Net neutrality advocates are spun up about two recent decisions that have little to do with net neutrality.  In the first instance, T-Mobile blocked a company called EZ Texting from sending messages for an outfit promoting medical marijuana dispensaries in California.  The second involves Facebook preventing users from displaying marijuana leaves in the images on [...]

The more I read the Blogosphere the more I realize that the web community seems to be the new entitlement state.  Seems that the latest craze on the web this week is the outrage that Intel is offering a $50 soft upgrade for their microprocessors [CPUs], and the web echo chamber (e.g., DailyTech) is picking [...]

Facebook recently slashed their video bitrate in half which means significant degradation in their online videos. Bitrate is a crucial to video quality and every bit as important as resolution. This alone won’t stop anyone from using Facebook but it does diminish the quality of the service and open the door to competitors.

Podcast of a conference with some distinguished network architects who helped develop the Internet technologies and standards.

When news broke last week that the cable industry saw a net decline of some 711,000 subs in the second quarter, the news was met with near hysteria.  Oddly, though, the hysterics weren’t in cable board rooms, but on blogs.  The chattering class, it seems, was more than eager to proclaim this the work of [...]

Does cable really cost $100/month or are tech geeks misrepresenting the costs compared to Internet alternatives? By the time the equipment leasing is factored out and premium channels are factored in, the online alternatives won’t be priced much differently.

After reading this summary of the Net Neutrality debate from David Post, I’ve decided to write the following open letter to him.

Free Press and their fellow Net Neutrality advocates are a classic example of this contradiction when they say “it’s not their first amendment but ours” and Nicholas Deleon of Crunch Gear is making the same mistake. Everyone loves to support free speech when it comes to speech they support, but the true test of a person’s conviction is when it comes to speech that they don’t support.

The Google-Verizon proposed compromise is based on good faith on the part of both companies but it falls short in some key areas. It takes the extreme position that paid router prioritization and that broadband providers are presumed guilty. It also defers the important debate on ISP differentiation while ignoring the will of the end user.

Free Press and other strict Net Neutrality advocates have their facts backwards. The router prioritization that they claim is harmful to others is actually not harmful and the CDN “geographic prioritization” that they claim is harmless is actually the most harmful. Not only does it cause a lot more jitter, but it hogs bandwidth at the expense of other applications.