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The Future of the Internet
bariswheel writes "An important piece written by a Columbia Law professor addresses sensitive questions about the future of the Internet: "Is it a problem if the gatekeepers (i.e. a duopoly of the local phone and cable companies) discriminate between favored and disfavored uses of the Internet? How would you take it if AT&T makes it slower and harder to reach Gmail and quicker and easier to reach Yahoo! mail? What if I-95 announced an exclusive deal with General Motors to provide a special "rush-hour" lane for GM cars only? Is there something special about "carriers" and infrastructure--roads, canals, electric grids, trains, the Internet--that mandates special treatment? Should content providers like Google, or subscribers like us, pay for the bandwidth consumed?" Here's hoping that sites like Google Techtalks and Channel 9 remain 'free' and available for the next 10 years."
Is that the tension over US control causes a splintering of the internet. So that you would have to do something weird if you were in the US and wanted to use the "French internet". It would be like the old days, when you had to be on bitnet to send mail to someone on bitnet.
Heaven's no. They should pay our ISPs, who will also charge us as well, thereby making double the profits.
Watch for the end of the Internet, coming to a legislative body near you.
... is that Google and Amazon will merge to form the Google Grid. Everyone will be able to submit stories, and no real news will ever be published amidst the flurry of user submitted trash.
I think it might be quite problematic to offer different speeds for different services with some other countries that don't follow the same logic. Also, it might be that "throttled" content providers move across the borders and demand, as "international traffic", equal treatment.
I could see some quite interesting lawsuits coming down that throttled road.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The biggest ISP decided to partner with a lot of content providers and limit that content to their customers only? I think it would be called AOL and people would jump ship and go to smaller ISPs.
Doesn't the same apply here?
I'm not sure if similar actions are widespread in the US yet, but up here, Canadian ISPs already discriminate based on content. Ports used by popuplar P2P software is throttled to the point where throughput is almost choked off completely. Many Rogers subscribers have found a way to "hack" their torrent bandwidth back to normal, at least temporarily, by using the same port Rogers is using for their new VOIP service.
Resistance seems futile, as no ISP wants their users using P2P apps. What can we do? We used to threaten to cancel our services with providers guilty of bandwidth throttling, but now they all do it, so what options are left, besides simply accepting that this is how the future of the Internet will be? Normal access to "preferred" sites that make the ISP money, and discouraged (throttled) access to sites and services that cost the ISP money. It sucks. I'm open to suggestions.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Anonymous Coward splices comma, calls Columbia professor a "moron," links to article which only illustrates AC's own failure at life. Film at 11.
Bonsai Kitten: TNG
Forget the future, the internet split between fast/slow lanes already happend and is continuing to happen... now it's just more widespread than universities so more folks are aware of it. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=internet2
I guess to me it would be a matter of how "slow" or how much "harder". I mean how do they make it "harder"...have www.gmail.com NOT go to GMail .
"...Should content providers like Google, or subscribers like us, pay for the bandwidth consumed?""
Again, both consumers, via the monthly charges to their ISP, and Google, via the presumably large charges from whoever provides their bandwidth, are already paying for bandwidth consumed.
Why do people keep repeating this absurd claim?
Three Squirrels
Just another persona totally irrelevant to internet and speaks on things he has no clue about.
Can you imagine what would happen if such things, filtering, seperate pricing, access procedures etc should be done, with hundreds of thousands sites erected each day, maybe 20 thousand and more isps active around the world, hordes of networks, satellite and telecom operators, datacenters ?
The result would be an INFINITE and ever increasing number of protocols, prices, agreements, disagreements, filters, etc and stuff !!!
How much cpu power would the operators need to determine what goes to where and what goes not if such mess was introduced ? Google would have to erect a new server farm to process 'filters', and it would be one that is comparable to the one it uses for search processing.
'Pay for bandwith' my arse. The profits from bandwidth would go to maintaining endless server farms all around the world to process access limitations.
I repeat : people should not be allowed to propose laws in an area they have no expertise, training or experience in.
Read radical news here
What if I-95 announced an exclusive deal with General Motors to provide a special "rush-hour" lane for GM cars only?
Ever hear of an HOV lane? The government is more likely to make this kind of approved/non-approved decision. The "gatekeepers" on the other hand are only interested in making money.
Obviously networks require at least a little regulation to encourage that the major participants to play nice with each other. This has been true since the days of the railroads, and is still true in the information age. But at this moment, I really think the more likely danger is too much regulation rather than too little.
Already we have toll roads. We have examples of where special lanes are set aside for people who are willing to pay more for better service. So how is complaining about internet providers doing the same different?
...
The only time it becomes a problem is if they purposely slow down the connection. Not granting it access to the newest high speed line is not the same thing. If some provider builds up a special section of their network to provide better throughput then by all means they should have the opportunity to sell it, if they can. Still I believe most of it is going to require a lot more investment than the returns would allow for.
iow
(in Atlanta it has been suggested to make some lanes paid access on a tiered scale... didn't my taxes pay for this interstate already? Oh yeah they did, but they haven't paid for the new lanes now have they?) Same logic.
Which would I prefer? The same for everyone but I do know that there are people right now who pay for faster access as it is. When dial up was good enough they went ISDN or T1/T3/etc. Some still do even with DSL/Cable speeds. There will always be a market for people who believe they need it now. Let them have it. So far the rest of the net has been just fine for me.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
"What if I-95 announced an exclusive deal with General Motors to provide a special "rush-hour" lane for GM cars only?"
GM doesnt pay for the roads. Taxpayers do. Now if GM went a built a series of roads with their money and only allowed their cars to use those roads, would you object?
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
I'll go build my own Internet!
With BlackJack! And hookers!
AOL recently releaseda product model that discriminates against users without credit cards. Presently a user with a credit card can get a month's access to AOL and the web for free, provided they have a credit card. This is like 30 x 24 x 60 minutes. AOL brought out a product that is a "pre-paid" subscription, costing $10 and providing 400 minutes, or roughly 6 and a half hours. This seems to be a very cheapskate deal given that they offer credit card holders somehting like 180 hours for free before charging them anything.
Why isn't friaco available in the USA? thats what i want to know.
"I'd rather companies charge me extra for better access overall than have others pay them for exclusive better access."
But the question the writer's missing is: should we allow this to happen? The possibility of activism is completely lost on this person.
One trick is not to pirate music and movies.
Goodbye, account.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Real freedom double so!
