Network Neutrality Peter Shaughnessy Justin Fromm Wei Leong Chew Charles Young Shante Collins Brought to you in part by:

Introduction to Net Neutrality The concept of network neutrality is that all packets traveling through the internet should be treated equally, regardless of origin or content. As of now there is no legislation in place guaranteeing neutrality. Current Quality of Service protocols do give priority to some packets based on their content (for instance streaming video or voice over IP). We do not believe that these protocols should be abandoned, but rather that legislation should be enacted to control the ability of ISPs to charge fees for traffic based on origin or content. The internet fairly neutral today, but we fear the consequences of not legislating to keep it this way. Without legislation the ISPs would be free to charge excess fees, thereby discouraging start up websites, and hurting the end user. If it’s not on: Then you’re wrong.

Negative Scenarios Blocking- A start up website pays Comcast for its internet access. Time Warner happens to disagrees with what this website is about and decides to block access to it to all of its end users. Monopoly- Comcast and Time Warner decide that they both want to start charging for traffic coming across their network that doesn’t originate within it. They make an arrangement saying that they will both carry each other’s traffic, but will charge or block all other traffic. This would make it extremely difficult to break into the market. Application discrimination- Two phone companies develop similar voice over IP applications. One controls much more of the end users than the other. The larger one decides to intentionally drop calls from the other’s application to bolster use of its own. This discourages others from trying to develop similar, perhaps better, applications. >

A Non-Neutral Internet Would Hurt the End User If ISPs decide to charge content providers for their traffic, they will pass the cost on to the consumer. If a content provider, such as a small video start up, no longer finds it economically feasible to offer its videos for free, it would have to charge the users of its service. Large companies, such as Google and YouTube, could afford to pay without charging users, but smaller companies could not. This would discourage entrance into the content provider business.

Evidence A study by Nicholas Economides of the Stern School of Business at NYU and Joacim Tåg of the Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration showed that “net neutrality regulation…increases total industry surplus compared to the fully private optimum at which the monopoly platform imposes positive fees on content and application providers.” This means that, as a whole, the industry benefits from having an overall neutral network rather than a network where fees are charged.

“Freeloaders” Opponents to net neutrality argue that, since providers carry other providers traffic, they deserve to be paid for it. On the surface, this seems like a logical argument. In reality, the content providers are not “freeloading” when it comes to internet access. Companies like Google pay exorbitant sums of money to their ISP (or ISPs) to provide the content they do. The freeloader argument is put forward by the ISPs that aren’t lucky enough to have a contract with large providers like Google. All of the major ISPs carry each other’s traffic, and if one decided to charge the others would most likely follow. As stated before, these fees would ultimately fall on the consumer. The internet was designed as a neutral environment through which packets could flow regardless of content, and this design has served the community very well. The only reason ISPs want a non neutral internet is to protect their right to charge content providers fees without having to do anything else. = Not Google

“Last Mile” The “last mile” of the internet has relatively few options for a consumer. They would have few places to turn if their ISP decide to slow or block traffic they wanted. In this way the ISPs already have a limited monopoly on their consumers, and this would only give more power to the ISP who controls the most amount of end users if they decided to charge content providers.

References alityhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutr ality tmlhttp:// tml hn_net_neutrality_warning/ hn_net_neutrality_warning/ mides_Tag_Net_Neutrality.pdfhttp:// mides_Tag_Net_Neutrality.pdf Special Thanks To: