The Technology Liberation Front - Latest Comments in Herman Makes a Good Point about the Scope of Neutrality Regulations

Re: Herman Makes a Good Point about the Scope of Neutrality Regulations

BubbaDude — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 15:55:00 -0000

Pardon the grammatical errors in my comment. Here is what I meant to say:

Is network neutrality the same thing as "the end-to-end principle?" I don't think so.

As I understand it, a neutral network is simply a passive network that doesn't make any decisions about routing packets based on content or source address. If we replace this passive network with an active one that offers multiple service levels, it can still be up to the end points to select the service level for any given stream of packets. Hence this network is "end-to-end" but not "neutral".

The notion of only worrying about monopolistic practices that threaten "the end-to-end principle" seems a bit like putting the cart before the horse.

Re: Herman Makes a Good Point about the Scope of Neutrality Regulations

BubbaDude — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 15:09:36 -0000

The network neutrality the same thing as "the end-to-end principle?" I don't think so.

As I understand it, network neutrality is simple a passive network that doesn't make any decisions about routing packets based on content or source address. If we replace this passive network with an active one that offers multiple service levels, it can still be up to the end points to select the service level for any given stream of packets.

The notion of only worrying about monopolistic practices that threaten "the end-to-end principle" seems a bit like putting the cart before the horse.

Re: Herman Makes a Good Point about the Scope of Neutrality Regulations

lippard — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 09:46:45 -0000

I wholeheartedly agree. Susan Crawford, however, thinks that drawing such distinctions is "dangerous," though she doesn't explain why.