Survey Finds Canadians Support Net Neutrality Law

An anonymous reader writes "A new public opinion survey conducted in Canada finds overwhelming public support in that country for net neutrality legislation. Three-quarters of Canadians believe the government should pass a law to confirm the right of Internet consumers to access publicly available Internet applications and content of their choice — even though most of those surveyed did not know the term 'net neutrality.' The survey was commissioned by eBay." Of course the devil is in the wording. Given the survey's sponsorship, it's unlikely that respondents were presented with examples of the value that ISPs say packet shaping can bring, or asked to weigh such against net neutrality.

Comments

And if you care too

[Anonymous Coward]

You can go sign the petition at http://www.neutrality.ca/

Re:And if you care too

[multisync]

You can go sign the petition at http://www.neutrality.ca/

Oh, sure, slashdot the petition in favour of net neutrality. That'll convince 'em ISPs shouldn't do traffic shaping ;^)

Re:And if you care too

[Anonymous Coward]

While you're there, check out Amber MacArthur's blog (Media page, link at the bottom). What a cutie!

Re:And if you care too

[hendridm]

Why don't I just post my opinion to Slashdot. It probably has an equally useful effect.

Re:And if you care too

[smilindog2000]

I doubt the Canadians' opinions are of much use either, as they have the highest on-line music piracy rate in the world :-)

Can we separate "net neutrality" into two distinct issues? I would rather discuss "Internet tolls" in one forum, and "traffic shaping" in another. BTW, screw Internet tolls, and to hell with the politicians trying to ram it down our throats!

Re:And if you care too

[kwandar]

I beg your pardon?! It is PERFECTLY LEGAL to download in Canada because we pay a tax on CD/DVD media that goes to the music industry. Our opinions don't count because we can legally download? I think our opinions should count for more BECAUSE WE PAY FOR THE PRIVILEGE!

Re:And if you care too

[alexo]

Only 3712 Signatures as of now...

Right?

[darjen]

the right of Internet consumers to access publicly available Internet applications and content of their choice

Internet access is not a right. It is a service provided through someone's labor, with all the associated costs that entails.

Re:Right?

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to read your quote. It appears to be at odds with your post.

Re:Right?

[d0rp]

Internet access is not a right. It is a service provided through someone's labor, with all the associated costs that entails. True, but you are paying for that service. Shouldn't you expect to get what you're paying for? Not what the highest bidder is offering for the service provider to give you.

Why should the service companies be able to charge on both ends for a service that they are already providing to paying customers?

Re:Right?

[mweather]

Labor and public tax money. You forgot that. Speaking of, where is the fiber optic network we paid for?

Re:Right?

[SignupRequired]

There are laws against abuse of monopoly and laws against collusion between what should be competitors. A net neutrality law would be along the same lines.

re: Right?

[SpeedyDX]

If what you're saying is correct, why are we always up in arms when oppressive governments censor internet access? After all, if the government of China provided the labour in order to provide internet service for their citizens, then China has every right to limit what their citizens do. And so on for other countries. Why do we care about the "Great Firewall of China" or any other government that limits their citizens' activities online? What do we care about the Burmese bloggers?

I don't know the answers, and I don't pretend to. What I do know is that we should probably rethink what we understand as "rights" and "privileges", when it comes to novel technologies that act as mediums for free speech. Maybe the internet should play by different rules, like those that would be provided by a net neutrality act. Maybe not. But what is obvious is that the internet is somehow different than other privileged services, in that it has become a somewhat essential medium for global citizens to convene and engage in free speech.

As I said, I don't know the answers, but I do believe that your approach is not the direction that we should go in.

Re:Right?

[eepok]

Well, since rights are declared, not given, maybe we can declare it a right and require the government to provide access.

hmm... on second thought, I may actually trust a telecom more.

Re:Right?

[DanQuixote]

"Internet access is not a right."

---

Not precisely true. There are other rights besides the "inalienable" ones. Sometimes, we create new rights and give them to the citizens.

This can be a "good thing", especially when advancing technology brings up a new issue.

Now that online video is becoming more prevalent, and people are moving from their TVs to their computer screens, it may behoove us to create and support the poor guy's right to view the same content as the rich guy.

Of course there are always trade-offs, and some who will even abuse such a right, but over-all I think it will be best for the nation to adopt a net-neutrality position, and sick the courts on those who try to profit by claiming some bits are worth more than others.

Re:Right?

[Acrimonymous]

Shouldn't you expect to get what you're paying for?

It's the old adage of "better on paper". People should be holding companies liable when they pull that sort of crap, but consumers don't act in a self-interested manner anymore. Capitalism only works right if everybody involved in the process does their part to keep everybody else in check, but consumers have just rolled over and asked for it up the rear over the last few decades, so they're getting exactly what they requested now.

Re:Right?

[fm6]

TPP didn't say that access to the Internet was a right. It said that access to Internet content and applications is a right. That might seem like a trivial distinction, but it's not. Access to information is a fundamental right, and if the only way an individual has to access that information is through an ISP, it makes perfect sense to insist that the ISP not play the role of censor.

If you want to stream some music produced by some heavy metal band you just heard about, and your ISP says, "Sorry, we don't carry packets from that server, how about some nice Britney Spears?" then they're interfering with your first amendment rights. Also committing a crime against nature, but that's another issue.

Re:Right?

[enrevanche]

A society has the right to determine the parameters by which a business must operate. This is especially true of large of these large semi-monopolistic organizations for which there is little competition.

Re: Right?

[mrlibertarian]

If what you're saying is correct, why are we always up in arms when oppressive governments censor internet access?

Because an oppressive government uses stolen money (i.e. taxes) to fund its operations, and it prevents competition through physical violence or violent threats. In contrast, a company must acquire its money by providing goods and services, and a company can not use violence or violent threats to stop competition. A company can only oppress you to the extent that you allow yourself to be oppressed.

Another poster mentioned that it's dangerous to allow a random CEO to price a provider out of the market. Yes, a CEO exercising his right to control his company's property on behalf of the shareholders is dangerous to your "freedom" to dictate to that company how they will use their property. However, I don't believe in your so-called freedom. Build your own damn network.

And no, I don't think the government has a right to control the internet because it was partially built with tax dollars. If the government has funded the internet infrastructure in the past, then the solution is for that money to be repaid to the government, and for the government, in turn, to return the money to the taxpayers. The solution is not to treat the internet as though it is a "public resource", because that is both immoral and inefficient.

Re: Right?

[darjen]

There's a world of difference between the Chinese government censoring the internet and net neutrality. They are using taxpayer money to artificially limit what would voluntarily be consumed by paying customers. If you don't like the terms of the internet service providers, you are welcome not to use their service. But over there the people are compelled by force to participate.

I view this the same way as our cable TV provider and ala carte scenario. I don't find that the 200 channels they offer for one block rate is compelling enough, so I simply don't subscribe. When they decide to offer individual channels I want at a reasonable price I will gladly pay for it once more. Until then, I'll go with netflix or whatever other entertainment seems appealing. But I don't believe that forcing others to use their property in certain ways is the right thing to do. I'm sure some people might call me an industry shill for saying that, but that's what I feel is just in this situation.

If internet providers start choking their bandwidth enough, I will not subscribe to their service too. Maybe I'll just stick to using the internet at work... who knows. But what I do know is that it would create a great business opportunity for a new provider to come in and offer what people want to pay for.

Re:Right?

[QuantumG]

Yeah, for example, they're supposed to prevent the formation of monopolies.

People in the US never seemed to have learned that lesson.

Re:Right?

[drsmithy]

True, but you are paying for that service. Shouldn't you expect to get what you're paying for? Not what the highest bidder is offering for the service provider to give you.

You do get what you pay for. So does the service provider on the other end.

"You should get what you pay for" is a pretty nonsensical argument. Because service providers paying to get their traffic prioritised (or not de-prioritised) is a fairly standard example of exactly that.

Why should the service companies be able to charge on both ends for a service that they are already providing to paying customers?

Same reason they can now. They have a resource that various parties want to access. According to free market ideology, they should be able to charge both parties as much as they are willing to pay.

Re:Right?

[Acrimonymous]

I always figured it was a symptom of a larger problem. The majority of people seem to have very little ability to completely think through the consequences of their actions (or are unwilling to). Think of how many people you know who will get completely raped by a store over something, to the point they're fuming mad, but they'll immediately go back and buy something else just because it's the cheapest place to buy that something else.

The problem here is really that IQs are specifically built to fit a bell curve so they're always an average, but the average person isn't really that bright. The vast majority of people, speaking from the perspective of an absolute intelligence, are pretty dumb.

Re: Right?

[drsmithy]

In contrast, a company must acquire its money by providing goods and services, and a company can not use violence or violent threats to stop competition. A company can only oppress you to the extent that you allow yourself to be oppressed.

This theory works up until the point where avoiding that company's products is a reasonable thing to do. In many cases, that isn't true.

Another poster mentioned that it's dangerous to allow a random CEO to price a provider out of the market. Yes, a CEO exercising his right to control his company's property on behalf of the shareholders is dangerous to your "freedom" to dictate to that company how they will use their property. However, I don't believe in your so-called freedom.

When that CEO and the rest of his regular golfing foursome control 99% - 100% of the avenues you have to access a particular good or service, then you probably should start caring about "so-called freedom".

Build your own damn network.

Needlessly duplicating that sort of infrastructure is a grossly wasteful and inefficient exercise.

Re:Right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Labor and public tax money. You forgot that. Speaking of, where is the fiber optic network we paid for? It's being built, but only in a way that locks out competition. Once it's fully rolled out and competition's no longer possible, expect things to get much worse.

Re: Right?

[Rakishi]

Build your own damn network. Effectively illegal in a number of places where government sponsored monopolies are the only option. furthermore many of these networks were paid for by taxes to various extents making them effectively partially the property of the government.

Re: Right?

[mrlibertarian]

This theory works up until the point where avoiding that company's products is a reasonable thing to do. In many cases, that isn't true.

I don't believe there is some threshold of "reasonableness" in which other men become your slaves. For example, I can't say, "I was born without any arms and legs, making it unreasonable for me to take care of myself. Therefore, it is moral for me to ask society to force you, as a non-handicapped human being, to support me." No man owes you anything. If a man does offer you a good or service, for any price, be grateful for it. The fact that you find it unreasonable to refuse his offer shows how grateful you should be to him.

When that CEO and the rest of his regular golfing foursome control 99% - 100% of the avenues you have to access a particular good or service, then you probably should start caring about "so-called freedom".

Why? The CEO owes me nothing. He's going to run his company in order to maximize profit; in other words, to get customers to pay him as much as possible. If he is able to make more profit by providing an inferior service, then that must be because the customers are willing to pay more for an inferior service, and therefore, have only themselves to blame. On the other hand, if the majority of customers are happy with his service, but you are not, then that is your problem.

Needlessly duplicating that sort of infrastructure is a grossly wasteful and inefficient exercise.

If I build my own house, instead of moving into someone else's, is that needless duplication? No, because I value control, and I can control what I build myself. The only way for two people to have full control over a single good is to duplicate that good. You see this as wasteful because you don't like the way one of those individuals chooses to control his good. But why is your opinion of how the good should be controlled more important than his?

Also, don't forget that if company A controls a good in way that his customer B does not like, and B decides to duplicate that good, A will be pressured to give into B's demands. But if the government prevents B from duplicating that good (because it would be "wasteful"), then A has nothing to fear, and very little reason to give into B's demands.

Re:Right?

[nilbud]

"Only in America"

Re: Right?

[drsmithy]

I don't believe there is some threshold of "reasonableness" in which other men become your slaves. For example, I can't say, "I was born without any arms and legs, making it unreasonable for me to take care of myself. Therefore, it is moral for me to ask society to force you, as a non-handicapped human being, to support me." No man owes you anything. If a man does offer you a good or service, for any price, be grateful for it. The fact that you find it unreasonable to refuse his offer shows how grateful you should be to him.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say, or how it is relevant, but *my* point is that in many cases, the frequently heard retort of "deal with it, or go somewhere else" (or variations thereof, like yours) ignores that "leaving" is often not a reasonable course of action to take.

Further, it is not at all unreasonable to expect people not to be arseholes when dealing with them. That it frequently takes government regulation to make this a reality, is a sad reflection on the attitudes prevalent in business, not on the consumers who request that the regulation be imposed.

Why?

Because you simply may not be able to access that resource without going via that CEO or another he colludes with.

The CEO owes me nothing.

On the contrary, he owes everyone something because it is only through government legislation and law enforcement services that he is able to operate fearlessly behind the shield of incorporation, rather than actually having to take responsibility for his actions.

He's going to run his company in order to maximize profit; in other words, to get customers to pay him as much as possible. If he is able to make more profit by providing an inferior service, then that must be because the customers are willing to pay more for an inferior service, and therefore, have only themselves to blame. On the other hand, if the majority of customers are happy with his service, but you are not, then that is your problem.

Or, alternatively, they have no choice because that CEO - or the other CEOs he influences - don't offer any alternatives. Or they don't know about alternatives because the half a dozen guys that CEO has dinner with every other Tuesday own all the mainstream media outlets and don't publish any negative information about his services (and he, in return, gives their services priorities over any competitors).

If I build my own house, instead of moving into someone else's, is that needless duplication?

No. Nor is the comparison valid. There is value in separate housing, because different people have different needs. There is no value in (to use a relevant example) two lines of fibre optic cable lying next to each other transferring the same bits over them when one could do the same job.

