You may have read in the last day or two about a so called “net neutrality tool” created by a hacker / tinkerer / software programmer, to detect if your send / receive packets are being discriminated against by your ISP. I think it would be a great tool to demonstrate the problem and to show that packet-shaping and discrimination is (or will be) happening.
However, what some are missing is critical to this whole net neutrality debate. It's not that we won't know or be able to detect if we're experiencing packet discrimination. Heck, we already know broadband providers are going to discriminate because they've told us they will–AT&T's Whitacre even said it recently again, in case there was any question.
No the issue is this: we'll know the discrimination is happening, but the internet surfing public and web-based businesses will be unable to do anything about it. Why? Because last year the FCC gave up that discrimination complaint-process role and in Congress' telecom bills (House and proposed Senate), even if the FCC changed its mind and wanted to do something, its hands will be tied.
So, go ahead, write all the discrimination-detection tools you want, but a lot of good they'll do you–when they start doing what they told you they would do, you'll have no recourse if we don't reinstate an enforceable net neutrality principle.