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Net Neutrality a Threat to Online OSes?
tomtechie writes "OSWeekly.com talks about net neutrality and how it would impact the world of operating systems, both online and offline. The author states, 'I know of a couple of people who support the legislation despite the fact that it could possibly enable ISPs to restrict access for those who are not willing to pay a premium fee for broader access. They have a strong belief that it is needed in order to make sure that ISPs have the tools and funds to expand their already overtaxed networks. Keeping in line with their belief system, this allows ISPs to make sure that developing connectivity can in fact, keep up with the explosive demand for broadband in more places. In other words, it allows for fatter pipes.'"
In other words, it allows for fatter pipes.
Agreed! It's always good to let private industry widen up those tubes!
I'll be honest, we're throwing science against the wall to see what sticks. -Cave Johnson
I wonder where an online OS fits between the hourses and lottery balls flushing Ted Steven's pipes. (Last night's Daily Show on Net Neutrality)
If you can't grow your broadband, get a loan. If you can't get it, don't expand. If you can't host a service, don't host it. Simple as that.
ISPs don't host mirrors of popular free content out of generosity or because they are such open source fanatics, they do it so you suck that 6+gig image from their local mirror (i.e. only generate traffic inside their net, which they can charge you for but costs them zip) instead of leeching it from overseas (which costs them as well as you).
Don't fall for that, please.
As for "online OS", could anyone tell me the benefit of having even less control over the OS I'm running?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
for them to stuff our money into. Stop paying the CEO's 400million a year and put some of the cash into the pipes if they're not good enugh. Don't pull it out of my pocket.
He whom you called four-eyes yesterday, you call Sir tomorrow.
OSWeekly.com talks about net neutrality and how it would impact the world of operating systems, both online and offline
First thought about that was WTF - how would this impact an offline system? Scanned the article and there isn't any mention of it.
Any takers, anyone?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Two Hundred Billion Dollars were set aside for exactly this purpose. To charge people TWICE is just a way of getting more money.
Come on. Where did the money go?!
AccountKiller
If the those that own the infrastructure are loosing money or not making enough to maintain and improve the systems then they should just charge more. And if JQPublic cannot afford it then too bad. Access to the "Internet" is not a right. It is a nice to have and someone has to pay for it.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
If the money I pay to send/receive my bits is not enough to fund the network, then charge me more for my bits. That's fair, and has the added benefit of not destroying the very soul of the Internet.
How come no ISP rep can discuss (i.e. oppose) net neutrality without talking about "incentivizing" the creation of higher-capacity networks. 1) Damn, "incentivize" is an annoying word. 2) The incentive to build high-capacity networks is the profit you will get when customers subscribe to your service.
Car analogy time! Does GM require that the automobile-production needs to be "incentivized"?
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
You don't have to be a senator to know that the internet is, in fact, a series of tubes.
It's not as if it is impractical to deploy enough capacity to keep the networks from being "Overtaxed" but of course the greedy telcos want to make everyone (falsely) believe that that they will be driven out of business if they actually spend some cash building out their infrastructure.
Isn't one of the fundamental principals of capitalism that the strongest companies will survive? In other words, for a company to be strong, it needs to invest in itself to give itself a competitive advantage over others? To me, it seems like "fattening the pipes" is just something else that needs to be a corporate investment. The telcos/ISPs/whatever seem to be saying "pay up or we won't invest in making things better".
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I just can't wrap my head around why ISP's need a NEW chargable interaction. If the ISP needs more money to improve their pipes, either raise the prices for your customers or gain more customers.
What's so hard about that? If Google's traffic is bogging your network, raise the price on your contract with Google. They will either pay the price, so you can expand, or they will fire up the dark net, opening tons of your pipe back up.
The back bone carriers increase rates for the high tier ISPs, they raise rates for the low teir ISPs, they raise rates for what the consumer's pay. Viola! The pipe bilders get more money, the consumers and businesses still pay for them, and no one gets censored.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
It would never happen that way, because as the last page states Google are the "server masters" and they cannot to evil, so I ask you, how can they "run" this Broadband-OS when it would be evil to do so? That's right, they wouldn't be able to, it goes against their programming.
Also, if something like that did start to happen, Google would most likely start to be an ISP which doesn't restrict things... watch out Verizon.
One last thing, I wonder how this would affect me, being as I am Canadian; or even anyone else in the world.
--Valthan
Hey Google isn't a frickin truck with frickin series of tubes attached to its head..
"You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
When it talks about legislation it does not differentiate between legislation for Net Neutrality (Which we need) and legislation which would specifically allow extortionary tactics to be used by the telcos (which we need like a kick in the face).
The issue isn't the pipes.
It's the money.
We all know traffic shaping is going on - and that's fine and dandy so long as it's mild in degree and hard to show, and as long as it's being done to preserve quality of service.
The issue is that some jerk ISP's want people to pay them money for preferential shaping, which is basically blackmail, in my eyes.
Really? It says NOTHING about the total connectivity, just about how they want to carve up what conectiviy there is. In fact, it seems likely to discourage growth of capacity; if the premium services are running tight, they can just downgrade the "normal" services a bit more.
Net Neutrality is not a business concept, it's based on a theory in computer science that the most efficient and cheapest networks are those based on the principle that protocol operations (i.e. TCP/IP) should occur at the end-points of the network.