You see this as wasteful because you don't like the way one of those individuals chooses to control his good. But why is your opinion of how the good should be controlled more important than his?

No, I see it as wasteful because it uses twice as many physical resources to provide exactly the same goods and services for no reason other than a bad attitude. Sorry, but physics trumps economics.

Also, don't forget that if company A controls a good in way that his customer B does not like, and B decides to duplicate that good, A will be pressured to give into B's demands. But if the government prevents B from duplicating that good (because it would be "wasteful"), then A has nothing to fear, and very little reason to give into B's demands.

Indeed. Which is why critical infrastructure and utilities should be regulated, at the very least, if not wholely government-owned. Thus preventing A from being unreasonable and allowing B to offer his services.

Re:Right?

[Skrapion]

The reality is that they are already charging both parties for extra access to that resource. Only, instead of charging for access based on content, they're currently charging for access based on speed.

Charging extra for faster upstream or downstream is a fair system. Users are happy with it, businesses are happy with it, and it's an accurate way of measuring and limiting how much the ISPs' networks are actually being used. It also doesn't carry any of the scary byproducts that are possible in a tiered system.

By contrast, a tiered system offers no (or very little) visible advantage to either the customers or the businesses, isn't an obviously fair way to charge for your services, and can potentially stifle the rate of innovation on the Internet.

A free market would be nice, but unfortunately, the ISP market isn't big enough to properly support the advantages of a free market.

Re:Right?

[thecountryofmike]

What I haven't seen is the argument that:

The current state of the internet is where you know it today WITH net neutrality. That's what's currently in place.

Net neutrality was decided years ago. The question isn't whether or not to put net neutrality in place.

The question is "Should net neutrality be RESCINDED?"

This Canadian votes NO.

Re: Right?

[mrlibertarian]

I'm not sure what you're trying to say, or how it is relevant...

I'm trying to argue that no one owes you anything, so it doesn't matter if it's "reasonable" or not to refuse to use their good or service. You respond by reiterating that it's not always "reasonable" to refuse someone's good or service, which makes me feel like we're just going in circles. So, I'll give up on this particular point.

There is no value in (to use a relevant example) two lines of fibre optic cable lying next to each other transferring the same bits over them when one could do the same job.

If the second line is transferring the same bits as the first line, why would anyone build the second one? A second line would only be built if it was transferring bits the first line was not.

It's true that the first line is the only line necessary to get the job done if the job is defined as "getting bits from point A to point B", but what if the owner of the first line doesn't want certain resources on his network used for a certain purpose? In that case, a second line is required. You can call that a "bad attitude", but you only say that because you don't like the way the resource is being used.

For example, some slashdotters are saying that it's okay to filter packets by kind, but not by source. But that's just the opinion of some slashdotters on how things should be done, and other users will differ. If you, as a customer, tend to use certain sources, it benefits you if traffic to and from those sources are favored. The owners of the network will try to guess at what their users would prefer more (as indicated by the amount the users are willing to pay, not by what the users say they want).

It's similar to coach and first class seating on an airplane. If you define getting the job done as "fitting as many people as you can on a plane", then first class is wasteful. But, since some people demand a certain amount of comfort and amenities on their flight, we have first class, and another plane is required for more passengers. No waste is taking place, it's just different strokes for different folks.

Re: Right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course. And, by that reasoning, if Verizon's cable goes across my property on an easement seized by government actions, I have every right to cut it unless they agree to give my packets priority over everyone else's.

If you let the government steal property and give it to people, that would be just as wrong as the government stealing it, right?

scamble word - sagacity

Re: Right?

[mrlibertarian]

Effectively illegal in a number of places where government sponsored monopolies are the only option.

Yes, which is why we must put an end to government intervention. We have to move to a free market.

furthermore many of these networks were paid for by taxes to various extents making them effectively partially the property of the government.

I already answered this in the last paragraph of my post.

Re: Right?

[Dragonslicer]

Yes, which is why we must put an end to government intervention. We have to move to a free market. A free market where every other week a backhoe is digging up your street so that yet another company can put down copper wires? I'm all for competition in service providers (if your only choices were Comcast and Verizon, wouldn't you be, too?), but just like electricity and water, you can't have a dozen different companies making physical connections to your home. I'd be interested in seeing if something like what's happened to electricity in some areas also happen with ISP's; separate the company (or even the local or state government) that manages the physical lines to your home from the service providers. In theory, this would allow new service providers to simply go to the line owners and say "I want to buy some bandwidth to resell to people." I don't know if it would work or not, but it doesn't seem like it could be any worse than what we have now.

Re:Right?

[tbannist]

I'm not sure that entirely true. What we're seeing is a natural result of capitalism. It's easier for corporations to "give it" to their customers than it is for customers to avoid "getting it". A corporation only needs to hire 1 lawyer to write an abusive EULA, but then every customer of their's needs to read, understand and act upon the EULA. Similarly a corporation with a vested interest in copyrights only needs to hire 1 lobbying firm to change laws in their favour. Most customers do not have a similar incentive to protect themselves from that abuse. Heck, capitalism working at its best dictates that it's probably better for consumers to get routinely screwed by corporations as long as the screwing doesn't become more expensive than what you'd have to pay to avoid it.

Consumers roll over and take it up the rear because it's generally cheaper than fighting it. It's exactly what economics predicts they'll do.

Re: Right?

[rs79]

"Effectively illegal in a number of places"

The entire Internet was illegal before Tony Rutkowski at the ITU made it legal worldwide.

Also around that time the USG mandated the use of OSI protocols.

But guess when happened when the first transatlantic X.25 link went up? Poeple started shooting IP packets over it before any other flavour of data.

The point is, if you make a usefull tool people will use it and government regulations be damned.

I suspect your problem is wires. I think all our problem is wires. We've been sucking at the convenient tit of telcos for ages and I've always wondered what the landscape would be like right now if we'd gone to a uucp style RF mesh in the mid 90s instead of just granting any wingnur with $20/mo a dialup connection. In a sense we only have our own greedy asses to blame. While it's true the UUCP network only passed mail and news the underlying paradigm made much more sense than the more regimented internet that consumed then killed it.

Re:Right?

[rs79]

"I may actually trust a telecom more"

Bingo. A telco is accountable to it's shareholders who expect it to make money by providing a tool people will use. If hey provide a stupid tool and somebody provides a better one that telco dies an organic death.

In thery a government is accountable to the people. In practice nothing could be further from the truth.

Re:Right?

[rs79]

"TPP didn't say that access to the Internet was a right. It said that access to Internet content and applications is a right. That might seem like a trivial distinction, but it's not."

You have no rights.

The internet is a concatenation of privately owned networks. There is no such thing as "the public internet" it is very specifically not a public resource.

For a very good reason.

The government regulats public resources. Look at FCC spectrum. Nobody can so shit without the FCC doing so.

With the internet you can do what you want without asking or a license. People may so dumnb things, but ah, you still have the freedom to do better things without asking for a license.

This is why you and I are using TCP/IP to talk right now and not X.25.

One is centrally controlled, one had no central control and is instead edge-controlled; anybody with a root password controls their piece of it. Now how much do you want your root access controlled by the government for your piece of the "public internet" ?

Re:Right?

[rs79]

"A society has the right to determine the parameters by which a business must operate "

Uzbeck asshole.

Re:Right?

[Hognoxious]

I don't see how the two are mutually exclusive. I'd consider justice a right but that is provided by someone's labour and it costs something.

Re:Right?

[fm6]

The government regulats public resources.

The government regulates all kinds of things. Businesses used to assert the right not to serve people of color; that's now illegal. Zoning laws tell people what they can and cannot do with their buildings and land. Food and drugs cannot be distributed if the government determines they are unsafe or ineffective. These are all private activities that the government regulates.

Unlike most Slashdotters, I don't pretend to be a legal expert, so don't try to get me into an argument about specific cases. I'm simply pointing out that when there's a conflict between property rights and other rights, property rights don't always come first.

Re:Right?

[fm6]

With the internet you can do what you want without asking or a license.

Sure no license. But do what you want? Not if ISPs are allowed to impose terms of service with all kinds of restrictive conditions — including the requirement that you not publically criticize the ISP! Not if ISPs are allowed to pick and choose who sends packets over their networks.

You're basically reciting the Libertarian mantra: "Less government! More individual rights!" This logic ignores the fact that powerful individuals are just as capable of taking away your rights as any government.

This is why you and I are using TCP/IP to talk right now and not X.25.

Excuse me? Both protocols have semi-governmental origins. X.25 was invented by the International Telecommunications Union, which has 700 private entities as members; its advocates in the U.S. were mostly private telecom companies. TCP/IP was invented by DoD-sponsored researchers. Neither was ever imposed by government fiat.

Re: Right?

[Anonymous Coward]

No man owes you anything. If a man does offer you a good or service, for any price, be grateful for it.
I'd like to meet with you to discuss how much you owe me for the service of not stabbing you.
Let's not pretend I owe you any special kindness or mercy.

Why? The CEO owes me nothing. He's going to run his company in order to maximize profit; in other words, to get customers to pay him as much as possible.
I see you approve of my business model.

Re:Right?

[rs79]

"Neither was ever imposed by government fiat"

It was a USG requirement in the 80s that you talked to them with OSI protocols or you didn't talk to them at all.

I'm not particularly libertarian. But I was deeply involved in the DNS mess and from experience, government involvement in the net is akin to handing it over to industry lawyers.

Re:Right?

[rs79]

"I don't pretend to be a legal expert, so don't try to get me into an argument about specific cases. I'm simply pointing out that when there's a conflict between property rights and other rights, property rights don't always come first."

Whatever. Remember "it doesn't have to be fair, it has to be legal".

It helps to know the law. It tends to be the framework things are built on. Your opinion, while intersting it does not mesh well with the way things actually work, in theory and practice.

Re:Right?

[donscarletti]

The vast majority of people, speaking from the perspective of an absolute intelligence, are pretty dumb.

The vast majority of people are able to make and use tools, reason abstractly to solve problems, communicate with each other with vocabularies of many thousands of words and learn hundreds of new facts and concepts every day. I would really like to know what average humans are dumb compared to. Unless of course you mean they are dumb compared to smart humans which is a pretty self evident and meaningless statement, sort of like saying that the average jet interceptor is slow because some can do over Mach 3 but most travel at about Mach 2. Quit your misanthropy and give our species a break.

Re:Right?

[fm6]

The way things work in theory and practice? People believe they have the right to access information, and that other people, be they governments or network providers, don't have the right to interfere. There are other factors, but that one factor gets a lot of weight. There's a theory for your.

Re:Right?

[Acrimonymous]

Unless of course you mean they are dumb compared to smart humans which is a pretty self evident and meaningless statement...

Actually, it's neither self-evident nor meaningless to an average person. Most people are wholly unaware that scoring 100 - an "average" score - on a typical IQ test is a poor showing of intellect. I mean, "average" means not real great, but not bad, right? Right!?

Quit your misanthropy and give our species a break.

I don't think so. Humanity is both pointless and cruelly idiotic. If every human being on the planet vanished tomorrow and left no trace of existence behind, the living conditions of hundreds of billions of creatures, if not trillions, would be vastly improved, and billions of human beings would cease living pointless, painful, and ultimately wasted lives. Even if only smart people existed, it would still be pointless because intellect is only the first of a vast number of massive flaws in our species.

A "break"? No, I think not. Humanity has never achieved anything purposeful, and I seriously doubt it ever will. For all the hubbub of our cultural, architectural, technological, whatever accomplishments, we've done little more than make this planet a worse place for a significant chunk of our existence, and I'm rather certain that the odds are favorable that when we're snuffed out - or we snuff ourselves out - the planet will be that much better for it.

So What?

[MightyMartian]

So what if the respondents don't understand QoS issues. Net neutrality isn't about getting rid of QoS, but about the deliberate extortion of money by ISPs and backbones to give preferential service to their own offerings and to those willing to pay. The deliberate muddying of the issue by industry shills is what gets people going "but what about packet shaping". Trying to prevent 5000 customers with Limewire at 8pm from dropping the average subscriber speed to 33.6kbs is not the same thing as demanding Google pay you money or you'll cut the bandwidth from your subscribers to them.

Re:So What?

[Conspicuous Coward]

Net neutrality isn't about getting rid of QoS, but about the deliberate extortion of money by ISPs and backbones to give preferential service to their own offerings and to those willing to pay.

I think 90% of people on slashdot would agree with this. But then most people here have some understanding of the issues involved. A lot of non-technical people, especially regulators, will get caught up in the FUD being spread.

I think the real background to this is that certain groups are, for obvious reasons, very keen to change the internet from it's current free-for-all state to a managed tiered service; more closely resembling "push" services like television or other traditional media. ISPs are generally happy to support them as they can see opportunities for profit, e.g charging both the user and the server owner for the same bandwidth.

If some form of network neutrality legislation is not forthcoming I think this could become a serious problem. There's only a handful of companies that own most of the internet backbone, if they decide to start prioritizing content they like over content they dislike it will force all the smaller ISPs to follow suit and pass these fees on their customers. The dangers for internet freedom of allowing some random CEO to price internet services they dislike out of existence should require no further explanation.

There are clearly legitimate applications for QoS, prioritizing latency dependent applications over somebody's p2p traffic for example. The question from a regulatory point of view becomes where do you draw the line. What level of regulation is required to stop attempts to change the nature of the net and prevent unscrupulous ISPs charging twice for bandwidth, and to what extent will this interfere with legitimate technologies.

