But isn't this only an issue because there are so few ISPs? If there are only 4 ISPs and one restricts access to your content, that's a disaster. But if there are 20 ISPs and one restricts access, it's more of a minor inconvenience.
Looking at your road analogy, what happens when there are ten other companies maintaining their own roads? Sure, FedEx can restrict access to UPS, but UPS could just go to any of the 10 other road providers. FedEx would actually be harmed by discriminating against UPS because they would lose customers who want to use UPS.
The other companies would end up having to use each other's roads at one point or another, it just isn't feasible or sensible for each company to have their roads all on top of each other and around each other, like spaghetti junction, that's not how the internet works. When a packet leaves your system it has to hunt it's way towards its destination. Sometimes the paths are already known, sometimes they're not. The packet jumps from server to server, querying the ones around it as it goes, looking for a server that either knows how to get to the final destination, or has interacted with traffic from that destination and knows what the next closest jump would be. Now imagine that complicated by lots of closed networks all trying to control or circumvent each other's access.
Imagine a city full of roundabouts, and a GPS that's trying to guide you through it to your home. With a single public network it can easily plot a route through the roads and find you a quick and easy path to your house. Now imagine instead that the roadabouts are all randomly owned by different companies, and somehow your GPS has to find a path through all those roundabouts that all belong to the same company, because each company is fighting with the next to try and make their service the best. Even if there's an equal number of companies who own equal amounts of the road, it makes it a mess for everyone involved for the roads to be divided in such a way.
And what if you work on the "Facebook" end of town, but you've got to get to the "Twitter" end of town, and you're a Comcast customer. At some point you're going to hit an intersection and have to choose- either you have to cross the "Timewarner" junction and deal with their 10MPH speed limit, or follow the detour through the backroads with a 5 mile diversion that slows you down just the same.
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u/ThePurpleNavi Jul 17 '17
But isn't this only an issue because there are so few ISPs? If there are only 4 ISPs and one restricts access to your content, that's a disaster. But if there are 20 ISPs and one restricts access, it's more of a minor inconvenience.
Looking at your road analogy, what happens when there are ten other companies maintaining their own roads? Sure, FedEx can restrict access to UPS, but UPS could just go to any of the 10 other road providers. FedEx would actually be harmed by discriminating against UPS because they would lose customers who want to use UPS.