British ISPs Embracing Two-Tier Internet

Barence writes "Britain's leading ISPs are attempting to construct a two-tier internet, where websites and services that are willing to pay are thrust into the 'fast lane,' while those that don't are left fighting for scraps of bandwidth or even blocked outright. Asked directly whether ISP TalkTalk would be willing to cut off access completely to BBC iPlayer in favor of YouTube if the latter was prepared to sign a big enough cheque, TalkTalk's Andrew Heaney replied: 'We'd do a deal, and we'd look at YouTube and we'd look at BBC and we should have freedom to sign whatever deal works.' Britain's biggest ISP, BT, meanwhile says it 'absolutely could see situations in which some content or application providers might want to pay BT for a quality of service above best efforts.' PC Pro asks if it's the end of the net as we know it."

Comments

"above best efforts?"

[Anonymous Coward]

"a quality of service above best efforts."

WTF does that mean? If they can do better, then the "best efforts" wasn't actually the best effort, was it?

How can you have a level of effort above the best?

Re:"above best efforts?"

[cbiltcliffe]

"Above best efforts" really means "above the best effort we are willing to put in, unless you pay us our extortion money."

Re:"above best efforts?"

[LilBlackKittie]

"Best efforts" might mean "best effort getting that traffic through our really congested upstream transit provider".

Something with higher quality might be a direct private peering.

Of course, it's not unknown that ISPs engineer congestion on those upstreams to force a private peering -- and you can bet your bottom dollar it won't be a "settlement free" peering.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[mikkelm]

"Best effort" in networking terminology is the priority given to traffic that isn't specifically prioritised or limited. There's nothing wrong with what he's saying.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[jamesh]

It means they are going to give 110%

Re:"above best efforts?"

[mrnobo1024]

No no, that's all wrong. Let me show you how it's done:

"I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Apple co-founder/CEO Steve Jobs was found dead in his California home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular computing. Truly an American icon."

Sheesh, trolls these days.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[dangitman]

"Best effort" in networking terminology is the priority given to traffic that isn't specifically prioritised or limited. There's nothing wrong with what he's saying.

Except for the fact that it doesn't make any sense. How can it be the "best effort" if something can be prioritised ahead of it?

Just because "networking terminology" is stupid, doesn't mean we have to accept it at face value.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[Anonymous Coward]

It means they are going to give 110%...

You forgot the most important part

"...to our profit margin."

Re:"above best efforts?"

[93 Escort Wagon]

"a quality of service above best efforts."

WTF does that mean? If they can do better, then the "best efforts" wasn't actually the best effort, was it?

How can you have a level of effort above the best?

(In my best Sheldon Leonard voice) Dat's a nice Internet you'se gots dere - shame if somethin'... happened to it.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[a_nonamiss]

Why would you try to start a fake rumor like this on a weekend? If you shorted Apple, I would think it would be much more effective when the markets are open. Even if you did manage to freak the markets out enough to make an impact on share price, by Monday morning, everyone will have realized you're full of crap.

Also, even though you posted AC, I think the SEC is one of those organizations that probably has enough pull to get some information about your identity. (Slashdot values privacy, but they do keep some records, and they do have to comply with government subpoenas)

Unless, of course, you took a LiveCD of Ubuntu to a library nowhere near your home (after first making sure there were no surveillance cameras) and posted AC from that computer. Then you should be fine. Unless you make some real money. The SEC is pretty efficient at following money trails.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[wisty]

I'm sure it's nothing like this. Websites already pay (somebody) for bandwidth. This just changes the pricing structure. Offering a tiered approach will enable providers to offer lower fees to standard websites, and better service to the sites that need it.

Assuming they actually offer lower fees, and better services, and don't just use the added confusion as an excuse to overcharge and underdeliver. Fucking confusopoplies.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[mysidia]

Except for the fact that it doesn't make any sense. How can it be the "best effort" if something can be prioritised ahead of it?

It makes perfect sense. When a QoS scheme is being designed; traffic is divided into classes, and (typically) each class is assigned to queues based on priority; each queue has a certain size.

The class that is not associated with any priority queue at all is called "best effort". The reason it is called best effort, is, unlike other traffic classes -- there is no priority or reservation.

Other traffic has priority in the form of something close to a guarantee; meaning, if prioritized traffic does not exceed the size of the priority queue, it is guaranteed to be delivered even in the face of congestion. Whereas the remaining traffic is just "best effort".

The traffic that is best effort will be delivered if possible (in the face of congestion), but it might be dropped, best effort is weaker than guaranteed priority.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[Cwix]

He was probably just trolling. I seriously doubt he was trying to manipulate the markets.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

It makes perfect sense, both within QoS terminology and in plain english.

Example:

"I will put my best effort into helping you build a house. My very best effort, I'll use most of my free time to help you, and I might even skip work a day or too to help you out".

"I have signed a contract with you to finish building your house by July 23th. I've already allocated the necessary resources to make it happen by that date".

There you go, "best effort", and a contract, which is by definition "above best effort".

Same thing with the mail. Regular mail is "best effort". We'll do our best effort with the current resources to deliver your letter ASAP.
Priority mail, OTOH, means dedicated resources to get certain subset of letter to their destinations within an allocated time.

Not that I agree with this situation, just pointing out that language wasn't an issue.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

It would be good if the bottom line wasn't pushed down, and if the upper classes were sold in a non-discriminatory way, at fixed prices. The problem is that it's not going to happen that way, it'll just turn into a sell-to-the-highest-bidder situation, where companies will be out-paying each other to get priority over each other's traffic. It'll be a way for ISPs to sell their stuff twice instead of increasing their capacity. Let's say now they charge you a dollar for 1GB of traffic through a 10mbps link, instead of increasing their capacity to sell you 10GB over a 100mbps link at $ 0.7, they'll just charge $1 for 1GB through a up-to-10mbps link, then charge you another dollar to prioritize your traffic over all the torrents and other crap, and then another dollar to prioritize you a bit more. They will be essentially charging you several times for what you are already getting now.

Of course, they'll manage to screw over some people even worse, particularly anyone in need of low-latency communications (think VoIP, etc).

Re:"above best efforts?"

[Kitkoan]

It might have been because Steve Jobs has gone on medical leave again. It's presumed to be related to his Pancreatic Cancer which was diagnosed in 2004. Pancreatic cancer has a very low survival rate averaging between 4.6 percent to 6 percent after 5 years of being diagnosed. Steve Jobs is now on year 7, beating the odds.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[Kitkoan]

So it means that this dial goes to 11?

Re:"above best efforts?"

[Kitkoan]

By outsourcing it to a company that is more capable then you?

Re:"above best efforts?"

[rhade]

im hungover but seriously thought i was on 4chan for a minute there

Re:"above best efforts?"

[maxwell demon]

Of course he could have used TOR to access an anonymizing proxy located in some country which isn't exactly U.S. friendly (assuming such proxies exist). In that case, any U.S. authority would have troubles to find him even if he were posting from home.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[Anonymous Coward]

queue 0 - Best Effort
queue 1 - Expedited Forwarding
queue 2 - Assured Forwarding
queue 3 - Network Control

The way priorities work is you generally reserve a small % for Network Control messages. Usually this is between 1% and 10% of the link, depending on how big it is (obviously you don't want to use 10% of a 10gig link). This is for stuff like your routing protocols, which HAS to get through or else nothing works.
Then you have three different priority queues. Queues 1 and 2 are reserved bandwidth queues, where you reserve a certain amount of bandwidth for traffic in those two priorities. Usually you'll have queue 2 reserved for a few select things like Voip or voice traffic which absolutely HAS to keep flowing. Queue 1 is usually used to manage other internal ISP services such as DHCP requests, although that's not always the case. Often this is where customer who pay for dedicated bandwidth have their traffic, although usually other shaping mechanisms are used to guarantee the bandwidth is available.
This leaves you with the 'Best-Effort' queue, called such because it makes its Best Effort to get all the remaining traffic pushed through with whatever bandwidth is left.

If you're operating a small network or an Enterprise network, as opposed to a Carrier-grade network, you usually don't need to mess around with it much. If you run SIP within your office, or have business applications which need a minimum bandwidth reservation, then you'll probably make use of one of the guaranteed bandwidth queues. A lot of larger businesses will use network control for network management, and then use queue 2 for things like SIP traffic, queue 1 for all business applications, and leave queue 0 for all the general internet traffic.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[dangitman]

Same thing with the mail. Regular mail is "best effort". We'll do our best effort with the current resources to deliver your letter ASAP.
Priority mail, OTOH, means dedicated resources to get certain subset of letter to their destinations within an allocated time.

But if it was their best effort, they would be devoting all the resources they had, just like "priority mail."

Re:"above best efforts?"

[thegarbz]

Think of it this way. An airline had to cancel a flight, and there's a a couple of free seats in the following flights. The people in the following flights who have paid get a seat regardless of what happens, for the rest of them on that earlier canceled flight, the airline makes a best effort to get the people to where they are going.