I think we need to be very careful. There is clearly a need for regulation, but it's imperative that those drafting it have an understanding of the technical issues involved, as bad regulation could be as much a danger to internet freedom as no regulation.

Re:So What?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are either a liar or a fool. Net nuetrality is about QoS. Anti-trust laws already exist to prevent blocking of competing services.

Re:So What?

[Wildclaw]

Pretty much all the advantages of QoS is best done at the endpoint using a QoS enabled router or QoS software. If the ISP wants to do QoS it should be an optional addon for customers that don't have the know-how themselves.

I am strongly for complete net neutrality, and not the watered out version that the grand parent represents. ISPs should not be allowed to filter packets based on destination nor content. The only exception being if it is provided as an optional service.

If I use too much bandwidth I should be capped, independent of what I am using it for.

Re:So What?

[seebs]

The problem is that, every time you guys use actual words to describe a proposed law, it ends up being a law that bans QoS in any circumstance where someone might pay for QoS.

In short, QoS is relevant because it's what the laws people actually propose would ban. I am aware that most advocates of "net neutrality" aren't thinking in those terms. However, the law doesn't care what you were thinking about when you wrote it, and the courts generally enforce the law that got written, not the vague and unspecified prohibition against "bad" traffic limitations that the people signing the petitions wanted.

You may say that trying to prevent customers from killing average subscriber speed isn't the same as demanding that Google pay you money -- but most attempts to legislate against the latter would prevent the former.

In fact, as of yet, I haven't seen a proposed law advocated for this that wouldn't ban me from dropping packets from spammers, if it were actually enforced as written.

Frankly, in the end, I just don't think this is something where I want governments trying to get the rules right.

Re:So What?

[perlchild]

If the people don't understand the issue, they won't vote with their wallets either...
So it can be made illegal, or not, but the market is taken out of play until they understand the issue.

Somebody define net neutrality

[Cracked Pottery]

Does it mean that bandwidth providers can charge more for high demand customers? Probably fair enough. Does it mean that they can charge end users more for extra speed. No complaints. What is not acceptable is that the owners of the backbone can make deals with "partners" and give them a special rate and stiff other customers. Or they can charge their customers more for bytes from one source than another. The concept of a "common carrier" has served will in the the fields of communication and transportation. Regulation is necessary. I don't want a top down controlled Internet where I am merely a content consumer.

Re:Somebody define net neutrality

[Opportunist]

What net neutrality is about is that you may not charge more for traffic from this content provider than from that content provider. That's pretty much all. That you pay more for a fatter pipe is fine. Use more, pay more. No problem there. The problem is whether the packets from this source should cost (you or the source, doesn't matter) more than packets from that source. Should they be allowed to charge more for this kind of packet than for that kind of packet.

Generally, the "weigh" is the same, and that's where the "neutrality" part comes in.

Re:Somebody define net neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, if the intertubes were like just about any other product or service, which they are, high bandwidth users would receive a bulk rate that's lower than the standard rate. Only makes sense, no?

Re:Somebody define net neutrality

[Nozsd]

This is what the internet is going to turn into if we don't have net neutrality:
http://i7.tinypic.com/5z6vt4n.jpg

Re:Somebody define net neutrality

[megaditto]

No, not all packets cost the same: if you have a peering agreement with some network, or if the packets come from within your own network, then those packets cost you much less than other 'normal' packets.

If the providers have to pay different rates based on the origin, it's only fair to pass that on to consumers... What's wrong with dividing up the traffic into different tariff zones, and billing each one differently (or shaping them differently in lieu of variable pricing).

Re:Somebody define net neutrality

[Phil06]

Canadians expect the net to be equal on both ends of the hockey rink

Re:Somebody define net neutrality

[TheThiefMaster]

No, not all packets cost the same: if you have a peering agreement with some network, or if the packets come from within your own network, then those packets cost you much less than other 'normal' packets.

If the providers have to pay different rates based on the origin, it's only fair to pass that on to consumers... What's wrong with dividing up the traffic into different tariff zones, and billing each one differently (or shaping them differently in lieu of variable pricing). Even this could be argued to be in network neutrality. The key is not charging more for google (for example)'s packets more than another website's, based purely on the website. Or, alternatively, purposely slowing google's transmissions to your customer because google haven't paid you extra (despite the fact that you're not google's ISP).

Network neutrality means that people only pay for where they connect to the network, and don't have to pay a surcharge for every single site they want to visit, and the site doesn't have to pay every ISP that someone who wants to visit their site could be using.

A neutral network is like the phone system. You pay for calls, getting charged more for longer distance calls. You don't have to pay an extra $5/month for every phone network you want to be able to call. The person you're calling doesn't have to pay your phone carrier so that people on that carrier (including you) can call them.

Cable TV is similar to a non-neutral network, though it's obviously only 1-way. If you don't pay for channels you don't receive them, regardless of whether you watch them or not. Can you imagine an internet like this?

An ISP on a non-neutral internet could force you to use their search instead of google by slowing google down until it takes an hour to load. A neutral ISP is forced to actually make their search engine better than google to get customers to use it. See the difference?

Re:Somebody define net neutrality

[megaditto]

To use your analogy, I think the ISPs could give low-def signal for all channels, and high-def for only those that pay for it!

Re:Somebody define net neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

If the providers have to pay different rates based on the origin, it's only fair to pass that on to consumers

Yeah, I hear you, it's all a bunch of losers crying "*wah* *wah* I got stuck in shitty contracts".

Oh wait, you're talking about the companies, not the consumers. In that case, fuck the contracts, they can do whatever the fuck they want and people should shut up and bend over on command.

The double standard when it comes to whining about contracts is staggering. If the company doesn't like what they're paying, they can get new peering contracts, after all, that's the argument they give us when we don't like their service.

kdawson FUD

[ejito]

Just because its commissioned by eBay doesn't mean the company (the largest independent polling company in Canada) made a loaded survey, especially when AT&T is also a client of theirs. If the survey turned out to be negative for eBay, they could simply not release the information.

Re:kdawson FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny how this article had a bunch of "kdawsonsucks" and similar tags then all of a sudden they all magically disappeared... Ugh

Re:kdawson FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

hows by "dropkdawson" and "losekdawson" and "firekdawson"

"Critics"?

[js92647]

While critics will undoubtedly note that the majority of Canadians were unaware of net neutrality Just because we "live in the north" doesn't mean we are ignorant of our surroundings and what neighboring countries are up to. I'm sure lots of Canadians read /., Digg and are bombarded by American propaganda (interpret that how you may) on a daily basis.

Re:"Critics"?

[KingEomer]

I think he meant that most Canadians, like most citizens of all first-world countries, don't know what Net Neutrality is. So, no, this wasn't an insult directed at Canadians.

Re:"Critics"?

[prelelat]

I am a Canadian. I can tell you right now that the "While critics will undoubtedly note that the majority of Canadians were unaware of net neutrality" is correct. I don't think this is a hot topic in the media and that is the main source of information on these kinds of things for people who are non technical. This would probably have the same results as if you did the survey in most places. I think what this does show the people who are fighting for their internet rights, is that we need to be making a better effort to make it an issue. Otherwise people are going to think their tubes are blocked and this is the only way to unblock the trucks of email going through them.

Even when I try to explain net neutrality to people allot of the time they either don't understand or don't care. The majority of people think they only use the computer for email. They might but allot of people I have worked with in the past don't realize what they do on a computer until it is gone.

My point is, is that it's not that Canadians are less technical there are alot of people in Canada that do read slashdot, but there are thousands more that don't know whats going on.

Lies, Damn Lies, and ....

[cez]

This just in... Canadians don't want to get ass raped by a panda bear either!?

Those that heard of a proposal to let a sex-starved panda free to roam the Canadian tundra were outraged.

On a more serious note TFA:

While critics will undoubtedly note that the majority of Canadians were unaware of net neutrality, that has not stopped other groups - including copyright lobby groups and the telcos - from commissioning similar surveys and reporting them as fact.

This happens all too often here in the US as well, and needs to be more severely penalized.

Re:Lies, Damn Lies, and ....

[Anonymous Coward]

I like anal panda rape you insensitive clod.

Re:Lies, Damn Lies, and ....

[WillAffleckUW]

Those that heard of a proposal to let a sex-starved panda free to roam the Canadian tundra were outraged.

Um, there's not much bamboo in Canada. And none in the tundra.

Let alone panda bears. They're not only not native, they don't understand either of the two official languages and aren't First Nation speakers either.

Plus, they don't grok net neutrality very well.

"Video Choice"

[mind21_98]

But I wants me some video choice!~

I guess the exchange rate applies to intelligence too, eh? ;)

Re:"Video Choice"

[pthor1231]

What, virtually 1 to 1?

Re:"Video Choice"

[mind21_98]

It'll get worse. For the US, rather.

Re:"Video Choice"

[freezin fat guy]

I guess the exchange rate applies to intelligence too, eh? ;)

So we were considerably less intelligent than Americans until recently? ;)

Packet Shaping

[Detritus]

Packet Shaping? Value added?

How about just switching my fscking packets and shove your "value added" up your ass. The contents of my packets are none of your business. I'll be very happy when IPSEC is ubiquitous and the only information ISPs will have access to is the minimum needed for routing.

Re:Packet Shaping

[kriss]

The problem isn't in the contents, it's in the amount. If you've got a limited resource - bandwidth - there's two ways of going about sharing it: Either you got access to your own little slice of the fat pipe (not a whole lot), or a collective/shared pool (much more), but it is just that - shared.

You can, of course, refer to your 'right' to use the pipe however you deem fit - but let's face it - if it's your torrent or 400 average web users that should be prioritized right now, your torrent wouldn't win either the sound business sense vote, nor the democratic one.

Sure, one can say that the provider should upgrade the bandwidth and equipment - to some extent this is possible, of course, but it's not exactly cheap equipment we're talking here and there has to be some sort of ROI, or there won't be a provider.

So if you buy these basic ideas - you're paying for a shared resource and it can't be magically made into an un-shared resource - what would you say is a fair way of doling out the bandwith in?

Re:Packet Shaping

[Opportunist]

As a long time hardware buyer, I learned that "value" is the new word for "crap".

For reference, see the "value edition" of various graphic cards, memory sticks and other hardware.

Re:Packet Shaping

[Telvin_3d]

Ah, but Net Neutrality is fine with traffic shaping and prioritization. What it is against is ISP only shaping traffic based on destination/source instead of content.
The best example is streaming video. Something everyone agrees takes a big chunk of bandwidth. Now, under Net Neutrality, ISPs are free to limit video streaming in order to preserve resources for other uses. What they are not allowed to do is throttle all the video services except the one provided by them. They also can't go to Google and threaten to only filter Google's services unless Google pays them extra money.

So, if ISPs are really having bandwidth problems, Net Neutrality does nothing to stop them from throttling individual services such as torrents, video streaming/downloading or music. What it prevents is the ISPs using their control of the physical connection to extort money out of individual business and consumers.

Re:Packet Shaping

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to be able to pay Netflix to see video on demand without your fscking bit torrent traffic causing it to drop out fascist (actually socialist, but that's a fscking complement here).

Re:Packet Shaping

[Abcd1234]

How about just switching my fscking packets and shove your "value added" up your ass.

Truly the words of someone who doesn't know wtf their talking about. See, I want to use VoIP. I want to give the local telco monopolies (lucky, we have two!) the big Fsck You. But because my ISP *disabled* QoS, which would grant my VoIP packets guaranteed low latency, at the expense of throughput, I can't get reliable service, as my calls would cut out the minute a few people decided to fire up bittorrent. Meanwhile, I'm perfectly happy if the packets for the ISO I'm downloading get held up a little bit, as long as the total throughput is nice and high. But, alas it is not to be.

Ironically, in this case, I suspect my ISP (which is the local cable operator) disabled QoS because they wanted to deploy their own VoIP service, which runs over a private network on a separate set of channels. IOW, disabling shaping, in this case, was *anti*-competative.

Gee... maybe this whole "net neutrality" thing isn't so simple after all, eh?

Re:Packet Shaping

[rtb61]

So what you are saying is if you are selling bandwidth, you are entitled to lie and not actually allow that bandwidth to be filled with data. Cool, I will now offer packet shaped 100Mbit service, it is just unfortunate that I consider any attempt to actually send data down the 100mbit service I am selling, is "Stealing", as I am only selling the bandwidth, not actual data travelling across the network, that costs extra.

Any complaints about the service or data from or to competitors will be packet shaped to 1 bit per hour, regardless of data fees paid.

So if ISPs are having bandwidth problems, they should stop fucking lying to customers, and stop attempting sell what they do not have!

Re:Packet Shaping

[kriss]

"Ah, but Net Neutrality is fine with traffic shaping and prioritization." see grand-grantparent for someone who thinks otherwise. If this were the case and universally accepted, yes, I'd agree with you somewhat (see below). And I agree with your sentiment that net neutrality in the sense of not doing extortion is a good thing. I'm somewhat tired of the 'my packets are holy' sentiment, though.

The problem with the 'good' net neutrality, still, is that it kind of runs into a grey area once you start talking about peering. What if Google goes to BigISP or BackboneProvider and say 'Hey, we'll peer with you directly'.. they just 'bought' an advantage versus OtherOnlineVideoService. If that's OK, why isn't it OK to do it virtually?. And, if you start limiting peering in the name of fairness, you're probably doing the net in the US a huge disservice..

In short: How do you stop people from being greedy evil fucks without doing a lot of collateral damage?

phrasing

[mark_jabroni]

How about "Do you approve of an ISP change that would you faster access to certain websites while reducing your rates for internet access?"

