Authors: (1) William P. Wagner IV, Claremont Graduate University. Table of Links Abstract & Introduction Definition of Key Terms Fundamentals of Internet Operation Encapsulation Usage-Based Economic Models Net Neutrality Legal History Researcher Conclusions Areas for Further Exploration & References 3. Fundamentals of Internet Operation 3.1. Hardware Independence. As long as the hardware meets some basic technical requirements to communicate with its neighbors, there are no specific restrictions on hardware or communications medium. The Internet is Hardware Agnostic. All decisions about a given network’s hardware are left to the network administrator or owner to provide the best solution for their application. Copper, fiber, satellite or cellular – that decision is up to the network owner – the Internet does not care. 3.2. Network Independence. As long as the data packets arriving and leaving a network meet some basic technical requirements to communicate with their neighbors, there are no specific restrictions. The Internet does not care who the owner or administrator of a given network is or what topology that network employs – it will route packets based on “Best Effort” routing – the Internet is Network Agnostic. 3.3. Content Independence. As long as the data packets leaving a network meet some basic technical requirements to communicate with their neighbors, they will be prioritized by type not content or source. For example: A home user’s VoIP packet should almost always be more important than an FTP request from a big corporation, except on a subnet of only that company’s FTP servers. The Internet is necessarily Content Agnostic. This paper is under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 DEED license. available on arxiv

Part of HackerNoon's growing list of open-source research papers, promoting free access to academic material.

Layers of Encapsulation: Exploring the TCP/IP Model in Internet Communication

Net Neutrality, the Internet and the Internet Society

Read My Stories

Too Long; Didn't Read

Boost your HackerNoon story @ $159.99! 🚀

The Agnostic Nature of the Internet: Understanding Hardware, Network, and Content Neutrality

About Author

Comments

TOPICS

THIS ARTICLE WAS FEATURED IN

Related Stories

Untitled Story

A Technical Perspective on Net Neutrality

What are the Vicious - and Breakable - Cycles of the Attention Economy?

A Technical Perspective on Net Neutrality

Net Neutrality, the Internet and the Internet Society

Layers of Encapsulation: Exploring the TCP/IP Model in Internet Communication

A Technical Perspective on Net Neutrality

What are the Vicious - and Breakable - Cycles of the Attention Economy?

A Technical Perspective on Net Neutrality

Net Neutrality, the Internet and the Internet Society

Layers of Encapsulation: Exploring the TCP/IP Model in Internet Communication

Light-Mode

Classic

Newspaper

Dark-Mode

Neon Noir

Minty

HN StartUps