Maybe computers will never become as intelligent as humans. For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-89]
Why am I paying for X MB of access if I can't actually get X MB of access on whatever port I feel like? That's just retarded economics. Eventually a company will offer X MB of access for X dollars, no catch, and that company will become the internet monopoly ISP of all time.
stuff |
Do this: Traceroute to your favorite sites. Understand that traceroute is no longer the tool it once was, ICMP ttl-exceeded messages are not always handled, and you aren't seeing things like paths over MPLS where there are tags that created switched paths across the net. But... it's the best thing the end user has, unless your broadband provider or ISP disallows it.
On average, how many carriers did you cross? What would happen if a carrier started using Class-Based Queueing techniques just across their sections? What if they started creating tariffs, quotas, import fees of classified "bulk traffic', or started using the differentiated services model at internet peering points? I'm not talking about rate-queues and other things that guys on NANOG routinely do now, I'm talking about corporate sponsored refusal to carry types of traffic.
A complex system of MPLS paths based on traffic types would result, BGP tags would get processed to have implied meanings (i.e. AT&T won't carry my SMTP messages unless they are destined for email servers in the AT&T network) and on the whole, it would get pretty messy.
Now, the economic result of this would be that carriers would set up trade barriers to each other, not unlike nations do. And the net-net would be... market consolidation. How could it not? The small ISPs and regional carriers would eventually fall prey to larger groups who would create mutually beneficial arrangements to carry traffic and create cartels to approach the major websites, esp. the search engines, and demand that they pay up. Google would need to pay into formed groups like "the Consolodated Tier-1 providers of North America" to allow broadband users to reach Google services.
The end result would be the fragmentation of the internet. Large parts of it would be unreachable from certain parts of the world. And that's over and above national firewalls like the Chinese have, this wouldn't be censorship - this would just be business. The board at AT&T now has the technology to really implement differentiation, and now they want to use it. To make money, at the expense of content providers and value-add information sites. I don't see how that is a good thing.
"GM doesnt pay for the roads. Taxpayers do. Now if GM went a built a series of roads with their money and only allowed their cars to use those roads, would you object?"
Now, if GM paid for the roads themselves out of monies earned via a legally granted monopoly, say, that only GM cars are allowed to be driven in the region, would you object?
If the roads were partially funded by a special assessment on all drivers of GM cars, regardless of whether they choose to use those roads, would you object?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
What if I-95 announced an exclusive deal with General Motors to provide a special "rush-hour" lane for GM cars only?
Really now, with GM cars? That would just make it a "break-down" lane!
I pay my ISP to provide me with a connection to the internet.
Google pays their ISP to provide them with a connection to the internet.
Why exactly should either ISP be allowed to charge extra for me to connect to Google?
Look at it this way: If I pay for a 3 Mb connection and Google can deliver a 3 Mb downstream, I expect my ISP to allow that. Otherwise, I am NOT getting what I pay for. So basically what a number of ISPs want to do is promise their customers a connection which they will not deliver unless a given website *also* pays for their customers to get that connection.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
It seems like there are suddenly a lot of lawyers writing about the future of the Internet. So we've gone from ambulance chasing to Internet chasing? I can see the commercial now: Have you been the victim of an Internet crime? Spamming? Identity Theft? Bad romance from Match.com? The law office of Swindle, Swipe, and Obfuscate are here to help!
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
From the summary: What if I-95 announced an exclusive deal with General Motors to provide a special "rush-hour" lane for GM cars only?
I think they already do this in some states, except they discriminate by how many blow-up dolls you are transporting in your vehicle.
Should content providers like Google, or subscribers like us, pay for the bandwidth consumed?
Both of us already pay for our connection. I pay $45+tax+fees+basic_cable per month for a decently fat pipe coming into my house. Google pays something I don't even want to imagine for the bandwidth it consumes - and that includes the bandwidth for which I also paid to connect to Google.
But now the telecoms have said they want even more??? Greedy bastards we should do away with, for certain. But do we need to worry about non-net-neutrality?
Everyone talks about "imagine carrier-X favoring MSN over Google"... But Google already pays for a guaranteed bandwidth. My connection at work pays for a guaranteed bandwidth. Although I currently pay for peak bandwidth rather than guaranteed on my home connection, watch how fast consumers drop ISPs that throttle them for reasons unrelated to congestion. "But I can stream HD video from MSN? Great, fuck you too, I don't use MSN, cancel my account!"
So this leaves AT&T with three options - breach of contract with their "supply-side" customers, or loss of constomers on the "consumer-side". Wait, I said "three", didn't I? Yep - They have one other choice. They already need to provide a certain level of service to Google and to Joe Sixpack. But they have the option of making MSN faster than the competition. Whether they do that as anticompetitive price-cuts for higher bandwidth or as network infrastructure upgrades, both would tend to drive prices down and quality up. End result, they lose their own bone barking at the dog in the stream.
The money that Yahoo could pay to throttle Google's web traffic is miniscule compared to Cox making $85.00 a month per family in their service area.
ISP's make money while content companies have largely failed to live up to their Bubble-ish expectations.
Google only makes 7-8 billion in revenue, and the amount that could be diverted to potential bandwidth-throttling is not that much compared to the money ISP's generate from maintaining existing customers.
Other content sites aren't nearly as successful as Google, and would have even less leverage to engage in these anticompetitive practices.
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
I think a 'tiered' internet is trouble from the start, but what about this scenerio: Your VOIP provider starts providing 911 service, and your 911 call gets squashed by your neighbor's video download. Under strict 'net neutrality', it is possible for this to happen, if unlikely.
Additionaly, the ability of backbone providers to influence the delivery of packets is quite limited in comparison to the 'last mile' provider. The ISP customers immediately connect to, if they choose to set QOS for some type of service from some content provider, will have a great deal more effect on download/upload speeds that backbone providers. That's just how QOS out at the edge works. Yes, backbone providers can influence packet delivery, but not nearly as much as edge providers.
The other problem with allowing provider to prioritize traffic is that once packets traverse provider boundries, all bets are off. Does anyone really think that Verizon/MCI/UUNet will treat AT&T's prioritized packets better or even on par with its own? After all, Verizon's own customers, like maybe giant-company-xyz, is paying to have their traffic prioritized, and all Verizon might have with AT&T is an aggreement that might not be worth as much as $$ from giant-company-xyz. If AT&T never sees all the router configs in Verizon's network, how can they claim that Verizon isn't honoring their QOS?
