UK ISP To Prioritize Gaming Traffic

nk497 writes "A UK ISP is now offering a broadband package just for gamers, which will prioritize their traffic to give them an edge over rival players. Demon Internet has also set up direct networks with gaming companies to boost speeds, and is promising lower latency and a higher usage cap than standard packages. 'Looking at the usage of gamers, it's actually more akin to a small business,' the company said. While paying to get specific content streamed more quickly may worry net neutrality campaigners, Demon says it has enough capacity for its own customers and that's who it's looking out for."

Comments

Illegal under Net Neutrality

[commodore64_love]

This prioritizing of gaming traffic would be illegal if Net Neutrality existed.

You see how seemingly "good" laws can cause unintended and harmful consequences? (Lord save me from do-gooders trying to save my soul, or impose their morals upon me.)

Re:Illegal under Net Neutrality

[hedwards]

LOL wut? Net neutrality would prevent this, yes, but it would also prevent ISPs from holding you hostage for not paying up. I get that you're a Libertarian and it's all ZOMG gubment doin' stuff, but give me a break. The suggestion that what we have now works is as laughable as it is wrong. At bare minimum there needs to be rules to ensure that things are conducted in an above the board fashion.

Additionally, this is in a sense a method of cheating, you're putting down extra money to have an in game advantage, It doesn't take a genius to see that it puts pressure on other players to pony up for it as well, whether it would otherwise be necessary or not.

Re:Illegal under Net Neutrality

[klingens]

Let's create preferred lanes for Mercedes, Lexus and BMW drivers. After all, these people paid a lot more than Al Bundy for his Dodge and they pay more taxes as well. So it's entirely fair they get preferred treatment and lower driving latency (get to their destination faster). They're businessmen and women, so their needs are different from the normal people. We still have enough other roads for all the other drivers, don't worry.

Re:Illegal under Net Neutrality

[Rising Ape]

If they had enough capacity on their network to avoid congestion, they wouldn't *need* to prioritise anything. This appears to be running a poor network, then charging more to compensate for it.

Shame, Demon used to be a decent ISP in the 90s.

Re:Illegal under Net Neutrality

[squidfood]

Um, despite the "worry over net neutrality" cited in the article, the actual service just looks like they're repackaging a higher speed/business connection as a "gamer" package. Nothing there actually says that your connection will be slower by packet category.

Re:Illegal under Net Neutrality

[tepples]

I see it as more of a QOS feature than as a neutrality violation for two reasons:

• The service is between the ISP and its customer, not a bribe paid by a customer to someone else's ISP.
• It's sensitive to protocol (e.g. gaming vs. HTTP/HTTPS/etc), not to the identity of the party on the other end (e.g. MSNBC vs. Fox News or YouTube vs. Dailymotion).

Re:Illegal under Net Neutrality

[Adrian Lopez]

This prioritizing of gaming traffic would be illegal if Net Neutrality existed.

Would that be such a bad thing? Instead of prioritizing gaming traffic over other kinds of traffic, or doing the same for VOIP, or YouTube, or whatever else an ISP decides is more important than other protocols, why not adopt a QoS scheme that ensures equitable access to available bandwidth while allowing customers to set their own priorities within those equitable access constraints?

Re:Illegal under Net Neutrality

[Adrian Lopez]

Generalize QoS, you idiot. If the packet is marked to reduce latency, respect that, out to some cap per month or so. That way, it doesn't matter if it's a game or SSH.

Exactly. If we let ISPs decide for us which packets are more important than others, what's to stop them from favoring popular games while ignoring the rest? It's not as if all games use the same protocol, so instead of optimizing the network for particular applications or protocols, why not optimize it based on particular needs?

Re:Illegal under Net Neutrality

[HungryHobo]

Prioritizing based on source or destination would be a problem under Net Neutrality but prioritizing based on protocol etc isn't necessarily unless it's to try to degrade a competitors products(like a phone company which is also an ISP intentionally degrading VOIP).
NN doesn't stop you pushing VOIP packets through faster than FTP or UDP faster than TCP.

Re:Illegal under Net Neutrality

[Solandri]

This prioritizing of gaming traffic would be illegal if Net Neutrality existed.

