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AT&T Says Net Rules Must Allow 'Paid Prioritization'
suraj.sun writes "AT&T said Tuesday that any Net neutrality plan restricting its ability to engage in 'paid prioritization' of network traffic would be harmful and contrary to the fundamental principles of the Internet."
..AT&T...YOU are harmful and contrary to the fundamental principles of the Internet!
then why make any net neutrality rules in the first place? fp
GENERATION 24: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
AT&T said Tuesday that any Net neutrality plan restricting its ability to engage in "paid prioritization" of network traffic would be harmful and contrary to the fundamental principles of the Internet.
Uh, no...that would uphold the fundamental principles of the Internet.
Living With a Nerd
Considering the fundamental principle of the internet is to deliver my porn as fast as possible, perhaps AT&T is correct in prioritizing my traffic.
"AT&T said Tuesday that any Net neutrality plan restricting its ability to engage in "paid prioritization" of network traffic would be harmful and contrary to the fundamental principles of the Internet.
Telecommunications providers need the ability to set different prices for different forms of Internet service, AT&T said, adding that it already has "hundreds" of customers who have paid extra for higher-priority services."
So you want to tier the internet. You want only certain things viewable if I "only" pay you $30/month. I'll get more, but probably not everything at $50/mo and at $100/month I'll get everything you think I should want, but of course, something will be blocked as it will probably be against your businesses interests for me to see and/or use it (competing services, etc).
Seriously, go @#$# yourselves, AT&T.
1. We do things on the internet that you pay us for.
2. You do things on the internet that you pay us for.
3. When you do things on the internet that other people pay you for, you pay us for the privilege of doing them.
4. If we find out you are doing things on the internet that we are also doing, you will pay us for the privilege of doing them slower than us.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
There's already issues with ISPs promising bandwidth they don't provide, now they will come up with plans to sell you both bandwidth and priority. If that were the case and AT&T started to charge for priority traffic, how can any entity can confirm they are receiving the proper "right of the way" on networks?
This is yet another strategy to sell services that cannot be quantified.
I love how this is the quote that came up at the bottom of the story.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. -- Aleister Crowley
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
You can prioritize video over web, etc - but you have to do it to all your data the same way you treat someone else's - if you say that YouTube's video needs to be limited, so does your video service. If you give your video higher priority, YouTube's video gets the same high priority, and soe does Hulu's, Comcast's (if they send over your lines) etc.
(lol - CAPTCHA: defend)
Well that's funny, considering the fundamental principles that have driven internet growth have until now been all about net neutrality. There are always crazy anti-net neutrality advocates whining about governments regulating what "might" happen instead of what is happening. If this isn't proof enough that strong net neutrality regulation is needed to prevent the balkanization of the internet, then I don't know what is.
Man, that's a short summary.
Essentially, AT&T is arguing that because the idea of service classes is built into packet headers, the internet is not meant to have net neutrality.
Their opponents argue, essentially, that the service classes are there for a given end user entity to prioritize traffic by class if they choose, not for the telecom companies to do so.
Honestly, who could be surprised that AT&T reads the history/design of the internet in such a way that it seems to say exactly what they'd like it to say? This isn't any different from a corporate version of the phenomena in which a person interprets the holy text of their religion in such a way that it just happens to say that they should hate things or people that they already hate.
I bought bandwidth from my provider. Now additional tolls are being charged to the providers who I want to access. AT&T wants to sell something that is not theirs to sell.
Why are people having such a hard time understanding what network neutrality means? Paid prioritization pretty much is the exact _opposite_ of network neutrality. Thus, any net neutrality plan that included provisions for paid prioritization are NOT NET NEUTRALITY PLANS!
sigh...
The Internet is not a Mall. Sure, there are stores. Sure, there are ads for anything you can think of plastered everywhere. Sure, it's an anonymous place with crowds of people you don't actually know.
But the Internet is not a Mall.
It transcends the status of a basic retail venue. The Internet is a place where information (and occasionally knowledge) is stored. The Internet is an international forum. The Internet is an academic cornucopia. The Internet is the Great Library of Alexandria for the 21st Cenutry.
If AT&T demands the right to tax access to the Great Library, I demand that AT&T offer to sell all of its shares to the United States government for $0.01 so that there's public control about how those additional tax revenues are spent. Failing to hand over the keys to the castle to the public, AT&T can go pound sand. They ought *not* to be the arbiter of who gets access to what for which price.
That's, like, the opposite of true.
Technoli
Actually, hey: let's just forget the "Oxy", shall we?
A company that would profit from net neutrality being abolished states its bad for the Internet.
More at 11.
Using Adolph Hitler's "Big Lie" tactic, ISP giant AT&T simply turned the definition of "Net Neutrality" on its head in order to take advantage of people (especially in government) too stupid or too uninformed to appreciate the Net Neutrality concept and its importance to everything positive about the internet.
Gee, what a shock. News at 11.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Uh, no...that would uphold the fundamental principles of the Internet.
I agree with you but we're just users. That's the fundamental principle to a user. The fundamental principle of the ISPs and other businesses surrounding the internet is to make money and -- let's face it -- if there had never been a profitability aspect of the internet it would not have become as big and powerful as it is now. So far we've been pretty much in symbiosis with most of what the companies do but it seems to diverge daily. Back then I wanted to buy everything without leaving my home. Then came Amazon and Newegg and an endless supply from retailers. They wanted to sell, I wanted to buy, we were happy.
I think that's one of many reasons that Net Neutrality is so confusing to your average consumer: the internet used to be a great tool in getting them what they want from people who want their money. AT&T will phrase the debate to the consumer thusly: "You want prioritized traffic and we want to give you prioritized traffic so let's do the whole cash dance just like you do with everything else on the internet." The problems with that are obvious to you and me but may bamboozle the average consumer into thinking: "Yes, I need this. Here is my moneys. Please go do, my intarwebs are all slowed up from the evil file sharers!"
I'm on the same page as you but I think we're at a disadvantage because people are willing to pay for a prioritization of processing in many other things and assume that doing it this way with internet traffic is just a logical step in a capitalistic society where the rich can pay a premium for better and ensured service. In my mind, the simplest counter explanation without getting into -isms and what the internet manifesto is they don't meet my current advertised speeds so why should I pay them more to not meet higher speeds?
My work here is dung.
Providers OWE us net neutrality. They get access to public lands, and private properties to build and maintain their cables and routing hubs. Sometimes they need to tear up streets or block off traffic to to their work. Hell, they can sometimes get government subsidies to build cables or routing hubs. To say they own their network 100 percent is preposterous. That doesn't mean they shouldnt get a return on their investment, but if they want to charge for prioritization then they need to start paying for the aforementioned privileges and shouldn't get a cent of tax payer money.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
is that if you repeat it often enough, people start to believe it.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
The usual Slashdot response is that there is no way prioritization is compatible with net neutrality, but we only have to look at the post office to see that it can be done. You have the choice to send by standard mail, or to pay more to speed up delivery. I'll grant that it's not a perfect analogy, but there are models that would work.
My biggest concern would be that prioritization is done on an exclusive basis, i.e., a company pays to be the only one that can distribute sports on a high priority basis. We could imagine multiple tiers of bandwidth with a couple of conditions. Each tier must be available on uniform and nondiscriminatory terms, so that anyone can pay $X to deliver a megabyte on the highest tier. It's also important that the lowest tier doesn't get starved, which could be accomplished by requiring that no more than X megabytes are transmitted by high speed delivery before a megabyte is moved over the lower tier system.