The internet is more like an ocean than it is a bunch of lakes and canals, and the telcos want to sell good weather and smooth sailing. AT&T will sell Disney, for example, a 'higher tier' of service for their streaming video on their backbone, but unless they can get each and every edge provider to go along, and each and every other entity that runs any kind of peering link at all on the Internet, it won't make as big a difference as they claim. My point is that even if telcos sell prioritization, its likely it won't stack up like they claim, due to the nature of the Internet itself. Then everybody will have to decide how to treat legitimate priority traffic, like 911 for example.
The entire debate looks to me as though it being framed in a misleading way.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
TANSTAAFL.
As I see it there are three big "supply and demand" things on the net:
connectivity, high-transmission-speed, and low-latency.
Connectivity is a no brainer - that's maintenance on the wire going to your house, the cost of billing you, etc. etc.
Transmission speed is easy to understand also: The "pipes" just aren't big enough to let everyone max out their connection all at once. If everyone got on their high-speed connection and started downloading stuff at the same time, things will slow down. This provides an opportunity for the pipe-owners to say "if you want more megabits per minute when it's congested, ante up."
Latency is guarenteed delivery of a particular packet. This also gives the pipe owners an opportunity to say "if you want to guarentee that x% of your bits to go through within t milliseconds, ante up."
The question is who pays - the source, the destination, the person who initiated the conversation, a third party such as an advertiser, or some combination of the above?
The default alternative is a "non-preferred" internet, where everyone suffers equally during times of congestion and services which depend on low-latency like VoIP are forced to either compensate by sending extra bits, thereby making the congestion worse, or services such as VoIP become unusable. Imagine that during your next 911 call.
Another alternative, one favored by the egalitarians, is that bits that need low latency will be tagged as such and given priority over those that aren't. This works as long as everyone respects the priority scheme and as long as the high-priority packets aren't themselves the cause of congestion. Imagine a future September 11, where everone logs on to watch streaming-video newscasts while at the same time using VoIP to call their friends, neighbors, and employers. All the sudden, the high-priority bits are themselves the cause of the congestion, and the TV gets jittery and the audio becomes unusuable for everyone. With a pay scheme, those customers or providers who have, by paying more into the system, declared themselves to be high-priority will continue to funciton while those that don't will be effectively shut off. Of course, emergency services like VoIP calls to 911, will by law get the highest priority and will not have to pay to avoid congestion-related outages.
Personally, I think the egalitarian system works well enough most of the time and it avoids the greed/power/0wnership factor of the pay scheme that it's the best bet for most societies. However, I fear that the greed factor will dominate and within 5 years you will see large-scale pay-for-play for guarenteed-low-latency applications.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
your computer will spank you with a paddle god the future is scary
I was a Rogers customer for a long time and dupmed them when they started implementing restrictions. I am now with a small local DSL provider and everything works again and the speed is fine.
Meh.
Then how will I download the latest version of Ubuntu?
Meh.
That would assume that "consumers" actually had a choice, but as we all know, competition is a misnomer. With acquisitions and mergers, the number of carriers continues to shrink. And while you might think you can get whatever phone company you want wherever you are, think again. My folks in North Carolina have one carrier available: Sprint. They can't switch phone companies. They use calling cards for long distance, so they don't have to pay Sprint's outrageous fees or deal with their crappy customer service.
Think cable's a good alternative? Bah! I have to use Optimuj Online through Cablevision, because I can't get Comcast (not that I really want to). There's no competition -- in my area its Cablevision or satellite, take your pick.
If you think the Bells and or cable giants stand to lose by restricting service or charging more to some comapnies than others, think again. The customer doesn't have much of a choice in most cases.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
There is a big difference between the roads (regulated by the State) and the information avenues (so far not really regulated all that much): one would be paternalism (a subsidized company: GM and a regulated road), one would be preferentialism.
For me, I don't see a problem with ISPs who give preferential treatment to traffic -- just as your grocery store gets paid for better shelf placement by hundreds of product manufacturers, I think the same should be true for any free market good. In the long run, the market will decide what it favors -- balanced traffic or privately subsidized traffic. As long as the government stays out of the decision and lets the market decide, I think it will work out just fine.
The big problem is where government is already sticking their nose in my business, such as where certain providers get monopoly status (within the village or the state). In this case, there is cause for concern, but that is already the problem with government regulation: it tends to create monopolies out of preferred enterprises and really hurts the competitive market. I'm already starting a village debate over getting rid of the Comcast franchise fee (which gets dropped into hands of my local government). In just 10 weeks I have about 60% of the village angry that they're paying US$4 a month to the village so Comcast can have a monopoly over cable services. We're lucky to have not 2 but 6 different broadband providers in our tiny village of 3000 people, so it isn't a huge concern, but US$48 a year is still a lot to pay so a monopoly can have access.
For those of you with villages that monopolize just one ISP, you need to do what I've done: tell your neighbors and everyone around you that the village needs to stop. There is no reason for monopolized communications anymore, and dumping the monopoly will give you much more choice. The entire state of Illinois is being harmed by the telephone unions who are harping about the idea of opening up the entire market to competition by many ISPs. This is where we have to be really scared, not if one company gives preferential treatment over the data streams.
If there is open competition for ISPs, you will get a choice of service. Maybe it is possible that one big ISP can give preferential bandwidth for a fee to someone, and this will bring your utility costs down. For some, this is a big benefit. I'd rather pay more for equal service, but it should not be mandated by law or by "right." For now, you're using their line, and if you complain that your tax dollars paid for the line to be installed, you should see already that the fault is with the monopolizing effect of telecom regulation, not with the competitive marketplace.
I do believe we'll see a bifurcated Internet of varying ISPS offering varying levels of service for varying prices. This is good, this is how competition figures out what the consumer wants and needs at what price. It also allows the market to change at whim, depending again on what users want and need. Maybe some people want to pay per kilobyte, maybe some people want their bandwidth to their preferred sites subsidized by the sites, who knows? Let the market decide.
Let the spoiled bastards do it. They will lose subscribers and create a whole new market for competitors that *aren't* assholes to provide us with better service.
is that gradually the internet will become TV. ISPs already provide massively asymmetric connection with far higher down than up speeds. The EULAs already prohibit you from serving content - eventually someone'll start enforcing that. They'll start refusing to relay traffic that might expose them to liability, such as p2p networks and usenet.
I also predict a return to BBS-like behavior based on wireless mesh networks, but that's another post.
If this comes to pass, you all owe me a dollar.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
Enough to trade listings for
free AT&T.
Do no evil! In
this case, prevent others from
being evil whores.
Google could pretty much
prevent this from happening
singlehandedly.
That brings up a point
If Google can do it, do
they have too much strength?
