December 15, 2008 • 18 mins
Net neutrality is the concept that a computer user should have the same access to webpages regardless of the ISP or site visited. However, several ISPs are attempting to change this situation. Check out this podcast from HowStuffWorks to learn more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
tech stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello everyone,
welcome to the podcast. My name is Chris Poullett. I'm
an editor at how Stuff Works, and sitting next to
me as usual, I have senior writer and Jonathan Strickland.
(00:22):
Hey there everyone, So how are you feeling today? I
am neither happy nor sad. I expect then that we're
talking about net neutrality. That is correct, but boy, we
are just getting more and more lame with these intros,
aren't we. Yeah, and that's probably because they're all my intros. No, No,
might have been bad too. Let's let's move on to
net neutrality. Okay, this is one of those buzz words
(00:44):
that you hear a lot, and not everyone really understands
what the term means. And part of that is because
the term kind of means a lot of different things
to a lot of different people. But we'll we'll try
and muddy the waters a little bit here, I mean, sorry,
clear things up, and we're gonna are with just sort
of a broad definition of net neutrality. Not in general,
(01:05):
net neutrality refers to being able to access all the
different kinds of information that are on the Internet with
any applicable device without any restrictions um, meaning that the
different companies that own parts of the Internet don't restrict
your access to any of the freely available stuff in
(01:26):
any way. Socialism, yes, socialism uh so. In other words,
for what this would mean to you is that you
would log onto your computer at home into onto the Internet,
and you would be able to access any normal web
page the same as any other normal web page, assuming
there aren't any weird problems on the Internet at the time,
(01:48):
like the target server has gone down or something. Right, So,
like your I s P, it doesn't matter what I
s P you have, and it doesn't matter what site
you're accessing, right, because you should be able to have
the same you know, Ina provided their new problem technical problems,
you should be able to have the same experience no
matter who you're using. Right, you would be able to
to access a web page at the same speed, no
(02:09):
matter where you were going. So let's say you're getting
the news. Let's just go ahead and use an example.
Let's say you want to get the news and you
want to lug onto CNN Dot com and so you
tell your your browser and okay, that's where I want
to go. Well, on a net neutral platform, that means
you could access it just as fast as if you
were to access any other news site like MSNBC or BBC.
(02:31):
Um you would you would access those sites equally quickly.
Now here's where the issue comes in. As a lot
of I sps kind of want to move away from
this net neutrality. It sort of hinders them in their mind. Um.
And and it takes away one of their potential sources
of revenue, which would be to make partnerships with certain
(02:56):
content providers so that those content providers would get referential treatment.
And you would say, if you were a Comcast customer,
it's a Comcast makes a partnership with MSNBC, then MSNBC
site might load significantly faster for you than say CNN
or BBC. And therefore, as a customer, you would be
(03:17):
more likely to go to MSNBC because it would mean
less waiting around. Right. And this is um, this is
not really a hot button issue probably for most people. UM.
This is kind of a There's been some talk about
it even in the presidential debates and two eight and UM,
it's something I think you'd probably hear more as a
(03:39):
you know, secondary or tertiary topic, but it does come
up from time to time, and uh, you know, it's
it's interesting to hear who exactly who wants uh net
neutrality and who doesn't. Right, there's even been an act
that has not been there's been introduced on both in
both houses of the American Congress for called the Internet
(04:02):
Freedom Preservation Act UM. And basically this is it's still
ongoing undergoing some debate in both houses. But the thing
is um this would basically say, look, it doesn't matter
who you have, you should everyone is entitled to the
same experience when they use the Internet. But the problem
is there are other companies who would like to to
(04:25):
throttle that band within you know, in some ways they
have a good reason to do so. Right, it's not
just it's not just revenue generation. No, that's true, because
we're talking you know, we've talked about other some of
these other topics before, you know, streaming audio and video,
bit torrent um. You know, now that we have all
these conveniences, now that a lot of us have high
speed internet connections at home. Uh, you know, people are
(04:48):
using them and are using them. And that's a lot
of you know, bandwidth, a lot of information traveling on
the series of tubes. So we series of two. Well,
we were talking about politics in the Internet, and we
good talk about Steven's because he has mentioned anyway, um,
let's talk about let's talk about the bandwidth issue. So
bandwidth is not infinite. There is a finite amount of bandwidth.
