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A Simple Guide To Net Neutrality
superapecommando writes in with a neutral introduction to net neutrality from ComputerWorld UK. While it doesn't go into a lot of technical depth, it's rare to see anything written on the subject that isn't rabid on one side or the other. "Google's recently announced plan to set up trial fiber-optic networks in the US with ultra-high-speed Internet connections puts the long running national debate over Net Neutrality back into high gear. A hot topic of discussion and debate in government and telecom circles since at least 2003, Net Neutrality, actually involves a broad array of topics, technologies and players. Here's a primer for those looking to get up to speed fast."
The other companies are looking to get a slice of Google's profits.
Fuck them.
The day Google offers fiber in my neighborhood I am going to sign up with them.
... or even the most important thing to worry about. Watch for big cable-companies to impose bandwidth caps and raise the price of data transfer to protect their regional video monopolies at the expense of Internet-accessible video content. Bandwidth caps are outside of the purview of NN as it's traditionally defined.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
While this is true, consider that if the company imposes bandwidth caps on "internet" while allowing "cable plus" content from that provider to be delivered, one could conceivably make a NN claim on the "same pipes" logic. This is a stretch, I'm not going to lie, but consider that these things are related. Otherwise, the provider could just offer a "internet plus" with no caps and access to limited sites on the same pipes...you see where I'm going with this.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
Thats just as horrible as electric utilities making you pay per Killowatt/hour of power.
Honestly.. I would prefer a $X per Giga or Megabyte over $x for unlimited*
*Where we define unlimited, who gets throttled when and can cut you off for exceeding any internal threshold that we will not tell you about.
Seriously.. If I am curious about my power usage, I can walk outside, look at the meter, and figure out pretty close to what I owe.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
One of the most common arguments that I hear out of net neutrality opponents is that competition will somehow keep most ISP's net neutral without any messy government regulation. But what happens if all the major ISP's start blocking certain sites (like Pirate Bay)? With most people (in the U.S. at least) having at most 1-3 broadband providers to choose from, exactly where are you supposed to you go when all the big ones agree on a blacklist? And how can you open up a competing provider when all the wire and fiber are in the hands of monopolies like AT&T, Time-Warner, etc.? It's not like you can just start up a Mom & Pop broadband provider and start laying hundreds of miles of cable. Even Google will have a hard time competing with the big telco's and cableco's with the relatively minor bit of fiber optic they own.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
IMO, I'm not a huge fan of strict network neutrality, there are cases where you want advanced traffic management techniques that would be non-neutral: EG, if you are dealing with wide-area wireless, banning P2P applications is probably a very good thing, as wireless bandwidth is vastly more expensive. Likewise, token-bucket hacks which improve interactive traffic could in some ways be considered "non neutral", as the start of a transfer is given preference, but the net result is it greatly improves user experience.
But what is important is network transparency : we need to know what is happening, since without knowing what's going on, you can't distinguish between reasonable management practices and unreasonable ones, such as wireline services blocking P2P, favoring some sites over others, or blocking applications.
Additionally, there are a lot of behaviors, such as DNS wildcarding, which are non-neutral but have been overlooked in the debate by focusing solely on application transport.
Thus I believe its important to develop tools (such as, obligatory plug to the research project I'm involved with, , Netalyzr) so that we ensure transparency. We need transparency, because we need to "Trust, but verify". Otherwise, even if network neutrality was legally enforced, how do we know we are getting what we expect?
Test your net with Netalyzr
Maybe I need to do more research on the topic to figure out what exactly it is that people mean when they talk about network neutrality, especially since it seems to mean different things to different people. However, I'm not sure that we really have network neutrality now, nor can we. Just thinking of protocols such as BGP, which basically makes the Internet work at all, and which makes all of its routing decisions based on admin/management policy and not based on any technical metrics, so that certain routes will always be favored, especially those through peers, makes me think that network neutrality in the sense of ensuring that there aren't transit fees and data tariffs to keep competing content second class is sort of impossible.
I'll freely admit that I'm not in possession of extremely in-depth knowledge of how major ISPs handle their business, having been a system admin at a web hosting company and now working a provider of niche networking hardware, but what's the difference between one AS #1 peering with AS #2 and allowing free transit of data, but meetering data sourced at AS #3 which has no peerage agreement and charging them for the use of their tubes? How can we continue to use BGP, which isn't designed with "fairness" of routes in mind (at least not to my understanding, as opposed to other routing protocols which build routes based on metrics such as hop count and bandwidth), but which is designed to allow one AS to favor another AS explicitly, and still have network neutrality?
Or are people really only concerned that ISPs providing end-user service don't shape traffic and limit bt use, for example, but don't care whether their ISP just refuses to directly exchange routing tables with their favorite media conglomerate and increase the lag in their video streaming?
If I'm off-base with this one, please feel free to let me know, though.
Thats just as horrible as electric utilities making you pay per Killowatt/hour of power.