As a community I think we have to look really hard at whether net neutrality is a battle that can genuinely be won. If it is, then we fight the good fight. If not, then I think we have to consider what kind of non-neutral network is most reasonable.
Any Net Neutrality plan must enable "paid prioritization" of network traffic.
-also-
Any Net Neutrality plan must enable "complimentary non-prioritization" of network traffic.
-also-
AT&T == tardfarm
I've been using the Internet for a long time, since when it was just an University network and before AOL and in all the docs, READMEs, RFCs and FAQs that I read over the last 28 years, not once was "The right to profit" ever been mentioned as a fundamental principle of the Internet.
Openess and interoperability: yes, profit: no.
The point is that some people just don't care about ping rates and bandwidth. For the life of me I can't get my father in the USA to upgrade his internet connection from a 1MB connection to a 10MB connection for an extra $10 per month. I just do not get it.
However if I'm gaming and my ping rate goes above 200ms I get very concerned. I would pay to have my network traffic prioritised, but I am doing something for which I perceive a greater need for a better response time. I know Demon are trialling a new gaming broadband service, however I don't think what they are doing is degrading the service for others.
They have their normal good network, but also have direct hooks into gaming events and servers. If AT&T offered a direct network connection to a game network (say Battle.Net) that got my ping rate down to 40ms on a game I played 24/7, then I would be seriously considering buying this 'premium' service. Even the idea of offering better connection to NetFlix would appeal to some people.
Anyway there has to be a recognition that some people don't give a shit how fast their connection is and there are those that really really really do and some of us might even pay for that.
I'm pretty sure that is exactly what "paid prioritization" means. AT&T wants to charge Netflix for prioritized packets. Unless Netflix ponies up, then AT&T will downgrade, or eliminate, Netflix traffic.
AT&T calls it paid prioritization. You call it quality of service fee (possibly tongue in cheek). I call it double dipping.
AT&T says that the protocol specification "in no way limits the use of DiffServ to packets marked by 'end users,' as opposed to content providers or network operators."
The IP protocol specification does. IP routers are required to forward packets without modifying them, except as specified.
DiffServ markings are part of the packet, and a network provider changing them or any header item means tampering with the packet.
If you want your equipment to administratively to ignore the markings, and not prioritize packets with a higher IP precedence in the header, or drop packets with certain markings, fine.
As for the network provider changing IP Prec/Diffserv in the packet header, however, that's a big no-no not allowed. Much in the same way that tampering with the port numbers, source/destination addresses, or inserting options is not allowed by the spec; that's modifying someone else's packet.
The only header items of a packet expected to be changed by carriers are TTL
Don't all the Tier-1 providers have peering contracts so they don't have to pay money for each others' traffic? How can you charge another Tier-1 provider's customers when you've agreed to let that traffic pass already? If I signed a contract to let your traffic pass for free if you let mine pass free, I would be pissed when my customers complained you're trying to charge them for traffic pass.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
This is the exact reason why we need to defranchise the cable-co and telco's. If they do not have any one to compete against (other then cable vs. telco) they have no reason to make them selves competitive by expanding or upgrading their networks. If Comcast had to compete against Cox, Charter, TWC, etc. and Verizon's FiOS was competing with AT&T's U-Verus, I bet broadband speeds in the US would be much better. Then if you really didn't like they way your ISP was operating, you would have more then just one other choice. But I doubt that will ever happen since private corporations have Congress in their pocket.
"Anyone who trades liberty for security deserves neither liberty nor security" --Benjamin Franklin
Here on Slashot, I know I will be pilloried. But this issue is too important to fear retribution of the masses.
The deal is, that network neutrality is not just talking about stopping ISP's from not slowing certain network types.
It also stops companies from charging you more for expediting certain kinds of data. Well, what if I as a consumer WANT to pay a bit more to have my Comcast voice work really well with video, or to get faster bandwidth to some CDN's so that I could really replace cable video with internet video? Why should they and I not be allowed to do that?
The only issue we've ever seen is something I'm not even sure a network neutrality law would stop - Comcast forging packets to screw over BitTorrent. None of the proposals we are talking about say anything about forged traffic or even adhering to network standards, just that the companies cannot ever prioritize one source of traffic over another. So we're talking about a regulation to solve a problem we have not yet seen and there is no sign of that may not even prevent real attempts at hurting user traffic, while at the same time limiting the possibilities for advanced services ISP's could offer in a network-savvy world.
The real crime is that people don't have more ISP's to choose from, so that they can go elsewhere if they do not like the policies of the one they are using. Instead of adding new regulation, why not loosen up that one and see what real competition does for the internet instead of the government-enfornced monopolies we have today?
The last note I want to offer is one of caution - if you choose to regulate the internet, which until now has been free and open, you invite special interests to follow up and shape what the regulation means. If the government has a hand in regulating the flow of the network it can just as easily decree that MPAA blacklisted torrent trackers MUST be blocked or the ISP would face a fine. Is that really the world you want to move forward into?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Actually, there is a great deal of the Big Lie in politics today. Small wonder to see large corporations taking it out for a ride as well. Newspeak is alive and well. You might be surprised by how much difficulty you have persuading the average citizen that x ~= ~x.
War is Peace.
War out.
Honestly, I don't think it would be unfair to pay for priority service.
Things like WoW connections, VoIP, and any other such "real time" protocol that is sensitive to delays can benefit from increased priority. Paying for "packet rushing" is IMHO a valid thing.
The problem comes when it turns into a protection racket, or worse, sabotage.
If you can pay to have your packets boosted, that's ok.
What isn't ok is for the network to sabotage your performance on purpose because you didn't pay up, or worse, because one of your competitors did.
And that includes throttling bittorrent connections.
Does AT&T realize that they too can get severely screwed without net neutrality? Verizon or any other provider can decide that they don't like AT&T network traffic and place it at the bottom of the priority list or not route any of their traffic at all. For the small guys, this could quickly become a death sentence.
Look at Cogent history of issues with other providers. (AOL, Level3, Sprint, etc) Cogent was under-cutting everyone on price, generating huge amounts of traffic that caused lopsided peering and some providers didn't like it. What happen? They started dropping any traffic coming from Cogent.
I think it's imperative that all network traffic flow freely with the exception in the case of gross abuse of resources.
jollyreaper shall attribute quotes to whomever he wilt, in accordance to said quoted Law.
And that's the problem with the quote in question.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
I'm the GP who he responded to. His analogy is better than mine.
Perhaps a better analogy would be:
An airline owns the airport in your city. They wish to charge a "Prioritization Fee" for airlines to get preferential treatment at the airport. Their aircraft will of course not have to pay this fee.
Coincidentally, all of their competitors' aircraft fares just increased, and the flight times became longer.
Of course, you are still free to choose any airline you wish (provided you don't mind paying more and having slower transit).
Do a lookup of "walled garden". When you read the description, think about AOL.
A T1 is 1.5Mbps.
Can someone point me to the source for all this "I'll have to pay more if I want to see the whole Internet" argument? I RTFA, and if either side (even those arguing pro-neutrality) alleged that's going to happen, I somehow didn't see it; but I see a whole lot of people here claiming it's what AT&T wants.
In the end, my position on "net neutrality" regulation is the same whether or not content providers contemplate blocking access in a price-tiered scheme; and it is this:
There should be regulations, but they should not be technical regulations. If the government tries to mandate management practices in any way, they will get it wrong. The regulations won't keep up with technology, and American consumers will fall behind the rest of the developed world in yet another technical arena. The government can do every bit as much harm as corporate greed, and the surest way to do so is to attempt technical regulation.
