The internet is like a bridge that you paid for

Since today is the internet-wide day of action to save net neutrality and one of my senators has ignored my concerns, I figured I would take a moment to write a few words here.



My senator, Ron Johnson, had the following to say about net neutrality during an FCC oversight hearing on the matter:

Let’s say a group of neighbors want to build a bridge over a creek so they can cross over and talk to each other a lot, so it’s really for a neighborhood, maybe a dozen people. But then they find out that the local government is going to require that that bridge is open to the entire community of a million people, no prioritization whatsoever. They don’t get to cross first to go see their neighbor. A million people can come onto their property, ruin their lawns, and walk over that bridge.

Isn’t that kind of a similar analogy, is that a pretty good analogy in terms of what net neutrality is all about, not allowing for example a company that is going to invest billions of dollars in the pipeline, not allow them to sell a prioritized lane, for, I don’t know, doctors who want to prioritize distant diagnostics? They’re going to have to share that same pipeline, no prioritization, with for example people streaming illegal content or pornography? Tell me where that analogy is maybe not accurate.

In my example, I don’t think too many neighbors would chip in the money to build that bridge when they realize we’re not ever going to be able to use it or certainly not get priority on it.

Unlike the "series of tubes" analogy, this one can actually be used for a reasonably accurate comparison of the internet with and without net neutrality.
In this bridge analogy, it appears a house in the neighborhood is our computer, and whatever is on the other side of the bridge is "the internet". The bridge itself represents some amalgamation of the internet access you pay your internet service provider for combined with that ISP's infrastructure. While a little imprecise, this analogy is reasonable enough for our discussion.

It's certainly accurate to say that there are a million people on the other (internet) side of the bridge that could come over, but they come over only at your request. Let's say the people on the other side of the bridge are cops, construction workers, and cowboys. You enjoy talking to cops, construction workers, and cowboys roughly equally, so you invite them over in similar numbers. The bridge is only so wide, so only so many cops, construction workers, and cowboys can come and visit.

With net neutrality in place, the mix of cops, construction workers, and cowbows is entirely up to my choosing, if I don't feel interested in what cowboys have to say today, I can have more cops over instead. As long the as number of people fit across the bridge, the mix isn't important. Of course, with the bridge at capacity, we may have to wait awhile for a doctor to cross.

Without net neutrality, the ISP is free to limit the number of cops, construction workers, and cowboys that can cross the bridge. Even if the bridge can easily accommodate 100 people a day, the ISP can limit me to to 10, 5, or even 0 cowboys. The upside being there is always room for a doctor to cross quickly. But maybe I don't care, maybe I have no need for a doctor.

If you haven't guessed by now, the cops, construction workers, and cowboys, could just as easily be called Netflix, Facebook, and Amazon. Some of these people, you even have to pay to visit you! But what about that poor doctor? The bridge gets filled because the ISP sold more neighbors access to the bridge than the bridge can really support. ISPs oversell the amount of bandwidth they have available under the assumption not everyone will use it at the same time. This is why you may notice your internet slowing down at certain times of day.

The solution, of course, is to build more bridges. After all, scarcity exists in subscription services everywhere. You wouldn't accept constant 'all circuits are busy' messages from your phone provider, or if your cell provider limited your ability to call certain businesses that were 'out of network'. You would probably be pretty upset if your showers were billed at a different rate than your baths, or if a #1 was charged a rate half of a #2. If these services are capable of building an appropriate amount of capacity and charging an appropriate amount for it, why shouldn't we expect the same from our ISP?

ISPs however have decided it's easier to limit your access to certain kinds of traffic. In the time before the current FCC rules, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, AT&T, and CenturyLink were accused to artificially hamstringing traffic from Netflix. Time Warner Cable is being sued by New York over throttling League of Legends speeds. This is made even more suspicious by the fact many of these providers have competing services such as cable TV and VoD.

And fear not for the doctor, the current FCC rules (caution, PDF link) allow for isolated network capacity for things such as telemedicine. Other such "non-BIAS" services specifically allowed special treatment are VoIP, medical devices such as heart monitors, and energy consumption sensors.

Ultimately, it comes down to who has the final say on bridge usage. Should your ISP get to decide who crosses the bridge, and who doesn't? Even Ron Johnson seems to acknowledge its the "neighbors" that built the bridge who should have "priority", and make no mistake, we're the ones paying for these bridges while somehow having worse bridges to show for it. The FCC uses our tax dollars to subsidize ISP expansion, ISPs that apparently "used taxpayer money for everything from massages to trips to Disney World". In other cases, municipalities have used tax dollars to pay for ISPs to expand while preventing competitors from expanding without the use of tax money. We're paying for these bridges to be built, and after they're built, we're paying a monthly fee to use them all the while the bridge owner's come up with new and creative ways to extract more money from us. The bridge owners can sell information about how we use the bridge to whoever wants it. We bought this bridge, we're paying to use it, so we should be demanding better bridges, not worse ones.