The difference is power distribution companies are not allowed to charge exorbitant fees to green power generation companies to transport that power to the end user. They have to charge the same price they charge their own coal fired power generation subsidiaries. Having a monopoly on power distribution, they are restricted from using that to gain an unfair advantage in another market, such as power generation. Claiming green power and coal power are different product even though they go over the same pipes in the same way is the same as claiming television service is different from any other data going over the cable network. You can't artificially raise the price of your competitors from a monopoly position.
No. No you are not.
I'm a comcast customer and their network is reasonably neutral, as based on actual measurements I've performed as well as looking at their network management policies. So yes, its reasonably neutral for me:
They do do DNS wildcarding (ick ick ICK), but actually have a workable opt-out (rare, most who wildcard don't).
They do block the windows ports outbound, and do dynamic blocking of spam-bots. (Not strictly neutral but arguably VERY good things)
They bias the network to allow the first X MB within a given timewindow to exceed the advertised speed, which again, is not strictly neutral but greatly improves interactive activity.
They impose a two-tier network-based QOS under congestion, measured on 15 minute timewindows, which means that light users are not generally impacted by congestion.
I haven't seen anything weird on routing: performance is usually limited by either my connection or the remote site, not the peering, so BGP issues are not coming up.
So its not strictly neutral, but the deviations are generally to my benefit as a customer (except for F@#)@#*( DNS wildcarding, but at least that has an opt-out I exercised immediately)
Test your net with Netalyzr
Am I the only one that read the submitter's username as Super Rape Commando?
Yes... it's just the guilt manifesting itself from when in 1991, you raped and murdering a teenage girl. Why won't you just come clean already? I mean, we've all been there buddy, at least at some point, so why are you refusing to talk to us about it?
I'll take "The Rapists" for $200, Trebek.
That's "Therapists", Connery!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
brought to you buy the fine folks from expertsexchange.com
Sorry. Xfinity Cable is not the same as Xfinity Internet. You are using Xfinity Cable to watch On Demand programs, not Xfinity Internet. It doesn't matter that the same wire is being used to deliver both, and your Xfinity Telephone service too.
By the way, our new 100MBPS Xfinity Internet speeds allow you to reach your undefined unlimited bandwidth limit 10 times sooner, so enjoy watching Xfinity Cable for the remainder of the month after you hit your limit with Netflix on-demand on day 3 of each month ...
The big cable companies should be allowed to do whatever they want with their networks. They paid for the networks out of their own pocket, free from any tax-payer subsidies, right?
Wait. What's that? They didn't? Oh. My mistake!
At least we're not throwing 7 billion dollars of taxpayer money in their general direction in the form of "stimulus".
Really? We're doing that too? You're kidding?
What about the Fed building, owning and running fiber as a service? The states could get in it as well.
Charge a federal sales tax on all purchases made via the interweb to fund it. Or maybe just have a national system that does not aim at making a profit to compete against the companies.
How about making the damn providers compete? In the US, telcos DO NOT COMPETE in any meaningful way. Maybe lifting the laws that prevent competition would help. Prices are going up instead of down or staying flat, while service seems stagnant.
The net isn't just for porn and games, it's a major channel for business and communication (speech). i think it's wrong to trust that to executives of massive companies.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
Problem is, the other baskets are Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T.
They all rotate into the limelight with something awful.
Google is a really tricky company. I think they do a decent job of scaring everyone into line.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Well at least they know what they're doing! I wouldn't want to go into an operation like that without an expert handling it.
WTF Slashdot, why do I have to login 50 times to post?
The net neutrality argument is one that should never have been.
The baby bells in the US were required to carry competitors traffic over their networks and this is the way it should have been for all utilities.
Then there is the question of what exactly to carriers own anyway.
The Internet was paid for by tax payers so why should they get the right to profit off of what the public has paid for?
Right now they arent legally considered common carrier. They get all the benefits of being a common carrier. Legally force them to be a common carrier and all these problems go away.
Only reason for them to restrict what is being transmitted.
1. illegal: child porn or ddos/spam; only with applicable legal implications of getting the law involved.
2. Act of the flying spaghetti monster destroyed the packet.
3. The transmitter sent a fragmented or broken packet.
4. Their network is being attacked.
Otherwise they are liable for the cost of the damage.
Japan has done this. Surprise surprise they have reasonable and good quality internet access there. $45 will get you 45mbit/5mbit unlimited. or $75 for 100mbit/100mbit unlimited.
Because in 2006 AT&T's CEO opened his mouth and basically stated he wanted to hold his customers hostage from Google in exchange for more money. He plainly stated that he wanted to charge both his direct customers AND people who were incidentally coming across the lines. It was made plainly obvious that corporations can and would abuse their services and their customers for the sake of making a profit, especially when they had a monopoly position in areas.
My personal preference would be to force common carrier status on all data providers.
