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BT Content Connect May Impact Net Neutrality
a Flatbed Darkly writes "BT's Content Connect, a service which many have accused of threatening net neutrality, has apparently launched, although it is unknown whether or not any ISPs have bought or are planning to buy it yet; BT has denied the allegations, from Open Rights Group among others, that this, despite certainly being an anti-competitive service, does not create a two-tier internet. From the article: '"Contrary to recent reports in the media, BT's Content Connect service will not create a two-tier internet, but will simply offer service providers the option of differentiating their broadband offering through enhanced content delivery," a BT spokeswoman said.'"
She denies that their service creates a two-tier internet, then goes on to describe their service which, is to create a two-tier internet. Nice.
"differentiating their broadband offering through enhanced content delivery" Certainly sounds like two tiers to me...
I ran that through babelfish and got the translation: "Fuck you! We'll do whatever we want and you can't do a thing about it."
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
So it does not create a two tier internet but differentiates their broadband between enhanced content delivery and regular content delivery? Don't spit in my face and call it rain...
By definition, differentiating negates net neutrality
Do they think people are so stupid that they can just use big words to lie to people? Oh wait...
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
"BT's Content Connect, a service which many have accused of threatening net neutrality, has apparently launched, although it is unknown whether or not any ISPs have bought or are planning to buy it yet
Why would ISPs have to pay to use Bittorrent? Isn't it free and Open Source?
... and then they built the supercollider.
Sounds like Akamai
I don't have the exact statistics, so I may be wrong - feel free to downvote if you disprove this - but I've rarely seen anyone not on a BT line, until the '60s the company which was previously BT had a complete (government-instated) monopoly of telecom infrastructure, and it is known that BT still owns the majority of lines. A lot of TSPs won't give service over anything but BT lines, and I've seen a few ISPs do similarly. If this is being offered to all ISPs on BT's network, as the BBC article claims, then this is being offered to near enough every ISP in Britain.
To be fair and having RTFA, this doesn't seem to impact on Net Neutrality at all. This is a BT sponsored CDN (Content Delivery Network) that they are offering to their customers. This does not affect the traffic passing over the network, they are simply offering a network of local hosts to optimise content delivery. Like Akami and other such geographical CDN.
So BT have worked out that CDNs are taking a slice of the pie and they want some of that action and so create their own?
Perhaps if the service offerings (broadband connections and networks) were scaled out so that they can cope with the 'exponential' (someone should explain exponential to the website designers) growth of video traffic then we wouldn't need CDNs?
BULLSHIT! - Wait we're not playing BS Bingo?
BT needs disambiguation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BT
Acronyms can be confusing, so please explain them before using the acronym.
I hate signatures
Going through the content connect website, it appears that instead of content traveling from content providers through the internet to an ISP, then to end users, instead, now it goes from a content connect content provider, who is hosting the content provider's content, held in cache, somehow physically closer to end users, and bypasses the ISP.
Obviously this cannot be true, but that is what the combination of words and moving images would present.
Most vexing is the concept that this is supposed to make high quality video use faster, but the bullet point list includes that consumers are willing to pay more for higher quality video than speed.
I do not understand what content connect is supposed to be doing, or why. I do understand that if an ISP chooses to use content connect for specific content and not for other content, and this affects speed somehow, that this would violate net neutrality. On the other hand, if all content is shuttled through content connect, in effect, that makes the ISP superfluous.
Similar to those deployed by Akamai and Limelight for their customers, and by Google and Microsoft for themselves.
A typical case of a Telco moving into an additional market.
Arguably, it does allow BT to offer multi-tier services. But it is not packet-level differentiation
in the network, which is the issue at the heart of the net-neutrality debate.
If Content Distribution Networks violate net neutrality and the /. crowd thinks so, then
we should be blasting Akamai and Google long time before we started blasting the Telcos.
Please excuse what is probably a fairly ignorant question, I'm not too clued in about networking.
A quick look about the BT website in the summary brings up a page supposedly explaining how it works: what they seem to be saying is that they take "Connect Content" and put it on its own server which is physically closer to wherever you are. Then, instead of having to connect to a server, say, 3,000 miles away via choc-a-bloc networks for that video, you're connecting to one maybe one or two hundred miles away with fewer users, saving you a lot of routing and time in exchange for a fee.