The term best effort is applied to generic traffic only. Priority traffic gets priority (well duh), such as VoIP. The rest gets pushed through as good as they can in what in QoS terms is called best effort delivery, or Class 0

Re:"above best efforts?"

[kronosopher]

Offering a tiered approach will enable providers to offer lower fees to standard websites, and better service to the sites that need it.

This makes sense, but the important fact you're overlooking is that corporations make reasonable arguments to do unreasonable things. By implementing such controls, would it not be ripe for abuse? Is there anyone who thinks that telecoms wouldn't abuse it?

I understand that the internet may in-fact be better off with throttling, prioritization, etc. However, can we really trust corporations to implement this system with the public's best interest in mind?

At the very least, look at it from an economic perspective. What incentive will telecoms have to upgrade their lower tier services when only their priority services make big money? How long before the speed disparity between tiers is so large that the lower tier services are no longer viable(given increasing bandwidth demand)?

Re:"above best efforts?"

[dangitman]

Priority traffic gets priority (well duh), such as VoIP.

So, that would be their best effort, then?

Re:"above best efforts?"

[Anonymous Coward]

*facepalm*

Re:"above best efforts?"

[thetoadwarrior]

There are their best efforts for the customers and the best efforts for themselves and the two aren't the same.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[sgbett]

You are assuming that best effort is good enough to do do the job, fully.

If I say I am giving my best effort to helping someone, they shouldn't then expect me to help them above all else, they can maybe expect (at best) all my free time. Some things are just more important. Sleeping, eating, paying the bills.

To assume I am going to drop those is disingenuous. If however, I make a guarantee (foolishly perhaps) to help you finish your house in a certain time period then whether or not I eat and sleep is no longer of any interest to you. I made the guarantee, therefore you expect me to stick by it, to the exclusion of all else. I still make my best effort to eat and sleep.

Sometimes you just don't have enough time to do everything you want to, at those times some stuff gets priority, the other stiff you make your best effort to get it done.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[RollingThunder]

In business, "best effort" means "whatever we feel like" rather than "to meet a contractually obligated standard".

Re:"above best efforts?"

[Anonymous Coward]

It still doesn't make sense. The amount of effort that you put into routing "guaranteed" traffic is larger than that you put into routing "best effort" traffic; therefore, the latter isn't really receiving your best effort.

It sounds less like technical terminology than like a marketing buzzword.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[dangitman]

If however, I make a guarantee (foolishly perhaps) to help you finish your house in a certain time period then whether or not I eat and sleep is no longer of any interest to you. I made the guarantee, therefore you expect me to stick by it, to the exclusion of all else. I still make my best effort to eat and sleep.

If that is the most you can give, then that is your best effort. Logically, it is impossible to give more than your best. So, calling something that is less than your best effort your "best effort" is disingenuous.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[Anonymous Coward]

It means they are going to turn it up to eleven!

Re:"above best efforts?"

[sgbett]

You say: "Logically, it is impossible to give more than your best."

'best' or 'best effort'?

If I have a hangover my best effort is often less than my best. Best effort is subject to the prevailing conditions, and not always equal to best.

If you did your best to understand this, then you i'm sure you would instead you are only making your best effort (subject to you preferring, instead to argue the toss).

Re:"above best efforts?"

[jimmypw]

It more likely means "the lines we aren't going to upgrade any more because we have people that sponsor their own lines". It annoys me. I Truly hope that no websites pay this ransom money.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[Moridin42]

If your one piece of mail or one packet of traffic were all that were travelling, you might have a point. But your mail courier and your internet provider have many package/packet origins headed to many different destinations. They will make a best effort to deliver each as they can, given that everybody else in the queue also wants their stuff delivered at least as much as you do. They have limited resources in which to do this. If traffic is congested, the mail courier cannot develop a new route/plane/vehicle in the timeframe of your delivery. The ISP cannot negotiate a new upstream provider in the timeframe of your packet's delivery. It is a best effort with the resource at hand. If there are insufficient resources, some of you will be disappointed.

If this is not good enough for you, you can pay for a guaranteed class of service.

If you fly and have checked baggage, the airline will make a best effort to see that your luggage arrives at your destination when you do. However, if you have a quick turnaround for a connecting flight and your checked baggage isn't sorted and loaded in time to make it out, the airline will shrug and say they've made a best effort. Clearly, according to you, they haven't. After all your carry-on made it just fine and they could have let you carry on all your baggage. This would entirely alter the situation by lowering max passenger counts and increasing aircraft groundtime (as passengers try to organize and haul 2-3 more bags off a plane). But to anybody else, the airline has made a best effort. If you wanted a better class of service, you could pay for it by reducing your baggage to a carry-on only (or.. I guess by paying for seats in which to put your otherwise-would've-been-checked baggage).

Re:"above best efforts?"

[thegarbz]

No because data like that would be identified as critical. Stop confusing "best effort" being put into the entire datapipe vs "best effort" being put into the generic data that is left over after all other data has been identified and had it's QoS requirements classed.

How can you prioritise data that looks entirely generic? There's a reason that in many countries the express post and standard mail go into different boxes. Doing best effort delivery on standard mail has absolutely nothing to do with express post, just as it does in this case.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[cosmas_c]

sure ... you are talking about "networking terminology" I forgot what I was saying (slashdot login and "communication terminology")

Re:"above best efforts?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Networking terminology isn't what is stupid. This ISPs attempted extorsion is. You look like you haven't read anything in your life about networking and/or QoS, so i'll invite you to read this intro now and get a good book, and maybe then continue talking.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[PopeRatzo]

That doesn't make any sense.

The art of business writing, where words like "QoS" and "best effort" come from, is the art of using sensible terms to not make sense.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[PopeRatzo]

So, that would be their best effort, then?

No, it means they'll make their "best effort" to fuck over customers who don't pony up. Sort of like a loan shark saying "If you don't pay me, I'm gonna let Vito the Shiv come visit you to do what he does best."

Re:"above best efforts?"

[flyneye]

WTH, I'm willing to let him manipulate the markest if you are.
        Let him give it a go. The news clowns could use the story. Someone should shake up market constipation.
Media Junkies need something to talk about over coffee. Stever could use the rest, I'm sure. It's a win/win/win situation.
O.K. everybody chant with me
          "STEVE IS DEAD".

          O.K. let's reverse the playback on that one.
        " Dadsi Veets"... no wait a minute, let's E.Q. it... "Hail, Ozzy,Ozzy"... there, see it really does mean something.

          "Steve is dead"
          " Steve is dead"
            " Steve is dead"

Re:"above best efforts?"

[flyneye]

We should eulogize it in a song for maximum socio/emotional impact.

          White on white translucent black capes
          Back on the back

          Stevie Jobs is dead
          The bats have left the belltower
          The victims have been bled
          Red velvet lines the black box

          Stevie Jobs is dead
          Stevie Jobs is dead
          Undead, undead, undead
          Undead, undead, undead

          The virginal brides file past his tomb
          Strewn with times dead flowers
          Bereft in deathly bloom
          Alone in a darkened room
          The Count

          Stevie Jobs is dead
          Stevie Jobs is dead
          Stevie Jobs is dead
          Undead undead undead
          Undead undead undead
          Undead

          Oo Stevie
          Stevie's undead (repeat ad nauseum)

I think this approach is a good fit for the press and Apple devotees alike.

   

Re:"above best efforts?"

[raddan]

This is totally, 100% wrong. "best effort" refers to the fact that in packet-switched networks, there are NO GUARANTEES whether a packet will reach its destination. This is in contrast to connection-oriented networks, like the phone network, where guarantees can be made once a connection has been established. Wikipedia's entry on best effort delivery is also wrong: "best effort" is the upper bound on packet-switched networks. Every packet that enters a connectionless network has some probability of reaching its destination, but there is no guarantee, which is why TCP has a retransmission mechanism. If you are willing to accept occasional lost packets (because in some applications, recovering that lost data is not worth the cost), you use UDP.

Anyone who says that they can deliver "better than best effort" on a packet-switched network is blowing smoke.

It's also important to recognize that the "pooled" nature of packet-switched networks is by design, and that its loss characteristics were deemed to be an acceptable tradeoff (the advantages being cost and network neutrality).

This book has a good history on the Internet, by a person who worked on the early ARPAnet networks.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[raddan]

I should also add that priority queues differentiate among traffic below the best-effort threshold. Keep in mind that the total QoS from one endpoint to another is a function of the routing decisions of every node from one endpoint to the other. So Joe ISP can change the priority for a particular website, but they can only deprioritize traffic. You can't affect the policy of upstream traffic, and in most cases, there's a lot of network upstream of you, even when you're an ISP. Saying that you can "deliver better than best effort" is pure, unadulterated bullshit.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[raddan]

Sorry, I meant to refer to "connectionless" networks, not packet-switched. You obviously can have packets on both types of network.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to Newspeak 2.0.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[mikkelm]

If we were discussing the perils of switched networking, you'd be absolutely correct. "Best effort" in switched networking parlance means "we'll try our very best to get it there, but there are no guarantees, because this method of switching is inherently unreliable."

