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