Net Neutrality and Quality of Service

TL;DR

This paper discusses the evolving landscape of net neutrality and QoS regulation in Europe, highlighting potential shifts towards guaranteed performance and analyzing recent research with game theory perspectives.

Contribution

It provides an overview of net neutrality issues, recent research, and the implications of introducing QoS guarantees in European Internet regulation.

Findings

Potential shift from best effort to guaranteed QoS networks.

Regulatory changes may lead to more expensive Internet services.

Game theoretical approaches are used to analyze net neutrality policies.

Abstract

2010 has witnessed many public consultations around the world concerning Net neutrality. A second legislative phase that may follow, could involve various structural changes in the Internet. The status that the Internet access has in Europe as a universal service evolves as the level of quality of service (QoS) to be offered improves. If guarantees on QoS are to be imposed, as requested by several economic actors, it would require introducing new indicators of quality of services, as well as regulation legislation and monitoring of the offered levels of QoS. This tendency in Europe may change the nature of the Internet from a best effort network to, perhaps, a more expensive one, that offers guaranteed performance. This paper presents an overview of the above issues as well as an overview of recent research on net-neutrality, with an emphasis on game theoretical approaches.