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The Internet Government Your Rights Online

Real Net Neutrality Problem: 'Edge Provider' vs 'End User' 97

Posted by timothy from the what's-your-paradigm? dept.
An anonymous reader writes At the Washington Post, Brett Frischmann elaborates on the theory that the continuing flaw with the FCC's Net-Neutrality strategy lies in the perverse distinction between "End User" and "Edge Provider". Succinctly: "The key to an open Internet is nondiscrimination and in particular, a prohibition on discrimination or prioritization based on the identity of the user (sender/receiver) or use (application/content)," and then, "Who exactly are the end users that are not edge providers? In other words, who uses the Internet but does not provide any content, application, or service? The answer is no one. All end users provide content as they engage in communications with other end users, individually or collectively. ... Think of all the startups and small businesses run from people's homes on home Internet connections, using WordPress tools or Amazon hosting services. Are they 'end users' when they email their friends but 'edge providers' when they switch windows to check their business metrics?"
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Real Net Neutrality Problem: 'Edge Provider' vs 'End User' More

Real Net Neutrality Problem: 'Edge Provider' vs 'End User'

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  • Which way are the bits going? (Score:3)

    by __aaltlg1547 ( 2541114 ) on Sunday November 02, 2014 @08:50AM (#48292881)

    It sounds like they're intending to draw a distinction between nodes that principally receive data from those that principally transmit data.

    If the node has a high ratio of bits received to bits transmitted, it's an "End User." If it has a high ratio of bits transmitted to bits received, it's an "edge provider."

    ISPs are neither. They presumably have similar numbers of transmitted and received bits because they are mostly actiing as conduits between data sources and data sinks.

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It sounds like they're intending to draw a distinction between nodes that principally receive data from those that principally transmit data.

      If the node has a high ratio of bits received to bits transmitted, it's an "End User." If it has a high ratio of bits transmitted to bits received, it's an "edge provider."

      ISPs are neither. They presumably have similar numbers of transmitted and received bits because they are mostly actiing as conduits between data sources and data sinks.

      I provide a service where users upload files and my system identifies similarities to other files that have been previously uploaded. I have a received to transmitted ratio of around 50-1. By the logic you describe this makes me an end user rather than a service provider, which is utter bollocks.

    • Re:Which way are the bits going? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by NotSanguine ( 1917456 ) on Sunday November 02, 2014 @09:04AM (#48292975) Journal

      It sounds like they're intending to draw a distinction between nodes that principally receive data from those that principally transmit data.

      If the node has a high ratio of bits received to bits transmitted, it's an "End User." If it has a high ratio of bits transmitted to bits received, it's an "edge provider."

      It's like that because of the artificial restrictions placed on upload speeds by the DOCSIS and ADSL protocols. Which is just the big boys trying to protect their business model by keeping us from being creators and sharing on a peer-to-peer basis.

      High speed, symmetrical network links for everyone, and peer-to-peer protocols for social networking, sharing creative content and ensuring freedom of speech could be incredibly empowering and liberating technologies.

      Unfortunately, those technologies which would allow users to share directly with each other, as well as strong encryption would most certainly limit the ability of the corporatocracy and the governement to spy on us for their benefit. So of course it must be stopped.

      I really hate how cynical I'm getting, but our corporate and government overlords keep taking our freedoms and most people are cheering them on. Good consumers. No need to be a citizen. Just be a good little consumer.

      • It ought to be, nodes are nodes, but we're talking about the difference between telco legacy interconnect and the dawn of Internet "hotels" which were aggregations near NAP points and convenient telco interconnects. This is what was the problem: ATM, SONET, and other L1/L2 problems. This allowed the concept that some junction points were more important than others, and that an edge device could be poorly provisioned, while big junction points could have nearby CDNs, huge hosts, and so forth.

        Add in isometric

        • Who is going to pay for all of that fiber - and associated changes to the network to allow it to go the last mile (so far, the only fiber we've seen to the home is in very small enclaves of people who can afford premium services anyway)?

          If you believe that should reside in the corporate realm, then how do you as a corporation turn a profit while also investing in a universal fiber network?

