[GLLUG] Net Neutrality

[Chick Tower]

While reading a Slashdot article
(http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/06/10/04/0159249.shtml), I found this
comment by mabinogi.  I think it's a simple yet superlative explanation
of why the desire of major ISPs to eliminate "net neutrality" is just 
plain wrong.

                                Chick

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I don't quite think you understand the issue.

There are four parties involved.
A. The content provider
B. The content provider's ISP / Hosting provider, whatever
C. The consumer
D. The consumer's ISP (in this case NextGenTel)

Note - A is _NOT_ a customer of D.

If A wants to serve more content at higher speeds, no problem, they pay
B more money.
If C wants to get more content at higher speeds, again no problem, they
pay D more money.
No one has any problem with that concept.

The problem is when D decides that they can extort money out of A, by
throttling the traffic between C and A unless A pays them some money -
regardless of the fact that D doesn't actually provide any service to A.
They try to use the justification that with there being so much high
bandwidth content around that they can't handle the load anymore, so
someone has to pay. But they gloss over the fact that someone _IS_
paying: C, the customer that actually requested the content from A in
the first place.
If C's internet habits are really costing D money, then they should be
charging C directly, not charging the sites they visit - that's just insane.

I don't know how any of these companies think they can possibly justify
it - they already have the means to cover their costs, it's not the
content providers' fault that the ISPs are greedy enough to try to
charge coming and going.