SHOULD the internet treat all data equally, regardless of whether it is part of a multi-gigabyte video file or a short email? A ruling by the US Court of Appeals last week has left the issue as murky as ever.
Nearly two years ago, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) censured network operator Comcast for trying to impose restrictions on “bandwidth hogs” who use BitTorrent and other file-sharing software. These systems eat up huge amounts of data capacity, and so can degrade the service to other customers.
The FCC intervened on the basis of the “net neutrality” principle that all data should be treated equally, but the Court of Appeals has now ruled that the FCC cannot dictate how internet service providers manage their networks. Confusingly, both sides have declared their support for net neutrality. The FCC reaffirmed its commitment to “preserving a free and open internet”, while Comcast says it too “remains committed to the FCC’s existing open internet principles”.
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But the key problem remains unresolved: when large numbers of customers want to access the internet simultaneously, how can traffic be managed in a way that prevents those who are transferring huge multimedia files clogging up the network?
Johan Pouwelse, a peer-to-peer researcher at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, suggests that a different kind of charging tariff could help. Instead of charging customers on the basis of download speeds, network operators should charge users and content providers according to how much data they download or upload. “They could do that without interfering with traffic, in an entirely net neutral way,” he says.
This proposal would be opposed by internet giants such as Google and Facebook, who generate large volumes of web traffic and so could face higher charges. But with high-speed broadband stimulating an ever-growing appetite for bandwidth, some way must be found to fairly share out the internet’s limited resources.
