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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.

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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With

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Speaker 1: tech stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello everyone,

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Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. My name is Chris Poullett. I'm

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Speaker 1: an editor at how Stuff Works, and sitting next to

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Speaker 1: me as usual, I have senior writer and Jonathan Strickland.

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Speaker 1: Hey there everyone, So how are you feeling today? I

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Speaker 1: am neither happy nor sad. I expect then that we're

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Speaker 1: talking about net neutrality. That is correct, but boy, we

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Speaker 1: are just getting more and more lame with these intros,

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Speaker 1: aren't we. Yeah, and that's probably because they're all my intros. No, No,

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Speaker 1: might have been bad too. Let's let's move on to

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Speaker 1: net neutrality. Okay, this is one of those buzz words

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Speaker 1: that you hear a lot, and not everyone really understands

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Speaker 1: what the term means. And part of that is because

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Speaker 1: the term kind of means a lot of different things

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Speaker 1: to a lot of different people. But we'll we'll try

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Speaker 1: and muddy the waters a little bit here, I mean, sorry,

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Speaker 1: clear things up, and we're gonna are with just sort

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Speaker 1: of a broad definition of net neutrality. Not in general,

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Speaker 1: net neutrality refers to being able to access all the

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Speaker 1: different kinds of information that are on the Internet with

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Speaker 1: any applicable device without any restrictions um, meaning that the

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Speaker 1: different companies that own parts of the Internet don't restrict

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Speaker 1: your access to any of the freely available stuff in

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Speaker 1: any way. Socialism, yes, socialism uh so. In other words,

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Speaker 1: for what this would mean to you is that you

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Speaker 1: would log onto your computer at home into onto the Internet,

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Speaker 1: and you would be able to access any normal web

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Speaker 1: page the same as any other normal web page, assuming

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Speaker 1: there aren't any weird problems on the Internet at the time,

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Speaker 1: like the target server has gone down or something. Right, So,

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Speaker 1: like your I s P, it doesn't matter what I

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Speaker 1: s P you have, and it doesn't matter what site

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Speaker 1: you're accessing, right, because you should be able to have

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Speaker 1: the same you know, Ina provided their new problem technical problems,

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Speaker 1: you should be able to have the same experience no

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Speaker 1: matter who you're using. Right, you would be able to

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Speaker 1: to access a web page at the same speed, no

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Speaker 1: matter where you were going. So let's say you're getting

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Speaker 1: the news. Let's just go ahead and use an example.

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Speaker 1: Let's say you want to get the news and you

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Speaker 1: want to lug onto CNN Dot com and so you

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Speaker 1: tell your your browser and okay, that's where I want

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Speaker 1: to go. Well, on a net neutral platform, that means

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Speaker 1: you could access it just as fast as if you

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Speaker 1: were to access any other news site like MSNBC or BBC.

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Speaker 1: Um you would you would access those sites equally quickly.

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Speaker 1: Now here's where the issue comes in. As a lot

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Speaker 1: of I sps kind of want to move away from

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Speaker 1: this net neutrality. It sort of hinders them in their mind. Um.

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Speaker 1: And and it takes away one of their potential sources

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Speaker 1: of revenue, which would be to make partnerships with certain

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Speaker 1: content providers so that those content providers would get referential treatment.

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Speaker 1: And you would say, if you were a Comcast customer,

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Speaker 1: it's a Comcast makes a partnership with MSNBC, then MSNBC

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Speaker 1: site might load significantly faster for you than say CNN

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Speaker 1: or BBC. And therefore, as a customer, you would be

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Speaker 1: more likely to go to MSNBC because it would mean

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Speaker 1: less waiting around. Right. And this is um, this is

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Speaker 1: not really a hot button issue probably for most people. UM.

