[josho]

> Can anyone think of any advantages to a non-neutral internet?

Yes. In the early days there was a competing networking technology called ATM. It provided quality of service (QoS) aspects in the protocol. So, you could prioritize packets, e.g. protocols affected by latency could be prioritized (e.g. VOIP, gaming), while those that weren't could be given a low priority (FTP, email).

The beauty of ATM was that on a relatively low bandwidth connection you could utilize all of your bandwidth and services like VOIP would still work beautifully. TCP/IP still today struggles with this.

So, as a consumer, I'd be happy to pay for QoS so that my VOIP packets had an expressway on my 2Mbps connection. However, that ship (for many) has sailed. With my largely under utilized 50Mbps connection there is no reason to pay for QoS because we've largely solved latency by throwing bandwidth at the problem.

However, with the approach that the FCC/comcast/et al are taking, I see no benefit.

[Jtsummers]

But QoS at the protocol level is different than non-neutral. Non-neutral is a way for someone, not the user or application developer, to reprioritize content. You're not using Comcast VOIP? Fine, we'll slow down your Facetime chat. Don't want to use Mediacom Streaming Movies? Fine, we'll slow down Netflix.

That's what non-neutral means. QoS is different, that's applications behaving themselves. BitTorrent, for instance, led to the development of uTP (micro transport protocol). One of its nicest features for torrent users is that it will slow itself down now in response to congestion and play nice with other network-using processes on the client side.

Putting this into the underlying connection like ATM did just means that you at least have to pick a default QoS and hopefully applications/systems pick a sensible assignment for the traffic. Rather than the default being to treat every connection as equal.

[josho]

I understand the difference, my point was simply acknowledging that not all traffic is equal, so I have no problem to pay extra to ensure that the traffic that is important to me is given a priority. I do that today by paying for more bandwidth than I need. Alternatively, if bandwidth were a limited resource, then I'd consider paying to shape my traffic (either by paying for a better router to apply QoS rules in my own network or pay my ISP to take care of that on my behalf).

Comcast, however, wants to flip this around, so that even if I have bandwidth to spare they seem to be purposefully slowing down traffic (or under provisioning their own bandwidth) to force the Youtube's, Netflix's of the world to pay more.

TL;DR: all data is not equal; traffic shaping is 'ok' in theory; Comcast is evil, so please god don't let them artificially create slow lanes to force those willing to pay into the fast lanes.