Instead, the regulations should be labeling laws, for example:
While we're at it, legal definitions for terms like "unlimited" should probably be considered, so that a provider can't put that in the large print and "up to 20GB/month" on the fifth page of the small print.
Let providers sell what they want to sell; but make them ensure that the buyer knows what's being offered, and then the premises of a free market start to work. (Note to the anti-market trolls: Free market does not mean "unregulated market". The market as it exists today is not a free market. More regulations to ensure the free flow of information in the market would help it to become a free market.)
Couldn't a self-respecting nerd simply bypass the paid priority by tunneling into a non-double-dipped protocol? (ping tunnel comes to mind). If mole-bashing becomes an issue, simply tunnel through a protocol they cannot mess with, like http. Tunneling may be in a nerd only realm now, but it could easily become as ubiquitous as (insert kid friendly p2p app) here.
only one everything
All that means is that they can sell 100MBits to T1 customers on an upstream connection of 102MBits and sell 200MBits/sec to residential customers and reap the profit without having to supply the product.
No it doesn't. If they did it to that extreme they would hemorrhage customers and re-evaluate their business strategy in short order.
Some amount of overselling is necessary in network design. It also makes sense. Most residential customers would rather have the ability to burst up to 10-15mbit/s than have a dedicated connection that runs at 3.0mbit/s (pulling numbers out of the air but you get the gist) 24/7. My cable connection peaks at 10mbit/s but usually sustains around 5-6mbit/s during peak hours. I'm perfectly content with that. The extra bandwidth is there late at night if I want it for sustained downloads and it's there for bursting when I need to download something fast during peak hours.
It would be stupid to roll out a network that restricted your customers to 3.0mbit/s when you can offer them the ability to burst at higher speeds and even sustain them when others don't need them. The trick is in making sure that you don't excessively oversell and that your customers understand the product they are paying for.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
..AT&T...YOU are harmful and contrary to the fundamental principles of Capitalism!
Corporate Welfare is socialism/communism for private institutions. If you (Corporate C*Os) need the law to protect you from market competition, then you run a socialist institution of incompetence.
Telecommunications/Infrastructure is for the utility of domestic distribution of information for the economic and public good. IOW: AT&T - Grow The Fyck Up (GTFU) you are a utility company, not a technology company seling products and services.
Water, Power, Information, Transportation, and Sewer are 21st century utility companies. For AT&T to say they can charge different rates for bits and bytes is just fat-out Luddite bullshit.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
A T1 is 1.5Mbps ALL THE TIME 100% saturate-able for 24/7 in BOTH DIRECTIONS if you bought the right thing and not a burstable cloud connection.
I could NEVER get real full T1 speeds for 24/7 from even the grandaddy Comcast top tier Cablemodem service.
go ahead, try and use 1.5mbps up for even 5 hours.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
If I traceroute a packet across the country it probably travels over at least 3 different providers' networks, do they all bill me individually, or will the ISPs band together to form an ISPAA ? We all know how well that serves the common good.
Also, there are other ways of getting traffic around the country than the internet. These guys could easily create an MPLS overlay to the Internet and effectively split tunnel traffic at the DLAM / Cable head to send regular traffic over the internet infrastructure and "premium traffic" over a separate network directly to the servers of the companies involved
Nullius in verba
...But after this, I'm not too sure. AT&T or Comcast? Both are really BAD choices, but they're my only two.
Guess I am preaching to the choir here, but that bit stood out to me.
...but here's a wonderful graphic that AT&T can repurpose.
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
I didn't say it wasn't a more usable, more stable, higher quality service with a 2-hour technician-on-site SLA. I used to be the director of technical operations for an ISP. We had over 20 T-1s for bandwidth from points to other points, and a DS-3 at 6 Mbps 95% utilization burstable to the full 45 MBps for an additional fee with four DS-1s for backup connectivity to the world. DSL that ain't, but you pay for it. I've also dealt with frame circuits and ATM. I was also the second ranked admin at a place with OC-12s running into it.
The T-1 (or more properly DS-1) is still 1.544 Mbps and not 100 Mbps as AC mentioned. When you start talking HDLC lines, ATM, or SONET with short-timed SLAs, the price is big whether the bandwidth is or not.
It would be stupid to roll out a network that restricted your customers to 3.0mbit/s when you can offer them the ability to burst at higher speeds and even sustain them when others don't need them.
That's fine and all, but sell it as a 3.0 mbit/s service with higher burst speeds as a bonus. Don't sell it as a 10mbit/s service when you never see those speeds in reality.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Honestly, giving the government too much power wouldn't be good, either. I'm all for net neutrality, but with restrictions put on what the government can do. Doing nothing with have very bad results, as will giving the government too much power over the internet. I know because I'm one of the many people caught in an area with only one high speed ISP (Comcast). Sucks.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
....along with the facts.
AT&T seems to be saying they use Diffserv to provide many of their subscribers with prioritized services, specifically, the article points out they offer that to commercial/business customers, and an example is tagging VOIP for better service.
This, by itself, doesn't bother me at all. In fact, if I'm running VOIP at my business, I want it prioritized to ensure good performance. If I have problems with other important traffic failing, I probably have too little bandwidth and need to make some choices, but this is network management at its best.
The community (/.'rs especially) seem to equate this with some horrid scheme to not just allow end users to prioritize important traffic, but as a way to restrict other traffic, either to penalize unpopular (to the ISPs and others) services, or to make them uncompetitive. This fear is mostly quoted as seeing cable cos. de-prioritize video streaming, so as to enhance their own streaming offerings, and usually to gain more paid subscribers for those 'new' services. For instance, Cox (my carrier) would, in this scenario, deprioritize Hulu packets, for instance, while leaving their own video streaming alone. This would be evil in these instances:
- If Cox did this deprioritization of Hulu traffic at their gateways, I think that's evil. It indicates this is a corporate decision, if it is explained as a network utilization response I feel as if I've bought Internet access that can't deliver a desired service to me ( I want my money back if they can't fix the network), and it is clearly not a choice BY their end-users.
- If Cox begins offering a free video streaming service and does this, it smells like they are trying to kill Hulu just to keep me on Cox services, evil.
- If Cox begins offering a paid video streaming service, and coincidentally starts harming Hulu (and/or other) competing (for free) services, this smells really evil.
So, if Cox decides to de-prioritize traffic at their gateways, they are shouldering the burden of either proving this is necessary, or exposing themselves to the charge that they are evil.
Now, there are other problems that AT&T and others using Diffserv might cause, and more evil to be had.
If peers start deprioritizing traffic at their NAPs, how long before a carrier that services Google, for instance, has a claim against one that is predominately serving residential customers if they see Google traffic being slowed? Why does Google get caught in the position of having to pay extra to provide good service to their end-users? Excellent question, and the crux of the overall Net Neutrality question for me.
If ISPs are going to charge sites or services that provide value to their customers, we have what is beginning to look like the 'Cableization' of the Internet. Let me explain.
Cable systems, as they grew out of the MATV era, started providing video from largely free (to them) sources, primarily local stations. As satellite services grew, cable systems rarely had to pay for access, ESPN being an example. HBO, of course, was the exception, and proves the rule. Pr0n was always paid content, because it is considered valuable by the customer.
Telephone companies used to charge usurous rates for long distance because there was no other alternative. As CLECS and third-party LD providers get into the game, that changed. Cell phones have destroyed the LD market, so telcos were stuck with a lot of copper and not many ways to sell it profitably.
