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ISPs Blow Off Stanford Net Neutrality Hearing
eldavojohn writes "The FCC & Stanford hoped to host an on-campus debate over Net Neutrality and invited AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and Time Warner to take part. None of them showed up. Unfortunately, only one side of the issue was voiced despite Stanford being home to people opposing Net Neutrality. At the hearing, the FCC Commissioner stated: 'Consumers have come to expect and will continue to demand the open and neutral character that has always been the hallmark of the Internet. The Commission is currently examining several petitions and complaints according to which broadband providers have intentionally and secretly degraded applications in a way that undermines the open and interconnected character of the Internet.'"
Does the FCC have any actual pull here, or are they as impotent as the Better Business Bureau? I'd like to actually believe that somet good could come from all this talk..
I think the FTC should get involved and determine what the definition of "Internet Access" and "ISP" are. If net neutrality was a requirement to be labeled "ISP" or providing "Internet Access" I think it would help the consumer greatly. This would have also helped with those old wireless carriers who used to provide web-only access but called it "Internet Access" (I think the are all gone now).
Similar to:
"USDA Organic"
Or
"This product has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease."
This business of a dual standard bothers me. I remember a certain European country whose postal service offered an express mail service at a premium cost. Then they found that they couldn't meet the standard they had set for the express mail. So, to keep some sort of differentiation between the two classes of mail, they simply delayed the regular mails.
as subject dictates if we the people are not allowed to have this great neutrality of said internet we the people could end up like the poor bastards in china, not able to read news, read anti-communist lits, and other such great things. i thinks its about time we all strike back against isps that throttle legitimate Bit torrent traffic and take back what is rightfully ours; the net.
I think the FTC should get involved and determine what the definition of "Internet Access" and "ISP" are.
I agree that the issue is a proper job for the FTC, not the FCC.
Network neutrality can mean "Treat all packets the same." Or it can mean "Don't favor one player's packets over anothers'."
There are valid, pro-consumer reasons to give some packets different treatment than others. One of the biggest: Streams and file transfers have very different requirements for good service. Optimizing routing for one of them makes the performance of the other very bad when things get congested -(and file transfers WILL congest a network unless they're throttled to the point that the network is seriously underutilized.)
So the real issues of "Network Neutrality" is anticompetitive and rent-seeking ("consumer gouging") behaviors and sabotaging high-bandwidth applications to protect an underprovisioned network from obvious failure (thus failing to provide the advertised service). Anticompetitive actions, abuse of defacto monopolies, and false advertising are FTC issues.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Let's give rich people the right of way at intersections and higher speed limits on the highways while we're at it.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I was an unwilling Comcast customer (they were the only provider around because I live in a DSL black hole) for a couple years, right up until Verizon Fios became available and was installed last Friday. As soon as I was able, I switched. Their P2P blocking was only slightly annoying to me since I only use P2P once every few months on average. However, the side effect that it caused was infuriating!
Back in late '06 and early to mid '07, I would use P2P to download some music very sparingly. It always worked and would complete in a matter of minutes/hours with no side effects. I remember first seeing news of the Comcast P2P blocking in the Summer of '07, but it never affected me when I would use Bittorrent. However, one day in September of '07, a couple friends of mine were over and one of them wanted to watch a show. He logged into a torrent tracker that he's a member of and we started downloading a couple episodes. One finished, but the other one froze and would not transfer at all. Actually, at this point my entire Internet connection was dead and I couldn't even browse websites! After about 30 minutes, the Internet connection returned... mostly. I could do most things on the Internet, but strangely enough my Vonage VoIP phone line was dead. If I tried starting a Bittorrent download, the entire Internet connection would die again for about 30 minutes. If I rebooted the Vonage router (gateway router for our home network), the Internet connection would remain dead for 30 minutes then come back, but the Vonage line stayed dead.
