Father of Internet Warns Against Net Neutrality 322
An anonymous reader writes "At a recent talk at the Computer History Museum Robert Kahn, co-inventor of TCP/IP, warned against net neutrality legislation that could hinder experimentation and innovation. Calling 'net neutrality' a slogan, Khan also cautioned against 'dogmatic views of network architecture.' A video of the talk is also available."
I don't get it... (Score:5, Interesting)
Does kahn host his own servers at home? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Finally someone gets it (Score:4, Interesting)
Not true. The regional broadband duopolies can do far more to hamstring innovation than net neutrality legislation would*. For example, with net neutrality, anybody is free to innovate in the fields of VoIP and VoD. But if the broadband companies had their druthers, they'd be the only providers of those services to their customers. How does that help innovation?
* Yes, it's possible to craft legislation that would do more to hamstring innovation and then label it "net neutrality", but then, at its core, it wouldn't strictly be net neutrality legislation.
First, define "neutral". Now let the gov't do it. (Score:1, Interesting)
Follow that to its logical conclusion and you can only conclude that passing "net neutrality" will end up resulting in government regulation of the internet.
Does anyone here that's a good idea?
So, can you explain to us why government regulation of the internet is a good idea?
Don't Legislate (Score:3, Interesting)
In fact, I believe the only reason the issue is so important is because too many things have already been written into law. Specifically, existing laws make it difficult to set up ones own telecom operation. This is what makes the incumbents so powerful, and this is why we need to be worried about them locking people out or providing suboptimal service.
If the barriers to entry were lower, perhaps we could have different carriers for different niches, rather than what is basically a yes/no proposition.
If you _really_ want to know my opinion about whether there should be net neutrality or not, I would say there has never been, nor will there ever be net neutrality. There are always some who get better service than others, even if nobody is making a specific effort to make it that way. While I think ensuring everyone can have a certain minimum level of access to information has some merit, network neutrality is either a misnomer or taking things waaaaay too far.
Neutrality? (Score:2, Interesting)
Using this definition, I am very confused, as I would expect Kahn to support this type of thing. He talks about innovation a lot. I always thought the prevailing consensus was that if ISPs have their way and quash NN, little companies would be effectively "locked out" of the Internet.
Am I wrong here?
Re:I don't get it... (Score:3, Interesting)
No, it's like someone buying up all the lanes on the freeway and then dictating who can drive and how fast. And they wouldn't even have to buy all the roads, just a few "choke points". Actually, a bit more accurate would be that a company would pay the "road-company" to dictate who can drive what, to where and how fast. Of course, as each company owns different stretches of roads, I see different companies paying for different roads so that all traffic moves at a stand still.
However, the rest of your comment makes sense. And while the existing legislation under consideration may suck, the absence of it would imply that what I mentioned above is legal.
Net Neutrality Question (Score:2, Interesting)
I am, for example, all for ISPs giving lower priority to VOIP if they need to. What I am not OK with is some VOIP company paying an ISP to give them greater priority priority, while the company that can not afford to pay gets shafted.
Working in this article like "the ability of systems engineers to improve latency and jitter issues" make it sounds like no packing shaping at all is allowed. Is that right?
I guess I get it,... (Score:5, Interesting)
We have lived during a rare time, when such a powerful medium has somehow managed to keep from being completely commercialized past any recognition of the fragile and open universe it was for its first decade. There may be no way to stop the dictates of the almighty "marketplace" from having its way with the Internet like a brute with a virgin child, but I give credit to those who are trying to think of ways to keep it free for a few more years.
If we ever see the full-out commercialization and commoditization of the 'net, we will have lost something precious - something that made the turn of the millennium a great time to be alive.
Re:I don't get it... (Score:1, Interesting)
1) Hi-speed access
2) Pays additional money for inbound connections to their site.
Think about the people that do non-profit work:
1) Debian, Fedora
2) FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD
3) All the package repositories.
Updating and install software could take a whole lot longer. Now the non-profits have to fork over money to pay the Cable and Telco's to send you your files. In essence every site gets slower if they don't pay extra to the backbone providers. Big companies might be able to afford the rates; but will they pay:
1) Google
2) Yahoo
3) MS
4) Amazon
But the small companies and non-profits will suffer. The telco's and cable companies are already being compensated via user subscriptions now they want everyone else to pay for access to your network. Since this is
Re:I don't get it... (Score:4, Interesting)
Sounds pretty harmless when you're talking about Joe Tiny ISP. It's these big guys that start to give you the willies when you think about the implications of it. Net Neutrality in its purest form is somewhat of a myth these days anyway, given that almost no one runs a perfectly open router. We all firewall, we all segment and exclude, etc, etc, etc. Prioritization of packets is a natural next step in that chain. It just urks me that some PHB got the idea to make that into a profiteering mechanism, so now prioritization is evil, and will either be abused, or outlawed.
The absurdity of it all abounds. Packet prioritization is not evil unto itself. I guess if I started squelching any and all requests from microsoft.com and msn.com but gave high priority to google.com....pfft, this is all insane.
Re:internet regulations (Score:5, Interesting)
Amazing how all the cable people required monopolies to run cable but no one needed a monopoly to run high speed internet.
Re:I don't get it... (Score:3, Interesting)
These both amount to the same thing when you take into account that as time goes on, bandwidth for a given price should increase: the definition of "decent bandwidth" will change over time. Net Neutrality seeks to prevent ISPs from freezing the quality of their infrastructure and forcing you to pay through the nose for anything better. Do you remember when a 14.4 was decent bandwidth? What if sites today had to pay a premimum in order to deliver content at anything above that?
Re:I don't get it... (Score:2, Interesting)
Now it's based on who's sending the data, so now you'd be a bad guy.
Not all prioritization is the same.
Re:Unintended Consequences (Score:3, Interesting)
Think of this: You have a big pipe CAPABLE of total 2 MiB/s up and down. You could section that off so that you have
The key would be if YOU could control your OWN QoS, not if the companies force it towards you....
Re:I guess I get it,... (Score:3, Interesting)
An engineer is not an economist. You shouldnt have to apologize when you see an expert use his weight in one field to push his opinions in another. He is at fault here.
Re:I guess I get it,... (Score:2, Interesting)
In the end, though, you're very right - it's definately better not to create more useless laws where they are not necessarily required.