Verizon and Google Offer Up Net Neutrality Truce

When it comes to net neutrality, can we get along? Google and Verizon, antagonists on the question yet partners in Droid, say yes. The two companies have even teamed up to send the FCC ideas on how to handle network management disputes. 'Google/Verizon say that the Internet should function as an "open platform." That means, to them, that "when a person accesses cyberspace, he or she should be able to connect with any other person that he or she wants to—and that other person should be able to receive his or her message," they write. The 'Net should operate as a place where no "central authority" can make rules that prescribe the possible, and where entrepreneurs and network providers are able to "innovate without permission."'"

Comments

Throttling?

[SanityInAnarchy]

There's still this problem:

when a person accesses cyberspace, he or she should be able to connect with any other person that he or she wants to—and that other person should be able to receive his or her message,

Yes, but how fast?

A throttled Internet is still not a neutral network.

Re:Throttling?

[jornak]

A throttled Internet is still not a neutral network.

Actually, if it's throttling based on overall traffic, and not port/application-based, then yes, I'd say it's neutral.

Re:Throttling?

[iamapizza]

Virgin Media (In the UK) throttles your speed if you download a certain amount of data between certain times. For example, on the M package, if you download 1.5 GB between 1000 and 1500, they bring you down to 200 or 300 kbps. That seems fair to ensure that nobody's encroaching on someone else's speeds (although I'm no network engineer, so someone else can confirm whether this is a legitimate line of reasoning by them).

Also, you're supposed to say "First Post"

Re:Throttling?

[derGoldstein]

I have a broader question: Isn't this entire "teaming up" look like some sort of fluff? It seems like the PR teams of both companies met for lunch and decided that both parties have better things to do than moderate the public aspect of this particular disagreement. They then put up a sign saying "move along, nothing to see here".

Re:Throttling?

[cervo]

Perhaps by saying that at least 75% of someone's network capacity has to be used to deliver all packets and the extra 25% can be re-allocated to higher priority packets or something. I'm not sure how it works.

But in principle I'm okay with throttling traffic within reasonable limits. Unfortunately due to corporate greed it is obvious what will happen. Basically people will throttle packets so slow that people like Google will have to pay, basically extortion. But still throttling has some uses if done right. A VOIP packet needs to be a higher priority than say someone's bit torrent download because it is real time. In fact most real time apps would benefit from higher quality packet.

But you need something like the operating system does. Basically in an operating system, to protect against starvation, often lower priority processes get their priority bumped up over time so that eventually they are guaranteed to get a turn at the processor. Otherwise it is possible that higher priority processes come along and cause the low priority process to starve. The same principle would need to happen on the internet.

However if you are ATT and you want to extort google, you could just make everyone's packets but google's higher priority and then google would suffer starvation of many packets and would be force to pay if a significant amount of the traffic comes through google. Rather than that I'd rather have net neutrality. But I'd be open to some type of regulations that stop people from overly slowing down other traffic (for say extortion) but using maybe the top 25% or 10% of capacity to give some special packets higher priority than others. The problem is that I don't really know how to word it exactly. And also many ways of wording it will leave the area wide open to abuse. Also remember Comcast denied it was practicing traffic management for a long time. It outright lied to everyone until it got caught. Now it claims that the FCC doesn't have the authority to regulate it (which maybe it doesn't, who knows). But if the company was so sure it was in the right, why lie until caught red handed? But anyway no matter what it thinks the law is, it tries to get around it. Either it thought the FCC had the authority and tried to avoid the issue and now is trying to challenge the authority to skirt the law. Or it was just keeping to itself for customer relations.

Anyway I wouldn't necessarily mind a throttled connection at my local ISP either, as long as it says it is throttled and all the conditions. If you lie to me that's ridiculous. And if you sell $60/month throttled connections, I think you'd lose customers as they jump ship. But a throttled connection selling at a discount to a non throttled connection would probably attract some people. I think the government should start going after companies for false advertising. If you sell an "unlimited" connection then it better damn well be unlimited. Without any type of secret caps. Some companies throttle you or even cut you off after you reach a certain cap. IF that cap is not advertised clearly and it is an "unlimited" connection they should be fined/thrown in jail. If they sell a connection that says UNLIMITED to 5 GB and then throttled to 128K then that is fine. But if you sell "unlimited" then don't come whining when people use it unlimited.

Still I'm not entirely convinced that it is all network problems and not trying to set things up. Bittorrent is right now used a lot for illegal files. But ultimately when Hollywood joins the 21st century, bittorrent could be a great cheap way for them to distribute movies. Then they just need to pay for hard disk space for a movie and seed it on bittorrent. Probably much cheaper than printing out DVDs and stuff. Ultimately they could distribute a lot of older movies that are out of production due to lack of popularity. And people would probably buy them. Even TV studios can use bittorrent to distribute tv show episodes while saving a ton on bandwidth costs. N

Re:Throttling?

[sexybomber]

I thought the same thing. Yes, Alice will, in fact, be able to connect with any other person that she wants to, and Bill's site will, in fact, be able to receive messages from Alice. Unfortunately, the ping will be several thousand ms each way, because neither Alice nor Bill have paid Verizon their protection money. Also, Bill's site will not be listed on Google for the same reason.

Re:Throttling?

[derGoldstein]

Since they put up a chart and everything, and at least attempted to give some reason for their methods, it looks more like the only thing they're guilty of here is offering their customers a raw deal. I think that the main problem with throttling is when it's done without people's knowledge, and especially when they specifically target certain types of traffic.

Re:Throttling?

[Monkeedude1212]

Is that when they both Hire Eve to break into Verizon and unthrottle them?

Re:Throttling?

[PPH]

Actually, if it's throttling based on overall traffic, and not port/application-based, then yes, I'd say it's neutral.

Make that port/application/end-point and I'll agree.

Why should my HTTP packets cost more than those from one of Verizon's preferred partners?

Re:Throttling?

[Anonymous Coward]

I fear that everyone is losing sight of the original problem: that websites could pay ISPs to have their accessibility increased to that ISP's customers, or pay to have their competitors slowed, or even that ISPs might start racketeering sites to protect them from being slowed to the point of inaccessibility, not cut off.

At some point, the telco lobby seems to have tricked everyone into forgetting that this is what we were originally upset about, not the more drastic idea of having access cut off completely for some reason. Simple QoS based on volume obviously makes sense, and censorship is a serious issue in net neutrality too, but we've still left a very large door open for Big Telecommunications to exploit; they can still, for example, make Google unbearably slow and Bing super-fast to manipulate their customers' usage habits if Ballmer forks over enough cash. This declaration says nothing about that kind of behaviour!

Perhaps it gets overlooked so much because it's difficult to create a car/road traffic analogy that expresses it.

Re:Throttling?

[cervo]

Anyway the other thing is that if I can't figure out how to word the regulation so there are no exceptions and I am familiar with the issue, what chance does a normal congresscritter have of wording the regulation right to stop people from getting around it? Many of them are totally clueless on technology issues. Basically the safest thing for a congresscritter is to regulate net neutrality. Anything else will endanger the internet.

Also if there is throttling another thing that I didn't think about is that you can exercise control. The government can start to make laws, like any anti-government or "terrorist" websites get a lower priority. Not that I'm a terrorist, or that I am interested in the Klu Klux Klan or anything, but they have a right to their opinion as long as they aren't hurting anyone.

The government also often goes on anti-porn crusades to try to attract the religious right. They could legislate that all ISPs need to throttle down any traffic to known porn sites (from their list) to be super slow. Basically throttling can be used to control content on the internet. We have already seen governments trying to use a blacklist.