"Best effort" in QoS parlance means "we'll try our very best to get it there, but there are no guarantees, because we have to ensure that certain other flows can survive congestion." Not only is that because QoS schemes can be applied to connections with any orientation and reliability, but also because there's no point in letting the caveats associated with external systems affect the terminology of a logical concept, when it is obvious that a prioritisation scheme is only as reliable as the system it operates on.

There's a reason why doctors don't tell terminal patients that "you have six months to live.. unless you get hit by a car or something."

Re:"above best efforts?"

[mikkelm]

Accepting it at face value seems to be just what you're doing. If, instead of doing that, you had investigated the subject, you would have found "best effort" to make perfect sense in this case. I guess it's easier to just call it stupid and be done with it, though.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[theshowmecanuck]

It would be funny if the naive only buried themselves, but somehow they manage to cover everyone else up with dirt even after they themselves are six feet under.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[mysidia]

That doesn't make any sense. If they are really making their best effort, it would be the same as guaranteed priority.

You're missing the point. These are accepted industry terms, not subject to dispute by people who think they know something about computer networking. Suggesting there is something wrong with the terms is just equivalent to brandishing your own errors/lack of understanding:

Quality of services clases impose constraints on the system, by assigning traffic to different queues with different sizes and latency/drop preferences. The priority queues are constraints, and not to be violated in order to deliver a packet. They are usually of a fixed size, so even some packets from prioritized streams can wind up dropped into lower priority classes.

Best effort refers to the best effort to deliver packets in that class, without violating any constraints imposed on the system.

Priority queues are constraints; packets in a higher priority queue cannot be dropped at a higher rate than allowed, for the purpose of delivering best effort packets.

Best effort is basically near the very bottom. The only worse traffic class is called Less than best effort; typically applied to non-drop non-latency sensitive traffic such as bulk transfers, e.g. FTP, FXP, SMB, Peer to Peer networks, sometimes SMTP.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[mysidia]

So, that would be their best effort, then?

No, that is incorrect. The treatment of prioritized VoIP traffic can be properly called above best effort, however, in QoS terms.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[BrokenHalo]

I know Jobs hasn't yet had the courtesy to shuffle off this mortal coil, but there has to be some more pithy epitaph than that. Something along the lines of:

What I like about Clive
Is that he is no longer alive.
There is much to be said
For being dead.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[Anonymous Coward]

"Best effort" is really the lowest rung of the ladder, actually. It means that there's no guarantees - as in "we'll make a "best effort" to give you a certain bandwidth/latency/packet drop, but if it doesn't work, tough luck".

Re:"above best efforts?"

[murphtall]

"yea, but my stereo goes to 11"

Re:"above best efforts?"

[rtb61]

The real point is has nothing to do with what BBC iPlayer or YouTube, that is the lie, it is all about screwing over the end user and not telling them that their access to the internet is being manipulated and downgraded so that the ISP can attempt to extort fees from parties with whom the ISP does not have a business arrangement by attempting to deny access to the ISP's end users.

So the end users is left in the dark and has no idea why they can no longer properly access web sites (something they already pay for in data upload and download) as they used, they are lied to by the ISP and denied the truth as to why the connection, what they are paying for and the data on that connection they are also paying for is being screwed over, why their service is basically being fucked up on purpose.

So a class action lawsuit will be required to protect end users, so a little warning screen comes up, "Your Connection to this Web Site is being Purposefully Fucked Up So That We Can Extort Money From The Owners of The Web Site, It Is In the Terms and Conditions of Contract So If Your Want to Complain Shut The Fuck Up and Wait Two Years For Your Contract to Expire Sucker".

It is the end user who seeks the data, it is the end users who initiates the download and it is the end user whose connection get screwed over, pretending it is about BBC iPlayer and YouTube is just public relations bullshit.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because "networking terminology" is stupid, doesn't mean we have to accept it at face value.

Banks use same kind of terminology. If you buy or sell shares at "best price", you actually buy or sell at whatever price the market is currently, which is usually a worse deal than if you set a limit.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[nagnamer]

But there are always more than a few that will say "Yeah, I hope nobody pays this ransom money so I can pay it and beat them hands down." And it always turns out there are more than a few of those idiots.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[16Chapel]

A story about the UK, and I have scroll halfway down the page to find a reference to Orwell?

Come on Slashdot, you can do better than that!

Re:"above best efforts?"

[tehcyder]

I seriously doubt that the markets take that much notice of slashdot trolls. They probably haven't got the time or patience to read at -1 and so would miss most of them...

Re:"above best efforts?"

[AmiMoJo]

I think we are lucky to have the BBC because they won't pay. They have stated as much and it would not be a fair use of license fee payer's money. As long as iPlayer remains neutral any ISP will have to choose between cutting off one of the most popular streaming video services or not allowing their network to degrade to that point for "best effort" sites.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

Sadly, you are right.

That's how it works in many industries: You are the product. It's how TV works, you are the product and they are selling you to advertisers.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[Anonymous Coward]

British society is "two tier" to begin with so this fits right in. There have always been one tier of service for those with status or money and "best efforts" for everyone else.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[mysidia]

This is totally, 100% wrong. "best effort" refers to the fact that in packet-switched networks, there are NO GUARANTEES whether a packet will reach its destination.

Bzzt... wrong.

Did it not occur to you that what exactly 'best effort' entails depends on the context in which it is used?

If you tell your kid you want them to put in their Best Effort to get an A in chemistry; this does not mean you want them to violate rules of the system (such as looking at another student's paper during the test, stealing the answer key, etc).

When we are talking about QoS, the accepted definition for best effort is noted in RFC2474, RFC 3644

rfc 2474,

A "default" PHB MUST be available in a DS-compliant node. This is the common, best-effort forwarding behavior available in existing routers as standardized in [RFC1812]. When no other agreements are in place, it is assumed that packets belong to this aggregate.

Such packets MAY be sent into a network without adhering to any particular rules and the network will deliver as many of these packets as possible and as soon as possible, subject to other resource policy constraints.

A reasonable implementation of this PHB would be a queueing discipline that sends packets of this aggregate whenever the output link is not required to satisfy another PHB. A reasonable policy for constructing services would ensure that the aggregate was not "starved". This could be enforced by a mechanism in each node that reserves some minimal resources (e.g, buffers, bandwidth) for Default behavior aggregates. This permits senders that are not differentiated services-aware to continue to use the network in the same manner as today. The impact of the introduction of differentiated services into a domain on the service expectations of its customers and peers is a complex matter involving policy decisions by the domain and is outside the scope of this document. The RECOMMENDED codepoint for the Default PHB is the bit pattern ' 000000'; the value '000000' MUST map to a PHB that meets these specifications. The codepoint chosen for Default behavior is compatible with existing practice [RFC791]. Where a codepoint is not mapped to a standardized or local use PHB, it SHOULD be mapped to the Default PHB.

A packet initially marked for the Default behavior MAY be re-marked with another codepoint as it passes a boundary into a DS domain so that it will be forwarded using a different PHB within that domain, possibly subject to some negotiated agreement between the peering domains.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[mysidia]

Sorry, I meant to refer to "connectionless" networks, not packet-switched. You obviously can have packets on both types of network.

Worn out arguments about packet vs circuit switching really have no relevance.

Nowadays you can oversubscribe circuit switched networks; and you can have packet switched networks with guarantees -- few/nobody might do it, but that doesn't mean it's impossible.

QoS is about guaranteeing an aggregate service level anyways, not about guaranteeing the delivery of each individual packet, which can die for a multitude of reasons.

Just like when you try to call someone on the phone, there might not be a free circuit available, the cat might have eaten part of the phone cord, caused a brief short, and then it momentarily came back to normal in the middle of your conversation.

QoS in this case is about the system dropping other people's ongoing call to free up a circuit for someone who just dialed 911. That doesn't mean the dropped call was not treated with best effort; it's just that there is prioritization and overriding consideration (based on policy).

Extreme circumstances (such as hardware failures) will cause guarantees not to be met, regardless of technology.

But aside from those, you can make certain guarantees in regards to packet switched networks, and QoS is a name for the toolbox of things that let you make those (often very limited) guarantees.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[raddan]

You don't seem to understand the RFC you sent me, both of which are for QoS models. "best-effort" is the default behavior of the network in the absence of traffic classification. This is the standard interpretation. If a particular QoS discipline chooses to redefine "best-effort" to mean "the lowest class", then sure, you can have "better than best effort". But that makes about as much sense as me swapping the meanings of true and false in my favorite programming language. Just because there's an RFC saying so doesn't make it true or good. Particularly since your QoS discipline applies to YOUR network. I can choose to ignore flags when your packet reaches MY network.

