Nobody's Neutral In Net Neutrality Debate 132
ygslash writes Michael Wolff at USA Today has a long list of the many stakeholders in the net neutrality debate, and what each has to gain or lose. The net neutrality issue has made its way into the mainstream consciousness, thanks to grassroots activism and some help from John Oliver on HBO. But it's not as simple as just net neutrality idealists versus the cable companies or versus the FCC. One important factor that has raised the stakes in net neutrality is the emergence ("unanticipated" by Wolff, but not by all of us) of the Internet as the primary medium for distribution of video content. And conversely, the emergence of video content in general and Netflix in particular as by far the most significant consumers of Internet bandwidth. So anyone involved in the distribution of video content has a lot to gain or lose by the outcome of the net neutrality struggle.
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I think it's pretty neutral to say that I should get what I pay for and not have some toady at Time Warner deciding what's worthy of being passed along at advertised rate.
Re:No one's neutral (Score:5, Informative)
"As much as 70% of Internet-distributed data is now video, 50% of it from Netflix. This new video industry — growing exponentially and transforming the nature of entertainment — is getting a free ride on the cable and telco investment in broadband. Arguably, this is unsustainable free distribution, overtaxing networks and slowing the Internet for everyone."
I just gag on "free ride". 11M Netflix subscribers pay Verizon/Comcast/etc $50 * 12 * 11m = $6.6 billion a year for this "free" ride. Margins on Internet services at Verizon/Comcast are believe to be in the 90% profit range.
I can help the FCC solve this. Require that ISPs provide at least one settlement free peering point for each customer in their network with no peering point providing access to less that 10,000 customers. 10K because after all they are ISPs and they should do something for that $50/mth (i'm sure Verizon would immediately declare this settlement free peering point to be the customer's wifi node without this rule).
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"I just gag on "free ride". 11M Netflix subscribers pay Verizon/Comcast/etc $50 * 12 * 11m = $6.6 billion a year for this "free" ride. Margins on Internet services at Verizon/Comcast are believe to be in the 90% profit range."
Two things.
1. You didn't even bother to mention the fact that Netflix themselves most likely pays a hefty bandwidth bill to their ISP(s). So both consumers and Netflix themselves are paying for bandwidth on both ends of the cable.
2. I doubt margins are at 90%.
Nobody's neutral because it''s important (Score:5, Interesting)
Is slavery wrong?
Is the First Amendment a good idea?
Is the Second Amendment a good idea?
Are civil/gay/religious rights a good idea?
Etc. etc. Important things matter and people care about them. That's why we call them 'important'.
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And of course there are far more people that don't live in the USA that don't have those 'rights'
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Everyone on the planet (or in orbit, for that matter) has those rights. It's just that some people live in jurisdictions whose government fails to recognize them.
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Only a technicality, but you don't have any right whatsoever. There is a broad consensus that you should have basic human rights, but there no natural right to them.
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Which number is bigger? 15 or 5.
Are there hats?
Do owls exist?
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Depends on the font size.
Yes there is, and there will always be as long as two children left home alone for a short while one afternoon get visited by a very interesting yet troublesome cat wearing a tall striped hat.
Of course they do. Just ask Dr. Whooooo.
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ignore this. accidentally modded it
Re:Nobody's neutral because it''s important (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, and if you ask most people who have an opinion on net-neutrality, "should an ISP with settlement-free peering arrangements be able to give preferential QoS service to their paying customers on congested interfaces?" most of them will have their eyes glaze over and start rambling about censorship or something.
You don't conduct a man-on-the-street interview to understand the energy of the Higg's Field, you build an LHC. Engineering and economics can work around opinion polls and popularity contests, but they sure aren't goverend by them, no matter what anybody wishes were true.
depends on how the QoS is done (Score:2)
I have no problems at all with an ISP prioritizing certain types of traffic, but that prioritization should be 1) under the control of the subscriber, and 2) it should *only* affect traffic belonging to that subscriber. My traffic and your traffic should be shaped (as a whole) based on the subscriptions that each of us has paid for.