A bunch of regional monopolies serve as the only reasonably modern gateway to the most important technology of the late 20th/early 21st century, and they're more than willing to destroy what makes it unique.
The carriers should be forcibly struck blind. They've already been caught fucking with connections, and are more than willing to host and affect their networks (and customers) with conflicts of interest that serve only themselves.
Because in 2006 AT&T's CEO opened his mouth and basically stated he wanted to hold his customers hostage from Google in exchange for more money. He plainly stated that he wanted to charge both his direct customers AND people who were incidentally coming across the lines. It was made plainly obvious that corporations can and would abuse their services and their customers for the sake of making a profit, especially when they had a monopoly position in areas.
so, 3-4 years later... what's happened because of this talk?
A bunch of regional monopolies serve as the only reasonably modern gateway to the most important technology of the late 20th/early 21st century, and they're more than willing to destroy what makes it unique.
in some cases, there's a monopoly on high speed internet. that's not really a monopoly though, because there's other alternatives.
The carriers should be forcibly struck blind. They've already been caught fucking with connections, and are more than willing to host and affect their networks (and customers) with conflicts of interest that serve only themselves.
and again, this won't have any real affect, besides making it harder for someone else to get into the industry, with more red tape. and more requirements.
not like this, the FCC has stepped in and mucked with minor stuff. and that was only recently.
The only reason nothing has happened in the last 3-4 years is that the huge backlash caused a *threat* of legislation that made the monopolies back off on their plans. That's not to say they have given up on them, merely realized they need time to spin the issue differently. If there were no threat of legislation there is little doubt in my mind they would have implemented their plans already.
As for it being harder to get into the industry, that's easy to say but do you have the least bit of evidence to back that up? Do you have any idea how difficult it is *now* ??
so why pass it then, even if it's true that the threat made them back off? And if they implemented those plans, how long do you think they'd last? really? They wouldn't. there's too many options.
As for it being harder to get into the industry, that's easy to say but do you have the least bit of evidence to back that up? Do you have any idea how difficult it is *now* ??
WHy make it harder? I'm not saying it's easy, It's not easy for anybody to come along and make a successful business. but successful businesses are good things for everyone, so I really want as little resistance to them as possible. And by making it harder, you'll make it easier on comcast, because the big guys have economies of scale, and that regulation doesn't fade them at all. It will screw up the little guy.
lol i love it. call me a moron pl0z thx.
But unnn.. do provide me with some links to the current wonderful regulations, becuase i'm to stupid to find them myself (and i haven't heard of them).
How soon kids forget the history. It is currently enforced that Net Neutrality happens. Those laws had a sunset clause. The ISP's and cableco's don't want any replacement laws.
So, despite your the "largely unregulated internet has gone on in mainstream for over a decade now, with no major problems," has been BECAUSE of the net neutrality laws in place for those decades, YOU come along and ask "why do we net netrality laws now?".
The answer, bub, is that the current net neutrality laws are ending. THAT is why you need them now.
What laws are those? Can you tell me what laws are ending that currently enforce network neutrality (or have recently ended)?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Comcast initiated RST attacks on users and denied it for ages. Bandwidth caps began applying, except to the streaming services provided by the carriers themselves. But if you're willing to trust a corporation not to fuck you over, well, that's your own game of russian roulette.
So it's a monopoly, but not a monopoly. Because there are other, often inferior, alternatives to a monopoly granted by the municipality. You're saying that because dialup is available in the area, they have carte blanche to abuse their customers, am I right?
You act like it's easy as it is. No, it's hard. The incumbents love how difficult it is now, they just don't like it when people get sick of their shit and apply legal pressure.
"Net Neutrality" sucks. Net Neutrality, as I understand it, is very nearly fundamental for economic growth.
Seriously, this is a geek site, and every time NN comes up people talk about different things.
I think we should talk about "common carrier" status. I know it doesn't legally apply to telcos in the US, but it should, and it's a reasonably well-understood term.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
>>>Bandwidth caps are outside of the purview of NN as it's traditionally defined.
Not really. Net neutrality bsically ays all pipes will be treated the same, so whether I watch my videos at MGM.com r comcastrentals.com,I should be treated the same (~10 cents per gigabyte transferred).
My MAIN concern is that Comcast/Cox/whoever doesn't block access, such as to sites like FOXnews.com or infowars.org.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
And since Comcast is a monopoly (or duopoly in some cases), they should be regulated by the State commission.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Even if the cable/isp companies did not receive one single dolar, the fact they were given a government-granted monopoly also means they have to obey the government's rules. Else said government will kick-out Comcast and put someone else there - like Google ISP
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Power is finite and needs to be generated on-demand from (usually) consumable resources. Bandwidth doesn't fall in the the same category.
