Today something very significant happened, but you could’ve missed it if you didn’t happen to read The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal or PC Magazine. A group of Internet industry CEOs and Founders, myself included, came together to write a letter to U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman, Julius Genachowski, to express our support for his efforts around network neutrality.
Net neutrality is a cause that myself and OpenDNS as a company care deeply about. Before we came along and provided you with an alternative DNS service, everybody used their ISP or ran their own DNS server. Now we provide people with more choice and have demonstrated that a competitive DNS landscape is good for the Internet. It’s important that this competitive landscape be maintained and that network operators don’t do things that might cause them to block or prefer one type of traffic over another.
I urge you all to read the letter and get behind this great cause. I’ve embedded a copy of it below.
RichF
I for one don’t think it’s a great cause. The FCC is, once again, going to violate property rights for political reasons. ISPs have a right to do what they want with the part(s) of the net that they own and this right supersedes any fictional right to net neutrality.
posted on October 19th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
David Ulevitch, Founder
RichF — That’d be true if ISPs were in a competitive market. Unfortunately they are not. At best, most consumers have a duopoly to choose from.
ISPs used regulation and tax benefits to build out their infrastructure in the last mile, so that last mile needs to be neutral since we, the citizenry, paid for it.
When the day comes where ISPs are in a competitive market, I think you’ll find openeness being a key differentiator, and potentially even a premium people will pay for. Until then, things should be accessible equally.
And I’m not saying ISPs should be forced to peer with people, but once my bits hit their network, they need to be delivered with the same best-effort as other similarly classed traffic.
posted on October 19th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
TerjeP
I’m generally a fan of net neutrality. However one exception which has in my view been good for the Internet community is in regards to outbound connections to port 25 from home networks. A lot of ISPs routinely block such traffic unless the customer specifically requests otherwise. This has been great at helping to reducing spam from infected home PCs. These days RBL services such as the following make even this intervention unnecessary:-
http://www.spamhaus.org/pbl/index.lasso
posted on October 19th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Alan
I used to be in favor of Network Neutrality enforcement and codifying it in law. But I’m not any longer. If “Network Neutrality” is limited to the concerns David mentioned above, then I’m all on board. But this only needs a simple rule-making or enforcement of rules that already exist.
I’m concerned that in the name of protecting people, Network Neutrality will create another bureaucracy to regulate it. That bureaucracy will take on a life of its own, and to justify its existence it will start looking for things to enforce and result in unwanted government regulation and intervention.
All I want is for the FCC to prevent ISPs from blocking applications on their networks and promoting competition in the marketplace. That’s what the FCC was created to do, and that’s what they should be doing. Nothing more.
posted on October 20th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Ken Carter
As an operator of a large ISP, I fully support net neutrality, however I do not support the involvement of any regulatory bodies that will most certainly add cost to the services I provide or forbid me from managing my network (that I pay for by the way). Network management is an ongoing task that anyone with any real experience will no doubt agree upon. However, those that are making the rules, their experience level at the granularity of packet data management will only drive all ISPs to a usage based model, where extraordinary usage of the network will result in extraordinary fees. My vote, the best thing we can do is keep the government out of things they don’t understand (really now, haven’t we learned our lesson?).
posted on October 21st, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Ray
The one thing David did not say was that there used to be ISP competition when access was via dial-up. Broadband is highly desirable, and yet, as David says, only available via one or two providers. This gives those providers an advantage called “monopoly”. There may be some good because of the competition between telcos and cable, but they need to be watched for collusion. Collusion is easier when there are fewer competitors to blow the whistle.
If the monopoly were beneficent, it would probably not be much of a problem. I am not against profit, unless the profit is obtained via the monopoly’s unfettered greed for more more more and more.
In general, I am a “less government is better” person. However, there are certain areas where the government should exercise oversight. Those areas that affect ALL of us as citizens (not special interest groups).
I agree that bureaucracies can also become too powerful. (This is where Congress should exercise oversight.) But, without the oversight, evil grows.
Balancing the interests of the consumer vs. businesses is needed. Unbalance is all too easy, and requires constant tweaking. Too much one way, as in over burdensome government regulations is a huge problem because of the power of the bureaucracy. Too much the other way allows for the greed of some businesses to abuse the consumer.
Having said all that, I am always suspicious, of everyone. Intent, hidden agendas, revenge, greed, there is a Pandora’s Box of things on both sides that needs to be aired out and made public.
posted on November 30th, 2009 at 8:20 am