[governance] What is Network Neutrality

[McTim]

On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 6:55 PM, Meryem Marzouki <marzouki at ras.eu.org> wrote:
>
> Le 12 janv. 09 à 15:15, McTim a écrit :
>
>> Parminder,
>>
>>  And, consequently, it turns the basic
>>>
>>> logic of the Internet on its head.
>>
>> no, it IS the basic logic of the Internet.  User types in a url, DNS
>> resolves it, web page requested by browser, web page delivered over x
>> networks.  making x a smaller number is good for everyone.
>
> yes, definitely, provided that x is not only smaller for everyone but also
> smaller for any web page accessed by the same person.

Now you are talking about something that would be possible to
engineer, but would cost many billions of Euros to implement and
monitor.  It's completely out of the question IMHO.  It would require
mandatory edge and squid caches at every ISP, no matter how small.


 Otherwise, people will
> access only (or mainly) the content that is best (lest costly) accessed.

That doesn't follow at all.  People will access the content they want,
just as they do now.  Some of that content will come to them faster if
cached, just as it does now (You can access a page hosted in France
faster than you can access a page hosted here in Africa).

> Although this is entirely different from a technical point of view, it's
> conceptually the same problem with google results appearing on the first
> page vs. those appearing on the 30th page, with the same query.

Isn't it that "people will access only (or mainly) the content that is
best" for them, thus they choose Google or Yahoo or whatever search
engine they prefer.

Who would
> bother checking all 29 result pages before reaching the potentially
> alternative views provided on the 30th page? Note that this 30th page result
> is not only still technically reachable, but also quickly and directly
> accessible if I decide, say, that as a matter of principle I would always
> give some privilege to the results appearing on the 30th page instead of
> relying on google search algorithms. In case we want to make a better
> analogy, then we should suppose that one can only access the 30th pages
> results after having gone through the 29 previous pages. Who wouldn't give
> up far before reaching the 30th page? (and actually, as studies have shown,
> everyone does..).
>

If they chose another search engine, they would get different results
(or perhaps the same results ordered differently). Still the freedom
to choose is there.

>> In your quest for some brand of egalitarianism, you have actually
>> taken a deeply anti-development stance on this issue.
>
> actually, you might yourself legitimize a "double penalty" for people in
> developing countries: not only Internet access is more expensive and
> cumbersome in general, but also, with such caching, there is less capacity
> of choice between mainstream content (whose provider can afford expensive
> caching systems in these countries) and alternative content, even though
> provided by the NGO next to your door.

nope, same capacity of choice exists, despite the number of people who
may choose cached content.

As an experiment, I just tried to view the content of the NGO which is
my next door neighbor.  I ran a Google query for "Cesvi"at the same
time as I typed in cesvi.org (a guess as to the domain name).  Google
lost in terms of speed (perhaps because of a squid cache?), I am
viewing the content via the direct surfing, not via Google.

-- 
Cheers,

McTim
http://stateoftheinternetin.ug
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