Isn't the whole issue with net neutrality that ISPs would be incentivized to prioritize their own traffic (or that of companies they collaborate with)? How does making it harder for them to identify traffic for my app/service/whatever stop them from doing that? As long as they can identify the traffic they do want to prioritize (by companies who haven't done the process you describe), it's not obvious to me why they wouldn't have trouble deprioritizing my stuff based on them at least knowing that it's not their own, effect if they don't know whose it is? "Random noise" isn't likely to look like it's their special favorite traffic.
If everyone including the priority traffic did this, then I guess it would have an effect on net neutrality, then I could see that it would make a difference, but I don't see how that could be construed as "whether they like it or not" given that they could just as easily not implement this if they didn't "like it".
That's not to say this isn't worth doing for the privacy and security benefits, but I'm struggling to see how this would have any real-world influence on net neutrality.
> How does making it harder for them to identify traffic for my app/service/whatever stop them from doing that?
You can masquerade your protocol as HTTPS with SNI of that company, for example. Filtering by IP is very inconvenient (they change all the time), so the telecom would probably look at SNI.
I still think I'm missing something. My understanding of how telecoms would abuse identifying traffic to violate net neutrality would be that they need to identify the traffic they want to prioritize, not deprioritize. Is your understanding different, or does this somehow give the ability to make your traffic indistinguishable to traffic that they favor (and therefore would either control directly or would be able to provide instructions to the controller to be able to make identifiable in some way)? What you're describing to me sounds like you're saying my traffic isn't possible to distinguish from other random traffic, but my argument is that they're never going to be prioritizing random traffic; they'll be prioritizing traffic that they can identify, which will likely not act in the way you describe precisely because it would make it impossible to prioritize. My traffic being anonymous doesn't somehow stop them from throwing it in to the lower priority lanes with everyone else because they don't recognize it; if anything, it seems like it's likely to guarantee it as well, because anything not recognizably a VIP doesn't get to go in the VIP lane.
If everyone including the priority traffic did this, then I guess it would have an effect on net neutrality, then I could see that it would make a difference, but I don't see how that could be construed as "whether they like it or not" given that they could just as easily not implement this if they didn't "like it".
That's not to say this isn't worth doing for the privacy and security benefits, but I'm struggling to see how this would have any real-world influence on net neutrality.