You see how seemingly "good" laws can cause unintended and harmful consequences?

How do you figure that? You're assuming that the consequences of banning this would be harmful. There are two cases to consider here - one where the ISP is operating at 100% bandwidth, and another where they are operating below that.

If the ISP is operating at 100% bandwidth, then this becomes a zero-sum game. The gamer's packets being prioritized come at the price of other paying customers' packets being de-prioritized. In essence, the other customers are not getting the bandwidth they paid for. The ISP transmits the same number of packets, they collect the same amount of money from regular customers, and they collect more money from the gamers. In other words, the ISP does the exact same amount of work as before, but collects more money.

If the ISP is operating below 100% bandwidth, then the gamer gains nothing. His packets travel out with the same latency as regular customers' packets, so he gains nothing by paying extra. Again, the ISP does the exact same amount of work as before, but collects more money.

So in both cases, the harm comes from offering to prioritize gaming traffic for an extra fee. At its heart, that's what Net Neutrality aims to prevent - ISP using their monopoly position over your network data to extract more money from you while they do the exact same amount of work. Net neutrality encourages ISPs to solve bandwidth problems the correct way - by adding more bandwidth. Except for illegal traffic (spam, copyrighted downloading), prioritization encourages ISPs to solve bandwidth problems the wrong way - by not adding more bandwidth when they obviously need it, and taking bandwidth some customers have legitimately paid for and should get, and giving it to someone else who paid more.

Now, if ISPs wanted to lower prices for people willing to have their bandwidth degraded, while raising prices for people wanting to have their bandwidth prioritized, thus keeping their revenue the same, then there's no problem. But no ISP is going to do that because it involves them doing a whole lot of work implementing all this for no net revenue gain. The whole reason prioritization (of legal traffic) makes economic sense to ISPs is because it's essentially robbing from Peter to pay Paul, without Peter knowing that he's being robbed, and Paul is willing to pay extra for the service.

Re:Illegal under Net Neutrality

[Kjella]

Do you really want to have a gaming fee and a voip fee and a youtube fee and whatever "extra charges" tacked onto your bill for each service you want to work well? The way technology is evolving, you can effectively make gaming worse but not upgrading the normal connections and only upgrade those that pay extra, pretty soon it's almost a requirement. Yes, this is part of delivering an "Internet service", if access to one part of the Internet - in this case game servers - is too poor you must upgrade everyone. You can't charge people extra for getting decent rates to EU or Japan or Australia or the WoW server. They can't say "Well if you want good access to THESE servers you must pay extra."

There should be some room within Net Neutrality legislation to prioritize classes of traffic, I'd say three is sufficient:
1. Realtime (VoIP, gaming etc.)
2. Interactive (Web etc.)
3. Bulk (P2P, FTP etc.)

They should not be able to collect additional fees, but they should be allowed, but not required to prioritize up the first and prioritize down the last. What I am concerned about is that this won't be simply a "gaming" fee, next up it'll be by what game it is. Suddenly you have a "World of Warcraft" fee or "Warhammer online" fee or "Age of Conan" fee. All priced to fit supply and demand so they can profit as much as possible. Would you like that? I wouldn't.

Re:Illegal under Net Neutrality

[jc42]

If we let ISPs decide for us which packets are more important than others, what's to stop them from favoring popular games while ignoring the rest?

Hey, that's a nice little MMPORPG you've got there. It'd be too bad if it weren't playable because the players of other games have soaked up all the bandwidth. Y'know, for a small monthly gratuity, we could make sure that didn't happen to your game. Whaddaya say?

Re:Illegal under Net Neutrality

[Kjella]

Prioritizing based on source or destination would be a problem under Net Neutrality but prioritizing based on protocol etc isn't necessarily

Since most games run their own protocol, it's effectively the same. So the WoW protocol gets prioritized and the Age of Conan protocol does not, it works out to exactly the same as a src/dst filter.

Re:Illegal under Net Neutrality

[AaronMK]

"I see it as more of a QOS feature than as a neutrality violation"

I have QOS on my router. Why should I have to pay an extra fee for it. If they are not overselling their network, they should not need to prioritize traffic to get the performance for which they are charging this extra fee. If this stopped at being a service fee for setting QoS on a single customer's connection for the services of their choice, and it did not include peering agreements guided by specific types of services for which they are charging consumers a premium, I might agree.