Really? Bandwidth is finite and it requires the exact same power from those exact same consumable resources, plus the equipment to deliver the data. I agree it's not quite an apples to apples comparison but it's closer than you are making it out to be. The difference is that one is a direct cost and the other is an indirect cost. They're both real costs but one can be directly assigned to a cost center and the other cannot. This has enormous implications that I think you should study a little deeper. Charging per bit is a way to turn an indirect cost into something resembling a direct cost. Not perfect to be sure but there are good reasons to do it.
For fibre, if you have something that's sitting around idle, you're "wasting" (say) 1 Gb/s of bandwidth each second that it's not lit up. It could be used to transfer information for someone, but if you've capped people and so they're not using it because they're over their caps, you have all this telco equipment doing absolutely nothing.
Whether that is a valid argument depends entirely upon whether there is excess capacity to be had and how the costs are allocated. The "wasted" bandwidth is only wasted if someone wants it and can't get it. If there is no demand for it then you have a case of excess capacity and the costs for the equipment will be higher for everyone who pays to use it. If the bit can be delivered but at the cost of slowing down other customers there is an opportunity cost in play. ISPs do need to make sure that all their customers have access to bits, not just the customers who use the most bits. There also might be upstream costs since your ISP probably pays some rate per bit for data delivered outside their own network. If bandwidth is artificially limited when it could otherwise be delivered without interfering with other customers, then your argument may carry weight.
With electricity, I'm being charged for the consumption of coal/gas/uranium (plus some overhead for transport). What exactly am I being charged for consuming when I download a bit?
The cost of the equipment to deliver that bit, the electricity needed to power that equipment, the staff needed to manage that equipment, depreciation, insurance, upstream bandwidth costs from other suppliers and a number of other costs. Welcome to the wonderful world of direct versus indirect costs. This is what makes cost accounting such an important and difficult endeavor.
Disclosure: I'm a certified accountant.
For instance, take a peek at these two articles on Net Neutrality that have come up in the past year.
The first one about Senator Mc. Cain. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/10/22/fcc-approves-proposed-net-neutrality-rules/ He states, "These new rules should rightly be viewed by consumers suspiciously as another government power grab over a private service provided by private companies in a competitive marketplace". He also states it will stifle innovation and kill jobs. He clearly does not have a coherent understanding of Net Neutrality as one of the goals is to increase innovation through the unrestricted, unfettered access to the internet. In this case, the government is providing deregulation to a market by disallowing private companies from restricting content.
Another Politician, Senator. Feinstein believes we should allow ISPs to restrict access to the internet to abate the spread of child pornography. In her words, changing the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program "allows for reasonable network management practices such as deterring unlawful activity, including child pornography and copyright infringement." While removing child pornography from the internet is a noble goal, she doesn't understand how much more harm will come of this through abuse of the policy. Halting the spread of child pornography can be combated through our legal system instead of giving ISPs complete control over what we can view. The article can be viewed here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/11/feinstein_stimulus_amendment/
While allowing ISPs to restrict our internet access would stop the spread of child pornography and could be construed as a government intrusion of a private sector that doesn't need it, consider China and Iran. The governments of these countries are completely against Net Neutrality in every way so they may control their populations by restricting anything that collides with their views. While our private ISPs might not have the kind of power these governments do, would you want our ISPs to be allowed that power?
Thats just as horrible as electric utilities making you pay per Killowatt/hour of power.
What's wrong with that?
I have a simple question: Why?
So that you can continue to post here without your ISP blocking you.
Have gnu, will travel.
Any competitor which doesn't block it will get more business.
Only if there is a competitive market. As it stands the major ISPs (telephone and cable companies) are really an oligopoly and there is little or no way for new competitors to easily enter the marketplace.
The problem there is that the government funded their cabling, yet the companies turned around and monopolized it.
The government did NOT fund their cabling. They granted AT&T and later the cable companies monopolies but generally speaking the networks were built with private funds. AT&T was wildly profitable for decades and there was no need for the government to give them any money. Furthermore there were good reasons to allow the monopoly to exist as it made the telecom system highly consistent everywhere with the attendant network effects benefiting everyone.
Currently their "low" rates are effectively subsidized, thus making competition difficult because a new competitor wouldn't be subsidized.
Again, wrong. They have the advantage of an existing network with it's attendant network effects. Building a cable network is hugely expensive - massive fixed costs. For the phone and cable companies, this cost has already been paid long ago. It is extraordinarily difficult to make an economic case to build a new network to compete with them. Utilities and telephone companies tend to form what is called a natural monopoly because the economies of scale required to provide the lowest cost service naturally tends to result in one or very few companies in the marketplace.
As you can see, it's not a free market in the first place.
Exactly my point. You can't argue it both ways. Either it is a competitive marketplace or it isn't. Given that it really isn't, I would not expect market forces to be especially useful in keeping the net "neutral" - only regulation can do that at the moment.
Kilowatt/hour of power
-> kilowatt-hour of energy
Just sayin'...
