The last time I wrote about network neutrality, higher education was deeply involved in the debate, especially through the Association of Research Libraries and EDUCAUSE, whose policy group I then headed. We supported a proposal by the then Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman, Julius Genachowski, to require public non-managed last-mile networks to transmit end-user Internet traffic neutrally.

We worried that otherwise those networks might favor commercial over intellectual content, and so make it difficult for off-campus students to access course, library, and other campus content, and for campus entities such as libraries to access content on other campuses or in central shared repositories. (The American Library Association had similar worries on behalf of public libraries and their patrons.) Almost as a footnote, we opposed so-called “paid prioritization”, an ill-defined concept, rarely implemented, but now reborn as “Internet fast lanes”.

Although courts overturned the FCC on neutrality, for the most part its key principle has held: traffic should flow across the Internet without regard for its source, its destination, or its content.

But the paid-prioritization footnote is pushing its way back into the main text. It’s doing so in a particularly arcane way, but one that may have serious implications for higher education. Understanding this requires some definitions. After addressing those (as Steve Worona points out, an excellent Wired article has even more on how the Internet, peering, and content delivery networks work), I’ll  turn to current issues and higher education’s interests.

What Is Network Neutrality?

To be “neutral”, in the FCC’s earlier formulation, a network must transmit public Internet traffic equivalently without regard for its source, its destination, or its content. Public Internet traffic means traffic that involves externally accessible IP addresses. A network can discriminate on the basis of type–for example, treat streaming video differently from email. But a neutral network cannot discriminate on source, destination, or content within a given type of traffic. A network can  treat special traffic such as cable TV programming or cable-based telephony–“managed services”, in the jargon–differently than regular public Internet traffic, although this is controversial since the border is murky. More controversial still, given current trends, is the exclusion of cellular wireless Internet traffic (but not WiFi) from neutrality requirements.

Pipes

The word “transmit” is important, because it’s different from “send” and “receive”. Users connect computers, servers, phones, television sets, and other devices to networks. They choose and pay for the capacity of their connection (the “pipe”, in the usual but imperfect plumbing analogy) to send and receive network traffic. Not all pipes are the same, and it’s perfectly acceptable for a network to provide lower-quality pipes–slower, for example–to end users who pay less, and to charge customers differently depending on where they are located. But a neutral network must provide the same quality of service to those who pay for the same size, quality, and location of “pipe”.

A user who is mostly going to send and receive small amounts of text (such as email) can get by with very modest and inexpensive capacity. One who is going to view video needs more capacity, one who is going to use two-way videoconferencing needs even more, and a commercial entity that is going to transmit multiple video streams to many customers needs lots. Sometimes the capacity of connections is fixed–one pays for a given capacity regardless of whether one uses it all–and sometimes their capacity and cost adjust dynamically with use. But in all cases one is merely paying for a connection to the network, not for how quickly traffic will get to or arrive from elsewhere. That last depends on how much someone is paying at the other end, and on how well the intervening networks interconnect. Whether one can pay for service quality other than the quality of one’s own connection is central to the current debate.

Users

It’s also important to consider two different (although sometimes overlapping) kinds of users: “end users” and “providers”. In general, providers deliver services to end users, sometimes content (for example, Netflix, the New York Times, or Google Search), sometimes storage (OneDrive, Dropbox), sometimes communications (Gmail, Xfinity Connect), and sometimes combinations of these and other functionality (Office Online, Google Apps).

The key distinctions between providers and end users are scale and revenue flow. The typical provider serves thousands if not millions of end users; the typical end user uses more than a few but rarely more than a few hundred providers. End users provide revenue to providers, either directly or by being counted; providers receive revenue (or sometimes other value such as fame) from end users or advertisers, and use it to fund the services they provide.

Roles

Networks (and therefore network operators) can play different roles in transmission: “first mile”, “last mile”, “backbone”, and “peering”. Providers connect to first-mile networks. End users do the same to last-mile networks. (First-mile and last-mile networks are mirror images of each other, of course, and can swap roles, but there’s always one of each for any traffic.) Sometimes first-mile networks connect directly to last-mile networks, and sometimes they interconnect indirectly using backbones, which in turn can interconnect with other backbones. Peering is how first-mile, last-mile, and backbone networks interconnect.

