| Most "network neutrality" laws and policies I'm aware of allow:
1)
Prioritising specific types of traffic to improve service. For example, small
packets are usually interactive traffic which benefits from low latency. This
basically encompasses the entire field of QoS, including AQM and FQ
disciplines.
2) Prioritising traffic to or from specific sites, in
accordance with policies
published or even marketed to customers. In some
cases, ISPs may even
allow customers to customise this aspect of their
service.
3) Throttling heavy users during periods of high traffic demand, so
that
lighter users still get good service. This could be implemented as a
coarser-
scale version of the QoS mentioned in point 1.
4) Outright blocking
traffic deemed to be harmful, such as flood attacks or
worm spreading vectors.
(This does not include BitTorrent.)
5) Outright blocking traffic to specific
sites as part of a specific service to
customers, such as parental
control.
All of the above are reasonable traffic management practices. It
is not
reasonable to enforce a "pure dumb pipe" requirement on all ISPs, even
if
some of them are happy to provide that type of service.
What is
generally not allowed is to block or throttle specific types of
traffic
that are not inherently harmful, and which customers have not
specifically
agreed to. This also disallows the spoofing of TCP RST packets to
forcibly
close BitTorrent connections, which Comcast used to do.
Incidentally, the
problem with Comcast was with the method of obtaining
upload bandwidth on the
shared cable. The cable equipment permitted a
combination of several heavy
uploaders to accidentally monopolise the upload
bandwidth, drowning out lighter
users who only needed the uplink for ACK
packets and requests. The correct
solution in such a case is to patch the
equipment so that it always leaves some
room for light users (see point 3
above) - and I would hope that such a
solution was even cheaper than
installing DPI boxes.
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