by Corbin McGrath

Created on: May 24, 2008   Last Updated: April 30, 2011

There is a quiet war being waged in blogs, discussion forums, and other places on the Internet. The issue at hand: Net Neutrality. A vague term referring to the indiscriminate transfer of information over the Internet (dictionary.com). Net Neutrality began gaining attention when: "In 2005, the FCC raised eyebrows when it investigated a small broadband provider, Madison River Communications, that had blocked access to Vonage's VoIP application. The matter ended when the provider agreed to unblock Vonage and pay a fine (more on this case later). Some argue that the source of the FCC's power to regulate net neutrality is based on the Supreme Court's 1997 decision allowing the agency to enforce "must-carry" regulations, which required cable companies to include local channels in their lineup. (Hannan)"

Companies like Google, Yahoo, and almost every site on the Internet are in support of Net Neutrality. On the other side lie large communications companies such as Comcast and Verizon who claim sites like Google and Yahoo should pay for using network bandwidth (Oates). As would be expected, founders of the Internet and protocols including Vint Cerf and Robert Khan have weighed in on the conflict and offer different opinions. Sites like SaveTheInternet.com have popped up allowing people to organize into one voice for Net Neutrality but in the end, the decision lies in the hands of lawmakers.

With the advances in technology that have taken place since the creation of the Internet, we are capable of streaming movies, music, and other large quantities of data. Frank Long, course director of Computers, Math and the Internet at Full Sail, explained that the internet backbone is only a few hubs scattered around the country with a limited number of main lines connecting consumer markets to the Internet. Since streaming large amounts of data uses an incredible amount of bandwidth, Internet companies are proposing "tiered" networks (savetheinternet.com). This kind of system will allow companies like Verizon, AT&T, and Time Warner to analyze information being sent and deciding which gets sent first and how fast. The large corporations argue that this type of network policy is needed to ensure QoS, Quality of Service. The companies say that in order to provide services such as home health monitoring, they need to be able to control information being sent (Farber). In other words, a doctor performing remote surgery would have his video data moving across the network at

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