Neutral Net? Who Are You Kidding?

NEUTRAL NET? WHO ARE WE KIDDING?
[SOURCE: Wired News, AUTHOR: Michael Grebb]
How neutral is the net right now? Not very, it turns out. "Net neutrality" has many meanings, but in the broadest sense refers to a cooperative principle whereby everyone on the net is supposed to make the same effort to help deliver everyone else's traffic. In fact, pushing bits through the network-of-networks that makes up the Internet is an anarchic business and frequently an ugly one. ISPs must often fight to get their data carried on neighboring networks, and those who are willing to pay extra reap immediate benefits in the form of faster and better service. Vast amounts of traffic are rerouted and blocked every day. The system, while successful overall, seems to ride on the very edge of chaos, insiders say. "I don't think the Internet has ever been perfectly equal or neutral," says Khaled Nasr, a partner at venture-capital firm InterWest Partners. "There has always been some level of inequality." Seconds Matt Tooley, CTO of broadband optimization firm CableMatrix: "I don't think it's as egalitarian as people would like to think it is."
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/internet/1,71012-0.html