Attacks on net neutrality

2010/04/01 Leturia Azkarate, Igor - Informatikaria eta ikertzaileaElhuyar Hizkuntza eta Teknologia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Internet

The president of Telefónica last February, César Alierta, has raised the voices commented on in a conference held in Bilbao: It indicates its intention to start charging Google and other search engines and large Internet service providers for the use of their networks, arguing that they are doing business at no cost thanks to the telecommunications operator's infrastructure. Many will think that this idea is not so rare, that it is very common to try to get a few funds from those who have a lot. Google, for example, has to endure many of these things: newspapers have often asked to share with them the benefits of Google News, because it is being enriched at the expense of its contents. More than one will agree with the request, and the one with the most will have to distribute. But there is a lot at stake that Telefónica wants or doesn't want to: the neutrality of the network would be in danger and, at the same time, that the Internet remains what we know today.

What is net neutrality?

To better understand the concept of net neutrality, it is necessary to know some basic aspects of the functioning of the Internet. The Internet is a decentralized giant network made up of millions of interconnected networks, both private and public, academic or business, larger or smaller. While on a physical level these underlying networks use very different technologies, logically all of them use the family of TCP/IP protocols, which allows it to function as a single network in practice. In these protocols (and therefore on the Internet), any information to be transmitted from one address to another (an email, a request, a website, an image, etc.) is distributed in packages, which are redirected from each of the nodes that make up the network to the next node, taking into account different parameters (traffic, fallen nodes, etc.) To arrive at the destination in the shortest possible time, and in the event that the information is necessary (shipment). Therefore, the network is designed to channel any information in the most effective way possible.

This network connects companies that provide services to their servers and clients or users (through a telecommunications company) their computers. And when a client wants to use a service, the only parameters that will condition its speed will be the characteristics of these termination points (speed contracted by the client, server capacity put by the provider company, etc. ), but this information will receive the same treatment as any other on the Internet network, regardless of its origin or destination.

The neutrality of the Network is, therefore, the principle that defines the Internet network as what at present and in the future should be, and establishes that the information that goes from the Network will not suffer any discrimination because of its content, origin, destination, platform, application or protocol, and that the telecommunications company will limit itself to offering a channel of communication with bandwidth contracted by the user, without it being able to intervene in the information that is.

Without neutrality, we end up with the Internet we know

What Telefónica wants to do is totally against the neutrality of the network, since if they do not pay them insurance they will take measures such as slowing down or cutting connections with them. Given this, the logical thing is that Google and others send us to blackmail the similar Telefónica. Who will contract the service of slow or zero connections? But if all telecommunications companies agreed and did their own? The Internet would totally change to become something different from the Internet.

First, as has already been indicated, with service providers paying telecommunications companies the traffic would go faster and with others more slowly. With this, the equality of opportunities that small businesses have had to date to compete on the Internet was over. Or if we wanted the traffic of those who do not pay to go out quickly, users would have to pay and the rates would depend on the services we want to use. But also, once the door is opened and finished with neutrality, telecommunications companies will do whatever they want. They could slow down or cut traffic with the websites and services of their competition, preventing, for example, Skype and the like. Or, why not, anyone can pay them to oppose their competition...

In addition, what they propose is not economically viable. Anyone who wants to access the Internet today, whether user or service provider, pays a telecommunications company for being connected to it, but only to one, and then can communicate with anyone else, but if Telefonica's desire was successful, not only him, any of the millions of smaller networks that make up the Internet could charge a toll to anyone who wants to pass it. The cost of being on the Internet would be unviable for small businesses, and for big ones, who knows!

Party at a decisive moment

This is not the first attack that suffers the neutrality of the network. The lobbies of the associations for the defense of copyright have long claimed the limitation of the traffic of P2P programs in Spain, France and other countries. But now the Spanish Minister of Industry has stated that Telefónica's intention can be good and it seems that the Spanish government wants to take advantage of the presidency of the European Union to adapt the law to the expectations of the SGAE and Telefónica. For his part, the president of the US, Barack Obama, it is clear that the neutrality of the network is a principle to protect. He defended it in his electoral program and, for the moment, is fulfilling what has been said in this matter. One must see which of these two opposing interests prevails.