Is the end of net neutrality a good thing?

jerlich
jerlich
Jul 23, 2017 · 3 min read

tl;dr: The current infrstructure of the internet is inherently dependent on corporations. Because of net neutrality we have not been largely inconvenienced by the structure. However, the failure of net neutrality could force us to build replace the current internet with a huge mesh network, which would bring the power back to the people.

The internet is like a forest with just a few hundred (maybe thousand) large trees. The tree trunks are the major broadband internet service providers (ISP). The branches are local ISPs and each of us are individual leaves. If you and I both use AT&T then the information we share travels only on our tree, but if I am connecting to a person or company in another country on a different ISP then the information has to travel out of my leaf, down a small branch, to a bigger branch, to the trunk, then to the roots (where the ISPs talk to each other) and then once it gets to the tree of the destination it makes the same trip up the trunk, to a big branch, to a small branch and finally to the destination leaf. You can easily see this process by using the traceroute command in the terminal (Mac, Linux, Windows is a little different). Try traceroute medium.com to see the journey that this article took to get to your computer.

With net neutrality, the ISPs have to treat all traffic equally. So Comcast (a major ISP) has to give its customers the same bandwideth to sites that use AT&T or Verizon as their ISP as sites that are Comcast customers. Without net neutrality each ISP can filter their traffic as they please. This is a major issue because most of the ISPs are also content providers. For example, Hulu is partially owned by Comcast. So Comcast has a conflict of interest when its customers want to watch videos on Netflix or Youtube because those sites compete with Hulu. You can watch a great video from John Oliver on net neutrality.

Recently, the FCC has been dismantling net neutrality which has sparked protests from several tech companies. Even the major ISPs now claim to support an “Open Internet”, although they argue that new legislation rather than regulation from the FCC is more appropriate.

I have a pretty simple model for thinking about corporate decision-making: they are motivated by money (as they should be in a capitalist market). The reason these corporations support an open internet is because they are aware that technology exists to take away their current monopoly on internet traffic. As long as consumers are not majorly inconvenienced, there is little incentive for the commercial development of these alternate technologies. So, the ISPs’ support for net neutrality (in some form) is simply self-preservation, and I believe that while the death of net neutrality would be painful, it would create the proper incentive for building a decentralized internet (which has gotten some hype from Season 4 of Silicon Valley)

So, is building a decentralized internet really possible?

Yes! A few of the key technologies that would allow this:

  1. Fast wireless networks.
  2. Mesh software that runs on existing hardware.
  3. Using the blockchain for decentralized trust mechanisms (Fun video explaining this by MickMake.)
  4. Unkackable kernels to create secure mesh network routers.

In dense cities (like New York, Shanghai, London, Tokyo, Mexico City), a mesh could be quickly built, since almost everyone’s routers are visible to 10–20 other routers. This would allow for fully private peer-to-peer messaging (e.g. text messages that are never logged/seen/saved on a central server) and payments. Even a peer-to-peer social network that could replace Facebook: where your information is securely distributed across the mesh with full control for each user to decide who has access to the information. Connections across oceans would be harder, but solar powered drone routers could provide a solution. The commercial/corporate internet would still exist, but the mesh would be like a web connecting the leaves in the canopy of the forest.

So, what would you prefer? An internet controlled by corporations that is “neutral” by government decree (or a corporate greed) or a truly decentralized internet that gives the power to the people?

Note: Recently, home mesh networks have been popularized and commercialized. These networks are mini-mesh networks which are demonstrations that the technology is mature, but they are very limited, since they still require you to connect to your major ISP for access outside the home.

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