This is not so today.
Cable systems have to pay for many of the programming sources they offer, as the content providers realized that the cable systems needed them more than they needed cable. Actually, not so true any more, and cable TV has matured into the dominant and preferred delivery network and the content providers that can charge for their content do so.
The Internet was, for a long time, in the MATV mode - every one wanted to get stuff from the Internet, and most providers off
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
go ahead, try and use 1.5mbps up for even 5 hours.
I've run uploads (torrents) 24/7 for weeks on end using nearly of my upstream before. I've also run sustained downloads of ~8mbit/s for the better part of a day before. Haven't heard a peep out of Time Warner. Sorry that you have the misfortune to live in Crapcastic land.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
A T1 is 1.5Mbps.
Which is more than AT&T or Comcast will allow you to use on a residential connection of any speed. Just try using 1.5 Mbps for 24 hours straight, and see what happens to your connection speed.
It most other businesses, the advertised data rate would be called misleading advertising, or consumer fraud after you'd paid for it. But ISPs are allowed to outright lie about the "service" they supply, and limit your access if you use more than a few percent of what they sold you. And they aren't even secretive about it, because they know they won't be fined for it.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
The T-1 (or more properly DS-1) is still 1.544 Mbps and not 100 Mbps as AC mentioned.
I think his theory was that AT&T would sell 66 1.5mbit/s DS-1s (99mbit/s) and a bunch of DSL connections and make them all share the same 100mbit/s backhaul.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Aren't these the idiots who tried to steal BSD unix from the University of California at Berkeley? Aren't these the guys who were found (with prejudice) guilty of stealing tens of thousands of lines of software created at the University of California at Berkeley? Aren't these they guys who sold what little of unix they owned to another company for a low price (because they did not actually own that much) and begged the judge to keep the final ruling sealed? That these guys actually deal in any way with technology appears to be an accident. They sure keep getting it wrong! What happened when they were split up January 1, 1984 should be forced upon all phone companies offering digital services. There should be a minimum of 7 internet service providers competing in every region. If they offer x amount of bandwidth for x per month, I should get that. It does not matter what I do with it, but I should get x per month. Its normal (and reasonable) to pay a fee for using more than x per month, but what I do with the bandwidth I buy from them is my business, not theirs.
Right, the same way you are "up to" no good.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
They said they are CURRENTLY doing it. So how can you say it's a "problem we have not yet seen and there is no sign of"
Because all they are doing is SPEEDING UP some traffic they choose.
What they are not doing and we have not seen is SLOWING down some kinds of traffic they dislike. That is what would be an issue.
You seem to not realize that the point of this "regulation" is to ENFORCE the free and open status quo that the internet currently has.
You seem not to realize that the point of any regulation is to reduce choice. To claim that imposing a regulation makes something "more free" is absurd on the face of it, and a dangerous misconception to hold.
There can be times when the limits of regulations act to check real problems. So lets wait until we see what real problems might be before we start imposing regulations to tilt at imaginary network windmills and reduce real choice on the part of businesses and consumers.
Personally I would like to see internet service turned into a public utility
Andddd there goes bitorrent and reliable service.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If I could get TWC to guarantee 3Mb/s with "up to" 10Mb/s (which, with TurboBoost or whatever it's called, they might as well call it "up to" 14 Mb/s, since I can hit that speed about as often as I can 10Mb/s), I'd probably be pretty happy with that.
As it is, it's not uncommon for me to be able to pull less than 700Kb/s down on my "up to" 10Mb/s connection, which is, in my opinion, disgraceful. 3Mb/s as a guaranteed minimum would actually be a blessing.
The issue isn't so much that they advertise the [generally unattainable] maximum; it's more that they don't advertise or adhere to any minimum speed or QoS metrics.
So... what they're saying is that in order for net neutrality to work, we have to not have net neutrality?
And if you think about it, the pay-for-prioritization model doesn't help anybody except the ISP, by bringing them in more money. It hurts the customers who pay for prioritization because they are paying more for the same service they had before the prioritization model. It hurts the customers who don't pay for prioritization because their connection now sucks.
Another interesting way to think about it is, "Pay us more or your connection will be throttled down," which I'm pretty sure has to be some form of illegal.
What there needs to be is a clearly advertised minimum speed (and require it to be within a certain range of the maximum advertised speed, as well as not being throttled depending on its source/destination) and a clearly advertised maximum latency. If we can get those to be required somehow, it will at least be a step in the right direction. Tis a longshot, though.
No, there is no "-1 I'LL NEVER ADMIT BEING WRONG!!!" mod.
They are stating that they want to do exactly what you are saying "we have never seen"
What we have not seen is problems.
Them wanting to speed up specific traffic, is not a problem. Because everything else I use already still goes the same speed.
It's when they start monkeying with the speed to slow down some services arbitrarily that I as a customer get annoyed. That is what we have not seen and see no sign of.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I remember when the power company charged a flat-rate for a stream of electrons that entered my house. Nowadays, they charge based on the Tiers as they are not an electron provider but an energy services provider.
Tier 1 is Basic Services ($.05/kw/h): refrigeration and one light bulb.
Tier 2 is Basic Enhancements ($.10/kwh): hob/microwave, washing machine, one electric fan and three light bulbs
Tier 3 is Common Enhancements ($.20/kwh): drying machine, dishwasher, two electric fans and a garage door opener.
Tier 4 is Advanced Enhancements ($.50/kwh): television, computer, more than four light bulbs, more than two electric fans.
Tier 5 is all other devices or devices without smart metering ($1.00/kwh)
Next year, their moving to a preferred Tiered Pricing Scheme.
Tier 1 is Basic Services ($.05/kw/h): GE refrigerators and one GE light bulb.
Tier 2 is Basic Enhancements ($.10/kwh): Samsung hob/microwave, Whirlpool washing machine, one GE electric fan and three GE light bulbs
Tier 3 is Common Enhancements ($.20/kwh): Whirlpool drying machine, GE dishwasher, two GE electric fans and a GE garage door opener.
Tier 4 is Advanced Enhancements ($.50/kwh): Samsung television, Dell computer, more than four GE light bulbs, more than two GE electric fans.
Tier 5 is all non-listed devices or devices without smart metering ($1.00/kwh)
I fail to see how this good for anyone, really. The electricity generators are losing money due to decreased demand. Consumers are losing money due to constant rate increases and restrictions. The only people benefiting from this seem to be my local power utility, GE, Samsung, Whirlpool and Dell.
It's a bit frustrating as tax money was used to build the electricity distribution infrastructure in the first place but part of the new policies are that government money cannot be used for infrastructure development.
Although, to be fair, it's not all that bad. At least I don't have any Tier 6 (non-GE general medical – $5/kwh), Tier 7 (non-GE life support – $10/kwh) devices.
"why not loosen up that one and see what real competition does for the internet instead of the government-enfornced monopolies we have today?"
What you would see is exactly what you have seen in every other deregulated industry. A few big players continually stacking the deck against any realistic competition from much smaller competitors until as has occurred in banking, gasoline distribution, cable operations, news media business, etc. two or three large dominant players that are "too big to fail" and able to lobby or bypass government to maintain a monopoly that are NOT government enforced, but rather subject to no regulation as to price fixing schemes, privacy intrusion, special tax breaks, etc. Eliminating governmental regulation (shrinking government) to benefit a few private fifedoms has ALWAYS turned out badly for the public at large and actually threatens democracy itself.
