[ih] history of net-NON-neutrality

[Jorge Amodio]

> "net neutrality" is not a technical term, nor is it a technical issue.
> It's a political issue, and it's about business practices.

Not only that, to compound the problem as in politics the meaning and
implications of the term varies according who is talking and who is
the audience.

I spent quite a bit of time today watching and reviewing some of the
sessions from the current IGF meeting, Vint, Bob Kahn, people from
AT&T, France Telecom, and others were in one of the workshops/panels
(Network Neutrality: What is Appropriate in Managing the Network).

What I observed (besides that even on the IGF there is not a clear
consensus about what "neutrality" means) is that the reality of the
developed and developing worlds are so far apart, that neutrality gets
confused with network management, traffic engineering and access
aggregation, and to add another dimension wired vs wireless.

Some see it as a network layer issue, others as an application issue,
as you said others as a political issue and service providers as a biz
differentiation issue.

The other thing I observed is that with this format of open dialog
without any structure or focus on a particular subject/context, and
with the disparity of the different local realities, there is no way
to reach an universal definition for "neutrality", add to that, that
some folks are already starting to talk about "search neutrality".

I liked that Vint pointed out that on the collaborative Internet,
where from point A to point B packets have to travel through multiple
networks, there are no common agreements (if any) on how to shape the
flow of those packets or what type/kind of policies to apply end to
end (Vint correct me if I got it wrong).

The "common carrier" spirit applies somehow but there are some
particular issues like if you have for example a hazardous cargo you
are not able to use some routes, then there is a service
differentiation  that applies based on the payload.

Then the problem is how you determine (by regulation?) that a payload
is hazardous, and how you (and this could be a proprietary decision by
the carrier) decide what alternative route to take ?

There is also a lot of hype around the subject, and get ready because
very soon we'll start hearing about "Cloud neutrality"  ...

Cheers
Jorge