Comcast initiated RST attacks on users and denied it for ages. Bandwidth caps began applying, except to the streaming services provided by the carriers themselves. But if you're willing to trust a corporation not to fuck you over, well, that's your own game of russian roulette.
And the end result is people wont' get the service they want and will find alternatives. And you can make the same comparison to cars, which is a lot more appropriate. But in general, the free market works well to protect the consumer. why, because the consumer must willing pay for the service. So they're not gonna pay for something that doesn't work. Adam Smith's invisible hand is well at work, even when you're not aware of it.
So it's a monopoly, but not a monopoly. Because there are other, often inferior, alternatives to a monopoly granted by the municipality. You're saying that because dialup is available in the area, they have carte blanche to abuse their customers, am I right?
it's not really a monopoly is my point, unless you make your definition only to a narrow market. And again, the market protects customers, even with the smaller threat of dialup/satellite, it's not ideal, but it's good enough, becuase they still have to have costumers and the best way to keep/make more customers to treat them right. Most places know this, even if it doesn't always seem like they do.
You act like it's easy as it is. No, it's hard. The incumbents love how difficult it is now, they just don't like it when people get sick of their shit and apply legal pressure.
So you're saying because it's hard now, why not make it even harder?
Double-dipping and extortion is not innovation.
The ISPs are still allowed to do prioritization based on packet type. They just have to treat all of the same type of packets equally regardless of source/destination (within bandwidth limits, of course).
Sorry AC but Bell systems was a monopoly established in 1913. Many years before the 1949 antitrust suit settled in 1956.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
and if my isp blocks me from posting here, i'm gonna keep giving them money? No, they'll start losing money, thus they won't block me, and in the case they do, they'll go bankrupt.
You didn't explain how bandwidth caps are "not really" outside the purview of network neutrality.
Yes, the ISP must treat your packet to site A and site B equally, but once you reach X Gb of transfer for the month, they can block any and all of your traffic under the poorly defined category of "reasonable network management".
According to the FCCs proposal, the definition for reasonable network management includes the clause of "(b) other reasonable network management practices"... uh...
The only proposed rule that would cover bandwidth caps would be the transparency proposal. It'd require the ISP to at least be upfront about their caps so you can make an educated decision. Transparency: "Subject to reasonable network management, a provider of broadband Internet access service must disclose such information concerning network management and other practices as is reasonably required for users and content, application, and service providers to enjoy the protections specified in this part."
-John
Power is finite and needs to be generated on-demand from (usually) consumable resources. Bandwidth doesn't fall in the the same category.
For fibre, if you have something that's sitting around idle, you're "wasting" (say) 1 Gb/s of bandwidth each second that it's not lit up.
Same could be said for my 200AMP service, when I'm only using 50 amps.
On the other hand, if you're not using power, that means the generation companies aren't burning coal/gas/uranium. You don't use, they don't use. But an ISP, if you don't use... their plant is still running.
How often do they power down dams and nuclear reactors near you? Those, along with coal, are base-load, and almost always run.
Basically, what you are alluding to, I think, is that with electricity, the power is finite, and the delivery mechanism is the cheap part.
My argument is that bandwidth is the same, but backwards, the bandwidth is relatively infinite, but the delivery mechanism is the expensive part. (fiber to your house or node, uplink bandwidth, etc) Your electric system (or at least many) even allow you to choose the "source" for the other side of the connection, even if its not really those same currents coming directly to your door. Why do we continue to purchase these in bundles? I would pay less, even when I watch things like Hulu.com, then my neighbor, who has kids who love to torrent every TV show, ever made. I am also taxing the system less as well.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
EEEK.. here, clip a corner from my Geek Card.. thanks!
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
and if my isp blocks me from posting here, i'm gonna keep giving them money? No, they'll start losing money, thus they won't block me, and in the case they do, they'll go bankrupt.
Not your ISP. The backbone operator between you and Slashdot will block you. Because your ISP doesn't give them a cut of that fat income stream Slashdot generates.
If Slashdot is the only thing you do on the 'Net, well I guess your ISP is going to lose you as a customer. But they're betting that their own branded discussion groups will keep most of their paying customers happy. So I doubt they'll miss you very much.
Have gnu, will travel.
they're gonna just cut off parts of the net? they will lose customers. that's what happens. if toyota makes a crappy car there's honda, subaru, ford ect. although people might enjoy more options in buying a car, the internet business is still pretty young.
Metered bandwidth would be an even bigger blow to innovation on the Internet than lack of net neutrality. If all Internet users were forced onto metered bandwidth plans, these things would all be dead:
That last one is the real kicker. The Internet basically runs on advertising. When Internet access is billed by the byte, everyone is going to look to cut their costs by installing ad blocking software. Google and Yahoo would fold overnight. Facebook would become the exclusive realm of the well-to-do. The "printed" news industry would fall into an even deeper hole than its already in. I could list examples all day, but the key thing to take away here is that the Internet as we know it would cease to exist.
