Cisco: Broadband providers should not treat all bits the same

All bits running over the Internet are not equal and should not be treated that way by broadband providers, despite net neutrality advocates’ calls for traffic neutral regulations, Cisco Systems said.

A huge number of Internet-connected devices with a wide variety of traffic requirements, including billions of machine-to-machine connections, will come online over the next four years, Cisco predicted in its Visual Networking Index Global Forecast and Service Adoption, released Tuesday.

“What we’re seeing is a wide range and a very diverse range of devices, applications and requirements that results in a much greater complexity of the networks,” said Robert Pepper, Cisco’s vice president for global technology policy. “The Internet of everything is here, it’s real, and it’s growing.”

Some Web-based applications, including rapidly growing video services, home health monitoring and public safety apps, will demand priority access to the network, while others, like most Web browsing and email, may live with slight delays, said Jeff Campbell, Cisco’s vice president for government and community relations.

“We really have a multiplicity of applications and services that are now running across the network, some of which require dramatically different treatment than others,” he said.

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