On the Internet, sharing is a solved problem. The Tier-1 backbone providers all save time and money for their international bandwidth via “peering agreements” — contracts that say network traffic will be freely exchanged between them without any money traded. The cost of maintaining such an agreement is only the maintenance of each side’s own equipment, and one or more “cross connections” that are shared equally between the contractual parties. Whole buildings have been set up, usually called “carrier neutral hotels,” just to provide space for the equipment and wires required for these connections. They wouldn’t be sharing traffic in this way, nor would they pay the costs of these cross connections and hotel stays, if there were not some huge cost benefits being gained. Free Internet traffic must be very valuable.

So why don’t neighbors and home owners just participate in Internet traffic sharing agreements as well? Is it a technical issue? Not really! Home network scale Internet routing features like Multihoming, Routing Information Protocol, and Border Gateway Protocol routing have been available in low-cost network equipment, sitting on store shelves for years.  Computer scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have even developed routing software called PERM (Practical End-host collaborative Residential Multihoming) that makes it easy to safely share a home wireless network connection with nearby neighbors, on low-cost wireless network equipment. They are giving that software away for free! The biggest thing holding back people from actually using that software isn’t knowledge — it’s incumbent ISP contract limitations and related legal fears. Your Internet provider doesn’t want you to get the same economic advantages that they do from sharing connections. They want you to buy any bandwidth upgrades from them, rather than doubling your burst bandwidth by just sharing connections with a neighbor. The problem isn’t that sharing with neighbors is hard — it’s so easy that incumbents can’t easily charge you extra for it.

II. The opportunity of the Commons.

The table above was derived from one that was created way back in 1977, in part by Dr. Elinor Ostrom, who was a recipient of a 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics. It is a brilliantly simple way to figure out how a resource should be managed, between people with access to any given resource. When looking at this table, it’s fairly obvious that the Internet as a whole should be treated as a Public Good. Due to a phenomenon called the network effect, sharing a network with more people actually increases its value. Technologies like wireless network routers, network cables installed via fence line conduits, and Network Address Translation (NAT) all combine to make it almost impossible to stop close neighbors from sharing network connections. Even if a property is physically inspected for such neighbor-to-neighbor connections, properly encrypted connections make it nearly impossible to prove that such connections are sharing anything other than local data traffic. Restrictions on sharing Internet traffic are unenforceable in such a situation. The cost of inspection would be much higher than any income that could be gained by detecting such sharing.

There is one situation when sharing Internet traffic could diminish connection value — when the traffic in an Internet router is congested. This only happens when the sum of router connections sending traffic exceeds the hardware’s ability to route traffic. This could happen either because the processor isn’t fast enough to handle the traffic, or the destination line’s bandwidth is too small to handle all the traffic. In well managed networks, this congestion happens very rarely, and only in short bursts. In these cases, the cost of excluding sharing participants near the router is actually higher, because each additional router that can handle the same traffic will help ease the congestion. According to the table above, this temporary scenario presents an opportunity to deal with the Internet as a Common-pool Resource (or “Commons” for short).

Older and less powerful routers tend to deal with network data congestion by dropping data packets randomly, which just forces the sender to resend the same data a little later (hopefully when that network route is less congested). Newer and more powerful routers can selectively drop data based on packet type, like dropping a video packet while keeping a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone packet. This kind of selective dropping is usually called a Quality of Service (QoS) feature, because selecting one service over others allows it to have better quality, like less static on a VoIP call. How incumbent Internet Service Providers (ISP) use this service is the primary subject of Network Neutrality. QoS technology can be used to give you better service of your own choosing, but it can also be used by your ISP to make services that they choose seem better, regardless of your own wishes. The biggest fight at the center of the Network Neutrality is over who owns your Internet connection, and with it the right to control QoS settings.