Now also think about who have thus far been the major proponents of metered bandwidth: Cable and phone companies. They have an interest in restricting how their customers use the Internet, because they believe it competes with their other services. And they would be right. They can see a future where Hulu is just the beginning of streaming content distribution on the Internet. Eventually, services will come along that offer a cable-TV-like experience for a fraction of the price. All the customer needs is an Internet connection and a little set-top box. Companies like Comcast and AT&T will simply become ISPs, which is the exact opposite direction that they want to go: they want direct control and supervision over their customers' experience because that's where the money is. Any whining noises they make about peer-to-peer killing their networking infrastructure is bullshit, they just don't want to be cut out of a direct content relationship with their customers.
Power and gas are utilities. They are easy to quantify and are used for specific obvious purposes, so it makes sense to bill based on how much is consumed. The Internet, however, is a communications medium. Apples and oranges, my friend.
Spoken like a true believer. Never let reality get in the way of a good story.
Support SETI@home
i've given concrete examples, explained why things work, and all that i've basically heard in opposition is that things might happen (when they haven't, and it's been this way awhile). and i'm the true believer??
And again, the market protects customers, even with the smaller threat of dialup/satellite, it's not ideal, but it's good enough,
Have you tried dial-up recently? I did. Don't even start opening a web page if is not vital. Today's web pages are not the same as they were in 2000.
Even if they DID go metered they'd exempt their own bits from measuring.
Watch a gigabyte's worth of cable, it's free. Do so on your computer, they charge.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
they're gonna just cut off parts of the net? they will lose customers. that's what happens.
So what? The back end marketing deals your ISP cuts with its partner sites will more than make up for the few belly-achers like you that threaten to drop their service just because a couple of sites disappear.
Have gnu, will travel.
look at what happened with 4chan and verizon blocking that on some networks. I really doubt it would happen very often, since it's hasn't happened yet.
It's not easy for anybody to come along and make a successful business.
It'll be interesting to see if Google manages to get their fiber ISP off the ground. I suspect they've got their choice of neighborhoods willing to pay the fiber installation costs, but the real question is how they're going to get packets from the neighborhood to the internet.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
The difference is it that to make energy to how to put more energy in to get more out. You have to pay for the cost of the coal/gas/uranium you're burning. (traditionally, solar, tidal, and wind energy is a different business)
Every form of backbone in existence costs the same idling as it does running full tilt. Thats not true, this is a difference, its just so small that its really not worth mentioning as you probably can't detect that power difference (on the network infrastructure gear) in the facebook data center, let alone anyone smaller.
If you have 100 million cable modem subscribers using the Internet for an hour a day (at the same time) it costs the EXACT same as if none of them use it at all that day, or if they all use it constantly all day.
Both companies have to pay to install infrastructure, the cost is more or less identical between the two.
I pay more on a normal month for cable than power. I pay more for something that has no consumables than I do for the product that has a consumable, the power usage for providing the bandwidth doesn't count, its far too small to count. Power companies are also required to be fair and charge fair prices, they have to ask the government to make changes, and they government can and does say no.
Comparing bandwidth providers to power companies is roughly like comparing pirating an mp3 of brittney spears to kidnapping her and forcing her to sing at your daughters birthday party. Its a fucking retarded comparison to make.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
And you can make the same comparison to cars, which is a lot more appropriate.
The proper car analogy would be having your engine stall out every few minutes, and when you take it in for service you're told that everything is fine and you must be doing something wrong. Then, a year later someone at a bar mentions how their car stalls all the time, discovers that the bartender drives the same model that stalls out too, and then goes around and realizes that all of the company's cars stall every few minutes. This absolutely remarkable coincidence continues to be denied by the car manufacturer until a few smart guys get together and prove that the company had intentionally set the motor to stall, at which point the car company finally caves in and fixes the cars.
Great news for everyone but those who got suckered into buying a lousy car based on incomplete information and/or the car company's lies.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
i'm gonna keep giving them money? No, they'll start losing money
You and what army? Even if the million (mostly inactive) users here all canceled their internet connections in protest, I doubt the ISPs will be crying too hard.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
and how often does that happen? i'm sure it has happened.. but it's pretty rare.
Dial up is pretty much only good for granny checking her email once a week, and then only if nobody sends her pictures of the grandkids.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
>>>You didn't explain how bandwidth caps are "not really" outside the purview of network neutrality.
Yes I did.
>>>once you reach X Gb of transfer for the month, they can block any and all of your traffic under the poorly defined category of "reasonable network management".
>>>
True but Comcast could also say, "You have reached your cap, but can still access all comcast.com sites for free." That would violate net neutrality because it gives these comcast.com sites an unfair advantage over Itunes.com or MGM.com or other sites that are limited to ~250 gig or less.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Well, at least thats the only industry, WAIT ITS NOT! Oh, well at least this isn't all about profits WAIT IT IS! amidoinitrite?
