While Internet service providers (ISPs) prey on the individual's inability to fight them, fines can range up to $25,000 USD for throttling.
In the United States, net neutrality, the principle that ISPs treat all data on the Internet the same, and not discriminate, has been an issue of contention between network users and access providers since the 1990s.
With net neutrality, ISPs may not intentionally block, slow down, or charge money for specific online content.
Bandwidth throttling is also often used in Internet applications, in order to spread a load over a wider network to reduce local network congestion, or over a number of servers to avoid overloading individual ones, and so reduce their risk of the system crashing, and gain additional revenue by giving users an incentive to use more expensive tiered pricing schemes, where bandwidth is not throttled.
A computer network typically consists of a number of servers, which host data and provide services to clients.
The Internet is a good example, in which web servers are used to host websites, providing information to a potentially very large number of client computers.
[5] In the specific case of Comcast, an equipment vendor called Sandvine developed the network management technology that throttled P2P file transfers.
[6] Those that could have their bandwidth throttled are typically someone who is constantly downloading and uploading torrents, or someone who just watches a lot of online videos.
With net neutrality, the network's only job is to move data—not to choose which data to privilege with higher quality, that is faster, service.
They are designed to protect free expression and innovation on the Internet and promote investment in the nation's broadband networks.
On October 19, 2023, the FCC voted 3-2 to approve a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that seeks comments on a plan to restore net neutrality rules and regulation of ISPs[9].On April 25, 2024, the FCC voted 3-2 to reinstate net neutrality in the United States by reclassifying the Internet under Title II.
Bandwidth capping on the other hand limits the total transfer capacity, upstream or downstream, of data over a medium.
In 2007, Free Press, Public Knowledge, and the Federal Communications Commission filed a complaint against Comcast's Internet service.
The Commission stated that it had jurisdiction over Comcast's network management practices and that it could resolve the dispute through negotiation rather than through rulemaking.
The Commission believed that Comcast had "significantly impeded consumers' ability to access the content and use the applications of their choice", and that because Comcast "ha[d] several available options it could use to manage network traffic without discriminating" against peer-to-peer communications, its method of bandwidth management "contravene[d] ... federal policy".
At this time, "Comcast had already agreed to adopt a new system for managing bandwidth demand, the Commission simply ordered it to make a set of disclosures describing the details of its new approach and the company's progress toward implementing it".
The Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (Berec) will examine the issues for the EU, and will ask both businesses and consumers for their views.
Specifically, it falsified packets of data that fooled users and their peer-to-peer programs into thinking they were transferring files.
[citation needed] Though AT&T had told its customers throttling was a possibility, the FTC filed a lawsuit against the company in 2014, charging that the disclosure was insufficiently specific.
Its practices provide insight into the probable behavior of ISPs in markets that have little or no competition and/or lack balancing regulations in the interest of consumers.
For consumers to be able to make an informed decision when choosing an Internet plan, ISPs should publish their capping and throttling practices with the necessary level of detail.