The Electronic Consumers Association is a group I respect – not just as a gamer, but as a political operative. They have put together a really strong operation to represent the interests of the gaming community in DC.  However, their latest position, and a subsequent post at Save The Internet, has me wondering who they are serving now, because it certainly isn’t gamers.

Their VP and General Counsel Jenn Mercurio has used the post to explain why “gamers demand” net neutrality.

While the Internet has traditionally been a place of relative freedom, several recent actions by service providers concern the ECA. Under current law, or the lack thereof, Internet service providers can block websites, content, services or applications they don’t like.

And they have, most notably when Comcast secretly interfered with users’ ability to access popular video, photo and music-sharing applications; or AT&T and Apple deciding which applications can be downloaded to iPhones. Both of these activities could easily be aimed at games to limit our hobby online.

And we are seeing more troubling behavior in the marketplace. Internet service providers have stated their intention to deploy discriminatory “deep packet inspection” technology that would allow them to monitor and control the Internet.

This dangerous technology would give network providers unprecedented power over Internet users, and it presents a serious threat to online privacy.

There are a slew of misconceptions in that, so let’s battle through them one at a time.  First, the throttling of P2P traffic by Comcast would actually have been a win for gamers.  Granted, it may have slowed some downloading, but the pressure it took off the network would have decreased lag and latency issues for online games.  More on that in a moment.

With regard to the AT&T/Apple decision to limit applications that run on the wireless network, again the ECA has actually taken the anti-gamer position.  By insisting wireless networks open their relatively constrained networks, they may see some additional apps delivered.  However, the network performance hit that will result from untested apps is likely to delay more robust multi-player gaming on the platform.

Mercurio’s point on deep packet inspection is also well off the mark.  While there are certainly some concerns with the technology, the advantage to gamers is quite clear.  DPI would allow the network to sense, route, and prioritize game traffic to provide the best possible experience for gamers.  Under the type of net neutrality proposed by Save The Internet, the “big dumb pipes” would leave game traffic to duke it out with heavy hitters like P2P downloads – which by design maximize the amount of bandwidth they consume.  The end result would be online games that are unplayable.

Prioritization is the Gamer’s Friend

Contrary to popular belief by gamers, net neutrality is actually their worst enemy when it comes to actual gaming.  George has detailed the reasons for this in a series of posts about network prioritization and the effect of net neutrality on latency sensitive applications.

The gist of his explanation is this.  Games actually transfer very little information back and forth during actual game play.  Since games typically rely on client software that defines the game elements, and the actual traffic merely tells those elements how to behave, the instructions are fairly small and take up very little bandwidth.  Industry traffic estimates I have seen indicate that gaming accounts for only about one percent of broadband traffic.  The trouble is, while very small, those packets are very sensitive to delay.  If another application on the network is consuming excessive bandwidth, games are adversely impacted almost immediately.

P2P applications are designed to move large files as quickly as possible.  As I mentioned earlier, they do this by grabbing every available bit of bandwidth and creating multiple simultaneous threads.  That crowds out other traffic.

On the well-prioritized network George envisions, the system is smart enough to recognize the sensitivity of gaming packets and will move them to the head of the class.  P2P, which will be impacted almost not at all by the slight delay, will be slowed enough to let the traffic through.

Think of gaming traffic as a fire truck, video streams as ambulances, and VoIP as police cars.  Now imagine P2P traffic as freight trucks.  Everyone recognizes the value of letting first responders get to their destination quickly.  When the lights are on, all other traffic pulls to the side.  Traffic may not stop moving, but right-of-way is given to emergency vehicles and everybody gets on with their life.  If freight trucks were given the right of way and fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars had to yield to them, the results would be catastrophic.  That is the world Jenn Mercurio and the ECA have thrown their organization behind.  Their concern over imagined harms has led them to align their group with a cause antithetical to its members’ interests.  In DC, that’s fairly common.

The gaming community should be distressed at their organization selling them out.  If ECA is going to continue to argue for policies that harm gamers, perhaps they should change their name to “Gamers for Lag” and be honest about their goals.