http://badersbits.easystreet.com/cat...et-neutrality/
Net Neutrality Amendment Fails, Bill Moves Toward Passage (article)
http://www.evergreenpolitics.com/ep/...gnificanc.html
The Significance of Net Neutrality to America's Future (article)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-s...b_b_20951.html
Net Neutrality: Telcos' Big Lie (blog article)
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(manually retyped. all spelling errors are mine)
From: MaximumPC (July 2006 Edition)
Fast Forward: The Myth Of Net Neutrality
by Tom Halfhill
For thousands of years, people have been paying more money for faster communication. In ancient times, a king or successful merchant could hire a fleet-footed runner or fast-riding horseman to carry an important message at top speed. Even today, overnight FedEx costs more than USPS Express Mail, and so forth.
This long-standing tradition has me puzzled by the raging debate over "network neutrality," which is the insistence that all Internet traffic should enjoy equal priority. To hear some people talk, any alternative is an outrageous violation of civil rights, and an affront to democracy. They're fighting a communications bill in Congress that would establish "tiered service," which would allow network carriers to route some data at a higher priority for a premium price. Opponents insist that all network traffic must be treated equally.
But nothing has ever worked that way, including the internet. Dial-up service is available for less than $10 a month and is slow as hell. Regular DSL can deliver 1.5 megabits per second (Mb/s) and costs about $30 per month. High-speel DSL can deliver 3Mb/s for about $50. A dedicated T3 line gets you 45Mb/s and costs thousands of dollars a month. Everyone understands this basic concept.
Critics complain that without net neutrality, small online businesses won't be able to afford the same service as huge sites like Amazon and Google. That's like the owners of your neighbourhood thrift shop whining because they can't afford a storefront on Rodeo Drive in Beverley Hills. Actually, it's worse, because the pricing for tiered services won't be nearly as disparate as that. Companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo are fighting against tiered service, because they are the bandwidth hogs that will have to start paying their fair share for all the traffic they generate.
If Congress allows tiered service, nobody except the largest bandwith users will notice a difference. The Internet backbone has tons of capacity and keeps growing. Backbone routing plays a lesser role in overall packet throughput than your local Internet connection and the performance of the web server. In my opinion, vital network trafficshould be a higher priority than teenagers gossiping about K-Fed in AOL chat rooms.