Back in the day when AOL was around (after the BBS died out 1996-2001) you could basically dial into anyone in the nation. I would call this the era of the Mom and Pop Isp. Any person with a T1 could make their own dial up service.
There would be many competitors in your area and if you didn't mind long distance charges you could literally pick any of the thousands mom and pop ISPs anywhere in the nation.
But with Broad band... All those places died out... The telco's and cable companies took over and the only way you could get broad band was to choose between two groups who aren't really competing against each other as much as the mom and pop's were.
So the service quality is down and prices stay high with the new cartels.
If only technology would allow the Mom and Pop ISP days, we'd be better off.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
"Again, both consumers, ... are already paying for bandwidth consumed."
Sorry, but your claim is not very forward thinking.
How much do you think it would cost to have a connection that could stream multiple HD television stations to multiple TVs in the household, because that's where we're headed. You're not going to get that for $40 per month. No way. Perhaps $70. Maybe, but then all the people who think $70 is too high then drop their service and you start paying $100.
The cold hard truth is that people need to decide how much bandwith they want to consume. Are you going to stream HD TV to all the TVs in your house? Pay up!
For those of us in countries with free speech clauses or updates to their constitutions (such as the US First Amendment - although IANA-consititutional-L :-) ), I believe this should constitute a violation of free speech rights in the same way that if a telco insisted in penalizing/discounting phone tolls depending on whether you were talking to a commercial partner of that telco. (Eg. You may not talk to their 1-900-Weather service, only ours, without penalty).
Who and why I establish IP connections to them is NONE of the last mile provder's business.
I think this is why we should be glad that there is competetion between the cable and phone companys. The day that a major ISP has a huge monopoly will be the day when we see this type of advertising. I guess if this ever becomes an issue you could always use a proxy on the other side of the firewall.
The cold hard truth is that people need to decide how much bandwith they want to consume. Are you going to stream HD TV to all the TVs in your house? Pay up!
Yea... that's...um... called the open market
I remember when I had first heard about aDSL... It was the coolest thing I had heard of, and they were charging 70$ for it.
This really brings out the lust for pure flaming in me...
As net users we pay to be connected to the internet and for the price we pay we get a speed and (in the case of us australia users) a download limit. And as companies groups like google and yahoo pay for their connections and data they send to the internet.
So both groups have paid their dues to those who control the networks...So all of this bullshit (and lets not beat around the bush here) is that network providers want to double dip without raising their existing connection fees. Now the problem with is is that companies will end up biding huge amounts just to use the net - imagine yahoo and google in a auction style fight to exist - the networks demandinig this are just creaming their pants at that thought.
To be honest as a net user paying a fair price for a service I think these people should just fuck right off and I cheer google and others for standing up to them and serving them one.
I ate your fish.
It's not web 2.0?
And I think that confuses your point.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Your analogy utterly fails to acknowlege reality.
To use the same terms as your analogy:
1: The Internet *was* an ocean that ISP's sold boating subscriptions
2: The ocean contains wealth the ISP's have yet to harvest. That wealth will be extracted by turning the ocean into lakes. Inside each ISP's lake they will sell you the "right" to visit other lakes and see/use other features in the lake. This is the natural outcome of privitazation and "market-based" services.
The other sh*tpipe into your home, cable/satellite TV is the proven model. The "internet" that you have grown familiar with, is but a distant memory.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
No matter what Congress decides. Wireless modems and cell phone modems, traffic that does not go thru cell towers or central servers unless there's no other way, and network traffic decentralized and out of the control of big bloodsuckers.
No backbone until it comes time to leave the local urban area - no local ISPs at all. Networking becomes networking, not nodeworking.
There would be no way to charge for local access at all, and long distance could only be charged by the backbone providers that your box actually used.
No, that's entirely too workable, too cheap, to FREE.
There will certainly be a law against it, if we tried it.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
...the blocking of specific port ranges is already common with ISPs.
:-)
But (still) nobody forces me to stay in this country
Google+Microsoft.
diogenes had no need for etorrents and idonkies when he masturbated in the marketplace.
Perhaps it is time to take back *our* Internet, and more importantly, *MY* Internet. While I am only a generic sysadmin, and not Vinton Cerf, I did help build the Internet in what it is today. I worked at ISPs, webshops, and software huts. I took care of Internet customers. I told everyone how useful the Internet was. I posted to Usenet, sent emails, published videos, toyed with mashups, and other things. I helped make the Internet work, even if only in a teensy tiny small way.
I want to continue to experiment with everything Internet. I want to post, and send email, and publish. A tiered Internet would not make that financially possible for me, if I have to have two or three colocations to publish my stuff. Or, by not being an approved corporation that is allowed to reach certain network endpoints, how do I reach my intended audience?
So I suggest that the Internet's users take back what is rightfully theirs, and ours, and more importantly to me, mine. We can build our own infrastructure, which some groups have already started doing. Go get some wireless gear. Learn about it. Go wardriving. Have fun at a Wi-Fi shootout. Know the geeks in the area. I think the best way to take back our Internet, is to own a larger piece of it. I think the only way this can happen, is if there are more of us interested in wireless networking -- enough of an interest to start taking this more seriously.
Boy do I wish I were a better salesman sometimes.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
We already get filtered, snooped, tracked and wiretapped.
So there is little worse than this but shutting the network down!
Freedom is an illusion.
Real freedom double so!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
... I meant Amazon+Microsoft, cause Amazon ditched Google for Microsoft searches...
If 4 weeks ago when I submitted info on this the US Slashdot users had been activated we might have been able to kill the actions of a number of Represenatives while these actions were still in committee. I do understand that at the time a number of people regarded this as just so much BS. Heck even in my LUG I had problems getting people to believe that Larry Lessig and others really were fighting this fight. Now however the fight will be much larger. I might also point out that it is something that will primarily affect the US. As actions of this nature are not allowed in the rest of the modern world. Further erroding national security and pushing the US further behind in it's attepmts to keep pace with the world technologically.
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
forget the blackjack!
*(:=
-bw
If legislation doesn't solve the lack of network neutrality (and not in poison-pill form, either), the people will solve it for them, probably by use of anonymizing distributed surfing apps like Tor which will render traffic types and sources/destinations indistinguishable from each other. That'd be Big Brother's big nightmare, so if the Homeland Security folks in Congress want to keep snooping on us, they'd better fix network neutrality without all this Broadcast Flag bullshit tagging along.
As always with infrastructure, it's basically absurd for it to be in private hands or, at best, it's not at all clear whether the advantages of what little competition there is oughtweigh the disadvantages of the profit motive.
