Tom Wheeler Defeats the Broadband Industry: Net Neutrality Wins In Court (bloomberg.com) 165
Andrew M Harris and Todd Shields, reporting for Bloomberg: The Federal Communications Commission won a major appeals court ruling supporting its efforts to prevent broadband Internet service providers from favoring some types of web traffic over others. The Washington-based court Tuesday denied challenges to the federal government's so-called net neutrality regulations, which were backed by President Barack Obama. The ruling hands a victory to those who champion the notion of an open internet where service providers are prevented from offering speedier lanes to content providers willing to pay for them. It's a defeat for challengers including AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and Comcast Corp., which said the rule would discourage innovation and investment.FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said, "Today's ruling is a victory for consumers and innovators who deserve unfettered access to the entire web, and it ensures the Internet remains a platform for unparalleled innovation, free expression and economic growth. After a decade of debate and legal battles, today's ruling affirms the Commission's ability to enforce the strongest possible internet protections -- both on fixed and mobile networks -- that will ensure the internet remains open, now and in the future."
Great News (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, this could still be overturned if Trump wins and gets to override the pick for the next Justice, nevermind that a GOP congress plus Trump would be free to pass whatever anti-net neutrality legislation they want, or to replace the pro-neutrality majority of the FCC commissioners with a Republican one.
Subject of Comment (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm happier to see that this fellow has more integrity than most thought he'd have, with him being a former lobbyist for these cable companies.
Re:Great News (Score:5, Insightful)
Response translated from AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast: "Waaah, we can't upcharge for any existing or new service that comes along on the internet." Discourage innovation my ass. I'd say it's more likely that people will develop for an open internet than a closed one. After all, the developers would the ones having to pay the ISPs as well as the ISP's customers getting charged more for the service. I don't think that would go well in the long run.
Re:Great News (Score:5, Insightful)
Discourage innovation my ass.
You're confused my friend. They mean it will discourage innovation in their price gouging -- I mean -- strategies and business models.
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Not that I have a horse in the race. I don't stream video, I don't really smartphone roam (or at all), I'm not really in their crosshairs.
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You've exactly nailed the issue. This isn't about offering "faster" lanes for people who pay, this is about clogging down and limiting the people who don't pay.
"That's a nice on-demand video delivery service you've got there - it would be a shame if somethin was to happen to it..."
Re:Great News (Score:5, Interesting)
This effectively means it's settled. Comcast et al could still request an en banc hearing from the full Court of Appeals, but that's unlikely to succeed. They could appeal to the US Supreme Court, but with the current 4-4 split on the court, the best they could hope for is that the USSC would split and leave the Appeals Court ruling standing as is, at the same time they'd risk a 5-3 decision affirming net neutrality depending on how Kennedy swings.
Of course, this could still be overturned if Trump wins and gets to override the pick for the next Justice, nevermind that a GOP congress plus Trump would be free to pass whatever anti-net neutrality legislation they want, or to replace the pro-neutrality majority of the FCC commissioners with a Republican one.
It's really pretty staggering, considering that Democrats were supposed to be the "party of RIAA" back in the Clinton days (see Hollings, Senator from Disney). Sure, Lamar Alexander (R-Asshole) has been pretty good at picking up all of Hollings business once Hollings left Congress, but it's pretty interesting that the anti-free-internet banner has been picked up so thoroughly by the Republicans.
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but it's pretty interesting that the anti-free-internet banner has been picked up so thoroughly by the Republicans.
They don't see it that way; principled Republicans see a slippery slope now that the FCC is regulating the internet, which you may recall got to be what it is today largely because it was unregulated. Are such fears grounded in reality? Hard to say; come back in 20 years and let's see what the internet looks like then.
(Unprincipled Republicans are crony capitalists, more worried about their Big Telecom donors than Big FCC; condemn them if you'd like, but be honest enough to admit there are at least as ma
Re:Great News (Score:5, Insightful)
now that the FCC is regulating the internet, which you may recall got to be what it is today largely because it was unregulated.
In the late 80s, the internet was just this weird academic network that could not make money so no corporations paid any attention to it. Businesses were fighting over various online services (were you on Compuserve, or AOL, or The Source?). Then the government funded the NSFnet, and let outside companies join onto the NSFnet. And still nobody cared about the internet.
Then government-funded CERN invented the WWW, and government-funded NCSA invented Mosaic, and people started to care about the internet.