If you want to be pedantic, you could argue that every router has to have some QoS mechanism, because something has to decide which frame to send down the wire, and thus the QoS definition applies. But this is obviously silly, since then you could argue that a router that has no discernable traffic-shaping capability is doing QoS which then makes the "quality" part of QoS a meaningless word.

And, since you ignored the RFC (5290) that comes up first when you Google for "best-effort rfc", I'll paste the relevant portion here (which is the first sentence):

This document presents some observations on "simple best-effort traffic", defined loosely for the purposes of this document as Internet traffic that is not covered by Quality of Service (QOS) mechanisms, congestion-based pricing, cost-based fairness, admissions control, or the like.

and

Our intention is to define "simple best-effort traffic" to include the dominant traffic class in the current Internet.

Given that the RFC I reference is in the context of network neutrality, I think my citation is more relevant.

You might argue that "best-effort" constitutes a class of router behaviors, and that a QoS discipline makes traffic "better", thus QoS policies are "better than best-effort". But I would point out that, regardless of your QoS mechanism, that packet (or even aggregate of packets, as you point out) are subject to the same forces that make the Internet unreliable. The Internet is, at best, best-effort.

Re:"above best efforts?"

[mysidia]

And, since you ignored the RFC (5290) that comes up first when you Google for "best-effort rfc"

Google is not the RFC Index. RFC 5290 definitely doesn't define the terminology used by the differentiated services standards. When people speak of 'best effort' in regards to QoS, they are referring to the definition as it is defined in the differentiated services, and major router vendors use the same terminology, so this is what is accepted by the language using community.

Apparently you missed the heading of RFC 5290.

Status of This Memo

This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. IESG Note

The content of this RFC was at one time considered by the IETF, and therefore it may resemble a current IETF work in progress or a published IETF work.
This RFC is not a candidate for any level of Internet Standard.
The IETF disclaims any knowledge of the fitness of this RFC for any purpose and notes that the decision to publish is not based on IETF review apart from IESG review for conflict with IETF work.

As well as the part of RFC 2474 that states accordingly

A reasonable implementation of this PHB would be a queueing discipline that sends packets of this aggregate whenever the output link is not required to satisfy another PHB.

Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[Opportunist]

Didn't we elect them to make sure that the weak get protected so they don't get screwed over by those that could flex their muscles to browbeat them into submission?

If governments do not serve that function anymore, why the fuck do they exist at all? I can let someone (financially, physically...) strong beat me up and make me surrender quite fine without paying a few dicks to keep a bunch of chairs from flying off planet with their fat asses.

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[betterunixthanunix]

Clearly, you are misunderstanding the purpose of 21st century governments. The purpose of your government is to ensure that corporations and their shareholders become wealthier.

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[Opportunist]

Then it's time to get rid of them. They clearly do not serve the purpose they are supposed to and have to be replaced with a working product.

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[LilBlackKittie]

Current UK Government, with its close ties to Murdoch and News Corp, is unlikely to be fighting for neutrality in this situation. They're not fighting for an equalities commission to look at the News Corp buy-out of BSkyB. I can't see them stepping in here either, even to protect the BBC.

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you suggesting that it is okay to shoot corrupt people who refuse to step down?

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[Professor_UNIX]

Capitalism naturally weeds out situations that are unsatisfactory to the consumer. If you don't like your ISP with its two-tier Internet approach, use another. If there are no other options, assuming there is no government-imposed monopoly in place, then petition companies to start offering service in your area. If enough people get pissed off with poor service then other companies will jump at the chance to fill the void.

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[shentino]

No, it's to ensure the people making them rich stay poor enough not to fight back.

Part of being rich is being comparatively wealthy. If everyone became a millionaire, nobody would feel like one, because apart from the rampant inflation required to make such a thing a reality, part of the perk of being rich is having what other people can't. If everyone around you was just as wealthy, you wouldn't feel special.

In a zero sum world where resources are finite, you cannot win without someone else losing.

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[Anonymous Coward]

If there are no other options, assuming there is no government-imposed monopoly in place, then petition companies to start offering service in your area. If enough people get pissed off with poor service then other companies will jump at the chance to fill the void.

This is tremendously naive. Realistically, the chances of this happening are slim to none. Most consumers will just accept their fate and do nothing (despite the efforts of people trying to get them to stand up), leaving everyone else doomed.

Why do I believe this? I've been stuck with a single ISP for years. If this truly happens, it does not happen in a reasonable amount of time, and I'd rather have a competent government do something about it than wait for a miracle.

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[mrnobo1024]

Capitalism naturally weeds out situations that are unsatisfactory to the consumer. If you don't like your ISP with its two-tier Internet approach, use another. If there are no other options, assuming there is no government-imposed monopoly in place, then petition companies to start offering service in your area. If enough people get pissed off with poor service then other companies will jump at the chance to fill the void.

99% of people are ignorant. When they see YouTube videos loading at dial-up speeds, they won't realize it's because it's being throttled - the media certainly won't tell them, especially NBC (now a subsidiary of Comcast). They'll just assume Google's servers suck and decide to instead watch some corporate-approved content at Hulu or something.

The 1% of internet users who are savvy enough to know what's going on are an insignificant speck to capitalists. The costs of building last-mile Internet infrastructure are huge enough to ensure that no business will ever try to get in there unless they can expect to control a big fraction of the market.

Capitalism is vulnerable to tyranny of the ignorant.

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if no other ISP is willing to give "Net Neutrality," and the ISPs can make more money by not offering it, why would any of them.

If this happens, then the Net will become the next cable TV company.
What you pay for is what they decide you will see.
So much for freedom of expression and leveling the playing field.

To recap, once one ISP can do this, they all will.

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[TubeSteak]

I think Heinlein writes in one of his stories that governments exist to facilitate commerce.
It's a very cynical worldview, but not without merit.

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics.

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[Anthony Mouse]

If enough people get pissed off with poor service then other companies will jump at the chance to fill the void.

Right, so that the increased competition will drive down prices and increase value for consumers.

Except that the prospective competitor knows that it entering the market would increase competition and reduce margins. And making a huge up front capital outlay in order to enter a market that would consequently have low margin is not conducive to making a good ROI, so the prospective competitor declines to enter the market.

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's correct if the economy was a zero sum game. The economy is not a zero sum game.

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[ghmh]

listen: there's a hell of a good universe next door; let's go

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[maxwell demon]

In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics.

Can't you at least make an exception for the second law?

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[dorward]

Of course not. Tory governments have never been about that. We elected them because Labour was out of control after too many years in power.

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Capitalism is vulnerable to tyranny of the ignorant.

Actually, it's just a known design flaw.

The capitalist foundation stone is that everyone in a market will do whatever benefits them the most and screw everyone else. Altruism aside, this is a rather intelligent way to approach the problem [lowest common denominator, no-one could possibly be more immoral and greedy then the hypothetical immoral greedy person used as the model] which is why it works, certainly why it works better than communism did.

The problem with this idea is that it does not account for laziness, capitalism relies on the perfect information principle where all actors are informed and willing to gather information to consider all their options in order to achieve the best deal for the lowest price. How many people do you know, honestly, who regularly go to that much trouble for anything less expensive then a house or car?

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[Rinnon]

Most consumers will just accept their fate and do nothing (despite the efforts of people trying to get them to stand up), leaving everyone else doomed.

Why do I believe this? I've been stuck with a single ISP for years. If this truly happens, it does not happen in a reasonable amount of time, and I'd rather have a competent government do something about it than wait for a miracle.

It's a self fulfilling prophecy too. It's extremely hard to be motivated towards action when so many apathetic people around you won't lift a finger to help, even when they agree with you or believe in your cause. Everyone knows one person isn't enough to change a corporations ways, so even those who might have been moved to action see the frivolity of it, and end up doing nothing.

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[SuricouRaven]

"assuming there is no government-imposed monopoly in place"

What about a natural monopoly? It's possible for a monopoly to exist without a government imposing one. There are several situations where it can happen. For example, in the case where the cost of entry to a market is very high (Got to dig up roads and lay cables), once the first supplier has been set up it may no longer be economical for a competitor to follow as the potential market share will be lower

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[Khyber]

All day, every day. In the streets, in their offices, in their homes. In front of their families and in full view of the public, to spread the message such corruption will not be tolerated. Mayors, Judges, District Attorneys, nobody is immune.

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Alright. I think you are right, but I just wanted to have somebody state it. I hate it when people say that we have to change governments and then only resort to voting and writing letters.

I honestly wonder how we would go about doing this.

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am the person that you replied to.

I think that you are right. I'd even add some accountants to that list. I think that accountants aren't as slimy, but they do have their hands in the pot.

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[Anonymous Coward]

If anyone from the government is going to "step in", it'll be to make sure the BBC gets screwed rather than helped. Lest we not forget Cameron and Murdoch's meeting at Number 10 no less than 4 fucking days after they took the reigns, for which Murdoch entered and left via a side door.

