Kraken

I really want this awesome shower curtain.

Posted by Matt · 404 days ago

net neutrality

There has been some concern that large ISPs could throttle (slow down) traffic to/from certain sites. For example say you buy internet access from a cable company like Time-Warner or Comcast, the thought is that they might see Netflix streaming as a competitor to their Cable TV service and they could therefore throttle netflix traffic to make the user experience less than stellar. Internet service from AT&T might throttle VOIP (internet phone) traffic since it's competes with their phone service.

I'm not sure there's any evidence of this actually ever happening but that is the fear. And of course this fear is driving people to demand that the government fix the problem that doesn't even exist yet by using their benevolent might to regulate the internet. Let's say, by some miracle, the government decides not to grab more power and the ISP's actually do throttle traffic, what could be done?

Well obviously if one ISP starts throttling traffic from some source there will likely be a competing ISP that doesn't throttle traffic from that source, that just seems logical, (even more logical would be an ISP that doesn't throttle any traffic out-competing the throttlers) anyway, if a person was determined they could buy multiple connections and between them all would have one completely unthrottled connection. Using a router they could then send traffic for certain services down a line that doesn't throttle that traffic.

Okay so that's what one fairly smart person could do on their own at a pretty high expense (paying for multiple lines), that doesn't help poverty stricken non-nerds. Well, what if the nerd in the above example were to purchase the highest speed versions of the ISP lines and then using WI-MAX (high speed wi-fi) or something he could easily sell unthrottled internet to his neighbors, possibly (depending on how many of his neighbors sign up) for a price lower than what a given ISP would charge for a throttled line. The nerd covers the cost of his multiple lines and maybe even makes a bit of profit, and the throttling ISPs lose a bunch of business...