Net Neutrality’s Technical Troubles

by Jeff Hecht, IEEE Spectrum

The debate has centered on policy, law, and finance, as if the network itself were a given. It is not

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is set to vote on new net neutrality rules on Feb. 26, which could lead to a regulatory regime that requires Internet service providers (ISPs) to treat all data the same.

However, there is a technical dimension to the net neutrality debate that rarely gets much attention and could result in dramatically degraded service quality in some areas if net neutrality is implemented too stringently. Everyone who suffers from Internet traffic jams has a favorite villain. Streaming-video watchers blame carriers for throttling data flow to their phones or computers. Real-time gamers howl that delays and losses in data transmission hobble their competitive performance. This problem is so bad that Riot Games, maker of the popular League of Legends, plans to build a dedicated high-performance gaming network.

The stakes are rising with the promise of new Net applications, such as communication among autonomous vehicles. Also at stake is the future of wire-line telephone service, which FCC chairman Tom Wheeler wants to shift from aging landline networks to the Internet.

Yet so far the debate has centered on policy, law, and finance, as if the network itself were a given. It is not. The fundamental technical challenge is getting the Net to carry traffic that it was never meant to handle.

One of the key mantra’s of the net neutrality movement is that all data should be treated the same, but one of the fundamental tenets of network management is that to ensure the best service, some data needs to be treated differently due to the way the Internet transmits data. This is most notable when it comes to voice service, where prioritizing the transmission of specific packets, known as packet scheduling, is key to improving the quality of voice data sent over the Internet.

Some net neutrality proposals would disallow packet scheduling, which could lead to significantly degraded voice-over-Internet service. Engineers and others say truly effective net neutrality rules should avoid such extremism and leave room for reasonable packet and network management on the part of ISPs.

DCL:  This is an excellent article – here’s the link to it.