Allowing private tiers would make it possible for a few ultra-wealthy non-regulated monopolies to control all political speech, including how much "alternative" candidates are charged for campaign advertisements (oh no we are preventing you from advertising, its just that if you don't pay more it will take 10 days for your webpage to load).
I recently changed my iPhone plan on my work account to include the ability to tether (I don't want to jailbreak my work provided phone).
The choices were 2GB "DataPro" plan with tethering ($45) or a 2GB "Enterprise" plan with tethering ($60). It wasn't clear on the web-site what the differences were so I called AT&T.
After three transfers I finally got to someone who could explain the difference. The guy told me that the "Enterprise" plan is for users connecting to their own mail server - not a google/yahoo/hotmail type service.
I asked if they would actively block my connection to my mail server on the "DataPro" (non-enterprise) plan - and he said no - not yet. I asked if he would support (somehow) my connection to my mail server on the "Enterprise" plan, and he said no I'm on my own.
So AT&T is charging more for an "Enterprise" data plan and not giving ANY additional service - they only reserve the right to break your connection to your own mail server on a non-enterprise data plan.
Fuck those guys. We are leaving them the minute iPhone goes to Verizon, or some other carrier. Are we to trust this company with ANY policies regarding network fairness? No way.
-ted
A more proper analogy would be that you are a long-time YouTube user. You're on a big ISP like Comcast. Comcast sets up its own user-video service called YouCast. They then start blocking/rate limiting YouTube
This is the core of the matter. You (and others) want to impose regulations to stop this exact problem. And this is the EXACT problem that has never occurred, and that there is no hint of occurring in the near future, from any ISP of any level of evil. Not even Comcast is considering it, so that should tell you just how likely it is to occur.
We may well see something like ComTube. But it's a far, far cry from there to where they ALSO rate limit YouTube.
That's a no-brainer for me. I know how corporations work. They are a known quantity, and I can fully expect them to do the worst possible at all times.
But the same can be said for regulators. The only difference is that with regulators there is literally no-where else to turn when the worst possible thing happens, because they are the be-all and end all of what is allowed. With companies when one displeases you you simply stop buying services from them. There used to be very little choice, but there's usually at least a choice between Cable and DSL internet, and with WiMax coming online that's enough competition that no ISP would make the suicidal move of rate limiting YouTube.
If you are displeased with regulators, what can you do? Vote in someone who say they will fix it, hope fifty other states do the same more or less, and THEN hope a politician keeps his promise to you? I'd even take voice menus on a help line direct to India over that!'
And again, the REALITY is that companies have not done what you are so sure they would do, despite having had any years to do so.
As such, given the choice between a known/guaranteed disastrous outcome of "self-regulation"
The guarantee is that regulation will impose control over the internet, driven in part by lobbyist interests, and we can already see the MPAA/RIAA has a powerful lobby. It's not like there are any dots to connect; the point is a singularity of suck.
Meanwhile again the disastrous outcome you feel is so certain has not happened and there is no sign of happening. Given that your "certain" disaster has not actually happened, why not err on the side of preventing the far more likely certain disaster that results from imposing regulation.
I didn't adress your note that companies would be allowed to prioritize traffic because it is irrelevant to the core concern I have, which is more that in fact we will see some traffic blocked or slowed as a result of the regulation to stop traffic from being blocked and slowed.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Often we choose an expensive ISP over another because it is faster, or has a lower national or international latency. How is this different from paid prioritization? A real problem is the size and power of AT&T and similar companies, which limit the available options when choosing your ISP.
My other signature is a car
The Principle of Capitalism: use the money you have to make more.
That capitalists might voluntarily limit themselves to moral or even legal ways is simply a myth invented by the likes of Rand and then perpetrated by the robber barons who's image it helps improve. Comcast, Enron and BP are the true face of Capitalism, and the faster you understand that the faster we can make the huge corrective turn towards left we should had done a long time ago. Otherwise, watch things get worse as the pack of wolves deregulation has unleashed keeps on tearing the society apart.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
"... would be harmful and contrary to the fundamental principles of the Internet."
What is the politically correct way to say:
FUCK THAT SHIT!
These Corporate Oligarchy scumbags seriously want to rule the world, overriding all sanity and citizen's rights. Bite me AT&T.
CLUE: The Internet belongs to the CITIZENS, not to any corporation, not ever. Deal with it.
Do not use AT&T I cancelled mine and switched to Verizon.. letting AT&T know why.
Use verizon & let THEM know why. They still have a real "unlimited data" plan also.
Data is data and all data should flow w/ the same alacrity.
No it doesn't. If they did it to that extreme they would hemorrhage customers and re-evaluate their business strategy in short order.
You're assuming 2 things: The average consumer is smart enough to notice or care, and that the savvy consumers can actually jump ship to a competitor. Both are very big assumptions in the ISP market.
Quality of Service: good, because it is necessary to make VoIP and videoconferencing really usable. Higher QoS should entail higher costs, otherwise everyone would use the highest QoS for all traffic.
Charging one customer more than another customer for the same type of traffic: bad, because it is inherently anti-competitive.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
ISPs should have to state 3 speeds
#1. Avg Sustained during peak
#2. Max Sustained
#3. Burst (aka turbo/etc)
eg. 16mb line may say
2mb sustained, 16mb Max, 38mbit burst
Now here comes the problem. How do I maintain low pings/jitter during peak hours?
I WANT QoS so when their over-subscribed networks hit peak, I can still get low pings and low jitter.
Now I do with my current ISP for whatever reason, but I'm just lucky right now.
All ISPs are oversubscribed. If they weren't we'd be paying $300/mbit and that sounds expensive to me.
If AT&T wants to charge more for a tiered system, then let them. Anyone who doesn't like will leave. They will obviously say you can't leave without some penalty. However, buy changing the service they are effectively opening everyone's contract. When enough people leave that it hurts their bottom line, they will switch back.
I am betting Four hundred quatloos that the Anonymous Coward get cash from AT&T.
My cable connection peaks at 10mbit/s but usually sustains around 5-6mbit/s during peak hours. I'm perfectly content with that.
This sort of attitude is the reason that Verizon has issues with getting permission to lay more fiber.
Once you realize that you can pay the same price per month for 24/7 speeds that aren't "up to", you wonder why you would consider anything else. The reason, of course, is that you don't have a choice due to monopolies that are enforced by Comcast, et.al., contributing large sums to local politicians.
My 25/15 FiOS connection has no problem running at those speeds at any time of the day. In fact, I have often seen speeds higher than the "max" I am paying for. 15/5 is currently going for $55/month. No other service can touch that, and that makes them all very scared.
"I'm all for net neutrality, but with restrictions put on what the government can do"
Your point seems to miss two fundamental points:
1) we (the government, by virtue of those we elect; yes we often chose poorly) paid to have the internet invented
2) putting restrictions on the people to their own inventions so that rules can be set by third parties, with no accountability is just asking for trouble, since eventually these parties will exclude everyone else from the decision making process and then be free to charge whatever they want for "internet related services", which essentially means every aspect of human activity these days.
Better have a few basic rules like net-neutrality that essentially say, no you can not manipulate the system to give yourself an unfair advantage. I like the idea of requiring ISP and service providers to pay a larger "royalty" to the government each year so that certain essential services (free and fair exchange of political speech, free and fair elections, universal pricing for political advertising, free availability of laws and regulations be made available to all, etc. without third parties being able to inject their own self-serving "rules" into the process whereby they can charge differential costs to access such information.