That is, I could ask my ISP to prioritize my Netflix packets over my bittorrent packets, but if you and I have paid for the same level of service then your VoIP packets shouldn'
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What people are up in arms is not that the ISPs are shaping traffic*. But that they are using that as an extortion to get the content provides to pay for preferential treatment. That is, pay for bandwidth that was already payed for by the subscriber. Or using it to quench competition to a service they provide. The problem is that there is no world where traffic shaping can exist and rent seeking through these means not.
* For example prioritizing VoIP is something that almost nobody would object to and that
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Is the constitution the zeroth amendment.
Does the 1st amendment amend the zeroth?
Does the 2nd amendment amend the 1st?
Ohh! The amendments are independent of each other.
Thanks for telling me.
The people (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet, only one side should matter; the people.
And no, corporations aren't people and each person counts as one, regardless of their bank account and army of lobbyists.
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Why is it called a "debate"? Are the ISP oligopolies putting forward new ideas for discussion? This is nothing but ISPs trying to define the market to their advantage, and get the FCC to endorse their definition.
Further, this is the media reporting on the interests of big business and (surprise!) re-casting it as a important national issue. Why do newspapers have a Business section instead of a Labor section?
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Yes, unfortunately we have two political parties in the US who believe they represent their faction and not the people. They have made undermining the majority preferences of the people that live in their districts into something noble that they can sell to their supporters to raise money. Parties which were formed claiming to protect American values of Liberty and democracy now undermine our institutions.
Except for protecting and defending the constitutional rights enshrined in the constitution, a Congre
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Are you saying when civil rights laws were passed in the 60s and were unpopular in some areas of the country, that their congressmen should have voted against them because that's what their constituents wanted?
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"And yet, only one side should matter; the people."
Unless they are wrong. If 95% of the people are ok with slavery, that still doesn't make it right.
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The average age of the world's greatest democratic nations has been 200 years. Each has been through the following sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith. /p>
Care to name even one example?
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"Stakeholders" (Score:5, Interesting)
Who are the stakeholders? Well, let's see:
Only one of these "stakeholders" have opinions that actually matter, and that stakeholder sent "a groundswell of 3 million citizen comments, most of them, presumably, against the FCC's approach" [and in support of regulating ISPs as Common Carriers].
I think we're done here.
Re:"Stakeholders" (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong, I fully support "Net Neutrality" What I don't like is the feds touching the internet. The longer we keep them out, the better. So, I look at the root of the problem. Why do the ISP's want to break net neutrality? It's related to an ongoing fight between Netflix and pretty much every ISP on earth.
To me, if the feds have to get involved, I'd rather see them involved in the peering agreements. They are already heavily involved in a lot of inter-carrier agreements so it wouldn't be anything new. If they simply passed regulation that said Peering agreements must be agreed to by both parties prior to signing, this entire issue would die with no federal involvement in the high level network traffic.
Where's my '-1 deliberately obtuse' mod when I need it?
Reclassifying *all* ISPs as common carriers (as opposed to some and not others) isn't anything new or original, nor does ir require additional regulation by the Federal government. Many people make this as being all about Netflix. That's just a sideshow. ISPs who are not classified as common carriers routinely block traffic, throttle bandwidth and offer "service" plans with extremely restrictive TOS. Common Carrier status would change some of that -- and put these ISPs on notice that they are providing a useful utility with our consent -- consent that can be revoked.
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Don't get me wrong, I fully support "Net Neutrality" What I don't like is the feds touching the internet.
Keep your government hands off my ARPANET!
(with apologies)
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Right. The correct solution is to break up the monopolies, requiring the company that owns the physical infrastructure to be a nonprofit that non-prejudicially leases access to that infrastructure to any other company that wants to use it. Such a design gives the wire provider the natural advantages of a monopoly without them being able to capitalize on it for profit (in part because they are limited to providing point-to-point fibers, and are forbidden from ever providing Internet service), and ensures t
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That's what we have the first amendment for. The best way to address your concern is to fix the bad precedents set and make it universally clear that Federal Communications Commission v. Pacifica F
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You are a liar, doing nothing but spreading FUD.