III. Remaining Questions.

Should these kinds of management decisions be left in the hands of incumbent Internet access duopolies of telephone and cable? Should these decisions be left to consumers instead, via elected representatives, and perhaps via democratic organizations like Cooperative Utilities? What do you think?

In the 21st Century, the Internet is the most important tool we all have for our freedom of speech. So it’s important to answer the question: who really owns the Internet? One answer might be found in the Comcast and NBC merger that is currently being fought out in Congress. This is just the latest example of an Internet provider (in this case the second largest one) seeking to control online media content and access. At the same time, they are also fighting the FCC and Congress against Network Neutrality, regulations that affect every single Internet Service Provider (or ISP for short) nationally. They don’t want regulators to interfere with their ability to pick and choose online media winners. If they get to pick the winners, then all of us will be the losers, especially when it comes to our individual freedom of speech.

Even if you don’t live in a Comcast service area right now, your current telephone and cable owners will follow their example. If you don’t like the media content your cable picks, you will only be able to switch to content that your telephone ISP favors. In the end, you will only have full speed bandwidth to companies that pay your ISP for the privilege.

II. The Problem: Nobody owns their connections right now.

So who really owns our connections to the Internet now? It’s certainly not us! The truth is: we rarely have any choice over our connections to the outside world, except for the choice of where we live. A short list of local broadcasters, one telephone company, and one cable company choose our homes, often before we move into them. If another company decides to come along and buy out a local provider, we don’t have any real control over that either.

In Los Angeles, DWP owns our pipes and our electrical mains, but we expect DWP to work in our best interest, through local voter controls over their activities. The giant telephone and cable incumbents have none of the same local voter responsibilities, except in the form of broad industry regulations.

The only connection to the outside world that we really own is our driveways. They give us access to a grid of local city streets, state highways, and national interstates. A larger array of transportation systems connect us to the entire world. Everyone has an equal vote over shared road issues, and we all must obey the rules of the road.

Right now there are no driveways nor surface streets onto the “Internet Super Highway.” We can’t even connect to our next door neighbors without going all the way to their “Highway” and back, and we always have to pay a toll along the way.

It’s pretty clear by now that nobody is going to build any “Internet surface streets” for us. Forcing all of us out onto their toll roads is way too lucrative. Without surface streets to connect to, any driveways we build are useless. We will have to find some way to make these streets for ourselves, but we certainly don’t have to do it alone. Almost every American is in the same situation right now.

III. Two Potential Near-Term Solutions: Google’s 1Gbps Fiber Experiment, and Internet Service Cooperatives.

1. Google recently released news that they will be deploying a lot of gigabit fiber Internet connections in America this year, as an experiment in high-speed Internet Services. They have welcomed responses from local government and members of the public, using their online “Request For Information” (RFI) forms. They are taking all submissions until March 26th. They will use these responses to help them decide where to install fiber, to find out the best installation methods, and even to help decide payment structure.

Please use Google’s RFI forms if you want to help make sure that they get all the information they need, and to let them know that the North East Los Angeles community is an excellent choice for their experiment. An incremental payment path to fiber line ownership should be encouraged to Google, so that home owners are given the chance to finally own their connections to the world. It is not clear that Google wants to provide ISP services in the long term, so they may welcome a path towards giving more responsibility to home owners.

2. A Non-Profit Utility and Communications Cooperative, as defined by Internal Revenue Code 501(c)(12). These co-operatives exist to bring basic services to under-served communities at cost, or to provide superior services for less cost than for-profit corporations. All Cooperative Utility subscribers must also be equal voting members and, unlike for-profit telephone and cable operations, cooperatives are required to share services and cost savings in a manner that benefits all members equally.

A neighborhood cooperative could create a network of “Internet surface streets,” and help local home owners make their own “driveways” onto that network. Two complimentary technologies that could enable private network development today are: wireless mesh networks, and wired conduits along fence lines. These “Internet surface streets and driveways” would increase home value, and decrease bandwidth costs over time.