(05:12):
It's and it it ends within the infrastructure. Okay, well, literally,
the physical cables and fiber optics that make up the
Internet's backbone can only hold so much information at one time.
Now you can always add more. You can add more nodes,
you can add more cable and so there's you know,
(05:34):
there does there is a solution beyond just oh well
it's full now, you know. It's kind of like the
whole build more roads idea for managing traffic. That's the
other part is when you build more stuff, more people
use it. Um It's kind of funny how that works out.
But as as things like digital distribution of media come
into play, where more and more companies are really looking
(05:55):
at that as a possible way to to move into distribution,
you know, skip the whole blu ray DVD problem. A
lot of people are are concerned that blue rays never
going to mature as a full technology because by the
time the prices come down, digital distribution will have taken
its place. So here's the issue. Digital distribution takes up
(06:17):
a lot of bandwidth. I mean if you're especially if
you're talking about like a high definition movie. Yeah, huge files,
enormous files. So that if you want to get one
of those files in a timely manner, meaning that you
don't want to wait three months while your computer downloads,
you know, a film, then you need a lot of bandwidth.
You need the speed to be able to access these files. Um. Well,
(06:41):
because this band what fills up the I s p
s have to sit there and think, okay, well, how
are we going to manage this? Are we going to
invest in putting down more hardware to meet demand or
could we just sort of figure out a different way
where we kind of do some traffic control. And that's
where that's where some problems have popped up recently. Um.
(07:02):
In fact, there's a pretty famous case with Comcast. I
was wondering if you picked them for a reason. Yeah, well,
I guess who I have is an I I S
p um not anymore. Yeah, I'll go home and I'll realize, hey,
where my internet go? Um. Comcast has uh come under
fire by the FCC for throttling traffic related to bit
(07:24):
torrent users, although not necessarily bit torrent. I guess it
could be anyone who's who's consuming tons and tons of bandwidth. Actually, again,
I say it's funny that you mentioned that, because I
read an article in which the Electronic Frontier Foundation was
saying that yes, bit torrent was one of them, but
(07:45):
there were other protocols affected as well. HTML, which is
the protocol that you normally used on a web page. Uh,
not so much affected by this, but they had they
had a test that they did and um bit to
warrant Nutella and even the Lotus notes, the popular corporate
email program. And I think this probably dates the information
(08:08):
a little bit. You know Natella too. But it wasn't
just bit torrent, So they were apparently looking for other
things that used a lot of bandwidth, uh, bit torrent
and not tell A, both sharing file sharing pro programs
and um what they were doing apparently was forging packets,
(08:29):
and a packet is a little chunk of information when
you when you request something over the internet. Um, basically
Internet protocol breaks it down where the machines do break
it down into little chunks which travel over Internet protocol
to get to your machine from the machine that's serving
it up. Well, what they were doing at Concast, apparently
according to this this article I read, was they were
(08:50):
making up extra packets and when they would when it
would detect bit torrent um, it would basically throw some
of these junk packets in there, which would disrupt the
connection and cause it to break basically hang it up.
Beyond just throttling, it's like sticking a stick through this
spoke to your bicycle wheel. Golly, except with the last
(09:11):
road rash. Yeah. So so throttling, Uh, traffic is bad enough.
That's where you you actually put in exterior control so
that you slow down someone's traffic, giving that bandwidth, opening
up that bandwidth for other users theoretically, um, but you're
not really supposed to do that. In the FCC kind
of spanked Comcast when when the allegations came to light
(09:34):
that Comcast was throttling users, um, not literally throwing users bandwidth,
I should say, weren't coming to people's houses and strangling them. Um,
although I guess some people probably felt like that, Yeah, yeah,
that's nice visual Chrys. It will really come across in
the podcast. Thanks. So anyway, Um, so, yeah, the FCC
(09:55):
comes down, and this was a big deal because some
people weren't sure the FCC really had the authority need
to do this. In fact, contest was one of them saying,
who gives you the right to do this? And this
is one of those things that that people are kind
of they're kind of forging what net neutrality means and
where the parameters are as we go along, because it
is new ground, and so I think, you know, to
(10:19):
be fair, we should look at it from the other
from the company's point of view. Now, not everyone is
using that level of bandwidth. Really, from what I understand,
it's less than five percent of users who are really
cranking down all the goodies they can download from the
Internet and and taking advantage of the fact that they
have this massive, unlimited connection. Um. The thing is, you know,
(10:43):
these companies have responsibility their shareholders, and they need to
make the most of their investment, and they don't you know,
they'd love to have additional customers, and they I'm sure
they probably really don't have a problem with us downloading
all the videos and music as long as it doesn't
get them in trouble with the different copyright holders. But
(11:04):
you know that they're not really so much interested in that.