Regulating ISPs as Common Carriers would "regulate the actual traffic on the Internet" exactly as much as regulating phone companies as Common Carriers censors the content of telephone calls -- which is to say, not in the slightest.
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I love this argument. You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about yet you tell "Common carrier fixes everything!" When it's not even relevant to this debate at all.
Read about Common Carriers and telecommunications here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]
(if you trust Wikipedia)
Please follow the links and read about the communications act of 1934 and the changes to it made in 1996. It's about Phone service. Even the telcos are not regulated in regard to their ISP services. Only the pots lines are, a
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Why do the ISP's want to break net neutrality? It's related to an ongoing fight between Netflix and pretty much every ISP on earth.
I think you fundamentally misunderstand the point of Net Neutrality.
It's not just about the Netflix fight.
The biggest ISPs are increasingly turning into content providers and this puts them in direct competition with online service providers.
The idea behind Net Neutrality is to prevent these conglomerates from using their control of the network to either force payments from other companies (extracting rent from Netflix) or to force consumers into using co-branded offerings.
If you look at the wireless world,
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You can do all of that without regulating the traffic.
Force the parent company into not creating video content. Done. Telephone companies are already prevented from creating video content due to the 1996 telecommunications act. The Telcos still hate Netflix and want to shape their netflix traffic in return. Yet they have no vested interest in hurting Netflixes product. So why are they mad? Is it possible because Netflix really is behaving badly?
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I think the number I heard was 1% of the comments opposed Net Neutrality. Assuming that's true, and that there were 3 million comments, then a mere 30,000 comments opposed Net Neutrality and 2.97 million supported it. Politicians might be many things, but unable to count votes isn't one of them. Hopefully, they realize that such one-sided support of Net Neutrality means that opposing it would be committing political suicide.
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Aye,
Other issues like abortion, taxation levels, foreign affairs are much more significant to voting than net neutrality.
Re: "Stakeholders" (Score:3)
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What surprises and disappoints me is that Intel has sided against net neutrality. Here's a link to the letter signed by Intel and other anti-net-neutrality companies:
https://www.ncta.com/sites/prod/files/TitleII-AssociationLetter-2014.PDF
I guess some commercial routers and network equipment have Intel chips in them, so Intel might just be doing what their router manufacturing customers have requested, but this has to be a bad move from a public relations point of view. Intel is a household name and lots o
Big fat red herring... (Score:4, Informative)
If streaming video is a problem for ANY one then it should be a problem for EVERY one. That's the basic idea of equality being fought about here. A natural monopoly should not be able to abuse it's position to sabotage competitors in different markets. This is also basic anti-trust.
The entire issue only exists because we tolerate (if not actively encourage) monopolies.
Curious (Score:2)
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I live in Taiwan. I have internet access far cheaper than I had in the US. Bundling with cable is not an issue.
Given that net neutrality is not an issue in the legislature here, I doubt video bandwidth is actually a cost problem in the US.
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When you assess what you think is the cost of bandwidth, what do you include?
Based on how much I used and how much I'm allowed to use I would pay 16 cents per GB. Considering what I actually use it cost me 21 cents per GB.
Do you have a link for what you call undoctored resource use statistics.
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Although the ISPs like to talk about bandwidth costs and such the REAL reason the ISPs are doing what they are doing is because it helps suppress alternatives to the overpriced pay TV service said ISPs offer.
Thought it was only for pirating? (Score:1)
But lots of Goody-Two-Shoe types for the past 10 years have been saying that nobody legitimately needs lots of bandwidth.
Only those bandwidth users were evil pirates and no one else is doing anything wrong on the internet at all....
Now it seems consuming a lot of bandwidth watching legally purchased video services is simply the norm.....