          If you believe it should be in the government realm - how do you get politicians to support fund allocations for it -

          • Most of it, to the last mile or so, is in the ground in the US.... there's tons of dark fiber waiting to be lit up.

            Fuck corporations turning a profit. This is a utility, not a bunch of regional monopolies masquerading as public beneficiaries. Governments and PEOPLE get easement and right-of-way income. There are lots of models as to how this can be done.

            Pioneers like Loma Linda, CA, DIgital Cities, and others show how to make it work financially, and no, not some sort of neo-socialist/commie model.

            Should th

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by pepty ( 1976012 )

            Step one: propose bonds that would pay for last mile fiber networks, with rollout decided primarily by neighborhood population density.

            Step two: ?

            Step three: Money goes to municipalities which in turn put network installation and management projects up for bid. Municipalities choose to provide service as a utillity or allow private ISPs to compete to sell broadband services.

          • they got all of the infrastructure FOR FREE ALREADY by federal subsidies when they first started offering data/internet access.

            then they used that infrastructure to make billions over the last 15 years.. now they don't want to upgrade the last mile, and the only real reason is to keep artifically low connection rates.

            TFB. nationalize our data highways. they can go take a flying F the same way they have treated their "customers" for years.

      • peer-to-peer protocols for social networking, sharing creative content

        But do most home users, especially those who aren't paid for producing "creative content", have the legal right to share most of the "creative content" stored on their devices?

        • Re:P2P infringement (Score:5, Insightful)

          by NotSanguine ( 1917456 ) on Sunday November 02, 2014 @10:39AM (#48293583) Journal

          peer-to-peer protocols for social networking, sharing creative content

          But do most home users, especially those who aren't paid for producing "creative content", have the legal right to share most of the "creative content" stored on their devices?

          Who knows what folks would do with the opportunities provided by high-speed symmetric links? Individually made feature films distributed by the filmmakers. Bands distributing their music directly. Authors selling their books. P2P social networks that are secured (in that you maintain control over your data on your own systems) and include only those you choose. And on and on and on.

          The lack of symmetric links props up the business models created in the era of mass marketing. It could be quite disruptive to the content providers who dominate the ISP market (and generally only offer asymmetric links to their customers) as well. Is that a coincidence? I don't think so.

          As for using such network links to distribute the intellectual property of others, the current model doesn't really stop that anyway does it?

          The only folks that asymmetric (with hobbled upload) links benefits are those who profit from controlling the distribution of creative content, those who profit by creating centralized servers for social networks, product sales and other human feedlots so the information stored on their servers can be analyzed and PI based on viewing, browsing and buying habits as well as personal interests can be sold to marketers. And since most of those don't use any sort of encryption, the government gets to spy on you too.

          So. Do you want freedom to communicate, collaborate and share only with those you choose to do so with, or do you want the big corporations and the government six inches up your ass? Yes, that's a straw man. But through it, I hope you get my point.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by tepples ( 727027 )
            I agree that symmetric connections to the Internet could help open up public participation in culture. But lack of a symmetric connection isn't the only obstacle to self-publishing. If we solve the other obstacles first, people can be ready to go once the symmetric Internet connections are ready

            Who knows what folks would do with the opportunities provided by high-speed symmetric links? Individually made feature films distributed by the filmmakers.

            How would the filmmakers recoup their investment in the film? Most commonly, people have suggested the use of copyright, a measure that legislators have enacted to let the author of a work have a chance of seeing rev

            • I agree that symmetric connections to the Internet could help open up public participation in culture. But lack of a symmetric connection isn't the only obstacle to self-publishing. If we solve the other obstacles first, people can be ready to go once the symmetric Internet connections are ready

              There are obstacles to just about everything. Don't make the perfect the enemy of the good. Let's move forward and deal with whatever issues may arise as they do so.

              I'm not a lawyer or a talent agent. I see wealthy business interests stifling freedom, creativity and innovation. As a networking guy I see solutions in the technology.

              Are there issues? Yes. Are those issues any different without high-speed, symmetric internet connections? No.

              I say implement the technologies and the rest will sort itself

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Bengie ( 1121981 )
          Most of the content on my wife's cell phone, by both number and size, is content she created. She takes pictures, she sends texts. That's all creative content. All forms of communication is "creative content".

