If the broadband provider frequently is unable to satisfy the size pipe that was sold, be it filled through one or multiple streams, then it sounds like that broadband provider has either oversold
their network or are selling unrealistic speed expectations to their customers. Either way, the broadband provider needs to focus on their own infrastructure to get it up to what they are promising their customers, or else risk those customers going to a different provider.

You commented that "I thought restricting the competition was illegal anyway coming under 'Restraint of Trade'". This has not proven the case thus far, and would need to be tested in court. I suspect that an analogy to the postal system would be made; where the vendor who is willing to pay can get preferential treatment (ie: overnight delivery in postal environment). However, while I believe that broadband providers could use that argument as a defense; there are differences. For one, the consumer doesn't pay an monthly fee for their home mail delivery like they do for their broadband access - costs are all postage-paid in the mail system. To date, the FCC has taken jurisdiction in the cases of small broadband providers that have blocked some VoIP traffic on consumer's pipes. However, giving preferential treatment is different than blocking.

You also asked "Also how would you monitor it legally? A packet meter for everyone out there." Of course not, that's obsurd. Do the police have a monitor attached directly to your car's speedometer to enforce speed limits? No. Equal treatment of the packets would be investigated and enforced when seen or complained about.

Posted by: ac2_z   Posted on: 02/08/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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