Where are all those people from years ago lining up to admit they were wrong? For years and years I was just a dirty little pirate for my large bandwidth usage (streaming el
Royally Angry (Score:1)
My family back in the UK get 60mbit down and 20 up whilst I get crap here in the US, supposedly the most advanced nation on earth. BTW, my family in the UK are not in a majorly built-up area. They live in a smallish village of about 12000 people.
Not happy...
Robert Cringely (Score:3)
He anticipated and wrote perceptively on the subject five years ago - http://www.cringely.com/2009/0... [cringely.com]
It is ludicrous that the mainstream media is only now getting a clue. This says much about the media in general.
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Correction: it says much about the general public about what they know about the technology that powers their life. For most people, it might as well be Magic.
So-called Mainstream Media (Score:2)
It is ludicrous that the mainstream media is only now getting a clue. This says much about the media in general.
No insult intended but I'm guessing you haven't had to deal with "mainstream media" much directly. I have on several occasions and let's just say that they were severely clueless. This sort of technical argument is WAY too subtle for them to deal with properly given that it isn't the sort of thing most people really care about or notice in their daily lives. They could do it but it requires too much effort and doesn't draw enough eyeballs. Furthermore a lot of them have some built in conflicts of intere
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This. You pretty much have to explain things in an anvilicious way for them to "get" the basic concepts, from what I've seen. They're just like the American public when it comes to technology; most know how to turn on a computer, open "the Internet" (Internet Explorer or, if you're really lucky, Safari), and "go to" Facebook. If you want them to understand, you have to explain it to them like you'd explain it to someone in the 1800s, except with the assumption that they know the names (and little more th
There is no "controversy" (Score:3)
In the 90's we (the tech-geeky people that had been on the Internet since the 80's) were telling everyone including the FCC that within a decade we would be streaming live and on-demand high-definition video over the Internet. At that point we were already doing it with audio (Net2Phone, SIP, MP3, Napster, Icecast, ...) We even formulated protocols for it and reserved space in the IPv4 range for things like broadcast and multicast (and multicast works incredibly well for distribution).
The problem is that neither the FCC, Congress nor anyone that was able to put pressure on the ISP's made sure that the ISP's kept up with the advances in technology. I moved to where I live now almost a decade ago and I still have the same amount of bandwidth than I did back then. TWC/Comcast, AT&T and others haven't upgraded their base broadband speeds since the early 2000's. DSL in most of the US is stuck at ~2Mbps, Cable at 10Mbps. In the mean time the world has moved on to 100Mbps and 1Gbps being 'normal' for respectively DSL and Cable. Heck, these days I can get satellite at the same speeds and cost (longer delays though) than Cable and DSL.
Re:There is no "controversy" (Score:5, Interesting)
In the case of Time Warner Cable/Comcast and other ISPs who also provide TV services, this is by design. The last thing they want is for you to realize that you don't need to pay them $100+ a month for a thousand channels - only four of which ever have anything decent on. They don't want you to decide that you'd rather stream videos from Netflix, YouTube, Amazon VOD, etc. The speeds they give you are "good enough" for normal web browsing. Any faster risks their monopoly Internet service provider business hurting their non-monopoly TV business and that can't be tolerated.
And just to make sure that Internet video doesn't supplant cable TV, they'll institute caps and "fast lanes" to kill off Internet Video, and keep charging you hundreds of dollars every month. Cable TV service - as it stands now - is going to be dying business a generation from now. The cable providers see this too and are working as hard as possible, short of actually innovating with their service (e.g. IP Television service or ala carte), to stave off the death for awhile longer.
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There is no free market when it comes to ISPs. If I don't like Time Warner Cable's service or business policies, I have no other ISP to go to. Yes, I could leave entirely, but then I'm without Internet access (not an option when you're a web master, like I am) and Time Warner Cable still won't change their policies. If your only plan of action to force a group of companies to change is "everyone in the US cancels their Internet service", your is doomed to failure. Saying "let the free market decide" whe
BS (Score:1)
Unanticipated my ass... I worked in the telecom industry and it was well known 10 years ago that this is the path that broadband was headed... This is disingenuous spin by greedy corporate fat cats...