Maybe we need some kind of "minimum delivered services laws" akin to minimum wage laws, if the principal of net-neutrality for IP packets is to abandoned to the free markets. Otherwise, a few will gain at everyone else's expense and that is not an equitable or useful social policy upon which to manage the sustainability of a fragile planet.
1. The telcos don't want to spend money on more bandwidth, everywhere to everyone.
2. Having limited bandwidth lets AT & T ration the bandwidth, and enhance margins.
No spend and more margin. Gotta Love that.
3. If there was enough cheap bandwidth to my house, I could start a TV station. I would be on equal footing with Madison Avenue, Hollywood, the Propaganda People, and the MSM. None of this signing my rights away in perpetuity for a 15 minute clip that gets pulled when someone's girlfriend gets their panties in a bunch. Vive la Revolution.
4. If google had enough cheap bandwidth from everyone to everywhere, it could take out the MSM, telecoms, cable, dvd rentals, itunes, pay per view. This is the Convergence they used to talk about. If it involves data or content moving via packets, Google is poised to take them all out. What do you think youtube is all about?
5. Peer to Peer: Unlimited cheap bandwidth from everyone to everywhere disrupts the government/MSM propaganda model. It disrupts Hollywood, and the Record companies.
6. If google gave the pipe providers bags of cash to build out no bullshit real stuff in real world, and everything ran just a little faster, but youtube and google apps ran really, really fast because google parked a bunch of those shipping containers in the parking lot by the pipe provider's backbone, and optimized and tweaked and advanced the state of the art, does it make a sound?
The telco's need to build out or die. Google is obviously demanding the build out, and has the cash to do it, but the problem it the telcos are blocking the advance in the internet.
The temptation for google to do something evil would be just too great, and the precedent would be set, leaving the door open for the next group of dudes to do evil.
7. But AT &T wants the bags of cash, with no build. You get your packets 'prioritized' and the other packets get the FU. AT &T sets a precedent, no build happens, the internet remains stagnant, while the MSM and the other dinosaurs flail around and do nothing, except maintain a declining grasp on the status quo. For a while. While the country stagnants.
8. Banks could lend. Wall Street could issue those IPO thingies. Helicopter Ben could print up a trillion. Hire all the engineers in the USA, we could have it all done in two years. GO! Are you waiting for the go code? GO! GO! GO!
9. There is nobody even close to google, to compete. The rest of the industry is still playing checkers and can only win by cheating.
10. Telcom, computing, networking, content, distribution, data processing, hardware, software, sales, service, support these are all the same business. Google sees this. Nobody else does.
11. You can't outsource innovation
12. You can't be an innovator by following the herd
13. You snooze, you lose.
14. Time occurs in larger intervals than 90 day quarters.
15. The pioneers are the ones with the arrows in them. Full speed ahead, dam the torpedos and body armor all around!
Maybe some people don't understand this, but in general the pipeline from an ISP to the rest of the world just isn't big enough to handle user traffic to a lot of very popular sites. Take CNN for example. When you type in www.cnn.com what do you think happens? Do think your request goes to a server owned by CNN in Atlanta?
Well, if you did you would be wrong. It goes to a server probably in the same building as your ISP (if it is big enough) that is owned by Akami. See, if you have enough traffic it is almost cheaper to pay Akami to cache the content on its servers which are co-located in pretty much every major ISP's facility. If you want high speed access to your content for all users then absolutely you want that content coming from a locally caching server.
Now, if you don't have a lot of money then Akami's fees are way out of line for you. And so you get way, way slower performance on requests.
See, pay-for-performance is here already and has been for a really long time.
To prevent them from removing competition, write a law that says that content distributors and producers cannot be ISPs, and split the company up. Again.
How they claim in the article that people want to force rate hikes to pay for more broadband infrastructure. What happened to all that money that was SUPPOSED to go towards this that the government gave them? Orite, they just took it and spent it on anything they wanted.
I want landline broadband where I live, believe me I do! But doing it at the expense of Net neutrality is wrong. I'd rather be extorted by the satmodem companies.
That's fine and all, but sell it as a 3.0 mbit/s service with higher burst speeds as a bonus. Don't sell it as a 10mbit/s service when you never see those speeds in reality.
That's exactly how most of them do sell it. I've never seen Time Warner advertise a promised speed for a residential connection. They all say "Up to X mbit/s". The "up to" part isn't even in legalese. It's right there in their advertising.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
As it is, it's not uncommon for me to be able to pull less than 700Kb/s down on my "up to" 10Mb/s connection
Complain about it. My node was overloaded last year when the students came back into town -- couldn't pull more than 2-3mbit/s during peak hours. It took them a few months to address it but they did eventually split the node after confirming that there was a problem. Since they did that I've rarely seen my peak time speeds drop below 8mbit/s.
Document the crappy speeds with their own speed test utility and post them on a forum like DSLReports. They'll take care of it sooner or later.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The problem is you expect that the telecoms would act in your best interests.
I expect telecoms to act in their best interests.
The interests they have include keeping customers.
The fact is that even with the limited choices we do have in the U.S., there is some choice - generally cable, possibly DSL, and a spreading choice of cellular internet and WiMax. So the truth is that companies simply cannot be too heavy handed.
Now lets think about what happens when the whole system is regulated. Suddenly how things work, are what is in the best interests of a regulator, who is being lobbied to care very much about whatever is of concern to lobbyist. If they do something you dislike, your only option is to change countries, not companies.
With regulation, what once is done is almost never undone.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
With Cable TV, you pay for the service, and then "pay" again when you watch commercials. Then you pay more if you want digital, then even more if you want HD or DVR. You pay extra for each box.
AT&T wants to charge you an internet access fee, then a fee to up your total bandwidth, then another fee to up your Web Video bandwidth, and probably a hefty fee for them to follow QoS for VoIP apps.
Unlike cable, uses for Internet Protocol are out of the telco's hands. If I develop a new app on port 3032 (say), how will AT&T prioritize it? Will traffic on new, unusual ports go to the back of the line?
In the business model AT&T wants, we will end up paying $100+ for internet service, just like we do for Cable or Satellite. What a drain on the economy, in return for no innovation. Also, it will stifle innovation of new protocols and apps. Add in the fact that your local cable company has a monopoly on your coax, and your local phone company has a monopoly on your twisted pair, and what do you get?
A country that spends its whole monthly paycheck on basic services. Which suck.
The ISP would still be justified in charging for the privilege of handling packets with boosted QoS settings, and denying requested QoS handling if the user that sent the packet hasn't paid up.
It's really simple you pay your ISP for a connection and the right to a certain transit speed for any traffic you wish to send or receive over it. That makes the bandwidth you use within those limits your property not theirs. What this boils down to is the Telecoms want to charge you once to allow you to make that bandwidth your property, then they want to charge the companies that wish to be able to reach you using the bandwidth that you have already paid for. They are for all intents and purposes selling that which they do not own.
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
Why can't we make it illegal for companies to prioritize traffic unless we ask them too? I mean, sure, I want my VOIP to have priority over my torrents. Who would argue with that? But does that really mean AT&T should be able to slow my traffic from Google to get a kickback from Bing?
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
AT&T is going on about things that impact the fundamental principles of the Internet. OK, the fundamental principle of the Internet (I'm going by those Department of Defense guys that invented it), is to have a robust electronic communication system that can function after a major nuclear attack. I say we nuke AT&T, then see if it still works.
How soon we forget, eh?
Telefonic, too
Those were blustery speeches by telcos, with no action or hint of action. They were just saying they were displeased.
