Network Neutrality

This is a really good overview of why we need regulations protecting network neutrality.  It gives a historical perspective showing how the telephone monopoly was broken up and the further need for regulation even after that.  The internet has been a great example of the innovation that can arise from free and unregulated communications.  We cannot allow monopolies to begin regulating communications.

A Leap Forward

Wow, so much time has passed since I last posted here that I forgot I had this blog. They've added a lot of snazzy new templates, apparently. I feel like the internet has mostly evolved past people having individual blogs. Instead, personal content is put on a group blog, like Facebook.

I suppose blogs still fill the niche of communicating with people you don't know, but that need is mostly for important people (read: not me).

Time Warner Cable Internet = FAIL

Tracing route to www.l.google.com [74.125.45.99]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     8 ms     9 ms     *     cpe-76-173-176-1.socal.res.rr.com [76.173.176.1]

  2     8 ms     *        8 ms  76.167.1.129
  3    12 ms    12 ms     *     tge4-2-0.tustca1-rtr1.socal.rr.com [76.167.14.145]
  4    15 ms     *       15 ms  ae-5-0.cr0.lax30.tbone.rr.com [66.109.6.64]
  5     *       43 ms     *     ae-1-0.pr0.lax10.tbone.rr.com [66.109.6.131]
  6     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  7     *        *       15 ms  216.239.46.180
  8     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  9     *        *      145 ms  72.14.232.215
 10    91 ms    89 ms    94 ms  209.85.253.137
 11    86 ms    91 ms    84 ms  yx-in-f99.google.com [74.125.45.99]

This is how bad my internet connection has been for the last few days. For those of you who don't understand what that stuff means, each row contains 3 attempts to contact each router along the way from my apartment to www.google.com. Each asterisk is lost data, each number is successfully sent data (how many milliseconds it took for the answer to come back). We've had such ridiculously high packet loss that either the connection is totally gone or it's in a minimally functional state like this for the vast majority of the time.

Time
Warner
Sucks.

Net Neutrality

One of the things we take for granted these days is "Net Neutrality." This is the principle that internet users are provided equal access to anything on the internet. However, some ISPs are working toward the ability to regulate content. Imagine the potential future where you can't access your favorite sites because those sites refused to pay your ISP. Imagine if websites critical of a certain politician were somehow blacklisted by ISPs by a simple bidding process.

There's a growing movement to try to protect Net Neutrality. Increasing awareness is always a good step to preventing this sort of potential problem.