This article gets the details wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
As with most mainstream articles on this topic, it just simply doesn't get what network neutrality really is. The problems start with the first sentence.
Net neutrality, the FCC's effort to govern broadband providers who supply Internet access, enters a new chapter as
Net neutrality is not the name of an FCC plan. It is the principle upon which the internet was created. They make this out to be some new regulatory effort, rather than something that has been around for decades.
There's the pro-business side, reflecting the interests of the companies that have paid for the broadband — cable operators and telcos. They naturally want to be able to charge bigger users higher prices
So now the author implies that net neutrality means that they can't charge bigger users higher prices. Bigger users do pay higher prices! They always have, that makes perfect sense. Then it says:
That's the logical growth area of their businesses —charging the distributors of data as well as the consumers (you and me).
Distributors and consumers do pay for their data.
The article is trying to be "nice" to everyone: identify each player in this topic and paint them out to have a reasonable interest. But to do that, the article must omit the core issue which is that cable and telecom monopolies want to double-charge distributors who have already paid. But if you mention that, it is kinda tough to make it look like each side has a fair and balanced interest in this. The article paints out 5 different interested parties, but there are really only two: the greedy monopolies who want to make more money without having to invest in infrastructure, versus everyone-else.
I am loathe to read the article linked within this one titled "RELATED: A Q&A about net neutrality" because I fear yet more inaccuracy.
Re:This article gets the details wrong (Score:4, Informative)
I read it again, and I missed the funniest part the first time.
"Imposing utility-like regulation, as in treating broadband like the telephone or even railroad tracks, inevitably creates a bureaucratic morass that in fact slows growth and innovation."
MASSIVE. ANALOGY. FAILY.
The author draws an analogy between broadband and telephone companies. Umm.... broadband companies ARE telephone companies dude. That's like saying "Imagine treating a Collie like a dog, that would be ridiculous!" Applying "utility-like regulation" to regulated monopoly utilities makes perfect sense.
Comparing to the railroad is the best though, because the "net neutrality" laws actually originated with the railroad when they were called called "common carrier" laws. These laws have been in place for hundreds of years, yet it is painted to be some kind of new heavyweight regulation.
The solution is simple (Score:1)
Internet providers should have two choices:
1) They choose to be neutral, but in doing so get government monopoly protection. They also must keep their prices to a reasonable level, as defined by the FTC.
2) They choose to not be neutral. Now they can make deals with websites to boost their performance or throttle whatever services they want, but they must now offer to rent their lines out to any company that promises neutrality for a reasonable rate, again set by the FTC.
It's the best of both worlds, really.
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The rental idea has been tried but doesn't work.
I forget the exact reason but essentially they find a way to put in extra costs which they can refund to themselves. Another way... they set a high cost for line upkeep and they perform the line upkeep so the essence for them is taking money out of the left pocket and putting it back in the right pocket while the cost is unprofitably high for everyone else.
You basically need an iron wall between bandwidth and content providers. Separate companies with separa
Everyone has an interest (Score:2)
Whenever you enter into a debate on any issue, no one debating is neutral. If they're neutral, they wouldn't debate. They need to have some level of interest, and some set of concerns about the outcome of the debate. You can't expect people to be neutral, but you should know what their interests are and let that information inform your understanding of their argument.
Me, for example. I have an interest in the net neutrality debate. I'd like to have a good/fast internet connection that is not filtered/
You can debate without taking a side (Score:2)
If they're neutral, they wouldn't debate.
I debate things all the time that I have a neutral viewpoint on. Usually I do this to point out that there is another side to an argument that has some validity that the person I'm debating is not acknowledging. Sometimes I debate a topic to help figure out what I believe about a topic. Only an idiot takes a side in a debate without first trying to understand the relative merits of the different sides being debated. Having a debate where the goal is to poke and prod arguments rather than to convince th
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Usually I do this to point out that there is another side to an argument that has some validity that the person I'm debating is not acknowledging.
