Remind Me: Why Should I Care about Net Neutrality?
End-to-end is part of Internet history, but so is traffic differentiation. On the one hand, some forms of discrimination at the packet level are constructive. Applications have different needs and it’s good for networks to provide them with the type of service they desire.
Making the Internet of the Future Happen Today
With all the policy controversy around the Internet today it’s useful to take a step back and look at the overall trajectory. While the battles over privacy, security, and the…
American Broadband Policy: Information over Manipulation
While it’s true that Americans aren’t dancing in the streets over ISP customer service, it’s unrealistic to claim that replacing them with municipal utility providers will change this dynamic at all.
Voluntary Net Neutrality: Holy Grail or Total Hoax?
If net neutrality is what its supporters say it is – the best overall way of setting expectations and managing Internet service agreements, it should be expected to become self-executing at some point. I think we passed that point about ten years ago, but we will see what we will see.
Five Myths About Internet Privacy
Our web activity is tracked by “edge services” such as Google and Facebook even if we don’t go to their web sites. This is because they both operate tracking networks with the cooperation of web sites that carry their tracking code.
Senate Internet Hearings
As a technical matter, it is the case that the Internet is more like cable TV than the telephone network. While the Internet does support interpersonal communication, its primary role is publishing audio, video, pictures, and text. And like cable TV, it’s a platform in which advertising is a very important source of revenue.
Animating Rural Broadband
Subsidies aren’t going to alleviate rural America’s broadband woes all by themselves, but with a little planning and some new technology we can do a lot with a little.
Is Net Neutrality Doomed?
Net neutrality is doomed by history and technology regardless of who sits atop the FCC. Neutrality is forced modularity, a losing proposition in every long run. Our reverence for for forced modularity comes from a fluke of history.
Reimagining the FCC for the 21st Century
I read an intriguing article on Airbus’s plans for flying cars in Digital Trends. Before the end of the year, Europe’s aircraft maker will be testing both single-passenger and no-passenger flying…
Rural Broadband is the FCC’s Top Priority
The FCC needs a commissioner with close ties to Capitol Hill who can help the members of her party forge alliances with Republicans to address the rural broadband problem more effectively. Improving the rural economy is in everyone’s interest because that’s where our food comes from. Continued advances in high-tech ag depend to a great extent on connectivity, so rural broadband is more important than idling away the hours watching TV reruns can ever be.