Much has been reported about the Egyptian Government’s shut-down of Internet access to its citizens in the wake of civic protests. While all reports properly condemn such censorship, there has been some disagreement on the way it was achieved.

The most credible reports, such as that from The Telegraph explain that the shut down involved the withdrawal of more than 3,500 Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routes, used by networks to establish routing between one another. When a border router is turned off or removed, its routes are automatically withdrawn, and the networks beyond it become unreachable. Egypt, although a large country, is served by a small number of border routers.

Other reports, such as this Huffington Post story, appear to be misinformed. This article blamed a solution from a U.S.-based company, Narus, whose products incorporate deep packet inspection (DPI) technology. The article then went on to call for Congress to pass rules on the use of DPI. ⁽¹⁾ It also named a variety of companies, including Sandvine, that include DPI in their solution sets.

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Sandvine has reviewed the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) December 23, 2010 Report and Order (the Order) related to Preserving the Free and Open Internet. In short the Order appears to stabilize the environment for deploying Sandvine’s Network Policy Control solutions in the United States.  These new rules are not a dramatic change from the prior four Net Neutrality principles, from the FCC’s broadband Policy Statement of 2005, which require open access to lawful content, applications, devices and competition, all subject to reasonable network management.

Notably, for Sandvine, the Order appears to preserve an environment in which deployment of Sandvine’s Network Analytics, Fairshare, Usage Management and Quota Management policy applications can continue to thrive.  Other significant aspects of the Order are highlighted in the sections below.  Sandvine continues to provide solutions to service providers globally, in support of their compliance with their respective regulatory and legislative environments.

The Rules in Brief

The basic rules require:

1. Transparency of traffic management practices, performance characteristics and the commercial terms of service. Mobile broadband providers must also disclose third-party device and application limits and any relevant criteria for use of such third-party offerings.
2. No blocking of lawful content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices. A less onerous no blocking rule applies to mobile broadband providers, which may not block access to lawful websites and may not block applications that compete with their own video or voice telephony services.
3. No unreasonable discrimination such as to favour one’s own application offerings over competitive offerings. The FCC acknowledged that some discrimination is beneficial. They also noted that paid prioritization is likely to be unreasonable, but will be subject to case-specific review. This rule does not apply to mobile providers.
4. All of the rules are generally subject to Reasonable Network Management.

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