Wavelength Comic by Ben Klingberg

Content providers are trying to put arbitrary distinctions on internet traffic that don’t exist in reality to provide a justification for tiered pricing for content. The problem for the content providers though is that they have to make a case through misinformation for increasing the cost to the end-user for usage of the fundamentally neutral transmission medium of TCP/IP, the backbone the internet is built on.

The main point that many people don’t truly understand about “Net Neutrality” as a concept is that we already have it. All the proposed legislation and debate on the topic revolves around either taking us away from the status-quo or protecting it for future generations.

TCP/IP makes no distinctions on the content that’s being piped down your internet connection, it just sees it as “stuff”. “Stuff” gets shunted down your DSL line or your WiFi and the only thing that matters to the computer or device on the receiving end is that the “stuff” is all received and re-assembled in the right order, which TCP/IP ensures.

Once you have these chunks or “packets” or data, then and only then does it actually matter what the content is. Whether you’re viewing a web page (you actually do download every page you view. It gets “cached” on your computer’s hard drive when you view it), patching a video game, making a Skype call or watching a Youtube video, it doesn’t matter to the computer or server on each end of the connection. All the time these machines are wrapping up data in little packets and sending them out into the ether while they listen for and reassemble incoming packets into something that makes sense to them.

Context is only relevant to the user. Not the data transmission. Some may argue that online video and large file transfers utilise more bandwidth than viewing a simple web page, but just remember again that all this data is currently treated equally. If an online video is using ten times the bandwidth of a simple web page, then by extention someone in the supply chain is paying ten times the cost to send you that video. What those against net neutrality want to be able to do is charge you twenty times rather than ten the cost of viewing the web page to view that same video.

If you’re claim to care about the issue and are against net neutrality because you either don’t fundamentally understand the issue or the technology, please make a point of educating yourself on the topic. If those of you in the industry who do understand what you’re talking about can still advocate the concept of tiered pricing with a straight face, at least make an effort to be honest about your reasons.

Net neutrality is not evil. We already have it and all those in favour of it want to do is protect it.