To see how big carriers could control the online world, you must understand its structures.
Earthlink gives Jennifer access to the Internet, much in the way than an onramp puts a driver on the national highway system. Earthlink is a local internet service provider, and it will send the (1) to an Internet " (2) provider", to route it along its way.
These Internet players typically own and lease long-haul fiber-optic cables spanning a large region. They also own the communications gear that directs (3) over the Internet. They connect to each other to exchange data between their customers, like the highway system over which most of the freight of the Internet travels to reach its (4) .
Now, instead of the National Science Foundation, there are many of them that-link together to provide the global (5) , that is the Internet.
The problem was, as the Internet grew, the public points became overburdened and traffic showed at these bottlenecks. So they started making arrangements with each other. And they aren’t changing peers now,but there is a lot of discussion about whether they should. And the industry has not figured out how to (6) who owes what to whom if fees should be changed.
Since the Internet was (7) , it has grown by leaps and bounds into a remarkably successful communications medium without government (8) --and most want to stay that way. But the Internet has matured to a point that more uniform rules are needed to (9) competition.
Those who can afford to pay the price can become peers. Peering would be determined by the (10) rather than by a private company with its own competitive interests.