Kind of a loaded wording, but no more loaded than the survey question.

But...so?

[DragonWriter]

Given the survey's sponsorship, it's unlikely that respondents were presented with examples of the value that ISPs say packet shaping can bring, or asked to weigh such against net neutrality.

Since traffic shaping that is done based on the kind of content without regard to the source of content and which is accompanied by sufficient bandwidth so that non-prioritized content isn't just dropped on the floor in favor of prioritized content is neither inconsistent with the concept of net neutrality as a common-carrier-like provision nor inconsistent with the goal articulated in the question asked in this survey, I'm not sure how you think pointing that out would be relevant.

Re:But...so?

[Wildclaw]

I disagree with that. As soon as you start to look at the content of packets, be it their destination or their content, you are violating the concept of neutrality. Neutrality is about not caring what you deliver and just making sure that it gets delivered at a fair price per packet.

Sure, you can claim that "net neutrality" has a specific meaning that is defined differently, but in that case "net neutrality" is about neutrality as much as the "us patriot act" is about patriotism.

Re:But...so?

[DragonWriter]

Sure, you can claim that "net neutrality" has a specific meaning that is defined differently, but in that case "net neutrality" is about neutrality as much as the "us patriot act" is about patriotism.

Net neutrality is about neutrality of origin, it originated as a term as a reaction to ideas aired by telcos and other ISPs regarding charging the original sender of packets (particularly high-volume sites like Google), as well as the immediate customer of the ISP receiving the packet, for packets crossing the ISPs network. It most critically refers to packets being treated without regard to origin.

But whatever "net neutrality" may or may not mean to you or me, the kind of issue raised in TFS after the excerpt is irrelevant to the question asked in the poll referred to in the part of TFA excerpted in TFS, so in any case I disagree with the suggestion in TFS that the assumed failure to frame the question in the way suggested is, even if the assumption is acccurate, not a substantial failure, since the suggested framing is completely irrelevant to the question asked, even if it might be relevant to some particular vision of "net neutrality" in the abstract.

Re:But...so?

[Wildclaw]

While filtering on content type isn't as bad filtering on destination, but it is similar.

Ok, I know that this is a bad example that would never happen, but imagine if an ISP decided to deprioritize all World of Warcraft packets and demand blizzard to pay up money unless they wanted it to continue. Not much different than the google example is it.

Name one

[Frogbert]

Come on, name one benefit that packet shaping can bring. In all serious I can't think of a single example where it would be acceptable.

If an ISP needs to shape packets they've over sold their service, and that is their problem. Not ours.

Re:Name one

[kriss]

* Service level control (give the customer the service level they pay for)
* Prioritizing empty acks for improved transfer speed
* Congestion avoidance - if you're approaching the wirespeed, you'd rather want to drop a packet from something non-interactive than say, a DNS query. Well, given a normal ISP consumer scenario anyhow.

That's three. I'm sure you can Google for more.

Re:Name one

[Opportunist]

Service level control is already in place. That's why many ISPs have different up/downstream offers for different needs (and also different price ranges). You want more, you pay more. But what you use it for is your decision, as it should be.

Prioritizing acks ... what for? If the ISP has troubles getting a double digit byte sized ack through his pipes, he has problems. Big problems. But not my problems. Stop overselling your bandwidth and you're fine.

"Selective" dropping is also a touchy subject. Who says what's important? I'm fairly sure an MMORPG enthusiast in the middle of the raid will give you a piece of his mind if you tell him his neighbor's DNS request for bigboobsandfatasses.com is more important than his 3 hour buildup for the final boss. Not to mention that within nanoseconds after such a "selective dropping" policy becomes accepted, money will tell which packets are "more important".

Re:Name one

[Ironsides]

TV over IP. Say you're getting TV from your ISP and they both use the same IP connection for both internet and TV. The TV connection is going to require it's own dedicated bandwidth which, unless you know of a few methods I don't, would require some form of packet shaping.

Re:Name one

[Wildclaw]

Prioritizing acks is nice if you are using up all your bandwidth.

However, there is no need for the ISP to get involved. QoS software like cFosSpeed is all that is needed to ensure that everything works nicely.

I agree with you in general though. My data is just as important to me as my neighbours data is to him. The only fair measure is the volume transferred and what you pay for the bandwidth.

Re:Name one

[Opportunist]

Well, if I have troubles getting my acks through, I should probably start pondering whether my pipe should be bigger. Or I could start cutting back on traffic somewhere (either by actually reducing my load or by QoS). All of my traffic is under my control and I get to decide which is more important than others. If my pipe can't support it, I have to cut down my use.

It's the same for a provider. Though for him, cutting down the use doesn't mean shaping a customer's traffic. When I pay for a service, I expect that service to be available to me. If an ISP cannot provide it, he is required to fix this problem. Either by increasing his bandwidth or by reducing his amount of customers. I do not accept that I pay for a certain bandwidth and am not "allowed" to use it.

Re:Name one

[Spy Hunter]

First of all, TV over IP is here, and it works right now without any "dedicated bandwidth", despite doom and gloom from ISPs. I've been watching shows from NBC.com and ABC.com and it's worked quite well for me. My connection isn't fast enough for streaming HD, but ABC does offer it and I hear from other people that it works well. Joost works less well for me, but I suspect that's because my upload is crappy (Joost is P2P).

But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and concede that maybe some kind of shaping is helpful (maybe if you're running BitTorrent while watching streaming TV and talking on Skype). Even so, that kind of shaping can and should be done on the consumer's side of the last mile. If you want glitch-free TV, you can set the router sitting in front of your cable modem to give TV priority over your other traffic. The ISP can even provide you a router with this capability pre-set; no configuration necessary. ABC.com could provide instructions and/or software for configuring routers, and future home routers could attempt to automatically classify and shape traffic (this could be a differentiating factor in the home router market). Doing shaping inside the ISP, where the customer has no control over it, is stupid and wrong. It can only work to benefit the ISP's interests and lock out competition for their services. No ISP is going to configure their routers to favorably shape traffic to services competing with their own offerings.

Re:Name one

[Ironsides]

You aren't watching TV off of NBC or ABC.com, you're watching videos that buffer on your PC. TV over IP is what Verizon is offering on their Fios networks and uses at least an order of magnitude more bandwidth. UDP packets delivered across the ISPs network to the decoder box to the TV. It requires constant latency. As such, the setups are made so that you have your internet and your TV running off the same line, but even if you aren't using the TV, you aren't getting access to the bandwidth the TV had. It still requires packet shaping to block off bandwidth specifically for the TV.

Re:Name one

[Spy Hunter]

I am aware that the term "IPTV" is commonly used to refer specifically to delivering a legacy cable-style user interface to TV delivered over IP, but ABC.com is also delivering TV over IP and I think it is stupid to call it something else just because the term "IPTV" was taken. Anyway, pedantic debates over the definition of the term "IPTV" are not the point here, and neither are the implementation details of Fios. The point is that high-quality video can be delivered over the Internet without cooperation from ISPs, as ABC.com is proving right now. We don't need ISPs meddling with our packets.

Re:Name one

[Blkdeath]

It's the same for a provider. Though for him, cutting down the use doesn't mean shaping a customer's traffic. When I pay for a service, I expect that service to be available to me. If an ISP cannot provide it, he is required to fix this problem. Either by increasing his bandwidth or by reducing his amount of customers. I do not accept that I pay for a certain bandwidth and am not "allowed" to use it.

Repeat after me; BURSTABLE TRAFFIC. You are paying for a consumer-grade, burstable link. If you want dedicated service pay for a couple T1s. What? They're too expensive? Then quit crying when your $40/month burstable link isn't always 100% available to you.

Re:Name one

[Ichijo]

Doing shaping inside the ISP, where the customer has no control over it, is stupid and wrong.

So I shouldn't be allowed to set up a gaming-oriented ISP where my customers pay me to prioritize gaming packets over all other packets?

Re:Name one

[whitehatlurker]

name one benefit that packet shaping can bring

A service I was with increased priority on interactive services, like http, ftp and ssh. Smtp service dropped to a standstill, and I was without spam for several days.

Next?

Re:Name one

[Spy Hunter]

So I shouldn't be allowed to set up a gaming-oriented ISP where my customers pay me to prioritize gaming packets over all other packets?

You could do that, you would just have to implement it slightly differently. You would provide neutral service to the user's modem, then install a value-add hardware router or software program (on the customer's side of the modem, and not required for service) to do any shaping the customer desires. In fact, a better business would be providing the hardware and/or software which customers of *any* ISP could install to prioritize gaming packets over all other packets. Or, ISPs could contract you to provide your gaming performance hardware to customers who want it. Doing the shaping inside the ISP confers no benefits over doing it at the user's end, plus it is much less flexible *and* encourages anti-competitive behavior when ISPs (which are natural monopolies) become content providers (which should never be monopolies).

Re:Name one

[Opportunist]

Repeat after me: SELL WHAT YOU GOT. You can't handle 10gb, don't sell 10gb.

Currently, ISPs sold more bandwidth than they can provide, relying on their users only using the bandwidth offered in bursts instead of permanently. It reminds me a wee bit of the troubles phone companies had in the US, where local calls weren't metered because, well, who cares if one person calls his aunt for an hour, the average call takes a few minutes tops. Then came the internet and modems running 24/7 and the lines were clogged. Yes, that was a problem for the phone company. But it's a problem they brought onto themselves.

Do you really want to blame the user for using what he was sold? If they can't provide the service, they should not try to sell it, or at least market it as what it is. Saying "you get 512mb and up to 10gb if available" is certainly less attractive than saying "you get 10gb", but it is what you can provide. If I sell what I don't have, I go to jail for pulling a scam.

Re:Name one

[kriss]

"Well, if I have troubles getting my acks through, I should probably start pondering whether my pipe should be bigger."

Not really - you have a limited pipe upstream, no? If it's DSL it's probably asymmetric as well, which doesn't exactly help - let's say you use one of those for this particular scenario. Bear with me. And you obviously want to squeeze some more oomph out of it.

Sure, you can ponder if your pipe should be bigger, but the increase in costs from your DSL to something bigger is, assuming there's no operator offering ethernet or fiber locally, prohibitive. You can either take that cost, or get a decent bit more oomph out of your current wire by shaping traffic.

Thing is, you're saying 'all traffic shaping is evil' and say you'd be prepared to use QoS yourself - a prime example of traffic shaping if any.

As for the 'I can use all I pay for'.. try going to a 24/7 gym and get a membership. Start hogging one of the big, expensive machines 24/7. No sweat, you're one user. Ten people start doing it? Problem.40 people? Major problem. Sure, you pay for access whenever you want, but no matter how much you feel entitled to it, it's still a shared resource. The options are to increase price or limit your hogging of the exercise machine. In my experience, most ISP's get the best pipes they can, but bandwidth isn't cheap and it's not always possible to just crank up the bandwidth either.

That's not to say that I think you're not entitled to use whatever you want on the pipe - but by all means, think a bit further and check out what a few Mbps of global transit costs. Either you buy them yourself, or you buy them shared and.. well.. have to accept that they are, in fact, shared.

Re:Name one

[maxume]

I routinely set up my bittorrent client to limit its traffic, in order to keep browsing and what not a bit snappier.

Re:Name one

[Opportunist]

I'll repeat myself, so please mod me redundant if really necessary, but SELL WHAT YOU GOT. If you cannot provide 24/7 gym training, then don't sell it. Yes, you might assume that people will only work out for 2 hours and then get tired, but still, if you advertise something as 24/7, be prepared for people using it that way. Or would you go to an "all you can eat" diner with a 2 plates maximum?

I can agree to a service that offers 512mb "guaranteed" and 10gb "if available". No sweat. But ADVERTISE it as such! Don't go and claim you can provide 10gb 24/7 if you simply and plainly cannot.

Re:Name one

[rs79]

Keep in mind too, if everybody in the US picks up the telephone handset at the same time - the phone network crashes. It's not designed to do that.

Re:Name one

[Opportunist]

And if every Chinese climbs a chair and jumps at the same time the Earth will get out of orbit. The big question is, why should they? It's their loss if they did.

What's your point?

Re:Name one

[ZorbaTHut]

Optional low-priority service. If my ISP provided another IP I could use, with much higher bandwidth but no guarantees of consistent speed, I could use it for bulk downloads and other non-interactive processes while keeping webbrowsing and gameplaying on the "high-priority" IP.

This is assuming that you don't believe in sending ACK packets first, which I do - even if you're not congested, sending ACKs a few milliseconds faster can be a nice benefit.

Re:Name one

[Ironsides]

ABC is NOT providing "High Quality" video. What they are providing is a lower quality video that is below TV resolution and framerate, containing bluring and blocking that would not be considered acceptable by any TV station. It is not even up to VHS quality.

Further, you did not even look at the requirements of providing two different services off of the same connection which, as I mentioned, would require at least a small amount of packet shaping to keep segregated.

Re:Name one

[fm6]

I believe his point is that any network builds to handle the maximum likely usage, because they can't possibly afford to build to handle the possible usage. So it's not as simple as saying "if you sell X, build X."

Re:Name one

[Spy Hunter]

Have you even tried ABC's stuff over a decent connection? It's far beyond VHS. It's also far beyond, for example, the compressed crap spewed by DirecTV on its SD channels. You need to reconsider your "any TV station" statement; that bar is pretty low. It doesn't match Fios's quality yet, but it's only going to get better as connections get faster; in fact if ABC were targeting only customers with Fios level (30Mbps+) connections, they could probably beat Fios's own picture quality today. And if Fios's full bandwidth was available as neutral switched IP instead of being reserved for Verizon alone, then there would be no question: ABC could serve up crazy picture quality, with zero cooperation from Verizon.