To use another imperfect analogy, first mile networks are on-ramps to backbone freeways, last-mile networks are off-ramps, and peering is where freeways interconnect. But here’s why the analogy is  imperfect: sometimes providers connect directly to backbones, and sometimes first-mile and last-mile networks have their own direct peering interconnections, bypassing backbones. Sometimes, as the Wired article points out, providers pay last-mile networks to host their servers, and sometimes special content-distribution systems such as Akamai do roughly the same. Those imperfections account for much of the current controversy.

Consider how I connect the Mac on my desk in Comcast‘s downtown office (where a few of us from NBCUniversal also work) to hostmonster.com, where this blog lives. I connect to the office wireless, which gives me a private (10.x.x.x) IP address. That goes to an internal (also private) router in Philadelphia, which then connects to Comcast’s public network. Comcast, as the company’s first-mile network, takes the traffic to Pennsylvania, then to Illinois, then back east to Virginia. There Comcast has a peering connection to Cogent, which is Hostmonster’s first-mile network provider. Cogent carries my traffic from Virginia to Illinois, Missouri, Colorado, and Utah, where Hostmonster is located and connects to Cogent.

If Comcast and Cogent did not have a direct connection, then my traffic would flow through a backbone such as Level3. If Hostmonster placed its servers in Comcast data centers, my traffic would be all-Comcast. As I’ll note repeatedly, this issue–how first-mile, last-mile, and backbones peer, and how content providers deal with this–is driving much of today’s network-neutrality debate. So is the increasing consolidation of the last-mile network business.

Public/Private

“Public” networks are treated differently than “private” ones. Generally speaking, if a network is open to the general public, and charges them fees to use it, then it’s a public network. If access is mostly restricted to a defined, closed community and does not charge use fees, then it’s a private network. The distinction between public and private networks comes mostly from the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), which took effect in 1995. CALEA required “telecommunications carriers” to assist police and other law enforcement, notably by enabling court-approved wiretaps.

Even for traditional telephones, it was not entirely clear which “telecommunications carriers” were covered–for example, what about campus-run internal telephone exchanges?–and as CALEA extended to the Internet the distinction became murkier. Eventually “open to the general public, and charges them fees” provided a practical distinction, useful beyond CALEA.

Most campus networks are private by this definition. So are my home network, the network here in the DC Comcast office, and the one in my local Starbucks. To take the roadway analogy a step further, home driveways, the extensive network of roads within gated residential communities (even a large one such as Kiawah Island), and roadways within large industrial facilities (such as US Steel’s Gary plant) are private. City streets, state highways, and Interstates are public. (Note that the meaning of “public network” in Windows, MacOS, or other security settings is different.)

Neutrality

In practice, and in most of the public debate until recently, the term “network neutrality” has meant this: except in certain narrow cases (such as illegal uses), a neutral-network operator does not prioritize traffic over the last mile to or from an end user according to the source of the traffic, who the end user is, or the content of the traffic. Note the important qualification: “over the last mile”.

An end user with a smaller, cheaper connection will receive traffic more slowly than one who pays for a faster connection, and the same is true for providers sending traffic. The difference may be more pronounced for some types of traffic (such as video) than for others (email). Other than this, however, a neutral network treats all traffic the same. In particular, the network operator does not manipulate the traffic for its own purposes (such as degrading a competitor’s service), and does not treat end users or providers differently except to the extent they pay for the speed or other qualities of their own network connections.

“Public” networks often claim to be neutral, at least to some degree; “private” ones rarely do. Most legislative and regulatory efforts to promote network neutrality focus on public networks.

Enough definition. What does this all mean for higher education, and in particular how is that meaning different from what I wrote about back in 2011?

The Rebirth of Paid Prioritization

Where once the debate centered on last-mile neutrality for Internet traffic to and from end users, which is relatively straightforward and largely accepted, it has now expanded to include both Internet and “managed services” over the full path from provider to end user, which is much more complicated and ambiguous.

