Network Neutrality

Neutrality indicates the lack of influence, both positive and negative. How that relates to a wifi WAN like Air-Stream, I would suggest, is from the point of view of the packet.

That is, the packet must traverse the network; the packet is the one that 'receives' the influence.

No doubt the most common hurdle is the various iptable rule sets a packet must traverse when making several hops. Backbones we hope allow all going anywhere! But what of more obscure network protocols? Would my AppleTalk LaserWriterII show up if I so forwarded it onto the Air-Stream network?

Perhaps real network neutrality would be any "packet" would be seamlessly passed across the network; tcp/ip is but one way of sending signals. OLSR perhaps attains to that with its cell repeator methodology ..

I would define Network Neutrality as the "network" doesn't care what is inside a packet, who sent the packet or who is receiving the packet - from end to end. The network being everything inside these two ends, ie it is an End2End philosophy. It is more of a philosophy than a design principal, it deals with the attitude to "WHAT" is passed through the network rather than HOW.

Background

We can talk about net neutrality at different layers. For example the IP network layer protocol, it doesn't care what physical medium its running on and it doesn't care what is inside its payload (though there is provision for service levels.) As betsuin alluded to, one could say that neutrality is air-stream routers forwarding ALL IP packets equally as they arrive (regardless of type in header) to their destinations.

We can say the same thing about the transport layer protocol TCP. TCP doesn't care what content or application ("actual" data) it is carrying. It is neutral towards whatever application runs on top of it. This is the original network neutrality idea of the Internet, built upon TCP/IP, that content is delivered end to end without prejudice to the originator or application. This left people free to develop whatever applications they could imagine, which is the classic net neutrality idea. As long as you spoke TCP/IP your packet was delivered across the network to the other end in a best effort fashion.

But let us go back down the stack to the physical layer. This is essentially what we are building with Air-Stream, we are building a wireless physical and link layer. Apart from that we have an Air-Stream "Network" which is a bunch of routers and iptables rules etc. One could argue that neutrality is the ability to build multiple networkS (eg AppleTalk) on top of this physical/data link medium. I don't think it is very useful to talk about network neutrality at this layer, since no network exists until the network layer. If a member felt strongly enough to build an AppleTalk network, then there is nothing stopping them but they could also encapsulate their obscure network protocols inside IP, and be guaranteed whatever neutrality exists in the implementation of IP on the network.

Community Good vs Consumer Greed

The discussion so far also has brought up the best effort method of delivery, which is HOW network neutrality has been implemented in the past. Some argue that best effort is but one method of delivery and actually gives large file transfers an advantage over gaming and voice applications, so it may not be the ultimate application neutral implementation. These issues usually come to light when the network nears its capacity, thus we enter the world of QoS. Some of the debate just reflects corporate and consumer greed ('I want my Video on DEMAND!') and an obsession for wanting the best latency all the time (HINT: Other people use the network!)

Air-Stream is a community network, so as members we all take responsibilty for the health of the network. Abusive practises are uncommon because we are hopefully respectful to each other and have an understanding of bandwidth and networks. This is similar to how the Internet originally operated, we are all network admins to some extent. So, for ivi, some of the 'bandwidth throttling' is implemented in the good faith of users. A far as technical measures go, there is some QoS implemented in the Air-Stream network. I would submit that various levels of service does not impact net neutrality as long as content within each of the service levels is treated equally. For example if priority is given to "game" packets, no individual game would be treated differently to ensure neutrality and no individual user would be treated differently. However this does mean that games are given priority over betsuins encapsulated appletalk IP packets, which he could incidentally be using to play mac games!

Stating that bandwidth is (or will be) scarce is assuming we will forever want more and more, reminiscent of the throw away culture that pervades our lives today. If we change our assumptions and attitudes we may find that it is actually a non-issue. If Air-Stream members find they want more bandwidth there is something they can do about it, build more network. We are not restricted by ensuring a bottom line, keeping a share price up or obligation to a financial backer.

Community Wireless Networks

The neutrality that exists in Air-Stream as far as I understand is that people are free to develop wireless (TCP/IP?) networks and connect them together via the Air-Stream "Network." All of these networks are treated equally with their data being subjected to the same set of routing principles as all other networks. (eg If the policy was to give low priority to email, this would not change in relation to network A or network B. Both networks can expect the same treatment)

Wow that got long :)