Further, you did not even look at the requirements of providing two different services off of the same connection

Actually, you are just ignoring the obvious and perfectly reasonable solution to this problem that I presented, which doesn't require packet shaping *inside of ISPs*. I won't repeat myself here; just read it in my original post (2nd paragraph).

Three Things To Think About

[WillAffleckUW]

1. Canadians value privacy, freedom, and their role in creating the open communications systems they depend on (SFU and UBC R001!)

2. Canada is used to having a high-bandwidth internet that is cheaper than the US one, faster, and in more households.

3. Only those who want to sell you less for more are in favor of killing off net neutrality.

Wording is everything

[Cleon]

I think in this case wording is everything. It doesn't seem to me that the majority of the general public, outside of techies and their friends, is really informed about "Net Neutrality" and the debate over it.

You could probably get a poll to go either way based on how you word the question:

"Do you believe that governments or corporations should place restrictions on what websites you can visit, or charge you extra based on visiting certain sites?"

"Do you believe that private property should be respected, and that Internet Service Providers have the right to control the content they deliver, such as restrictions on child pornography, sites that contain malicious software, and terrorist web sites?"

In polite company. Re:Packet Shaping

[Erris]

Well put, but perhaps not the best thing in mixed company.

The easy way to defeat "packet shaping" sophistry is to point out that value comes from bandwith and nothing but. Constricting bandwith through a filter always reduces the bandwith available, even if it favors a few "sensitive" packets. The only way out of bandwith problems is to spend the money on more bandwith. Money spent on other things is wasteful, even if honestly used.

Well that's no big surprise

[Sycraft-fu]

Even if you understand some of the basics of it, most people come down on the side of net neutrality. I mean having a neutral policy is good right? It takes some fairly detailed understanding of the issues to realise how a well meaning law like that could have unintended consequences that makes things worse overall. It is a complicated situation. On the one hand you have assholes like AT&T saying they want to depritorize traffic from anyone who doesn't pay them protection money, on they other you have network admins worried this means they can't using things like packet shapers and such at all on their network.

It isn't the kind of thing people can give an informed response on unless they are given a decent bit of background info, maybe more than they are interested in listening to.

Right! Re:Right?

[Erris]

When I pay for bandwith, I expect to be able to use it as a chose not as YOU or anyone else sees fit. I understand that this costs money and that is the source of my outrage.

Conversely, use of public servitude and spectrum are privileges not rights. Those that would use those public resources have obligations to the public. It can be argued that the current owners of spectrum and networks in this country have failed those obligations and should be removed from their position of privilege and jailed.

Re:Right! Re:Right?

[Brandee07]

When I pay for bandwith

I understand that this costs money

When taken in conjunction, these two statements are all that needs to be said. You are paying for a product or service. You should receive it.

No doubt

[ignavus]

No doubt the people who tell us how wonderful it would be without net neutrality are the same people who tell us how marvellous it is to watch ads instead of TV programs.

Re:In polite company. Re:Packet Shaping

[fm6]

This isn't mixed company, this is Slashdot.

Ok

[Sycraft-fu]

Sounds good. So then let's take a situation some years in the future where it's law. What happens when you are watching TV, and all of a sudden the stream starts stuttering. You call your cable company angry. They explain that TV is now delivered over IP, like everything else. Currently you have some neighbours hitting the P2P really heavy and it is using up enough of the segment that it is interfering with video traffic. They'd love to have video have a higher QoS, but alas the law says they can't. The "contents of your packets are none of their business."

Right now we have a situation where largely there's a disconnect between data, voice and video networks. They run on different standards, are handled by different equipment and so on. However that's slowly changing. VoIP is one of the first examples, but it'll keep going. Eventually we are likely to have everything routed to us over an IP network. However some of it is more important, or rather more time sensitive, than others. I don't mind if packets for my download have to wait a little bit. However with video, you've got to get me the next frame in not more than 33 milliseconds or I'm going to start dropping frames. This is the reason why video that operates over the Internet has to buffer and can't be true realtime, and even then still drops sometimes.

As such it is not a clear cut case of "just leave it alone." If everything goes to IP we are going to need a way to give priority to time critical packets. Even if that doesn't happen there's reason to want to shape packets. The big objection people have to P2P is that it eats up an unfair amount of network time. Most networks, all other things being equal, will work out so that each transfer gets an equal amount of time. Download one file via HTTP on a T1, you get somewhere in the realm of 150-190k/sec. Download a second file, they both go in the realm of 75-95k/sec. Ok, good deal. However P2P works off of lots of connections. You can have a single download having 150+ connections. So it'll grab more resources than its fair share and slow things down.

An easy solution to that, without banning P2P or something like that, is to just make P2P a lower priority than normal traffic. That's what we do on the campus I work on. We have a couple packet shapers that will put P2P packets behind others. That means that so long as there's bandwidth, everything works normally. However if we cap out, P2P slows down before other things do.

This isn't a clear cut thing. I agree that companies should be prohibited, either by law or simply by people refusing to do business with them, for charging people extortion money under threat of slowing their traffic down. However that doesn't mean we want to declare that all packets must be treated equal. Some things are just more important than others on a mixed network, and there needs to be allowances for that.

Re:Ok

[Wildclaw]

Looks like the ISP has some problems with their bandwidth controls. That isn't a QoS issue at all.

Why are your neighbour allowed to download at such a high speed that it prevents you from watching video. The opposite question could of course also be, Why are you allowed to download video at such a high rate that it interfers with your opponents p2p traffic.

An ISP should ensure that it gives each custome adequate bandwidth. What the customer does with that bandwidth is their own business.

Know the counter argument from QoS proponents is of course, What if I want to use p2p, VoIP and play an online game at the same time. Without QoS this won't work.

This is true, but the only place where the QoS needs to take place is on the local router (or using software like cFosSpeed). The ISP doesn't have to be involved at all. I have personally cFosSpeed and played online games while using p2p, and it works just fine.

Re:Ok

[Opportunist]

In this case, I don't question my neighbor's use of his pipe but the company's selling policy. Appearantly they sell more bandwidth than they can sell. They should not sell him a pipe fat enough to interfere with the TV broadcast.

God beware my neighbor actually uses what he pays for!

Re:Ok

[Sycraft-fu]

I mean at a higher level than what you are talking about. Right now, video and data are totally separate. Even if you have a cable modem, one has nothing to do with the other. They are in different frequency ranges on the cable. Ok, but let's look to the future. First we axe the analogue channels, that's coming already. Once you are all digital already, it becomes feasible to unify the service. Rather than having something like 0-500MHz for data and 500-1000MHz for video, you do it all for data. Send cable out via multi-cast. Lots of cool reasons to do that.

However if you do that, that traffic needs to be high priority. Not necessarily because of the bandwidth, but because of the timing. If you want it to work like cable today, where it isn't buffered, where it's real time, you've got a 33 msec window per frame to get that to them. Any more, you have to drop a frame.

As a real world example today, take VoIP. We use it on campus here. Bandwidth is never the issue, a single VoIP call is 80kbits/sec (64k for the data, the rest is overhead). All our links are 100mbit or gbit. However to function VoIP still has to be higher priority than normal traffic. Why? It's time critical. It works with the PSTN and as such should have 0 delay. For that, those packets need to get there right fucking now.

That's what I'm talking about. More than any sort of bandwidth limits, it is making sure that non-critical stuff doesn't interfere with critical stuff. You want to be able to say "Voice always gets it's bandwidth no matter what, video can have what voice doesn't need, data can have the rest, and P2P has to be at the bottom of the heap." This can be important even in situations where the overall link is never saturated. However it becomes really important in cases of situations of saturation. If you have users trying to use 110% of a link, the P2P people won't even notice if some packets get dropped. The people on voice calls will be pissed.

It is the reality we face as we unify previously separate networks and do everything over IP. Should work great and make everything better, but we are going to need to acknowledge that not all packets are created equal.

Re:Ok

[Wildclaw]

And my reply still stands. More specifically the comment.

"Why are you allowed to download video at such a high rate that it interfers with your opponents p2p traffic?". I can tell you for sure that users on ISP that shape bittorrent traffic shaped does notice it.

Using bandwidth limits is in my opinion the only fair compromise. Anything else is basically claiming that your information is more important than my information. In the few cases where that is true, that information should probably be transmitted via a more expensive connection, or be small enough that it fits the within bandwidth limits (like a call to the police over VoIP).

If there isn't enough total bandwidth to even be able to handle the bandwidth of a VoIP call for each user you would have a point. However, in that case, I think the ISP needs to upgrade before trying to sell VoIP.

Re:Ok

[Telvin_3d]

Net Neutrality allows for all sorts of traffic shaping. In your example, the ISP is welcome to carve out a chunk of bandwidth in order to ensure that TV streams get through. What they are not allowed to do is to distinguish between the TV service they offer and the other TV services. They can't play dirty by intentionally slowing down the signal of competing services while giving extra bandwidth to their own.

There is no problem filtering things based on the type of traffic. What we need to prevent is filtering based on where the traffic's origin or destination.

Re:Ok

[Anonymous Coward]

To all other replies to parent comment: stupid networks are not the answer. You are never going to get an end-to-end bandwidth guarantee, because it is impossible to guarantee billions of people will get a perfect connection from anywhere to anywhere. You don't get that now, and you never will. Packet shaping is the only efficient way to solve the LATENCY problem associated with routing time sensitive audio and video traffic.

Re:Ok

[Sycraft-fu]

This isn't a problem of just bandwidth limits. You have to do QoS on VoIP even if you don't max the connection. It has to get it's packets through on time. The switch right up the the end user does QoS on our campus. It isn't just preventing you from interfering with others, it i prevention you from interfering with you. It is making sure that time critical packets get through no matter what else you are doing.

Also the problem you suggest with bandwidth limits is that it makes things worse for everyone. Right now on campus people can get gig connections. You can have a gigabit link all the way up to our edge. Our external connections are then several hundred mbps. Now what this means is that generally you get things very fast. When I last grabbed a Linux ISO I got about 3 megabytes/second download. Had that shit done in a few minutes. However, it can work that way because we can monitor and deal with people using more than their fair share.

If you insisted that we do a "You get this much bandwidth, use it as you will," we'd have to take probably half or more off the top for research, servers and such and then divide the rest between the some 20,000 computers on campus. It would end up being probably like 500-1000kbits per user, maybe less.

The system works precisely because not everyone uses all their bandwidth all the time. Most of the day my system doesn't get anything from the net. Even when it does, it is usually very little things like a website. As such it doesn't need bandwidth dedicated to it. However it does need it available.

To implement a plan like you suggest would be extremely expensive. Suppose I have a 48 port 10/100 floor switch which desktops hook to. If I want to ensure they each can have all their bandwidth, I then need 5 1gbps links to the building switch. Now let's suppose there's 5 floor switches hooking to that building switch. It then needs about 3 10gbps links back to the core switch that serves it. If that switch serves 20 buildings it is going to neex a hell of a connection to the rest of the core, and so on.

It just can't be done, and further more doesn't need to be done. It all works pretty well when people just share it. The only time you get in to problems are when you have traffic that is time critical, like VoIP and video, and traffic that can use an unfair amount, like P2P. Rather than just throttling everyone to a small amount, seems to me that a better solution is QoS.

This is doubly true for critical traffic. One of the major reasons for VoIP is that it simplifies things. We can get rid of our 7R/E (the 5ESS's successor) and all the massive amounts of copper wiring that accompany it. Buildings can be fed over just fibre connections, and have only one network. However to work, that traffic for voice HAS to be higher priority. If it isn't realtime, we can't use the system that interfaces with the PSTN as it does and we sure as hell can't use it for E911. Even if we limit each individual port to use only their share, there is still the problem on a per port basis. We need that VoIP traffic delivered over their other data. Even setting aside enough bandwidth isn't good enough. It doesn't just need 80k/sec, it needs it RIGHT NOW, has to happen in a small window.

The suggestion of running over another connection is silly. Why should another network be installed? That's expensive and in fact gets us back to the very thing we are trying to solve: The second network of copper cables.

Like it or not, you have to share the Internet with other people at some point. Also, if you want it cheaper, that sharing is going to have to continue. The idea of complete dedicated bandwidth just doesn't work. The higher a level you want a given level guaranteed, the more you have to pay.

I'm not supporting the "Charge more because it came form someone who didn't pay us," thing, but you have to be realistic about new technologies over a unified IP network.

Re:Ok

[complete loony]

No, the simple answer is; "give me the service I am paying you for". If the ISP is overselling bandwidth, and people are now starting to use the service they were sold. It's not the customers fault. Or the fault of the new services that are starting to crop up. Use the money I am giving you to build the infrastructure you need to provide the service you have promised. If you don't have enough money to build the infrastructure, charge more, or promise less.

Re:Ok

[grcumb]

Sounds good. So then let's take a situation some years in the future where it's law. What happens when you are watching TV, and all of a sudden the stream starts stuttering. You call your cable company angry. They explain that TV is now delivered over IP, like everything else. Currently you have some neighbours hitting the P2P really heavy and it is using up enough of the segment that it is interfering with video traffic. They'd love to have video have a higher QoS, but alas the law says they can't. The "contents of your packets are none of their business."

I know you're just responding to the GP, who is off the mark as well, but can we please get something straight: Net Neutrality is not about traffic shaping!

