The State of the Internet

Net Neutrality is dead…for now.  But as many have said, the battle will continue.  Censoring…fast lanes…data caps…favoritism…etc.  All this is going to be rolled into obscure wording from greedy ISPs to maximize their profits.  And look, if I believed for a second that this extra money was going to actually increase infrastructure and speeds, I’d be more for it, but we all know that the internet fees to performance ratio is sky high in the US.

I’m an IT guy, specifically networking, so I’m going to do a bit of predicting here.  On a daily basis, we monitor our network.  We make sure we have the bandwidth and speed to meet the needs of our users.  It’s crucial for us to keep an eye on this.  Just like how it’s important for large cities to measure the traffic on the roads, to optimize the intersection lights, adjust speed limits, add more lanes, etc.  Now all this is possible because we can measure how heavy traffic moves, where it moves to, and when it happens.

Now, imagine there was no insight to this data.  Currently, ISPs can see a majority of where traffic goes.  But imagine how users are going to get around the bottle necks and slow lanes the ISPs try to enforce upon their customers to avoid paying higher subscriptions.  They’ll use VPNs (Virtual Private Networks), tunneling, encrypting their traffic, etc.  The same way people in China get past their great firewall of censorship.  Services to hide your traffic are going to increase.  Heck, modified routers that encrypt all your traffic by default will become a thing.  Everything will be hidden…  

This will make it difficult for ISPs to shape their traffic, to predict what they need to upgrade.  To add to that, anytime you encrypt traffic, you are increasing overall bandwidth needs.  When everyone does this, things slow down.  There’s more overhead.  Data will travel multiple hops, across countries and continents to avoid being traced.  How do you prioritize traffic now?

Also, since all traffic is hiding what possible data flows through it, think of the security threats this potentially adds.  Now look, there is definitely a concern for privacy, and there is good reason to use SSL encryption for your banking, email, medical data, etc…but EVERYTHING?  Yea, people are going to default to this method of surfing the web because guess what…your ISP is watching EVERYTHING you do and can MODIFY and CHARGE you (or your favorite service) so they can line their pockets even further then we do today.

And what can you do about it if there is only 1 internet service provider in your area…   umm, move I guess?  This is a huge issue.  The internet should be treated as a utility.  It’s a pipe, like the one that provides water to your home.  It’s pretty much required for our way of life now.  Yet those who have the money to influence our government have just bought their way into making even more money off us.

Things are going to quiet down now that the vote is over, but we must stay vigilant.  The fight should continue.  Keep an eye out for the sneaky fees  ISPs are going to try and add before we can win our freedom back.  

DO NOT accept this as the norm.