[governance] What is Network Neutrality

[JFC Morfin]

At 16:01 08/01/2009, George Sadowsky wrote:
>All,
>I like very much Carlos' suggested approach of focusing on net 
>neutrality.  In addition to addressing edge-content manipulation by 
>ISPs for whatever reason, it addresses the issue where (1) XXX is a 
>government, and packets in one or both directions may just end up in 
>the gulag (and sometimes with their senders and recipients, too!); 
>and (2) the potentially more beneficial case where SIPs are trying 
>to do spam control or other damage control of some kind.  Note that 
>this would also diversion of traffic to alternate recipients, or 
>simply inspection of traffic in transit (e.g. the Great Chinese Firewall)

Dear George,
I am afraid you are only partly correct. Every debate about Net 
Neutraility is pure nonsense, until one starts openly documenting 
legally, societally, technically, internationally, and politically 
(the 5 WSIS governance poles) what are:
- the Internet
- what is the "Net"
- what is "Neutrality"
- by who
- where
and everyone involved has read, fully understood and appreciated the 
positive/negative impact of RFC 3238, 3752, 3835, 3836, 3837, 3838, 
3897, 3914, 4037, 4236, 4496 and 4902.

Then and only by then one could try to evaluate if "Net Neutrality" 
differs from "Life Neutrality" and if it makes sense. Or if we want 
to talk about Net Life Quality, Protection, Ecology, Consistency, etc...

>There are, of course, different definitions of net neutrality, and 
>there are some thoughtful and challenging papers that address the 
>subject.  It's probably worth at least establishing and contrasting 
>definitions, but more important, understanding what they imply for 
>users in areas such as privacy, confidentiality, and accuracy.  I 
>agree with Carlos in that much of what I've seen does not 
>concentrate upon implications for the user.

Question is not so much to dispute what we do not want, but to obtain 
what we want. This means understanding what is possible, deciding, 
and acting logically enough to obtain it.

>I have never seen from an ISP a clear statement by an ISP of what 
>the ISP does with respect to traffic manipulation (if anything), and 
>I would think that a reasonable goal should be to establish a 
>framework that allows/requires an ISP to declare, in simple language 
>or languages, its policies with respect to content manipulation and 
>delivery.  This is most necessary and useful at the local level, 
>where there is one path to the user's computer.

This is the datacom last mile problem - another part with economy, 
multilinguistics, technology convergence, etc. of the access issue. 
Lax SSL management, lack of presentation layer, poor network usage 
architecture, confusion between the "Internet" and its many many 
"networks", etc. make all this extermely confuse. We need first to 
clarify all this new cross-subzidization issue. Locally in the US and 
for the rest of the world.

>Although higher tier ISPs have the capability to make the same 
>declaration, it's not useful to the user in that the routes 
>traversed by packets are likely to belong to multiple carriers and 
>in theory may even vary, packet by packet.
>
>This is a REAL Internet governance topic.

Yes. This is why it must be considered as an intergovernance 
multilateral issue in the context of the current financial crisis, 
economical intelligence and unrestricted warfare. Etc.
jfc



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