Definition of Net Neutrality
Miscellanea / / July 04, 2021
By Guillem Alsina González, in Aug. 2017
The big operators hate it, while the big online service providers love it; net neutrality consists of not discriminating IP packet traffic according to their origin and the service to which they belong.
The TCP / IP protocol divides the information corresponding to the various programs and services that communicate through Internet in small packages, which include certain identification parameters, both of their destination, and of the service to which they correspond.
That is why, by inspecting the interior of each package, it is possible to establish controls to filter according to what traffic.
Why should operators be interested in doing this? Well, for two reasons:
The first is to reserve a certain bandwidth for your own services and those that most suit you. of interest, while the second consists of reducing the bandwidth to services that do not benefit.
For example, audio and videoconferencing services are not very interesting for operators, since they take away
income coming from long calls distance and international, so they are very interested in being able to limit the bandwidth they use so that the quality decline and users opt for traditional voice calls.At the same time, the operators in charge of route network traffic,
complain that service providers (such as videoconferencing, streaming, and others) profit without spending a penny on the maintenance of the infrastructure that allows them to offer their services,
which corresponds to the aforementioned operators.
This tug of war has surfaced, above all, since the irruption in scene from Netflix and other video and movie-on-demand services; the higher the quality of the video broadcast in streaming, more data occupies, and this leads to the networks suffering an increasing load, leading the operators to have to update their systems according to the growth of the demand, which in turn represents a significant outlay on new solutions.
The same problem occurs in mobile connectivity, and not only in fixed, both at home and professional.
The neutrality of the net has made it possible to guarantee from the beginning the "natural selection" of online services, that is, that the best and most accepted prevail over the others.
In this way, any new service initiative that consumes a large amount of transfer data has the same chance of success as any other.
Proponents of this concept also argue that it guarantees the Liberty choice of online services regardless of the provider of the connection that one has.
On the part of the operators and their defenders, and in addition to the aforementioned argument of the cost of the infrastructures, their continuous updating, and the fact that they do not see a penny from the service providers who are profiting from it, we also have the protest that they cannot give priority to the traffic of their own services or services of third parties with whom they have agreements, and that give a sense of exclusivity to their customers.
The most common case of this are those operators that offer Netflix or other streaming services. streaming exclusively in certain countries
and who want to ensure a fairly wide minimum bandwidth for these services, in order to guarantee the quality of the content display.
At the same time, operators that do not offer certain video services do not want These consume a great bandwidth, since they will not see a penny of what these earn Business.
In some countries, net neutrality is guaranteed by law, as is the case in the Netherlands. Likewise, the European Parliament has voted in favor of net neutrality, and the issue is hot in political discussions in the United States.
Photos: Fotolia - bakhtiarzein / robu_s
Issues in Net Neutrality