Comcast throttling Bittorrent traffic
Didn't you read my original post even? Network neutrality laws would not affect what Comcast did, because they didn't throttle traffic - they forged response packets which had the EFFECT of slowing down the system but would not fall under any guidelines for not altering traffic flow. Torrent traffic was free to flow as fast as it wanted, it's just that the fake packets Comcast sent confused the clients.
The single problem that ACTUALLY occurred, the regulation would not even prevent!
I don't know about you, but I am not willing to wait on the inevitable before I do something about it.
You have yet to explain why the "inevitable" has not happened yet despite the links you sent having the AT&T quote from 2005! Five years, and NOTHING HAS HAPPENED. Yet you are all "Panic Panic! Something may happen, so something must be done!".
No, the same can NOT be said for regulators, simply because their job description says that they are charged with serving *me* as one of the people, not the industry schills.
Wrong yet again. Regulators are not charged with serving you; they are not elected. They are charged with doing what the group they are with does, which for the FCC is moderate use of networks. And they most certainly ARE beholden to industry shills who are free to lobby the regulators with a nice meal and a trip and explain why, to protect copyright, all BitTorrent traffic must be blocked.
I certainly do not intend to stand by and watch THAT happen, which is why I'm attempting to point out why should head off regulation at the pass.
Well, again, you are wrong, because they ARE, and are openly making plans to do so.
What plans? Give us anything beyond a CEO's statement for five years ago that obviously never materialized into a real plan.
Bullshit. There's no guarantee that regulators would be corrupt or influenced by lobbyist interests to go against the public interest.
Well 4000 years of human history says otherwise but I'm SURE this time it will be different.
Hell, even the current FCC is trying to do everything it can to make Net Neutrality regulations that DO serve the public good. Where's the corruption right now?
They need to get the power structure in place before those seeking to leverage the power start to apply pressure. But you'll see it even in the exact wording of the proposals.
Meanwhile, again, it HAS happened, and IS happening.
Links? You have none, because it's not happening...
Currently you are simply a tool for those that want to shut down torrent traffic for good in the U.S. I know you have good intentions in mind but you seriously need to think about how naive you are being in regards to what happens when you centralize control of ANYTHING.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Trouble is that some of mine don't give a fig about my opinion, because this area is so $PARTY that they'll get elected regardless of whether they piss off people like me.
One of them was heard to say that he doesn't represent "those people" when asked whether he'd speak to some gays who were protesting for equality, ffs.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Well, it's interesting that a few people are reporting that they get the advertised speed for long periods.
Of course, this could be a case of "squeaky wheels", in which we only hear from the (apparently many) people whose ISPs don't provide the advertised service. Finally, after enough complaints, and the general consensus that it's a mess, the people actually getting good service start speaking up.
Another possibility is that the ISPs' management is slowly catching onto the idea that they've gotten a reputation much like used-car salesmen, and if they want to stay in business, maybe they should start being a bit more honest.
Also, they've probably also read the reports from South Korea and a few other parts of the world with internet speeds that put the vaunted US technical lead to shame. There are probably a lot of corporate discussion that amount to "These other guys can provide actual fast internet access; maybe we should be looking into investing in the infrastructure that supports it. They talk to their engineers, who express frustration that they've been held back for so long, and decide that maybe it's time to move into the 21st century.
There are probably a lot of other explanations for the wildly different service levels (and customer satisfaction) of various ISPs. I wonder what the other explanations might be?
(My local experience, with RCN here, is that the data from my linux firewall's port is that we sometimes get a bit better than the rated max speed, but usually only around half that during the evening busy times. We use VPNs extensively for job purposes, which has a noticable minimum traffic level, and as far as we can determine, we don't often get throttled. But I'm not convinced we have a valid test for this. In any case, the service currently meets our needs. Even when my wife is satisfying here need for old movies. ;-)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Or do I have to be the one with the brass balls, AGAIN, and stand up for you like I did against EA?
We gave the telecoms industry 200 BILLION dollars, and this is what we get, a bunch of lies and almost NOTHING of what we originally paid for?
I want a FULL FUCKING REFUND.
And if you can't get behind me BEFORE I get this lawsuit rolling, I don't see why any of YOU should get your money back.
So, man up and join the cause, or keep up your ineffectual whining.
Enough of us suing will get them attention they don't want. Then we drag the entire telecoms industry in, and we force them to become public utilities.
And enough of us suing usually means there's some HUGE law firm that will take our case on contingency.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Those were blustery speeches by telcos, with no action or hint of action. They were just saying they were displeased.
Oh please. You OBVIOUSLY didn't read either article. They both said a HELL of a lot more than "we're displeased".
I'll bet you didn't know that AT&T Wireless Internet already blocks Skype traffic on their network. No action?
Didn't you read my original post even? Network neutrality laws would not affect what Comcast did, because they didn't throttle traffic - they forged response packets which had the EFFECT of slowing down the system but would not fall under any guidelines for not altering traffic flow. Torrent traffic was free to flow as fast as it wanted, it's just that the fake packets Comcast sent confused the clients.
The single problem that ACTUALLY occurred, the regulation would not even prevent!
Except that it would, because the specific technical action doesn't matter; the end result DOES matter. It doesn't matter how traffic prioritization is done. Filtering, blocking, spoofing, packet editing, whatever. The law would say that the net effect should not be to selectively interfere with the proper flow of traffic, and, thus, most certainly would apply in this case.
You have yet to explain why the "inevitable" has not happened yet despite the links you sent having the AT&T quote from 2005! Five years, and NOTHING HAS HAPPENED. Yet you are all "Panic Panic! Something may happen, so something must be done!".
Nice strawman. Do I REALLY have to explain the concept of proactive prevention versus reactive remediation to you? It WILL happen if something isn't done; it is already happening. That you choose to downplay it and stick your head in the sand hoping it will go away by itself without regulation doesn't change that simple fact.
Wrong yet again. Regulators are not charged with serving you; they are not elected. They are charged with doing what the group they are with does, which for the FCC is moderate use of networks. ..and what is the FCC's charter, again? Oh, yeah to "ensure that the American people have available, at reasonable costs and without discrimination, rapid, efficient, Nation- and world-wide communication services; whether by radio, television, wire, satellite, or cable".
Sounds an awful lot like they are charged with serving me, since I rarely hear telcos referred to as "the American people".
And they most certainly ARE beholden to industry shills who are free to lobby the regulators with a nice meal and a trip and explain why, to protect copyright, all BitTorrent traffic must be blocked. ..and Cable/telco companies aren't beholden to such pressures? At least regulators have to maintain SOME level of decorum and resist even the appearance of impropriety, lest they be caught and held accountable for said impropriety. The FCC is far too exposed to the public eye for that level of corruption to go unnoticed for long, unlike, say, the MMS.
Yet again, if Net Neutrality laws are crafted to DISallow ANY monkeying with network data, even by the government, pretty much the same as it has been for decades with voice service. When was the last time you heard about the government blocking phone service to someone based on who they were calling and what was said on the line? Phone service has been heavily regulated off and on for a long time (since 1934, to be sure).
I certainly do not intend to stand by and watch THAT happen, which is why I'm attempting to point out why should head off regulation at the pass.
Well 4000 years of human history says otherwise but I'm SURE this time it will be different.
So government standards and regulation have ALWAYS been corrupted and perverted? It has never worked? Is that REALLY your argument? O.o
Better chance of it not happening in government than in the private sector. Corporations have no cause to resist the temptation to be unethical in the name of profits. The gov
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
Oh please. You OBVIOUSLY didn't read either article. They both said a HELL of a lot more than "we're displeased".