So, either renationalise the telcos (which has its problems, but at least the government can't absolve itself of responsibility), or tell them pretty clearly what they can and can't do. Given that lobbyists pay for the legislation of their choice, the latter option might not be so great.
I can't believe people are buying in to this garbage.
What we, the infrastructure providers want to be able to do is sell QOS. The product you by mfrom my via cable modem is best effort. period. If you want to use vonage, knock yourself out. if your neighbor uses bittorrent and eats yoru bandwidth, not my problem. I could sell you a qos upgrade for your voip app tat would but your ip trafic above best effort. Of course, Vonage started screaming "OH MY GOD! THEY'LL MAKE MONEY OFF OUR PRODUCT! and has started all of this bull shit about us blocking the internet.
We have the technology to make any traffic better. if you want to pay for it, I'll sell it to you.. and the hell with Vonage crying about it. As i've said a hundred times before.. all they have to do is build their own network and it isn't an issue. Instead, they want to tell me how I should treat their traffic on my network.
It seems like there are suddenly a lot of lawyers writing about the future of the Internet. So we've gone from ambulance chasing to Internet chasing?
Not only is this comment trolling for the ATT and cable companies, taking us for idiots, but I am highly suspicious of anyone having modded this insightful. When something threatening the future of the Internet as we know it is before the Congress, we need all the lawyers we can gather, especially when they are professors at Columbia.
Um, I am paying (or not paying) for my bandwidth (lack of). I pay for the slowest DSL line available to save money. No streaming HDTV for me, I'll have to bittorent it at 1/4 real time. No problem as long as I don't want to watch more that 6 hours of HDTV a day.
Verizon will gladly sell me more bandwidth and that's ok. Just don't make hidden deals with shadowy players in smoke filled backrooms that make some packets cross the network slower than others.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
So, it's basically taxpayer-funded one way or another. All infrastructure is.
My book, podcast
I wouldn't have a problem with a tiered level of service based on how much one was willing to pay for that service. Isn't it capitolism that embraces this notion? Would your packets riding in a big pipe be worth more to you if your company or shareholders profits depend on it? I also think that consumers disagreeing, with big enough numbers or backing, would quash this if it wasn't fair over time and with dollars. Just my ignorant thoughts.
What you and the jokers who modded you insightful fail to recognize is that is the mantra that all successful bandwidth/wire providers live by:
"Bandwidth is a service."
You can reasonably charge some customers more than some smaller bandwidth consumer and they will pay it. If they don't pay then maybe their service suffers a little until the big-bandwidth consumer sees the light and agrees to pay a little more. You have to have money to pay for the bandwidth provider's obscene CEO compensation package right?
If this sounds a little like organized crime's "security service" in some neighborhoods, then it should. I'd say the difference is one is not illegal.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
They're shooting themselves in the foot by blocking P2P - without it, I'd get basic 512k DSL, with it I'm going for the premium 12 megabit plan and they get bigger profits.
Of course, I appreciate that their ideal user is one who gets the premium plan and never uses it... but they do OK financially and get some good will by meeting the customer half-way, don't they?
Rep. Ed Markey has introduced some legislation for net neutrality. Write your congressman or something about this.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
This issue must be raised in every town hall across the country where the telecoms are applying for new video over IP cable TV franchises.
If a telecom has applied for a franchise in your town the do this:
Show up at the local council meeting and ask your local government to ask the telecoms what their position is on keeping the internet a level playing field?
This issue needs to work from the local governments up; not from the federal level down. The telecom's money is useless at the local level.
Raising the question of Net Neutrality at the local level will, at the very least, set precedent that this question belongs on the table. Think of what will happen if some small town actually stands up and says: We will not grant you permission to operate a cable TV franchise in our town because we don't like your future plans for the internet.
You need to get involved locally to push this issue forward.
Please see what I am doing in my town, Red Bank NJ, to see how raising these questions can help. Please visit my simple blog at: http://www.redbanktv.org/
-- Tom
eg, richard stallman carries you to his bed and spanks you for buying the wrong graphics card while linus torvalds sings the free software song in the closet
Private corporations, like AT&T, have the right to toss packets on their network however they see fit. If you don't like it, you're free to go access someone else's network who uses rules more to your liking. There is no requirement that they be "neutral" any more than there is a requirement that I must also allow people to put signs in my front-yard who support the war instead of oppose it.
I-95 isn't a private entity, it's a government funded entity, which means the Department of Transportation needs to be neutral.
......to go back to newspapers and tv?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
On the most recent This Week in Tech, it was mentioned that YouTube is burning a million dollars a month in bandwidth fees (yes, a million). My question is, who are they paying that money to? I'm assuming it's the very same telco that is claiming that they're not making any money off of YouTube...
This guy's the limit!
It was a nice try at a FP! biiiatch
The 'problem' here is only one in the US. This is what the companies in the US want to do. And this is what the people YOU voted in are going to let them do. So STFU and educate yourself to who is voting for these things in YOUR name.
If your not turned on to politics, politics will turn on you.
Which is why the peering agreements exist - the concept being that V-S traffic @ V-S rate is close to equal to S-V traffic @ S-V rate.
Privately between V and S, the payment balances out to an accounting issue rather than a cash transaction.
In the ideal world I've just outlined, everyone gets paid the correct amounts over time - Google pays Verizon, Verizon pays Sprint, Sprint pays AOL. On the request path, you've paid AOL, who pay Sprint, who pay Verizon. All the middle men get enough of a cut from the payment for them to carry on playing the game.
I don't understand (nor will I ever, I suspect) why the people in the middle want to get more of a cut of the cashflow, without actually doing any extra work. All the parties connected to their networks directly are being charged a (presumably reasonable) fee for doing so, and their connections to other parties cost them a (again, presumably reasonable) fee to stay established.
I was wondering if I am being accurate in comparing what this divvying of the already user subsidised, almost like bandwidth allocation all over again sorta, going over our heads and splitting hairs over the major bottlenecks of popular traffic is going to accomplish.... Won't this have the affect of altering our perception of network availability to manipulatively shift traffic to or away from sources of preffered information and undoing what google did when they geuinely weighted their search results so you no longer had to sift through pages of search engine sponsored advertisers to get to the results you were looking for. I mean, this is the same thing right? I do not want to go back to the hellnet where you have to constantly outwit search engines and change your operating system, etc. to reclaim relevancy with your queries. The problem I see now, is that it's not something that can be easily taken back by users (like old google).
