A series of tubes? No, more like a highway.

I was pondering Senator Ted Stevens's speech on why he opposes network neutrality. I knew that he's wrong, but I couldn't figure out why he was wrong. I suddenly figured it out.

The internet is not like a series of tubes.

It's more like, forgive the cliche, a highway.

Any data to be sent across the internet gets broken up into little chunks, called packets, and (basically) get addressed to the computer where they're headed. It's a lot like filling up freight trucks with the stuff you need to send across the country. The packets get individually sent across the internet, and are reassembled at the other end into the full amount of data.

That's why data I send doesn't slow down data you send. Even if I'm gonna be sending a greater total amount of data across the internet, you get to send a packet just as often as I get to send a packet.

That's why it takes much less time to send a web page across the internet (just a few packets) than, say, download a video (lots and lots of packets).

What network neutrality says is that internet service providers cannot give special treatment to packets from companies that give them money, or block packets from companies that don't. For example, an ISP that doubles as an internet phone service cannot give special treatment to it's own packets, and slow down the packets of, say, Skype or another internet phone service.

I'm concerned that the lawmakers in DC will make a huge mistake over network neutrality because they do not truly understand how the internet works, and why we need this abstract concept called network neutrality.

Oh, and if it takes something like a day for Senator Ted Stevens to get an e-mail, it's becuase someone's system is on a time delay to either send or receive e-mail messages at a certain time of day. It's not that traffic on the internet has been slowing his e-mail down for hours and hours.