Also look at some of the anti net neutrality opponents (ie the RIAA, etc...). By using throttling they can control who is permitted to distribute their content. Anyone not "authorized" or maybe even someone "authorized" trying to negotiate a better deal will have their traffic throttled so slow, they won't be able to deliver content. Or even more, the RIAA can pay so that it's music sites get higher priority. An independent music site may not be able to pay, so the content is so slow that no one bothers. Then the independent artists are forced to sign on with the RIAA to get online distribution.

Anti Net Neutrality is all about control, no matter what anyone says. It is the last chance to control the internet. With net neutrality it remains as it is, largely without control. There will be red light districts, fringe opinions, government opinions, etc... all with equal access. There will be "legal" places to get content and "illegal" places to get content. And if the "legal" places try to rip consumers off they will be to the "illegal" places.

Re:Throttling?

[gad_zuki!]

NN generally doesnt mean the end of QoS and throttling for technical reasons (putting priority on VOIP and gaming and putting torrents and ftp to bulk). Instead, it means ending throttling and QoS for BUSINESS REASONS. That is to say, Comcast isnt going to put Vonage VOIP into the bulk category because Vonage competes with their own VOIP service.

Re:Throttling?

[Anonymous Coward]

But it is port based. As a Verizon customer I say first hand that they black ports that you can communicate. Namely, port 80 in blocked among others.

Re:Throttling?

[Dalzhim]

But still throttling has some uses if done right. A VOIP packet needs to be a higher priority than say someone's bit torrent download because it is real time. In fact most real time apps would benefit from higher quality packet.

Then how do you determine what application needs real time and what application doesn't to provide higher quality packets? Will the next generation of P2P applications use real-time protocols to be quicker than their predecessors? Will people with legitimate real-time applications need to go through endless and costly processes to get "authorized" as real-time apps which deserve higher quality packets? Throttling is just a new tool to make oversubscription easy. It has no advantages for the everyday customer; only downsides.

Re:Throttling?

[cervo]

That's exactly why we probably need net neutrality. I can't think of how to word it so there is no way around it. And I have a tech background. Our congresscritters don't have a chance at wording it right. If they make a certain class of application, then the phone companies would probably figure a way to work around it making it so all their traffic is that class of application. Or making it so that everything is low priority and that people who pay can have their packets slightly modified to meet the new definition of real-time and hence be served at normal speed.

But still if it was possible to make a perfect law, I'd be okay with throttling. Since it probably isn't, I think we have to go with net neutrality.

Re:Throttling?

[geminidomino]

Is that when they both Hire Eve to break into Verizon and unthrottle them?

No, that's when they both hired Squiddy Big-Hands to break into Verizon and throttle the management.

Re:Throttling?

[Dalzhim]

As you point out, there's no chance such a thing could ever be written as a law without any major flaws, but even on the technical aspect it is impossible to prioritize traffic in a purely objective and deterministic way.

Net neutrality is the way to go and our providers need to spend more money on developing their network rather than developing software which cripple their own product.

Re:Throttling?

[SanityInAnarchy]

NN generally doesnt mean the end of QoS and throttling for technical reasons (putting priority on VOIP and gaming and putting torrents and ftp to bulk).

Yes it does, and that's most of the point.

Instead, it means ending throttling and QoS for BUSINESS REASONS.

There are always business reasons.

For example: Suppose Verizon unilaterally declares VerizonVOIP, their own, proprietary protocol, to be "the standard" voice over IP, and give it priority? Or suppose they only prioritize SIP and not Skype, or vice-versa?

That is to say, Comcast isnt going to put Vonage VOIP into the bulk category because Vonage competes with their own VOIP service.

Great, they won't do it to Vonage, but what will they do about Mumble? Will they prioritize things by default? Then VOIP won't be getting the advantage it "needs". Will they "bulk" things by default? Then Mumble will suffer.

And how, exactly, do they detect "gaming"? Do I have to attach a "gaming bit" to every packet sent? Great, now all the torrent clients will start doing that by default, long before even half the games I want to play have patched in support. Short of that, they'll have to recognize specific games and protocols, which means WoW will be fine, but, say, Nexus TK will suffer.

In other words: The very large groups in need of real-time traffic will be fine. Everyone else will be worse off than we are now. Congrats, you just raised the barrier of entry to any low-latency app.

The point is that the network should be entirely neutral with respect to the bits being sent. If I want to add that kind of QoS to my own router, that's fine, but you do not get to apply it at the ISP level. If that's a problem, maybe it's time to stop claiming "unlimited" usage and such high bandwidth, and start giving me a realistic amount of bandwidth that I can use as I please.

I mean, this isn't complicated. Go back and read their statement, vague as it is:

The 'Net should operate as a place where no "central authority" can make rules that prescribe the possible, and where entrepreneurs and network providers are able to "innovate without permission.

If I have to get permission for my homebrew VOIP protocol to get priority, the network isn't neutral. If someone is arbitrarily deciding that my neighbor down the hall chatting with her friend on Skype is more important than that Linux ISO I needed 10 minutes ago, the network isn't neutral.

If it doesn't mean the end of QoS at the ISP level, it's not network neutrality.

Re:Throttling?

[TubeSteak]

For example, on the M package, if you download 1.5 GB between 1000 and 1500, they bring you down to 200 or 300 kbps. That seems fair to ensure that nobody's encroaching on someone else's speeds (although I'm no network engineer, so someone else can confirm whether this is a legitimate line of reasoning by them).

I'm also not a network engineer, but it seems rather obvious that their system is not "fair" so long as the throttling is arbitrary and bears no relation to the available bandwidth.

Re:Throttling?

[Drummergeek0]

Agreed, but as far as Verizon preferred partner's, I see no problem with Verizon offering faster connectivity to their internal services (Their VOIP vs Vonage, for instance) Throttling has to happen on an overall traffic situation, but they should still be allowed(I'd even argue required in the case of TV, phone, etc) to allow unthrottled traffic to their services without reprisal.

Re:Throttling?

[Anonymous Coward]

Our congresscritters don't have a chance at wording it right.

Are you saying they cannot word net neutrality in general right? Or they couldn't properly allow the shaping of traffic?

Both are rather incorrect. Sure, the vast majority of staff members on Capitol Hill are overworked and underpaid, but their jobs are still hyper-competitive due to the connections and prestige you build there. Based on the telecommunications staffers I have met, most of them have a pretty firm grasp of Net Neutrality (even on a numerical and technology level) and the ones that don't are working for members of congress that are just going to follow the vote of the chairman anyway. Congressional staffers also have access to a mostly unlimited supply of experts, and can phone up the government relations department at any corporation, nonprofit, think tank or other government agency and will have their questions answered in short order. They also have direct access to the Congressional Research Service, which compiles detailed reports on basically every major issue (and there are several good ones on net neutrality.

As for wording the current legislation (HR3458 to anyone interested) correctly. Numbers are rather unimportant as long as you have an arbitration body like the FCC to lean on if people start whining. So the current text seems rather reasonable. It just sets forth a number of principles for openness. For example:

(1) to protect the right of consumers to access lawful content, run lawful applications, and use lawful services of their choice on the Internet

and

(2) to preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of broadband networks and to enable consumers to connect to such networks their choice of lawful devices, as long as such devices do not harm the network

There's a number more, but this is a pretty good example of the type of language they use.

and the text ultimately leaves all of this up to the filter of "Reasonable Network Management" as "a network management practice is a reasonable practice only if it furthers a critically important interest, is narrowly tailored to further that interest, and is the means of furthering that interest that is the least restrictive, least discriminatory, and least constricting of consumer choice available". They leave the ability to arbitrate anything vague up to the FCC, which does employ a number of informed people on this subject (quite a few who likely even read /. ). I guess all I'm really trying to get at is that just because legislation deals with something technical, does not necessarily mean it will be screwed up, or that it even requires that technical of a bill. HR3458 is only a few pages and doesn't really include any technical language.

