What Does Two-Tiered Internet Mean?
Two-tiered Internet refers to a proposed Internet structure that would allow entities that provide connections and interconnections to the World Wide Web such as telecommunications companies and Internet service providers (ISPs) to divide the traffic running through their lines into different tiers. In this case, two tiers: a preferred or premium tier boasting performance to those that can afford it and a lower tier for what effectively translates to “everybody else.”
Techopedia Explains Two-Tiered Internet
The two-tiered Internet is just another “business” proposal that telecommunications corporations, ISPs and other network owners can get behind in because it furthers their financial goals. Although the talk is having two different infrastructure tiers as well, the more logical and economical solution is to retain the same infrastructure, upgrade it to be faster but deliberately throttle the bandwidth on non-preferred traffic. These companies could then charge big websites for the privilege of getting preferred service.