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by tepples ( 727027 )
            Text messages and still photos are still relatively small in data size. Most of the congestion-by-choice debate as I understand it is about video, especially high-definition long-running-time video.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Bengie ( 1121981 )
              She doesn't sore videos on her phone, she streams them. I assume my wife is a lot closer to "normal" than I am. While I may have the capability to share lots of content that is not "mine", my wife shares stuff all the time on Facebook, etc, and it's all legal. Just wait for 4k 120fps Youtube upload in the near future. Going to need some bandwidth for that. GoPro already has 1080p 120fps cameras. Record 30minutes with that and see how much a phat upload pipe would help. This is becoming "normal".

      • Once you invite the FCC into regulating the Internet, you end up with a few appointed non-technical guys whose first loyalty is to a political party (In this case, Democrat, but I'm not saying GOP-controlled FCC would do a much better job of regulating) or to the special interest groups they support defining the various parts of the Internet in ways that make no technical sense, but allow them to accomplish their supporters very financially and power-based objectives.

        As a result, the Internet becomes requir

        • I'm sorry. Were you replying to my post? Because your ramblings have fuck all to do with what I posted. If so, please explain what FCC regulations have to do with last-mile protocols developed by private groups and how they're designed to prop up failing business models?

          If not, carry on.

          Either way, have a great day!

          • I know it's unusual, so I apologize for the shock, but while I was replying to your post, I was actually agreeing with you.

            Specifically, "I really hate how cynical I'm getting, but our corporate and government overlords keep taking our freedoms and most people are cheering them on. Good consumers. No need to be a citizen. Just be a good little consumer.", but just expanding on the mechanism a bit.

            The FCC will inevitably kowtow to the corporate and other interests and lock in their vision of what the Interne

            • I know it's unusual, so I apologize for the shock, but while I was replying to your post, I was actually agreeing with you.

              Specifically, "I really hate how cynical I'm getting, but our corporate and government overlords keep taking our freedoms and most people are cheering them on. Good consumers. No need to be a citizen. Just be a good little consumer.", but just expanding on the mechanism a bit.

              The FCC will inevitably kowtow to the corporate and other interests and lock in their vision of what the Internet is and is for, discarding the reality of what it can be and what the rest of us would like it to be.

              So, carry on...

              Ohhh. My apologies. It's business as usual of course. Rock on. I'd only suggest that rather than focusing your ire on the symptoms (regulatory capture), perhaps focusing on the root cause (the monied interests which are the sources of capture and corruption) instead. Have a lovely Sunday evening.

      • It's like that because of the artificial restrictions placed on upload speeds by the DOCSIS and ADSL protocols.

        Huh? There's nothing artificial about it in the case of DOCSIS. Cable was originally designed to multicast video using a shared medium. Putting Internet on top of that is a very clever hack, but it doesn't get around some of the fundamental assumptions and designs of the system.

        To download data from the node to the user you merely need to put it on one (or more) 6MHz channels, and the user's modem

    • It sounds like they're intending to draw a distinction between nodes that principally receive data from those that principally transmit data.

      This has been the traditional way to measure the type of peering between two networks: are you a net supplier of data or a net sink for data. Networks with a high number of web browsers would be a net sink, because HTML requests have high ratio of data received by the customer to the data sent. Networks with a high number of web servers are just the opposite. Mos

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Bengie ( 1121981 )

        This last option is what some of the transit and ISP networks

        Transit networks love Netflix, it's some of those pesky last mile ISPs that don't like them.

    • doesn't matter (Score:4, Insightful)

      by globaljustin ( 574257 ) on Sunday November 02, 2014 @09:33AM (#48293139) Journal

      this is about artificial scarcity

      how they use technical-sounding language to contextualize that fake distinction is interesting to note, but the core of the matter is that none of the distinctions are actually relevant

      also "data sources and data sinks" is also equally non-technical a description of network topology

      data "flows" but it doesn't pool up like water in a retaining pond

  • I completely agree that the "end user" and "edge provider" distinction in this case is absolutely ridiculous...it's an non-functional abstraction layer that has absolutely nothing to do with network engineering...there is an "edge router" but the distinction between "end user" and "edge provider" is not technical

    however, we cannot be tempted to think that because this confusing, stupid distinction exists, **if we fix it, we fix Net Neutrality**...that's wrong

    no matter what the language, it's about the data,

  • The provides always have created an assymetric internet, in which there are users and servers. While I welcome dynamic ip addresses for privacy reasons, static ip addresses have the advantage of being... static. And with ipv6, you could create static global ip addresses with ipv6, and still have a dynamic ip address for privacy. Does one provider support this? No, because they want to separate between "end users" and "internet services".