On a side note, Senate offices are usually large enough to accommodate an actual IT staff, usually of the nerdy /. reading variety. In fact, I'd wager that the legislative staffers in charge of telecom issues will be using their office's IT staff as a knowledgeable resource if the senate really gets a comparable bill going.

Re:Throttling?

[nine-times]

Make that port/application/end-point and I'll agree.

I would actually sooner give in on letting ISPs throttle ports/applications than endpoints. If Verizon wants to do some kind of traffic-shaping which prioritizes HTTP and VOIP over bittorrent, that at least seems like it might be reasonable. I think it should be prioritization rather than straight-up throttling, but certain kinds of communications are less tolerant to lag than others. However, what I *don't* think is fair is for Verizon to give special priority to their own services and their partner's services.

The issue, in my mind, comes down to the monopoly/duopoly that the phone company and cable company have over the infrastructure coming into homes and businesses. My company has absolutely no choice but to use Verizon for our Internet access. Verizon should not be able to use this position to restrict our choices in VOIP providers.

Re:Throttling?

[JesseMcDonald]

Then how do you determine what application needs real time and what application doesn't to provide higher quality packets?

Simple: you don't. The ISP shouldn't care about the applications, just the data. Instead, you allocate each customer N bytes of real-time data per day (or per peak/off-peak period) at a maximum rate of X KB/s. Any application can request real-time priority, subject to overrides configured in the router, but once either the short-term rate or the long-term cap is used up the overflow gets bumped down to normal priority.

Since real-time bandwidth is strictly limited it wouldn't benefit bulk-data applications, which don't care about latency or jitter. For example, if a P2P client application were to request real-time priority it would only get a bit less jitter and latency for, say, the first 10 KB/s worth of packets; the remaining 100 KB/s would be over the limit and thus left at normal priority. The practice would be self-limiting as users would not choose clients which exhaust their real-time allocation and interfere with VoIP calls for—at best—marginally higher throughput.

Re:Throttling?

[nine-times]

Bittorrent is right now used a lot for illegal files.

This is very tangential to what you're talking about, but I'd still like to point out that Bittorrent is right now used for a lot of legal files too. FTP is used to transfer both illegal files and legal files. HTTP and NNTP too. It doesn't make sense to blame the protocol.

Re:Throttling?

[The Mighty Buzzard]

That seems fair to ensure that nobody's encroaching on someone else's speeds

I can see where it might, but I am a network engineer and it most certainly isn't. It's extremely easy to keep the tubes full but make sure important packets like http/voip/fps games/etc... get to skip ahead in line and get through faster. That gives Quality of Service to what's important without slowing down all the less time critical traffic any more than absolutely necessary. It's actually harder to do it the way you suggest and serves no purpose but to keep Virgin Media (or whoever) from having to build up infrastructure to keep up with demand.

Re:Throttling?

[Qzukk]

But it is fair in the sense that you can go to their website and find out under what conditions it happens (specifically, not an undefined "excessive usage"). I'm even going to go so far as to say that if your connection is running slow, you'd be able to call in to support and they'd even tell you that you went X megabytes over quota and you'll have to wait Y hours for it to balance out.

Compare that to just about every single ISP in the US that does "something" if you use "too much" bandwidth, and when you call to complain about performance their support either doesn't know or is instructed to lie about their throttling and/or forged RST packets, and blames the site you're trying to visit.

Re:Throttling?

[slinches]

Perhaps it gets overlooked so much because it's difficult to create a car/road traffic analogy that expresses it.

It's not that difficult:
It's like living in Nevada and having an 80 mph speed limit on I-80 if you're going to California and a 40 mph limit if you're headed to Utah because California payed to have the speed limits changed to benefit themselves.

Re:Throttling?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps by saying that at least 75% of someone's network capacity has to be used to deliver all packets and the extra 25% can be re-allocated to higher priority packets or something.

Why not limit advertising to the throttled speed? I.e. if I buy a 20 Mbs package from my ISP, I should be able to download at about 2.5 MB/sec from any site that supports it, but for their partners I might get 4 MB/sec. As long as the latencies are reasonable this would be a way to add value to the service, rather than take it away. The latter is cheaper, but I think a good business could make the former work very well. "Add on our super hyper turbo booster service for $10/month and double your speeds to YouTube. Or add our lag-be-gone package and get very low ping times to your favorite game servers."

Re:Throttling?

[Anonymous Coward]

*Yawn* As of the time I am writing this, there are only 64 comments to this posting. Nobody really gives two hoots about net neutrality.

Re:Throttling?

[plague3106]

I see a problem with that; it would allow operators like VZ to kill any competition. It's unfair to Vonage. Why should I again be forced to use the phone service my phone company dictates?

Re:Throttling?

[NotBornYesterday]

I see no problem with Verizon offering faster connectivity to their internal services (Their VOIP vs Vonage, for instance)

How do you mean that? If you mean "Verizon should be able to throttle back Vonage, and accelerate their proprietary services", I absolutely disagree. It ends up hurting the consumer and the marketplace. We end up back in the same world we were in with Ma Bell running the whole show: Crappy services for exorbitant fees.

If you meant "It's okay if Verizon's internal services happen to be faster than an unthrottled Vonage connection because they are really good at networking and telephony", I'd agree with you.

If Verizon gives me a DSL or FIOS connection for $xx.xx per month, their job is to deliver bits. Reliable, timely, consistent delivery of bits. It shouldn't matter a damn what I put across that line, or what other company sells/gives me services.

Re:Throttling?

[zero0ne]

really?

you must have the worst possible plan with them then.

with FioS, I have absolutely no blocking done on my setup.
I actually have the Cynapse appliance setup and running on port 80 right now.

(Part of the reason could be because the default FioS router they give you uses port 40 and 443 for the router login page)

Re:Throttling?

[Anonymous Coward]

...A VOIP packet needs to be a higher priority than say someone's bit torrent download because it is real time. In fact most real time apps would benefit from higher quality packet...

Why? What makes one person's chat more important than another's ISO download? If the network is not capable of handling the traffic it sees, then it needs to be upgraded. Giving preference to VOIP at the expense of bittorent does not seem "neutral" to me.

Re:Throttling?

[Drummergeek0]

Because Vonage is an external network and it is throttled just like the rest of the outgoing traffic, VZ VOIP is internal and not part of the throttling. It is only killing competition if they specifically target Vonage or similar VOIP, if they throttle equally it is not.

Re:Throttling?

[Drummergeek0]

I mean that they can throttle traffic that leaves their network, but leave their internal network services unthrottled. The requirement is that the throttling happens to the entire outgoing connection not to specific apps/ports.

Re:Throttling?

[gad_zuki!]

>If it doesn't mean the end of QoS at the ISP level, it's not network neutrality.

Then your network would become unusable for many applications as VOIP would time out, videos would stutter, etc because bulk applications are in contention for the same bandwidth. The ISP would go out of business from all the complaints.

Re:Throttling?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Then your network would become unusable for many applications as VOIP would time out, videos would stutter, etc because bulk applications are in contention for the same bandwidth. The ISP would go out of business from all the complaints.

Or they would do one of two things: Either upgrade their infrastructure, or stop overselling!

See, that wasn't hard!

If it really and truly is unmanageable, another possibility would be to provide a limited amount of high-priority bandwidth to each consumer, but let them choose how to use it. But frankly, the simplest way to deal with applications like BitTorrent is to cap people's bandwidth so they stop hogging it.

Re:Throttling?

[cervo]

Where was this skilled IT staff when the DMCA came out? Asleep at the wheel? Where was this skilled IT staff with the Child Online Protection Act? Asleep again? I'm sorry but either the staff in the offices is totally incompetent (which I doubt), or congress guys just don't take their advice at all when deciding how to vote.

