[OT] The Internet (that Ben says does not exist) and Net Neutrality

[Jeff Kinz]

On Mon, May 22, 2006 at 08:33:44AM -0400, Ted Roche wrote:
> On May 21, 2006, at 9:06 PM, Jeff Kinz wrote:
> 
> > It seems clear that everyone, except the big pipe owners mentioned
> > above, want the internet to stay with the traditional endpoint only,
> > "You pay to get your bits onto the network and to receive bits from  
> > the
> > network" model which we have all been using up to now.  With no  
> > charges
> > by whatever part of the network our bits happen to traverse in their
> > traveling.
> 
> I don't know all of the business arrangements, but is this an  
> accurate model of how the internet is set up? If I want to set up a  
> Contoocook ISP,  I buy/lease/rent an OC-48 and bandwidth from an  
> upstream provider who, in turn, buys their connections to various  
> backbones, perhaps via another layer or more of intermediaries. At  
> some level (I understand there is no "center of the Internet") all  
> peers agree to accept and transmit bits to each other on a peering  
> arrangement, but that's only because their downstream customers pay  
> them to do so. No one is doing this out of the goodness of their  
> hearts; all of us pay to keep those little green LEDs blinking.

Quite right, but "You" do not pay those transit charges, in the sense
that you do not negotiate a price for them and you are not billed for
"transit".  The price model you are presented with is :

Here is what it will cost you to "put bits on or get bits off" the
internet.