An early indicator was AT&T’s proposal to let providers subsidize the delivery of their traffic to AT&T cellular-network end users, specifically by allowing providers to pay the data costs associated with their services to end users. That is, providers would pay for how traffic was delivered and charged to end users. This differs fundamentally from the principle that the service end users receive depends only on what end users themselves pay for. Since cellular networks are not required to be neutral, AT&T’s proposal violated no law or regulation, but it nevertheless triggered opposition: It implied that AT&T’s customers would receive traffic (ads, downloads, or whatever) from some providers more advantageously–that is, more cheaply–than equivalent traffic from other providers. End user would have no say in this, other than to change carriers. Thus far AT&T’s proposal has attracted few providers, but this may be changing.

Then came the running battles between Netflix, a major provider, and last-mile providers such as Comcast and Verizon. Netfllix argued that end users were receiving its traffic less expeditiously than other providers’ traffic, that this violated neutrality principles, and that last-mile providers were responsible for remedying this. The last-mile providers rejected this argument: in their view the problem arose because Netfllix’s first-mile network (as it happens, Cogent, the same one Hostmonster uses) was unwilling to pay for peering connections capable of handling Netflix’s traffic (which can amount to more than a quarter of all Internet traffic some evenings). In the last-mile networks’ view, Netflix’s first-mile provider was responsible for fixing the problem at its (and therefore presumably Netflix’s) expense. The issue is, who pays to ensure sufficient peering capacity? Returning to the highway metaphor, who pays for sufficient interchange ramps between toll roads, especially when most truck traffic is in one direction?

In the event Netflix gave in, and arranged (and paid for) direct first-mile connections to Comcast, Verizon, and other last-mile providers. But Netflix continues to press its case, and its position has relevance for higher education.

Colleges and Universities

Colleges and universities have traditionally taken two positions on network neutrality. Representing end users, including their campus community and distant students served over the Internet, higher education has taken a strong position in support of the FCC’s network-neutrality proposals, and even urged that they be extended to cover cellular networks. As operators of networks funded and designed to support campuses’ instructional, research, and administrative functions, however, higher education also has taken the position that campus networks, like home, company, and other private networks, should continue to be exempted from network-neutrality provisions.

These remain valid positions for higher education to take in the current debate, and indeed the principles recently posted by EDUCAUSE and various other organizations do precisely that. But the emergence of concrete paid-prioritization services may require more nuanced positions and advocacy.  This is partly because the FCC’s positions have shifted, and partly because the technology and the debate have evolved.

Why should colleges and universities care about this new network-neutrality battleground? Because in addition to representing end users and operating private networks, campuses are increasingly providing instruction to distant students over the Internet. Massively open online courses (MOOCs) and other distance-education services often involve streamed or two-way video. They therefore require high-quality end-to-end network connections.

In most cases, campus network traffic to distant student flows over the commercial Internet, rather than over Internet2 or regional research and education (R&E) networks. Whether it reaches students expeditiously depends not only on the campus’s first-mile connection (“first mile” rather than “last mile” because the campus is now a provider rather than simply representing end users), but also on how the campus’s Internet service provider connects to backbones and/or to students’ last-mile networks–and of course on whether distant students have paid for good enough connections. This is similar to Netflix’s situation.

Unlike Netflix, however, individual campuses probably cannot afford to pay for direct connections to all of their students’ last-mile networks, or to place servers in distant data centers. They thus depend on their first-mile networks’ willingness to peer effectively with backbone and last-mile networks. Yet campuses are rarely major customers of their ISPs, and therefore have little leverage to influence ISPs’ backbone and peering choices. Alternatively, campuses can in theory use their existing connections to R&E networks to deliver instruction. But this is only possible if those R&E networks peer directly and capably with key backbone and last-mile providers. R&E networks generally have not done this.

Here’s what this all means: Higher education needs to continue supporting its historical positions promoting last-mile neutrality and seeking private-network exemptions for campus networks. But colleges and universities also need to work together to make sure their instructional traffic will continue to reach distant students. One way to achieve this is by opposing paid prioritization, of course. But FCC and other regulations may permit limited paid prioritization, or technology may as usual stay one step ahead of regulation. Higher education must figure out the best ways to deal with that, and collaborate to make them so.