So you're not neutral. You're picking a side that you feel is under-represented, and you're taking that position. You're doing so... probably either to educate, or because you have some feeling that the under-represented side is important somehow.
I'm not saying that, in order to debate, you need to be biased and serving selfish ulterior motives. It's just that, on some level, you need to be interested, and you need to have some kind of agenda-- even if that agenda is just "entertainment at flexing my in
Yes you can be neutral (Score:2)
So you're not neutral. You're picking a side that you feel is under-represented, and you're taking that position.
Sometimes I genuinely am neutral. Just because I understand both sides of an issue doesn't mean I necessarily give a crap about the issue. To give a rather silly example I genuinely do not care one way or the other about the relative merits of emacs versus vi. I understand the arguments and can articulate them if someone seems to misunderstand something but I genuinely do not care about either side of that debate. I am the very definition of neutral there. (Actually my opinion is something along the li
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To give a rather silly example I genuinely do not care one way or the other about the relative merits of emacs versus vi. I understand the arguments and can articulate them if someone seems to misunderstand something but I genuinely do not care about either side of that debate
So then you won't participate in a debate, because you don't care at all.
Like ask me whether I think the best college football team is, and I'll tell you, I don't care. I just don't. If you say it's the University of Alabama, I'll say, "Yeah, sure. Whatever." I don't care. If I engage, it's because I care and have some kind of position.
(Actually my opinion is something along the lines of "a pox on both your houses")
Ok, so that's still a position. If there's a debate between emacs and vi, and I say, "I don't like either," that's a definite position, even if it's neither pro-vi nor
Interest != a position (Score:2)
So then you won't participate in a debate, because you don't care at all.
You seem to be having a hard time with this. I explicitly said I have and do participate in debates in where I don't care about the eventual outcome. Scientific debates are often like this. I might not actually care what the outcome is and I often don't have a position of my own (I'm neutral) but I do have an interest in the debate based in curiosity and an interest in the truth. I don't really care if dinosaurs had feathers or not and I am neutral on the subject but I am interested in whatever the answ
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I explicitly said I have and do participate in debates in where I don't care about the eventual outcome.
Geeze, I'm getting really tired of explaining this to people who obviously just haven't bothered to think. You do care. Obviously you do, or you wouldn't bother. The debate might be between A and B, and maybe you don't care about A or B, but the outcome of real debates (contrary to what they teach you when you're a little kid) is not the choice between A and B. If you want the debate to be fair, or you want the debate to be interesting, or you want to avoid a certain kind of outcome to the debate, then
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Ah, I see, you're thinking of some kind of high-school debate format, where I take the pro- position and you take the against- position, and we have a formal silly little discussion that gets graded by an English teacher, or some nonsense. That's not what I'm talking about. In fact, my point in my original post was partially to point out how silly it is to approach an argument/debate that way.
There's no such thing as being truly neutral without being indifferent and disinterested. If you are not disinte
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Or, rather than being pugilistic, as both you and the GP are wont to do, it can simply be that you use it as way to make pleasant conversation to pass the time and potentially to learn something about something you hadn't much thought about before. But don't let me stop both of you guys sparring - it's quite entertaining.