But they you know, every time they have to go
out and add a new fiber optic line or or
you know, upgrade their additional additional lines that cost them
money to which cuts into the bottom line and hurts
them in the shareholders. Uh, you know, they have a
reason reasonably legitimate reason to uh do you do that?
(11:26):
But the article that I read uh in c net
Um Australians say that this is an American problem, Yes,
because that that's where I read about you know, the
less than five percent. Well, uh, they say, basically, what
we should do is limit the amount of information that
we can we can download because essentially these few people
(11:47):
are the ones costing everyone else. Uh. When it comes
to net neutrality, they're saying, if you've throttled back on
those select few people, then uh, you know, it won't
be much of an issue and people won't be calling
for the takeover of net resources. That I can I
can kind of see that argument. There's also the argument
(12:09):
that some people make that if you were to regulate
net neutrality it would hamper innovation in some way. And
you're talking about Andy Kessler from the Wall Street Journal
also talking about Bob Cohn, founders of the Internet. So yeah,
because both of them then apparently said that it would
be anti competitive, right, it would. And well, it's more,
(12:31):
it's not just the leaving a neutral it's the idea
of regulation when you bring regulation into the picture, that
somehow regulation automatically constricts innovation. Um. I think when we
look at our economy sometimes we say that a lack
of regulation could also cause problems. I'm just saying I'm
(12:52):
not a huge fan of massive amounts of regulation either,
but if it means preventing abuse, then I think it
does become necessary. And we're we're recording this before the
the presidential election. Um so by the time this comes out,
maybe maybe this has been decided one way or the other.
But uh, it's interesting to look at how the candidates
(13:14):
view net neutrality. McCain has said that he kind of
he wants the market to take care of it, so,
in other words, hands off lack of regulation, so really
kind of against the whole regulating net neutrality, No, no
big government hands off. Uh lazy fair. That was a
nice one. So Obama he uh, he believes in net neutrality,
(13:38):
or at least has said that he would. He would
favor net neutrality, which is interesting because his running mate
Joe Biden does not favor net neutrality. So there's not
really a clear cut choice for people who are really
itching to use net neutrality is one of the one
of their factors for voting, unless they, of course, they're
completely hands off, from which case, you know, McCain is
(14:00):
pretty clear on the subject. Um. Obama's personal stance seems
to be that, hey, we need to make sure that
people have access to this information no matter who they choose.
And as you pointed out, talking about an American problem
that's not unique to the Australians. Europe seems to think
the same thing. I've read that that in Europe the
concept of net neutrality is also one of those things
(14:23):
where they they're afraid it's going to hamper competitiveness. But
in Europe there are a lot more choices for I
s p s, So you could if you knew ahead
of time that this I s P partnered with these
particular sites, you could shop around. You could say, hey,
you know, that's not the website I prefer. I prefer
this website. You could theoretically look around and get a
(14:45):
different I S and use them in order to access
the Internet. And then maybe you're okay, maybe you don't
care that the other sites are are throttled because the
ones that you like are fine. Uh. In the United States,
that's not really the case. We don't have that kind
of choice. In most regions you have maybe two choices.
Maybe some places you only you don't have a choice,
(15:06):
you have one, or you're not on at all. Well,
there's satellite internet, Well okay, but then that has its
own bandwidth throttling, which is due to the latency of
the signal traveling up to the satellite, back down to
the provider, and back up to the point being that
you only have maybe one or two choices, maybe three
uh max wherever you happen to be UM, as opposed
(15:28):
to Europe, where you may have several, like maybe half
a dozen or even a dozen choices. UM. When you
don't have that kind of choice, that's where the customer
impact really comes into play. Yeah, and uh, as a
matter of fact, you know the Internet basically started in
the United States. I mean there's there's I'm sure that
(15:48):
that other people have added on to it, but you know,
as a Defense Department initiative essentially kind of the foundation
for the Internet. And and there you know, there were
other people in the in the universities and some universities
who are working on similar things. But when they got together,
that was essentially what what made it happen. You'd think,
(16:09):
you know, being the leader in creating this worldwide network
that the United States would own, you know, the most bandwidth,
and we wouldn't have in this country the fastest connection speeds.
