September 29, 2008 9:24 AM
"There is no such thing as network neutrality."
Without provocation I had an interesting encounter with the issue of net neutrality on my visit to Jackson, TN last week.
It came up while touring Union University when Curtis Parish, Jr, their director of network support, was showing off where JEA's fiber terminated in the building and we came upon his PacketShapers, which are essentially boxes that allow him to prioritize traffic and manage usage on his network. In introducing this technology he flatly stated, "There is no such thing as network neutrality."
He went on to highlight how the amount and variety of traffic running over his network has increased dramatically in the last few years, which means he has to rely more heavily on sophisticated technologies like these to keep his network running. He then cited two reasons why being able to prioritize traffic and manage usage through his PacketShapers are key to helping students and faculty maximize the use of the network:
- When someone's trying to initiate a videoconference he's able to prioritize that traffic over other people downloading files, which only makes sense give that without sufficient bandwidth you can't have a quality videocall whereas less bandwidth while downloading just means it'll take a little longer to get your file.
- When someone's consuming far more than their fair share of bandwidth, like through the constant use of P2P file sharing applications, he sometimes has to limit their throughput in order to preserve the ability of other users to connect at a reasonable speed. It's not that he doesn't like or prohibits P2P, it's just that those apps have a tendency to gobble up all available bandwidth leaving other users with a significantly degraded experience.
Too often our suppositions that network neutrality is a matter of good vs. evil cloud the basic fundamentals of how networks are run. That's why I found this insight so interesting as Curtis obviously has no interest in driving profit, he just wants to keep the network running. While admittedly managing a campus network vs. a residential one isn't a straight apples-to-apples comparison, they're close enough that there's good insight to be gleaned from people like Curtis.
My education on network neutrality continued when I brought the topic up to Matt York, the guy responsible for keeping JEA's network running.
He explained to me how there are accommodations already built in to any broadband network to prioritize different applications based on their traffic demands. So giving different priority to VoIP traffic vs. downloading a webpage is not only nothing new but it's essential to addressing the needs of different apps to help them run better on the network.
Though when I asked him what network neutrality meant to JEA he responded quite simply that it doesn't mean much of anything as they've got bandwidth to spare. in other words, they're not having to worry about slowing any one down or speeding them up as everyone gets access to super-fast speeds due to their full fiber infrastructure.
Now some may be asking, "What about the big evil telcos speeding up some websites over others?" But we have to realize this issue is not one of network neutrality but that of Internet neutrality.
As I've argued before, the term "net neutrality" is a bit of an obfuscation. It obscures the line between Internet and network neutrality, yet that's where these discussions break down.
Network engineers don't understand how anyone can be seriously considering a regime of network neutrality as it would effectively tie their hands when it comes to managing traffic on their networks.
While net neutrality advocates have begun to claim they never intended to call into question legitimate network management practices, if you read the legislation and rulings that have been put forth to date there doesn't seem to be a clear enough acknowledgment of this.
So if we're to move anywhere on this issue of net neutrality we must first recognize that there's a difference between Internet and network neutrality, and that while we may need safeguards to protect Internet neutrality we can't afford to let that bleed over into network neutrality lest we allow idealism to trump the reality of how to keep networks up and running.