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[KonoWatakushi]

In a zero sum world where resources are finite, you cannot win without someone else losing.

This misconception is part of the reason that humanity is still stuck in the dark ages. We are so far from exhausting any resources, that it is completely irrelevant at this point. The only problem is that our resources are being put to exceedingly poor use, and those in power are doing their best to keep it that way.

Basically, nearly all resource problems can be solved with more energy, and there is plenty of that available, should we choose to tap nuclear or develop fusion.

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[Moridin42]

But.. who are the weak? Modern governments are more likely to have processes which preclude the numerically superior side from imposing its will on the numerically inferior side on the premise that the numerically inferior is the "weak" side.

However, if you give the smaller side too much political ability is is not weak. It can stop the majority at will, hence the majority is weak. Give it too little power and it is weak, unable to stop the majority from having its way.

Making the issue even more difficult, each issue up for debate by the government has different power bases and backing, different sizes of sides. Any government incapable of rapidly, accurately, and dynamically allocating political restraints will fail to protect the weak. That currently includes all governments.

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[Opportunist]

Morally it has never been wrong. The only reason that it's illegal is that... well, who do you think makes the laws?

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[Opportunist]

Unfortunately we're not in a capitalist free market system.

In a (ideal) capitalist free market system, you would be absolutely correct. An ISP offering a (from the customer's point of view) flawed product would instantly cause another ISP to come into existence that offers a product the customer wants, the customer would identify the superior product, switch to it, the supplier offering the product the customer wants will thrive, the supplier offering a product that is not sought after will perish. This is the situation in an ideal capitalist world.

Our world, unfortunately, hasn't been capitalist for a while now.

The customer cannot fulfill his role in the capitalist system because this ability has been stripped from him. Governments should actually ensure that he can fulfill this role, but instead created regulations and laws (or did not enforce laws to enable him, since the customers as a not organized group are invariably in the weaker market position and hence need this support to enable them to fill this role sensibly) that increasingly takes this ability away, creating a system that favors the supplier in an undue and for the capitalist system very unhealthy way.

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[Opportunist]

Balance is the key here. Unions were originally about that, but, just like you said, are today a prime example of tipping the balance too far.

Customers are towards suppliers usually in the weaker position today, since they are an unorganized mass, financially (individually) weaker than the few suppliers who are well organized corporations, often organized not only within but also with each other. They lack a lot of tools and information the supplier has. The capitalist theoretic system assumes a customer that has the free choice between various suppliers and full information of all products. This is, as anyone can easily see, not the reality. Usually, you are stuck with a few suppliers that are organized amongst themselves to ensure no competition (agreeing between them on something akin to territory protection, i.e. you supply Europe, I supply the US, and we don't get into each other's hair) and customers that don't even know of possible alternatives (how many people even know they could run Linux instead of Windows, a lot even assume Linux is something that runs on top of Windows).

This is where I would expect governments to ensure this balance is restored to make the system work. They are currently doing a lot to work diametrically against this goal.

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm the person that you are replying to.

Yeah, I agree that it is not morally wrong. It seems so obvious, now that I think about it. After all, if a person refuses to step down or do his job, then he is really picking a fight.

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[TheRaven64]

I don't have a problem with this. It's their network, and they can do whatever they want with it, as long as they meet two conditions:

• If they are only providing access to a subset of the Internet, then they may not claim to be providing Internet access in any adverts, and should be subject to significant financial penalties if they do so.
• If they are filtering the content - by any criteria - then they are liable for any illegal traffic that flows over their network, including any spam, copyright infringement, fraud, child pornography, and communications between terrorists. For serious cases, the corporate veil should be pierced and the top level executives should be personally accountable in court.

As long as they're happy with this, they should feel free to go ahead and filter or prioritise as much as they like.

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[Charliemopps]

Because most poloticans aren't elected based on their political views anymore. They are elected because they had enough money to slip in the most ads between episodes of Jersey Shore.

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Was that before or after he started writing stories with a time traveling character having sex with his own mother?

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[dalani]

Maybe it does in the USA, doesn't mean it should nor exist in all countries. Take China for example, where govt exist to pursue its own empire building using commerce as a tool achieve that goal while technically still communist. wrap your head around that one!

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense. Violence is a fucking ignorant reaction. If you're unsatisfied with the politicians being elected, then work on changing the minds of the voters. It's insufficient to be a pundit, of course. Launch some initiative. Bring together communities of like-minded folk and become a force of change.

  Does this sound naive? It's big thinking, but that's how shit gets done from the ground up. It's tough, but please don't embrace the cowardly idea of political decapitation. Fight with might, and don't just pluck off the bits of government that you don't like.

Changing a corrupt political scene is like treating cancer: removing the tumor is insufficient, so chemotherapy is used, even though it wreaks havoc on the entire body.

You think that changing a few politicians will change the system? THAT is naive.

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your comment signature is an excellent aphorism.
I've copied and pasted it into my Google notebook.

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Realistically, the chances of this happening are slim to none.

In the UK, Be There started a nationwide deployment of 24 mbps ADSL equipment and associated back-haul because BT Group were uninterested in adopting new technology whilst they could continue to milk what they thought was a captive audience.

Be were followed by Bulldog ( now C&W ), Easynet ( now Sky ), TalkTalk and many more local loop unbundlers. On top of all that infrastructure are over 100 ISPs contending for your business.

In other words: move to the UK and stop whinging.

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[Dan1701]

To understand what is going on here, you have to understand the UK telecoms market. It all started with a publicly owned conglomerate which did post and telephony rather badly. This got split up, and the telephony sector privatised together with some very special rules to force it to play fair and not exploit its monopoly position. This leaves us with the situation where British Telecom (BT) owns most of the telephone wiring from exchange to end user, yet is forced to share this with assorted other operators and is legally compelled to play them fair. With few exceptions, there is no difference between the copper you're talking over for BT ADSL, Talktalk ADSL or whatever.

The only real competitor in the market is the conglomeration nominally owned by Virginmedia, which is primarily a cable TV outfit which does internet on the side. Pretty much all their cabling dates from the initial build, and covers only those areas initially identified as really good prospects for selling cable TV to (primarily poorer areas, higher density housing, lovers of pay-for football etc). Mobile internet, wide area wifi and so on are minor players and can be discounted.

What this leaves you with is a price war, and a race to the bottom. Virginmedia can supply super-good internet, but only to cabled areas. Niche ISPs can supply good ADSL that is as good as the BT copper can support, and the likes of Talktalk are left slugging it out, trying to cut corners wherever they can to push the price ever lower. This is why we're seeing this crude blackmail attempt; these bargain basement ISPs are struggling to make any margin at all since pretty much every cost and corner that can be cut has been cut, from El Cheapo ADSL modems to call centres outsourced to Elbonian idiots (and the call centre numbers are usually premium rate numbers, to scrape a bit back there too).

None of this is going to change until BT upgrades the copper to the end user (which it is doing, with the Fibre To The Cabinet upgrading programme), and even that is going to take a while since there isn't any real incentive for BT to break any records doing the upgrade. It is a constrained monopoly operator, and is obliged to share any upgrades it makes with its direct competitors, so why bother fussing with upgrades? All BT needs to do is idle along doing the bare minimum, and wait for the competition to cut each others' throats for it.

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[nagnamer]

Are you maybe refusing to step down?

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[nagnamer]

and I'd rather have a competent government do something about it, or, in other words, wait for a miracle.

There, fixed that for ya.

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[nagnamer]

Your idea is brilliant (no sarcasm) and I agree with it. However, I do feel it's a bit idealistic. Any ISP that comes up with a detrimental plan like the one in the article would also flatly refuse to agree to those terms.

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[deadweight]

bwahahahaa - let me laugh some more - bwahahahaha Broadband access for most people is a monopoly or duopoly at best. Some third company is really going to spend millions of dollars and fight through government red tape for years in order to undercut the existing providers? ROFLMAO

Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, but why should the strong guys bother beating you up when they've got the government to do it for them?

Cheapest is Best

[LilBlackKittie]

This is what the drive to the lowest price possible gets you: a broadband that loses the ISP money in an attempt to get that TV and billboard price-point of £5.99 per month. How does the ISP make money and remain competitive? Answer: more bites at the cherry! Phorm, getting content providers to pay... etc...

Re:Cheapest is Best

[Sulphur]

At a child's birthday party, Cracker Jack boxes are handed out.

Birthday boy announces that the prizes are his.

Re:Cheapest is Best

[MrL0G1C]

Exactly and this is why I dropped Virgin Media - Phorm, 'traffic shaping' and a generall shambles of a network - pages broken by poorly managed caching systems. Upstream only 2-5% of download speed. Bittorrents take forever to re-up including linux distros and other legal torrents. They suck bad. And they're not even cheap!!!

Re:Cheapest is Best

[severn2j]

Virgin Media has (allegedly) backed away from Phorm, along with the other two ISP's that were considering it.. You are, however correct in every other statement.

