The sun has once again set on America’s net neutrality doctrine, which states that all internet traffic should be treated equally. Last week, a federal appeals court panel ruled that the Federal Communications Commission cannot classify Internet service providers (ISPs) in a way that prevents them from prioritizing certain content over others. I put it down. Without net neutrality, providers could slow down or throttle traffic to competitors’ websites. Or your ISP may require you to pay for faster connections to certain Internet destinations.
The new ruling, handed down by a three-judge panel on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, is a new ruling on the FCC’s net neutrality mandate, which began in 2015 when the agency adopted the Obama-era Open Internet Order. This marked a clear end to executions. The order defined ISPs as telecommunications providers and required them to act in the “public interest” under FCC oversight. Two years later, the order was repealed by the Trump administration’s FCC, but was reinstated by an FCC vote in April 2024 under President Joe Biden.
Net neutrality advocates include consumer watchdog groups, free speech groups, and World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee. “The web is yours,” he wrote. scientific american “This is a public resource that you, your business, your community, and your government depend on.” Netflix, YouTube, and other video streaming giants also support net neutrality. The benefit is that you don’t have to pay extra for content to load quickly. (Estimates vary, but streaming probably accounts for at least two-thirds of all Internet traffic.)
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But internet operators, which control the Web’s cell towers and cables, strongly oppose net neutrality and welcomed Thursday’s ruling. In their judgment, the judges stated: Roper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondothe Supreme Court case that overturned the so-called Chevron decision in June. This means courts no longer need to listen to the expertise of the FCC or other federal agencies to interpret ambiguities in the law.
The FCC now says the fate of net neutrality ultimately lies with Congress. “Consumers across the country have told us time and time again that they want a fast, open and fair internet,” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a news release. “This decision makes clear that Congress must heed their call, advocate for net neutrality, and enshrine the principles of an open internet into federal law.”
Net neutrality may now seem far beyond the FCC’s control, but that doesn’t mean the principle is dead, said computer scientist David Choffnes, director of the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute at Northeastern University. says. “We can always continue to collect data, continue to observe what’s going on, go to our representatives and tell them this is important, and find solutions,” he says. First, Choffnes and several of his colleagues created an app called Wehe that anyone could download to test for net neutrality violations. Since 2017, it has been used to perform over 2.5 million tests. Choffnes said Wehe detected traffic throttling in the United States and censorship in a handful of other countries. Censorship, he explains, is “bandwidth tuned to zero.” I spoke to Mr. Choffnes. scientific american About the impact of the court’s decision.
(An edited transcript of the interview follows:)
Net neutrality means different things to different people. In mechanical terms, it is described in terms of blocking or limiting speed to certain websites, policies that treat the Internet like a public utility, or free market terms. People like Ajit Pai, former FCC chairman under President Donald Trump, are taking advantage of unnecessary and stifling ISP restrictions. How do you define it?
The general idea is that network providers aren’t going to treat Netflix traffic any differently than Hulu traffic or Facebook or TikTok. All Internet traffic is treated the same. And those principles, the idea of openness and neutrality, are a huge part of why the Internet has been so successful.
How does Wehe work?
When your app sends network traffic, it doesn’t declare itself as Netflix, YouTube, or Hulu. It’s just internet traffic. This is data sent to a named (numbered) server. And these numbers, servers, and IP addresses are reused by many services. So how do you know it’s Netflix and not Hulu or Peacock?
The answer, it turns out, is that it’s looking for specific portions of network traffic that reveal domain names. As an example, consider Netflix’s netflix.com. (ISPs) have devices in their networks that search for this text, and if they find this match in the first few (data) packets of network traffic, they’ll say: This is now YouTube traffic and I’m going to slow it down. ”
We know that these devices aren’t looking at IP addresses, they’re just looking for the text in the network traffic itself, so they’re not looking at everything that’s being sent between the actual app, like Netflix, and its servers. Record. It then loads that information into the app and its own servers.
our app sends that’s right What the Netflix app sends, the server responds that’s right The Netflix server responded. From the perspective of a device in a cell network running this type of application discovery, network traffic looks exactly like Netflix.
Then continue repeating the experiment, except swapping all the 0’s and 1’s. The way things are represented in internet traffic is, at a very basic level, 0s and 1s. Just flip them over. This is the most efficient way to undo any patterns that (ISPs) are looking for.
Heck, if one of these networks is targeting and slowing down Netflix, for example, you’ll see that you get some throughput if your network traffic looks like Netflix. Even if it doesn’t, you’ll usually get much higher throughput.
Then we perform statistical analysis to come up with a reliable, validated method to say, “Yes, that made a big difference.” It wasn’t just a coincidence that we saw this huge difference. The technical term for this is “differentiation.” However, the more common term is “net neutrality violation.”
A paper you presented at a conference in August 2019 analyzed measurements from over 126,000 people who used Wehe from January 2018 to January 2019. In it, you and your colleagues identified 30 ISPs in seven countries, including the United States, that were throttling streaming on popular websites. YouTube etc. However, you write that this is from a total of 144 ISPs, and that “major broadband providers in the United States” (such as Comcast) do not differentiate traffic based on content. What else did you find?
Since we started this initiative, 2.5 million tests have been carried out covering many countries. Nevertheless, the picture we get from a snapshot six years ago is pretty much the same as it is today.
What we see in the US is not censorship, but all wireless providers. This means that your cell phone provider, long range radio, or satellite radio all have at least one subscription plan and a user to perform the tests. And they find differentiation. I’ve noticed that some video streaming apps are slowing down. It turns out that fixed line providers don’t do this.
Do you have any insight into why throttling doesn’t seem to apply to broadband providers, but it does apply to wireless providers?
All I can do is guess. When it comes to broadband, I think it’s clear that bandwidth is not in short supply.
On the wireless side, the problem has traditionally been a lack of spectrum. (Spectrum is just a proxy for bandwidth.)
Historically, it may have made sense to try to limit video streaming bandwidth usage. It’s no surprise that at some point this was putting a strain on the network.
Now, when you visit your mobile phone provider’s website, you’ll see their high-speed 5G networks and the amount of bandwidth they have. I don’t think it’s rare anymore. The whole point of the evolution of our cellular technology is to remove bandwidth limitations. I’m not sure it’s still a problem.
The Wehe project continues and is currently tracking traffic to apps like Zoom. Has anything changed since your state’s net neutrality law went into effect? (States with such laws include California, Oregon, and Washington.)
The answer is no. We found no evidence that whatever rules were passed at the federal or state level changed behavior on these networks.
I think the states that passed these laws probably haven’t done anything. Because if this decision truly spells the end of FCC rules, we’ll have to wait and see what happens.
How will last Thursday’s decision affect Internet traffic?
We do not expect any changes in the short term, as network providers never change their behavior in response to laws and regulations that have been enacted since we collected the data.
Do you have the motivation to continue working, or do you feel like you’ve added to your workload?
Let me preface this by saying that this has all happened before. The research (behind this project) began before the 2015 Open Internet Mandate. And since we’ve been bringing the Wehe app to life since 2017, we’ve seen net neutrality rules created, revoked, challenged in court, and put on hold. I’ve seen it all at this point… (my answer is) even more… “I’m fed up with things the way they are.”
My feeling about this project is that there needs to be transparency. When things are opaque and no one can check what companies are doing, we tend to find that companies are doing things that are not in the best interest of the consumers who use them. I’m not saying all companies are evil, and I’m not saying that when companies do bad things, it’s done with malicious intent. But the important fact is that bad things happen and if you don’t know about them, you can’t fix them.