Who’s on First, Abbott and Costello’s classic routine, first reached the general public as part of the Kate Smith Radio Hour in 1938. It then appeared on almost every radio network at some time or another before reaching TV in the 1950s. (The routine’s authorship, as I’ve noted elsewhere, is more controversial than its broadcast history.) The routine can easily be found many places on the Internet – as a script, as audio recordings, or as videos. Some of its widespread availability is from widely-used commercial services (such as YouTube), some is from organized groups of fans, and some is from individuals. The sources are distributed widely across the Internet (in the IP-address sense).

I can easily find and read, listen to, or watch Who’s on First pretty much regardless of my own network location. It’s there through the Internet2 connection in my office, through my AT&T mobile phone, through my Sprint mobile hotspot, through the Comcast connections where I live, and through my local coffeeshops’ wireless in DC and Chicago.

This, most of us believe, is how the Internet should work. Users and content providers pay for Internet connections, at rates ranging from by buying coffee to thousands of dollars, and how fast one’s connection is thus may vary by price and location. One may need to pay providers for access, but the network itself transmits similarly no matter where stuff comes from, where it’s going, or what its substantive content is. This, in a nutshell, is what “network neutrality” means.

Yet network neutrality remains controversial. That’s mostly for good, traditional political reasons. Attaining network neutrality involves difficult tradeoffs among the economics of network provision, the choices available to consumers, and the public interest.

Tradeoffs become important when they affect different actors differently. That’s certainly the case for network neutrality:

• Network operators (large multifunction ones like AT&T and Comcast, large focused ones like Verizon and Sprint, small local ones like MetroPCS, and business-oriented ones like Level3) want the flexibility to invest and charge differently depending on who wants to transmit what to whom, since they believe this is the only way to properly invest for the future.
• Some Internet content providers (which in some cases, like Comcast, are are also networks) want to know that what they pay for connectivity will depend only on the volume and technical features of their material, and not vary with its content, whereas others want the ability to buy better or higher-priority transmission for their content than competitors get — or perhaps to have those competitors blocked.
• Internet users want access to the same material on the same terms regardless of who they are or where they are on the network.

Political perspectives on network neutrality thus vary depending on who is proposing what conditions for whose network.

But network neutrality is also controversial because it’s misunderstood. Many of those involved in the debate either don’t – or won’t – understand what it means for a public network to be neutral, or indeed what the difference is between a public and a private network. That’s as true in higher education as it is anywhere else. Before taking a position on network neutrality or whose job it is to deal with it, therefore, it’s important to define what we’re talking about. Let me try to do that.

All networks discriminate. Different kinds of network traffic can entail different technical requirements, and a network may treat different technical requirements differently. E-mail, for example, can easily be transmitted in bursts – it really doesn’t matter if there’s a fifty-millisecond delay between words – whereas video typically becomes jittery and unsatisfactory if the network stream isn’t steady. A network that can handle email may not be able to handle video. One-way transmission (for example, a video broadcast or downloading a photo) can require very different handling than a two-way transmission (such as a videoconference). Perhaps even more basic, networks properly discriminate between traffic that respects network protocols – the established rules of the road, if you will – and traffic that attempts to bypass rule-based network management.

Network neutrality does not preclude discrimination. Rather, as I wrote above, a network behaves neutrally if it avoids discriminating on the basis of (a) where transmission originates, (b) where transmission is destined, and (c) the content of the transmission. The first two elements of network neutrality are relatively straightforward, but the third is much more challenging. (Some people also confuse how fast their end-user connection is with how quickly material moves across the network – that is, someone paying for a 1-megabit connection considers the Internet non-neutral if they don’t get the same download speeds as someone paying for a 26-megabit connection – but that’s a separate issue largely unrelated to neutrality.) In particular, it can be difficult to distinguish between neutral discrimination based on technical requirements and non-neutral discrimination based on a transmission’s substance.In some cases the two are inextricably linked.

Consider several ways network operators might discriminate with regard to Who’s on First.