These silly digressions are really aggravating. We need to be clear about the problem, and we're not. So let's try to keep this topic simple:

If you believe that people should only pay once for Internet, then you support Net Neutrality. If you think telcos have a right to charge twice for the same service, then you're against it.

The Net Neutrality Debate [sic] is about letting telcos decide which providers get preferential service, based either on corporate allegiance or on the provider's ability to pay whatever the extortion rate du jour is.

Anybody who knows anything about multi-user networks knows that some amount of traffic shaping is necessary. While the GP and I probably agree that less is more, there is no real-world scenario in which no QoS occurs. The telcos want us to focus on this red herring, precisely because they know they can win this argument.

But if we could just stop our collective knee from jerking for a moment, we could consider what is really proposed:

Google wants to provide the world with search-related services. To that end, they pay gobzillions of dollars for state of the art data centres with tubes so big that even Ted Stevens couldn't comprehend them. The consumer wants state of the art Internet services, of which quick and easy searching is a pretty significant part. So consumer goes to telco and subscribes for X megabits at Y dollars per month.

So Google have paid for their Internet access. Consumers pay for their access. But telco's still feeling hungry. The Lear jet's in the shop and baby needs a new silver spoon. So they go to Google and say, "It's going to cost you Z dollars per megabyte that you transmit to our consumers. If you don't want to pay, that's okay, we'll just throttle your service and let Yahoo! through quicker."

Consumer never sees this. All that consumer sees is that Google is 'slow' and Yahoo! is 'fast'.

Ultimately, what we're looking at is a situation where telcos aren't satisfied with Y dollars per month from the consumer, and gobzillions more from Google. They want to charge Google more for the right to access their particular bunch of consumers.

There is nothing morally, ethically or even legally right about this model. Telcos know this, so they're lobbying governments around the world to make it legal. The problem that we face is that consumers will never actually see the effect of this legislation, if it ever passes. The only people who will know that things could be different are the geeks. And for all anyone cares, we'll simply be a voice in the wilderness.

Re:Ok

[Blkdeath]

In this case, I don't question my neighbor's use of his pipe but the company's selling policy. Appearantly they sell more bandwidth than they can sell. They should not sell him a pipe fat enough to interfere with the TV broadcast.

Such is the duality of the geek argument. Geeks want 4, 5, 8, 10, more megabit connections to the Internet. Ok, so a cable company gives 10MBit/sec connections to all users. Well now they want to use it at capacity and pay the same as the guy down the street who uses it for burst traffic (web, e-mail and such). I remember the outcry over bandwidth caps! "You sold me a dedicated 8MBit connection and now you want me to pay when I max it out 24 hours a day 31 days in a row? FASCISTS!"

See, the cable connections all share the same big fat pipe. They have an advantage over DSL in the distance they can travel from the 'CO' facility but the disadvantage in that there's only so much total bandwidth to go around and if all your neighbors are downloading large P2P files you're SOL to check your e-mail or use your VoIP service. The bottleneck, of course, for DSL lies in the convergence point at the central office where all those little pipes (drinking straws) feed from the big pipe(s) (firehose) connected to the rest of the Internet.

Consider the ramifications of even so much as a typical suburban neighborhood having 10MBit/sec connections. 1000 houses in a new sub-division * 10MBit/sec = 10GBit/second. That's an OC-192. For a single neighborhood. Now consider the population of the small(ish) town I'm from at ~85,000 people. Estimate that 75% (number pulled from thin air, FWIW) of people have broadband connections and you've got 63750 people with 10MBit connections. That's 640GBit/sec for one small town!! (That's about 67 * OC-192s for the record)

Clearly this gets out of hand FAST. There's no way any company can expect to maintain a level of dedicated, guaranteed bandwidth for all those subscribers; especially at $39.95/month.

QoS is the simple answer, and unfortunately people who use and develop P2P software don't seem to want play ball. They want to be able to saturate the up and downlink capabilities of whatever line they're on to get that {$File} downloaded NOW NOW NOW because hell, free should be fast.

Until something happens where multi-terrabit connections at the core are commonplace we won't see dedicated high speed, full-access all the time connections to our doorsteps and we're going to have to deal with burstable connections that can and do slow down during peak usage times and under major events.

Re:Ok

[Wildclaw]

"Also the problem you suggest with bandwidth limits is that it makes things worse for everyone. Right now on campus people can get gig connections. You can have a gigabit link all the way up to our edge. Our external connections are then several hundred mbps. Now what this means is that generally you get things very fast. When I last grabbed a Linux ISO I got about 3 megabytes/second download. Had that shit done in a few minutes. However, it can work that way because we can monitor and deal with people using more than their fair share."

I don't get this whole paragraph. First you claim that bandwidth limits makes everything worse. But later on you specifically say that you deal that people using more than their fair share, which sounds a lot like a type of bandwidth limiting.

I think you have misunderstood me. Bandwidth limiting doesn't mean that you divide everything equally every second of the day. If someone is using his connection 24/7, his priority gets reduced, while those who only download once in a while have priority when they do so.

There is no need to look at the packet content for that to work.

I am probably spoiled since I am live in Sweden and have a pretty decent ISP. I understand you regarding the deal with VoIP and especially 911 calls. I actually don't mind VoIP having higher priority that much. I am more afraid of the opposite, that certain types of traffic gets deprioritized by giving all other traffic higher priorities.

Re:Ok

[Sycraft-fu]

The thing is, rather than just reducing someone's priority totally, you can deal with it a better way and just reduce the kinds of traffic that use a lot. If P2P is lower priority then during peak times it doesn't interfere with other traffic, though it works plenty fine. When things slow down, it gets more bandwidth. Everyone is happy, you don't have to limit someone just because they like to use P2P.

I do that on my home network even using a m0n0wall traffic shaper. SSH gets priority over everything, games get priority over everything but SSH, everything else gets priority over P2P. Makes things better for me and ensures that even if my roommate or I are doing a lot of P2P, it doesn't hurt the other one. A much better system, I think, than setting up something to rate limit each of us to half the total connection speed.

This is why shaping is useful. Also, though I use VoIP as the most important, it has other uses. Games are a good example. Connections are getting fast enough these days it is going to start to be reasonable to design games to work on a more immediate schedule of data delivery but only if that can be guaranteed. QoS can do that, you can have it so that game traffic gets priority over web traffic. It doesn't even necessairily make anything slower, just makes sure that the more time sensitive traffic gets delivered first. As I noted, video is another area that needs priority bandwidth. I'm sure there are more that I don't know about, and more that have yet to be invented.

All in all it makes the idea of a truly neutral network something of a problem. We need to find a way to balance any law such that it protects consumer from asshole companies, but doesn't cripple the company to be able to provide the QoS needed to have a good modern net.

Re:Ok

[Anonymous Coward]

I get my net and TV from the same telecom here in Korea*. It is IPTV, and I can watch a movie no problem while downloading several torrents.
Maybe if the telecos in the States stopped treating their customers like indentured peons, you wouldn't be worrying about this aspect (which has nothing to do with net neutrality) at all.

*And before all the "oh America is too big for ubiquitous FTTH" people pipe up, consider maybe just the major metro centers in the states, such as NYC, LA, Chicago, Houston etc.

Re:Ok

[mariushm]

If my video would be delivered via IP and starts stuttering and they give me their explanation, I would simply quit paying for the TV and I will also probably sue them.

It's not their business to see what packets I am transferring and to prioritize stuff, but it's their business to deliver what they promise in the contracts.

Too much P2P traffic? Tough luck, the companies shouldn't have promised so much in contracts, if you can't deliver 4,6 mbps then don't say in the contracts.

Governments and customer protection companies should enforce and sue ISP's who specify in the contracts some parameters and when monitoring the connection, those parameters can not be reached for a specific amount of time(let's say 80% of the time). I don't care if the neighbors are downloading stuff and the lines are busy, the ISP companies won't accept 50% of the monthly fees because you had a hard month at work (or you did not receive quality service.

My feeling is that if this is enforced, *all* ISP companies would have to lower the download and upload speeds advertised in the contracts or raise the monthly prices for those contracts. This way, you really get what you pay for and companies will not promise so much.

Re:Ok

[heinousjay]

There's very little need to make it a class warfare thing. The large ISPs are publicly owned, and lots of people make money when they do well. Certainly, some people do very well, but they are exceptions. Holding them down sure doesn't lift everyone else up, in any case.

Re:Ok

[Opportunist]

Then either sell the line as a "burst traffic" line, where you get the 10gb offered only for short periods (and market it as such!) or go back to selling 1gb instead of 10. Sell 1gb and "more if available".

What you say sounds like ISPs sell what they don't have and want to shape traffic to continue this scam.

Re:Ok

[canuck57]

Sounds good. So then let's take a situation some years in the future where it's law. What happens when you are watching TV, and all of a sudden the stream starts stuttering. You call your cable company angry. They explain that TV is now delivered over IP, like everything else. Currently you have some neighbours hitting the P2P really heavy and it is using up enough of the segment that it is interfering with video traffic. They'd love to have video have a higher QoS, but alas the law says they can't. The "contents of your packets are none of their business."

Problems like above, while possible is 100% the issue of provisioning, or under provisioning. It has absolutely nothing to do with net neutrality. Simply put native private services on an independent channel. Just like they do with VoIP. Don't mix private services with open internet services.

What net neutrality is supposed to stop is Telus, Bell, Rogers or Shaw would rather you pay per view using their open to the internet IP feed, and to artificially notch down YouTube or Google in their favor. Maybe even get a little payola from MSN to keep their QoS up while throttling Yahoo and Google. Or just as bad, get some Google payola to outright block MSN and Yahoo. These practices already occur, a mild form of censorship has been observed on my providors Internet access.

Net neutrality is about providing assurance of fair access to the bandwidth. It is about preventing anti-competitive practices creaping into your Internet viewing pleasure.

Re:Ok

[rs79]

"Looks like the ISP has some problems with their bandwidth controls. That isn't a QoS issue at all.

Why are your neighbour allowed to download at such a high speed that it prevents you from watching video. The opposite question could of course also be, Why are you allowed to download video at such a high rate that it interfers with your opponents p2p traffic" "

1) For any bandwidth X, there will always be, what yo call "problems with bandwidth controls".

2) If you're downloading a movie (snicker) and it takes 5% or even 200% longer you don't really know or even care. If it's slow it still works. It is what it is. But if TV or voice start dropping packets to the point where you can no longer make sense of it that's not the same. If it's slow, it's broken.

The best example of the importance of QoS was Nick Negroponte's which went something like "if 5 percent of a huge number of packets that make up a voice or tv transmission fail you don't really care. But if even one packet of a very short datagram to a pacemaker fails, you do more than care". An extreme example to be sure, but hopefully the point sinks in to that atrophied mass of neurons resting on top of your neck.

Re:Ok

[rs79]

"Appearantly they sell more bandwidth than they can sell." "

That's kinda the way the net works.

You buy a T1. Do you really not sell that 25th 56K connection because you're out of capacity? You can't even pay for the T1 at that rate. So you oversell. At 10:1 oversell things still work great. It's when you get to 100:1 things start to get slow.

IP bandwidth is ALWAYS oversold.

Re:Ok

[rs79]

"If you believe that people should only pay once for Internet, then you support Net Neutrality. If you think telcos have a right to charge twice for the same service, then you're against it. "

Nonsense. net.neutrality is the addition of a political layer module into your router. Now the govt has a say in things.

net.neutrality will do for network performance what ICANN did for the creation of new tlds. ICANN's mandate? "stability of the network". Sounds good until you realize expansion is now out, "stable" means "the trademark holders don't want new tlds so we maintain the status quo - and things will be stable". Never mind Postel himself wanted 300 new tlds the first year so .com wouldn't become, well, um, what it is today.

Re:Ok

[MyIS]

Ugh, where are my mod points.

That's the hilarity of it all. The net neutrality law passes. Our ISP rates shoot up. Everyone complains. That's the problem with shotgun egalitarianism - it costs money.

Re:Ok

[Opportunist]

Then maybe the future is in selling not only bandwidth but also amount of packets transfered, as it is already with some providers who only let you transfer 10, 20 or even only 1 GByte a month before cutting your cable (or charging you extra).

There are ways to solve this, but deciding which packets are more important than others, based on their source, is something that should be left to the user to decide, not the ISP.

Re:Ok

[Blkdeath]

Then either sell the line as a "burst traffic" line, where you get the 10gb offered only for short periods (and market it as such!) or go back to selling 1gb instead of 10. Sell 1gb and "more if available".

What you say sounds like ISPs sell what they don't have and want to shape traffic to continue this scam.

It is a burstable line. Just because you didn't read the fine print doesn't make the phone / cable companies negligent.

If you want dedicated 8Mbit/sec (it's not gigabit, BTW, you best check your acronyms) you might want to check the pricing on a fractional T3. (Hint: it's atleast $1000/month).

If you want to continue whining about your SOHO burstable link I'm afraid your complaints are falling on deaf ears. Pay the money for the real thing or deal with what you're getting for $40/month.

Re:Ok

[Jherek Carnelian]

Do you realize that net neutrality was the rule of the land in the USA until just a couple of years ago? It was only very recently that internet service was reclassified from a "voice" service to a "data" service. The tariffs on "voice" service mandate network neutrality while the tariffs on "data" service do not.

So, if you were right, we've had this "political layer module" in our routers for decades now. And given how slowly infrastructure is upgraded, most routers in use still have that "political layer module" installed and functioning.

