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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 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
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".
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
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.
I think you're being a troll, but I'm going to take the bait anyways.
Too many services, both public and private, are moving to the internet. My healthcare provider won't send me an id card, I have to go to their website and print it. My State Civil Service Office requires that I apply for the Technology Analyst list by online application only. New York City has put their entire database of tickets and fines online so that if I plead not guilty to a parking ticket and am found guilty, I have to go online to find it and pay it. The Internet was built with public funding and it should be a public service. If the telcos are going to battle against Municipal Wireless, then they shouldn't be allowed to charge more for fatter tunnels.
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.)
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
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.
Access to the "Internet" is not a right.
Access to gasoline isn't a right either, but kind of puts a crimp in your life if you can't buy it.
And I guess the telephone service isn't a right either, but kind of sucks when you need to call 911 or get a call for a phone interview for a new job to feed your family.
Then again... We don't have an inalienable right to electricity either even if it means we can't store food in our fridges or do things at night.
I mean... We can live without all above, but life would be pretty miserable.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
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!
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.
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.
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
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 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
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
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.
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?
Right now, QoS (RSVP) isn't part of IPv4 and doesn't progress outside of a LAN... So if the possibility to enable QoS over the Internet makes some packets more valuable at a cost premium (to the sender or reciever? With snailmail it is the sender who pays for first-class rather than third-class) regarding traffic control, the results are the others will become less valuable.
Look at RFC 791 and the Type of Service field. QoS has been built into IP since the beginning, and its implementation just left up to individual networks. If people want QoS on the Internet, they should force their ISPs to form contracts with each other to respect the QoS bits that customers set, and adopt pricing schemes for everyone to pay for the QoS packets they send. There shouldn't need to be any distinction between what traffic is marked for QoS, so long as the ISP maintains enough reserved bandwidth to send all the QoS they sell to customers.
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.
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.)