• Alpha Networks might decide that its network simply can’t handle video streaming, and therefore might configure its systems not to transmit video streams. If a user tries to watch a YouTube version of the routine, it won’t work if the transmission involves Alpha Networks. The user will still be able to read the script or listen to an audio recording of the routine (for example, any of those listed in the Media|Audio Clips section of http://www.abbottandcostello.net/). Although refusing to carry video is clearly discrimination, it’s not discrimination based on source, destination, or content. Alpha Networks therefore does not violate network neutrality.
• Beta Networks might be willing to transmit video streams, but only from providers that pay it to do so. Say, purely hypothetically, that the Hulu service – jointly owned by NBC and Fox – were to pay Beta Networks to carry its video streams, which include an ad-supported version of Who’s on First. Say further that Google, whose YouTube streams include many Who’s on First examples, were to decline to pay. If Beta Networks transmitted Hulu’s versions but not Google’s, it would be discriminating on the basis of source – and probably acting non-neutrally.

What if Hulu and Google use slightly different video formats? Beta might claim that carrying Hulu’s traffic but not Google’s was merely technical discrimination, and therefore neutral. Google would probably disagree. Who resolves such controversies – market behavior, the courts, industry associations, the FCC – is one of the thorniest points in the national debate about network neutrality. Onward…

• Gamma Networks might decide that Who’s on First ridicules and thus disparages St. Louis (many performances of the routine refer to “the St Louis team”, although others refer to the Yankees). To avoid offending customers, Gamma might refuse to transmit Who’s on First, in any form, to any user in Missouri. That would be discrimination on the basis of destination. Gamma would violate the neutrality principle.
• Delta Networks, following Gamma’s lead, might decide that Who’s on First disparages not just St. Louis, but professional baseball in general. Since baseball is the national pastime, and perhaps worried about lawsuits, Delta Networks might decide that Who’s on First should not be transmitted at all, and therefore it might refuse to carry the routine in any form. That would be discrimination on the basis of content. Delta would be violating the neutrality principle.
• Epsilon Networks, a competitor to Alpha, might realize that refusing to carry video disserves customers. But Epsilon faces the same financial challenges as Alpha. In particular, it can’t raise its general prices to cover the expense of transmitting video since it would then lose most of its customers (the ones who don’t care about video) to Alpha’s lesser but less expensive service. Rather than block video, Epsilon might decide to install equipment that will enable video as a specially provided service for customers who want it, and to charge those customers – but not its non-video customers – extra for the added capability. Whether an operator violates network neutrality by charging more for special network treatment of certain content – the usual term for this is “managed services” – is another one of the thorniest issues in the national debate.

As I hope these examples make clear, there are various kinds of network discrimination, and whether they violate network neutrality is sometimes straightforward and sometimes not.  Things become thornier still if networks are owned by content providers or vice versa – or, as is more typical, if there are corporate kinships between the two. Hulu, for example, is partly owned by NBC Universal, which is becoming part of Comcast. Can Comcast impose conditions on “outside” customers, such as Google’s YouTube, that it does not impose on its own corporate cousin?

Why do we give a shortstop (whose name, lest you didn’t read to the end of the Who’s on First script, is “darn”)? That is, why is network neutrality important to higher education? There are two principal reasons.

First, as mobility and blended learning (the combination of online and classroom education) become commonplace in higher education, it becomes very important that students be able to “attend” their college or university from venues beyond the traditional campus. To this end, it is very important that colleges and universities be able to provide education to their students and interconnect researchers over the Internet. This should be constrained only by the capacity of the institution’s connection to the Internet, the technical characteristics of online educational materials and environments, and the capacity of students’ connections to the Internet.

Without network neutrality, achieving transparent educational transmission from campus to widely-distributed students could become very difficult. The quality of student experience could come to depend on the politics of the network path from campus to student.To address this, each college and university would need to negotiate transmission of its materials with every network operator along the path from campus to student. If some of those network operators negotiate exclusive agreements for certain services with commercial providers – or perhaps with other colleges or universities – it could become impossible to provide online education effectively.

Second, many colleges and universities operate extensive networks of their own, or together operate specialized inter-campus networks for education, research, administrative, and campus purposes. Network traffic inconsistent with or detrimental to these purposes is managed differently than traffic that serves them. It is important that colleges and universities retain the ability to manage their networks in support of their core purposes.

Networks that are operated by and for the use of particular organizations, like most college and university networks, are private networks. Private and public networks serve different purposes, and thus are managed based on different principles. The distinction is important because the national network-neutrality debate – including the recent FCC action, and its evolving judicial, legislative, and regulatory consequences – is about public networks.