Oof

[Prikolist]

Not only does this kill small companies' as well as individual users' chances at internet presence, but what a great way to kill off any p2p protocols by dumping them whosesale into the 'slow lane'.

Re:Oof

[Nemyst]

Everybody knows any P2P protocol is strictly used for pirating, so then it's alright!

Those small companies and users are probably infringing something somewhere too, so they're all criminals anyways.

Re:Oof

[VortexCortex]

Everybody knows any P2P protocol is strictly used for pirating, so then it's alright!

Those small companies and users are probably infringing something somewhere too, so they're all criminals anyways.

Yargh! Those lilly-livered scallywags wot call themselves "Producers" are pedalin' stolen wares foisted from real Content Producers under legal duress! Aye! The true artisans be shackled and made to slave away in concerts and promo gigs to make ends meat.

I say we smartly keel-haul the dirty bilge rats! Nay, lay siege and claim the bountiful media booty, make like Robin Hood with the lot of it, then scuttle the lot of 'em!

Avast ye thick skulled brutes -- Will not the art-slaves still earn a living prostituting at promo parties, late night shows, and musical venues?

(A cutlass twice sharpened slices doubly)

Re:Oof

[Anonymous Coward]

Funniest post of the day.

Re:Oof

[PeterBrett]

Everybody knows any P2P protocol is strictly used for pirating, so then it's alright!

Those small companies and users are probably infringing something somewhere too, so they're all criminals anyways.

Yargh! Those lilly-livered scallywags wot call themselves "Producers" are pedalin' stolen wares foisted from real Content Producers under legal duress! Aye!

This is pretty much correct.

The true artisans be shackled and made to slave away in concerts and promo gigs to make ends meat.

As is this. It's well-documented that recording industry accounting practices are designed to ensure that artists never succeed in paying back their advances, no matter how much revenue is obtained by the industry from "peddlin'" (n.b. spelling) their work.

I say we smartly keel-haul the dirty bilge rats! Nay, lay siege and claim the bountiful media booty, make like Robin Hood with the lot of it, then scuttle the lot of 'em!

For the sake of clarity, the Pirate Party UK endorses the former strategy, but not the latter.

Re:Oof

[Spad]

P2P Protocols are *already* dumped into the slow lane; most ISPs these days actively throttle P2P traffic to some degree because, as someone else already stated, it's only used for pirating stuff - everyone knows that (and because poorly configured bittorrent clients running 24/7 and downloading Tb of data a week do tend to have a rather dramatic impact on network performance when you've massively oversold your capacity).

Re:Oof

[TheRaven64]

P2P stuff is deprioritised for a very good reason - it is very rarely latency-sensitive. If some packets in your BitTorrent download arrive a few seconds late, you probably won't notice. If you get two seconds of jitter in the middle of an HTTP download, then you might notice if it's streamed video and the buffer size isn't big enough. If you get two seconds of latency in a VoIP link, it's unusable.

Re:Oof

[nurb432]

And while i realize its not a guarantee in the digital world, it will kill off the concept of 'free speech' for the individual.

So does this work for everything?

[Anonymous Coward]

How much does it cost for you to NOT be a douchebag?

I wonder if i can use that too... Hey goverment ijits... I'll stop breaking the law if you pay me.

They keep using that phrase

[DoofusOfDeath]

'absolutely could see situations in which some content or application providers might want to pay BT for a quality of service above best efforts.'

I do not think "best efforts" means what they think it means. If it was their "best" effort, there would be no room for improvement.

Re:They keep using that phrase

[Rennt]

Don't be so quick with the witty movie quotes - "best effort" can mean different things. In networking "best effort" service comes with no guarantees. Above that you have your service level agreements.

In common usage "best effort" is also something of a euphemism for "I'm not promising anything", so that fits too.

it's the end of the net as we know it?

[Bananatree3]

Yes. You'll wake up tomorrow to a new internet, slightly different than todays.

where we go from here, is up to you.

Two very different things

[SuperKendall]

I think absolutely, ISP's should be allowed to provide faster bandwidth for sites where companies have agreed to pay for delivering content to the consumer at faster transfer rates. Those companies are in effect subsidizing higher levels of ISP service for some content; there's nothing at all wrong with that.

The second issue raised, where potentially a company could fork over enough money to block some other service - that's really bad, but I don't see it ever happening despite scare quotes like the ones the article provides. There's simply no way customers would put up with it, and the company being blocked could easily sue the company paying for the block. So who would actually do that?

Remember that you are being frightened in order to be OK with giving over more control over an inherently open internet, to those that want to control content. It's under the guise of protecting you but the first thing you should do when someone says "I'm here to protect you from a horrible danger" is to be very suspicious and ask a lot of questions to find out if in fact there's really a credible threat.

Re:Two very different things

[sribe]

I think absolutely, ISP's should be allowed to provide faster bandwidth for sites where companies have agreed to pay for delivering content to the consumer at faster transfer rates. Those companies are in effect subsidizing higher levels of ISP service for some content; there's nothing at all wrong with that.

And how exactly do they do that? They do it by delaying the packets sent by those who don't pay extra.

Re:Two very different things

[Anonymous Coward]

The second issue raised, where potentially a company could fork over enough money to block some other service - that's really bad, but I don't see it ever happening despite scare quotes like the ones the article provides. There's simply no way customers would put up with it, and the company being blocked could easily sue the company paying for the block. So who would actually do that?

You are dead wrong on this. We know that consumers will put up with a lot of crap. All it takes is for a few of the greedy ISP monopolies to start doing this and the customers will feel like they simply have no alternative and accept it as status quo. Secondly, you speak like every single entity on the internet is some company who has the time and resources to sue. I don't know how courts are in the UK, but here in America the guy with the most money to buy the best lawyers always wins. What happens when a small non-profit organization website is blocked by a larger corporation? Or what about some of the more socially unacceptable websites (ie. 4chan, porn sites, etc) are blocked by a company with some conflicting interest? We all know how these law-suits would turn out, and that is not in favor of freedom of the internet.

Who would actually do that? The answer is obvious - someone with something to gain by doing so.

Re:Two very different things

[SuperKendall]

You are dead wrong on this. We know that consumers will put up with a lot of crap.

Citation?

We know from example that people will gladly pay extra for systems or services with crap removed. They hate the crap as much as we do, and are not technically able to fix the issue. But consumers ALSO know how to complain.

here in America the guy with the most money to buy the best lawyers always wins.

I have a number of friends who are lawyers and know for a fact that is simply untrue, as much as you might like to believe it.

What happens when a small non-profit organization website is blocked by a larger corporation?

And why praytell, would a large organization care to actually spend money to block that small non-profit? That's a totally unrealistic example, as are any the scare-mongers try to fill you with fear over something that HAS NEVER and WILL NEVER happen. If it were at all likely it would have happened during the dot-com boom... companies don't have the money to be flinging around to block sites they don't care for and open up a huge can of lawsuit worms in the process. Remember (and again I do have friends who are lawyers) companies are FAR more afraid of exposure to lawsuits, than actual suits.

Re:Two very different things

[gilroy]

Plus, of course, the idea that you could "sue" if blocked depends on a legal consensus that common carriers have to, you know, carry you. If two-tiered internet is OK, then why shouldn't an ISP be allowed to block those who won't pay up?

We really need to get back, or get to, the idea of ISPs as common carriers, disallowed from discriminating among packets based on content or, worse, on payor.

Re:Two very different things

[Anonymous Coward]

There's simply no way customers would put up with it, and the company being blocked could easily sue the company paying for the block.

If they want to access the internet at all they will. In my area, there is a single ISP. One. Just one. My job depends on having an internet connection. I do not want this favoritism to be allowed. It is not in the best interest of consumers. It is in the best interest of giant corporations that are making more than enough money already, however (even though they'd like you to believe that they are broke).

Re:Two very different things

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a look at the current state of ISPs. In many areas there is only one available ISP, and consumers simply accept their crap because there is no alternative. Want access to the internet? Pay our ridiculous prices for our poor service or no internets for you.

Also, as far as small orginizations vs larger corporations, wikileaks comes to mind. I think there are quite a few companies and governments that would jump at the chance to have wikileaks blocked.

Re:Two very different things

[Anonymous Coward]

...companies have agreed to pay for delivering content to the consumer at faster transfer rates.

Does this mean consumers no longer have to contend with bandwidth and maximum download caps as long as consumers are willing to accept variable speeds? Otherwise, what good does it do me if YouTube wants to pay extra to feed me uncompressed HD quality video in real time if my internet connection can only accommodate a fraction of the required bandwidth and download allotment? For example, my ISP has tiered services. Let's say I'm on the lowest tier. YouTube has paid to have its content delivered at the fastest possible speed. So for as long as I'm surfing YouTube, my connection behaves as if it's on the highest tier. Did I understand you correctly?