So "unregulated" for a bunch of government-funded projects is a very relative term. Far less regulated than the other online services, I'll grant you, but those were all regulated by their corporate owners, not by the government.
And that's really the lesson here. The internet won because it had far less overall regulation, while the other services were locked down and controlled. Now, the big ISPs want to "regulate" their pipes. The government passed a regulation, net-neutrality, which says "nobody can lock-down and control their pipes in certain uncompetitive ways". So, I think that you are arguing for very high (but corporate) regulation, and the NN folks are arguing for very low (but governmental) regulation.
You want no regulation? As long as it makes money, that cannot happen. But we get to choose between one hands-off sheriff, or a bunch of small despotic warlords. And I'm happy with how the court has chosen.
Re:Great News (Score:5, Funny)
Yes. Now get off my lawn.
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What about Prodigy, BBSes, etc.? :P
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Yes, because this will be the one magic regulation that big business is somehow unable to twist to their advantage.
I'm in favor of network neutrality, but opposed to Network Neutrality. I just don't believe that new regulatory powers are the cure to problems created by the old regulatory powers.
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The FCC hasn't claimed anything. The Telco reform act of 1996 (Bill Clinton) gives this authority, atop the Act of 1934 which created the FCC in the first place. So, if you have an issue with it, you should take it up with your congressional representatives.
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On the one hand, you worry about the possibility of the FCC being abusive, ignore that the FCC stepping in almost certainly is partly why AT&T's CEO's plan never came to pass
I don't think AT&T had a "plan" per se; I think their CEO foolishly ran his mouth, lamenting that he couldn't double dip, and the net community ran with it. There was a lot of FUD on our side of the issue, best exemplified by this graphic [dslr.net], and for awhile we were conflating long standing peering practices/disputes as network neutrality issues and the like.
Do I think that AT&T would have liked to charge Google for using "his" pipes? Absolutely. Do I think he would have had the balls to actually do
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It is all down to money grubbing worthless middle men, publishers. Basically the old world publishers RIAA et al won out against the ISP publishers. Basically the ISP wanted to kick all the other publishers off the internet and take over, they wanted their APPLE iTunes style kickback, 30% of all digital sales to go to the ISP or your traffic won make it through, that is all it was about. Nothing to do with bandwidth or traffic congestion, the ISP wanted a percentage of all digital sales and if you didn't pa
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The real effect is that high-bandwidth Over the Top parasites like Netflix get a free ride
How are they parasites? They pay for the bandwidth they use. And so do their customers.
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The FCC is regulating the internet to be fair - nothing more. The internet got the way it is because it was unregulated, but fair. It was only in the past decade that tit was possible to be u
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See my other reply. [slashdot.org] Most everything that you're worrying about were theoretical abuses. The Netflix issue is the only thing you mention that actually happened and it's still unclear to me how much of that was Reed Hastings trying to offload his cost of doing business onto others -- Netflix does not have completely clean hands here or elsewhere -- and how much was the ISPs being dicks. I suspect a little bit of Column A and a little bit of Column B.
Meanwhile, as I said in my other post, caps and zero rat
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You link to the EFF's "zero rating" report, but is that not the exact sort of net neutrality abuse that these rules were supposed to counteract?
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It's really pretty staggering, considering that Democrats were supposed to be the "party of RIAA" back in the Clinton days
Net neutrality has little to do with strong copyright protections. You can easily support strong copyright laws (as well as DRM, closed source software, and other things technophiles hate), while still supporting net neutrality.
Re:Great News (Score:4, Insightful)
They could appeal to the US Supreme Court, but with the current 4-4 split on the court, the best they could hope for is that the USSC would split and leave the Appeals Court ruling standing as is
Unless you're the Oracle of Delphi it's extremely dangerous to try and predict how SCOTUS Justices will swing on any given issue. They rarely break down along predictable partisan lines, even on the highly divisive political issues of the day (e.g., Roberts on the ACA) never mind something as technical as network neutrality and telecom regulation. People who try to politicize the Court miss the point; I suspect Liberals could find more than a few things to admire about Scalia (Kelo v. New London) if they were honest with themselves, as well as a few things to hate about the Justices on "their" side (Gonzales v. Raich). Conservatives could do the same, again, assuming they were willing to be honest with themselves, rather than blindly rooting for the "home team."
