The basic Net neutrality argument goes that carriers should not be allowed to offer varied tiers of service that proffer high-level speeds to content providers willing to pay, and lower levels of service to the rest. Google’s Richard Whitt, in a June 2007 post, defined Net neutrality, saying carriers should not be allowed to “prioritize data packet delivery based on the ownership or affiliation (the who) of the content, or the source or destination (the what) of the content”; or “build a new “fast lane” online that consigns Internet content and applications to a relatively slow, bandwidth-starved portion of the broadband connection.”
The question is: Is local caching of video content the same as offering a higher level service to content providers with deep pockets? In a post today on the Google Public Policy blog, Whitt defends Google’s OpenEdge program, saying that collocation of caching servers is not discriminatory, and is in fact, a common, smart open Internet practice:
Companies like Akamai, Limelight, and Amazon’s Cloudfront provide local caching services, and broadband providers typically utilize caching as part of what are known as content distribution networks (CDNs). Google and many other Internet companies also deploy servers of their own around the world.By bringing YouTube videos and other content physically closer to end users, site operators can improve page load times for videos and Web pages. In addition, these solutions help broadband providers by minimizing the need to send traffic outside of their networks and reducing congestion on the Internet’s backbones. In fact, caching represents one type of innovative network practice encouraged by the open Internet.Still murky on the difference? In a reply to Whitt’s latest blog, a poster called Shiruba explains it best:
There is a large technical (and otherwise) difference between prioritizing traffic and offering edge caching. Offering edge-caching potentially improves service for some customers using cached content. It *doesn’t* do that at the expense of other customers or services. If, for example, Google were to pay Comcast to prioritize traffic to Youtube, then people accessing competing sites (say.. Hula) would be slowed down because google suddenly is taking the bandwidth. Not to mention, if Google paid, everyone would have to pay to compete, and there would be no way for start-ups to compete in the future.So while yes, edge caching does improve service to Google content, it doesn’t hinder service to others. But what about new start-up YouTube competitors that can’t afford to collocate their caching servers within the carrier networks? Won’t their services seem slower than Google’s, in effect, relegating them to a slow lane Internet service? Just asking…
