[1st-mile-nm] Google Policy Blog: response to WSJ article errors.

[Richard Lowenberg]

Net neutrality and the benefits of caching

http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/

Monday, December 15, 2008 at 12:14 AM
Posted by Richard Whitt, Washington Telecom and Media Counsel

One of the first posts I wrote for this blog last summer tried to define what we
at Google mean when we talk about the concept of net neutrality.

Broadband providers -- the on-ramps to the Internet -- should not be allowed to
prioritize traffic based on the source, ownership or destination of the
content. As I noted in that post, broadband providers should have the
flexibility to employ network upgrades, such as edge caching. However, they
shouldn't be able to leverage their unilateral control over consumers'
broadband connections to hamper user choice, competition, and innovation. Our
commitment to that principle of net neutrality remains as strong as ever.

Some critics have questioned whether improving Web performance through edge
caching -- temporary storage of frequently accessed data on servers that are
located close to end users -- violates the concept of network neutrality. As I
said last summer, this myth -- which unfortunately underlies a confused story
in Monday's Wall Street Journal -- is based on a misunderstanding of the way in
which the open Internet works.

Edge caching is a common practice used by ISPs and application and content
providers in order to improve the end user experience. Companies like Akamai,
Limelight, and Amazon's Cloudfront provide local caching services, and
broadband providers typically utilize caching as part of what are known as
content distribution networks (CDNs). Google and many other Internet companies
also deploy servers of their own around the world.

By bringing YouTube videos and other content physically closer to end users,
site operators can improve page load times for videos and Web pages. In
addition, these solutions help broadband providers by minimizing the need to
send traffic outside of their networks and reducing congestion on the
Internet's backbones. In fact, caching represents one type of innovative
network practice encouraged by the open Internet.

Google has offered to "colocate" caching servers within broadband providers' own
facilities; this reduces the provider's bandwidth costs since the same video
wouldn't have to be transmitted multiple times. We've always said that
broadband providers can engage in activities like colocation and caching, so
long as they do so on a non-discriminatory basis.

All of Google's colocation agreements with ISPs -- which we've done through
projects called OpenEdge and Google Global Cache -- are non-exclusive, meaning
any other entity could employ similar arrangements. Also, none of them require
(or encourage) that Google traffic be treated with higher priority than other
traffic. In contrast, if broadband providers were to leverage their unilateral
control over consumers' connections and offer colocation or caching services in
an anti-competitive fashion, that would threaten the open Internet and the
innovation it enables.

Despite the hyperbolic tone and confused claims in Monday's Journal story, I
want to be perfectly clear about one thing: Google remains strongly committed
to the principle of net neutrality, and we will continue to work with
policymakers in the years ahead to keep the Internet free and open.

P.S.: The Journal story also quoted me as characterizing President-elect Obama's
net neutrality policies as "much less specific than they were before." For what
it's worth, I don't recall making such a comment, and it seems especially odd
given that President-elect Obama's supportive stance on network neutrality
hasn't changed at all.




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