    If the internet would be fully symmetric (upload speed == download spee

  • This is war over content, not neutrality. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    'Murican ISPs just don't want to sell you fat pipes to The Internet at all. They want to sell you some mentally-ill junk media that they own, plus some thin pipe to the internet as a bonus. In other countries they actually have fat pipes providers. And "neutrality" initially meant "irrelevance of the origin of content".

  • The internet is meant to be peer-to-peer. Sure, some realities mean that we need some dedicated servers. That doesn't change the fact that when we do anything other than treating all peers by the same standards, we impede the open use of the internet.

    • Nonsense, the Internet is mostly client-server for 25 years now, not peer to peer. The Internet would not be possible without massive servers and business grade infrastructure. End users are indeed a seperate thing from providers, making emails and facebook uploads is merely end user activity.

  • no matter how much you pay, no priority bit jump to get your traffic ahead of anybody else's. you can buy a gig if you want to, and it's offered in your area. but you're the same priority 0, or 2, or 3, or whatever the provider grants to non-critical traffic like VoIP or management commands, that all internet traffic users have. that's net neutrality in a nutshell, and it applies to Google as well as Billy Joe Whistlebritches and his 600 kB line ten miles out in the sticks.

  • Congestion (Score:3)

    by Bengie ( 1121981 ) on Sunday November 02, 2014 @10:11AM (#48293399)
    They should make a rule that an "edge provider" must maintain non-congested links or must make sure that all links have roughly the same congestion, otherwise they're unjustly discriminating. If the ISP can't handle that, then they must downgrade customer's link rates until the congestion is gone. If the ISP can't handle the traffic, then they should send the traffic to someone else who can, you know, purchase transit from Level 3 or someone. Edge providers are not responsible for congestion outside of their network, but are responsible for congestion inside or at its borders.

  • um no (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Charliemopps ( 1157495 )

    Are they 'end users' when they email their friends but 'edge providers' when they switch windows to check their business metrics?

    and that right there sums up why people who don't know how networking works, shouldn't write news articles about it.

    In both cases in this example the user is consuming data. A better example would be once the user is hosting data locally, like a webpage... And then, in fact, they'd be required by nearly every ISP in the county to have a business account.

    The author acts like he's come up with some novel argument that questions the basic foundations of the ISPs business model, but in fact, it's a ques

  • Just like banking (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Just as banking and investment should be considered distinct and often conflicting interests, so should network connectivity and content distribution. These two types of business should not be allowed to vest in the same company. Connectivity is as essential to the modern economy as transportation, and should be provided on the same fair nondiscriminatory terms to everyone.

  • I always defined it in terms of traffic:

    An end-user is a network (possibly consisting of only one machine) or group of networks owned/controlled by a single entity that doesn't carry traffic bound for networks owned/controlled by any other entity. So a residential Internet subscriber or their home LAN would be an end-user, as would a typical corporate network that doesn't carry traffic for anyone but the company. An ISP wouldn't be, since it hands traffic off to the home networks controlled by it's subscrib

  • If end users are all providers then they should be paying the business rate. Right now everyone is under the mistaken belief that a fair systems as an asymmetrical rate where some users who consider themselves providers are being charged far more for the same bandwidth and covering almost 100% of the cost of delivering internet while others are getting tons of bandwidth at the cost of offsetting some-all the cost for the last few miles. So if you want to claim that everyone is a provider then everyone sho

    • Cost is defined [wikipedia.org] as the value of the next-best alternative that was given up.

      In major data centers, download is used very little, to the point of being free.

      Upload to customers is what is costly, and since different channels are used for upload and download, the law of supply and demand dictates higher prices for upload in datacenters.