How about that Ted Stevens guy saying the internet is a bunch of tubes? Are you saying he consulted his IT staff for that? John McCain spouted a lot of anti-net neutrality crap on his campaign....I don't think he get that from his IT staff, more like the nice lobbyist from ATT or Comcast.....

Re:Throttling?

[cervo]

Anyway I would also add that most companies do not take their IT staff seriously. In a typical non software company the IT staff is seen as "overhead" and "not generating revenue". Often it is the first to be cut... I doubt congress is different....

Re:Throttling?

[gad_zuki!]

>Or they would do one of two things: Either upgrade their infrastructure, or stop overselling!

Wont make any difference. Lets say Im downloading at 5mbps with my torrents and you cant make a VOIP call.

Now they double. Now I download at 10mbps and you still cant make a call.

Overselling is the only way youre not paying T3 fracs or multiple T1 prices for your home connection. Or paying the telco company 20 grand to drag some fiber to your home.

There's no way an ISP will survive without basic QoS/throttling. The FCC recommendations from last month reflect this and echo my sentiments about technical reasons to maintain a network, but no "payola" deals with providers.

Re:Throttling?

[PPH]

Agreed, but as far as Verizon preferred partner's, I see no problem with Verizon offering faster connectivity to their internal services

There are two issues here: Verizon partners: Those that have caved and agreed to pay Verizon a kickback so they can actually be seen. And Verizon 'internal' services. Verizon shoudn't be competing against any other business if theu have the power to selectively throttle their services. If Verizon finds in necessary to throttle VoIP, or add a surcharge for it, then that throttling should apply to all VoIP providers equally. Or Verizon needs to split their network and VoIP services into two independant companies. Or face the Sherman Antitrust Act.

Re:Throttling?

[PPH]

Verizon: That's a nice little Interet business ya' got there, buddy. It sure would be a shame if something happened to it. Heh, heh. We'll make you an offer you can't refuse. Sell it to us. Cheap. And we'll host it internally. Or nobody will ever see your server again.

Pay no attention to that horse's head in your bed.

Re:Throttling?

[sonicmerlin]

They have to upgrade their network whether they throttle or not. The implementation of throttling simply allows them to delay the upgrade cycle once, but they are forced to continue anyways. Bandwidth increases according to MOore's law. VM is screwing over its customers by claiming they have to throttle in order to manage the network. If they put their money into network investment they would be able to offer everyone truthly advertised, unthrottled connections. Just look at various other European countries with super-fast speeds.

Re:Throttling?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Wont make any difference. Lets say Im downloading at 5mbps with my torrents and you cant make a VOIP call.

Now they double. Now I download at 10mbps and you still cant make a call.

Assuming we're actually in the same building, yeah, that's a problem. But we're not. We just happen to share an ISP.

So they double, but they leave us both still with 5 mbit connections, not 10. Now I can make a call.

Overselling is the only way youre not paying T3 fracs or multiple T1 prices for your home connection. Or paying the telco company 20 grand to drag some fiber to your home.

Well, let's see...

Back home, I have fiber. Our local government subsidized it. The ISP in question seems to be doing pretty much what I've suggested -- they buy more bandwidth as they need it, so VOIP generally Just Works, even when people are torrenting a lot. But they also cap your bandwidth, and will charge you if you use ludicrous amounts.

They basically solve this problem by providing enough bandwidth that no one ever saturates the entire pipe.

There's no way an ISP will survive without basic QoS/throttling.

Well, again, if that's really the case, I think my suggestion still holds -- it should not be the ISP making the decision about what needs to be QoS'd, or in which direction.

Re:Throttling?

[s73v3r]

Internal services is still traffic going over their network. If they are going to throttle, then all of the traffic going over their network should be affected. It shouldn't matter if its their own or not.

Re:Throttling?

[Anonymous Coward]

Make that port/application/end-point and I'll agree.

I would actually sooner give in on letting ISPs throttle ports/applications than endpoints. If Verizon wants to do some kind of traffic-shaping which prioritizes HTTP and VOIP over bittorrent, that at least seems like it might be reasonable. I think it should be prioritization rather than straight-up throttling, but certain kinds of communications are less tolerant to lag than others. However, what I *don't* think is fair is for Verizon to give special priority to their own services and their partner's services.

The issue, in my mind, comes down to the monopoly/duopoly that the phone company and cable company have over the infrastructure coming into homes and businesses. My company has absolutely no choice but to use Verizon for our Internet access. Verizon should not be able to use this position to restrict our choices in VOIP providers.

That's completely against Net Neutrality. First of all, you can't do it purely by port, because ports for applications can be changed. That brings us to packet sniffing, which, at the very least, is invasive. 2nd, what if Verizon's competition is some VoIP? And they happen to lower that application's priority? That's bad news, and thus the need for Net Neutrality.

Re:Throttling?

[Drummergeek0]

not totally true, if they use VOIP or IPTV then the connection is faster than the internet connection to accomodate, if they throttle, they will only throttle the internet, and not their internal services. This is how it should be to ensure reliability of the services their users pay for that require a certain speed.

Re:Throttling?

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't you allow apps to tag their data with a realtimeness - realtime apps gets fewer packets through, but faster, non-realtime gets more packets through but slower for each packet (higher delay)? That way, there'd be no incentive to lie about what kind of data it is, you just have to figure out the right trade-off for your app...

Re:Throttling?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Traffic to/from Verizon services must also play by the same rules: when transiting a congested link Verizon services must be just as likely to lose packets; Verizon-hosted services will already have an advantage by having fewer potentially congested links to traverse, they must not be allowed to say "you will get 100Mbps from our server but only be allowed 10Mbps from their server."

Re:Throttling?

[Dan541]

I agree, if I paid for 20GB and go over that then I'm ok with throttling provided it is still done to the whole connection, and only when the user has gone over their limit.

I say whole connection because service providers shouldn't be allowed to make exceptions for services that paid them a premium. Even when the user has used their bandwidth limit.

Re:Throttling?

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

And if you do that, nobody will be able to offer up reliable voip services. Point. QoS is required to get professional voip services. And if you totally disable QoS, a single idiot bittorrenting to capacity will be able to disrupt the network control protocols, resulting in total disconnection of the entire AS (BGP is, after all, an inband protocol).

Of course the only result is that Verizon will still offer voip services, they'll just create a non-internet network to do it with. Then they can just have a generally shitty internet network, and raise prices further due to the extra equipment required. Verizon went to the trouble of building a huge network, Vonage is free to do the same.

Then the residential users will get a network that the price they pay can provide, instead of being allowed to freeload on excess capacity of business customers, and trust me, you don't want that. That will be the end of anything over 1 mbit residential internet connections.

In other words, net neutrality is a big bucket of rules that are neither consistent, nor practical. It's just "I NEED free stuff, and damn the consequences". It is people demanding unrealistic bandwidth, not willing to pay the real price of it, so they find the telcos (and any other ISP, they're not all huge companies, some are small and just trying to survive) must simply force others to pay for it.

And yes : I work for one (a tiny one). And yes we throttle. We give residential users access to all UNUSED bandwidth available. Of course how much bandwidth is unused is determined by how active the business users (fortunately business usage drops just before 18h and residential usage starts spiking just after 18h), who pay for the interlinks. The business reality is simple : if we can't use QoS, we will terminate our residential customers, because they aren't worth it.

To get rid of "net neutrality" was of course the whole point of the transition to packet based networks. Dynamically sharing bandwidth. The old networks, like SDH, either provided their specced network bandwidth between two points, or they refused to connect at all. Anyone care to return to that situation ?

Re:Throttling?

[plague3106]

So your argument is that as long as they kill ALL VOIP, and not just Vonage, its fine? Well I'm sure they'll have no problem throttling majicjack too.

God damn... are you really this stupid?

Re:Throttling?

[plague3106]

You work for a shitty ISP. Care to post its name, so I know to avoid it?