But part of the reason that neutrality is such an
issue is that the speeds in the United States are
are if you take them in rank, the United States
(16:31):
is not even in the top ten uh and fastest
internet speeds. I mean places like South Korea and and
I think Finland, I mean jan Japan, you know, double, triple, quadruple,
usually the speeds that we get here on our our
fastest internet connection. And you might you might wonder why
that is. There's I can give you one simple reason.
(16:53):
I mean, it's not the only reason United States is big. Well,
it's enormous. It's a lot hard to wire a country
the size of the United States that it is South Korea.
That's not the only reason, I mean, there are also
other reasons, like a lot of these other countries have
government funding that goes into these infrastructures, whereas the United
States is private companies, so you've you know, you're looking
(17:15):
at for the public good versus for private enterprise. Um,
that's a big difference as well. But size I think
plays a huge role. Yeah, I think I think that's true.
And it's just one of a number of issues. As
you can tell, it's they're a bunch of different sides
to this, and it's one of those things where it's
not a top issue. But I think it's growing. I mean,
just judging from the the amount of traffic it's getting. Uh,
(17:38):
something I heard about a long time ago, and it's
popping up a lot more. I think it's going to
become something that people can't ignore, at least here in
the United States, when you've got Obama even suggesting having
a Chief Technical Officer or a Technologies are um to
look into this kind of thing. And there's some pretty
big names that have been bandied about potentially to fill
(17:58):
this position. Um, I mean you know that it's starting
to come into the forefront of that point where you're
talking about the founding a new national office that would
oversee this sort of thing. That's pretty good news. Well,
that wraps up this discussion on net neutrality. If you
want to read more about this and other topics, you
should check out how stuff works dot com. And we'll
(18:20):
talk to you again really soon, but more on this
and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works
dot com? Let us know what you think. Send an
email to podcast at how stuff works dot com, brought
to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready,
(18:40):
are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
tech stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello everyone,
welcome to the podcast. My name is Chris Poullett. I'm
an editor at how Stuff Works, and sitting next to
me as usual, I have senior writer and Jonathan Strickland.
(00:22):
Hey there everyone, So how are you feeling today? I
am neither happy nor sad. I expect then that we're
talking about net neutrality. That is correct, but boy, we
are just getting more and more lame with these intros,
aren't we. Yeah, and that's probably because they're all my intros. No, No,
might have been bad too. Let's let's move on to
net neutrality. Okay, this is one of those buzz words
(00:44):
that you hear a lot, and not everyone really understands
what the term means. And part of that is because
the term kind of means a lot of different things
to a lot of different people. But we'll we'll try
and muddy the waters a little bit here, I mean, sorry,
clear things up, and we're gonna are with just sort
of a broad definition of net neutrality. Not in general,
(01:05):
net neutrality refers to being able to access all the
different kinds of information that are on the Internet with
any applicable device without any restrictions um, meaning that the
different companies that own parts of the Internet don't restrict
your access to any of the freely available stuff in
(01:26):
any way. Socialism, yes, socialism uh so. In other words,
for what this would mean to you is that you
would log onto your computer at home into onto the Internet,
and you would be able to access any normal web
page the same as any other normal web page, assuming
there aren't any weird problems on the Internet at the time,
(01:48):
like the target server has gone down or something. Right, So,
like your I s P, it doesn't matter what I
s P you have, and it doesn't matter what site
you're accessing, right, because you should be able to have
the same you know, Ina provided their new problem technical problems,
you should be able to have the same experience no
matter who you're using. Right, you would be able to
to access a web page at the same speed, no
(02:09):
matter where you were going. So let's say you're getting
the news. Let's just go ahead and use an example.
Let's say you want to get the news and you
want to lug onto CNN Dot com and so you
tell your your browser and okay, that's where I want
to go. Well, on a net neutral platform, that means
you could access it just as fast as if you
were to access any other news site like MSNBC or BBC.