The service is between the ISP and its customer, not a bribe paid by a customer to someone else's ISP.

I could be "someone else" on the same ISP. So yes, that is "bribing" for priority on "someone else's ISP". Besides, Net Neutrality rules don't distinguish between who is paying, or whether that other network happens to be an ISP, a corporate network, or even someone's home network.

It's sensitive to protocol (e.g. gaming vs. HTTP/HTTPS/etc), not to the identity of the party on the other end (e.g. MSNBC vs. Fox News or YouTube vs. Dailymotion).

Comcast degrading BitTorrent traffic (that's protocol based, not "identity" based) was a Net Neutrality violation. Favoring specific applications IS a Net Neutrality violation, unless it falls under "reasonable network management". As I said before, if they are not overselling their network, they should not need to prioritize. Reasonable network management would be limited to times of unusually high spikes in traffic, and would be a fail-safe for time sensitive or safety critical services, not for people who have paid for some special prioritization.

Re:Illegal under Net Neutrality

[netchipguy]

It's not as simple as whether the ISP is running at 100% or not (i.e. your packet will get through, or not). Some apps are very sensitive to latency (voice, gaming, etc) while most are not.
The switches have buffering which gets emptier, fuller, emptier, fuller. When it runs out of buffering, i.e. your 100% situation, packets get dropped, and TCP "backs off" to try to avoid that happening again in the immediate future. In fact, Random Early Discard (RED) protocols will drop the odd random packet, with increasing probability as the buffer fills, to let TCP know to backoff.... before LOTS of packets start getting dropped. If you do get to 100%, it shouldn't last long.
However when your time sensitive packets are in the same queue as it gets emptier, fuller, emptier, fuller, then even if the buffers never fill, you still suffer from increased latency... and also latency variation (jitter), which can be even more problematic (when do you decide the packets never coming and you need to fill in the gap?). Furthermore, you'd like to avoid dropping these time-sensitive packets with RED (which of course would be another "non neutral behavior"). That's because these kinds of apps generally send a steady stream, they will sorely miss the data in that dropped packet, and anyway they won't backoff in the face of drops, defeating the whole purpose of RED.
Enterprises who use IP Telephony will usually put that traffic at a higher priority (and, for that priority, disable RED). Not because their gigabit LANs are at 100%... they do it because it makes the telephone calls almost as robust and low-latency as "fixed lines".
The whole Net Neutrality debate would perhaps get somewhere if people agreed on what they were talking about. There's too many very different ideas bundled into the same name. The version that makes it illegal to willfully delay/block/etc will get 90% support. The version where it's illegal to prioritize ANYTHING is much more debatable. Those who have actually rolled out services over shared medium (IP telephony, video conferencing, etc) will have a lot of information to share on the latter.
Simply throwing bandwidth at the problem is not (yet) a viable solution, since folks are still figuring out ways to use all the bandwidth they can get. It's like saying "I don't need background threads and foreground threads, just treat them all the same and make the CPUs faster". Sounds nice, in theory.
Think of a service like Skype. Assume we want that kind of innovative service to prosper. This absolutely requires that service providers don't block/delay Skype packets. Meanwhile, to hit the quality and reliability of "fixed lines", some way to mark that small number of packets as "important" would help A LOT.
-netchipguy

Re:Illegal under Net Neutrality

[3vi1]

1. QoS doesn't speed up any traffic. It drops un-prioritized traffic in favor of the priority stuff, when the link nears saturation. So, if your neighbor buys into this - it inevitably means slowing down *your* traffic in favor of his (even if you're no where near your speed cap). That's not neutral - it effectively penalizes you for not using the internet in the way your neighbor does.

2. QoS does often involve identifying the other end of a conversation. Sometimes apps will negotiate a random port, or just tunnel traffic over port 80, and there are no PDLM's for most game protocols. Classifying the traffic based on the server endpoint is sometimes the only option.

3. How is an ISP supposed to know about every online game? They may have a list of thousands, but it won't be complete. Games they know about are going to get prioritized over the ones they don't - effectively punishing users of PC games in favor of XBox Live and PSN customers . Again, that's not neutral.

