[governance] What is Network Neutrality

[McTim]

On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 9:54 PM,  <nancyp at yorku.ca> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> A neutral network must ensure that data is reachable from anywhere on the
> internet network. At present the internet has no minimum standard of acceptable
> performance for reachability of websites and data.

As Avri and others have mentioned, this "standard" is called "best-effort".

The internet as an
> information tool is useless without clarifying standards of reachability.

It's been quite useful to me for over 20 years!



s it
> a tool for edutainment or for information?
>
<snip>

> Another important example of the unreachability of data took place in March 2008
> at York University. A professor using the on-campus network attempted to reach
> an internet website located somewhere in Europe that was important to his
> research.  After repeated attempts, he still could not reach the site so he
> contacted the IT (Information Technology) department at the university. They
> were mystified why this would be the case. When the professor went home,
> however, he found that he could reach the website. After several days the IT
> department found out that the university's bandwidth supplier Cogent had
> severed a peering relationship with a bandwidth provider in Europe called Telia
> which was the bandwidth network provider for the website that the Professor was
> trying to reach. (Miller, 2008) Cogent did not proactively inform the
> University of the issue and the loss of connectivity.

Then York needs a new upstream....you gave us this story before IIRC.

>
> Reachability is a net neutrality question. The policy concept of common carriage
> evolved into net neutrality through deregulation in the context of a transition
> from analog to digital communications. Unreachability of internet data may be
> due to geo-political factors, uncontrollable technical reasons as well as human
> error, but unreachability due to hidden arbitrariness in commercial peering is
> unacceptable.

Then switch providers, or peer with more networks, so this isn't an issue.

 The problem of the lack of transparency in commercial internet
> interconnection is largely a US problem as the US is the main battleground for
> carriers refusing peering.

There is transparency if you only look in the right places.  I gave
you many hints last time we went thru this.  I can see who York is
connected to, and who those people are connected to, etc, etc.  What
you seemingly want is to see the peering agreements, which are private
contracts between commercial organisations.  Good luck with that.

-- 
Cheers,

McTim
http://stateoftheinternetin.ug
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