And we've given you concrete examples of things that did happen, and your answer has always been "oh well people will use dialup if their high-speed internet sucks because it's totally an equivalent good, just like a tricycle can replace a Porsche". Assuming, of course, that the phone company didn't decide to just hang-up on everyone every now and then just to make sure everyone who doesn't use their DSL is as miserable as they are.
there's satellite, which isn't great, but again. you want to screw over the whole system because some people don't have all the choices right now? And again, this is still not a big issue. Do you understand how the market works? do you understand, why you can go to the grocery store and buy a couple gallons of milk for only a few bucks? do you understand why your car, even if it's a crappy car, will still be a decent enough car? do you think all these other situations where the free market has flourished and delivered better goods for cheaper prices, had perfect competition? do you think there weren't people trying to cheat the system? You can apply your scenario to all other scenarios, but it never works out like that in the end. the best way to get rich is to deliver something valuable to your customers. that's what capitalism brings.
There's been plenty of cases out there where even the ISPs you deal with don't get a say in the matter, after all they have to buy their bandwidth from somewhere. In the US, after the FCC "deregulated" the regulation requiring telcos to share their lines, most of them kicked companies like speakeasy out of their markets, regardless of what those ISPs' customers wanted. Then there's the Canadian case of Bell Canada throttling other ISPs' connections [michaelgeist.ca] (again, without telling anyone, because companies don't want an informed marketplace).
They found out about it didn't they? companies can try to keep things a secret, but it doesn't usually work that well. And why should a company have to share a line? Of course, your answer here is that because government paid for it, in part. so the solution of having to much government involvement is more government involvement.
We enjoy the fruits of the free market every day, yet, in general, we despise it, because it doesn't seem like it would work, but history is full of it working. I dunno why these ideas of government control are still so popular. Look at what government control has done to education? they get involved with subsidizing tuition at the college level, and look at the costs? Fortunately we still have a lot of freedom at the higher level, so there's still competition that generates decent colleges. Government is completely in charge of lower level education and look how bad we are relative to other countries? Look at what's happened in medical care? prices have gone up tremendously. 50 years ago, there was no involvement and prices were lower, and people got the care they needed. Granted quality, has gone up, but that's inspite of government holding it back, with regulations, which are basically just extra taxes, because now all the medical paper work has to be done. and this whole system feeds into our insurance companies, who don't really have to compete. and the government gives tax breaks to employers who buy insurance for employees, but won't give a tax break if employees buy it on their own, thus artificially manipulating the market, and doing so to a great cost to everyone.
sfdioahgaghasdf,afhalhf ok i'm done.
look at what happened with 4chan and verizon blocking that on some networks. I really doubt it would happen very often, since it's hasn't happened yet.
So, you want a world where the wronged party has to turn to vandalism (4chan) or be big enough to push a carrier around (Skype) to get justice?
Bring on the regulation. Please.
Have gnu, will travel.
no, the consumers will leave/voice their opinions ect. which, well was the reason i heard about 4chan getting banned. i guess it's not surprising that they would start an attack on verizon though.
Comcast is not legally a monopoly or a duopoly. There is no regulation prohibiting a second, third, or even fourth cable company from setting up shop. Most smart cable companies were very careful not to sign exclusive franchises anywhere.
In fact, Comcast faces stiff competition from satellite and telco providers.
The only competition Comcast doesn't face is from competing cable companies, and that is not because of regulation, it's a cost issue. Those same smart cable companies that signed non-exclusive franchises know there just isn't enough demand from potential customers to merit the cost of two supply chains. I.e., system buildout costs can't be recovered from sufficient customers. That's a defacto but not legal monopoly, but even then, wireless services are eating Comcast's lunch already.
Cable companies used to be subject to strong local regulation (I was a member of two such cable regulatory groups), but the FCC released them from that due to the increased competition from satellite and greater regionalization of companies (i.e., the first cable commission I was on regulated a local company, which eventually got bought out by a national one.)
All that said, I agree they ought to be regulated. Comcast in particular. Especially Comcast scum. But good luck with that. Even when they are shown federal law requiring them to do something, they ignore it, and the FCC has to date ignored it, as well.
1776 called and it wants its wanton belief in Wealth of Nations back.
But if your user base is too small for Verizon to miss, or your users aren't as anti-social as 4chan's are, you're screwed. You have no recourse.
Have gnu, will travel.
do you understand, why you can go to the grocery store and buy a couple gallons of milk for only a few bucks?
I don't know where you're living, but milk costs significantly more than $1.50 a gallon here. And last time I checked, the government regulated what can and can't be in milk, requires nutrition information to be on the carton, requires an ingredient list to include any additives, requires pasteurization of milk products, requires that products be marked with a "sell by" date, and requires that the dairy be inspected regularly. And, last time I checked, it would be illegal for a dairy to sign a contract with the city government giving them the exclusive right to sell milk in this city (at any price they wanted).