Re:Ok

[Jherek Carnelian]

Ultimately, what we're looking at is a situation where telcos aren't satisfied with Y dollars per month from the consumer, and gobzillions more from Google. They want to charge Google more for the right to access their particular bunch of consumers. I'm sure this is an unpopular opinion, but my theory is that the reason the telcos are driving so hard for network bias is because of the flat-rate pricing model.

Flat-rate pricing means there is a limit on how much income the ISP receives from each customer. So the less bandwidth the customer uses, the more profitable they are for the ISP. Thus it is in the ISP's interests for their own customers not to use their service. That's a bad business model because it pits vendor and buyer against each other and as we know - per user bandwidth usage will only increase over time as new services gain a foothold on the net.

A better business model is one which the more the customer uses the service, the more the vendor benefits. In this case, that means some variation on metered billing.

Put aside the obvious expectation that the telcos will try to over-charge as much as possible in a metered billing scenario. The benefits of being aligned with the customer instead of against them could be very helpful - the more customers use bandwidth, the more money there is available for the telco to build up more bandwidth infrastructure. Instead of looking for alternative forms of revenue like network biasing and ISP-produced/owned content delivery that conflict with the interests of their customers - they can simply concentrate on their primary business - bigger and better pipes to the rest of the world.

I used to be extremely anti-metered-bandwidth, but after seeing things like the network neutrality fight and comcast dropping their "biggest" customers it just seems to me that we would all be better off if the telcos' interests were aligned with ours instead of fighting with them. Kind of like the way Verizon went to bat against the DMCA requests without subpoenas - they didn't give a ratsass about customer privacy, but their business interests were aligned with ours anyway because the cost to process those DMCA requests was too much of a burden.

series of tubes?

[TheSpengo]

While critics will undoubtedly note that the majority of Canadians were unaware of net neutrality, that has not stopped other groups - including copyright lobby groups and the telcos - from commissioning similar surveys and reporting them as fact. Don't worry, I'm sure senator Ted Stevens will be glad to explain it to them... Still, I agree with darjen.

Internet access is not a right. It is a service provided through someone's labor, with all the associated costs that entails. Why should network neutrality be enforced? You are choosing your ISP and paying them through your own volition, nobody is forcing you to choose one that doesn't support network neutrality. If it says unlimited access on my contract then by god they damn well better be giving me unlimited access, but otherwise there shouldn't be a law forcing ISPs to give everyone the benefits of network neutrality. Let them compete by offering it--why is there a need for legislation? o.O

Re:series of tubes?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are choosing your ISP

You're choosing your ISP from a pool of two or maybe three major players, and all of them have adopted onerous terms and conditions for you to obey with no negotiation.

Let them compete by offering it--why is there a need for legislation?

Because frankly, the ISP doesn't give a shit about you and your double-digits-a-month connection now that they've set their sights on extorting multimillions from other companies. You can vote with your $30 a month or whatever, but that's small fry compared to what they're going after.

I value net neutrality

[Arthur B.]

That's why I will take and ISP that provides me with the most neutral access to Internet.

As for the *proposed legislation* that would ban ISP from not being net neutral, that's net-statism, a quite different beast which must be beaten to death and then shot to make sure.

Re:I value net neutrality

[Cairnarvon]

Your confidence in the free market is quaint, but history has already shown it just doesn't work.

Re:I value net neutrality

[Arthur B.]

My confidence in the free market is real indeed, but it has nothing to do with my statement. I don't care if I lose net neutrality, regulating ISP is *morally wrong*.

I don't think that the free market can solve everything, but I do believe the government can't solve anything.

The devil is still in the wording

[Moraelin]

The funny thing is that there are well known effects that skew the effects of polls, among which:

1. People are nice social beings. They tell you what they think you'd like to hear. It's a reflex and enculturation effect that, well, I suppose helps us live with each other. If you know someone, say, likes pink, the nice social reflex is to say "yes, it's a nice colour."

Why does that matter? Most people, even on a perfectly anonymous poll, tend to answer what they think would please the poller. If they're polled by eBay, of course they'll say what they think eBay would like to hear.

2. (Or 1.b.) The wording is very important. If you present a skewed view where option 1 is pure good and option 2 is pure evil, you've already told them what you think on that matter. So they'll subconsciously try to be nice and agree with what you told them you like, regardless of what they actually think on the matter, and regardless of whether they even give a damn at all.

3. All things being equal, there's a bias towards answering more "yes" and less "no". I guess we've all been educated that it's not nice to disagree all the time. So well design polls actually randomize the questionnaires so 50% will ask the question one way, and 50% ask the negative version.

E.g., if half the questionnaires ask "should we stay in Iraq?", the other half must ask "should we pull out of Iraq?", because otherwise you get it skewed towards "yes". If you only ask "should we stay in Iraq?" you'll get your results skewed as some people will vote "yes" just because it's, you know, a "yes."

4. Biased sample fallacies. Was that sample representative, or was it, say, only the people who visit site X? E.g., if you were to make a poll about computers or OSes on Slashdot, I hope you can see how the results wouldn't really reflect what the whole population thinks.

Etc.

Now I don't know how the poll in TFA was done, so I'm not commenting on that. But basically if you want to know what people _think_, then you _don't_ do a poll along the lines of "do you think we should stop ISP extortion?" If you do that, you'll just get a false result that's good for self-shoulder-patting, but won't reflect what they actually vote for in the next elections.

Just saying...

Re:The devil is still in the wording

[big_paul76]

Here here.

Having worked for a polling and market research company, much of the polling questions isn't that different from how you get people to say ridiculous things on "Talking to Americans".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_To_Americans

The classic example is, if you ask people do you support capital punishment gives much different numbers than asking "do you support the Death Penalty?".

Re:The devil is still in the wording

[roman_mir]

People are nice social beings. They tell you what they think you'd like to hear. It's a reflex and enculturation effect that, well, I suppose helps us live with each other. If you know someone, say, likes pink, the nice social reflex is to say "yes, it's a nice colour."
- See, I am on the other hand, not a nice social being. When I know that someone likes pink, the reflex in me is to say: Hey, you know that pink color you like? Fuck you.

When someone doesn't like the pink color, I say: Hey, you know that pink color you don't like? Fuck you.

When someone has no preference about the pink color one way or another, I say: Hey, you know what? Fuck you.

It makes my day.

Re:The devil is still in the wording

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm in complete agreement with the issues posed by wording.

however, there is a problem with asking a question two ways: you arbitrarily segment your sample... randomizing the order of responces in a multiple choice question is fine, but when you start asking different people different questions, you can't always legitimately combine results. as i figure it, it is typically better to have a larger sample size and be aware of a bias and try to deal with it in the wording than to try to correct for the bias in that method.

that said, i am a huge fan of randomized responce techniques...

for those not involved with survey research, that means that you ask someone a question but don't know what the question is... for example, i might have a small deck of ten cards, three which say "I support the war in iraq" or "I use drugs" and seven which say "I oppose the war in iraq" or "I do not use drugs". ask 100 people to randomly pick a card without showing you, then get them to state their agreement honestly. since the surveyor does not know what the respondent is agreeing to, the respondent will be more likely to answer honestly... but how can we get useful information from this? well if all 100 people agree to what the card says, we conclude that 30% of the people support the war in iraq or use drugs.

Re:The devil is still in the wording

[kajumix]

If you know someone, say, likes pink, the nice social reflex is to say "yes, it's a nice colour." No, it's a hideous color.

"Blame Canada,"

[LM741N]

"Blame Canada" The US usually does the exact opposite of our friends up north.

Yes Minister on surveys

[Trillan]

I think Yes Minister said it best.

Humphrey: You know what happens: nice young lady comes up to you. Obviously you want to create a good impression, you don't want to look a fool, do you? So she starts asking you some questions: " Mr. Woolley, are you worried about the number of young people without jobs?"
Bernard: Yes
Humphrey: "Are you worried about the rise in crime among teenagers?"
Bernard: Yes
Humphrey: "Do you think there is a lack of discipline in our Comprehensive schools?"
Bernard: Yes
Humphrey: "Do you think young people welcome some authority and leadership in their lives?"
Bernard: Yes
Humphrey: "Do you think they respond to a challenge?"
Bernard: Yes
Humphrey: "Would you be in favour of reintroducing National Service?"
Bernard: Oh...well, I suppose I might be.
Humphrey: "Yes or no?"
Bernard: Yes
Humphrey: Of course you would, Bernard. After all you told her you can't say no to that. So they don't mention the first five questions and they publish the last one.
Bernard: Is that really what they do?
Humphrey: Well, not the reputable ones no, but there aren't many of those. So alternatively the young lady can get the opposite result.
Bernard: How?
Humphrey: "Mr. Woolley, are you worried about the danger of war?"
Bernard: Yes
Humphrey: "Are you worried about the growth of armaments?"
Bernard: Yes
Humphrey: "Do you think there is a danger in giving young people guns and teaching them how to kill?"
Bernard: Yes
Humphrey: "Do you think it is wrong to force people to take up arms against their will?"
Bernard: Yes
Humphrey: "Would you oppose the reintroduction of National Service?"
Bernard: Yes
Humphrey: There you are, you see Bernard. The perfect balanced sample.

Re:Yes Minister on surveys

[bjorniac]

Video link - tells you all you need to know about surveys. I loved Yes Minister + Yes Prime Minister - you can get them on Netflix Watch Now :)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4093618813050375979&q=Yes+minister+youtube&total=136&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=4

So it seems we have ...

[Anonymous Coward]

proof, apparently, that the idea is not a sound one.

I don't see what the problem is.

[feepness]

I am strongly in favor of both your proposals and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

3 of 5 Canadians are retarded

[Anonymous Coward]

"three in five Canadians concur that ISPs should be required to treat all content, sites and platforms equally."

This prevents any sort of packet prioritization. Therefore, services which require QoS will ONLY be provided by telecom companies. Telecom companies have their own private networks, and don't need the internet. However, net neutrality makes it impossible for a company like Vonage to sell a quality phone service, and compete directly with telecom companies. It makes it impossible for Netflix to guarantee quality on the video on demand service. It makes it impossible for a company that is not a telecom company to offer quality IPTV. Given consumers choice. Don't strangle the internet.

Mobile Phone Carriers Failed The First Time

[guggs]

If we compare the Internet like the airwaves that we allow mobile phone companies to operate, we can see first hand how anti-net neutrality causes the US to fall behind the rest of the world. Freedom of the airwaves would give consumers better choice of phone services than if each carrier stingly guards and closes their own network - same with the Internet.

Perhaps a compromise?

[PhysicsPhil]

We always want the ISPs to be treated like other common carriers, but people seem to have differing notions of what they really want. With other common carriers like transportation, it is possible to pay higher rates to receive faster delivery. The post office is a fairly standard common carrier, but it has had various classes of postage for ages. Companies shipping food know that canned soup can take a couple of weeks to get from California to New York, but the fresh produce needs to move now. Can something like this be implemented on the Internet?

The Internet was really designed to move data around reliably rather than quickly. In the past, it was more important to get the data around a bombed-out relay than to provide real-time delivery. The Internet has moved beyond that and now applications, VoIP or Starcraft for example, really do need fast delivery or else the application is useless. So much of the discussion of network neutrality seems to treat it as all or nothing: either every packet is treated with the same priority or else the ISPs get to gouge the senders and/or receivers for priority.

It seems to me that something similar to the postal system might be a viable compromise. One could imagine the ISPs operating on several tiers, where they could charge different prices according to the speed of data transmission. On the flip side, they would have to charge in a non-discriminatory manner, with rates based only on the volume and priority of data (perhaps with discounts on high volumes). First class data from Google, EBay and a tiny VoIP startup would all move at the same rate, but would move faster than low-priority transmissions such as web browsing. One could also imagine mandating that ISPs allocate bandwidth to the various tiers in a fixed ratio as well, so as to avoid them ignoring the lowest tier stuff. Class 1/2/3/4 bandwidth, for example, might have to be transmitted in a fixed 10%/20%/30%/40% of total available bandwidth.

Re:Perhaps a compromise?

[Anonymous Coward]

the difference is the post office cant discard your mail while ISPs can discard packets. so your analogy is false.
how bout it works like this :
google pays the isps so you get realtime from google. every website which doesnt pay gets blackholed and doesnt show up in your webbrowser. like that ? because thats what it leads to.

Re:Perhaps a compromise?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you just haven't noticed yet, but that's exactly how it already works. If I am running a web-site, I can pay to have a faster connection to be able to better serve up my content to the demand. If I am a joe user, I can pay for a dial up connection (56k) isdn (112k) dsl/cable (1.5+ Mbps). DSL and cable even have scalable service offerings with many providers.

Given that both ends of the line already pay for scaled service, why should they have to pay _again_?

Re:Perhaps a compromise?

[PhysicsPhil]

Maybe you just haven't noticed yet, but that's exactly how it already works. If I am running a web-site, I can pay to have a faster connection to be able to better serve up my content to the demand. If I am a joe user, I can pay for a dial up connection (56k) isdn (112k) dsl/cable (1.5+ Mbps). DSL and cable even have scalable service offerings with many providers.

This isn't the result of my previous suggestion. Right now, a DSL connection has the ability to send data to the ISP more rapidly than a dial-up, but once the data packets hit the ISP they're all routed with the same priority further upstream. Realtime applications need the ability to send priority packets, so that my Skype conversation will be pushed ahead of my web surfing on Slashdot, which in turn might be placed ahead of bulk data like reading a newgroup. My comment was that it's not unreasonable to have the sender pay to have data routed at a higher priority, but that charging for that service must be done on a non-discriminatory basis. Just like the post-office delivers first class mail faster than second class mail, first-class data on the Internet must be transferred without regard to who the originator of the data is. Google, a VoIP startup and Verizon should all get the same service for the same fee.