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Speaker 1: This is kind of a There's been some talk about

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Speaker 1: it even in the presidential debates and two eight and UM,

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Speaker 1: it's something I think you'd probably hear more as a

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Speaker 1: you know, secondary or tertiary topic, but it does come

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Speaker 1: up from time to time, and uh, you know, it's

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Speaker 1: it's interesting to hear who exactly who wants uh net

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Speaker 1: neutrality and who doesn't. Right, there's even been an act

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Speaker 1: that has not been there's been introduced on both in

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Speaker 1: both houses of the American Congress for called the Internet

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Speaker 1: Freedom Preservation Act UM. And basically this is it's still

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Speaker 1: ongoing undergoing some debate in both houses. But the thing

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Speaker 1: is um this would basically say, look, it doesn't matter

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Speaker 1: who you have, you should everyone is entitled to the

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Speaker 1: same experience when they use the Internet. But the problem

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Speaker 1: is there are other companies who would like to to

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Speaker 1: throttle that band within you know, in some ways they

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Speaker 1: have a good reason to do so. Right, it's not

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Speaker 1: just it's not just revenue generation. No, that's true, because

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Speaker 1: we're talking you know, we've talked about other some of

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Speaker 1: these other topics before, you know, streaming audio and video,

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Speaker 1: bit torrent um. You know, now that we have all

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Speaker 1: these conveniences, now that a lot of us have high

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Speaker 1: speed internet connections at home. Uh, you know, people are

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Speaker 1: using them and are using them. And that's a lot

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Speaker 1: of you know, bandwidth, a lot of information traveling on

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Speaker 1: the series of tubes. So we series of two. Well,

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Speaker 1: we were talking about politics in the Internet, and we

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Speaker 1: good talk about Steven's because he has mentioned anyway, um,

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Speaker 1: let's talk about let's talk about the bandwidth issue. So

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Speaker 1: bandwidth is not infinite. There is a finite amount of bandwidth.

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Speaker 1: It's and it it ends within the infrastructure. Okay, well, literally,

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Speaker 1: the physical cables and fiber optics that make up the

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Speaker 1: Internet's backbone can only hold so much information at one time.

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Speaker 1: Now you can always add more. You can add more nodes,

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Speaker 1: you can add more cable and so there's you know,

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Speaker 1: there does there is a solution beyond just oh well

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Speaker 1: it's full now, you know. It's kind of like the

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Speaker 1: whole build more roads idea for managing traffic. That's the

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Speaker 1: other part is when you build more stuff, more people

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Speaker 1: use it. Um It's kind of funny how that works out.

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Speaker 1: But as as things like digital distribution of media come

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Speaker 1: into play, where more and more companies are really looking

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Speaker 1: at that as a possible way to to move into distribution,

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Speaker 1: you know, skip the whole blu ray DVD problem. A

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Speaker 1: lot of people are are concerned that blue rays never

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Speaker 1: going to mature as a full technology because by the

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Speaker 1: time the prices come down, digital distribution will have taken

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Speaker 1: its place. So here's the issue. Digital distribution takes up

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Speaker 1: a lot of bandwidth. I mean if you're especially if

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Speaker 1: you're talking about like a high definition movie. Yeah, huge files,

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Speaker 1: enormous files. So that if you want to get one

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Speaker 1: of those files in a timely manner, meaning that you

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Speaker 1: don't want to wait three months while your computer downloads,

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Speaker 1: you know, a film, then you need a lot of bandwidth.

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Speaker 1: You need the speed to be able to access these files. Um. Well,

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Speaker 1: because this band what fills up the I s p

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Speaker 1: s have to sit there and think, okay, well, how

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Speaker 1: are we going to manage this? Are we going to

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Speaker 1: invest in putting down more hardware to meet demand or

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Speaker 1: could we just sort of figure out a different way

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Speaker 1: where we kind of do some traffic control. And that's

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Speaker 1: where that's where some problems have popped up recently. Um.