Users got together and created a .coop? I won't pretend that I'm an expert in any of this, but if such an idea were at all feasible, wouldn't it make sense to form a Cooperative whose express purpose is that of an ISP?
In the short term, such an effort could provide a collective bargaining scheme for dealing with ISP's. In the long term, perhaps it would be able to route through its own hardware?
This is all wild speculation, but I leave it to the /. crowd to argue over the feasibility.
Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. - John 14:6 NLT
Common carrier status, in the telco world, affords some protections to carriers regarding the use of their networks. Carriers can not be held responsible for the content that crosses their networks, but in exchange, they must carry each other's content.
Law makers should allow carriers to decide if they want to be "net neutral". After all, businesses don't like to be told what to do, so let businesses decide.
Lawmakers should offer a choice to carriers:
1. Claim common carrier status, and carry all traffic equally.
2. Refuse common carrier status, carry any traffic you like, in any manner you choose, - but be held responsible for all illegal traffic and use of the network.
You can't have it both ways. You can't pick and choose the data that crosses your network, but claim you know nothing about the data.
-ted
Just curious. How many high-speed low-latency connectivity providers can you choose from where you live? More than two?
Cheap home broadband, only three choices (possibly four, if the ISP about a mile away offers point-to-point wireless links, but I've never looked into that).
And no, I don't live in big city... Not the middle of nowhere, either, but the suburbs of a fairly small city (~30k people).
But I see your point. Keep in mind, however, that cellular carriers already have the ability to offer decent internet connections (not quite broadband quality, and certainly not cheap, but a hell of a lot faster than dialup). Within a few years I fully expect them to make a move to try to eradicate the dialup ISP market (would I drop down to a 768k connection for $20/mo on top of my normal cell bill, if it didn't count against my minutes? Hell yeah!)
Add in the likelyhood of wide-area broadband wireless technologies such as 802.16/802.20 maturing in the next few years, and we could realistically see "broadband" enter the same realm of consumer-benefitting ISP competition as the glory-days of the dialip ISP back in the late-80's/early-90's. $9.99/mo unlimited at up to 10Mbit? It'll happen, eventually.
So if AT&T (or any other provider) plans to abuse its current position as having near-monopoly control within given regions (usually half of the phone/cable duopoly), they'd better do it soon, because unhappy customers jump ship the first chance they get.
Comparing degradation to an Interstate is the wrong way to go. AT&T is not a government entity.
What we should be focusing on:
- Bandwidth is already paid for. The consumer and producer pay their respective Internet Service Providers. This has already been discussed above.
- AT&T (and other telephone companies) get tax breaks, tax incentives, and right-of-way because they are common-carrier and a utility. If AT&T wants to start degrading service to individuals unless a fee is paid, then AT&T should lose all its perqs granted by government. They no longer are willing to provide service to everyone, only a select few. Getting tax breaks and right-of-way on top of charging an extra fee is just fleecing the taxpayer -- the perqs are no longer necessary. The subsidies should stop, and the playing field levelled.
What will happen (network-wise) eventually:
Level3 (and all the other non-telephone companies) will stop peering with AT&T networks because there will no longer be any benefit to Level3. AT&T will soon be isolated, unless they stop degradation.
To all those who don't understand network peering, it is essentially a *free* service large networks undertake to exchange traffic. Of course, this only works when both sides benefit somewhat equally. When Level3 starts taking on extra traffic from AT&T customers and AT&T is taking on less traffic from Level3, do you think Level3 will not care? Of course they will.
Soon, we'll see the Bells' networks turn into notworks. And the Internet will chug right along without them.
However, it wouldn't be unusual for the government to step in and regulate something like this. I think they should too--normally I am all about letting the free market do it's work, but in this case I don't think the market would correct the problem. The only internet provider available to me is Adelphia--I can't even get DSL. This is true in a lot of places. And in most places, there are only 2 or 3 internet providers (I'm excluding dial-up), and I could easily imagine both or all three service providers doing the same thing if this is allowed. And if that happened, how would the market correct that? We'd have to boycot the internet.
I think you're mistaken.
:o)
Red is a colour, apples are fruit (or possibly a brand of computer.
First, the vast majority of people do not have HDTVs, nor will they in the next five years. Second, the vast majority of people do not stream their TV; they get it from satellite or cable.
The idea of doing an individual stream for each TV for each station is *IDIOTIC*. You would honestly have to be stupid to do that. If some VC was silly enough to give you money for that, your business would go under anyway.
TV over the Internet works for either small numbers of users or if you run it multicast. ISPs do not want to deal with multicast, and neither do most other people, as nifty as the concept is.
So in short, it will cost about $45 a month to stream HD TV to all the TVs in the average house. Coincidentally, this is the same price as for a cable or satellite TV hookup.
I think some people are confused about net neutrality verses QOS (You really believe this FUD). We offer different connections. We generally don't charge for QOS but a better connection will cost more, e.g. more bandwidth, PVC DSL vs ADSL, etc. In our lit buildings we sometimes charge extra if the customer wants to host a website because that can consume significant bandwidth. What we don't do is tell them that certain sites they visit will have priority over others. We provide the bandwidth and the customer chooses what they want to do with it. This is drastically different than charging sites for preferential treatment by those visiting them. This would be similar to saying that we're going to charge you to make a phone call AND charge the receiver of the call. Hmmm, K-mart customers will be able to call and have a clear phone call but Walmart customers can expect choppy calls because they didn't pay enough to Verizon.
Stop promoting an insecure operating system just because it aligns with your left wing communist ideals.
That's a new one. I've heard people call thing left-wing to justify hating them, but saying that and OS has a political preference is something that is unprecedented to me. You also seem like one of those people that would be absolutely baffled to hear that communism and government are mutually exclusive.
Google only makes 7-8 billion in revenue..
Oh, what a sad world! Vast sums are considered mere trifles.
Only through such a perspective may the 'tiered internet' endeavor to exist.
We accept your offer...the internet will remain free for the next 10 years...then it is OURS!!!
Sincerely,
The Corporate Powers that be
how many times do we have to take a brick to your stupid skull and point out yet again how little choice there is in most broadband service areas.
1) A giant virus/spyware outbreak/whatever sweeps the Internet.