See "End-to-end arguments in system design" by Jerome H. Saltzer, David P. Reed, and David D. Clark:
This principle was used by DARPA when it worked on Internet design and it's the reason TCP/IP communications have experienced massive growth.
It's a principle supported by almost everyone except the backbone owners. Verizon's CEO has said many times that the pipes belong to him and if you're going to make a profit off them then he wants a cut too (referring to Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, et al who oppose Net Neut).
An example of a non-net-neut service is a cell-phone. I'm no fan of government regulation, but I don't want my ISP bill to start looking like my cell-phone bill.
I also don't understand why people can't realize that "net neutrality" means preserving the existing internet. It's all about equality of packets. Everything else on the subject is FUD. Light the dark fiber or charge a proper fee base on bytes-per-second (megabytes per month doesn't control tube-clogging, it's more like a truck model). We're really supposed to believe Google doesn't pay for all the video they're transmitting? Hah.
(By the way, OSWeekly could unclog the tubes with a better web design. One sentence per page to maximize ad loads is ridiculous and I sure stopped reading by the third page.)
Glancing at the page, my eyes combined "Net Neutrality" with "Online OSes" on the next line and reported "Net Neuroses" to my brain.
I think that means something, but I'm not quite sure what.
This is as ridiculous as saying that we won't be able to go buy milk from stores if we have laws against extortion.
Unfortunately for Ted Stevens' tubes, it doesn't work that way. Right now the broadband providers have a motivation to create larger amounts of generally available bandwidth. What would happen under a regime that doesn't include net neutrality is that they'd make more money, but there's no reason to believe they'll invest that money in bigger pipes on the consumer end.
Right now, how does a broadband provider get more money from a customer? Offering more bandwidth or providing additional services like VOIP, IPTV, etc. But if net neutrality isn't protected, then that's no longer where they make their money. They will make their money in creating tiered services and charing external providers to get different levels of service through their network. So rather than competing for your dollar, they'll be competing for Google's dollar, or simply pricing superior service in such a way as to eliminate competition for those services mentioned above.
As soon as subscribers become nothing more than a pool of consumers for broadband providers to sell to service providers, bandwidth will stop increasing. What incentive would they have to offer 10Mbps to you if 5 is sufficient to provide the services they want to offer? They'll be investing in equipment to tier their network services, not in putting fiber into your house.
Furthermore, consumers will be paying for this tiering through more expensive services. The bandwidth providers will either charge too high of a fee to use their tiered service and force out competition or they'll simply charge a fee to the competitors just below the level that forces them out and the consumer will pay for it in higher subscription fees and more ads. So what you'll see if your monthly bill will slowly creep up due to lack of local competition, but your bandwidth will not increase significantly and your overall cost for network based services will go up.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
It says the strongest companies will survive, but strongest is just defined as richest. It's kind of like how evolution says that the "fittest" survive, but fit doesn't mean good, it just means the ones most likely to pass on their genes. Similarly capitalism ultimately rewards only those companies who do whatever it takes to fatten their bankrolls optimally, even if from an objective perspective those companies don't look very healthy or aren't making very good products. Like, for example, if there's a company that has a choice between increasing their profits by making a better product or increasing their profits by bullying the government to give them lots of money, and it's cheaper to do the second for a greater payoff, then capitalism ultimately rewards the company who will do that.
Competition over limited resources is where advances are made. Make it faster, cheaper, better - catch the market from the competitor. Easy money is just that - easy money. When MS "won" the first browser war, did it continue improving it's browser? It had corned the market after all and was rich and fat because of it. But - in spite of easy money, it had no reason to continue developing IE. It was done. Only when Firefox stepped up the competition did MS start developing IE again!
When these guys start charging more for our broadband, our services will *not* get better. They will simply get fatter and richer. They'll have less reason to innovate and compete because they have legeslative protection on the outragious fees they'll be charging their captive consumer-base. This isn't just about net neutrality - but net quality! Currently, they have to compete for every nickel and dime they get. Soon tho, they'll be able to sit back for every dollar and c-note they get. Why spend more money? They already have their basic infrastructure in place and there's lotsa dark-cable out there and their consumers are relatively happy with anything faster than dailup. You'll see *some* gimics and gizmos coming in the future - there's still *some* competition - but all in all, they'll just get fatter without really earning their wages.
This is the difference between "Free" USA and "Communist" Europe I guess...
In europe, Internet access is already 5x faster for easily half the price. In most of western europe, you can get a 20Mbps pipe in your house to deliver internet, tv (over IP) and phone (VoIP, although they do not call it that there or even make any difference for it).
In Europe, they forced the local operators (usually state owned) to open the local loop, allowing anyone to install their equipement to connect your house to their network. The result? Healthy competition driving the services up and the cost down.
Sure, Europe has a much higher population density than the US, BUT, if that was the only problem, you would have that level of service in any metropolitan area capable to sustain it. This is far from the case here... What happenned is the telcos concentrated on low speed "broadband" and low price. Consummer answered on those terms. You can grab a 1.5Mb/128kb for less than $15 (if you already pay for phone service, get into a 1 year contract and promise your first born) while in Europe, they get 20Mb/1Mb, phone and TV for 30 euros (which is about $40).
