Did Internet founders foresee future filled with paid, prioritized traffic?
AT&T has set off yet another net neutrality firestorm, claiming that a crucial Internet standards-making body gave its blessing to ISP priority access deals way back at the beginning of it all. In the late 1990s, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) added the “DiffServ” field to Internet Protocol (IP), AT&T insists, “to facilitate paid prioritization as a means for encouraging the further growth and development of the Internet.” Paid priority access “was fully contemplated” and even “expressly contemplated” by the IETF decades ago, the telco has told the Federal Communications Commission, and is “fully consistent” with that body’s standards-making discussions. Baloney, insists the IETF’s current chairman. “AT&T’s characterization is misleading,” Russ Housley told National Journal several days later.