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Unless what you are interested in is something other than the sides of the debate, in which case, you may be neutral to the sides of the debate
And to repeat, "Ah, I see, you're thinking of some kind of high-school debate format..." Which is nice and all, but not terrifically helpful. Debates and arguments in the real world aren't so easily broken down into two sides. Like if I said, "Let's debate the following idea: America should go to war with other countries. Either you're in favor of this idea, meaning you want America to always go to war with all countries, or you're against, and believe that America should never go to war with any other
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Who says I care about the outcome? Perhaps I'm just really bothered by appeals to emotion, regardless of the source or subject. No, debate in real life is not like debate club, but that doesn't mean that people don't go into debate with similar mindsets and respect for logic, or that people going in with such mindsets are bad actors. Even in debates where I do hold a certain position,
Net neutrality: good and bad points (Score:2)
1) On the one hand, it seems to be fair to force users - be they companies or individuals - to pay based on usage. Based on how many packets they put on the network. Currently they do not do that. What they do is to pay for their connection. If you want a very high speed connection, you pay for that. The ISP won't guarantee that speed, except in bursts. Kind of like how a 2 x 4 piece of lumber is really 1.5 x 3.5. [wikipedia.org] Conflicts arise when people try to use the full connection bandwidth in a sustained manner.
2
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Except for the part where it doesn't make sense because total usage (e.g. 300 GB in a month) has virtually nothing to do with the actual costs. The costs are tied to the peak bandwidth usage (e.g. 50 mbps), which
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Regarding your point #1: Network neutrality has nothing to do with usage-based billing. This is the #1 biggest misconception. If an ISP wants to charge based on the number of packets on the network, they can do that.
What a bullshit article (Score:4, Insightful)
It creates the impression that everyone is a "stakeholder" with reasonable motivations and roughly equal claims. This seems false, since the cable/telco positions aren't transparent at all about what their "stakes" are and their position isn't about some "fair" outcome but about achieving an UNFAIR outcome where they are in a position to approve/disapprove and charge rents over circuits already paid for by their own customers.
It totally ignores the business Comcast, et al is trying to defend against competition -- video distribution, as well as their underinvestment in networks which have left whatever legitimate claims they may have -- oversubscription of their last mile networks leading to congestion and problems.
From the outset, it seems biased in Cable's favor -- "There's the pro-business side, reflecting the interests of the companies that have paid for the broadband â" cable operators and telcos." You're fucking kidding, right? They "paid" for nothing -- we, the consumers, purchasers of their services, have paid for the broadband. Underinvesting in your network and then wanting to squelch service until you get paid again is what's happening.
This issue (Score:3, Insightful)
Is currently ONLY happening in the USA.
And ONLY on ISPs which are both effective monopolies and where what's coming off the 'net competes with something they offer themselves as a core business.
If there was effective competition in the USA, this wouldn't be happening. Handwaving about "Net Neutrality" is a dog-and-pony show to try and distract from the elephant in the room - which is for the vast majority of affected americans, the ISPs in question are the ONLY game in town for broadband connectivity.
the best evidence (Score:1)
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Ok, so how do we want TV to work? (Score:2, Interesting)
Given: TV will be working over the Internet.
What's great about this new TV over Internet is that it is a lot more flexible than traditional cable TV.
This means more diverse program program content.
It means new content providers.
It means new delivery funding models.
This will challenge the existing access and content providers.
Given: There is and will continue to be a natural monopoly in Internet acce
Why what you think Net Neutrality is, is wrong (Score:3)
1) Net Neutrality is...
A new buzzword hijacking 'Open Internet', which is the philosophy carriers and network operators have been using since day one to guide their decisions on how to make the network work. It is based on the idea of fairness, openness, and equal access for everyone as an ideal, but allows for the reality of private ownership of infrastructure, and business drivers that dictate how the network infrastructure is managed and operated.
2) Net Neutrality is NOT..
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a) a fight to ensure you 'get what you paid for'. If you believe this, you have been mislead as to what you paid for. You did not pay for 100Mb/s to netflix. You did not pay for 5Mb/s to netflix. You paid for shared public access to the rest of the networks your carrier has connections with, subject to availability of common shared resources, with NO guarantees of uptime, packet delivery or even that it will work when you switch it on. The mentality that 'I'm not getting what I paid for' is promoted by content providers in order to make you feel cheated. it is not reality.
