Net Neutrality: When Best Efforts is Least

Filed in archive Commentary , Internet , Society & Public Policy on April 20, 2007

Bob Cringely writes "We Don't Need No Stinking Best Effort: Net neutrality may have been just a fantasy all along." Bob, welcome to the real world.

One of his readers writes:

"I used to work at Time-Warner Cable's road runner High Speed HQ and as of 2005, TWC marked all VoIP packets with the TOS bit turned to 1. TWC has 5 levels of priority, VoIP having the highest, router tables second, commercial services 3rd, Road Runner consumer 4th and everything else is classified as 'best effort'."

"Best efforts" means you're prioritized last, receiving whatever bandwidth is left over.

Now this isn't a surprise to skeptics or those from the telco industry. It highlights that Internet neutrality is a complex issue. "Best efforts" made sense in the early days. But it's meaningless in a complex world where there are many different types of Internet services, from your ISP and external sources, including those require a high quality level (streaming media), lots of bandwidth (P2P), or both (streaming video).

So don't accept the ISP subterfuge. The very term "net neutrality" implies that they're out to serve the public good and have and could continue a neutral playing ground. Hardly.

It's like the entertainment industry pushing DRM (Digital Rights Management), when the only rights they're protecting are their own and what they're selling to consumers are restrictions, not privileges.