Anyhow, I digress. I would not even venture a guess as to how any of them would vote on NN. If you forced me at gunpoint to make a prediction it would be that they decline to issue any sweeping ruling; they'd kick it back down to the Appeals Court, 8-0, with clarification on one or two items of dispute.
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It's settled, legally, but don't think the fight is over. The GOP in Congress will still try to prevent the FCC from enforcing Net Neutrality via methods like defunding the FCC. And, if Trump wins, expect that Wheeler will be pushed out in favor of someone who will do what the industry wants the FCC to do.
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I'm not a Clinton supporter either. I was a Bernie Sanders supporter but - as much as I still like him, I'm realistic enough to know that Hillary's going to be the Democrat's nominee now. If I was forced to choose between the two, I'd choose Hillary, but only as a "lesser of two evils." My actual vote is likely going to be cast for Jill Stein.
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So, Hillary gets into office...and does what exactly, regarding Net Neutrality?
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Hmm, a vague, meaningless sentence. You just can't bring yourself to say she'll order the FCC to reverse Net Neutrality. Wonder why that is...
Now then, what are you expecting from Hillary?
Depends on the down ballot races. Hillary + GOP Congress = Fuck all and lots of it. Hillary + Senate = holding the Obama line on financial affairs with a remote chance of small improvements. Hillary + Dem Congress = Might actually get some sensible gun l
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Not one bit, because you continually fail to how explain how all these wondrous things will happen. These are your arguments in a nutshell:
1: Smoke filled rooms!
2: You're all sheeple!
Should you care to expound further, feel free. Meanwhile, in my corner, I have an FCC ruling which has survived hefty legal challenges, is publicly and heartily endorsed as a good thing by the nominee for the Democratic Party. Further, no bookie in the world will give you good
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Historically, campaign contributions from the telecom industry [opensecrets.org] have slightly favored Democrats (scroll to the bottom). And Hillary Clinton is by far the biggest recipient from that industry in recen
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Net Neutrality is not necessarily a right vs left or conservative vs liberal issue. The conservatives on the court are not going to reject it merely because a democrat is president. They have managed to have unanimous rulings.
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And you'll never complain about Comcast censoring the internet because it's ok when it's not a government doing it.
Complain all you want. If Comcast is censoring your internet, they are censoring you. No one will ever hear you.
Re:Great News (Score:4, Insightful)
Suspiciously, the post above me appears completely blank, is anyone else having this issue?
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
They're going to do it anyway... (Score:1)
Innovation (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm trying hard to think no of anything even marginally resembling an innovation which has come from Comcast - but I'm drawing a blank. So I can't see that having it their own way up until now has resulted in what they claim will be stifled by these rules.
On a side note: Tom Wheeler, I think many of us were wrong about you. Thank you!
Re:Innovation (Score:5, Funny)
They've had lots of innovation!
They figured out:
* data caps
* Double charging for the same service
* Outsourced customer service to lowest bidder
* Customer "retention"
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Don't forget "charging more for Internet Alone than Internet+TV to discourage people from cutting the cord or from getting TV service from another provider like DirecTV."
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They've had lots of innovation!
You forgot the innovation where they make the most recent episode of a TV show on OnDemand expire the same day you're watching it, so if you're just starting a series, you'll either have to binge watch or pay to see the most recent episodes later.
Re:Innovation (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Innovation (Score:5, Interesting)
Furthermore, I can't imagine any "innovations" that are good for the consumer coming out of all this. All Comcast and Time Warner are doing is "innovating" ways to force people to spend more money even though they're already paying ten times what the service is actually worth.
What we really need is a national law that outlaws local internet franchise agreements and prevents states and localities from outlawing municipal broadband. I'm lucky enough to live an in area with multiple ISPs, and (surprise surprise) nobody here has implemented data caps. I don't think capitalism is a perfect solution to all of our problems, but it does seem to work reasonably well for keeping internet prices under control.
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Prohibiting people from running servers is practically the same thing as data caps.
Re:Innovation (Score:5, Informative)
I'm trying hard to think no of anything even marginally resembling an innovation which has come from Comcast - but I'm drawing a blank.
You got a cheap +5 there, because Comcast is an easy target, but let me play devil's advocate and give you two things they've done right:
1. They had IPv6 for residential customers years before any other major ISP.
2. They actually invest money in their infrastructure, even in markets where they face no meaningful competition, unlike the asshats at Time Warner Cable. TWC left my hometown to rot on the vine; we didn't see DOCSIS 3.0 until two or three years ago and to this day still have speed/capacity issues at peak times. Go 20 miles to our immediate South, into Comcast territory, and you can get three digit speeds (we top out at 50mbit/s) that are actually consistently delivered to you.
