| Take as example 2 applications of the internet we are familiar with :
Website browsing
Sends traffic momentarily when you click through a link, and you expect it to work fast (website loads quickly) and reliably (no missing pictures, stylesheets, ..). All the rest of the time, which is 99% of the time, your connection is doing nothing
Several computers browsing websites can share a connection (with its bandwidth limit), and they normally won't notice the net becoming any slower (unless 2 of them click a link exactly at the same time. But the network is still more capable than that, so it takes more than 2 clicking a link at the same time to have any noticable effect, but then the chances of higher number of computer clicking a link at the same time goes down dramatically even when the number of connected computers goes up). This enables ISPs to offer, and for the most part successfully provide, service to big number of users even though their network isn't capable of serving them all in the same second
File sharing
Sends traffic all the time, and lots of it. lets say at a constant speed
Several computers sharing a connection will immediately notice each other's effects, as the bandwidth splits between them (equally or not is another question)
Lets say that we have a 10 Mbit/sec network connection. We go into some website where every page is ~10 Mbit (1.2MB) in size (including the pictures, stylesheets and so on). It will take 1 sec to load the website
Now we connect 100 PCs to this network, all browsing websites. Most of the time they still will load pages in 1 sec, occasionally (when 2 clicked a link at the same time) 2 sec, increasingly rarely 3 sec or more. Still very good
Now we add 10 PCs doing file sharing. Lets say the traffic splits equally, then each will be getting 10 / 10 = 1 Mbit/sec
And now one of the 100 PCs clicks a link. At this moment each PC gets 10 / 11 = 0.91 Mbit/sec. It will take 11 sec to load a website. 10 PCs doing file sharing ruined it for everyone else
Now we apply a rule at the network gateway : Packets for website browsing always have right of way over packets for file sharing. When many packets have to pass, all file sharing packets will wait untill all website browsing packets passed
This rule restored proper service for the website browsing PCs, and had only marginal effect on the file sharing
That is how traffic shaping - one of the non net neutral practices - works for the benefit of the internet as a whole
Problem is, that there are many other things that are "ok to do" once no law prevents it (well, some of them are done anyway, but once ISP's know it won't end up in court, they can get more naughty)
Examples include throttling (or throttling to a halt, so effectively blocking) anything they want, making unreliable connection to stuff they want peeps stop using, and so on.
They dont like Lighting Gallery ? Make it not load, or load slow, or drop pictures or a stylesheet (makes the website look incomplete) every once in a while
They dont like encrypted traffic ? Make that slow or drop it too. Unless it is to an "allowed" entity such as a bank
There may come a day, when there is a whitelist of "allowed for everyone" websites (companies will have to pay a fee to stay on it) and "basic home user" subscribers won't have access to anything else - so to access something like Lighting Gallery or somebody's private blog you have to have a special account. Maybe there will be also other requirements (other than bigger money) to have such account
That is where things can potentially get dark
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