So, you may have heard lots of (very boring) blather in the news about net neutrality recently.
You may not know what it really means, or who has what vested interest in a particular outcome.
Thankfully, I am here to save the day!
Hopefully, I can do so without being boring.
But let me start with a simple, direct statement, and then lengthy and hopefully interesting explanation will follow.
Net neutrality is a concept without which, network providers (the major players are Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T) could bone you six ways from Sunday without lube or the courtesy of a reach-around.
So let's begin by talking about what the internet actually is, how it works, and what you're paying for, versus what you think you're paying for.
Remember a few years ago, Senator Ted Stevens famously said "the internet is a series of tubes," and everyone mocked him publicly for his obvious ignorance?
Everyone but Senator Stevens was wrong.
See, "the internet," as you most likely understand it, is a fiction. There is no vast, swirling cloud of the sum total of all human knowledge in a secret containment vessel, hidden away in a long-buried subterranean laboratory run by the DoD.
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| Pictured: not a data containment vessel. |
What actually exists are individual computers, and groups (sometimes called "server farms") of computers. Each of those places - call them a "node" for simplicity of jargon - contains something. Like a tank filled with some finite, limited, but interesting knowledge.
Or cat pictures.
Or Tumblr.
Whatever.
Those nodes are connected to one another by...
...
...A series of "tubes." Most often, these "tubes" are in fact fiber-optic cables, connecting two separate networks together; they're often less than a foot long.
Back up. What the hell is a network, then?
Well, it's several nodes, all linked together.
For example: if you're at a college, all the computers at that college, or a large portion of them, are linked together. That's a network.
In order for that network to be connected to "the internet," somewhere on that college campus is a box - or a rack of little boxes - called "routers." Their entire job is to figure out where incoming and outgoing data traffic is supposed to go; kind of like a super-fast system of...
...well...
...tubes...
Look, you've been to a bank drive-up window, right?
You know how you have the little container, and you stuff your check, ID, whatever, into it, shove it into the tube, and hit a button, and it goes away? This is what happens when you computer asks for information. That can be a song on iTunes, an ebook, a website, whatever, but your computer puts the request in a container - called a "packet" - and fires it off to the other end of the tube.
The router is a midpoint; it sorts all the containers to make sure they're in the right tubes.
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| Pictured: what a router does. |
This happens really, really, really fast.
As in, your at-home little wimpy "router" from Comcast does this as many times a minute as the entire U.S. Postal Service manages in a whole year and then some.
Now, you may be wondering what this has to do with neutrality. We'll get there, I promise.
But back to the college campus...
The college - University of Downloadistan, whatever - pays someone, some company, to connect their campus network to the rest of the world.
To the student, this is transparent; they don't see any of the infrastructure, just the effects.
They click a link, a page loads.
But what really happened, was they clicked a link, their computer closed up the container with the info request, sent it to the college router. That router sent it on to the internet provider's router, which sent it on to another network router, which passed it along to another...
...ad nauseam, until the packet finally arrives at a computer that actually contains the web page the student wants; that computer opens the packet, takes the ID and check, stuffs the website data in, and sends it right back to the student.
Now, as the packet passes through each router, the router adds or updates the routing information on it; kind of like a dynamic mailing address, so that the data knows how to go back home after its hot date.
So, the student clicks, and within instants, the website is loaded and the student is none the wiser, not realizing that the data involved traveled in some cases literally thousands of miles to get there and back in the few seconds you were busy twiddling your thumbs waiting.
In doing so, it went through not one, but possibly hundreds, of individual networks - all connected by a series of tubes - to its destination.
Wait for it; we're getting the basics out of the way so the neutrality will make some sense, ok?
Now, if you're a private citizen, you most likely have an account with an ISP, or internet service provider. That would be Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Dish Network, Hughes, Verizon, AT&T, and some others.
What you most likely think you're paying for is an unlimited access pass to the collected sum of all human knowledge.
And cat pictures.
And porn.
And 4chan.
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| Pictured: 4chan. |
Moving right along, what you're actually paying for is for the company in question to connect your computer to the series of tubes that connects all the other networks. The way that service is sold in the USA is by speed; the more you pay for, the fatter a tube you get. The fatter a tube you have, the more requests for information and gifs of dancing monkeys and Vine videos you can cram down it at one time, right?
Whoa there.
That's how it SHOULD work.
But only in a net-neutral world.
See, each of these networks has borders.
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| Pictured: not what those borders look like. |
Information has a home; anything you're looking for is available for you to view, but it's stored in a physical place, even if you don't realize it.
Most of those physical places exist as individual networks.
Internet service providers, however, don't mostly have huge server farms like a university or corporation would; they have - drumroll please - you.
See, Verizon's "network," which has borders with the rest of the world's networks, consists of millions of individual people, each owning a computer.
In a net-neutral world, you ask for data; Verizon carries your request to the nearest border, passes it along to another network. Eventually, data comes back, and Verizon carries it to your house.
You pay Verizon to provide that service.
On the other end - somewhere - is a different network, run by a different company. Let's call them Level 3.
Now, Level 3 does the exact same thing Verizon does, except that their clients - instead of being single individual homeowners - are mostly corporations.
Netflix is one of those corporations.
So, in a net-neutral world, you open your browser, type in Netflix.com, and away goes your packet - through Verizon - to the border with Level 3. Verizon hands the packet to Level 3, Level 3 carries it to Netflix, Netflix refills the container with the webpage and sends it back; Level 3 carries it back to Verizon, Verizon carries it to you, you watch movies. Everyone is happy.
But... Wait.
Verizon ISN'T happy. Neither are Comcast or AT&T.
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| Pictured: a sad rich guy in a corporate boardroom. |
They feel that their networks are being unfairly used - for the purpose that you specifically pay them to perform - because lots of data comes and goes from Netflix.