Private networks serve private purposes, and therefore need not behave neutrally. They are managed to advance private goals. Public networks, on the other hand, serve the public interest, and so – network-neutrality advocates argue – should be managed in accordance with public policy and goals. Although this seems a clear distinction, it can become murky in practice.

For example, many colleges and universities provide some form of guest access to their campus wireless networks, which anyone physically on campus may use. Are guest networks like this public or private? What if they are simply restricted versions of the campus’s regular network? Fortunately for higher education, there is useful precedent on this point. The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), which took effect in 1995, established principles under which most college and university campus networks are treated as private networks – even if they provide a limited set of services to campus visitors (the so-called “coffee shop” criterion).

Higher education needs neutrality on public networks because those networks are increasingly central to education and research. At the same time, higher education needs to manage campus networks and private networks that interconnect them in support of education and research, and for that reason it is important that there be appropriate policy differentiation between public and private networks.

Regardless, colleges and universities need to pay for their Internet connectivity, to negotiate in good faith with their Internet providers, and to collaborate effectively on the provision and management of campus and inter-campus networks. So long as colleges and universities act effectively and responsibly as network customers, they need assurance that their traffic will flow across the Internet without regard to its source, destination, or content.

And so we come to the central question: Assuming that higher education supports network neutrality for public networks, do we care how its principles – that public networks should be neutral, and that private ones should be manageable for private purposes – are promulgated, interpreted, and enforced? Since the principles are important to us, as I outlined above, we care that they be implemented effectively, robustly, and efficiently. Since the public/private distinction seems to be relatively uncontroversial and well understood, the core issue is whether and how to address network neutrality for public networks.

There appear to be four different ideas about how to implement network neutrality.

1. A government agency with the appropriate scope, expertise, and authority could spell out the circumstances that would constitute network neutrality, and prescribe mechanisms for correcting circumstances that fell short of those. Within the US, this would need to be a federal agency, and the only one arguably up to the task is the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC has acted in this way, but there remain questions whether it has the appropriate authority to proceed as it has proposed.
2. The Congress could enact laws detailing how public networks must operate to ensure network neutrality. In general, it has proven more effective for the Congress to specify a broad approach to a public-policy problem, and then to create and/or empower the appropriate government agency to figure how what guidelines, regulations, and redress mechanisms are best. Putting detail into legislation tends to enable all kinds of special negotiations and provisions, and the result is then quite hard to change.
3. The networking industry could create an internal body to promote and enforce network neutrality, with appropriate powers to take action when its members fail to live up to neutrality principles. Voluntary self-regulatory entities like this have been successful in some contexts and not in others. Thus far, however, the networking industry is internally divided as to the wisdom of network neutrality, and without agreement on the principle it is hard to see how there could be agreement on self-regulation.
4. Network neutrality could simply be left to the market. That is, if network neutrality is important to customers, they will buy services from neutral providers and avoid services from non-neutral providers. The problem here is that network neutrality must extend across diverse networks, and individual consumers – even if they are large organizations such as many colleges and universities – interact only with their own “last mile” provider.

Those of us in higher education who have been involved in the network-neutrality debates have come to believe that among these four approaches the first is most likely to yield success and most likely to evolve appropriately as networking and its applications evolve. This is especially true for wireless (that is, cellular) networking, where there remain legitimate questions about what level of service should be subject to neutrality principles, and what kinds of service might legitimately be considered managed, extra-cost services.

In theory, the national debate about network neutrality will unfold through four parallel processes. Two of these are already underway: the FCC has issued an order “to Preserve Internet Freedom and Openness”, and at least two network operators have filed lawsuits challenging the FCC’s authority to do that. So we already have agency and court involvement, and we can possiible congressional actions and industry initiatives to round out the set.

One thing’s sure: This is going to become more complicated and confusing…

Lou: I get behind the plate to do some fancy catching, Tomorrow’s pitching on my team and a heavy hitter gets up. Now the heavy hitter bunts the ball. When he bunts the ball, me, being a good catcher, I’m gonna throw the guy out at first base. So I pick up the ball and throw it to who?

Bud: Now that’s the first thing you’ve said right.

Lou: I don’t even know what I’m talking about!