We’ve talked off and on about the probability that Internet video could lead to a disastrous bandwidth crunch. And we’re not the only ones. Voice over IP requires reliable packet delivery, and the About VoIP blog recently touched on this issue:

The whole net neutrality debate was sparked, from what I interpret, when Internet providers felt they had to apply a tiered price structure for connections based on expected usage. Fact is, if we suddenly had the billion or so current Internet users all using VoIP and/or IPTV simultaneously, the current infrastructure couldn’t handle it. (Correct me if I’m wrong.)

Nope, that’s a pretty good estimate — and a lot better than the politically-charged interpretations coming from pro-”neutrality” activists.

We all probably want faster connection speeds, and they’re coming, but will take time to roll out. What could come sooner is a new set of video compression codecs … coupled with high-power graphics cards sporting their very own quad cores or more. If our graphics cards were powerful enough, and we used super-crunched video formats, we might possibly reduce bandwidth requirements down to a point where every Internet user could potentially watch Internet TV simultaneously.

Interesting. Hey, sounds great to us. But as good as quad core is, we should still be building out our broadband infrastructure, especially in fiber-to-the-home. No reason we can’t have both.

Our last post highlighted an article from the popular tech website TechDirt that made a true and compelling argument against “wireless net neutrality.” That article also touched on a humorously self-serving petition to the FCC by Skype, the peer-to-peer online telephone service. Here’s the relevant section:

As far as Skype’s petition to the FCC, the less said about this blatant publicity stunt, the better. It’s not really clear why this is so important to Skype: a Windows Mobile version of its client software has been available for a long time, and is pretty much open to US mobile users with compatible Windows Mobile devices. It’s got little room to expand outside that niche, since its CEO says the company can’t seem to get the hang of mobile development. Also, it’s a little ironic that Skype’s demanding openness and use of standards, when it’s eschewed so many standards in the VoIP space, like SIP, in favor of proprietary technologies and systems it refuses to open up.

If you didn’t already know, Skype is owned by eBay, a close ally of Google, which is also not above silly attempts to go on the offensive on this issue. As Scott Cleland at Precursor Blog has been pointing out for months, both have adopted a “neutrality for thee but not for me” attitude. Here’s Cleland, on the same wacky petition:

While most everyone else is looking to see how competition policy is working and how it might be improved, eBay-Skype said in FTC testimony last week, by eBay-Skype official Tod Cohen, that even a competitive market of 4-5 providers won’t solve the problems of limitations on wireless devices by wireless carriers.

Got that? The regulationists have gone from arguing that the broadband marketplace is an unacceptable “duopoly” to declaring that even a quintopoly is not competition enough. Just more evidence that there’s nothing they won’t say to muddy this issue.

A headline in a Washington trade publication said it all:

“Passions are sure to run high with reintroduction of Net neutrality legislation.”

(Source: Warren’s Washington Internet Daily)

As the old lawyer’s saying goes, when the facts are against you, pound on the law. When the law’s against you, pound on the facts. And when both are against you, pound on the table.

So before passions run high, let’s recap a few facts about today’s Internet:

• Annual percent increase in Internet traffic (2005-06) – 60 percent

• Average number of spam emails sent per day (October 2006) – 61 billion

• Percent increase from October 2005 – 100 percent

• Percent of 2006 VOIP calls judged to have “unacceptable quality” – 19 percent

• U.S. world ranking in broadband access – 16th

• Percent of major Internet carriers that abide by the FCC’s nondiscrimination principles – 100 percent

The list could go on, but the point for Net users is that online quality is dropping as traffic surges and deployment remains slow. Neutrality regulations not only won’t help, they’ll just make things worse.

The phrase “net neutrality” has become a buzzword in recent months. This is regrettable simply because it’s entirely meaningless, it doesn’t describe anything specifically. It’s merely a byword for the huge debate over the Internet’s future. But there are other words, much better words that you should be aware of.

Recently, we quoted Jim Lippard using one of them: “QoS.” What is QoS? It stands for “Quality of Service,” meaning the quality of Internet service. To you it means that network providers can give priority to some web traffic if it’s important that the traffic get through faster.

QoS is an incredible concept, but it didn’t always exist. In words approaching layman’s terms, Wikipedia explains why network engineers realized a need for it in the first place:

“When the Internet was first deployed many years ago, it lacked the ability to provide Quality of Service guarantees because its infrastructure was too limited, consisting of data links no faster than 56 Kbps, the speed of the modern dial-up modem.”

Since then, broadband Internet has come on line, and so have new technologies to assist the networks in routing traffic to where it needs to go. QoS is just one of them.

For almost all Internet traffic, QoS doesn’t matter. An e-mail will read the same if it arrives at 4Mbps as it would at 4 Kbps — it would just take longer. But some types of traffic are needier. Sometimes time is a factor. One of the most popular is VoIP, which is Internet-based telephone service. Another is in medical technology, where doctors need to monitor or even operate on patients from great distances. If you can’t find the specialist in your city or state, the Internet can make this possible.

But only QoS guarantees that these services will be possible. So what is QoS, then?

More to come.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_of_Service

We’ve said in the past that some of the smartest commenters in the debate over so-called Net Neutrality laws are bloggers with a network engineering background. All of the voices calling for new regulations are all either political activists or web content experts, not the true plumbers. So when the network experts agree on something, it’s usually worth noting.

Well, the recent findings by Brix Networks showing that VoIP — telephone over the Internet — has gotten worse in the last year and a half. And what do the bloggers say? Take it away, Jim Lippard:

“The solution is, of course, prioritization–putting voice and other latency and jitter-sensitive traffic in a higher class of service with QoS (quality of service).”

And the telecom industry is working hard to bring it to you. That is, just so long as it continues to be legally allowed to, of course. The agitators for disruptive and poorly-thought out “net neutrality” laws have long settled on a different doomsday scenario. Unfortunately, they don’t seem able to adjust their arguments based on new evidence. But that also means something else: their arguments are growing less relevant. This is good news for consumers, good news for fans of the Internet — and especially good news for fans of VoIP.