A Lot Better Solution Than Net Neutrality

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[Commentary] I agree with Robert McDowell that Feb. 26 could be “The Turning Point for Internet Freedom” (op-ed, Jan. 20), but I don’t have as much confidence in the lawyers and politicians getting it right. So here is a geek’s solution to the net-neutrality fiasco.

Internet service providers should voluntarily make data about network throughput, latency, congestion and traffic management publicly available through a dashboard-like interface. It should be possible for me to see how packets get from any given customer or group of them to my service. If packets aren’t being delivered according to my requirements, I should be able to see why and provide the information to the [Federal Communications Commission] as a basis for a complaint. The carrier data should be in a standardized format accessible through application program interfaces so third parties can build other ways of looking at the data and customers can track packets across multiple service domains. This data is already available and used in every ISP’s network operations center. A month is enough time to get a proof of concept of this working. Given the threat of Title II regulatory nonsense, if I were running one of the ISPs, I’d make it my top priority.


A Lot Better Solution Than Net Neutrality