2) In response, a proposal is brought before Congress that Internet use in the US be 'licensed', much like car use. Only users of certain DRM-restricted, closed-source software will be allowed on the Internet. You will have a 'free choice' of OS between any of the OSes made compatible with the 'trusted computing' system implemented: The latest Windows home OS (e.g. XP), the latest Windows server OS (e.g. Windows 2003), and (via a Windows Update or CD-applied patch) the second-latest Windows home OS. (e.g. Win2K). Mac users will be outraged, but Apple (who by that point will be partially owned by Dell and/or HPaq) will quickly announce that support is coming soon, just in time for all the Internet infrastructure in the US to be closed to "non-trusted" systems.
3) Linux and all other 'free software' systems thus become illegal (if not downright impossible) to use on the Internet. Also, everyone is forced (even more than they are now) to keep on the upgrade cycle, to keep current with the 'trusted computing' systems as they evolve.
4) Profit!
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
you should quit posting
We pay for the internet infrastructure as well. That's my backyard thier cable is draped across. There are "infrastructure" charges on my phone bill. Those are perfectly good streets that are getting dug up. My neighbor down the street has a DSLAM parked on the sidewalk in his front yard and he can't do anything about it.
There's a whole lot of someone else's property the telecoms get to use for free.
... have commented that consumers will drop their ISPs if they throttle network connection, and as such this type of scheme will not work. I disagree. Most people, i think, won't bother with this for the same reason that they still use Windows: They don't care. They don't read the fine print and they don't care. If their ISP tells them that they can only access certain sites (assuming they even notice the difference) then they will just accept that as fact just like they believe it when Microsoft says that "XP is secure," "You have to reboot your computer every couple of days," or "over time, hard drives become fragmented and you need to defrag it." Just like Microsoft does not say "or software fragments hard drives," ISPs will not say "we slow access to some sites;" they will say "some sites are slower than others," and people won't care why. Mark my words: this will become the norm, carriers will find a way to make money from it, and we will all pay, and probably not even notice it.
Absolutely. Though the telcoms have to pay the government for land that the government buys as right-of-way for public infrastructure, that just comes out of our pockets anyway (like the infrastructure charge on your phone bill). The thing is, though, that your neighbor doesn't own the land the sidewalk is on, nor the sidewalk itself. He may choose to maintain it, but likely that's the property of the municipality or state, depending on what kind of road he's on. IIRC, telcos do get assessed for use of public lands -- but I'm sure it's offset by tax breaks.
And as you bring up, there are all the other intangible costs, like the nuisance of telephone/cable wires on your property.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
About the "FrenchNet".
Doesn't mean that it won't ever have some value to me in the future, but for now France might just disappear and, if I'm bored at that moment, I might notice the whooshing sound of the atmosphere filling a vacuum.
Other than that, I-XX already has 'special' lanes for cars with more than one person inside, motorcycles, HOV and whatever, and they are a disastrous economic and environmental failure.
Face it, the 'net used to be segmented and there were vast telephone nets of BBXs, ham radio operators, universities, and the like that could still carry your message around the world. Was it as efficient as the 'net today? No, and that is the reason for the 'net today. There was a demand and the suppliers sought profit and so implemented the 'net. If the demand still exists, there will be ISPs and other carriers that will provide for it even as AOL, CompuServe, Google, M$, et al cater to their own audiences.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Write to your senator complaining about this. (This of course assumes you can claim to be a voting US citizen.)
Think Deeply.
If he was trying to make an "apple and oranges" type comparison, he should have picked two things that were a bit more different than "apples" and "red".
"Apples" and "blue" would have been better. Or anything non-red and "red".
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
If only you were in charge of setting prices on everything, we could replicate the centrally controlled bliss that was the Soviet Union. Alas, this society is capitalist, and people make profits. For shame, really. No one should be rewarded more than a reasonably decided forcefully imposed amount.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
The telecoms love to play this off as a Regulation vs Non-Regulation issue but they don't really care about that; they just want what's best for them.
The telecoms don't want regulation when it comes to Net Neutrality but as soon as a town says they want to run a municipal WiFi then they run straight to their State or Federal lobbyist to push for regulation against muni-WiFi's
Don't be dragged into a Free Market vs. Too Much Regulation argument. The telecom's don't care about that and you shouldn't either. These issues are purely about what's best for the future of the internet.
-- Tom
The parent poster is exactly right. These freaking scumbags all go to same clubs, the same expensive vacation spots, they belong to the same organizations and they DO compete for no reason other than establishing dominance in the their own primate group.
"Hey Ted, my company pulled down a new record in profits last year! Whoo-hoo! What can YOU tell me? Catch up, buddy!"
"Hey, buzz off Bill, we'll get there; I've got our Best People working on that right now."
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
It's this way because the corporations have taken over our country. The technology is there to let people get broadband from anybody they want, but the large corporations whine about the money the money the money. And there's a small degree of truth to their point; why should they spend the millions of dollars to build out broadband to these different areas if someone else can then waltz in and start selling that broadband? But, at least with Qwest DSL I can have any ISP I want, I just pay them for the broadband itself.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
For example in Batavia IL, millions of dollars were spent on a smear campaign to defeat a grassroots effort to build a fast municipality owned fiber network. Millions of dollars that could have been spent providing better services to consumers instead of buying politicians. How unAmerican is that? Blocking someone like me from rolling up my sleeves and doing it myself?!
Um. No, that's not what blocking municipal networks is about. No law says that you, Joe Anonymous Coward, cannot provide your neighbors a free or nonprofit wireless Internet service. What has been blocked in many places is municipal-owned communications service. And there's an argument to be made there, which is: it would take tax money from all for the benefit of a subset of taxpayers. In most places it'd take a lot of tax money and benefit a tiny set of consumers. That sounds fine if you're one of the ones who benefits, but that benefit to you is subsidized by the taxes of those who cannot take advantage of it. And if you were to somehow limit the tax increase to those who benefit from it, you've just provided a market service. The free market already knows how to do that and usually knows how to do it better than governments.
There's precedent for such schemes, but a) it's usually on a much larger scale, and b) it usually has significant indirect benefits to everyone taxed whether they benefit directly or not. You can look at projects like the DC Metro (often cost-justified by claiming it saves area drivers a significant amount of traffic-induced gas consumption, but I have no idea if that's actually true), or the Rural Electrification project started during the FDR administration (bringing power and phones to rural farms enables them to serve their customers -- i.e. the entire country -- better and cheaper, at least in theory).
A major problem with all these idealistic free-wireless-everywhere projects is that it doesn't scale very well. There's a limited number of channels -- most site surveys assume you can get reliable service only with a five-channel separation between access points. That typically means using channels 1, 6 and 11 (in the US), with 3 or 4 and 8 or 9 as backup if those are too congested. So a municipal WiFi scheme amounts to the municipality saying "We are going to impose ourselves on this chunk of spectrum, making it less reliable for others to use besides ourselves." This makes wireless less attractive to the free market, because who knows when some municipality will step in and try to steal your spectrum out from under you? It reduces one incentive for the free market to provide a service, which means you can end up at the mercy of a municipal network with no incentive to provide a reliable service at all.