VZ didn't build the network, we did, through taxes (money was given to the telecoms) and tax breaks (they didn't have to pay as much as they should have).

If you treat all VOIP as high priority, thats one thing. If you treat YOUR OWN better than your VOIP competitors, you should be forced to close your doors.

Your attitude is retarded; you're a tiny ISP. What happens when your upstream provider wants to compete, and they just raise your rates until your prices are forced higher than theirs?

Re:Throttling?

[Drummergeek0]

All internet traffic, NOT BASED ON SPECIFIC PORT/APP/ADDRESS. I am saying that the services they bundle WITH their internet would not be throttled, while the internet would. If they throttle the entire internet connection to the point of killing anything, then they are no longer delivering the service offered, which creates an entirely different set of problems.

Re:Throttling?

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

If you treat all VOIP as high priority, thats one thing. If you treat YOUR OWN better than your VOIP competitors, you should be forced to close your doors.

Customers pay extra to get their voip traffic to us treated preferentially. They are perfectly free to pay for preferential traffic to another voip provider (as customers get to specify, up to a certain bandwidth, which traffic is prioritized, that limit being dependant on how much they pay. We even allow residential customers to prioritize certain traffic over others. Except for my own home connection I doubt anyone actually does that, though).

One way customers use this is to have telephony interconnects over our network to their different sites. We don't mind this at all, in fact I make it a point to help anyone who wants to do this. Same goes for IPv6 : if you want to configure it native on our network, I'll personally help you do it.

Btw : has vonage decided to start cooperating with other telephony operators again ? Because Vonage complains (and so do we), but they also use preferential network connections to their advantage (they also ask money for preferential treatment on their network), disconnecting providers who refuse to pay up.

Your attitude is retarded; you're a tiny ISP. What happens when your upstream provider wants to compete, and they just raise your rates until your prices are forced higher than theirs?

What makes you think they don't do that already ? What keeps us alive is cooperation agreements with other small (and even somewhat larger) ISPs, and as much own infrastructure as we can get our hands on.

As for internet and telephony transit we have no local upstream provider, for obvious reasons.

We don't want the government to interfere, as it's government interference that brought us to this position in the first place. Corrupt government cannot get us out again. If we're going to beat the large telcos we're going to have to do it by adapting faster than telcos do and offering better service. And we're going to do it by only placing infrastructure in interesting locations.

The problem with democracy is large numbers of clueless uninvolved "do-gooders" interfering in everything. Needless to say, what they do never turns out to be all that good.

Re:Throttling?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would argue that allowing them to prioritize access to their own services is the very reason we need network neutrality. We're locked in by business partnerships enough as it is. That would only make the situation of the illusion of freedom of choice that much worse.

Re:Throttling?

[PPH]

I don't mind a broadband operator prioritizing VoIP over BitTorrent. I just don't want them prioritizing theirVoIP over their competitors.

And if they can't manage that, then they need to pick one business (telephone or broadband provider) and sell the others off.

Re:Throttling?

[plague3106]

So as long as they're throttling ALL traffic its fine? So the fact that Comcast owns NBC gives them a right to throttle all other channnels' websites... because NBC is internal and all the other ones aren't. Is that what you're getting at?

Re:Throttling?

[plague3106]

Customers pay extra to get their voip traffic to us treated preferentially. They are perfectly free to pay for preferential traffic to another voip provider (as customers get to specify, up to a certain bandwidth, which traffic is prioritized, that limit being dependant on how much they pay. We even allow residential customers to prioritize certain traffic over others. Except for my own home connection I doubt anyone actually does that, though).

Oh, i see. You offer internet... but if you want "certain" apps to actually work over the connection they're already paying for... you expect them to pay up. Got it.

One way customers use this is to have telephony interconnects over our network to their different sites. We don't mind this at all, in fact I make it a point to help anyone who wants to do this. Same goes for IPv6 : if you want to configure it native on our network, I'll personally help you do it.

For extra fees, I'm sure.

What makes you think they don't do that already ? What keeps us alive is cooperation agreements with other small (and even somewhat larger) ISPs, and as much own infrastructure as we can get our hands on.

Yes, that's my point. This whole nonsense is driving up prices for end users needlessly. Raising prices because you can,, and no one can reasonally compete, smacks of antitrust violations. So again, what will you do when these agreements fall apart because your partners now want in on your market?

As for internet and telephony transit we have no local upstream provider, for obvious reasons.

That only makes sense if you're one of the big players, and even they have to deal with each other, but you've claimed to be a smaller operation.

We don't want the government to interfere, as it's government interference that brought us to this position in the first place. Corrupt government cannot get us out again. If we're going to beat the large telcos we're going to have to do it by adapting faster than telcos do and offering better service. And we're going to do it by only placing infrastructure in interesting locations.

Of course you don't want government interference; you want to screw users are much as possible. Of course if the government suddenly owned all the infrastructure, you'd have to compete on service alone, because all these nonsense peering agreements would go out the window. And who wants to do that when they can just screw people of money because they have no other choices?

As far as I'm concerned, the public already PAID for all the lines to be laid (and many that never were).

The problem with democracy is large numbers of clueless uninvolved "do-gooders" interfering in everything. Needless to say, what they do never turns out to be all that good.

Ya, because things were SO much better in 1910, when we had child labor, dangerous work conditions and no upward mobility. You may want to read up on what happens with unrestrained business. You might also want to read up on what happened without the "do-gooders" in eastern Europe and Russia.

Re:Throttling?

[Drummergeek0]

No, Internet vs Services. Not internal to their company umbrella, internal as in their cable/phone/internet. If all of these run on the same network and they throttle internet due to high usage and slow downs, their should not be reprisal for not throttling the cable/phone to maintain QoS.

Re:Throttling?

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Heh,

Now that I am found to have reasonable arguments, against your "I want free stuff" arguments I obviously have to be part of the evil empire.

We are, in fact, a small operation trying to compete with the incumbent telco. And no if you want to configure your network to treat certain traffic preferentially (QoS), or if you want to configure IPv6, I will help you out for free. Yes obviously only if you're a customer.

But if you want to send out your quake sessions preferentially marked, I'll help you out with that just the same. Of course, any preferential treatment stops at the network boundary, but hey. You could have inter-as agreements to solve that problem (we actually have one of those for a good customer).

The fact that the IP's PRINCIPLE is thoroughly violated by your suggestion apparently does not mean anything to you. The whole point of switching to IP was to make the massive overselling of capacity possible. Your complaints about service are as realistic as complaining in a garaga that the car they sold you doesn't fly.

The whole reason for packet based networking is to use the same bandwidth for different customers simultaneously. That's what made the internet possible in the first place. Things weren't better in 1910, so why you want to bring back the 1960's telephone (and "internet") system is beyond me.

Of course you don't want government interference; you want to screw users are much as possible. Of course if the government suddenly owned all the infrastructure, you'd have to compete on service alone, because all these nonsense peering agreements would go out the window. And who wants to do that when they can just screw people of money because they have no other choices?

Do we want to make a profit ? Yes.

But you are perfectly free today to go and see what happens if the government owns all the infrastructure. What's stopping you ? Just move to North Korea ... nothing hard about it.

Don't forget to write back a little note explaining how it's better, alright ? Of course as even the mail doesn't operate there, never mind telephone or internet, it'll have to be a message bird. Don't forget to take a pigeon, alright ?

"cyberspace"?

[derGoldstein]

Really?

Re:"cyberspace"?

[Monkeedude1212]

I heard about it on the Interblag!

Innovate without permission

[Nerdfest]

"Innovate without permission" is an excellent expression, although not completely descriptive of the goal in this case.

Re:Innovate without permission

[Anonymous Coward]

"Innovate without permission" is an excellent expression, although not completely descriptive of the goal in this case.

