For the final Rose Cafe of the year, we discussed how people pay for different internet services without really knowing the difference in what they are paying for. For instance, people see a higher bandwidth and believe it is reasonable to pay extra for the increased connection. However, they may not know exactly what they are paying for. There is also a factor to consider called latency. Latency is essentially a measure of the time it takes to get the message from one end of the connection to the other, whereas bandwidth is the amount of information you can send at a time. It is beneficial to be able to send larger amounts of information, but if it takes a long time to get the message through to the other end, then it may not be as worthwhile to pay higher. It made me realize that I need to be more aware of what I pay for in the future. As a student we have the luxury of being on Cornell’s WiFi, but eventually I am going to have to decide on an internet service provider on my own. I know from playing games online and streaming movies the perks of each, but I now know to be more cautious and calculated in my decision making process.

Another issue brought up in this conversation was the issue of net neutrality. Essentially this would mean that large companies such as Netflix cannot control how fast their service is distributed in comparison to other services. People have their own opinions, and both sides are very valid. On one hand, small businesses would have no chance in this market, but on the other hand a large corporation who can pay extra to have their service given priority should be allowed to pay for that advantage. My personal opinion on this subject would be to support the small business because it would hurt the market if these large companies were able to eliminate competition from the market by making it impossible to enter. Until their becomes a point where the competitive edge is a small enough advantage that it wouldn’t hurt small businesses, I believe net neutrality should be in effect. Soon enough, this will be the case as we rapidly approach the peak of what internet service we are physically capable to offer.