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I agree with you on both points (#1 wholeheartedly, #2 less so)... but neither one qualifies as "innovation".
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I agree. I had shitty local ISPs in my small home town. Even the cable internet was terrible. I moved to a Comcast territory and it was night and day. 10x faster for 1/2 the price. And it was extremely reliable. I moved out of Comcast Territory and the regional cable provider was again god awful and then moved again into a DSL territory and it was even worse.
The most reliable and lowest latency network I've ever had is Comcast. I have a really hard time hating on them.
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They really pushed high speed internet in the US. I was one of the first people in the country, outside of academia, who had "high speed" internet. It was because Comcast was rolling out "comcast @home" back in the late 90s. It was friekin' awesome and I loved that company for a decade as a result. You could call them and get a static IP address, and talk nerdy with the people who ran their network. Ahhh... the good old days *sniff*.
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Their innovations consist of ways to extract more money from their subscribers without actually delivering better service. They've also innovated in the ways they obstruct any and all competition from giving their subscribers any other options.
Neutrality fee (Score:1)
I'm sure Comcast will be fine with it once they figure out an appropriate "Neutrality Fee" to add to everyone's bill, and they can explain how these government regulations hurt the consumer so much by forcing them to maintain these expensive policies.
No Racist Internet (Score:2)
How will it impede innovation ATT/Verizon? (Score:1)
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My experience with anti-net-neutrality argument breaks into two pieces.
1)- The principle that the network is owned by the telecoms, and, as their property, they should be free to do as they wish.
2)- The practical idea that telecoms will have to greatly increase costs to cover all the bandwidth (or even, that they will do so out of spite).
Any arguments besides these two are generally shills. I've talked with people in real life who honestly hold to one of those two reasons, or both.
I find (1) somewhat compe
The Two Lanes (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not difficult to work out. If you have a company whose job is road maintenance, say they successfully argue that certain people need to cover the distance quicker. These people would pay extra for the privilege of faster transit, and after all, everyone else still has the original road.
Only in time, the original road is neglected, it becomes full of pot holes. If any expansion is made, it's made to the faster road, since that makes more money. So as the weeks pass, the original road falls into worse condition, unable to cope with the volume of traffic which is always growing. If anyone complains, then they are just told to pay for the faster lane.
Eventually the original road is barely navigable, and anyone wanting to travel is forced to pay the extra for the toll road. Eventually, the original road closes. Before long, an idea is floated for a new super-fast road...
Re:The Two Lanes (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the first lie right there. The first thing they do is fence off the leftmost lane to make the toll lane, which of course needs its own shoulder in case someone breaks down, so better fence off a second lane too. Now, the non paying traffic that was packed in a 4 lane freeway is absolutely crammed into two lanes, or at best mushed into three skinny lanes. Unless, of course, the driver pays to drive in that nice wide, fast lane.
But here's the difference between toll lanes and the internet: I get to choose if I want to suffer in the slow lane on the highway or pay the $1.30 to get in the toll lane.
On the internet, these decisions are made for me. For instance, maybe Bing paid $50 million so that anyone going to bing.com gets to take the fast lane. The choice of what quality I get isn't mine, either I go where Comcast tells me I can go quickly, or I go where I want and suffer.
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That's the first lie right there. The first thing they do is fence off the leftmost lane to make the toll lane, which of course needs its own shoulder in case someone breaks down, so better fence off a second lane too. Now, the non paying traffic that was packed in a 4 lane freeway is absolutely crammed into two lanes, or at best mushed into three skinny lanes. Unless, of course, the driver pays to drive in that nice wide, fast lane.
I agree with you, but there's also the concern that the government will go with the London model and turn some of the lanes into bus lanes... which are less than 1% utilized, but have to be there anyway. Except, I can't actually imagine how that would work with the internets. That already kind of exists, in private government links, but nobody is talking about forcing people to open their private links for internet carrier traffic so that seems fairly irrelevant.
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This is actually happening. Are you familiar with the ez-pass express lanes? [fox5dc.com] The government can't afford to build a highway, so they let a private company build it and charge for its use. I find this frightening.
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Who would have thought... (Score:2)
...that the dingo [youtube.com] would not eat the baby.