Right, "with impunity" would have been more descriptive and to the liking of the Chinese.

Re:Innovate without permission

[girlintraining]

"Innovate without permission" is an excellent expression, although not completely descriptive of the goal in this case.

What's sad is that it has to be said at all -- it implies that people need permission before molding technology and science in a way that serves the public good. I shouldn't have to ask someone for permission to learn more about the world around me and put that learning in service of the greater good. And neither should anybody else. Anywhere. Ever.

Re:Innovate without permission

[superdana]

"Innovate without permission" also sounds like a euphemism for bullshit like Site Finder.

Re:Innovate without permission

[derGoldstein]

I noticed that phrase as well, and thought that Google should adopt it as its tagline or motto:
"Google: We Innovate* without permission. *the meaning of the word 'innovate' may change at any time"

It suits their MO perfectly. They choose to "Innovate"(disrupt) certain aspects of the market when it suits them. The "Innovate"(pour money into) projects they see as helpful to their overarching goal. They especially "Innovate"(alter privacy conventions) according to how it best suits them at any point in time. Possibly their best defense against any objection is "it's technically *not* illegal, so piss off". This is all (mostly) fine, I just hate that they do it under the "we're the good guys with the OSS and 'do no evil'" umbrella.

Re:Innovate without permission

[girlintraining]

You don't.

You do.

And wont you need a rule to make it open ?

[unity100]

after all, if some party 'redefines' open, how are you going to keep it open ?

you need some basic rules to make sure that openness persists. you need net neutrality rules. there is nothing related to innovation in this. net neutrality is basically the freedom of expression for modern humanism. its fundamental.

It's a start

[Monkeedude1212]

Get the FCC to agree to something small first.

I have a feeling if they can convince them of this, its just 1 step in a long journey towards a better web.

Re:It's a start

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a feeling if they can convince them of this, its just 1 step in a long journey towards a better, safer, more secure and trusted web, especially after passing laws and regulations that effectively cuts off anything anonymous.
Here, fixed that for you.
Since when do we need regulation at all? Since some of the kids that grew up with BBS (and actually have a clue) became adults and started making money off of it?

PR

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds to me like they're both agreeing to go the throttled route.

Re:PR

[jaygridley]

Thats odd, I dont remember clicking post as AC.

Central Authority?

[PPH]

What about all the little(?) keepers of the last mile? Like Verizon. Can they make up their own rules? OTOH, the FCC is a 'central authority'. Are they suggesting that the FCC shouldn't have a say in such rulemaking?

Re:Central Authority?

[blitzkrieg3]

RTFA, but yes:

While Google and Verizon disagree about the degree of authority the FCC has to oversee network management, they seem to concur about the agency's limited powers in other areas. Although Congress has given the Commission oversight over radio and television broadcasters, these mandates should not be transferred over to the Internet, the companies warn. There is "no sound reason to impose communications laws or regulations on the robust marketplace of Internet content, applications, and services."

This whole "Google will work it out with ISPs on a case by case basis" is probably the scariest development in net neutrality in a long time. The only reading I can have of it is that Verizon had something that Google wanted, and they said "not until you change your stance on net neutrality". Net neutrality advocates have lost a big partner here.

Re:Central Authority?

[PPH]

This whole "Google will work it out with ISPs on a case by case basis" is probably the scariest development in net neutrality in a long time.

Its what the cable/telecoms wanted to avoid with individual municipalities. Having to negotiate franchise terms for access to rights-of-way with every little town along the road. Uniform regulation by the FCC was the solution.

The only reading I can have of it is that Verizon had something that Google wanted,

Access to customers.

and they said "not until you change your stance on net neutrality". Net neutrality advocates have lost a big partner here.

I'm guessing that Google made the following deal with the devil: Google and its ilk are big enough to make the money needed to pay off the telecoms' blackmail. Small web site operators are not. So mow the little guy's only option is to sign up with Google/Amazon/etc. hosting services who have the clout($) to make sure their clients can be seen. So what Google loses in bribe payments, they make up in customers for their services.

The solution is to go back to local regulation. Verizon will comply with my town's open access regulations. Or they can just pull all that nice fiber back out from under my street. And they'll have to comply with the regs of each little wide spot in the road. And that won't just be open access. It'll be the mayor's mother-in-law getting that public access chanel for her flower arranging class.

It's happening already. The Verizon FiOS salesman came around my street signing people up for service. In spite of all the mailers for their Broadband/Telephone/TV service, he had to inform me that their TV offering was not yet available. They are waiting on approval from our town to offer it. So the solution is to get hold of members of your town council and have them append a Net Neutrality clause to their franchise contract. Once Verizon has a few hndred different versions of these to comply with, they'll be begging to have the FCC step in and take over regulations.

Too vague to be of value.

[ilsaloving]

"That means, to them, that "when a person accesses cyberspace, he or she should be able to connect with any other person that he or she wants to—and that other person should be able to receive his or her message,""

This statement has no meaning if they don't include protocol in it.

Do they mean "he or she should be able to connect with any other person that he or she wants to... by whatever means they choose" or
"he or she should be able to connect with any other person that he or she wants to... as long as they're using only the tools and methods we tell them to"

And as someone else already pointed out, they don't mention speed either. The devil's in the details, after all.

It's an interesting start, but this is what people have come to expect from the internet in the first place. The part I worry about isn't whether there or not people will be able to reach each other. It's how the big networks will change to rules and set up restrictions, yet still convince people that what they are getting is still an 'open internet'.

Re:Too vague to be of value.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was also a bit worried with that statement.
Already this doesn't happen, and will never happen unless we create some teleport-capable routers / connections.

A message is relayed through X routers and switches before it gets to the destination.
A truly open Internet probably can't be done, everything goes through ISPs, everything goes through backbones.
These parties are usually, and quite often, targeted by agencies to get activity. Sadly these agencies usually win. (whether it is some idiots from the Music Industry, or some snooping government)
Even dial-up connections still go through the phone companies, which are often monitored to hell and back WITHOUT permission.
Not to mention the fact that most ISPs are usually corrupt as it is, creating artificial monopolies, buying out smaller ISPs or killing them off entirely.

Using such terminology in "legal" work is just plain wrong and won't (hopefully) get put through.

collusion

[girlintraining]

In other words, they're trying to come up with something that looks open on its face, but on closer inspection keeps all the power in the hands of private interests they can control. They realized their petty squabbling could both both their businesses in jeopardy so they're pretending to get along like a big house on fire now and praying that the FCC finds something else to pick on while they muster their political allies.

It's a tactic designed expressly to weaken the FCC's support in Congress by appearing to be the victims of the FCC "control freaks", while they, the benevolent corporate interests, only want the lowest prices and best services for you, the vulnerable consumer. Cue media relations campaign in 5...4...3...

This is a hail mary

[Dan667]

Big telecom knows their position is indefensible and that people do not want private corporations to take over the internet. Net Neutrality needs to pass to prevent them from waiting a couple years to try an internet take over again (ie horrible packages like cable tv channels, throttling, and unwanted re-direction of connections).

Worrying

[GreatBunzinni]

The way they worded their stance is very worrying. For example, this expression:

"when a person accesses cyberspace, he or she should be able to connect with any other person that he or she wants to—and that other person should be able to receive his or her message,"

The "message" part can be interpreted not as a packet but as any message such as email, IM or blog entry, which could be used to justify that any network traffic that crosses a network can be fiddled by the operators, even dropped, if it was sent through a connection which is communicating through protocols other than the ones officially sanctioned by the operators. So as your download isn't a message, your home-made VoIP service isn't a message or your internet gaming connection isn't a message then they would be free to just drop it as they see fit. To put it in other words, if the operators don't identify your connection traffic as being message exchanges then they can simply do what they wish with it, which, as wee have become used to, will mean that you and I are screwed.