"Communist" Europe regulated (forced the operator to open the loop) and got competition. "Capitalist" USA protected the interests of their lobbyists and got a price gouging.
Basic realities of modern computing are a threat to "online OSes".
I don't want a (very) expensive dumb terminal running software never designed for creating "OSes".
Stop playing buzzword bingo with the headline, please.
I respond to your sigs
As for "online OS", could anyone tell me the benefit of having even less control over the OS I'm running?
I prefer to call it an online desktop because the term "online OS" is perhaps misleading. The advantages I can see are:
1) Take your desktop everywhere: your documents, your favourite links, homepage, all your desktop settings and preferences, programs, wallpaper... basically everything. Nothing to carry, and nothing to install to get it working. You can access it from any random internet cafe.
2) You no longer have to administer your own system. Someone else does it for you, usually for free. No more taking backups or cleaning up after virus attacks.
And probably some other things i haven't thought of.
It's not for everyone, and probably not for you, but even so it's a useful product for many people. There are some problems with the technology which still need to be overcome, but the various projects have come along way since i first checked them out about a year ago.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Personal violence is for the amateur in dominance; structural violence is the tool of the professional. The amateur who wants to dominate uses guns; the professional uses social structure. The legal criminality of the social system and its institutions, of government, and of individuals at the interpersonal level is tacit violence. Structural violence is a structure of exploitation and social injustice. It seems to survive very well the changes from a slave society, via a feudal and capitalist order, to lodge in a socialist society. (Johan Galtung) OSWeekly by bashing net neutrality is supporting STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE against the end user (i.e. you and yours truly. OSWeekly is a PROFESSIONAL at dominance. Nobody EVER said professionals were stupid!!!
make sure that ISPs have the tools and funds to expand
They have the funds to expand because I pay them for the access. If they can't deliver on it, charge more, or stop selling what they can't support.
There should be a law that says if you sell X megabit access, then you damned well better be able to provide it...period.
This 'article' makes no sense. It seems like the ravings found on the blog of a google fanboy, seeded with the buzzwords of the month -online OS, anyone?- and that somehow made it's way on the front page of /. . The author makes the hypothesis that ISPs would deliver cheap access to MySpace and Google in exchange for running an onlineOS? What is that? These websites are the reason people pay for broadband in the first place... This would be like ordering a trio burger at the restaurant and being told that, in order to get the burger, you need to watch a 5 minute ad. Ridiculous.
"Net Neutrality a Threat to Online OSes?"
I don't understand. Net Neutrality is where you can't discriminate between packets, right? Surely it's the LACK of net neutrality that's threatening online OSes? Isn't that what the article says? No NN = OnlineOS packets go down the drain.
I'm not questioning the article, I'm questioning the Slashdot title. Meh.
It's their fault of course. They overtax the lines, they put money in the hands of the stock holders and talking head company leads instead of back into their network. They've been paid to do things they haven't done.
They can't honestly tell me they aren't making money. It's all just a ploy (that we've all seen before) where they make it appear they aren't making money so they can justify (and almost always get permission from the gov) raising prices, or doing whatever other monopolistic tactic they wish to perform.
Either rate, I get rather frustrated with this crap. It's like no matter what you do it always goes the worse direction possible because the people in charge don't know enough about the problem to make an intelligent choice, or they've been "greased" to look at things a certain way.
Network neutrality is a communist plot?
Network Neutrality is responsible for the spread of Avian Flu?
Network Neutrality is the sole cause of global warming?
Network Neutrality has been linked to child pornography and white slavery?
Network Neutrality is the leading cause of death in children under five, worldwide?
Network Neutrality has been photographed standing next to Osama Bin Laden?
Network Neutrality shot JFK?
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
What do you say?
Google is using sharks with friggin' lasers to defend Net Neutrality?
Would you kindly mod me +1 insightful?
If they need more money, they should charge more for bandwidth or more for peering arrangements.
The current "problem" they have is that they control too little of our online activities, and they don't have that many ways to bundle services and pester us into using websites they make money off of. Thus, their hate for Net Neutrality.
As is, their plans don't scale. They want to create walled gardens and charge outsiders for access to their customers. But the problem is that *every* idiot will want to put up their own walls to create a barrier to entry and stifle competition. And in the end, you have nothing but a maze of walls and a lot of pissed-off customers who no longer have a choice in the matter.
Frankly, I intend to do every legal activity I can think of in order to destroy, undermine or harass the companies (and their owners) who do such idiotic things. I'm totally pissed off and I intend to take it out on them.
For example, the bastards at TV4US (a telco astroturf campaign) have been using telemarketers to call people. Why not call them back at 1 (888) 346-1400 with your own special offers?
When I hear phrases like "in order to make sure that ISPs have the tools and funds to expand their already overtaxed networks" I can only answer
Take all the tax-grants and other grants you've gotten in the nineties when you were supposed to be laying fiber and shut the hell up with your hands out begging, AGAIN!!!
We need to organize a lynch-mob, seriously...
I know it exists (somewhere out there are several groups) who are attempting to build an 'ad-hoc' wireless network that anyone can join in on. Is there any reason that this is not a practical solution to the big telco problem (besides just getting enough people to get a transmitter/reciever unit). Is the technology itself just not ready to handle it? I really don't know enough about the subject, but I think it might be a good direction to start going toward. After all, a cb radio can go several miles, and is small enough. I can't imagine that something the size of say a small form factor pc couldn't go the same distances (or further) and blanket the country.
