ISPs Race to Create Two-Tiered Internet

An anonymous reader writes "The ISP race toward a two-tiered Internet is picking up speed. This article from Michael Geist points to a wide range of examples involving packet preferencing, content blocking, traffic shaping, and public musings about premium charges for faster content downloads. ISPs are now reducing access to peer-to-peer applications, blocking Skype, and, scariest of all, lobbying Congress to let them do it."

Comments

Go time

[panxerox]

If there was ever a time for slashdots to be active politically it is now, this is a wake up call that the Internet as we know it is in jeopardy. What this new ISP movement really is all about is to remold the Internet into what Gore invisioned originally, that is a wholly owned and controlled network primary based on cable technology.

Favoring content delivery over customer participation, the original concept for the "information super highway" was basically a one way street from the providers to the customers with the consumers having very little control. The Internet is not what he and the corps envisioned and they are pissed that they can't generate decent income streams from it (at least the majority of corps the innovators like google are able to but being an innovator is to hard for most corps).

As for liability the isps had better think about this real hard before they leap into content control, I'm sure the lawyers are licking their chops as the possibility for massive waves of lawsuits dance in their heads. From the article

"The network neutrality principle has served ISPs, Internet companies, and Internet users well. It has enabled ISPs to plausibly argue that they function much like common carriers and that they should therefore be exempt from liability for the content that passes through their systems. "

Circumventing ISP filtering

[CCMCornell]

How do the ISP's block or attenuate traffic speeds for certain services? Do they actually look at the contents of packets or is it simply by port? If by port, can't many applications like p2p's be set to use non-standard ports? For a few years now on Time Warner Cable/Road Runner, I've noticed that sometimes default settings for P2P's yield very slow results and sometimes no connection to the tracker/server and connections to very few peers. I've simply changed those port settings. I guess some applications can't be changed either because of lack of customization in the program or a required standard port.

I think it's fantastic in a way

[rainman_bc]

Just in a way. I'm all for freedom of speech.

I think this plan will backfire on ISP's. They presently do not filter content, so they are held excempt from liability of the content. Plenty of court cases have backed that.

However if they are filtering content, controlling what an end user can and cannot access, then won't the courts hold them accountable for this behaviour?

This will be a splippery slope, one where a few ISPs will get burned from it.

Re:Two word solution!

[Chris_Jefferson]

In the PC world, if Microsoft wasn't kept under some control, don't you think by now there would be Microsoft PCs, which (because they didn't have to pay for a copy of windows) would be much cheaper than other people's PCs, and they'd slowly take over 90% of the PC market?

Re:Two word solution!

[Dun Malg]

From what I've heard (I'm too young to remember it directly), things weren't too bad under the Ma Bell monopoly the first time around

I actually remember it. There was a certain degree of predictability that we don't have anymore. They owned the whole system, from the lond distance system to the CO to the jack in your living room, so any trouble was definitely their problem and indeed they fixed things quickly. But there was a dark side. To make a bastardized reference to the Ben Franklin quote, the AT&T monopoly essentially guaranteed safety at the price of freedom. Local residential service was very cheap because it was subsidized by long distance. The old days were a time when you didn't talk to out of state relatives but a couple times a year, and then for not very long. And forget calling overseas. The only people who could afford to regularly use long distance were businesses, and they only did when they had to. Starting in the 50's and exploding in the 60's and 70's, the old AT&T service pricing more and more reflected a country that no longer existed. We were no longer a country of insular agrarian communities with no need or desire for outside communication. People no longer lived worked and died in the same place they were born. They moved around, sometimes going great distances. Also, TV came along and brought the outside world closer. By the late 70's, AT&T was a company with the most advanced 20th century equipment, but with a largely 19th century business model. MCI suing for access was just the inevitable first step in the explosion of the "information age". Widespread, global communication had reached a point where it was not only possible, but it was easy (at least from a technical standpoint). The problem was that the next step, communication becoming inexpensive, was thoroughly and completely blocked by a behemoth monopoly that had no reason to change its way of doing business. You think Ma Bell would have rolled out DSL for cheap? I remember even back in 1995 Pacific Bell was reluctant to field DSL because it was afraid to lose all that revenue from locked-in T1 and ISDN customers. Large incumbent monopolies are famous for not exploiting emerging markets until competitors force them into it. No, the AT&T monopoly was tolerable for the first 80 years or so, but by 1984 it's time had definitely passed.

Re:Two word solution!

[dada21]

Actually, I sold my 1600 square foot home (worth over US$250,000) and bought a US$40,000 trailer with over 1600 square feet. Why? US$210,000 that I now have in my pocket to spend on vacations, business trips, and new ways to make me money. Some of my neighbors are friends of mine who sold their US$500,000 for 2200 square foot trailers. Why? The same reason -- we took advantage of the housing bubble (caused by regulations, mind you).

If you think living in a trailer is trashy, I applaud you -- it is why I can continue to live in housing that costs me less than US$3000 per year (including property taxes) and pocket the US$2000 a month in mortgage to spend on other things I like.

In the next 3 years I'll move at least 60 people with similar lives as mine into my community -- and we'll all live high on the hog getting rid of the 38% overhead of living in a "house." In fact, I've been able to cut my work hours almost in HALF and have more money in my pocket at year's end.

Don't knock it just because you want to keep up with the Joneses. The Joneses are in debt and live beyond their means and will have to both work until they're 65 to pay off their excesses. Me? My family loves life and has smiles on our face when we go shopping with cash in our pocket. It seems like everyone else we see has a frown and wonders if that plastic card will say "denied" at the register.

Everyone appears to be missing something

[GuyverDH]

The point that everyone, including the big-name ISPs are missing, is what this will mean to everyone else.

Case in point.

Let's say that a Verizon broadband customer buys service for a new Verizon VOIP product.
Let's say that this same customer has a friend across the country, that is also a Verizon customer.
They both get the new product, and one decides to call the other.

In todays market, that call will go from one end of the country to the other, with no impediment to it's packets (at least none that isn't applied to all traffic going through a certain subnet).

In the proposed market, let's say that to get from point A to point B, this traffic has to cross subnets owned by Sprint and Qwest.

Both Sprint and Qwest will throttle back the data as it's originated at, and destined for a foreign network.

Even though both customers are on Verizon's network, they get CRAP service due to the way the internet works.

Now, even though both customers paid Verizon for high speed VOIP service, Verizon couldn't deliver the goods because the user didn't pay Sprint and Qwest for that same service. Verizon sure as hell isn't going to pay Qwest and Sprint to speed up these connections as that would minimize their profit margins, so the customer gets shittier service, for a higher cost.

All this idea is, is a way to allow ISPs to charge more, for less service.
My guess would be that they won't do anything but throw controls in that throttle foreign network traffic, or traffic that hasn't been paid for by the customer.

It will be the end of the Internet as we know it.