I've heard lots about 'Net Neutrality' but precious little about what it means. The 'sound' of it would indicate free, open and unregulated internet facilities for everyone.... is this not the case ?

I believe it's 1984-style newspeak...

Please explain... is it just a buzzword, or do people actually mean something significant ?

I really haven't followed the issue... I was trying to be witty, while expressing my general feeling that government involvement in anything has a tendency to screw it up, and that the government proclaiming a goal of "neutrality" is likely a precursor to something quite different...

aah.....ok.....I am somewhat dense on the issue. I've been nosing around it seems that there are private companies, the ones that sell internet access to folks like you and I, who set up barriers to the websites of their competitors and/or possibly, to websites pushing ideas to which they are opposed. The 'net neutrality folks want this stopped, and just to show how frikkin gol'danged dumb they are,
they want the government, which is ALWAYS PARTISAN, one way or the other on EVERYTHING, to ensure non-partisanship. Funny thing that.... So you're spot-on about the government getting involved will morph this into a different issue.....what a world.

Right now it's in the beginning stages. First stage is to prevent Internet providers from restricting bandwidth to web sites like Comcast restricting bandwidth to Netflix. They also want providers to provide 100% bandwidth all the time to every user. In other words, if you're not home surfing you still have your 10 Meg service. This is totally crazy because it explodes costs out the wazzu. Currently, they use computer modeling to share a big pipe because not 100% of the people with use 100% of the bandwidth. So the providers get away with say a 4 to 1 ratio on the backend. They can monitor that back haul pipe and ensure it only gets to say 85% before they spend the money to install another pipe. That's crazy. If you have poor speeds to where ever you want to go and whatever time of day, fire your provider. There are tons of choices and providers are getting ready to offer 1gig pipes to the home. That's fricking amazing when you think 15 or so years ago we were talking 2400 baud dial up modems.

So you tell me where the problem is?

Right now it's in the beginning stages. First stage is to prevent Internet providers from restricting bandwidth to web sites like Comcast restricting bandwidth to Netflix. They also want providers to provide 100% bandwidth all the time to every user. In other words, if you're not home surfing you still have your 10 Meg service. This is totally crazy because it explodes costs out the wazzu. Currently, they use computer modeling to share a big pipe because not 100% of the people with use 100% of the bandwidth. So the providers get away with say a 4 to 1 ratio on the backend. They can monitor that back haul pipe and ensure it only gets to say 85% before they spend the money to install another pipe. That's crazy. If you have poor speeds to where ever you want to go and whatever time of day, fire your provider. There are tons of choices and providers are getting ready to offer 1gig pipes to the home. That's fricking amazing when you think 15 or so years ago we were talking 2400 baud dial up modems.

So you tell me where the problem is?

so this figures...it's a bunch of sphicters who are looking to dictate how the providers 'provide' to their customers. I like the idea of a bias-free service provider...hell...depending on their political views at the time, they can restrict access to NRA sites, HUNTING sites, anyplace they don't particularly agree with...that's a crock of road apples. And providing 100% bandwidth to everyone all the time is untenable...the only service capable of that is DSL and that's only capable withing a specific distance to line's termination. cripes....

being somewhat of a gizmo-geek, I am quite happy about the 1gB pipe proposal...I've not heard it anywhere else, so where did you get it from ? I'd sign up for that in a heartbeat....

My understanding is net neutraility, is primarily content based. Yes the bandwidth above is involved, but that seems to come from people who are 100% techno-clueless.

Some ISP's will bloke certain stuff. That's one aspect, in my view, if they are private companies, they can block access to whatever they want, you don't like it as a customer, complain and go elsewhere.

There's also the fraction that says government should provide "ratings" to the web content, like movies. TONS of issues with this, not the least of which is web content is replicated world wide and you can't really control it without closing the borders which removes US from the WORLD part of WWW.

There's a huge market in things like parental filters that you can buy and install to filter content. Most web sites also have a rating/classification on them, though not all and not 100% reliable.

It's more "protect people from bad things" pushes that some say the government should do.

that's not true believe it or not. You only have your speed 100% back to the DSLAM (providing equipment for dsl) behind the DSLAM is the pipe taking you into the network and that is shared. The 1 gig service is something I may know via insider information. So I have to keep that to myself for now. However, you're in NJ and I bet you will be within the serving area. It's coming soon is all I can say.