Re:Illegal under Net Neutrality

[vux984]

This prioritizing of gaming traffic would be illegal if Net Neutrality existed.

No. Actually it isn't necessarily a violation of net neutrality at all.

Net neutrality (as understood by most rational people) is violated when someone who is NOT a customer of the ISP gets charged for better access to the ISPs customers. e.g. throttling google traffic but boosting bing traffic becasue google didn't pay and bing did.

Yes, there are some nitwits who try and conflate net neutrality as being in conflict with QoS or Tiered ISP service levels like offering (slower lite vs regular vs higher speed connections), etc, etc, but that's not the "net neutrality" that net neutrality advocates are interested in.

There is nothing wrong whatsoever with CUSTOMERS paying to have their traffic, or some subset of their traffic given priority. And in fact I EXPECT customers to be able and willing to pay for faster speed for their traffic within their ISP.

You see how seemingly "good" laws can cause unintended and harmful consequences? (Lord save me from do-gooders trying to save my soul, or impose their morals upon me.)

You see how conflating two network management issues that are unrelated creates FUD about the unrelated issue? People like you are as bad as the do-gooders.

Re:Illegal under Net Neutrality

[netchipguy]

It's an issue anywhere there is congestion. Which happens anywhere people don't like wasting money.

Buffering versus line utilization is an interesting relationship. You NEED buffering if you want to keep the line highly utilized because data comes in randomly from various places -- if you have small buffers, then the various TCPs will often collide, drop, and backoff even though the line isn't highly utilized. The "right" amount of buffering is a function of how much you want to pay, the utilization you want to achieve, the latency you are willing tolerate, and, assuming an adaptive protocol like TCP, the round trip time of from one endstation to the other (not just on your segment).

In the core, the lines are fast, but also very expensive. Providers want those things well utilized -- a 10Gb pipe which is only running at 20% isn't earning enough money. So the core tends to have deep buffering, lots of simultaneous flows, and hence runs at high utilization. It's not uncommon to have buffers on the order of several megabytes per port (providers often will measure it "milliseconds").

In a LAN, gigabit lines run everywhere, and the wires are short and cheap. They tend to be cheap switches, with shallow buffers. No one cares too much if packets are dropped, there is plenty of bandwidth to resend things. It's not uncommon to have 2-4 megabytes shared for the whole switch (24 ports or whatever).

In the first case, prioritizing helps avoid large latencies, since the core has deep buffers, and enough users to keep the buffers busy.

In the second case, prioritizing helps avoid packet drops, since the LAN has shallow buffers.

-netchipguy

Re:Illegal under Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

but an ISP could just prioritize all UDP packets

And that will be the day all torrent software implements a new option: UDP instead of TCP for file transport.

Re:Illegal under Net Neutrality

[gilesjuk]

I was on them from about 1995-1998, I remember someone I know leaving them saying that "30%" packet loss isn't worth paying for, that was in the 1990s.

Re:Illegal under Net Neutrality

[grainofsand]

Hmmm - chance would be a fine thing. There are no Australian WoW servers. From the official WoW FAQ:

Can players select what realm they play on?

Yes. However, you must choose a realm that is located within your geographical region. For example, North American players must select a North American realm, and European players must select European realms. Some exceptions will exist. Australian and New Zealand players, for example, connect to realms on the U.S. West Coast.

Re:Illegal under Net Neutrality

[Adrian Lopez]

Yes, there are some nitwits who try and conflate net neutrality as being in conflict with QoS or Tiered ISP service levels like offering (slower lite vs regular vs higher speed connections), etc, etc, but that's not the "net neutrality" that net neutrality advocates are interested in.

Having read an online post where the owner of an ISP bragged about slowing down P2P connections and laughed about customers thinking the problem was on the peer's end rather than on the ISPs end, I tend to take a more expansive view of the concept of net neutrality. Call me a nitwit, if you will, but I think the concept of neutrality should also prohibit those kinds of shady behaviors. Go ahead and use QoS to ensure equitable access to bandwidth for all your customers, but don't cripple certain protocols under the guise of improving quality of service for others.