Note: I realize the troubles with then getting out to the rest of the world, but compared to actually deploying this kind of thing, that would be a small hurdle to overcome.
I got nuthin
I should have known better than to click through past the second page, but once I did I had to work my way out of the muddle that was this story. It's like when someone leaves the newspaper open to the sudoku on the subway.
page 1: "Since I have yet to find a non-biased reference to the issue, I will simply use Google's explanation." And I'll tell you the flip side too, which is that if the ISPs could charge for higher tiers to build fatter pipes. Oh, and "Once again, this is just one opinion and definitely not one that I support myself."
page 2: WebOSes aren't awesome yet, but if you don't have net neutrality, then, uh, those ISPs could block things like would-be awesome webOSes.
page 3: The idea of a webOS will be in a tech museum as some kind of pipe dream [my pun] by 2009, of which "Google was supposed to be the father"... But the author "already explained how Google is already very much offering an online OS from [his] previous article".
page 4: We get rural penetration but the poor rural people cannot afford to pay for the google/myspace tier, so the companies will offer them a discount so long as they use the Broadband-OS, which "guarantees that they control how you do your day-to-day activities"
page 5: ISPs are rich and smart. They'll actually get Google -- "Yes, Google. The server masters of the universe." -- to build your Broadband-OS. And the cable companies want in, too.
I'm not sure how exactly googleOS was museum-grade obsolete and also making the proprietary Big Brother OS, but that's the story as best I could understand it.
Keeping in line with their belief system, this allows ISPs to make sure that developing connectivity can in fact, keep up with the explosive demand for broadband in more places. In other words, it allows for fatter pipes.
I agree that that is the theoretical ideal that the free market shoots for. However, given that this is not a free market we are talking about (many of the players involved have explicit fiat monopolies, and all have contract-established trusts), the free-market argument doesn't necessarily hold water.
The very real fear is that the legal right to restrict access will be used as a barrier to entry. Most major corporations in the US today focus massive resources on developing and expanding barriers to entry, because they allow you to charge above-market prices. Patents, exclusive contracts, volume contracts, per-employee licensing, per-computer licensing, and dozens of other lawyerly schemes; all these things are thinly veiled barriers to entry based on government and court fiat power. They destroy the competition on which the free market depends for efficiency. All these things are heavily invested in by corporations that claim to be free market capitalists, but are in fact oligopolists and fiat monopolists.
It is killing our global competitiveness. We're getting our asses handed to us in the auto market by China, Korea, and Japan because the cushy barriers to entering our auto markets made Ford, Chrysler, and GM fat, lazy, and stupid (not respectively, all three are all three). Blocking competition is nice in the short run from the corporate executive's stock-option perspective, but it is miserable in the long run. For the consumer it even sucks in the short run.
That is the real problem with net bias - it is another way that corporations are granted a legal right to bar entry.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
This fellah has far too much time on his hands. This whole article is baseless blueskying, starting with the daft neutrality definition he got from Google. His article goes on to further muddy the water by inventing "what if" scenarios with no basis in reality.
The only real definition of network neutrality that matters (and there are lots of BS definitions out there) is that all packets are to be treated equally, no filtering, no preferences applied - packet handling as originally defined in the TCP/IP specification.
The prices are still high; Telenet for example; massal broadband provider in Belgium gave a lot of commercials to watch movies over the Internet. Result: users get smallband after 1gig d/l.
View two movies and you are already over that 1 gig.
We also got a direct connection to the UUNet (now Worldcom) backbone; I cannot say it's cheap; it's expensive for the speed coming out of it; while the line is capable of doing +10 times as much traffic. It's clear to me; they are not ready for high-speed/high-bandwidth demanding applications over the Internet yet and with this kind of mentality they will never be ready.
I don't think there is such much difference inbetween France (which I presume you are from) and Belgium; the salesmen tell "unlimited bandwidth" while the technical side says "thats the maximum and furtheron you will be surfing on a 19k2/38k speed"...
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Someone on Slashdot should know the answer to this.
What's the real cost, in megabucks of capital cost and kilobucks of operating expenses, to add backbone capacity?
At today's prices for optical transceivers, what's the cost of "lighting a lambda"? Is there still a large untapped supply of dark fiber?
There's plenty of last-mile capacity to support Google, so the telcos must be talking about backbone bandwidth if they even believe what they're saying.
Once again the lie that broadband content is "overtaxing" and "choking" the internet rears it's head. The "fatter pipes" that the telcos are claiming they need to build already exist and it's called "Dark Fiber". This is due to the fact that building the fiber optic infrastructure is what costs a lot of money, so when it was built, it was built to a capacity many times greater than was necessary at the time and for the foreseeable future. Not to mention the fact that data compression technologies advanced rapidly thereafter, creating even more bandwidth. We are using a small fraction of the capacity of these fiber optic cables and the telcos are trying to extort money from us all for simply putting unused cable into general use. This would be like building a twenty lane highway, allowing the public to travel on 2 of those lanes, and then when it began to get congested, claiming that new fees are necessary for "fatter highways" that already exist.
