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

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.