Then, this next excerpt is also important to take notice:

" they write. The 'Net should operate as a place where no "central authority" can make rules that prescribe the possible, and where entrepreneurs and network providers are able to "innovate without permission."

Well, that means nothing more than "and don't fuck with our business". That's terribly worrying because, together with the first stance, this reads as we get to choose what to do with our traffic and no one should ever bother us about it.

So this has the potential of being a horrible, horrible attack on today's free internet. And that is very scarry.

Re:Worrying

[Qzukk]

That's terribly worrying because, together with the first stance, this reads as we get to choose what to do with our traffic and no one should ever bother us about it.

I saw that too, and went back and re-read it as:

The 'Net should operate as a place where we can make rules that prescribe the possible, and where entrepreneurs "innovate with our permission."

Verizon is blocking irc apps on droid right now

[Anonymous Coward]

so you know, press releases are just words.. They just started doing this a week or so ago.

Re:Verizon is blocking irc apps on droid right now

[willzzz]

Ummm what? I use AndChat from the Market and it works fine. I can also install any Android app I want even those without official approval by enabling debugging mode and disabling signature verification in the options. Downloading some apps (*.apk files) from 3rd party sources (souceforge, etc.) and it works fine. Verizon's Android platform is TOTALLY OPEN if you know what you're doing I've noticed (aka RTFM/Google). Maybe you're having coverage or connection issues with the server? I even tether through my Droid using a NAT proxy app and haven't found ANY blocking.

!network management

[Tuki]

Seriously irritating that they continue to dub this "network management". I have been in the network management business for over a decade, and not once have I throttled down anyone's network connection. That is a job for network engineers!

Sounds like a definitiion of SPAM

[Anonymous Coward]

"a person accesses cyberspace, he or she should be able to connect with any other person that he or she wants to"... sounds exactly like request suggexted by a potential spammer. Surely they meant, "... if the recipient wants to be contacted"

No doubt they did.

Another view on Cell Phones

[cervo]

Most cell networks have really shitty service, and completely rip you off. SMS prices seem to have gone up over the years, however they are tiny text messages. As network capacity increases they should be even easier to deliver. The fact that people are surfing websites for cheap which use way more data than SMS just shows how the phone companies rip you off. They also have control on their phones, so often any IM apps will charge you for an SMS with every message.

Also once you buy a phone, you are locked into a network. If they screw you over for two years, to leave you will have to pay termination fees, and get a new phone on your new network. You are basically locked in. Some people sell unlocked phones, but they are often locked into one network. Even T-Mobile/ATT use different 3G frequencies. Verizon/Sprint do not use the same hardware either. So cell companies aren't in competition with each other.

With net neutrality 3rd parties can make devices that use all the cell networks (just the 3g parts, not the voice) and use VOIP. Now, Apple smacks down most VOIP apps in the apple store (no doubt at the request of ATT). But even if they didn't, the phone company could probably use deep packet inspection to find other people's VOIP packets an dmake them lower priority. OR just block all VOIP packets except for the phone company's own. IF there is net neutrality then they can't. So you could make 3rd party devices that link to everyone's 3g network and use VOIP. Then carriers would be forced to compete on price, and network quality. Customer service would improve because dissatisfied customers would just leave....

But in defeating net neutrality things can mostly stay the same....

Net Neutrality

[tad1073]

I had to right a short paper on this topic. Here is my the blog post. http://thomas-netneutrality.blogspot.com/

Re:Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

I had to right a short paper on this topic. Here is my the blog post.

http://thomas-netneutrality.blogspot.com/

If that's the quality of righting on your the blog, I'm not interested.

Get 'er done!

[hyades1]

It's seriously important to get a net neutrality arrangement worked out in the US and carved in stone before the neo-conservative elements get back in control. It's a sad fact that the conservative side of politics there has been taken over by a bunch of religious fanatics and fascists who want nothing to do with such traditional conservative values as freedom from the intrusion of government into one's private life. Net neutrality was headed for the scrap heap under the previous administration, and it's far from assured under this one.

It's also an unfortunate fact that the US still has enough financial clout to enforce its rules on other countries. The up-side of this situation is that if the US enacts strong net neutrality legislation, most European countries will happily fall in line, and the ones like England and Italy, which are flirting with harsh internet laws, will have to go along. Even China will have an increasingly-difficult time keeping its "Green Wall" intact.

Re:Get 'er done!

[hyades1]

This is a troll? Bullshit! It's an accurate, objective evaluation of the situation. Looks like there's a moderator running loose who doesn't know how the job's done. Anybody want to bet he's American and comes from a particular part of the political spectrum?

Re:Get 'er done!

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a fool to think this is a Conservative vs. Liberal issue. But keep playing the game as each side whittles away your rights and freedoms. Their loyalty lies not with you (whom they are supposed to represent), but with corporate interests.

Re:Get 'er done!

[hyades1]

You should re-read what I wrote. I expressed no particular confidence in this administration, either.

I just happen to believe that the current composition of the government and the FCC offer the best chance you're likely to get for real net neutrality laws. If this opportunity slips away, we're all screwed. I certainly don't disagree with your statement that both parties in the US are complete and utter corporate whores. And, so you don't assume I'm one of those snide, superior Canadians, I don't think our country's major parties are all that different.

Re:Get 'er done!

[timbo234]

Maybe pedantic but still worth pointing out: *England* is not flirting with harsh internet laws, there is no Government of England, it's the government of the UK that's doing so. And any laws that result will affect people in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as well as England.

Also it's not a given that European countries will 'fall into line' with the US on this. It requires specific laws at either the national level or the national and EU level to be enacted. This will be slightly more likely if the US does it, as it would provide a good example of a major nation seeing the benefit of net neutrality, but there's no mechanism where laws get passed from the US to Europe!

Any anti-neutrality tech...

[John Guilt]

...can be cast as 'innovation' (and a good one---it makes life easier for someone, and presumably even better if that someone has a lot of capital) which should not be stifled by a 'central authority' (any authority Google or Verizon doesn't like).

Actually it's a pass underneath during a blitz

[hellfire]

Sometimes corporations do the right thing in their own interest. I think is far more subtler than a business throwing up their hands and giving up, this is a business basically saying "we've always been at war with eastasia. Eurasia is our ally."

First, Verizon is getting it's butt kicked by Comcast and other cable providers for internet service. An article by Consumer reports this month says that Verizon has the superior service and value, but Comcast continues to hold onto the subscribers, particularly since FIOS is not available everywhere and cable just has the mindshare. Anything Verizon can do to make sure Comcast doesn't have a huge lever against them, particularly since they are buying NBC, will be huge.

Second, Verizon is starting to realize that Android has a shot at being a big deal, and not only does that require Google's cooperation, it also requires Android itself. Nexus One and Droid aren't the iPhone ikiller, but Android itself is becoming a challenger, because it's available across multiple platforms and services. Verizon sees this long term, and the secret to being competitive at the moment is getting people to go with the hardware and sell contracts.

Third, AT+T is getting tremendous flak for statements about limiting network usage and blaming iPhone users. Frankly, I think all providers would love to limit phones, but the problem with that is that people like Google don't want limitations. Leave it to Google to give Verizon some religion on the subject, and show them the more you can do with a device, the more people will want it. Anything that makes Verizon look good over AT+T, especially if AT+T self destructs a bit, is obviously great for Verizon.

Re:Actually it's a pass underneath during a blitz

[Dan667]

Banks were suppose to self regulate after deregulation, but look how that turned out with the bank bailout. It is reasonable to have an independent third party make sure telecoms are truly neutral with their networks. Net Neutrality needs to pass.