      The inverse tends to be true (if not as much) for residential connections.

      What you're proposing is eliminating these cost signals that help allocate capital, and keep usage of

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jbolden ( 176878 )

        In major data centers, download is used very little, to the point of being free.

        Where are you getting that from? More importantly how is that relevant? Major carrier based data centers are about every 100km along all the major fiber routes. Even if traffic were one direction, which it isn't, from the standpoint of the national map it would still be very expensive to distribute between them.

        Upload to customers is what is costly, and since different channels are used for upload and download,

        Different c

        • Have you deployed to a data center recently? Like, any data center anywhere? Unless you're in with people doing really bizarre, high-download stuff.. How about how about Amazon's AWS [amazon.com]:

          Data Transfer IN To Amazon EC2 From Internet $0.00 per GB

          You can saturate your download speed 24/7 and they won't charge you a penny, whereas "Data Transfer OUT" starts at $0.12/GB, past the first GB.

          In any event, there's this thing called supply and demand, which says (among other things) that prices of products are set com

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jbolden ( 176878 )

            How about how about Amazon's AWS [amazon.com]:

            Amazon is allowing you to upload free because when you upload you are generally going to be buying storage. That doesn't reflect Amazon's underlying network costs. They don't have the same cost structures as carriers because AWS offers far more services. So, no it does not cost Amazon 0 for you to upload data. They offset the cost. When they aren't offsetting the cost they charge between $30-120 / tb to move data out. Which is being sold at a reasonable

            • Amazon is allowing you to upload free because when you upload you are generally going to be buying storage. That doesn't reflect Amazon's underlying network costs.

              Upload (out) is what's expensive. Download (in) is what's nearly free.

              Amazon likely pays for the entire pipe which is rated at a certain capacity; they charge those particular prices because of supply and demand. Same thing with your commercial ISPs. The fixed costs and cost of the pipe is irrelevant; the price they charge is chosen because that is what that market can bear.

              I think you should go back read about supply and demand. The supply curve is a curve which indicates how supply increases as cost increases. The whole point of the intersection point being on that curve is that price is not independent of cost of providing the service. In particular, carriers are not going to give you services for far less than they cost to deliver.

              You're diving into the finer (but equally important) points of a change in supply vs. changing the quantity supplied. Yes, a change in

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by jbolden ( 176878 )

                Upload (out) is what's expensive. Download (in) is what's nearly free.

                You have upload and download reversed it is to and from them not to and from your local systems. But ignoring the terminology reversal, they don't charge you for the bandwidth when you are putting stuff on their server because they are going to collect storage fees.

                ; they charge those particular prices because of supply and demand.

                No they charge those particular prices because in one direction they make lots of money on storage and

                • "Upload" and "download" here is from the viewpoint of that server.

                  Sending data from my computer here on my desk to my AWS instance, AWS bills me nothing. Why? Because it's so under-utilized that it's practically free. People just don't use servers for consuming stuff.

                  Upload (from server to my desktop) is what it utilized, and pushes prices upward.

                  Residential connections tend to be the opposite, though there's no hard rule that this must be true, as TFA points out. The pricing phenomenon is decided by how pe

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by jbolden ( 176878 )

                    Why? Because it's so under-utilized that it's practically free. People just don't use servers for consuming stuff.

                    No that's not why. I've already explained to you why. You can continue to live in fantasy world or you can look at how everyone, including Amazon, is charged.

                    • Citation needed.

                      When you OWN the pipe you don't have marginal costs until the pipe becomes saturated. Get out of your little fantasy world where prices are crapped out by little price pixies.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Bengie ( 1121981 )
              "Your ISP can similarly offset home costs by making money on selling for example television." ISPs make almost no money on TV and make a lot of money on Internet services. Servers and residential customers have completely different usage patterns. The average home user has a nearly idle connection while you average server has a lot of usage. You also have the issue of density.

              A small data center is relatively easy to make efficient, but after a certain point, it starts to go backwards. Sometimes you st

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Bengie ( 1121981 )
            Networks are symmetrical and upload is heavily used, which means a beefy upload pipe, but an crazy under-utilized down pipe. Incoming is free because of the lack of demand and huge amounts of supply.

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