I don't know if I agree with what I'm going to say; I'd like to read your comments to form an opinion.
This is the basic idea: The issue of net neutrality arises because there is scarcity and therefore competition for the use of the resource. The issue does not arise in networks where the bandwidth is allocated (e.g. tdma) but it does in networks where there's competition (ip) and some nodes are not fair to the others in the use of the resource.
IP is fair towards TCP, in the sense that each tcp stream is treated sequentially; a sort of allocation. Layer 2 processing is generally not fair to IP, in the sense that there's no allocation but rather competition.
In LANs competition for resource at level 2 layer was handled by CMSA/CD; then there was the router which sequentialized traffic and injected it into a long distance link through a serial interface. The LAN had to manage the contention, not the long distance network, and it did via CSMA/CD.
Then came the switches which where not feasible with earlier electronics costs and each IP node went into its own lan segment, with no contention management; all management of traffic was carried on by IP, which was not built to manage resource contention between nodes.
Sounds reasonable ? crap ? if it is reasonable, how can we elaborate further ?
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