Yet, despite all that interference from government, there is a competitive market for milk. I'm sure the dairies complained about how government interference was going to drive them out of business when any of those "anti-business" regulations was proposed.
do you understand why your car, even if it's a crappy car, will still be a decent enough car?
Yes, and if it weren't for government regulation it would be a mufflerless, seatbeltless, airbagless car with no emissions controls burning leaded gasoline and getting 11 miles-per-gallon. I'm old enough to remember how each of those requirements was going to "destroy the auto industry". But what destroyed the American auto industry was building unreliable, gas guzzling, over-sized vehicles that nobody wanted to buy. How's that free market working out for ya?
Look at what's happened in medical care? prices have gone up tremendously. 50 years ago, there was no involvement and prices were lower, and people got the care they needed.
Again, where the hell have you been living? Fifty years ago medical care had more regulation, not less. Hospitals and insurance companies were highly regulated and were in many instances required to be non-profit. It was the deregulation of hospitals and insurance companies that started in the 1980s that started the current wave of costs spiraling out of control.
Again you are letting good stories containing what you want to believe get in the way of reality.
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You couldn't come up with better examples than milk and cars?
oh let's see, milk, food, cars, tools, computers, phones, houses, gadgets, ummm.. just about everything you purchase. lots of stuff.
I don't know where you're living, but milk costs significantly more than $1.50 a gallon here. And last time I checked, the government regulated what can and can't be in milk, requires nutrition information to be on the carton, requires an ingredient list to include any additives, requires pasteurization of milk products, requires that products be marked with a "sell by" date, and requires that the dairy be inspected regularly. And, last time I checked, it would be illegal for a dairy to sign a contract with the city government giving them the exclusive right to sell milk in this city (at any price they wanted)
I don't know the price milk off hand, it's small enough i never bother to check (again thanks to the free market for lowering the cost of milk and paying me enough that essentials are a trivial amount of my income)
And what you think that they'd put in addatives that would hurt you or something? i mean really, that's a great way to get people to buy our milk, we'll make sure its' quality isn't as good.
Yet, despite all that interference from government, there is a competitive market for milk. I'm sure the dairies complained about how government interference was going to drive them out of business when any of those "anti-business" regulations was proposed.
i'd rather have it unregulated, because the regulations do nothing. and you're right, the free market is doing great despite the government. funny that. but regulations on these things are not the reasons you get decent milk in your fridge whenever you want it. it's profit.
Again, where the hell have you been living? Fifty years ago medical care had more regulation, not less. Hospitals and insurance companies were highly regulated and were in many instances required to be non-profit. It was the deregulation of hospitals and insurance companies that started in the 1980s that started the current wave of costs spiraling out of control.
right, i hear all the time, about how much paper work was required in those times. i mean, really, you think there was more regulations? they might have had a few that aren't here now, but seriously, there was no medicare, no medicaid, i don't believe there was the stupid rules on insurance that require people to purchase in state and stuff like that. I think you are just totally off.
Yes, and if it weren't for government regulation it would be a mufflerless, seatbeltless, airbagless car with no emissions controls burning leaded gasoline and getting 11 miles-per-gallon. I'm old enough to remember how each of those requirements was going to "destroy the auto industry". But what destroyed the American auto industry was building unreliable, gas guzzling, over-sized vehicles that nobody wanted to buy. How's that free market working out for ya?
right people wouldn't pay more money for a quieter car. oh wait they do. people wouldn't pay more for extra safety.. oh wait they do. Without regulation, these things wouldn't be strictly required, sure. so if people wanted, they could buy them (assuming anyone would make cars like that). so yeah, people would be free to do what they like. what's you're problem with this?
yes people probably exagerate the effects of regulations, (i'm probably guilty of these at times) but they do have a negative effect.
Again you are letting good stories containing what you want to believe get in the way of reality.
good stories? i'm looking at the facts. that's really all i'm doing. and the facts continuously have a pattern, that government hinders, not helps, progress. that even well intended involvement by the government, hurts us all. and deprives us of things that the free market would otherwise bring us.
i suppose you argue that a perfectly free market is non existent. but for all practical purposes, we've experienced the benefits of free markets.. so i really don't care if you want to get into a semantics debate, go for it.
A free market, doesn't require that there be many producers, only, as many as the market demands... which when left alone, it will rise/fall to that number, through business success or failures.
well u sure showed me! how do i get ur smartz pl0x???
txhxxx
small time stories like this can generate a lot of negative attention for a big time company trying to squash it. or maybe that verizon math story is made up?
even if the millions cancel their internet? yeah actually a lose of revenue of that magnitude would make most companies cry pretty hard actually (million customers * 20 to 100 per month=lot of money). No, me leaving wouldn't make much of a different, but i wouldn't be the only one. and eventually they'd learn their lesson, or go bankrupt.