Recently, a U.S. federal court overturned an established FCC rule that Internet providers had to treat all Internet traffic the same with no preferential treatment for anyone. That rule was called the principle of Net Neutrality. What is Net Neutrality and why is it important?
Let's start with the basics - Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers and governments should treat all data/traffic on the Internet equally, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, and modes of communication. The term was coined by Columbia media law professor Tim Wu.
What does the court ruling overturning Net Neutrality mean? Now, Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner Cable, Level3 and all the others can decide who gets the best service and who doesn't. Providers also aren't required to tell you when you sign up with them that they prioritize traffic so that you can make an informed decision about their offering. They also have the right to restrict content or slow down services from competitors.
Could Google sign an agreement with AT&T and Comcast to give their service preferential treatment over Bing and Yahoo? Yes, possibly but there has been no announcement yet. Oh, I almost forgot. They're not required to even announce agreements like that!
Let's use the real life example of the first agreement signed between Comcast and Netflix last week. In essence, for a fee, Comcast guaranteed Netflix they would get preferential treatment for content that Netflix sells on their portion of the Internet at the expense of everyone else that doesn't pay for special treatment. Great of Netflix customers, everyone else? You'll have to wait a little longer.
When using Comcast owned Internet circuits, Netflix traffic comes first and your other Internet traffic comes after that. That's just one contract. Give them time! Within a year, there will be hundreds if not thousand of other companies asking all of the Internet providers and users for special treatment and those that don't pay will have to wait longer for your content to pass through those lines.
What's the scope? It's not just Comcast that's going to be there with their hands out extorting money from those that use their circuits. Almost every inch of the lines that connect the Internet are privately owned. The entire Internet is made up of hundreds of line providers and when you access a web site or transport data from one point to another, you may traverse many different vendor lines. Each one can set up their own "virtual tollbooth" to charge for faster throughput. If you don't have an agreement, you will slow down compared to those that pay.
What does it mean for you? Yes, there may be a slight decrease in your Internet response times but that's not the worst of it. If you work from home, your connection to the office may slow because your company is not paying for priority treatment. Video conferencing, for example, could be affected. The distributor you order your product from will be approached by their Internet provider to pay a premium for the same service they used to get automatically when the law said that everyone had to be treatment the same. Guess who will wind up paying a little more to cover that Internet "priority surcharge"?
Net Neutrality was a great idea and the FCC ruling guaranteeing everyone equal treatment was sound. The Internet providers that wanted to make more money than the already huge sums they already earn used their muscle to get their way and have a chance to really rake in the dough. Will it change? Maybe, there is still more legal wrangling to come but in the meantime you can expect a flurry of agreements to provide prioritized treatment of content now that Net Neutrality is dead.
Jeff Hoffman is an network security and data protection consultant with ACT Network Solutions. He can be reached at jhoffman@act4networks.com.
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