Re:Illegal under Net Neutrality

[ksandom]

If we had enough capacity in our wallets, we wouldn't *need* to prioritize anything. Businesses and people need scarcity to survive. It's gives us something to overcome. Without it, we'd be fat and lazy, and would hardly achieve a fraction of what we do. Managing that scarcity is an essential part of surviving.

Re:Illegal under Net Neutrality

[tepples]

If they are not overselling their network, they should not need to prioritize traffic

If they are not overselling their network, then they are selling T1 connections, not residential connections. Imagine an ISP that splits your service into 256 kbps guaranteed and the rest oversold. The protocols you choose would go into the "guaranteed" bin, while things not quite as sensitive to short-term network performance, such as torrenting or someone else's web surfing, would go in the "oversold" bin.

Re:Illegal under Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

So they're using their position in one market(as an ISP) to give themselves an advantage in another market(VOIP provision)?

No, you aren't paying them for a VOIP service, you're paying them for a DATA service. Just because you chose to run a VOIP application over your DATA service doesn't mean they should give your DATA traffic the same priority as a VOIP service which is sold as a VOIP service.
Why should your DATA traffic which you use for a voip phone get any kind of special treatment over the DATA traffic I use, simply because I'm listening to music? That would be a NN violation.

If I want to go to my ISP and ask for a dedicated bandwidth connection, I can pay for one. If I want to ask them for a circuit with a specific maximum latency I can pay for one. Neither one of these ideas violates network neutrality, even if my ISP ends up running those circuits over the same data trunk that 'normal' traffic flows over- but in order to give me what I paid for they will use a combination of traffic prioritization, bandwidth restrictions on VLAN's and LSP's, etc.

Many people don't understand that there is a VERY distinct difference between paying for an "Internet connection" and paying for an actual data circuit, and most people who are bitching about NN being violated are trying to do something (or expecting something) from an "Internet connection" which should really be done with an actual data circuit.

People who don't understand NN properly usually don't understand networking properly to begin with. If we use the (tired) analogy of the "information superhighway", you could consider the average home connection to consist of 3 lanes of traffic that everyone shares. A dedicated connection is like buying your very own lane on the highway. The priority setting as described in the story would be more like a Toll-only lane. In some cases it would be like a Toll-road, where it might take a shorter or faster path to a common destination.
In this analogy, a company violating NN would be stopping or reducing the speed limit for cars in the "everybody" lanes even when they aren't full.

Re:Illegal under Net Neutrality

[L0rdJedi]

Yes, there are some nitwits who try and conflate net neutrality as being in conflict with QoS or Tiered ISP service levels like offering (slower lite vs regular vs higher speed connections), etc, etc, but that's not the "net neutrality" that net neutrality advocates are interested in.

It may not be, but reading the FCCs request for comments on proposed rules seemed to say exactly that.

You see how conflating two network management issues that are unrelated creates FUD about the unrelated issue? People like you are as bad as the do-gooders.

Yes, because a law written by politicians and lawyers (in other words, not network guys) will surely keep the two network management issues separate. Or maybe standard QoS will just end up caught in the "for your own good" law and it'll die a quick painful death.

Re:Illegal under Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

I have QOS on my router. Why should I have to pay an extra fee for it.

Because that controls the qos within YOUR network, not other people's networks, and you don't have to pay anybody anything to use it.
  The prioritizing they are speaking of doesn't happen at your router anyhow, it happens once you hand your data to them. NO network on the planet which is worth a crap listens to ANY qos information sent from a 3rd party network- not only would it make no sense & defeat the purpose of qos, it could (in some cases) be an actual security risk.

If they are not overselling their network, they should not need to prioritize traffic to get the performance for which they are charging this extra fee.

Ah, yes. Once again someone paying peanuts for a common "internet connection" style account, who in reality wants a dedicated bandwidth (or possibly even an entire circuit), but doesn't want to pay the price for such a connection, bitching about an ISP "over-selling". Guess what- the road outside your house is "over-sold", and so are the check-out lines in the supermarket. Do you have ANY idea how much your internet would cost a month if your ISP had enough bandwidth to let you run wide-open 24/7? A lot more than anybody would be willing to pay for it, that's how much.

