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Comment by jMyles | Hacker News Reader

> It's possible to have a Facebook-like system with no Facebook-like entity in control of it

The same is true of the general topology of the internet. We don't need any of these layers (CAs, Room 641As, long bus-runs to carry messages seven times around the country before arriving at their destination).

There are distributed solutions to all of these problems (examples for the above, respectively, including NameCoin, CJDNS, and mesh networking), but legislated "net neutrality" enshrines the current model and blocks these decidedly non-"neutral" alternatives.

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> legislated "net neutrality" enshrines the current mode

I don't see how that's the case. It doesn't prevent distributed solutions from existing it just makes them less necessary.

I don't think that's so. These technologies are decidedly non-net-neutral. A mesh network by its nature most have packet-gnosticism as a first principle.

I think it's very likely that if a "net neutrality" framework becomes US law, that municipalities and small organizations who launch their own mesh networks will be told that, in order to comply with the law, they need to deliver Fox News and Netflix at the same bandwidth and latency with which they deliver locally available curated content.

In other words, I suspect that "net neutrality," well-intentioned as it may be today, will be a way to silence alternative internet topologies tomorrow.

> I think it's very likely that if a "net neutrality" framework becomes US law, that municipalities and small organizations who launch their own mesh networks will be told that

That's not how net neutrality works; you're arguing against a straw man. If network operators are blind to the packets on their network -- they have no idea where they came from, where they are going (except to route them to next hop), or what they contain then you have a neutral network. Your argument is participated on the idea of neutrality requiring perfect knowledge but instead it's perfect ignorance.

I think it's a legitimate concern that this definition of net neutrality doesn't consider that different networks have different costs associated with them. If a service offers peering for free at the local internet exchange which adds little additional cost for the provider I have a hard time seeing why you should have to treat that traffic the same as the traffic the provider has to pay for.

That means that someone on a community network, that isn't using the Internet very much, can't take advantage of that free peering. Instead they would have to join the same "traffic pool" as heavy users.

I completely agree and that's totally fair. What isn't far though is charging more for (or slowing) traffic that could be 20 hops away (and thus not directly connected to your network) just because the packets happen to be labeled "Netflix".

As it is everyone pays for their own connectivity. Netflix pays to connect to their ISP. You pay to connect to your ISP. The ISPs pay to connect to each other. They have agreements on traffic levels and bandwidth. But an ISP shouldn't be able to double-dip and "tax" certain services for which they have no direct connection with. It effectively amounts to extortion.

> if a "net neutrality" framework becomes US law,

"net neutrality" is the term for the body of existing law, as it has been enforced for the past couple of years since classifying ISP's as "title II" common carriers. That classification was to clarify and enable enforcement of already-existing law, and had bipartisan support. The FCC is currently in the process of dismantling existing policy to abandon "net neutrality".

Well, I don't agree there either.

"Net neutrality" is a concept that long predates anyone dreaming of ISPs as title II.

My concern is that "net neutrality" as a topology concept - important as it has been to the growth of the internet so far - may be both subject to deprecation in favor of something more anarchic (ie, better) and at the same enshrined by law as the result of the current zealotry.

Perhaps I did not word my comment clearly - I was trying to emphasize that the existing body of law, going back for many years, is all considered to be "net neutrality". That is the way it has been discussed by journalists, lawmakers, and pundits for years (It is true that some agitators have tried to make the definition so broad as to include both sides of the argument, presumably to confuse voters). Courts had difficulty enforcing laws in some jurisdictions, and the title II classification two years ago enabled these arguments to be put to rest (thus making "net neutrality" a legally unambiguous interpretation of existing law). Current efforts by the FCC, under the current administration, are to remove that classification and make it once again impossible to enforce existing neutrality law as it has been understood by lawmakers and which "long predates anyone dreaming of ISP's as title II".

> they need to deliver Fox News and Netflix at the same bandwidth and latency with which they deliver locally available curated content.

Why would the speeds be different? If it's because longer links are more saturated/throttled, and nothing else, that's valid in the presence of net neutrality. Is there any other reason that should be protected?

Because ISPs, faced with a lack of direct network power, simply refuse to turn up physical interconnects, a power they decidedly still have.

I asked for something they should be able to do, that net neutrality regulations would stop. You answered with something they shouldn't be able to do, that net neutrality regulations wouldn't stop?

See, it depends on what we mean by "neutral."

I think that a misguided or malicious regulator might certain be able to read that physical interconnects represent a "non-neutral" topological configuration, because they allow neighbors to share with each other at speeds faster than those outside their subnet.

That doesn't make any sense. To violate network neutrality you basically have to be either turning away peers or sticking them up for money. A mesh network wouldn't be doing either. If Fox News wants to plug a local node into the mesh network so their viewers have lower latency, you just let them. Why wouldn't you?

> A mesh network by its nature most have packet-gnosticism as a first principle.

Why?

Well, because the way that mesh networks (at least mesh-toplogy networks) function is to route packets to neighbors. Nodes don't blindly and neutrally route packets along; they select specific packets to route to specific neighbors.

Any useful network uses routing. Comcast is not defying net neutrality by delivering all the packets addressed to your IP to you. Net neutrality is not breached until Comcast or your mesh network starts handling the packets differently based on who they came from and the business decisions about that source.

Right, sure. But on a bus, routers blindly route all packets. They don't discriminate.

On a mesh (at least in OSLR or BATMAN), nodes only route certain packets. They are also free to drop packets for any reason, be they geographical or economic. Nobody can demand that a node perform routing.

I can absolutely imagine a malicious regulator claiming that the law requires every node on a small-town mesh to cart Fox News to the other side of town with just as much priority as packets originating from within the town. And that's not really sustainable for a mesh.

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