Then on the other hand, you've got them pushing to tear down any and all regulation that are pro-consumer. IE - the removal of network neutrality provisions that allow you and me to innovate and compete on a *fair and level* playing field.
Let's be clear. Currently, no such provisions exist that apply to the Internet. The telcos/etc. are trying to block them from being imposed in the first place.
-- Old Man Kensey
a Texan, with a marvelous record of supporting what's right for the people, Rep. Joe Barton?
In which case, why do I feel worried?
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
So if ISPs limit bandwidth to who pays for access, will ISPs ALSO be responsible limiting unwanted network traffic like Email SPAM and spyware?
These are that reasons that I subscribe to an independent ISP right _now_. Because big ISPs already limit people's choices. For example, some block incoming or outgoing ports or services. Forget that crap!
Subscribe to an independent ISP now. Prevent consolidation and maintain competition.
Yup. In California, the sidewalk is on private property, but is under "eavesment." As is the little strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street, where the DSLAM was. I really dont like the power line eavesments. My property is only 75' wide, but 25' of it is eavements.
It's the same with the airwaves. It's galling that the major networks charge political candidates for airtime, for instance. We let these frequencies go at a (relative) song to get a new market going, and this is the price we pay.
It would be nice if the airwaves and fiber worked like I-95 -- owned and maintained by the gubmint, or regulated like a utility (used to be). But would we have the same innovation in that case?
Maybe shorter leases (leashes!) are the answer?
n/t
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
There is no true future of the 'internet'.
For the average person it will just morph into some bastardized version of cable tv, with all the commercials and 'recording restrictions' and external content control.
For the big corporation it will be a new tool to invade our homes and coerce consumers into parting with their money, on a monthly basis.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
They should stop discriminating based on protocol, destination or content and simply change the pricing model.
Basicly, instead of offering "unlimited"* internet (with all these strings attached), change to a sane pricing model.
Basicly, you get x gb per month for your monthly fee.
Then, if you go over that, you have to pay extra $x per gb.
Most people (i.e. anyone who doesnt download large movie files or pirate warez ISOz etc) wont care (as long as the initial gb amount is reasonable). The high bandwidth users will be paying for their usage.
That way, they dont discriminate against content or protocols, only against bandwidth use (so the guy downloading 10gb per month of linux ISOs over HTTP and FTP pays extra just like the guy downloading 10gb per month of TV and movies over BitTorrent and the guy downloading 10gb per month of xbox ISOz over emule.
The other option is to have the same initial gb amount but instead of charging extra, throttle the customer back to dialup speeds for the rest of the month (lots of ISPs in australia do that)
Sasktel, my ISP, is clean. No throttling, no blocking, etc. Probably the only one that isn't.
Speaking of reality, here's how prioritization is likely to go:
ISP sells higher tier of service to corporation A, so content to and from their sites gets to the endpoints more quickly.
As with any such contract, corporation A also include an SLA in the purchase, with performance measures. That SLA, like most, will have rebate clauses, just like they do now.
However, the ISP can't speak for all the other ISPs, in particular the ones at the edges. Since corporation A most likely is buying its internet connection from a backbone provider, the higher tier of service ends up making a little bit of difference, but not much due to the fact that QOS has to be coherently configured end to end to make a consistant difference.
Performance metrics for improved service are, predictably, not met. Corporation A realizes it has paid for nothing, and has been had by its ISP. Corporation A begins enforcing rebate clauses. ISP gets less for its 'tier' of service than it hoped, if anything at all.
If there's a dose of reality, its that residential users never had impact in the first place, and that prioritization will just set backbone providers at each other's throats more than they are now.
As for the Internet ocean analogy, it holds accurate until each and every ISP on the Internet sets up filtering and QOS the same - that's just the nature of QOS. Until then, it may as well be an ocean from the point of view of ISPs trying to sell traffic prioritization. Missing from the discussion is an understanding of how QOS works.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
In NJ, they dpn't even bother with easements. Typically the municipality or state will own all the property with a certain distance from the median of the road, which depends on the size and classification of the road. When they widen the road, eminent domain is used and a 'fair price' is paid for the lost property... but good luck collecting that. And forget about collecting the loss in property value due to a home now sitting right next to a four-lane highway (when it had previously been set back a bit from a fairly busy country road).
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
So what? It's still not a fucking excuse to extort money from third-party websites!
Either the "consumer" (not third party) is going to have to suck it up and fork over the $100/month for his high-definition pablum, or the ISP is just going to have to realize that it doesn't make economic sense to provide the service. It is not a valid option for the ISP to make all competitors pay what is effectively Mafia-style "protection money" when they're already paying for their own connection, and would be blatantly illegal if the Bush Administration's Department of Justice wasn't fucking asleep at the wheel!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
What are you talking about? What the parent was saying is that everyone connecting to the Internet -- on both sides of the connection -- pay for the bandwidth that they consume. People or organizations that use more bandwith pay more in proportion, and there's nothing wrong with that.
What is wrong is that some ISPs now want to serve their own content in preference to their competitor's content, which is like your Mafia analogy. In fact, what it's exactly equivalent to would be a Mob-connected delivery restaraunt forcing all their competitors' drivers to pay an extra "tax" to use the roads, or something like that.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I don't work for Rogers (anymore) but this is my understanding:
Rogers doesn't do packet inspection, they do bandwidth shaping based on the connection patterns / ports of your computer.
Also note that they don't block the VoIP port because many services including Vonage (I believe) use that port; it would be a lot of angry customers if they throttled it. Rogers Home Phone runs either with a Sprint/Call-Net local loop or on a seperate Rogers Hybrid Fibre/Coaxial VLAN with a separate battery-backed up telephony modem, so it's completely fault tolerant to Rogers Hi Speed Internet.
I recall Rogers claiming that something obscene like 45-60%+ of all Rogers Hi-Speed Traffic was BitTorrent through 2005, which is what led to these measures in late 2005. I don't like them either, frankly, and wish at least they would provide options where we can pay for increased quality of service instead of resorting to workarounds. If they block the VOIP workaround port (which always works fine for me), they will likely lose a number of multi-product subscribers fed up with the restriction, which Bell Sympatico doesn't (yet) have.
-Stu