It's all so confusing... (Score:2)
Trying to remember who is head of the FCC and who runs the cable company lobby. They keep switching back and forth...
Re:It's all so confusing... (Score:5, Informative)
In this case, the head of the FCC was a member of a cable company lobbying group and was widely expected to be yet another pro-cable company shill. Except, Tom Wheeler apparently missed the memo and was mistakenly handed one that said "protect the consumers" instead. His run as head of the FCC has been surprisingly fantastic and I hope he continues on to give the cable companies headaches for years to come.
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John Oliver did a show last year where he mentioned that Tom Wheeler, head of the FCC, was a former telecom lobbyist. He then said that it was like hiring a dingo to watch over your baby.
Tom Wheeler responded by saying he was not a dingo.
I guess he was speaking metaphorically and literally when he said that.
Re:It's all so confusing... (Score:5, Informative)
I remember that one. Given Wheeler's background and the history of FCC chiefs in general, it wasn't unrealistic to assume that he would be a horrible FCC chief who would only think of what the industry wanted. A lot of people are very happy that he's not a dingo. (Well, except for the cable companies but I don't care about them!)
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And the former FCC chairman took over Wheelers role as head of the cable company lobby.
zero rating / tmobile binge on (Score:3)
How does the decision affect zero rating and stuff like tmobile's binge on? Although I'm completely in support of net neutrality and all companies should be treated the same, I do support the idea of having different types of traffic. For instance making bittorent traffic lower priority than realtime streaming. This should preferably be controlled by the consumer though where they get some benefit for sending less traffic over the fast lane.
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So does Tom Wheeler. What you are describing is "traffic shaping", where different KINDS of traffic can have different priorities. Net neutrality allows that. What it doesn't allow is prioritization of Comcast's streaming traffic over somebody else's streaming traffic.
Net neutrality is not neutral (Score:3)
I know it's popular because the internets want to be free, but I'd ask everyone to actually read the "net neutrality" regulations yourself. It's not about net neutrality per se, it's about something completely different.
For example, all the peering agreements suddenly come under FCC jurisdiction. Do asymmetric traffic charges count as "favoritism?" Do you even have any understanding of what that means?
The FCC rule means that everything internet-related comes under their jurisdiction.
What this means, in short, is your rates will go up...forever.
Net neutrality is good for the people. (Score:2)
Does this mean ... (Score:2)
They'll keep trying (Score:4, Insightful)
The broadband companies are going to keep trying until they get the answer they want. Then once they do, there will be no going back.
Personally I feel it's just a matter of time before they monetize everything on the internet.
This isn't a great comparison, but I remember cable TV was promoted as "commercial free TV." ie, You could watch TV without commercials.
Yeah... well... that worked out great.
Excellent, hope it holds up. (Score:2)
I pay my ISP for a pipe. I request what I want through that pipe and expect my ISP to deliver it without prejudice.
If I wanted them to decide what gets priority I would subscribe to fucking television.
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Re:Major Loss for Internet Freedom (Score:5, Interesting)
The Internet is a grand bazaar, forum, and meeting place, and what is needed on the parts of the absolutely necessary firms that transport our communications traffic to/from the Internet is for them to most emphatically not muck with it, whether that mucking comes in the form of "super-cookies" (injections of information into what should be inviolate virtual connections), invading people's privacy by tracking what they are doing, or trying to enhance their profits by trying to charge both ends for the same traffic.
There IS honor in providing an ordinary, plebeian transport service, albeit that honor may come with lower profit margins. Over the road truckers don't sort through our packages in order to build dossiers about what we buy, nor do they insert GPS trackers into packages in order to see where they are going. We wouldn't stand for them trying to monetize the delivery service they are already being paid to provide. We should expect no less from Internet Service Providers.
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and by "expand, innovate, etc." you actually mean "stagnate, rent-seek, collude, and obstruct."
Re:Traffic lanes designated to buses or bicycles n (Score:5, Insightful)
I can not identify an argument for "net neutrality", that would not also not apply to attempts to prioritize â" such as by designating traffic lanes for them â" buses, bicycles, cars with electronic toll-payment transponders, and even for emergency vehicles.
Perhaps this will help:
I can not identify an argument for "apples" that would not also not apply to "oranges."
Hope that helps clarify it a bit.
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"Only vehicles built by Ford can drive in this neighborhood."