(02:31):
Um you would you would access those sites equally quickly.
Now here's where the issue comes in. As a lot
of I sps kind of want to move away from
this net neutrality. It sort of hinders them in their mind. Um.
And and it takes away one of their potential sources
of revenue, which would be to make partnerships with certain
(02:56):
content providers so that those content providers would get referential treatment.
And you would say, if you were a Comcast customer,
it's a Comcast makes a partnership with MSNBC, then MSNBC
site might load significantly faster for you than say CNN
or BBC. And therefore, as a customer, you would be
(03:17):
more likely to go to MSNBC because it would mean
less waiting around. Right. And this is um, this is
not really a hot button issue probably for most people. UM.
This is kind of a There's been some talk about
it even in the presidential debates and two eight and UM,
it's something I think you'd probably hear more as a
(03:39):
you know, secondary or tertiary topic, but it does come
up from time to time, and uh, you know, it's
it's interesting to hear who exactly who wants uh net
neutrality and who doesn't. Right, there's even been an act
that has not been there's been introduced on both in
both houses of the American Congress for called the Internet
(04:02):
Freedom Preservation Act UM. And basically this is it's still
ongoing undergoing some debate in both houses. But the thing
is um this would basically say, look, it doesn't matter
who you have, you should everyone is entitled to the
same experience when they use the Internet. But the problem
is there are other companies who would like to to
(04:25):
throttle that band within you know, in some ways they
have a good reason to do so. Right, it's not
just it's not just revenue generation. No, that's true, because
we're talking you know, we've talked about other some of
these other topics before, you know, streaming audio and video,
bit torrent um. You know, now that we have all
these conveniences, now that a lot of us have high
speed internet connections at home. Uh, you know, people are
(04:48):
using them and are using them. And that's a lot
of you know, bandwidth, a lot of information traveling on
the series of tubes. So we series of two. Well,
we were talking about politics in the Internet, and we
good talk about Steven's because he has mentioned anyway, um,
let's talk about let's talk about the bandwidth issue. So
bandwidth is not infinite. There is a finite amount of bandwidth.
(05:12):
It's and it it ends within the infrastructure. Okay, well, literally,
the physical cables and fiber optics that make up the
Internet's backbone can only hold so much information at one time.
Now you can always add more. You can add more nodes,
you can add more cable and so there's you know,
(05:34):
there does there is a solution beyond just oh well
it's full now, you know. It's kind of like the
whole build more roads idea for managing traffic. That's the
other part is when you build more stuff, more people
use it. Um It's kind of funny how that works out.
But as as things like digital distribution of media come
into play, where more and more companies are really looking
(05:55):
at that as a possible way to to move into distribution,
you know, skip the whole blu ray DVD problem. A
lot of people are are concerned that blue rays never
going to mature as a full technology because by the
time the prices come down, digital distribution will have taken
its place. So here's the issue. Digital distribution takes up
(06:17):
a lot of bandwidth. I mean if you're especially if
you're talking about like a high definition movie. Yeah, huge files,
enormous files. So that if you want to get one
of those files in a timely manner, meaning that you
don't want to wait three months while your computer downloads,
you know, a film, then you need a lot of bandwidth.
You need the speed to be able to access these files. Um. Well,
(06:41):
because this band what fills up the I s p
s have to sit there and think, okay, well, how
are we going to manage this? Are we going to
invest in putting down more hardware to meet demand or
could we just sort of figure out a different way
where we kind of do some traffic control. And that's
where that's where some problems have popped up recently. Um.
