[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.