Content Connect and Net Neutrality

Net neutrality as a principle is a great ideal for the Internet. It is well known that nature abhors a vacuum. In the same way big business (and government) abhor free open communication. All from Google to Microsoft to News Corp and Disney would like to control and shape how you use the internet so they can make money out of your activity. Even in the early days some built “walled gardens” to keep their customers and their content inside and earning them money. Does AOL still exist?

Anyway the point is that where business and governments see consumers and voter gathering they are inexorably draw to it. There is therefore a need to be vigilant to ensure the Internet remains free and open. However, is BT’s Content Connect part of this pressure to control the Internet? The simple answer is “not in itself” it will depend on how ISP’s use it.

So what is Content Connect? It’s a Video only UK only CDN. CDN’s (Content Distribution Networks) have been around for a few years. Initially they evolved because the Internet is not very good at streaming video (live or on demand). You will probably have gone to a web page and watched as the various elements (pictures, text and menus) are built up over a few seconds. This especially noticeable at busy times and when the source site is a long way away. The page being built element by element as it arrives does not hinder your experience of the web page. The order in which the elements arrive is irrelevant as long as the whole page is built in a reasonable time. If a packet of data is lost in the internet it is simply requested again and slotted into the right place on the page.

Video is not so simple. Each image needs to arrive in the right order or a buffer needs to be built which allows missing images to be resent and slotted into the buffer before it is played to the screen. The internet is a collection of networks “Interconnected”.

One of the things that the internet does fairy regularly is through way data it can’t manage within a set time. In the text, and even with pictures, this is not too much of a problem. However, in video, where a 30 minute Standard Definition programme is the equivalent of 78,000 e-mails, As video has grew and core network congestion increased more packets tend to get thrown away. Resulting in extremely poor video jerky, blocky and constant rebuffering.

CDN were invented. These provided tunnels through the internet or separate networks to take the content from the Content Service Provider (CSP) to the End Use (EU). Therefore net neutrality in its purest sense had gone. CSP paid the CDN to deliver the content. The CDN would also cache the video local to the EU so that any subsequent request for the video was served from the cache and not the origin giving the CSP a saving on their bandwidth. There are other benefits from using CDN for another time maybe.

The CDN caches usually placed just outside or just inside the local ISP network and therefore solved the congestion on the core internet. As video use over the internet continues to grow and games consoles, connected TV and Set Top Boxes make it easier (friendlier) to consume video congestion in the local ISP is becoming a problem. ISP could buy more bandwidth but that is a cost with no revenue. They could charge consumers more for their broadband service but a) not all end users are watching video so one would be cross subsidising the other b) in the UK ISP competes on cost with most consumers comparing ISP on bandwidth costs. Therefore it will be a brave ISP that makes the consumer pay.

Content Connect moves the CDN cache further into the ISP’s network (not all ISP’s are compatible with Content Connect) reducing their bandwidth costs and giving more reliable video streams. Content Connect also allows CSP to mark video with a higher quality of service (QoS). If the CSP has an agreement with the ISP, the ISP can practise the video stream to that End User.

What is that agreement between the ISP and the CSP? This has not been determined but if the End User has just bought the latest Hollywood movie part of the payment to the CSP would go to the ISP to deliver it. Others within the household might see there “normal” internet traffic slow down but the neighbours would be unaffected. So while the network is no longer neutral in its purest sense it is no worse than it already is with the existing CDN’s. The ability to prioritise traffic is potentially determined by the consumer. I can think of other ways to use Content Connect that would not be determined by the consumer and it is the implementation and not the technology itself that we need to be vigilant about.