All talk, and no action. It doesn't matter what they said - it was five years ago and nothing has happened so what was the point of bringing that up?
I'll bet you didn't know that AT&T Wireless Internet already blocks Skype traffic on their network. No action?
And you are saying Network Neutrality would make that happen? In fact it would not since they are blocking all VOIP traffic, so there's yet another REAL problem the regulation doesn't do anything about.
BTW I can do Skype from a 3G iPad or iPhone just fine, are those rules specific to some service?
what is the FCC's charter, again? Oh, yeah to "ensure that the American people have available, at reasonable costs and without discrimination, rapid, efficient, Nation- and world-wide communication service
Right, but they do not serve you directly. If you cannot control how they go about performing that task they do not serve you. The mandate they have is distinct from who they serve - it's like a mission statement for a company that tells you what the goals are - it's the equivalent of Google's "Don't be evil".
And it's an excellent example of your dangerous level of naiveté.
The fact that Comcast has selectively monkeyed with bittorrent, gnutella, and even Lotus Notes traffic.
As noted, not in ways Network Neutrality would have stopped. So it doesn't fix the only problem you can find.
The fact that some networks selectively block competing services (like Skype on AT&T Wireless Internet).
Another problem it doesn't fix. So what's the point of the regulation again?
I see little need to respond to anything else you wrote; you obviously cannot listen to reason and do not see what is plain about what happens when you regulate a thing. I'll let you have the last word, but I'll say this - you will remember this if network neutrality comes to pass, and I hope you feel guilty for your role in enabling it to come to be (if indeed it comes to pass at all, which I have doubts about now).
I still think your motives and goals are good, but remember that I have the same ones. It's just that I have factored human behavior and lessons from history into what will happen in each scenario, in a way you have not.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
All talk, and no action. It doesn't matter what they said - it was five years ago and nothing has happened so what was the point of bringing that up?
It DOES matter what they say, because if they find it will increase their profits, they most certainly WILL do it. If they SAY it, it is that much more likely that they will DO it.
The point in bringing it up is that it illustrates the controlling mindset that the ISPs have, and that they are ACTIVELY considering how to go about making it happen. I would be MORE worried if they weren't saying it, though, because I *KNOW* they are making plans for it.
And you are saying Network Neutrality would make that happen? In fact it would not since they are blocking all VOIP traffic, so there's yet another REAL problem the regulation doesn't do anything about.
In fact, it most certainly would, since, as an ISP, they would be required not to interfere in legitimate IP traffic, INCLUDING VOIP. Now, if they want to charge YOU more for aggregate packet data usage as a result, that's perfectly fine. What they CAN'T do is charge you more for VOIP traffic, specifically.
Maybe what you see as network neutrality regulation is different from what I see it as, but I most certainly see it stopping these very kinds of abuses.
BTW I can do Skype from a 3G iPad or iPhone just fine, are those rules specific to some service?
Wait, which is it, you just said they are blocking ALL VOIP traffic, but now they aren't?
Here's one article on it; Google for more
Right, but they do not serve you directly. If you cannot control how they go about performing that task they do not serve you. The mandate they have is distinct from who they serve - it's like a mission statement for a company that tells you what the goals are - it's the equivalent of Google's "Don't be evil".
They serve me a HELLUVA lot more directly than AT&T, Comcast, etc ever will. Their mandate is to serve the people, of which I am a concerned constituent that they actually do listen to, even if only in aggregate most of the time. The ISPs mandate is to server their bottom line. It is more than a simple "mission statement" from a company, who has NO incentive to follow it, heh, just like your example -- "Don't be evil" Google. They sure as hell haven't lived up to that motto, now have they?
Besides, how does "Don't be evil" even remotely mention serving "the people"? The fact that government agencies at least TRY to fulfill their missions and mandates (and have SIGNIFICANT incentive to do so) leads me to believe that they have a much better chance of doing a good job of righting the applecart than any corporation ever will.
And it's an excellent example of your dangerous level of naiveté.
Hardly. Your complete refusal to see of the dangers of corporate-only stewardship of the Internet betrays quite a depth of ignorance on your part.
As noted, not in ways Network Neutrality would have stopped. So it doesn't fix the only problem you can find.
We can play this game all day. It most certainly would have stopped it, and it isn't the only problem I have given. Nice try, though. :)
Another problem it doesn't fix. So what's the point of the regulation again?
It most certainly would have fixed it, as that is the POINT of network neutrality. Go back and read the goddamn mandate of the FCC again.. here.. allow me:
"ensure that the American people have available, at reasonable costs and without discrimination, rapid, efficient, Nation- and world-wide communication services; whether by radio, television, wire, satellite, or cable"
What part of "without discrimination" do you not understand? Blocking VOIP over wireless is discrimination of the kind which should not be allowed.
I see little need to respond to anything else you wrote
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
I'm all for net neutrality, but I will agree with AT&T on this. For VoIP providers, the difficulty of providing a high quality connection come from traffic flowing from the ISP to the subscriber in the last hop. This last hop is usually the most constrained and without prioritization, there is little an end user can do to prevent their file download from stomping all over their phone calls. Because the connection is constrained before it gets to the end user, the prioritization must happen on the ISP side. By the time it gets to the subscriber's router, it is already too late.
You say let's use the ToS or CoS bits in the packet. The problem is that you need to trust those value before you decide to use them. Nothing stops anybody from setting whatever they want on those. It only takes one end point to screw the whole connection up for everyone. For the successful prioritization of traffic you need policies on both sides of the bottleneck.
If the ISP wants to take a charge for setting up the trust policies according what the customers ask for, I'm all for it. Its better that the current situation where that is almost unheard of from ISPs short of doing a whole MPLS set up. I am, however, opposed to a VoIP company having to go pay ISPs to make sure that the traffic isn't dropped or degraded outright.
br/
My AT&T DSL is never maxed out for longer than an hour or three, because I just don't meet that sort of usage pattern. I've never had problems keeping it maxed for as long as I needed to get a few OS DVDs downloaded via straight HTTP download, FTP download, torrent, or jigdo.
Then again, I don't usually do those downloads at peak usage times -- not because I particularly avoid it, but because I keep an odd schedule and tend to do long downloads when I'm going to be away from the computer and not competing with my own downloads for other data transfers.
Well said. Pity the news media have sold out. They might have supplied a safe haven for facts, but they blew their credibility at the same time they started blowing their bosses.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Thank you very much for getting it. If I hadn't already commented on this thread, I'd use a mod point on your behalf.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
I'm Canadian. We have our own battle to fight on this, and it won't be pretty.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
I know my rights. I want my phone call.
Tell me, Mr. Anderson... what good is a phone call... if you're unable to speak?
The Principle of Aristocracy or Plutocracy: use the money/power you have to get more gold/power. Is not capitalism. The global economy has changed camouflage, it no longer looks like a feudal state economy, but is still an aristocrat or plutocrat economy providing welfare and comforts too the least deserving few (in the US, EU, RU, CN...).
Capitalism is meritocracy based, not a fluke of time, place, and birth.
The present state of global economics IMO is not due to capitalism, but is due to elitist clowns (C*Os, POT*, PPP...) delusional hubris ... IOW: The foolish kings, queens, and titans of business and government, and their dogma-hog minions of self-destruction.
Chief*Os, PresidentOT*, PickPocketPreachers/Politicians...
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?