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May 10, 2006

Net Neutrality and High Def Video — Considering Alternative Views

Interesting conversation going on here and here regarding whether net neutrality regs would get in the way of services that require lots of bandwidth, like high def video.  I don’t mean to weigh in favoring or opposing net neutrality regulation, and I don’t want to rehash the big picture trade-offs at issue here — how enabling the sort of market experimentation by ISPs that Thierer lauds could come at great cost to innovators at the edges of the network. (FWIW: Christopher Yoo and Tim Wu’s recent debate in Legal Affairs lays both sides out nicely.)

Instead, let me briefly suggest how Thierer may be overstating the threat to delivering large files.  Tim Lee rightly points out that there are ways to assist distribution of large files without discriminating in favor of particular service providers’ packets. I don’t think the Akamai-style caching Lee describes is what net neutrality legislation advocates are concerned with, since it doesn’t monkey with the end-to-end principle and thus does not enable the discrimination typically at issue.

Providing more bandwidth to Net users may provide a sufficient — and perhaps superior — solution.  The VP of the Internet2 project stated the following at a House hearing on net neutrality: (found via David Isenberg’s presentation at Berkman)

“When we first began to deploy our Abilene network, our engineers started with the assumption that we should find technical ways of prioritizing certain kinds of bits, such as streaming video, or video conferencing, in order to assure that they arrive without delay. For a number of years, we seriously explored various “quality of service” schemes, including having our engineers convene a Quality of Service Working Group. As it developed, though, all of our research and practical experience supported the conclusion that it was far more cost effective to simply provide more bandwidth. With enough bandwidth in the network, there is no congestion and video bits do not need preferential treatment. All of the bits arrive fast enough, even if intermingled.

“Today our Abilene network does not give preferential treatment to anyone’s bits, but our users routinely experiment with streaming HDTV, hold thousands of high quality two-way video conferences simultaneously, and transfer huge files of scientific data around the globe without loss of packets.

“We would argue that rather than introduce additional complexity into the network fabric, and additional costs to implement these prioritizing techniques, the telecom providers should focus on providing Americans with an abundance of bandwidth – and the quality problems will take care of themselves.”

* Filed by Derek Slater at 1:12 am under General news
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