Pros & Cons Of Net Neutrality

In 1994, Al Gore said:
How can government ensure that the nascent Internet will permit everyone to be able to compete with everyone else for the opportunity to provide any service to all willing customers? Next, how can we ensure that this new marketplace reaches the entire nation? And then how can we ensure that it fulfills the enormous promise of education, economic growth and job creation?
—Al Gore, 1994

PROS AND CONS OF NET-NEUTRALITY, YOU DECIDE...

• Bandwidth availability:
  
  There is only a limited amount of bandwidth available at any given time for all of the applications that access the internet. As such, it is necessary to separate applications in order to insure that essential programs, such as internet browsers and email, get sufficient bandwidth, while still leaving some bandwidth for non-essential uses, like games.
  
  First Priority applications are programs with normal bandwidth demands that support general Internet use and access to other basic services that do not typically require the sharing of large files.
  
  High Priority applications are programs with variable bandwidth demands that periodically consume large amounts of network resources. Some of these applications, like instant messaging, also require dedicated network bandwidth in order to keep the applications functioning properly. These general groups of applications are given high priority when assigning available bandwidth, and include Web, FTP, Real Player, Quick Time, Windows Media, and instant messenger programs.
  
  Low Priority applications, such as digital media sharing and network gaming applications can use an extremely large amount of the network resources . High demand applications are given a lower priority than applications demanding lower amounts of bandwidth, as more priority is given to bandwidth that benefits all users, such as web traffic and e-mail traffic. As the level of web traffic and e-mail traffic grows throughout the day, users of these applications may experience slower rates, as less bandwidth is available to run these applications as it is allocated to the higher priority applications.
  
  
• Data discrimination:
  
  ISPs have engaged in data disrimination; In 2004, a small North Carolina telecom company, Madison River Communications, blocked their DSL customers from using the Vonage VoIP service. Service was restored after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) intervened and entered into a consent decree. In April 2006, Time Warner's AOL (America On Line) blocked all e-mails that mentioned www.dearaol.com, an advocacy campaign opposing the company's pay-to-send e-mail scheme. An AOL spokesman called the issue an unintentional glitch. In October 2007, Comcast was found to be preventing or at least severely delaying uploads on BitTorrent.
  
  
• Quality of service:
  
  Refers to the capability of a network to provide better service to selected network traffic over various technologies, including Frame Relay, Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), Ethernet and 802.1 networks, SONET, and IP-routed networks that may use any or all of these underlying technologies. The primary goal of QoS is to provide priority including dedicated bandwidth, controlled jitter and latency (required by some real-time and interactive traffic), and improved loss characteristics. Also important is making sure that providing priority for one or more flows does not make other flows fail. QoS technologies provide the elemental building blocks that will be used for future business applications in campus, WAN, and service provider networks.
  
  
• Peer-to-peer filesharing:
  
  Peers are both suppliers and consumers of resources, in contrast to the traditional client-server model where only servers supply, and clients consume. Peer-to-peer was popularized by file sharing systems like Napster. Peer-to-peer file sharing networks have inspired new structures and philosophies in other areas of human interaction. In such social contexts, peer-to-peer as a meme refers to the egalitarian social networking that is currently emerging throughout society, enabled by Internet technologies in general.
  
  Internet service providers (ISPs) have been known to throttle P2P file-sharing traffic due to the high-bandwidth usage. Compared to Web browsing, e-mail or many other uses of the internet, where data is only transferred in short intervals and relative small quantities, P2P file-sharing often consists of relatively heavy bandwidth usage due to ongoing file transfers and swarm/network coordination packets. A possible solution to this is called P2P caching, where a ISP stores the part of files most accessed by P2P clients in order to save access to the Internet.
  
  
• Pricing models:
  
  Computers: This consists of smartphones, netbooks and notebooks.
  
  E-readers: The Kindle has made this a familiar category, the idea of including the cost of access with a subscription is a strong model, but there may also be ways to charge monthly or session-based fees for data access.
  
  Location-Based Services: These are services for tracking children, pets packages, etc. Annual subscription plans or even including a one-time wireless transport charge when someone buys the device are possible models.
  
  Everything Else: On the consumer side, this includes things like having a digital camera with 3G access than can ship photos to a picture frame or cell phone.

How has computer technology affected privacy in public places?

Computer Technology has affected privacy in many sectors, not only in public places. There's something deeply disturbing about how technology has affected privacy; while some activities online might be legal, many people don't like the idea that such things can be done. Computer users and that includes almost all of us are becoming very concerned about protecting their electronic privacy. Certainly there is an increased sense of awareness and activism on this subject today, and many controversial proposals for the use of information have been subject to open debate.

To explain what I mean, let's take a look at several examples of the use or abuse of information today:

• At most schools and universities, the Fair Educational Recording and Practices Act prohibits making public any student's academic record without his/her explicit permission. Yet every school publishes its honor roll or Dean's List of high academic achievement in the newspaper.
  
• Most credit records and financial information are protected by a "private" bit of information, usually one's mother's maiden name. However, with the growing interest in genealogy, and the existence of over 17,000 Web sites relating to ancestry on the Internet, it is becoming increasingly easy to find a person's family tree.
  
• Almost anyone who has ever had a credit card or ordered something from a catalog has probably had their name and address sold as part of a mailing list to other card issuers, direct marketers, charities, and so on. While it is possible to have yourself removed from those mailing lists, it's a somewhat strenous process, and it's difficult to choose whom you wish to continue to hear from without the whole process starting over again.
  
• We like to think that our personal conversations are private, but many employers (including mine) explicitly state that they reserve the right to monitor all telephone calls, e-mail, and World-Wide Web browsing! After all, they supply the equipment for business purposes and have the obligation to ensure that it is used for those purposes. Furthermore, many employers are worried about security or liability with regard to electronic communications originating from their equipment, and so feel they need some control over what is "said" using these media.

There have been some attempts made to deal with these problems by law, but legal response to concerns about privacy is always going to be reactive rather than proactive. This is not necessarily bad, since laws should only be enacted after careful and reasoned study of the problem, and not in quick response to half-formed fears or misconceptions about the quantity and kinds of information available.