That's all well and good except for the fact that every consumer ISP (at least in the US) has pretty much oversold its available bandwidth. It's a zero sum game. In order for my connection to be temporarily upgraded when surfing YouTube, my neighbor's connection will have to be downgraded when he's surfing Vimeo (which didn't pay extra for content delivery in this hypothetical scenario) which may violate my neighbor's minimum level of service (unless of course ISPs downgrade that somewhere in the small print). Because let's be honest here, the extra money that ISPs will be collecting for this prioritized delivery isn't likely to go into upgrading infrastructure because we all know what the US telcos did with the tax payers' money that was earmarked specifically for upgrading infrastructure.

EDIT: lol... the captcha for my post is "extort"

Re:Two very different things

[Nemyst]

First, they say they'll speed up service for X and Y.

Slowly, your Internet service degrades for other sites. Wondering what's going on, you contact your ISP. They say X and Y's customers are using a lot of bandwidth and thus the infrastructure's getting throttled a bit for others. Nothing they can do about it.

After a while, they announce a grand overhaul of their services so that they can better provide access to sites... but they only speak of X and Y. Turns out the upgrade was done for those and the rest is still on mostly the same thing bar negligible upgrades.

Fast forward a little bit and you'll end up with sluggish access to all the sites that didn't pay. No, they never actually cut off a site or slowed it down on purpose - they just dedicated all their resources to them and let the rest fall to pieces. They have the incentive, they'll do it if they can.

Re:Two very different things

[Anonymous Coward]

Die. Just go kill yourself. You have no value to the human race.

Re:Two very different things

[Anonymous Coward]

And why praytell, would a large organization care to actually spend money to block that small non-profit?

If that small non-profit is WikiLeaks, then there are a lot of corporations and governments that would gladly pay every ISP in the world to block that site. Julian Assange most certainly would not be able to overturn an American ban with a lawsuit, and he'd have to file separate law suits in the UK, Germany, France, etc.

Re:Two very different things

[Imrik]

I say we offer them the choice, they can be classified as common carriers and thus carry everything equally or they can discriminate and be responsible for everything that they carry.

Re:Two very different things

[Infernal Device]

The second issue raised, where potentially a company could fork over enough money to block some other service - that's really bad, but I don't see it ever happening despite scare quotes like the ones the article provides. There's simply no way customers would put up with it, and the company being blocked could easily sue the company paying for the block. So who would actually do that?

You underestimate the power of marketing. If you say it loudly enough, long enough, and with enough attractive models, you could convince people of anything.

Remember that you are being frightened in order to be OK with giving over more control over an inherently open internet, to those that want to control content. It's under the guise of protecting you but the first thing you should do when someone says "I'm here to protect you from a horrible danger" is to be very suspicious and ask a lot of questions to find out if in fact there's really a credible threat.

Tell that the the average man on the street. They'll tell you everything is fine and be perfectly happy. They will happily sign over control of their internet access and content because the people in charge "couldn't possibly do anything *really* harmful, could they?"

Re:Two very different things

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes net neutrality is nothing but fairness doctrine for the internet or whatever the latest fox news horseshit is. Please don't vote you are too stupid to handle the responsibility

Re:Two very different things

[chaboud]

Bingo!

This is absolutely the most right-headed (and concise) statement of this problem that I've seen.

All of these guys (congress and parliament included) should be in jail.

Re:Two very different things

[Anonymous Coward]

> "There's simply no way customers would put up with it....,"

Yet.

If you went back 15-20 years, not realy that long ago, and told someone some of the common practices that are used by government and corporations they wouldn't believe you.

I remember satelite and cable TV without ads - that was part of what you were paying for.
I remember laughing at bottled water, but they privatised the water corp and the new owners keep to "minimum legal standards" so in some areas water tastes like shit.
I remember a time when only your carry on luggage was rifled through and x-rayed
I also remember the internet before it was tamed and packaged like a TV station, before each transfer of the same data was paid for 3 or more times. (upload, download and soon priority.)

So yeah, I think you missed a word in that quoted sentence .
Yet

Re:Two very different things

[Anonymous Coward]

Apply the same line of reasoning to your national highway system and see where that leaves you. Look up "Natural monopoly" and why you will have to regulate access under such circumstances. Without regulation you are allowing a private monopoly.

Re:Two very different things

[jarofgreen]

The second issue raised, where potentially a company could fork over enough money to block some other service - that's really bad, but I don't see it ever happening despite scare quotes like the ones the article provides. There's simply no way customers would put up with it, and the company being blocked could easily sue the company paying for the block. So who would actually do that?

Sue under what law?

The ruling party in the UK has made it clear they do not support net-neutrality. So you think they would introduce a law that made this kind of thing illegal? Dream on.

Re:Two very different things

[SuricouRaven]

Or they just don't upgrade their networks as traffic increases, allowing them to become overloaded. It's good business strategy - if their best effort service is too good, there will be no reason for other companies to pay for above-best-effort service. Got to keep the cheap product sufficiently low quality to avoid eating into the desireability of the higher cost product.

Re:Two very different things

[houghi]

You can offer what you will like and they will take what they want, whether you offered it or not.

Re:Two very different things

[Khyber]

"You are dead wrong on this. We know that consumers will put up with a lot of crap.

Citation?"

Oil Crisis of the 70s? Duh? It took prices of oil rising 400% before demand began to drop like a rock.

Re:Two very different things

[choko]

To the point of the second issue raised - What if several ISPs collude with each other to block the same service? Customers really wouldn't know the difference. If there is "no way" that ISPs would do this, what is the harm in forbidding the practice? Either way you look at it, someone is going to have control of the inherently open internet, and make it less open. It will either be corporate or government. Which would you prefer?

Re:Two very different things

[mattrwilliams]

I think absolutely, ISP's should be allowed to provide faster bandwidth for sites where companies have agreed to pay for delivering content to the consumer at faster transfer rates.

Without adding additional resources (which cost a lot of money), this can only be done by slowing down other traffic. Although blocking is unlikely, slowing down other traffic can make these services unusable, without actually "blocking" that traffic (think 1 frame per second YouTube). This will force the other services to also pay for the fast lane but only the largest sites will be able to afford this.

Say goodbye to new innovative services, especially those that compete with the business models of existing media conglomerates. Free or low-cost services like Skype, Facetime, etc. whose business models depend on equitable sharing of bandwidth will no longer be able to survive in their current form (think monthly fees, no free version). Anything not blessed by the big guys won't have a chance. An example of a big guy in the US: the new Comcast after the upcoming merger.

Yes, it is possible that an ISP could add new resources ($$$) so that the other traffic is not slowed, but think of the business case. In my example, the only cost is some DPI to classify the traffic and you get much more revenue by charging everyone who can afford it more money.

Lower cost + higher revenue + control = BINGO!

Re:Two very different things

[Lennie]

Why hasn't it happend now ?:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Oil_Prices_1861_2007.svg

Re:Two very different things

[yoha]

My ISP already does this and it is very frustrating. When I stopped sending them checks, they cut my download speed to 0 - Zero! They didn't allow any upload speeds at all. After an angry call with the help desk, I agreed to write them a check on a monthly basis. They now allow me to download and upload from any website. Anyway, I contacted my representative about this. To think that the ISP would stop letting me use their service, just because I stopped paying for it. The monopolies will rule the world!

Re:Two very different things

[currently_awake]

Laws and fairness only count if enforced. It's entirely possible for an ISP to increase bandwidth/latency for one provider while giving premium service to another that the customers will "choose" to give their business to the right one. You're not blocking, after all. Just giving better service to the paying customers.

Re:Two very different things

[Khyber]

Bill Hicks said it better than I could.

I'll leave it to you to decide which particular statement I'm referencing - you'd most likely be right in most any situation.

Re:Two very different things

[lingon]

Isn't this what would actually happen if they implemented it right now? From what I recall, there is a legal principle called "mere conduit" in the EU that applies to ISPs since they don't inspect or throttle traffic -- if they would start doing that, they would lose their "mere conduit" status and be legally responsible for everything that they carry. I don't understand why this isn't debated?

Re:Two very different things

[Lennie]

I'm not very familiar with American culture, but I think the graph says, if you slowly change something no one objects. It's like boiling the frog.

Re:Two very different things

[Laurence0]

What do you mean, if?

Re:Two very different things

[Imrik]

In the US ISPs are currently in a gray area, they get the protections of being common carriers without the obligations.

Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing we in the USA have net neutrality to keep things like this from happening! Oh wait....

Wheee

[Anonymous Coward]

I always enjoy it when my double payed (monthly and tax dollar subsidy) ISP decides what I can and can not see on the internet unless websites also pay twice (or three times).

Is it time for the revolution yet? I can hand out pamphlets.

Welcome to the Communications War

[ideonexus]

The problem with a lack of net neutrality is that it takes multiple ISPs to carry the packets. So if YouTube agrees to pay for preferential treatment, they're going to have to pay every ISP in the world for it. So one ISP got their check, but the one next door didn't, so they stifle the traffic. What happens when my attempt to ping Google gets bounced out to Europe as occasionally happens?

