Impact of the Net Neutrality Repeal on Communication Networks

TL;DR

This paper models the economic and network impacts of repealing net neutrality, showing potential profit increases for ISPs and significant energy savings by prioritizing certain video traffic classes.

Contribution

It introduces a MILP model to optimize ISP pricing strategies post-net neutrality repeal, focusing on video traffic and demand elasticity effects.

Findings

ISP profit could increase up to 8 times with data discrimination.

Network energy consumption can decrease by 55% due to traffic prioritization.

Discriminating against data-intensive content benefits both profit and energy efficiency.

Abstract

Network neutrality (net neutrality) is the principle of treating equally all Internet traffic regardless of its source, destination, content, application or other related distinguishing metrics. Under net neutrality, ISPs are compelled to charge all content providers (CPs) the same per Gbps rate despite the growing profit achieved by CPs. In this paper, we study the impact of the repeal of net neutrality on communication networks by developing a techno-economic Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model to maximize the potential profit ISPs can achieve by offering their services to CPs. We focus on video delivery as video traffic accounts for 78% of the cloud traffic. We consider an ISP that offers CPs different classes of service representing typical video content qualities including standard definition (SD), high definition (HD) and ultra-high definition (UHD) video. The MILP model maximizes the ISP profit by optimizing the prices of the different classes according to the users demand sensitivity to the change in price, referred to as Price Elasticity of Demand (PED). We analyze how PED impacts the profit in different CP delivery scenarios in cloud-fog architectures. The results show that the repeal of net neutrality can potentially increase ISPs profit by a factor of 8 with a pricing scheme that discriminates against data intensive content. Also, the repeal of net neutrality positively impacts the network energy efficiency by reducing the core network power consumption by 55% as a result of suppressing data intensive content compared to the net neutrality scenario.