My question is, how exactly is that related to net neutrality? I generally thought NN was more about the possibility of an ISP throttling or even completely blocking data from someone they don't like if you don't pay up. To me this seems to be more like the "premium download server" different hosting websites seem to have where if you pay more you can jump the queue to faster hardware with fewer users. What are the differences in principle between this and paying a fee for your own home server and hosting the video there instead of streaming it from [media website here] every time? Or has the BT PR department tactfully left something out of their explanation?
Net neutrality - The principle that data packets on the Internet should be moved impartially, without regard to content, destination or source.
BT supports the concept of net neutrality but believes that service providers should also be free to strike commercial deals should content owners want a higher quality or assured service delivery.
So I guess the real question is.. is she a liar or a moron?
A lot of the mobile phone subscription deals and some of the 3G internet-only subscriptions have severe limits but 'unlimited' access to sites like facebook and youtube.
You can also buy additional access to a selection of usual social-media sites for most subscriptions. Look here for some pricing examples.
With our restrictive data limits even on fixed ADSL lines i would not be surprised if we get so see some "unlimited access to facebook" deals in the near future.
Its already bad and it is only going to get worse.
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
The ISPs have always had a market where more money == faster service, we are also used to the idea of paywalls where some stuff is free and other stuff needs money to get access to. So where, exactly, does this idea that everyone should get access to everything for the same price come from? Would it still be "net neutral" if Facebook suddenly started charging $10 / year for "membership"? Is that really any different from your ISP saying "If you want to get access to service X, it'll cost you more money"? The only difference seems to me to be who does the charging - one organisation and that's business (or monetising), a different organisation and people bleat on about net neutrality.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
The situation is the same here in the UK too; extortionate data charges and use policies, but all you can eat data for YouTube and Facebook.
I find the YouTube deal particularly annoying, simply because whenever I went over my data limits, it was normally for email and browsing, and certainly not streamed video. So based on the effect that streamed video is going to put a much bigger strain on a mobile network than web and email, I can only assume that backroom deals have been done, and hence a multi-tiered internet is beginning to appear.
What is "BT"? "Bit Torrent"?
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Nobody has yet to explain why it's wrong for them to charge for access to their private networks however they wish.
Is that really any different from your ISP saying "If you want to get access to service X, it'll cost you more money"?
Yes. You can switch social networks if Facebook starts being unreasonable, but you don't have much choice in ISPs.
So what are you going to do? Make it illegal to bypass existing internet nodes to deliver IP services? Make it illegal to offer more bandwidth than existing IP services? How about making it illegal to charge more than any existing IP Service? How about making it illegal to charge less than any existing IP Service?
Why don't we just quit all this nonsense and pass laws for bandwidth and price controls, along with an "IP Commission" to enforce them?
Oops! Somebody once said "Be careful with sarcasm; the idiots are certain take it as advice."
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
No that's not a deadly snake I put in your bed, Its a legless lizard who wishes to express his love for you with envenomed kisses.....
How stuped do these doublespeak asshats think we all are?
Content Connect enables ISPs to store video within their own networks, closer to the user, as opposed to third-party companies – such as Akamai, which delivers the BBC's iPlayer – caching popular content around the globe. By paying the ISP, rather than the third-party company, users could get a guaranteed delivery of service even at peak times.
In other words, you can pay them to host your video for you. BBC's data moves at the same speed and with the same priority as that ninja guy's data. The difference is that BBC's data will move less distance because it is being hosted by the ISP near the user. Amazon does the same thing with cloud front except that it is not an ISP and may not be able to do it as efficiently.
But it would also create a situation where companies that are unwilling – or unable – to pay would have their content delivered less efficiently to the end user.
This is absolutly true. If you are not willing to pay for premium content hosting from the ISP, you will have less efficent service. However, that is becase the data is being hosted in a new way that could not be done before. Not because other data is being slowed down. This is not a direct threat to net neutrality. This is yet another buisness model/industry for ISPs to expand to.
They don't need to throttle anything - that would be legally dubious. It's much safer for them to just do nothing, neglecting to upgrade the connection. They will still be providing a 'best effort' service, but just making sure that the best they can do isn't too good.
I'm pretty sure this is what Time Warner / Road Runner are doing in my Kansas City neighborhood right now. Every evening I get to see my DL rate drop to .8-2mbps and my pings rise to about 100 with occasional packet loss. It's sad when my 1mbps UL is greater than my DL.
aka,
We're not stealing from you,
We're just borrowing from you indefinitely...
Who said lies, damned lies, statistics and marketing/advertising/corporate-speak?