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Speaker 1: In fact, there's a pretty famous case with Comcast. I

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Speaker 1: was wondering if you picked them for a reason. Yeah, well,

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Speaker 1: I guess who I have is an I I S

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Speaker 1: p um not anymore. Yeah, I'll go home and I'll realize, hey,

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Speaker 1: where my internet go? Um. Comcast has uh come under

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Speaker 1: fire by the FCC for throttling traffic related to bit

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Speaker 1: torrent users, although not necessarily bit torrent. I guess it

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Speaker 1: could be anyone who's who's consuming tons and tons of bandwidth. Actually, again,

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Speaker 1: I say it's funny that you mentioned that, because I

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Speaker 1: read an article in which the Electronic Frontier Foundation was

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Speaker 1: saying that yes, bit torrent was one of them, but

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Speaker 1: there were other protocols affected as well. HTML, which is

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Speaker 1: the protocol that you normally used on a web page. Uh,

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Speaker 1: not so much affected by this, but they had they

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Speaker 1: had a test that they did and um bit to

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Speaker 1: warrant Nutella and even the Lotus notes, the popular corporate

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Speaker 1: email program. And I think this probably dates the information

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Speaker 1: a little bit. You know Natella too. But it wasn't

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Speaker 1: just bit torrent, So they were apparently looking for other

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Speaker 1: things that used a lot of bandwidth, uh, bit torrent

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Speaker 1: and not tell A, both sharing file sharing pro programs

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Speaker 1: and um what they were doing apparently was forging packets,

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Speaker 1: and a packet is a little chunk of information when

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Speaker 1: you when you request something over the internet. Um, basically

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Speaker 1: Internet protocol breaks it down where the machines do break

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Speaker 1: it down into little chunks which travel over Internet protocol

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Speaker 1: to get to your machine from the machine that's serving

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Speaker 1: it up. Well, what they were doing at Concast, apparently

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Speaker 1: according to this this article I read, was they were

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Speaker 1: making up extra packets and when they would when it

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Speaker 1: would detect bit torrent um, it would basically throw some

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Speaker 1: of these junk packets in there, which would disrupt the

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Speaker 1: connection and cause it to break basically hang it up.

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Speaker 1: Beyond just throttling, it's like sticking a stick through this

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Speaker 1: spoke to your bicycle wheel. Golly, except with the last

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Speaker 1: road rash. Yeah. So so throttling, Uh, traffic is bad enough.

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Speaker 1: That's where you you actually put in exterior control so

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Speaker 1: that you slow down someone's traffic, giving that bandwidth, opening

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Speaker 1: up that bandwidth for other users theoretically, um, but you're

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Speaker 1: not really supposed to do that. In the FCC kind

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Speaker 1: of spanked Comcast when when the allegations came to light

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Speaker 1: that Comcast was throttling users, um, not literally throwing users bandwidth,

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Speaker 1: I should say, weren't coming to people's houses and strangling them. Um,

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Speaker 1: although I guess some people probably felt like that, Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's nice visual Chrys. It will really come across in

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Speaker 1: the podcast. Thanks. So anyway, Um, so, yeah, the FCC

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Speaker 1: comes down, and this was a big deal because some

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Speaker 1: people weren't sure the FCC really had the authority need

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Speaker 1: to do this. In fact, contest was one of them saying,

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Speaker 1: who gives you the right to do this? And this

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Speaker 1: is one of those things that that people are kind

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Speaker 1: of they're kind of forging what net neutrality means and

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Speaker 1: where the parameters are as we go along, because it

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Speaker 1: is new ground, and so I think, you know, to

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Speaker 1: be fair, we should look at it from the other

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Speaker 1: from the company's point of view. Now, not everyone is

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Speaker 1: using that level of bandwidth. Really, from what I understand,

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Speaker 1: it's less than five percent of users who are really

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Speaker 1: cranking down all the goodies they can download from the

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Speaker 1: Internet and and taking advantage of the fact that they

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Speaker 1: have this massive, unlimited connection. Um. The thing is, you know,

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Speaker 1: these companies have responsibility their shareholders, and they need to

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Speaker 1: make the most of their investment, and they don't you know,

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Speaker 1: they'd love to have additional customers, and they I'm sure

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Speaker 1: they probably really don't have a problem with us downloading

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Speaker 1: all the videos and music as long as it doesn't

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Speaker 1: get them in trouble with the different copyright holders. But

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Speaker 1: you know that they're not really so much interested in that.