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Net-neutrality supporters argue against discrimination based on packet-contents and origination, not the network gear, that generated them.
You're not quite getting the picture I intended to paint, here. I should have put a little more detail in.
Most of these broadband ISPs have their own services, TV being the big one, that they want to prioritize over the competition like Hulu or Netflix. Net Neutrality is not about QoS, it's about preventing the barrier-to-entry from being artificially risen. To correct your metaphor you'd need to distinguish the vehicles on the road by brand, not by their capabilities.
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The government, that maintains the roads, gives priority to the buses, which it also runs, how is that?
A little closer but still not the same. If the gov't gave priority in such a way that only one manufacturer could build those buses your metaphor would be in better shape.
The problem with Internet Service Provision is lack of competition.
I agree, specifically with this statement. I feel like this whole system would at least have the protection of "fear of losing customers" to keep everybody honest.
Adding more and more regulation only helps the incumbents ward off would-be challengers.
I don't think your example supports your point. In fact I think it does the opposite.
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You keep repeating this meaningless "manufacturer" thing — there is no "manufacturer" of Internet packets. Net neutrality tries to combat packet-discrimination based on origin (who sent this?) and contents (what are the originating and destination ports, what's inside — when "deep" inspection is enabled).
In case of roads, NY city's prioritizing of city buses is a pe
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You keep repeating this meaningless "manufacturer" thing â" there is no "manufacturer" of Internet packets.
Netflix, Hulu, Youtube, Vimeo, iTunes, Amazon, etc.
In case of roads, NY city's prioritizing of city buses is a perfectly apt analogy.
As I said, it is close, but it fails to pick up the very nuance that brought this legislation up in the first place.
But it is an example of how companies are forced â" by the regulations â" to compete for favors of government and judges, rather than those of customers.
It is in the customers' best interests to have competition in the space.
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These are all sources of information, rather than manufacturers.
There is no "nuance". We have owners of networks being ordered, what they can and can not do with their own equipment, that's all. The sole justification is "The Greater Good", property rights be damned.
I'm still waiting to hear an argument for "net neutrality", that would can no
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These are all sources of information, rather than manufacturers.
Could you please explain the distinction in this context? As long as you're understanding that the information is being categorized by Netflix, Youtube, etc, then we're close enough to being on the same page that your argument doesn't really act as a rebuttal.
There is no "nuance".
Well, no, you're just not seeing it. I'm not really seeing where the break in our communication is.
I'm still waiting to hear an argument for "net neutrality", that would can not also be used to argue against special traffic lanes for city buses and cars with E-ZPass.
E-Z Pass does not distinguish by manufacturer.
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Net-neutrality supporters argue against discrimination based on packet-contents...
A few do, but they shouldn't. Network neutrality does not preclude legitimate QoS based on type of data or protocol.
and origination
This part you have correct.
Giving priority to Ford-made buses over Ford-made sedans would've been wrong in their opinion.
Nope, that would be fine. Just like normal QoS prioritizing real-time protocols (e.g. VoIP) over bulk transfer protocols (e.g. BitTorrent) would be fine.
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I can not identify an argument for "net neutrality", that would not also not apply to attempts to prioritize — such as by designating traffic lanes for them — buses [nyc.gov], bicycles, cars with electronic toll-payment transponders [fox5dc.com], and even for emergency vehicles.
In fact, I suspect strongly, that, had the Internet-service provision been in government's hands already, the same people arguing for "net neutrality" today, would've been arguing for "sensible measures" to prioritize "special" traffic.
And vice versa — had private corporations been in charge of streets and highways, their attempts at prioritization would've attracted the same criticism currently hitting the ISPs.
Some neutralities are more neutral than others...
I've always viewed the entire net neutrality debate as a (hopefully) temporary sideshow while/until we fix the larger problem of lack of competition. The only reason (e.g.) Comcast is able to pull the shenanigans that they are is because we can't go anywhere else. Otherwise, if an ISP decided to slow down Netflix and try to extort money from them, their customers would just leave.
Re:Traffic lanes designated to buses or bicycles n (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Traffic lanes designated to buses or bicycles n (Score:5, Insightful)
Doing something like prioritizing VOIP packets over FTP, for instance, is perfectly acceptable, because the reason for doing it is that VOIP traffic is much more affected by latency than FTP. If I'm trying to talk via VOIP at the same time I'm FTPing a large file, and the network hits congestion, I'm generally much better off having the FTP transfer slow down than I am having my VOIP throughput degrade. It's still a neutral network because it doesn't care what VOIP service I use, as long as it's standard VOIP traffic. This is a "Cars with 4 people/buses/etc can use the left lane during rush hour, everyone else has to use the right 3 lanes" situation.