Besides, Net Neutrality rules don't distinguish

Net Neutrality is not defined formally, and so the definition gets changed to suit the rant of whomever is posting at the time. Most people who understand networking will define NN as "Treating everybody with the same type of account equally" and "not intentionally degrading or blocking a competing service" and "not using their position as a means to filter, monitor, or block activity which might be illegal, unsavory, or otherwise undesirable to the ISP for NON-TECHNICAL reasons".

Comcast degrading BitTorrent traffic (that's protocol based, not "identity" based) was a Net Neutrality violation.

Comcast wasn't "degrading BitTorrent" traffic, they were actively hacking the data streams of their customers (and off-network connections as well) and injecting false data. The only reason why the throttling of the bit-torrent protocols was a violation was because they were doing it even when there was not a bandwith crunch.

Favoring specific applications IS a Net Neutrality violation, unless it falls under "reasonable network management".

No, favoring specific applications is NOT a NN violation, especially when it's something the subscriber is paying extra for.... as long as they are not intentionally degrading or throttling those applications for people who don't pay.

As I said before, if they are not overselling their network, they should not need to prioritize.

And as I said before, you obviously have never had to engineer a large-scale network or you'd never make that kind of blanket statement.

Reasonable network management would be limited to times of unusually high spikes in traffic

Right, and since they aren't downgrading or throttling non-paying users' applications, and the prioritization only occurs in times of bandwidth crunch, under your definition what they are doing is 'reasonable'.

and would be a fail-safe for time sensitive or safety critical services, not for people who have paid for some special prioritization.

If you're running a safety-critical service over a residential, best-effort, general Internet connection you deserve to be locked in jail. Safety services should run on dedicated circuits which have redundancy and uptime guarantees, and in the years I've worked in the ISP industry this is pretty much the rule- and yes they pay a premium price for all of that. Much more than you'd be justified paying to get a better gaming connection.
If you need a phone for your elderly mother, buy a fucking phone service, don't buy a best-effort data connection and hook a Magic Jack to it.

Re:Illegal under Net Neutrality

[yotto]

Tiered service is not a violation of net neutrality. You can pay more for faster speeds, or less for slower speeds.

This is paying more for faster speeds. I don't see the problem.

I also see nowhere in the article that states WHAT is faster. I suspect it's just a faster pipe overall and this entire freakout session is without purpose.

Prioritize?

[garyisabusyguy]

Prolly more like "Not intentionally slowing down"

Re:Prioritize?

[HungryHobo]

other businesses around the globe do this sort of thing on a regular basis

*Monopolies which design their systems to run poorly with competitors products.
*Major phone companies which threaten to not allow their customers to call certain businesses (or threatens to make the lines really crackly and poor)who are connected through different phone companies unless the business in question pays them extra as well.
*Manufacturers which pay suppliers to not carry their competitors products or delay their competitors products.

Oh wait.
That sort of thing is generally already illegal.

Ski Resort? equivalent to getting a T1 rather than dialup. nothing to do with NN. If the tour bus driver who brought the customers there insisted that the ski resort pay him or he'd take them elsewhere that would be a better analogy.

Airports? Again T1 rather than dialup. nothing to do with NN. Perhaps if the Airlines expected the hotels near the airports you were going to to pay extra or else they'd take you elsewhere.

Toll roads? Again T1 rather than dialup. nothing to do with NN.

medical insurance? makes not even a little sense.

snazzy clubs? can actually be illegal in some countries already, discrimination based on sex.

Retail businesses? Again T1 rather than dialup. nothing to do with NN.

Web sites? Again T1 rather than dialup. nothing to do with NN.

Assuming good faith here

[tepples]

This appears to be running a poor network, then charging more to compensate for it.

Or perhaps running a poor network at first, planning an improvement to the network, and financing the upgrade wiht a premium package targeted at early-adopting gamers.

Fair enough I guess

[airfoobar]

Paying £3 to get something extra doesn't sound too bad. What worries me is that ISPs may quietly start crippling their default packages so they can sell "extras". For example, this ISP could artificially raise the latency of normal users' connections, and when anyone complains they might say "it's because we give priority to the more expensive packages -- if you want better latency you must also pay more". You might say "meh, that'll never happen"... But, this is exactly the sort of thing our ISPs are infamous for doing here in the UK.