Since people like using roads as an example, I will just point out, your road taxes are small, because you share the roads with everyone in your city. When you all try to go someplace at once, you end up creating congestion. Why are you not out protesting that 'I paid for my lane, the city just needs to build more roads so I don't have to wait'? Because it's a ridiculous statement, thats why. a large percentage of the time, those roads simply aren't over-used, so it would be a poor use of time and materials to make it larger to absorb a short window of time when it's running at capacity.
For those who like to point out how much America sucks for Internet speeds, Whip out your calculator, and tell me how the hell you expect to connect 300 million people spread out over an area of nearly 4 MILLION square miles, for a comparable cost to connecting 25 million people over 38,000 square miles. and 10 million of those people live in one relatively small metro area. Distance covered increases costs, and it's not only unfair but profoundly unrealistic to expect costs to be anywhere close to similar comparing such vastly different infrastructure requirements.
b) a gimmick for your ISP to shake you down for more money to get what you want. If this were true, you would already be paying for access by country or site or anything else. You don't. You won't. The technical challenges alone make this a non-profitable exercise. Anyone remember when some LD companies figured out that billing in 5 minute increments instead of 1 minute increments meant they actually made MORE profit, because they saved on the time and effort it took to do all the accounting?
c) some way to force content providers to choose a slow lane or pay extra for a fast lane. I wouldn't call this 'force'. I would call it the same option that has always been present in the design of the network. I would also observe that the reality of 'fast lane/slow lane' is based on our freeway example, not on some kind of toll road vs HOV lane example. The fact is, the way things work now, the 'fast lane' is dedicated bandwidth a company buys to improve it's performance when transferring larger amounts of data than the shared best effort peering infrastructure is willing to invest in supporting. Throw a little math at the problem. If you have a shared exchange interface with 20 other networks, and ONE network is consuming > 50% of the bandwidth, that is UNFAIR to all the other networks, if that also means the total bandwidth begins to regularly exceed the available bandwidth. To further simplify matters, lets say 95% of that bandwidth is coming from ONE customer on that other network. The network engineers all look at each other and say 'this isn't natural growth of the network, this
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For those who like to point out how much America sucks for Internet speeds, Whip out your calculator, and tell me how the hell you expect to connect 300 million people spread out over an area of nearly 4 MILLION square miles, for a comparable cost to connecting 25 million people over 38,000 square miles. and 10 million of those people live in one relatively small metro area. Distance covered increases costs, and it's not only unfair but profoundly unrealistic to expect costs to be anywhere close to similar comparing such vastly different infrastructure requirements.
Tell me again how the world's only superpower can't provide decent Internet speeds in huge metropolitan areas, when countries with much less population density can pull it off?
Nobody expects OC-192s to Assendofnowhere, Iowa. To claim otherwise is disingenuous at best. So, just how much of a slice of your portfolio does Comcast or Time Warner take up?
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The counterpoint to this is that comcast had exceptional problems providing netflix which cleared up literally instantly when netflix signed a payment agreement.
I.e. comcast already had the required capacity and was disabling it for netflix traffic.
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Easy: Use Public Funds You must be net neutral (Score:2)
Broadband should be defined as anything 10Mb and above, continuous bandwidth. So they cannot use DSL as a competitor (If it is below 10Mb still), or UseNET as it is not continuous throughput.
With this straigh forward definition, all this bac
Am I missing something here? (Score:2)
What is with all of the offensive articles lately? Nobody is neutral? We are talking about the neutrality of handling packets. Either you want packets to be handled neutrally or you do not. By framing it the way he has, he implies that nobody is for handling packets in a neutral manner... and that is FUCKING FALSE.
Jesus fucking christ people. Stop this shit. Stop it NOW. Stop INTENTIONALLY POLLUTING. YOU, yes YOU are absolutely the epitome of evil! Just shut up already.
The Conclusion is All Wrong (Score:1)
Obviously, they have forgotten to ask someone who doesn't give a shit.
Netflix was already paying (Score:1)
Netflix already pays for its bandwidth through its providers Level 3 and Cognet. Then if there is an imbalance in the traffic between them