ReasonedResponse.com

A small news item this week caught the eye of many of us who have labored over the problem of peer-to-peer networks.  Verizon has presented the restults of its investigation into how network management can be used to enhance the ability of users to download and upload over peer-to-peer networks without encumbering other users on the network.

Whether it ever gets adopted, this is a nice piece of innovative thinking on the part of Verizon -- the very kind of innovative thinking that we will need as we move the Internet forward into the remainder of the 21st Century.  The problem is that this kind of innovation can't ever exist or even be considered if we rush to adopt a one-size-fits-all regulatory scheme for network management in the name of "neutrality."

The idea that the Internet should be a "dumb pipe" that operates without management was never part of Internet engineering -- that's why a "Transmission Control Protocol" had to be added to the "Internet Protocol" to enable the TCP/IP we use today.  Nor was there any agreement that we should somehow freeze Internet technology at 1980 levels in order to be "fair."  Rather, there was agreement that the Internet should be a place where innovation and new applications were encouraged, and that practices and protocols should be carefully managed through processes that allow the greatest number of users to have the greatest possible Internet experience at any single moment in time.

What happens when we replace this forward thinking with a single set of rigid rules enforced by a government agency that works months, or even years, behind real time?  Innovation dies, no matter how well-intentioned the government may be, because there is little point in innovating if the technology will be another year or two down the road by the time it can be approved for use.  New applications die because a small group of regulators, rather than consumers, get to decide which ones can survive in the marketplace.  And they will die because the investors who fund these innovations and applications can't wait years to see whether there might be a return on investment.

Network Neutrality would return telecommunications in the United States to a single, monolithic entity ruled by the government, where innovation was stifled in the name of "balance" and "fairness."  It would wrest the Internet from the hands of engineers and entrepreneurs and place it instead in the hands of telecom lawyers, lobbyists and career regulators.  It would choke the life out of the Internet as we know it today in order to ensure that the Internet returns to the "dumb pipe" days of three decades ago.

I celebrate Verizon's accomplishment and innovation, and look forward to other initiatives in network management that will deliver the fastest, most economical, most effective experience to me -- and every other user on the network -- in the most innovative ways the network operators can deliver.

And "neutrality" be damned.