FreeBasics, CDNs, and Net Neutrality
Net neutrality has been a contentious issue for a while, and the recent election of Donald Trump looks to keep it that way (http://www.recode.net/2016/12/12/13919952/net-neutrality-fcc-rosenworcel-trump-senate). In the area of rural access, this debate has focused on zero-rating, specifically Facebook’s Internet.org/FreeBasics initiative. The basic idea is to provide some apps, websites and services for free; the user is not billed for the data. Zero-rating runs contrary to some interpretations of net neutrality as packets to these special zero-rated services are priced different than packets to servers that don’t participate. This is a fair critique. At the same time, I think it misses a bigger point about the network and how it’s built: companies already have deals with providers to better support their services: Content Delivery Networks (CDNs). To better understand why these impact net neutrality and how solutions like FreeBasics could potentially help provide a more equal platform for developers, we need to learn more about CDNs.
CDNs:
The internet is distributed in a way somewhat analogous to nations: a number of autonomous systems (ASs) that touch each other at borders. They share routing information across the borders and that allows messages (packets) to go from your AS (e.g., Comcast) to Google’s AS (e.g., Level 3). Net neutrality is essentially about this property, Comcast shouldn’t be able to preferentially route traffic across their AS to difference services.
Now, if you think about it, routing all of the traffic across an AS is a bit wasteful. If everyone is watching the Mariah Carey new years eve video, that video has to be transmitted all the way across the transit ASs for every individual user. This is dumb! Instead, networks cache the data, storing a copy of the video inside of the AS instead of at the end server. The server that stores those videos is a CDN.
CDNs were a huge innovation and a number of companies spun out of the idea, the largest of which is Akamai. If you ever request a picture and you see the browser ask for an Akamai address, you’re using a CDN. All of the major services you know and love (Netflix, Google, Facebook) have CDN infrastructure that they deploy into incumbent telecom and ISP networks to provide better access to their applications.
CDNs and Net Neutrality:
So what do CDNs have to do with Net Neutrality? Well, as discussed above, those companies with the resources, clout and connections to deploy their CDN infrastructure into provider networks do so. And their customers, by nature of the services being closer, are going to get better service.
Consider if we decided to build a Youtube competitor. We provide better videos, at higher quality, and with less ads. However, as a small player we don’t have the ability to put our CDN inside of a telecom in a developing country. This means that our videos will be fundamentally slower, from both a latency and bandwidth perspective, than Youtube’s. This also violates net neutrality and makes it harder for small players to innovate.
Zero-rating and CDNs:
Ok, so what do CDNs have to do with Zero-rating? Well it turns out that zero-rating uses CDNs; they store some small set of content in the provider network and provide that content for free. Effectively, FreeBasics is a CDN but with pricing, instead of just latency and bandwidth, benefits to users. This is the core of what I’m arguing here: Zero-rating is technically no different from Content Delivery Networks. Both are caches of content inside of the network provider and give fundamental advantages to the incumbents running the CDNs.
As such, CDNs and net neutrality are fundamentally opposed. But it doesn’t need to be that way. There have been a number of initiatives to provide an Open CDN system, one where anyone, regardless of resources or politics, can host their content inside of networks. This is aligned with the design goals of the Internet, where anyone can enter the network. In fact, FreeBasics is building towards this future; they provide an open API for services to use their no-cost CDN (https://developers.facebook.com/docs/internet-org/how-to-submit). Now, the devil there is in the details, there’s a lot of curation of what content they allow on the platform. That’s going to be complicated, providing pornography in Pakistan would open Facebook up to legal action. A more open platform would be better. But until then, misunderstanding zero-rating and FreeBasics isn’t going to make things better. Working on a better, more open CDN platform will.
