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Senators, ISPs, and Network Neutrality

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the my-oh-my dept.

Polarism submitted a good article about net neutrality that is currently running on Ars. It's a good explanation of where the pieces of the problem are, the government issues, the industry issues, etc. Worth a read.

4 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. Why the red herring? by XorNand · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Over and over again the anti-net neutrallity rant is based on the presumption that web site operators don't already pay for bandwidth. I don't understand why this continues? While most people don't know the nuiances of negotiating a high-dollar agreement with a carrier, there are a great many people out there who pay $10-50/mo for simple web hosting. Surely these people know that both ends of a HTTP connection are already paying. I'd like to know if this is an intentional distortion perpetuated by the telecoms, or if this is an honest misunderstanding?

    --
    Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
    1. Re:Why the red herring? by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Lets use an example. I'm looking at Toogle from the east coast. My ISP is Comcast, and (for sake of argument, I have no idea who it really is) Toogle is hosted on a west coast provider, say, Covad. My HTTP request is sent from my system to my ISP's node. The ISP's node then routes the packet to it's next hop, which might be on an AT&T network. The AT&T node then routes the packet to another node, which might be in a completely different network, and so on and so forth, until the packet reaches Covad. The response is performed in much the same way, until it reaches my system. Now, yes, both Comcast and Covad are paid for this transaction, from me in my ISP contract, and from Toogle in the hosting agreement. AT&T's complaint is that they have to carry this traffic for free across their network, and get nothing from this particular transaction.


      But Comcast and Covad are paying for their upstream connections to AT&T. Do you think Comcast and Covad connect to the Internet for free? Everybody who connects pays their upstream provider. It's not like either Comcast or Covad are one of the big backbone providers.
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    2. Re:Why the red herring? by mkw87 · · Score: 5, Funny
      Anyone back me up on this?

      Our president probably would.

      --
      Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling a pig in mud. Soon, you realize the pig is dirty, and he likes it.
  2. Re:Lack of basic understanding by uniqueCondition · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Offered at a loss

    DSL/cable isn't being offered at a loss. This is simply untrue! Go check out the financial statements of your local exchange carrier (LEC) http://www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml

    Lots of them make huge coin and are paying out big dividends.

    Forget the huge windfall later, most assume that data will eventually be commoditized in the way voice was (i.e., things will get worse).

    --
    "The more you know, the less sure you are." - Voltaire