Wireless is the future though

[beakerMeep]

When you think about it, wireless speeds are stating to catch up to hard wired connections. Over the next 10-20 years I think we're going to see a shift away from landlines. In terms of net neutrality this should mean there will be numerous companies competing in the wireless network market (AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint). This is good because ultimately users would not stand for gatekeepers that throttle -- therefore competition and user choice is paramount here. What worries me is device lock-in and two year contracts. Google's latest move with the N1 is starting to make a bit more sense now.

Re:Wireless is the future though

[blitzkrieg3]

It sounds like a good idea on the outset, but weather this will actually increase neutral networks through carrier competition depends on 3 things:
1. Lock in: Google has done a pretty good job of fighting against handset lock in, but we will never get past the fact that we have both CDMA and GSM networks, and even the GSM networks don't have the same 3G. So you will never be able to bring your latest and greatest unlocked phone to Verizon from AT&T, for example. Couple this with the fact that most phones have to be "unlocked" even to work on another network with the same protocol and you have a real problem. Even without handset lock in, every wireless provider will require you to sign a 2 year contract, meaning you won't be able to change phone service so easily.
2. Carrier Collusion: When one provider upped the price of texting from 10 cents to 20, every other provider followed suit. They could easily do the same thing by switching off access to Hulu at the same time.
3. Consumer Awareness: If every consumer really makes net neutrality their top priority, than they can affect change with the new competition, assuming there is no lock in and collusion between networks. The problem is, most people care more about the other things, mostly network quality and price. If you spend $75 for provider A's neutral network, but provider B blocks Hulu but gives you an alternative site provided by them, as well as free cable TV and unlimited on demand for as part of a $60 "double play" package, most people will forget their principals and go with the better value.

Re:Wireless is the future though

[Anonymous Coward]

Wireless only makes sense if major companies are NOT in control of the wireless airwaves or the devices that make it happen... I'd rather there be a million and one little 'meshed' connections than one or two big (authorized) connections. That way when the telcos finally figure out that they're just freight haulers we'll have the technology in place to 'route' around them. Besides a mesh network is a lot more robust than the 'controlled' networks of today.

(anonymous for a reason... remember the phone company is every where.... )

The obligatory car analogy

[jonaskoelker]

Perhaps it gets overlooked so much because it's difficult to create a car/road traffic analogy that expresses it.

Not at all.

Suppose the roads were privately owned. Dominos and Pizza Hut offer competing pizza delivery services. You really like Dominos' pizzas better, but Pizza Hut has paid the road owner of your neighbourhood to only let one Dominos delivery through for every 20 Pizza Hut deliveries, so you can't get your delicious pizza.

That'd make you quite unhappy, right? You'd feel unfairly discriminated against just for living in the wrong neighbourhood, right? You'd feel the road company servicing your neighbourhood was not providing the service you expected (despite you paying them), right? Oh, but you could of course always move. To a neighbourhood that has Dominos instead of Pizza Hut, but only lets the shipping company you hate operate. Or...

I think that car analogy was pretty easy and worked pretty well.

Re:The obligatory car analogy

[moosesocks]

I'm pretty sure this was an actual plot point in Snow Crash.

Traffic shaping done right

[jonaskoelker]

A VOIP packet needs to be a higher priority than say someone's bit torrent download because it is real time.

Your phone sex is not more important than my porn movie.

Your phone sex might be more important---to you!---than your own porn movie. That's fine. Tell your ISP (via IP QoS flags) to downgrade your own bittorent transfers in preference to your VoIP.

Prioritize your own traffic however the hell you like it (or ask your ISP to do that service for you). As long as I get the bandwidth I paid for, no matter how I like to use it.

Otherwise, I'm going to encode bittorrent packets as sound waves (remember modems?) and start delivering them over VoIP if that's faster. Then what have we gained?

Re:Traffic shaping done right

[cervo]

But it is. If the phone sex is a live chat and your porn movie is not live, then whether you get the porn movie now or an hour later it makes no difference. However if you are having phone sex and you get throttled it will ruin the conversation. The same is true of a streaming video. If you are streaming your porn movie then throttling may make it full of skips/jumps. But if you are downloading the whole thing on bittorrent then whether you get it now or an hour later, it makes no difference. You'll get your entire movie to watch it.

Mostly I'm okay with P2P data being put lower priority than everything else. Some of those apps suck bandwidth like crazy.....I would even prefer my web page browsing is faster than P2P. It all comes down to response time. P2P or even FTP don't require response time so much, they aren't critical. They mostly need a good throughput. Meanwhile VOIP, Streaming Video, and even web browsing require relatively quick responses because someone is there interactively.

Re:Traffic shaping done right

[jonaskoelker]

However if you are having phone sex and you get throttled it will ruin the conversation. The same is true of a streaming video. If you are streaming your porn movie then throttling may make it full of skips/jumps.

You want to use the internet for something you don't have the bandwidth for. Why should your desire let you steal my bandwidth?

Maybe a delayed torrent will mean I won't get to watch that film I just started downloading while my friend is still over at my house.

If your argument is that our two-customer ISP should share their bandwidth over time roughly 50/50 if we both want to max out, but they should tend to schedule your interactive packets before my non-interactive packets, while still giving me the bandwidth I need, then we can start talking. I'm not clear whether that's what you want, or whether you want 70/30 bandwidth distribution because you watch porn on redtube while I prefer to download mine off of TPB.

If I've mistaken your position, then sorry if I came off more aggressive than you deserve. Could you please explain exactly what your position is? How should the ISP handle the packets in their queue? What goal should they work towards?

Lies.

[ElusiveJoe]

I do not believe that a company which recognizes DMCA, could also be loyal to the net neutrality philosophy.

Can we just have packet prioritizing?

[YojimboJango]

All I ever see out of these people is throttling speed based on how much you've downloaded, or how long you've been downloading for. I have never once seen a throttling plan based on current network congestion. Why is this? Can't we run a system where once the network reaches 100% capacity we start giving priority to the packets that need it? Say a switch that has a priority stack that runs like voip,http,https,ftp,sftp,encrypted,unknown,BitTorrent.

All I ever see are 'solutions' that allow the ISPs to run at well below their actual capacity.

Right...

[dumky]

Yeah. Once the FCC gets its foot in door of regulating the internet, it will start embracing its new role in defining a better web. Oh, but wait, isn't the FCC more of a "central authority" than any ISP?!

Please keep government out of the internet. We will all have a better internet for it. All the comments and opinions above are important. But they should be voiced as customers, who are free to patron the ISPs that do the best job of meeting their expectations. When you start to involve the government, to try and force ISPs to provide a certain service, you are pretty much guaranteed to get un-intented side-effects. For one, ISPs will ramp up their lobbying effort, as that is the new game (instead of competing on the best product), which will continue to corrupt government.
Welcome to crony capitalism.

Re:Right...

[s73v3r]

Except most people don't have a choice in which ISP they patron; they have the ISP that is in the area. It doesn't matter how much they bitch, the ISP won't have much of a reason to change. And before someone comes in with, "Well why don't you have more competition in the ISP space?", that question is important to answer, but it isn't really relevant to this discussion. The answer could be that the area can only support one service provider. Should that give the sole provider the right to mess with my connection as they see fit?

Translation

[Alex Belits]

"when a person accesses cyberspace, he or she should be able to connect with any other person that he or she wants to--and that other person should be able to receive his or her message," they write. The 'Net should operate as a place where no "central authority" can make rules that prescribe the possible, and where entrepreneurs and network providers are able to "innovate without permission."

So when a "person" is an ISP, he has a "right" to pick and choose what traffic will he drop or throttle, and users, trapped in his network, don't have any recourse because no "central authority" can smack such ISP with fines and license withdrawals for such "innovation".

Amirite?

Re:Translation

[neo-mkrey]

Paranoid much?

Verizon supports a free web, eh?

[berkbw]

The original reason for me not using Verizon's mail services was that Verizon blacklisted much of Eastern Europe. Now they're on the "freedom train"?