"ISPs have the tools and funds to expand their already overtaxed networks" It's well documented that the ISPs such as Verizon have already collected $200 billion dollars in surcharges to expand their networks. Can anyone show how their current network is overtaxed? Do we see story after story about people complaining about dropped DSL connections? No we don't. Anyone laying a beef with Comcast over horrible download speeds? Nope. Dropping little phrases words like "overtaxed" only pre-shapes this discussion. Until I see some proof of bottlenecked capacity, I just don't believe this crap. They've had more than enough money to expand their services and capacities. They don't want to expand; they want to p0w3n the 'net so they can be the troll that controls which bridges we're allowed to cross / access. Don't like it? Take the long way around the 'net and say hello to my cousin Mr. Laggg. It's all "fuck you pay me" with these giant telcos.
Disney etc: It costs you money to market your brands on the Internet, because your ISP's/Peers are charging you for your bandwidth, but your sites are huge, and full of multimedia things, and aren't designed to cache (because you need the Page Impressions for your budget).
Disney etc: You need money to expand an infrastructure capable of delivering DVD quality video and audio. You also need the money to combat the pirates who are using the expanding infrastructure to stream DVD quality video and audio.
AT&T etc: Well, you can do whatever you like. Let's see them try to supply their users broadband addiction without your backbones. The problem though, is this 'free market' thing. If you start gouging, people might use another supplier. However, if you got exclusive peering deals with www.disney.com, *cha*CHING*!!
Users: You want a connection to the internet, but your friend has a connection with a bigger number that you don't understand, so you want one too! In the meantime you use 1% of it, but it DOES let you download DVD's really easily, which is lucky, otherwise you might have bought them!
Look, the internet is going to eat itself, and there's nothing you can do to stop it, because you're CAUSING it, and you don't WANT to stop.
Sit back, blame the guy next to you for having no willpower, and thank God this kind of problem doesn't happen in the real world, because we'd all die. (Mustn't forget to fill my tank)
You think I'm kidding?
Log into eyeOS, open eyeNav, then navigate to eyeos.info and get ready for some recursion
The best test environment is production. - Me
chrome://browser/content/browser.xul
I don't buy it. I can't see how any ISP, under the current regulatory regime and network architecture (which is what net neutrality is (mostly) trying to preserve), could justify killing a network-centric OS, other than to whine about how much bandwidth it's using (boo-hoo).
I think it's a very poor, misleading article.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
this allows ISPs to make sure that developing connectivity can in fact, keep up with the explosive demand for broadband in more places. In other words, it allows for fatter pipes.
Just about any business situation allows for fatter pipes, but tiered services aren't the fast track to getting them. In fact, tiered services are a great way to ration available bandwidth. The infrastructure owners could sit on the system they've got now, and in the face of growing demand, those who pay top dollar get to satisfy their need. One could milk this for quite a while to delay capital expenditures.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Otherwise we'd have lines all over the place
Or maybe no lines all over the place...broadband wireless has the potential to alter the ISP landscape in a dramatic way.
True - and it's exactly like every other tax-supported network, such as roads and the mail system. These projects are ultra-critical national infrastructure, and they seem to do just fine with public support.
It's telling that these other systems also have "neutrality," and it works extremely well. The USPS has no interest in delaying your parcel by two weeks. Every driver on the freeway is bound by the same set of rules. And guess what - when we need extra capacity, the taxpayers buy it! What's wrong with that system?
The difference is that unlike these government projects, the internet backbone is almost entirely privatized. It's true that ultraconservatives ordinarily support privatization as "more efficient" than government support. But haven't we recently seen some phenomenally anti-consumer behavior in privatized industries? And this administration is hardly a "typical" conservative gang - the federal bureaucracy has grown explosively under its leadership. Odd, that. I guess it depends whether the heads of the corporate shepherds are your friends.
The problem, as future economic historians will state in tragic retrospect, is that unlike the federal government, private corporations do not have their customers' best interests at heart - often they're in direct conflict. We don't put Microsoft in charge of our missile defense network, because every 20 minutes, they'd be hassling the federal government to pay their monthly licensing fees for the laser-guidance software!
It's more evidence of our shameful government that has completely discarded the notion of serving the people.
- David Stein
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
I've been running through various corporate strategies and tendencies, and this one is exactly what I came up with as what they are aiming for.
I've seen their little ads on slashdot too.. the pictures show congestion which can "only" be alleviated by discrimination...
I get the distinct feeling this is their plan to once again avoid upgrading our infrastructure and internet speed to match the rest of the world (20 megabits average and 100 megabits tops, residential).
If network neutrality is not enforced these greedy people will start rationing us when the infrastructure here eventually becomes overtaxed rather than doing their job and upgrading the lines like we the people have already paid them to do!
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
if the internet is clogged down, shouldn't the price to every bandwidth user just go up? Charge $4 for a T1 connection at 100% load per month or $8/GB transferred and let the market figure itself out. This isn't a spec, but it shouldn't be hard to figure out a decent solution.
I cannot imagine the current broadband monopoly setup existing forever. Many places are already served by DSL & Cable. And wimax, satellite (?), and stuff that has not been thought up yet will hopefully provide the broadband comsumer with more choice in the coming years.