(07:02):
In fact, there's a pretty famous case with Comcast. I
was wondering if you picked them for a reason. Yeah, well,
I guess who I have is an I I S
p um not anymore. Yeah, I'll go home and I'll realize, hey,
where my internet go? Um. Comcast has uh come under
fire by the FCC for throttling traffic related to bit
(07:24):
torrent users, although not necessarily bit torrent. I guess it
could be anyone who's who's consuming tons and tons of bandwidth. Actually, again,
I say it's funny that you mentioned that, because I
read an article in which the Electronic Frontier Foundation was
saying that yes, bit torrent was one of them, but
(07:45):
there were other protocols affected as well. HTML, which is
the protocol that you normally used on a web page. Uh,
not so much affected by this, but they had they
had a test that they did and um bit to
warrant Nutella and even the Lotus notes, the popular corporate
email program. And I think this probably dates the information
(08:08):
a little bit. You know Natella too. But it wasn't
just bit torrent, So they were apparently looking for other
things that used a lot of bandwidth, uh, bit torrent
and not tell A, both sharing file sharing pro programs
and um what they were doing apparently was forging packets,
(08:29):
and a packet is a little chunk of information when
you when you request something over the internet. Um, basically
Internet protocol breaks it down where the machines do break
it down into little chunks which travel over Internet protocol
to get to your machine from the machine that's serving
it up. Well, what they were doing at Concast, apparently
according to this this article I read, was they were
(08:50):
making up extra packets and when they would when it
would detect bit torrent um, it would basically throw some
of these junk packets in there, which would disrupt the
connection and cause it to break basically hang it up.
Beyond just throttling, it's like sticking a stick through this
spoke to your bicycle wheel. Golly, except with the last
(09:11):
road rash. Yeah. So so throttling, Uh, traffic is bad enough.
That's where you you actually put in exterior control so
that you slow down someone's traffic, giving that bandwidth, opening
up that bandwidth for other users theoretically, um, but you're
not really supposed to do that. In the FCC kind
of spanked Comcast when when the allegations came to light
(09:34):
that Comcast was throttling users, um, not literally throwing users bandwidth,
I should say, weren't coming to people's houses and strangling them. Um,
although I guess some people probably felt like that, Yeah, yeah,
that's nice visual Chrys. It will really come across in
the podcast. Thanks. So anyway, Um, so, yeah, the FCC
(09:55):
comes down, and this was a big deal because some
people weren't sure the FCC really had the authority need
to do this. In fact, contest was one of them saying,
who gives you the right to do this? And this
is one of those things that that people are kind
of they're kind of forging what net neutrality means and
where the parameters are as we go along, because it
is new ground, and so I think, you know, to
(10:19):
be fair, we should look at it from the other
from the company's point of view. Now, not everyone is
using that level of bandwidth. Really, from what I understand,
it's less than five percent of users who are really
cranking down all the goodies they can download from the
Internet and and taking advantage of the fact that they
have this massive, unlimited connection. Um. The thing is, you know,
(10:43):
these companies have responsibility their shareholders, and they need to
make the most of their investment, and they don't you know,
they'd love to have additional customers, and they I'm sure
they probably really don't have a problem with us downloading
all the videos and music as long as it doesn't
get them in trouble with the different copyright holders. But
(11:04):
you know that they're not really so much interested in that.
But they you know, every time they have to go
out and add a new fiber optic line or or
you know, upgrade their additional additional lines that cost them
money to which cuts into the bottom line and hurts
them in the shareholders. Uh, you know, they have a
reason reasonably legitimate reason to uh do you do that?
(11:26):
But the article that I read uh in c net
Um Australians say that this is an American problem, Yes,
because that that's where I read about you know, the
less than five percent. Well, uh, they say, basically, what
we should do is limit the amount of information that
we can we can download because essentially these few people
(11:47):
are the ones costing everyone else. Uh. When it comes
to net neutrality, they're saying, if you've throttled back on
those select few people, then uh, you know, it won't
be much of an issue and people won't be calling
for the takeover of net resources. That I can I
can kind of see that argument. There's also the argument
(12:09):
that some people make that if you were to regulate
net neutrality it would hamper innovation in some way. And
you're talking about Andy Kessler from the Wall Street Journal
also talking about Bob Cohn, founders of the Internet. So yeah,
because both of them then apparently said that it would
be anti competitive, right, it would. And well, it's more,
(12:31):
it's not just the leaving a neutral it's the idea
of regulation when you bring regulation into the picture, that
somehow regulation automatically constricts innovation. Um. I think when we
look at our economy sometimes we say that a lack
of regulation could also cause problems. I'm just saying I'm
(12:52):
not a huge fan of massive amounts of regulation either,
but if it means preventing abuse, then I think it
does become necessary. And we're we're recording this before the
the presidential election. Um so by the time this comes out,
maybe maybe this has been decided one way or the other.
