- #1
Lebombo
- 144
- 0
I am internet illiterate, however, I would like to understand the net neutrality issue by, perhaps, this Monday 1:00 pm (approximately 63 hours from the time of this post). This is a topic in my textbook so it could become a topic I'll have to write or speak about later this semester. I'm sure this is a complex topic and so my realisitic goal is to gain, at most, a rudamentary understanding of the issue in the short term.
I have not looked deep into the issue yet - and further, haven't wikipedia'd the topic for an general overveiw just yet. I just saw a 2 minute youtube video of someone defending net neutrality, but it's difficult to form an opinion without an understanding of what "net neutrality" actually is.
First off I think the primary difficulty is that I don't understand how the system works as is. So my first questions toward clarification would be this:
How do websites currently get charged to be on the internet?
And to specify the question with some subquestions (effectively pinpointing the true degree of my ignorance on this topic :)... :
Do they pay an ISP the same way I pay Comcast for DSL? Does a site like google have to pay its ISP more than I pay my ISP? Suppose the fastest internet access an internet ISP provides to customers is called SFC (Super Fast Connection). Suppose I use SFC and I'm charged 200 bucks per month for this connection speed; if Google also ran on SFC, would they pay their ISP the same rate as I do (even though I am one household and google is an entire corporation)? In other words, as it currently stands, does google pay more money for internet access due to the fact they send and receive lots more information the average casual user (who checks email a couple times a day, watches some youtube, and browses science blogs before going to work)?
I have not looked deep into the issue yet - and further, haven't wikipedia'd the topic for an general overveiw just yet. I just saw a 2 minute youtube video of someone defending net neutrality, but it's difficult to form an opinion without an understanding of what "net neutrality" actually is.
First off I think the primary difficulty is that I don't understand how the system works as is. So my first questions toward clarification would be this:
How do websites currently get charged to be on the internet?
And to specify the question with some subquestions (effectively pinpointing the true degree of my ignorance on this topic :)... :
Do they pay an ISP the same way I pay Comcast for DSL? Does a site like google have to pay its ISP more than I pay my ISP? Suppose the fastest internet access an internet ISP provides to customers is called SFC (Super Fast Connection). Suppose I use SFC and I'm charged 200 bucks per month for this connection speed; if Google also ran on SFC, would they pay their ISP the same rate as I do (even though I am one household and google is an entire corporation)? In other words, as it currently stands, does google pay more money for internet access due to the fact they send and receive lots more information the average casual user (who checks email a couple times a day, watches some youtube, and browses science blogs before going to work)?