What we're talking about is something like Comcast or AT&T trying to make _their_ Streaming Video/VOIP/FTP service work better than Netflix or whomever, by deliberately making Netflix worse, or forcing Netflix to pay extra to not get degraded. They can do this in a variety of ways, including throttling any Netflix connection, while exempting their own, or putting in Data Caps that apply to Netflix traffic, but not to their own streaming service. This is a "GM owns this toll road, so the charge for GM vehicles is $1.00, but the charge for Ford vehicles is $10.00" situation, and that's what you can't do according to Net Neutrality.
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So ISPs can offer services that don't provide full internet services(health monitoring, VOIP) and for an additional cost give those priority over all net neutrality traffic.
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Confusion will set in here because Fire_Wraith and will_die are using the term "VOIP" differently. Fire_Wraith, you used VOIP as an example of a network protocol for which low latency is important, and traffic shaping is legitimate and neutral. Will_die, you used VOIP as an example of a special service paid for separately, that happens to be routed over the internet, that is not necessarily part of the customer's internet service.
If one replaces "VOIP" in Fire_Wraith's email with "Skype" or "Mumble" or "R
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You say you want to have your FTP packets dropped so that your VoIP packets get through, but what you really mean is that you want my FTP packets to be dropped so that your VoIP packets get through. And that's not acceptable
Actually, it is the way things should work.
If FTP packets are dropped, they will be retransmitted. The file transfer will take longer, but it will still work unless the congestion is really, really bad.
Due to the nature of human auditory processing, however, you cannot just resend VoIP packets a half second later and expect everything to work. The typical use case implies a requirement for timely delivery.
A well-managed network should be able to route both VoIP and FTP in a way that prevents either protocol
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No. Think of it more along the lines of not just setting dedicated lanes for buses and bicycles, but only for COMCAST buses and bicycles -- unless you paid an extra toll.
Comcast and others did this with VoIP in the past. They prioritized their VoIP traffic while de-prioritizing competitorVoIP traffic.
It not only is perfectly legal now, but essential to business that ISPs prioritize traffic by traffic type -- called Quality of Service (QoS).
What they want to do is not by TYPE but by DESTINATION and OWNER. Th
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There shouldn't be any difference really but Comcast would like to charge Netflix and Amazon more to move a packet to their customer
There IS a difference, we want them to pretend that there isn't because that ensures fair competition. The ISPs do have to pay for peering, and they have to pay more if they want to deliver packets from Netflix (if not Amazon) in a timely fashion because Netflix is not spectacularly well-peered. Netflix's proposed solution to this problem is to host their CDN for them, which may or may not be reasonable depending on the situation vis-a-vis infrastructure and customer demand.
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The ISPs do have to pay for peering, and they have to pay more if they want to deliver packets from Netflix (if not Amazon) in a timely fashion because Netflix is not spectacularly well-peered. Netflix's proposed solution to this problem is to host their CDN for them, which may or may not be reasonable depending on the situation vis-a-vis infrastructure and customer demand.
Bahahaha. You realize that a customer tested out Comcast's excuse and found it to be hogwash. He ran Netflix through a VPN and it was actually faster. So let's think about what Comcast says: Netflix --> {internet} -->Comcast -->Customer was slow because Netflix is not well peered but Netflix --> {internet} -->VPN --> {internet} -->Comcast --> Customer is well peered and thus faster. So unless more hops and through a VPN somehow makes it more well peered. If you believe that, I have a
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Imagine if there were lanes you could only use if you were going to see a movie at a theater that paid the DOT under the table. Otherwise, only the bike lane is available for going to a movie. That's the internet without neutrality. Fair queuing and prioritizing at the individual household level based on type of service is fine under net neutrality.
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Well, there's a difference between QoS rules for all streaming video versus file transfers, and QoS rules for streaming video from provider X because they paid our ransom^W access fee to serve content to our subscribers that are already paying us for the same bandwidth.
It's rent seeking if not racketeering.
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How does it feel?
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Are you really this stupid, or did Verizon pay you to spew this nonsense?
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They have authority over telecommunications networks, and the Internet runs on those networks.
Get over it, astroturfer.