If/when the consumer had more choices, the tables will turn for the providers. Suddenly people will realize they could care less about the method of access, and more about the content. Myspace, youtube, google, all of the sites popular with the kids today might think to throttle their connections to verizon, comcast and the like unless THEY cough up some money. The users will go with whoever has the best access to the content they want.
Finkployd
The "couple of people" the author knows are morons. If Network Neutrality is ended, the price for bandwidth to sites which are contrary to corporate profit interests (like free software repositories) will be deliberately raised to make it economically impossible for them to provide even the bandwith they have NOW. The idea that the end of Network Neutrality is going to be of benefit to anyone but the corporations that run it and their friends is utterly asinine. These "couple of people" are either fools or apologists. Network Neutrality must be maintained or the net as we know it is doomed.
I somehow sense QoS is the unspoken center of this whole debate...
-=[ place
You see, this is EXACTLY why you communists who support this crazy crap about "net neutrality" are so disrespected. Like other communists through time, you whine and bitch and moan about stuff you now nothing about, and then when you are denied, you use threats of physical violence.
I support capitalism, I oppose net neutrality.
Tiered Pricing Will Create Bandwidth Shortages.
Rather than increasing available bandwidth, tiered pricing will have precisely the opposite effect. It will create an economic incentive to keep available bandwidth below needed levels.
The proof is really quite simple. Tiered pricing is being sold as a "guarantee" of network speed and latency. If you pay the premium, you'll get a "guarantee" that your packets will go through at a certain speed and rate of reliability.
Large organizations -- the ones you're actually trying to extract higher fees out of -- don't take marketing bluster for granted. They actually measure network performance. They assign a dollar cost to network speed, packet latency, dropped packets, and overall performance visible to end-users. Using this metric, they decide which network provider will offer the best network performance for the lowest cost (note that "cost" includes not only the fees charged by the provider, but the calculated costs assigned to network performance metrics).
Now, let us assume there's enough bandwidth for everyone, and all packets get through with more or less equal speed and latency. The organization measures network performance and discovers this to be true. Thus, since there is no cost advantage to switching to the higher tier of service, no one will subscribe. The money the telco hoped to rake in does not, in fact, appear.
So, what do you do? Create a shortage. Or, more accurately, route the tiered traffic over the newer network infrastructure, and let everyone else use what's left over (which you neglect). Poof! Now packets over the lower tier are getting delayed or dropped like crazy. Performance on that tier of service suffers, which "costs" you money according to your metrics. So you consider the higher tier of service. If the cost increase of the higher service tier is less than the calculated costs of dropped packets on the lower tier, you switch.
In other words, the only way to get large subscribers to actually pay more for "premium" network service is to create an incentive to do so by ensuring that the non-premium service sucks. And as long as the higher tier exists, the lower tier will experience a perpetual shortage (because the large organizations don't stop measuring performance).
I absolutely guarantee you that the telcos long ago had accounting graphs drawn up that assign "costs" to various packet delivery performance metrics, and already know the exact level of bandwidth shortage required to get organizations to pay more. They will not exactly "create" this shortage. They will simply plow their dollars into new, faster network infrastructure, over which will exclusively be run the higher service tiers. The lower tiers will be left with the existing infrastructure, and the occasional hand-me-downs from upgrading the higher tiers.
Some people may observe that tiered service already exists. Well, yes, but not in the same way. Typically what you're buying is higher bandwidth. Once you get to a certain bandwidth level, quality-of-service guarantees are in place more or less by default (example: you can't really get a T3 link without a QoS guarantee). However, no matter what your endpoint capacity is, your packets are still pretty much running over the same routers as everyone else's, so everyone gets to share the pain of a choked router. However, with the tiered service model the telcos want, which router your packets go through will depend on what service plan you have. Which leads to artificial shortages.
In summary: The telcos are knowingly lying to your face. Tiered pricing will not reduce bandwidth shortages, but will instead establish the economic incentives to create them.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
I saw this question in a letter from Peter Brooks of LA, CA, USA on pg. 23 of New Scientist of 8 July 2006, and inquiring minds want to know.
I am sorry but this whole thing is starting to make me sick the internet started as a DARPA project and since that's our tax dollars, when do I get to charge the phone companies and anyone else who wants to use my services. I say if they don't want it to be neutral fine pay every American and every person who contributed to tcp/ip the darpa project and every other project that built the network they are using! Good day to you sir I SAID GOOD DAY!
TheADDkid.com
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Not net neutrality, but lack of it is a threat to all oses of any kind. Even linux.
Its now free to develop and distribute linux, but if the telco whores get their robbery laws, the free software foundations will have to pay tribute to telco whores, so that people will be able to download and update their operating systems.
Paid opinion and lobbying = shit
Telco whore = enemy of people
Read radical news here
Great, like Sterno said, this would basically ruin the internet. This is the upmost insultory service I can imagine. It's just like Television, where the television customers are nothing more than a pool to be advertised on. This is basically dehumanizing the customers, and making them a 'resource'. I said it before, I'll say it again now that you've pointed out why: complete boycott of the company would put them out of business, because their ads would go to.. no one, and thus no one would want to accept a deal, with a company that has no subscribers. Of course, our nation has never heard of this issue, thus no one will know when it happens. Just like when two companies merge, they might mention it in their commercials, but as far as the average television watching person goes, they didn't know about it, and they wouldn't know what caused it. They would just assume that it's legal, and that the company can do that just because they can, because most television watchers probably don't even know how congress works.