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Speaker 1: But they you know, every time they have to go

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Speaker 1: out and add a new fiber optic line or or

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Speaker 1: you know, upgrade their additional additional lines that cost them

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Speaker 1: money to which cuts into the bottom line and hurts

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Speaker 1: them in the shareholders. Uh, you know, they have a

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Speaker 1: reason reasonably legitimate reason to uh do you do that?

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Speaker 1: But the article that I read uh in c net

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Speaker 1: Um Australians say that this is an American problem, Yes,

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Speaker 1: because that that's where I read about you know, the

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Speaker 1: less than five percent. Well, uh, they say, basically, what

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Speaker 1: we should do is limit the amount of information that

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Speaker 1: we can we can download because essentially these few people

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Speaker 1: are the ones costing everyone else. Uh. When it comes

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Speaker 1: to net neutrality, they're saying, if you've throttled back on

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Speaker 1: those select few people, then uh, you know, it won't

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Speaker 1: be much of an issue and people won't be calling

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Speaker 1: for the takeover of net resources. That I can I

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Speaker 1: can kind of see that argument. There's also the argument

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Speaker 1: that some people make that if you were to regulate

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Speaker 1: net neutrality it would hamper innovation in some way. And

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Speaker 1: you're talking about Andy Kessler from the Wall Street Journal

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Speaker 1: also talking about Bob Cohn, founders of the Internet. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: because both of them then apparently said that it would

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Speaker 1: be anti competitive, right, it would. And well, it's more,

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Speaker 1: it's not just the leaving a neutral it's the idea

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Speaker 1: of regulation when you bring regulation into the picture, that

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Speaker 1: somehow regulation automatically constricts innovation. Um. I think when we

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Speaker 1: look at our economy sometimes we say that a lack

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Speaker 1: of regulation could also cause problems. I'm just saying I'm

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Speaker 1: not a huge fan of massive amounts of regulation either,

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Speaker 1: but if it means preventing abuse, then I think it

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Speaker 1: does become necessary. And we're we're recording this before the

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Speaker 1: the presidential election. Um so by the time this comes out,

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Speaker 1: maybe maybe this has been decided one way or the other.

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Speaker 1: But uh, it's interesting to look at how the candidates

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Speaker 1: view net neutrality. McCain has said that he kind of

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Speaker 1: he wants the market to take care of it, so,

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Speaker 1: in other words, hands off lack of regulation, so really

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Speaker 1: kind of against the whole regulating net neutrality, No, no

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Speaker 1: big government hands off. Uh lazy fair. That was a

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Speaker 1: nice one. So Obama he uh, he believes in net neutrality,

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Speaker 1: or at least has said that he would. He would

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Speaker 1: favor net neutrality, which is interesting because his running mate

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Speaker 1: Joe Biden does not favor net neutrality. So there's not

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Speaker 1: really a clear cut choice for people who are really

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Speaker 1: itching to use net neutrality is one of the one

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Speaker 1: of their factors for voting, unless they, of course, they're

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Speaker 1: completely hands off, from which case, you know, McCain is

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Speaker 1: pretty clear on the subject. Um. Obama's personal stance seems

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Speaker 1: to be that, hey, we need to make sure that

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Speaker 1: people have access to this information no matter who they choose.

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Speaker 1: And as you pointed out, talking about an American problem

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Speaker 1: that's not unique to the Australians. Europe seems to think

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Speaker 1: the same thing. I've read that that in Europe the

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Speaker 1: concept of net neutrality is also one of those things

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Speaker 1: where they they're afraid it's going to hamper competitiveness. But

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Speaker 1: in Europe there are a lot more choices for I

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Speaker 1: s p s, So you could if you knew ahead

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Speaker 1: of time that this I s P partnered with these

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Speaker 1: particular sites, you could shop around. You could say, hey,

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Speaker 1: you know, that's not the website I prefer. I prefer

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Speaker 1: this website. You could theoretically look around and get a

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Speaker 1: different I S and use them in order to access

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Speaker 1: the Internet. And then maybe you're okay, maybe you don't

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Speaker 1: care that the other sites are are throttled because the

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Speaker 1: ones that you like are fine. Uh. In the United States,

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Speaker 1: that's not really the case. We don't have that kind

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Speaker 1: of choice. In most regions you have maybe two choices.