But that doesn't actually matter.
It's a cash grab.
Verizon and Comcast know that you don't know how this works. They're counting on it. They talk endlessly about it, because the more boring they can make it sound, the less attention you'll pay to it.
So they say that Level 3 is overloading their network by pouring so much data into it that it's slowing down connections for everyone else, because that border is getting congested.
You probably have a mental picture of the border between Verizon and Level 3 right now as some kind of Grand Canyonesque continental divide, a huge crevasse only bridged by a tiny rope bridge...
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| Pictured: What you probably think this looks like. |
That's not an accurate picture at all.
Instead, the interconnection points between Verizon's network and Level 3's network are far more simple.
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| Pictured: network diagram of the Network Service Provider Internet Exchange Point in the Carrier Hotel in L.A. |
Imagine a room roughly the size of a broom closet. Along one wall are two nearly identical metal frames, each holding several little flat metal boxes. Between those boxes are a series of cables, each about a foot long, connecting the sets of boxes together.
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| Not actually Level 3 and Verizon but you get the idea. |
That's a network interconnection point. Level 3's border routers, connected to Verizon's, by about a foot of cable.
Now, they're congested; they're congested because they need more cables.
Verizon wants to charge Level 3, and Netflix, more money for the data that goes across those wires, because they're using an "unfair" amount of data.
But that data is there because you - paying Verizon customer - paid them to go get it for you.
And they know they can't simply demand more money from you for that service, so they're trying to make it look like Netflix is owned by unreasonable dicks, so you'll think of them as the bad guy.
Charge Netflix more, Netflix has to raise prices, which YOU have to pay.
Hmmmmmmm...
So, Verizon is trying to charge a company you already pay for the data, to carry the data you pay Verizon to carry.
Hmmmmmm.
Well, it's because there's some huge expense involved in upgrading, right? After all, it's not really fair to expect Verizon to assume all the expense of upgrading their service to actually support the demands they charge their customers to satisfy, right?
Sorry, that was overly sarcastic.
I meant to say that since Verizon already charges you to carry data at a specific speed, it's unfair to demand that they carry data at the speed they charge you for, because that data has to come from someone else like all the other data on the internet, but because it comes from Netflix it's made of sucks and bags of coal and ass cancer, and therefore hurts Verizon more to carry it, or something...
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| I wish I was kidding, but that's actually what Verizon is claiming... |
...But wait, that's obviously bullshit, because...
...Level 3 offered to pay for the upgrades to the Verizon routers. Openly said "we will buy you the equipment, just plug in more goddamn cables," and you know what Verizon said?
"No."
Because their goal is NOT to provide you the service you pay them for, you see? Their goal is to profit off you on as many levels as possible. If Verizon launches a streaming video service - kinda like Comcast's "Xfinity" service - and they're competing against Netflix, they're going to lose.
But if they launch, and THEIR service is super, super fast, and Netflix is slow as hell - because Verizon is intentionally slowing down the traffic from Netflix so that their service looks better, despite the fact that you pay them to bring it to you - they win, and get your monthly service fee AND a subscription fee!
Yay, double-dipping!
If you feel like this is pretty epic douchebaggery, you're entirely right.
If you've read my articles before, you know what I'm gonna say:
But Wait, There's More!
See, it's not just that the villainous douchenazis at Level 3 have offered to pay Verizon's way through the congested links, no; as it turns out, Netflix actually provides - free - a service called the Open Connect Content Delivery Network.
What's that, you ask?
Well, it's the reason that Netflix doesn't experience slowdowns and congestion anywhere on planet Earth except the United States.
Because Netflix provides ISPs servers, containing Netflix data - big containers full of movies, you see - which can be plugged directly into the ISPs own networks, thus avoiding border disputes entirely.
And most of the major ISPs on Earth outside the United States have made deals with Netflix to do this.
Only in the United States do the ISPs have such sway over our governance that they can convince the government to let them even pretend their refusal to provide the service you pay them for is legitimate.
Net neutrality is the rule that says all ISPs have to treat data the same regardless of source.
If you don't have it, the ISPs get to not only refuse to provide you the service you pay them for, but they get to screw you out of extra money besides.
Now if you've read my articles before, you know what I'm gonna say:
But Wait, There's More!
Ever seen a Verizon ad? Or a Comcast ad?
In recent years, the primary thrust of their advertising has been to highlight their ability to provide the fastest, best streaming video service. Both companies loudly tout the ability of their networks to stream video onto any device you own, all over your house, or your neighbor's, or at McDonald's, wherever, because they're awesome.
Both companies also cap data. Both companies have made public statements to the fact that they want to change from a speed-based sales model, to a quantity-based model.
You want to know why?
Because they can charge you way, way, way more if they can charge you for the data, after you're hooked on streaming video services. Video streaming, especially at HD resolution, takes an enormous amount of data, thus the relevance of the speed of your connection; if you're trying to consume huge quantities of data, in the form of movies online, you need fatter tubes.
So they advertise fat tubes. (Look here to see how often Verizon and Comcast talk about their speed.)
Which they intentionally are trying to avoid giving you, specifically so they can gouge you for even more money.
Comcast earned roughly 1.8 billion dollars in net profit - that is, what they have left to throw in the Scrooge McDuck vault after they pay all their bills - in the first quarter of 2014. That adds out to not quite 8 billion dollars in profits expected this year.
Verizon made $11 billion in 2013.
AT&T made $18 Billion in 2013.
Do NOT let these companies snow you into thinking they're as broke as you are.
They're not.
And they're trying to avoid providing the service you specifically pay them for, despite other companies offering to help them overcome the technological hurdles they face utterly free of charge.
Understand that they're trying to steal from you, without your realizing it.
And don't let them succeed.