This anti net neutrality is fucking insulting.
Also, who the fuck ever said the companies had 'over taxed networks'?
The government is about the consumer, not the company, it is the companies job to compete for profits, not to monopolize on cities, and then force those people to become a public whore, for the company, so the company can charge other companies, that are not even subscribers (IE consumers) with that company.
there are some plain and simple aspects here. *every* business wants more profit for less work; not just telcos. look at haliburton!
as far as fios is concerned, verizon is marketing it very heavily. even going as far as sending 2-day UPS letters announcing it. that, and some of their marketing materials state, 'an important announcement about your cable service'. as has been pointed out here before, fios is not PSTN, and is not regulated as such. furthermore, once your off the telco grid they won't reconnect you.
lets use the GM analogy. you're going to drive you're car and go to the casino, so i want an extra dollar per gallon for this gas because someone else is making money on it. plain and simple, this is extortion.
there is not enough competition in the marketplace for this service, due to the financial barrier to entry, to ensure the consumer gets the best service for the lowest cost. and while poorly managed corporations may eventually go out of business or aquired my more successful companies, this will not compensate those who were overcharged. the only possible manner in which to assure fair and equal service, which should be the goal of our government, is by mandating it legally.
...vividly encapsulates that post-Watergate/pre-punk/coked-up moment when you could trust no one, least of all yourself.
Given that I have relinquished "right-of-way" and have been forced to give property rights to the telcos and cable companies...
Fair access to the telco and cable network becomes a right. Or do I have to regurgitate the "backhoe argument". In a nutshell, I get access or the telco/cable company looses the "property right". In the tradition of the accidental backhoe accident. Now, for this civil disobedience, I am willing to pay my fine (someone backhoed a fiber here a couple of days ago -- and disrupted Blackberry service for most of Canada for a day).
The "wire companies" were given a natural monopoly, and, in exchange, were forced to provide equal access. That battle was fought 30 years ago (there was a time when you couldn't plug your own phones into the phone network). "Network Neutrality" won back then, and the principles on which it won haven't changed.
Ratboy
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
Personally, while the USPS has no interest in delaying a package, they also have no internally-generated interest in making sure it arrives in as timely a fashion as possible, whereas their competitors UPS and FedEx have a 100% vested interest in making sure an overnight package gets there overnight.
Also, I notice that toll roads seem to be less cluttered with lane-sucking construction areas, and overall defects in the road surface, than public highways carry.
This isn't to say that Verizon et al should have free license to start chopping up their pipes and squeezing out the less well-off at all, and if they took tax money (or even incentives) to put in the fiber, then they should be subject to (hypothetical) laws regarding availability.
Personally, I think that if anything, companies should compete amongst each other to lease ownership of publicly-funded long-haul fiber for a given period of time, then be forced into a review process every X years, much like television and radio stations are forced to do with airwaves. If too many complaints arise, they lose the rights and get no refund, then others get to bid on the given stretch (leaving the punished company banned from bidding for x number of years). If they want more fiber or want to chop it up into however, then let them each add the extra at their own expense, buy their own right-of-way to lay that extra fiber, and be subject to a lot of the same regulations that AT&T lived under when they were the big dog in telecommunications. Hell, the FCC can probably monitor most of it as it is now.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
They have a strong belief that it [A tiered system] is needed in order to make sure that ISPs have the tools and funds to expand their already overtaxed networks.
If the ISPs' networks are seriously overtaxes, why don't they raise their prices? There is seriously no need to charge both consumers and suppliers of content. The suppliers are already charged to get their content on the net by ISPs anyways. They have two opportunties to raise their prices, why do they want this third charge? It can only be because they want to control what content is available (e.g. block out people that are compeeting with them in terms of voip and video). Anyways, I'm not sure legislation is the solution. I guess what we need to do is read the service agreements we have with broadband providers. I certainly would be more likely to subscribe to a broadband provider that gives me unlimited access to files as opposed to one that decides what content to let me see at what speed.
No Sigs!
Really, what is the point of posting this article? Hasn't this topic been rehashed over and over and over again?
I call shennanegans!
When I saw the hedline, my first thought was "WELL DUH! If the broadband service providers can choose what websites you can visit, how long will it take before Microsoft gives them a nice fat payoff to ban all Linux websites?"
Ok, I'm done now.
If only that were true.
I work for a tribal casino in Nice, California. I normally don't mention the name of the town even but let's face it, you could figure me out with google anyway. Our monthly mailer is sent out from god-knows-where; it's assembled by the ad agency that we pay to do such things.
Currently we are sending our mailer out via first class mail. The idea was that it would get to people in a timely fashion. Unfortunately, the post office in Nice seems to be holding our mail. People in Fort Bragg (vaguely close to here, but not really near either here or the city from which the mailer most likely ships) get the mailer two weeks or more earlier than people in Nice. First class mail should never take more than 2 days between any two points in California.
The USPS has interest in delaying our mail. Apparently. This is happening very reliably.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Lucky bastard. My ISP didn't grease me at all, and they didn't even kiss me when they were through.