To avoid having the lowest priority data lost into a black hole, it would be useful to have mandatory quality of service provisions between the priority levels. For example, it might be a requirement that one packet of low priority data be sent out for every two packets of high priority data, ensuring that even the unpaid stuff gets there in a reasonable fashion. Or an ISP could be forbidden from transmitting high priority packet when the queue of low-priority data gets to be a certain size. You get the idea.

The idea of network neutrality is good, but it seems to me that prioritizing data isn't the problem as much as the potential for discriminating based on *who* sent the data.

Re:In polite company. Re:Packet Shaping

[mc6809e]

The easy way to defeat "packet shaping" sophistry is to point out that value comes from bandwith and nothing but.

I use a 13kbps 100ms wireless voice link (cell phone) that lets me talk with my brother in Florida. By your logic, we should be just as happy recording everything we have to say on CDs and mailing them back and forth to each other, since the available bandwidth is higher.

Flawed

[6-tew]

I'm a Canadian and I have had Internet access since the dark days of dial-up (which at the time were rather sunny and bright come to think of it) and no one asked me about this. I'm appalled. If they had asked me, whoa boy, I'd have given them my opinion, which since I wasn't asked I guess is irrelevant.

Well shit.

I guess I'll just go... away.

Evidence against packet shaping for QoS

[Geof]

The Internet2 project found that the costs and complexities of implementing quality of service guarantees exceeded the benefits. It was more practical to add sufficient bandwidth than it was to prioritize packets. They also predicted - and other research supports - that QoS would encourage ISPs to deliberately downgrade service in order to charge more.

Re:Evidence against packet shaping for QoS

[heinousjay]

They also found it's easier to provide high bandwidth connections when you limit their total number. That lesson is so basic to Internet2 that it's hard to say what other lessons could actually be applied to the Internet.

Although I don't disagree that higher bandwidth could be provided without much trouble, and it's mainly greed holding things back.

Lets wait for a real problem before passing a law

[SuperKendall]

Net Neutrality is the Sarbanes-Oxley of the internet. Everyone has good intentations, but people with little understanding are trying to write a law based around the *potential* for a problem that simply does not exist, nor shows signs of existing anytime soon.

Let's not hasten to have government come in and wedge a big old bureaucratic foot in the door of networking - any bill that specifically defines how ISP's are to shape traffic, even if initially neutral, is only a small amendment or two away from something like banning all P2P packets. And of course any law dictating how traffic is to be shaped includes expensive compliance documentation that must be kept by the ISP, raising service prices for all of us...

What about small developers?

[Athaulf]

If net neutrality is destroyed, what will happen to the small internet developers such as the high schooler running the server out of his parent's basement or the guy trying to work out a few bugs in a new program that needs large automatic updates? From my position, it seems like there would be a great risk of losing some of the hobbyist programmers necessary to the open source community, especially considering the dropping of packets. I know that I (the high schooler running a web-server from his basement and the programmer) would just find a different hobby if I had to pay outrageous (or any) rates to test and implement my programs and setups at a decent speed (besides what my family is paying for broadband already).

Michael Liberal Geist

[Anonymous Coward]

Yawn.

And 75% of Venusians support

[Ogemaniac]

little ponies for every girl...until they know what the heck is being talked about.

What a pointless survey. 95% of people don't know enough about the issue to have an informed opinion.

Re:3 of 5 ACs are retarded

[Spy Hunter]

IPTV can't possibly work without QoS, huh? I personally am using IPTV all the time right now, provided by ABC.com, NBC.com, Comedy Central, Joost, iTunes, and yes, even YouTube. None of these services are provided by telecoms, and all are high enough quality for me in the *complete absence* of QoS. Whoops! Turns out QoS isn't quite as vital as you thought. OTOH, without net neutrality, it is likely cable companies will begin throttling video packets (and phone companies too as they try to move into the triple-play market). Given a choice between ISP-enforced QoS and net neutrality, I choose net neutrality.

Re:In polite company. Re:Packet Shaping

[Erris]

I use a 13kbps 100ms wireless voice link (cell phone) that lets me talk with my brother in Florida. By your logic, we should be just as happy recording everything we have to say on CDs and mailing them back and forth to each other

No, by my logic you would be happier doing both.

What should really make you happy, though, is the liberty to use your cable modem or fiber hook up to communicate with 128bps and exchange the other information in real time. More is better. Filters always provide less bandwith. People in Japan with their 10 mpps connections both up and down are laughing at your featureless cell phone and sorry internet connection.

You've missed the point

[Rix]

The purpose of net neutrality legislation is not to tell ISPs *how* they may shape traffic, but to ban them from doing so at all. We're far more likely to see a ban on P2P packets from greedy corporations who don't want people using the bandwidth they've paid for.

So take the option out of their hands. ISPs may sell bulk bandwidth, no strings attached.

Whose priorities?

[Rix]

My P2P traffic is far more important than some yokel glued to the idiot box. Who the fuck cares if TV works? Only children and morons watch it anyway.

If only we had more boadband ISPs

[similar_name]

Then it wouldn't really matter. You wouldn't pay hundreds of providers to speed up your service. Likewise any individual ISP in a hundred throttling speeds would only hurt itself. The real problem is near monopolies need this law so they can abuse their control. If there was real competition among providers this wouldn't even be an issue or a thought.

Canadians != USians

[redelm]

Look, both sides of the border need to get it through their pointy heads that "them over there" really _are_ very different. And for good reason. Most Canadians may speak english and watch mostly US-produced TV but that's it!

Americans of all strips are deeply skeptical of all large organizations, including especially their governments. Some Canadians are, but many more trust these organizations to at least look out for their long-term interests. There is an understanding, acceptance and even hono[u]ring of authority. Civil servants aren't pariahs. Many people aspire to Cdn civil service jobs.

There is a certain public spirit in Canada that transcends the profit motive in many cases. And an utter horror [naivete] when the public trust is betrayed, rather than a cynical "what did you expect"?

Re:Canadians != USians

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a certain public spirit in Canada that transcends the profit motive in many cases. And an utter horror [naivete] when the public trust is betrayed, rather than a cynical "what did you expect"?

You get what you expect.

Exactly. Canadians are not stupid.

[Jane Q. Public]

I do not see that this is even news. Most Americans support "net neutrality" too. I think most intelligent consumers would.

Re:Lets wait for a real problem before passing a l

[jez9999]

Sarbanes-Oxley was passed *in the wake of* the likes of Enron, Tyco International, Peregrine Systems and WorldCom. We don't wanna wait to be in the wake of corporations abusing their power to ruin the net, because by then it will probably be too late.

Besides, the way the US government is now, it may be the only chance to get the legislation through. Once powerful corporations decide they don't like Net Neutrality, their money will start to flow to politicians, and there can only be one outcome then.

But Don't bother

[brunes69]

If you want to show your support for this issue, then take the ten minutes of effort and write your MP, both email AND a printed snail-mail copy.

Online petitions are like prayer. They give you something to do, but they really don't get you anywhere.

Study finds...

[Organic Brain Damage]

...that big businesses do not care what Canadians want.

That is for the ISP's benefit

[Anonymous Coward]

If your ISP hosts Google info, this reduces the traffic that your ISP has to pay for (because they already paid for their own network, running it at 100% doesn't cost any more than running at 1%).

No, you've missed what happens

[SuperKendall]

The purpose of net neutrality legislation is not to tell ISPs *how* they may shape traffic, but to ban them from doing so at all.

Exactly - so the bill is defined in such a way as to shape traffic neutrally. That is a form of traffic shaping. From there any shaping the government wishes to introduce can simply be added to the bill, because after all the government is now dictating routing policy...

We're far more likely to see a ban on P2P packets from greedy corporations who don't want people using the bandwidth they've paid for.

Yet we haven't seen that to date, and with it not being a law any such actions would be on a case by case basis.

So take the option out of their hands. ISPs may sell bulk bandwidth, no strings attached.

Also prevents them from doing something like selling service that prioritizes game traffic... it's the ISP's bandwidth, let them parcel it up however they like.

Let ISP's operate without a cloud of government mandates controlling what they can do.

Re:No, you've missed what happens

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly - so the bill is defined in such a way as to shape traffic neutrally. That is a form of traffic shaping.
In the same way that "no food" is a form of dinner.

Yet we haven't seen that to date, and with it not being a law any such actions would be on a case by case basis.
I've had of plenty of ISPs who'd support a ban. I haven't had any who'd oppose it.

Also prevents them from doing something like selling service that prioritizes game traffic
Like the GP said, do it at the client site. If they want to sell QoS and packet shaping, they can let customers pay for having it set up in their routers.

Re:Lets wait for a real problem before passing a l

[SuperKendall]

Sarbanes-Oxley was passed *in the wake of* the likes of Enron, Tyco International, Peregrine Systems and WorldCom. We don't wanna wait to be in the wake of corporations abusing their power to ruin the net, because by then it will probably be too late.

But you'll note those were one-off cases, not generally widespread - and the cure has been horrible, a terrible waste of resources across the country.

In that case the "cure" should never have been implemented since shareholders insisted on more disclosure anyway - why should we make a terrible mistake and hamstring ISP's without even a problem in sight to overreact to?

Besides, the way the US government is now, it may be the only chance to get the legislation through. Once powerful corporations decide they don't like Net Neutrality, their money will start to flow to politicians, and there can only be one outcome then.

Oh Noez! The Powerful Corporationz!!!

Has it ever occurred to you that there are "powerful corporations" on both sides of this issue? While Verizon might want to do some crazy traffic shaping, Google and Yahoo can just as easily smack them down when it comes to donations and lobbying.

The issue is who prioritizes

[CustomDesigned]

I have no problem with traffic shaping. I would love to be able to flag a portion of the packets leaving my linux router as "low latency" or "high bandwidth". I am even happy to pay extra for high priority packets. What is evil about the current ISP proposals is that *they*, not consumers, get to pick what is high priority and what is not. That is the censorship issue, not the traffic shaping itself.

Internet Qos should work like parcel delivery. How would you like it if the post office, not you, decided which of your parcels got "next day" and which got "ground"? If ISPs would implement consumer choice QOS, they could charge a premium for priority packets. Geeks would use iptables to select which packets get priority, while end users with no interest in the details would have simple switches for common needs in their consumer broadband router: for example, "make VOIP high priority". ISPs could even offer to prioritize traffic for end-users that chose it - as long as they don't force it on the rest of us.

Pic of what will happen without net neutrality

[denis-The-menace]

This is what the internet is going to turn into if we don't have net neutrality:

http://i7.tinypic.com/5z6vt4n.jpg

Re:In polite company. Re:Packet Shaping

[Opportunist]

This is mixed companies. We have Linux and Windows supporters here. The latter group may be smaller, but they're nontheless present.

You're missing the fundamental problem here.

[epee1221]

"You should get what you pay for" is a pretty nonsensical argument. Because service providers paying to get their traffic prioritised (or not de-prioritised) is a fairly standard example of exactly that.

Peering agreements exist to get traffic between different ISPs. Google only has to pay its own ISP for an internet connection. I only have to pay Charter. Suppose Charter goes to Google and says packets Google sends me will be degraded unless Google pays money. Now Google and I are both about to get less than we paid for.

This is protection money for packets: "Pay us not to do something we shouldn't be doing anyway."

Who cares? I'll tell you

[RomulusNR]

The people who care most about net neutrality are content creators. Most people "on" the Internet these days are not content creators (save a few comments here and there, Yahoo Answers, social networkinc, etc.), therefore, they don't have any stake in the notion.

Which to me means that the Internet inasmuch as it is a public commons of communication, has failed, because people simply aren't interested in being content creators, at least not for anyone they don't know.

Also, most of these same people read only the top few portal sites and have little idea of the wealth of what is out there. 80%/20%: 80% of the people read 20% of the content that is out there. The sites that most people read are the sites that won't have much trouble shelling out for the priority routing.

Re:Lets wait for a real problem before passing a l

[epee1221]

trying to write a law based around the *potential* for a problem that simply does not exist, nor shows signs of existing anytime soon.

There's this telco/ISP that's been making public comments to the effect of "major internet companies should pay us for using our bandwidth." Maybe you've heard of it?

Action, not bluster

[SuperKendall]

There's this telco/ISP that's been making public comments to the effect of "major internet companies should pay us for using our bandwidth."

Yes, I already talked about this. You'll note those statements are from quite some time ago. If they really feel that way, where is the action on that talk? Answer, there is none. You are fearing shadows my friend. What crazy people would like to do and what markets allow them to do are quite different things.

Do you really think even the largest telco on earth would be able to hold out long against a Google blackout for all users? It's not like Google is some defenseless creature browsing on the underbrush. They have mighty teeth as well.

Re:In polite company. Re:Packet Shaping

[fm6]

Are you saying that I have to watch my mouth around Windows users? I always though that Linuxites were the prigish ones...

Re:In polite company. Re:Packet Shaping

[Opportunist]

Well, computer enthusiasts have different pet peeves as ordinary people. Abortion or not, capital punishment or not, a minor bickering point. But emacs or vi could well be the reason for the next big DDoS war.

You're an idiot

[Rix]

You may as well be arguing that a ban on murders is an open door to allowing some murders.

Check the crazy libertarian anti-government stance when you're talking to grown ups.