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Speaker 1: Maybe some places you only you don't have a choice,

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Speaker 1: you have one, or you're not on at all. Well,

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Speaker 1: there's satellite internet, Well okay, but then that has its

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Speaker 1: own bandwidth throttling, which is due to the latency of

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Speaker 1: the signal traveling up to the satellite, back down to

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Speaker 1: the provider, and back up to the point being that

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Speaker 1: you only have maybe one or two choices, maybe three

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Speaker 1: uh max wherever you happen to be UM, as opposed

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Speaker 1: to Europe, where you may have several, like maybe half

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Speaker 1: a dozen or even a dozen choices. UM. When you

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Speaker 1: don't have that kind of choice, that's where the customer

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Speaker 1: impact really comes into play. Yeah, and uh, as a

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Speaker 1: matter of fact, you know the Internet basically started in

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Speaker 1: the United States. I mean there's there's I'm sure that

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Speaker 1: that other people have added on to it, but you know,

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Speaker 1: as a Defense Department initiative essentially kind of the foundation

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Speaker 1: for the Internet. And and there you know, there were

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Speaker 1: other people in the in the universities and some universities

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Speaker 1: who are working on similar things. But when they got together,

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Speaker 1: that was essentially what what made it happen. You'd think,

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Speaker 1: you know, being the leader in creating this worldwide network

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Speaker 1: that the United States would own, you know, the most bandwidth,

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Speaker 1: and we wouldn't have in this country the fastest connection speeds.

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Speaker 1: But part of the reason that neutrality is such an

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Speaker 1: issue is that the speeds in the United States are

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Speaker 1: are if you take them in rank, the United States

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Speaker 1: is not even in the top ten uh and fastest

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Speaker 1: internet speeds. I mean places like South Korea and and

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Speaker 1: I think Finland, I mean jan Japan, you know, double, triple, quadruple,

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Speaker 1: usually the speeds that we get here on our our

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Speaker 1: fastest internet connection. And you might you might wonder why

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Speaker 1: that is. There's I can give you one simple reason.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's not the only reason United States is big. Well,

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Speaker 1: it's enormous. It's a lot hard to wire a country

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Speaker 1: the size of the United States that it is South Korea.

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Speaker 1: That's not the only reason, I mean, there are also

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Speaker 1: other reasons, like a lot of these other countries have

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Speaker 1: government funding that goes into these infrastructures, whereas the United

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Speaker 1: States is private companies, so you've you know, you're looking

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Speaker 1: at for the public good versus for private enterprise. Um,

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Speaker 1: that's a big difference as well. But size I think

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Speaker 1: plays a huge role. Yeah, I think I think that's true.

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Speaker 1: And it's just one of a number of issues. As

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Speaker 1: you can tell, it's they're a bunch of different sides

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Speaker 1: to this, and it's one of those things where it's

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Speaker 1: not a top issue. But I think it's growing. I mean,

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Speaker 1: just judging from the the amount of traffic it's getting. Uh,

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Speaker 1: something I heard about a long time ago, and it's

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Speaker 1: popping up a lot more. I think it's going to

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Speaker 1: become something that people can't ignore, at least here in

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Speaker 1: the United States, when you've got Obama even suggesting having

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Speaker 1: a Chief Technical Officer or a Technologies are um to

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Speaker 1: look into this kind of thing. And there's some pretty

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Speaker 1: big names that have been bandied about potentially to fill

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Speaker 1: this position. Um, I mean you know that it's starting

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Speaker 1: to come into the forefront of that point where you're

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Speaker 1: talking about the founding a new national office that would

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Speaker 1: oversee this sort of thing. That's pretty good news. Well,

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Speaker 1: that wraps up this discussion on net neutrality. If you

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Speaker 1: want to read more about this and other topics, you

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Speaker 1: should check out how stuff works dot com. And we'll

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Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon, but more on this

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Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works

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Speaker 1: dot com? Let us know what you think. Send an

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Speaker 1: email to podcast at how stuff works dot com, brought

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Speaker 1: to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready,

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