Of course, a call to Comcast's tech support line was not helpful at all. They denied that it was due to P2P blocking and sent me on my merry way. At this point I didn't have enough evidence to argue to the contrary, so I tried troubleshooting it with Vonage.
Since the Internet connection was working again and only the Vonage line had problems, I guessed that the Vonage router had somehow been damaged. Vonage tech support logged into the router, could communicate with it, but it just wasn't able to connect to their servers to establish a VoIP phone line connection. I ended up sending them the router back and got a replacement, which worked and gave me VoIP connectivity again immediately.
Fast forward to November. I try another P2P download and sure enough, the Internet connection dies again! Same thing... 30 minutes later, everything returns except for my VoIP line. Now, I'm pissed because I know it's Comcast. What if I needed to dial 911? As a side effect of their P2P blocking, they blocked my ability to dial anybody, including 911, from my home phone. 3 days later, the VoIP line inexplicably returns.
I'm a network engineer by day, grad student and dad by evening/night. I would have hooked up another PC with sniffing software on it to further troubleshoot the problem but I simply didn't have time to do so. With the information I have, it is obvious that Comcast was doing something to my Internet connection. It is highly unlikely that the Vonage routers were the problem. Let's review the facts:
- Router #1 worked for a year with P2P downloads.
- Then Comcast hits the news sites about blocking P2P.
- Then I try P2P download, my connection gets screwy and my Vonage phone line dies for a week.
- Two months later I try another P2P download with a different, newly shipped Vonage router and the exact same thing happens!
A month or so later, I read that Comcast was backing off on their P2P blocking a bit so I try another download. Finally, it's back to normal like in '06 and early '07; the download worked and there were no side effects. However, the whole experience of not having a usable home phone line for a total of 1.5 weeks left me quite bitter and I switched ISPs to Verizon Fios the week that it became available here. When the FCC had that comments page up for the Comcast P2P blocking investigation, I posted my story on there as well. From what I under
Hey, monopoly scum happens to be the number 1 supporter of my congressman Fred Upton, former chair of the house subcommittee on telecommunications. You're not suggesting that influenced political decisions in any ways are you? I'm shocked, shocked I tell you!
You can go through an interesting process to ENFORCE your contract. You know, that thing you sign when you buy their SERVICE, which says "unrestricted internet access" ? Yeah bingo... read tomhudson's slashdot journal to get an idea of HOW to go about hammering assholes who back down on contracts.
:)
About the only right humans have in the so called "society" we live in, is the right to freely contract (read, associate and exchange value and come to agreements with others). Everything from sales, purchases, to marrying someone or letting a rapist have his way with you, it is ALL contracts. Accords, agreements, even when you surrender to a bad guy, you've agreed to let him have his way. All things boil down to that. So enforce your contract. You bought 5 megs down 1 meg up, unrestricted internet access. Period. Enforce it. Take them up for violation of contract, there are remarkable collections processes available. Hell, a smart and asshole type individual willing to take it far enough, and with a stomach for leaving lots of people unemployed (whom I'd actually wager DESERVE it) could end up owning Cox@home
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
but the facts are not quite right. Brett Glass, of Lariat from Wyoming, was at the hearing representing the issues of ISPs. He runs a small rural ISP providing service to people in Wyoming that might not ordinarily have service. That quite a bit different than the person that wrote the story saying only one side was available. And let me tell you, he is quite the adversary and his arguments are compelling and spot on from his position supporting network management. I happen to be of the other persuasion, but I respect what he has to say as both sides have valid points. Comcast, Verizon, et al do not need to be at hearings as the logic presented by Brett stands on its own and does not need multi-billion dollar companies to echo his arguments to give them strength. But then again, maybe the person that submitted the story is bedazzled by Rolexes and sees branding as legitimizing arguments and people. I have no other explanation as to why he was glossed over.
Please see this link for Brett's comments since the person that wrote this article failed to take notice at the hearing: http://www.brettglass.com/remarks.html