But uh, it's interesting to look at how the candidates
(13:14):
view net neutrality. McCain has said that he kind of
he wants the market to take care of it, so,
in other words, hands off lack of regulation, so really
kind of against the whole regulating net neutrality, No, no
big government hands off. Uh lazy fair. That was a
nice one. So Obama he uh, he believes in net neutrality,
(13:38):
or at least has said that he would. He would
favor net neutrality, which is interesting because his running mate
Joe Biden does not favor net neutrality. So there's not
really a clear cut choice for people who are really
itching to use net neutrality is one of the one
of their factors for voting, unless they, of course, they're
completely hands off, from which case, you know, McCain is
(14:00):
pretty clear on the subject. Um. Obama's personal stance seems
to be that, hey, we need to make sure that
people have access to this information no matter who they choose.
And as you pointed out, talking about an American problem
that's not unique to the Australians. Europe seems to think
the same thing. I've read that that in Europe the
concept of net neutrality is also one of those things
(14:23):
where they they're afraid it's going to hamper competitiveness. But
in Europe there are a lot more choices for I
s p s, So you could if you knew ahead
of time that this I s P partnered with these
particular sites, you could shop around. You could say, hey,
you know, that's not the website I prefer. I prefer
this website. You could theoretically look around and get a
(14:45):
different I S and use them in order to access
the Internet. And then maybe you're okay, maybe you don't
care that the other sites are are throttled because the
ones that you like are fine. Uh. In the United States,
that's not really the case. We don't have that kind
of choice. In most regions you have maybe two choices.
Maybe some places you only you don't have a choice,
(15:06):
you have one, or you're not on at all. Well,
there's satellite internet, Well okay, but then that has its
own bandwidth throttling, which is due to the latency of
the signal traveling up to the satellite, back down to
the provider, and back up to the point being that
you only have maybe one or two choices, maybe three
uh max wherever you happen to be UM, as opposed
(15:28):
to Europe, where you may have several, like maybe half
a dozen or even a dozen choices. UM. When you
don't have that kind of choice, that's where the customer
impact really comes into play. Yeah, and uh, as a
matter of fact, you know the Internet basically started in
the United States. I mean there's there's I'm sure that
(15:48):
that other people have added on to it, but you know,
as a Defense Department initiative essentially kind of the foundation
for the Internet. And and there you know, there were
other people in the in the universities and some universities
who are working on similar things. But when they got together,
that was essentially what what made it happen. You'd think,
(16:09):
you know, being the leader in creating this worldwide network
that the United States would own, you know, the most bandwidth,
and we wouldn't have in this country the fastest connection speeds.
But part of the reason that neutrality is such an
issue is that the speeds in the United States are
are if you take them in rank, the United States
(16:31):
is not even in the top ten uh and fastest
internet speeds. I mean places like South Korea and and
I think Finland, I mean jan Japan, you know, double, triple, quadruple,
usually the speeds that we get here on our our
fastest internet connection. And you might you might wonder why
that is. There's I can give you one simple reason.
(16:53):
I mean, it's not the only reason United States is big. Well,
it's enormous. It's a lot hard to wire a country
the size of the United States that it is South Korea.
That's not the only reason, I mean, there are also
other reasons, like a lot of these other countries have
government funding that goes into these infrastructures, whereas the United
States is private companies, so you've you know, you're looking
(17:15):
at for the public good versus for private enterprise. Um,
that's a big difference as well. But size I think
plays a huge role. Yeah, I think I think that's true.
And it's just one of a number of issues. As
you can tell, it's they're a bunch of different sides
to this, and it's one of those things where it's
not a top issue. But I think it's growing. I mean,
just judging from the the amount of traffic it's getting. Uh,
(17:38):
something I heard about a long time ago, and it's
popping up a lot more. I think it's going to
become something that people can't ignore, at least here in
the United States, when you've got Obama even suggesting having
a Chief Technical Officer or a Technologies are um to
look into this kind of thing. And there's some pretty
big names that have been bandied about potentially to fill
(17:58):
this position. Um, I mean you know that it's starting
to come into the forefront of that point where you're
talking about the founding a new national office that would
oversee this sort of thing. That's pretty good news. Well,
that wraps up this discussion on net neutrality. If you
want to read more about this and other topics, you
should check out how stuff works dot com. And we'll
(18:20):
talk to you again really soon, but more on this
and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works
dot com? Let us know what you think. Send an
email to podcast at how stuff works dot com, brought
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Karah Preiss
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