Net Neutrality Bill Introduced In Canadian Parliament 132
FeatherBoa points out that the New Democratic Party in Canada has introduced legislation to limit the amount of control Canadian ISPs can exert over their subscribers. The bill would amend the Telecommunications Act to "prohibit network operators from engaging in network management practices that favour, degrade or prioritize any content, application or service transmitted over a broadband network based on its source, ownership or destination, subject to certain exceptions." Support for net neutrality in Canada has been building for quite a while now. Quoting CBC News:
"'This bill is about fairness to consumers,' said Charlie Angus, the NDP's digital spokesman. It also looks to prohibit 'network operators from preventing a user from attaching any device to their network and requires network operators to make information about the user's access to the internet available to the user.' The proposed bill makes exception for ISPs to manage traffic in reasonable cases, Angus said, such as providing stable speeds for applications such as gaming or video conferencing."
Bravo but... (Score:5, Informative)
Even here in Greece I see typical DSL performance which is to say the least crapulent. Being charitable I'll pretend OTEnet (the former state monopoly) isn't traffic shaping (heh - that's why my torrent of ubuntu dropped dead to 10Kb/s)...
Funny that it does that after about an hour regardless of time of day...(well not always but too often to be attributable to teh interweb being busy from Greece).
A car which may or may not be able to hit 100kph with the wind behind it being sold as a Ferrari wouldn't be acceptable (unless you're a retro Citroen freak).
A Ferrari with three wheels one of which refuses to be circular on wednesdays if we're driving to visit a mistress (hey i'm in southern europe not the puritanical domain of the U.S) wouldn't be acceptable.
Some traffic shaping is inevitable. But it's a stopgap measure not an acceptable solution. If 90% of new traffic is e.g. bittorrent then the answer is either to make this premium usage (and spell it out in the contract) OR STFU and put more capacity.
Should be really simple - either *BE* a provider with acceptable use spelled out transparently or *DIE* in the marketplace.
BTW I think the "exception" is to soften the blow for ISPS so they don't end up sued to death. YMMV. Remember - legislators are mostly (ex optional) sharks^H^H^H^H^Hlawyers so there will always be exceptions. Good luck Canada. Now if we can only persuade the UK to tighten the screws and torch the bloody Phorm thing - which ought to worry everyone much much more than traffic shaping...
Which leads me to a truly dumb idea. Allocation of the RF spectrum is controlled internationally via the ITU (A UN organization). Given the nature of the Internet shouldn't it be regulated the *same* way? (Running for bomb shelter and donning asbestos undergarments right now...).
Andy.
Good use of crap, roses. Bad use of crap - Vista.
Re:the state of things (Score:5, Informative)
First of all, the concept of 'shared resources' between you and your neighbour is a matter for your SLA with your ISP. If they sell you a certain amount of access and they can't provide it because of your neighbour then this is between you and them, and you should probably be advocating that they start charging for total data transferred as many ISPs do. Then, if your neighbour wants to pay a lot more than you, then he can use a lot more of your 'shared resource'. Mind you, if you are living somewhere where one person can make such a noticeable difference then perhaps you should be more interested in network upgrades, something non-neutral network advocates are interested in avoiding.
Secondly, QoS is nothing to do with network neutrality. Every pipe makes bandwidth versus latency trades. If your neighbour is using a lot of bandwidth then his latency will go up because your packets will have a higher priority. This is nothing to do with network neutrality either.
Network neutrality is about preventing traffic shaping based on endpoints. Preventing your ISP from prioritising your traffic if it goes to one online music store or news outlet and silently dropping packets and increasing latency if it goes to another one. If you're really happy that your ISP could enter into a partnership with MSN to make their search page load in a second and Google's load in 10 seconds or time out, then that's fine, and you are entitled to your opinion. If you're not, then please shut up about how great a non-neutral network is.