Re:Fair enough I guess

[SakuraDreams]

Something like this is happening in South Africa. Here one of the biggest ISPs released the first uncapped residential product which was originally not shaped very aggressively. They also released a business product which costs almost 4 times as much, this product was on contract and was totally unshaped. Prior to this residential offerings in SA were mostly capped - at limits ranging from 1 to 10 GB/month. The residential product's shaping increased dramatically as more customers came onto this semi affordable plan. Initially very little was shaped but as time went on all one click hosts, all P2P traffic and all newsgroups traffic became so badly shaped to become dial up at speed during business hours and perhaps up to 80% of line speed at 3-4am. Line speed here is 4 Mb/sec. Gamers also started to complain of poor latency. People who used VPN tunnels were in effect unshaping themselves so the ISP decided to terminate the accounts of those who appeared to download too much over VPN. Finally the ISP offered their business package on a month to month basis at the same price to gamers and heavier downloaders but at about 4 times the cost ($270 per month). In SA the customer also has to pay a $57 line rental fee if you're using the fastest line at the moment, 4Mb/s, whether or not the ISP shapes you or not. The ISP initially offered a rather unshaped experience but now offers a very shaped on and in response provides a solution almost 4 times the price which is out of the league of most gamers.

Re:Citation Needed

[P0ltergeist333]

Is there any evidence that what would actually be enacted is this way, or are you like most Net Neutrality proponents who make up their own rules and decide that must be what NN means?

It's still very much up for debate, and will be until it get's passed by the Congress, at least in the US. I think there are two pertinent points to be discussed here in regards to NN:

1. Does prioritizing traffic compromise the spirit and principal behind NN if it does not degrade others service?

2. Would it possibly be better to implement a QOS scheme that allows customers to prioritize whichever traffic is most important to them?

My personal answers are:

1. Not necessarily.
2. Yes

I will be contacting my elected representatives and the EFF with my views. I recommend you do the same.

Re:Citation Needed

[P0ltergeist333]

Wouldn't prioritizing, by definition, degrade someone else's service?

It's easy to get that impression, but I don't think so. Your question seems very semantic to me.

A major QoS benchmark is latency. Let's say your average latency to a given server is 13ms. As a gamer I want an average latency to my game server of 9ms. As long as your average latency remains at 13ms, while giving me the 9ms I desire, there's no problem. The problem occurs when the content providers (say, Time Warner) prioritize their media content over their network at the expense of their customer's connection to non Time Warner servers.

Re:woot

[dintech]

Not only that but Demon is the very worst ISP I've ever had the misfortune of being stuck in a 1 year contract with. Prioritised speeds on a shitty network wih clueless customer service is worthless.

Re:Citation Needed

[paeanblack]

"Net Neutrality" is too vague of a term, and it means different things to different people, depending on their agenda.

Car analogy time!

Option 1: All vehicle traffic is treated equally

Option 2: Vehicles are regulated differently based on external characteristics
    -Trucks drive in right lane and pay more tolls based on weight/length/# of axles
    -Emergency vehicles are given priority

Option 3: Vehicles are regulated differently based on traffic-relevant characteristics
    -High-occupancy vehicles are given a private lane

Option 4: Vehicles are regulated differently based on non-traffic-related characteristics
    -Fed-Ex and UPS bid for priority treatment in traffic law
    -Vehicles pay different amounts based on who and what they are carrying and what the owner can afford

On a government-owned road network, Option 2 has the most universal support. We're generally OK with certain private companies (ambulances) getting special treatment. We're also OK with large trucks having to pay more and still get less access. Sometimes we're OK with Option 3, but sometimes not. Option 1 seems silly, and Option 4 is abhorrent.

Unfortunately, "Net Neutrality" refers to everything other than Option 4. That lumps all the most sensible, but still very different, options under the same umbrella, which makes the term completely useless for discussion.

When someone claims that traffic for VOIP, VOD, gaming, etc, should be treated differently than bulk downloads, they get thrown into the same "anti-NN" crowd as someone who claims Time Warner should not have to carry traffic from plannedparenthood.com because they are a private business. That does not help the debate.