You do have a point that such a tiered service would give an incentive to the carriers to provide poor service so that customers will upgrade - however, I don't see a problem with this kind of "tiering" in general. If I want to pay more to get better service, that's fine. It is the discrimination based on destination or content or application that is the problem.
I have no problem with setting things up so that connecting to a server that pays more to THEIR ISP for better service gives me a faster connection TO THEM, nor do I have a problem with having it faster if I pay more to MY ISP for better service (to everyone, or even to a specific service). The problem is when my ISP wants to charge Google a fee in order to allow ME to connect to Google faster, when Google isn't a customer of theirs, by intentionally degrading the connection if they don't.
Some forms of discrimination are fine: if AOL or Verizon or whoever wants to make a special deal with Google to set up private lines and caching servers to both reduce their costs and improve their customer's connections to Google, and they want Google to share in the cost of that (and presumably it would reduce Google's costs to provide the same level of service), that's fine. That might be a reason to choose one ISP over another. That's a partnership. Distinguishing that from intentionally degrading connections is the difficult part.
What they want to do is have a hidden (from the consumer) revenue increase without raising consumer prices.
But they already do that: corporate customers pay completely different rates from home users, and home users are generally not permitted to host commercial sites or services.
The main problem of net neutrality is that it would stop efficiency improvements. Example: a vast percentage of modern internet traffic is BitTorrent. What if ISPs collaborated to shunt that all onto a dedicated high speed network and take the pressure off the regular wires? Some packets are being treated unequally, but everyone's speed goes up. Net neutrality would ban that.
(Yes I know the current trend is the other way, to shunt P2P into a crawler lane - IMO they'll learn that's wrong-headed when increasingly sophisticated circumvention makes their efforts fail. The way to get problem traffic out of the way is to entice it to play "good citizen" in exchange for faster speeds, like building a multi-lane bypass around an old town with narrow streets.)
Seriously, WTF? Both the original article and the poster seem to be... erm... confused about what Net Neutrality means. I mean, I make the same mistake, but they seem to be thinking net neutrality means the opposite of what it does...
Weird.
Anyway, it's completely backwards. What makes you think an "online operating system" will be easier to run if its run by an ISP? What's more, how does it help you if there's no neutrality -- won't you run into even worse issues than you do today if you try to take your MediacomGmailRipoff account to your friend's house, who's on SBC? At least today, Gmail either works about the same for everyone or it doesn't really work for anyone...
Eh, nevermind. This guy is insane, and so is any consumer who doesn't want net neutrality.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
A good point. I wonder how this supposedly "essential" cost model to help fund higher demand for capacity measures up when compared to other parts of the world (Korea?).
:)
We all love/hate to hear about the various fibre-to-the-home mega-cheap solutions overseas. How did they get funded etc?
Having to start from scratch is responsible for some of the great infrastructure being put in out there, I wonder if New Orleans will enjoy similar benefits?
Net neutrality? Sure thing! We, the public, will own the conduits and fibre infrastructure (just like the roads) and you can lease it from a neutral third party who will deal equally with you AND your competitors
--- I've completed diagnosis of your problem and can classify it as a YOYO...You're On Your Own
Of course Net Doublecharge allows for fatter pipes. Instead we'll get fatter CEOs and less equal access to Internet bandwidth and services.
Because "Net Neutrality" means equal access to everyone who's paying for their direct connection. Not adding blackmail charges to rich nodes' traffic that happens to traverse your network, though they've already paid their full fee to their direct connection, which has in turn paid you.
That's what "Net Neutrality" means, vs Net Doublecharge. Despite the illegible gibberish and random pseudothinking in telco stooge articles like that one in the summary.
--
make install -not war
One has to wonder weather the telcos should be allowed to do what they want.
:P
Before I get modded to oblivion, just hear me out. The telecos get their way and they start strangling normal traffic in order to "force" everyone to higher tiers. This makes people angry (sort of like how people don't like having their cable messed with). Angry people call up their congress critters and say, "We don't like getting screwed by our ISPs!". Congress critters begin to realize that if they don't do something to bring this back in line, they will be ejected for someone who will.
They get together and realize that the only way to make things "better" is to take the infrastructure away (maintained as a public service) and force the telecos to bid on the use of the network (sort of like how the FCC doles out broadcast frequencies).
Telecos realize they screwed the pooch as their cash cow gets turned into government pork.
It's really sort of a they lose big/we kinda break-even scenario. Maybe. Well....doubt it.
~X~
~X~
Wireless communication outside of one household is subject to exclusive spectrum licenses from the Federal Communications Commission and foreign counterparts in almost exactly the same way that wired communication is subject to municipal exclusive right-of-way licenses.
If your network is overtaxed it doesn't mean there's necessarily a problem with the network, it means you OVERSOLD your network and are now pissed off that people are using the capacity they paid for. It's a faulty business model (and faulty thinking) that assumes everyone will use under 100% of their always-on connection's bandwidth. It's probably true, but if you rely on it, you will get burned.
The Feds have my best interests at heart? That's news to me.
If only that's how things actually worked in this country. Americans are too passive (unless it comes to frivolous issues such as gay marriage). They will simply grumble and 'take it.' Some opposition will arise, but it will not be enough to break the power held by the telco lobbyists.