If we don't get Net Neutrality, we will have a war between ISPs discriminating against each other's traffic, and they will beg for the government to step in to resolve disputes. Once that happens, instead of the simple single rule of Net Neutrality, we will get a patchwork of situational regulations dictated by corporations through armies of lawyers representing their best interests.

Re:Welcome to the Communications War

[Spad]

Or, you know, how the non-internet world works right now :)

Re:Welcome to the Communications War

[Pteraspidomorphi]

What happens when my attempt to ping Google gets bounced out to Europe as occasionally happens?

Sorry, but what's your ISP? I live in Europe and I don't remember packets sent elsewhere in Europe ever getting bounced to america or asia... Are things that bad over there?

Re:Welcome to the Communications War

[Anonymous Coward]

The OP has the wrong idea about how the internet works. It is not a peer to peer network, there are so called peer-2-peer networks that you will use (gnutella like things) but these are overlays in IP and the packets in them are moved around by the various tiers of providers in the internet architecture. Although there are schemes for peer-2-peer architectures they are not used in any territory that I am familiar with or in any scheme past an IP-X.

So, this is how the internet works.

ISP's are the last link in one of two chains.

1. Large private AS (autonomous system) network (Google, Facebook, Amazon, Akamai). Content is placed onto this neIPtwork and carried either at a low rate (for a cloudfront or Akamai customer) or at the providers own expense (Facebook,Google)
2. IP-X peering facility. There are many of these round the world these are where ISP's build thier backhauls too and where the AS networks connect to. They then "peer" at this point with a selection of the networks at that IP-X using the BGP protocol.
3. A backhaul is used to transport bits from the IP-X to the access network. This may be the ISP's or, in some territories like the UK it can be provided by a wholesale provider.
4. The backhaul is connected to the access network - fibre or copper at an exchange. This is now ISP territory for sure.

The other chain is where IP transit is used to provide commercial or barter agreements between large networks, in this case a company might agree with another to carry IP traffic over a link on their behalf, normally on the condition that either money is paid, or that they agree to take traffic from them and pass it over another link. Some network providers (put Tier-1 into wikipedia) do this as their primary form of (sort of) business. This is how your packets get carried from your home connection to where ever else, and this is why the ISP's don't like it if you do run a successful service from your basement.. it buggers up their agreements no end - and why running servers at home is expensive and you will find that moving to Cloudfront or a big remote hosting provider (who will be peered cheaply) is so much cheaper.

Now, the big content providers will normally peer with anyone, have a look at http://www.facebook.com/peering/ for an example policy; that's because they want to get their content to anyone as fast as possible, but even so it is a pain in the arse for them to do peering with everyone, and some other types of content providers may find managing peering with all ISPs hard - for example rapidly created and dissolved providers like a rock tour or a sports event. To manage that kind of need they peer with Akamai or Cloudfront and pay them, and hope that all the ISP's they need to peer with are peered with those organisations already. This creates a level playing field for content providers of all sorts; everyone pays cents per mb, and so long as you can wire up an ad platform to your site you should get close to breaking even at least. This is how the internet works and has worked for the last 15 years since NSF stopped running the backbone.

The problem that ISP's have is that building backhaul and peering capability that is able to cope with hd video is expensive - not unobtainably expensive, but expensive and small ISP's will need to get (perfectly commercially viable) loans to do it. Unfortunately this is easy to say, and hard to do in the environment that we live in today. Therefore it is rather attractive for a small ISP to be able to get wholesale backhaul and allow the wholesaler to sort that kind of stuff out while operating a "pay as you go model" and using their subscribers fees to pay for it. The provision of network capacity requires funds, and a functional market (which means well regulated - as any one who has observed what has gone on in the world economy for the last five years surely will understand by now) can provide those funds efficiently to where they are needed, with one exception.

Re:Welcome to the Communications War

[toriver]

Not only that: Let's say some American content provider sends traffic across Comcast and pays them for the bandwidth. Comcast sends traffic further on to BT's customers and the networks involved are supposed to divvy up the cost between them.

Now, if BT demands that the content provider (aka. Comcast's customer) should pay them when BT's customers request content from them, the concent provider is likely to argue that such payments should be deducted from what they pay to Comcast. Would Comcast approve? Me thinks not. But that would be the logical conclusion when a third-party asks for such "protection money".

Or they would report BT to the feds for extortion. Which is what it would look like.

Thats the opposite of net neutrality

[macpacheco]

What's the point in having ultra high speed internet if most sites are slow by your own ISPs admission ???
The most absurd is this happening when 10 gigabit backbone connections are the norm, 40/100 gigabit backbone connections are starting deployment.
Fiber optic cable and accessories at an all time low.
Linux and Free BSD competing for lower cost router solutions.
Truly absurd. Competition is the only answer. Switch to the smaller ISPs. If customers leave those greedy bastards in significant numbers, this idea will die.
Thanks god I live in a city with 4 broadband options (two ADSL, two TV cable).
Can somebody tell us how much a 10 gigabit link with an international internet carrier costs this days in the US ? And in other countries. Those large ISPs buy multiple 10 Gbps links. Each can supply about 1 million users at a low quality level, or 100k users at an excellent quality level. I believe those links don't cost US$ 100k / month in the largest metro areas.

Re:Thats the opposite of net neutrality

[green1]

Truly absurd. Competition is the only answer. Switch to the smaller ISPs. If customers leave those greedy bastards in significant numbers, this idea will die.
Thanks god I live in a city with 4 broadband options (two ADSL, two TV cable).

And for those of us who don't?

I live in a city with 1 cable provider, and 1 ADSL provider, the ADSL provider, by law, must make service available to resellers (for some unknown reason, the cable company doesn't have to)... but because our government regulation body is useless, the ADSL provider only needs to offer the resellers 1/5 of the speed they are willing to offer to their fastest customers. furthermore, the ADSL provider is actually allowed to throttle, traffic shape, and bandwidth limit the resellers lines! So even if I switch from the ADSL provider to a small reseller of ADSL, I still can't escape the traffic shaping, throttling, and bandwidth limiting, AND I'd have to give up my current internet speeds...

A free market is great in theory, but doesn't work when you have a government granted monopoly with a corrupt regulating body.

Re:Thats the opposite of net neutrality

[macpacheco]

You should consider yourself somewhat lucky.
Here in Brazil there's zero requirement for reselling ADSL lines. There's zero actual unbundling. I believe that if this ADSL resell didn't existed in your area, standard ADSL service would be a LOT worse. The incumbent carrier must differentiate, or they will loose revenue to the alternative providers.

I was co-founder of a small telecom here in my home town. The only copper unbundling contracts costed more per line than the full commercial POTS service contract. A contract just so that the incumbent can say that there is a contract. The Brazilian FCC equivalent does very little to make it viable to use the incumbent network for any kind of other telecom companies.
In Brazil there's essentially zero dark fiber leasing arrangements. If you find an actual dark fiber contract, it's cheaper to run your own fiber for a 5 year investment horizon, even if all you need is a single fiber strand out of a 18 strand cable.
One 2Mbps E1 local loop costs US$ 1000 per month (in the US this costs about US$ 200 per month).
We ended up focusing on long distance service. Now I sold my share, the company has since switched hands twice.

Another interesting side of my story that is rosy but was very gloomy just 2 years ago.
I live in a million people plus metro area in Brazil. Something akin to living in Tampa-FL or New Orleans-LA, coastal cities like my home town.
Up to 3 years ago, the fastest broadband we could get at a reasonable price was 1024/300 ADSL and cable. There was 2Mbps service, but it costed 70% of the local minimum wage. Even 1Mbps ADSL / cable costed about 30% of the minimum wage back then. Of course Brazil's minimum wage isn't very high. Our comcrap is called Net servicos (the major primary long distance company - Embratel today owns 80+% of Net Servicos). Our Verizon is called Oi (catchy name for a company run by thugs with no respect for the law or their customers). The only thing thugs do that Oi don't do is to actually beat you up and kill you, all other lying / cheating / disrespect the law to-the-maximum-extent-possible they DO THAT ALL THE TIME. Sorry for the aggravation.

Then one new nationwide carrier came along (GVT) and offered ADSL/VDSL service where the SLOWEST was 3000/750 ADSL, that's right, this new carrier offered service with a minimum speed 50% fastest than the faster service before them. And 12000/1200 ADSL cost was just 20% more than 3000/750. And they also had 100Mbps/10Mbps fiber access (not cheap, but cheaper than a dedicated 1Mbps IP link).
And they didn't only offered affordable residential / commercial services (their POTS and ADSL service costs exactly the same for residential and commercial customers, while the other carriers charge about 30% more for commercial customers). They also offered reasonable wholesale IP links and STM1 (OC3) links to other major urban areas at about half the previous cheapest price. If they can offer prices that cheap, the only reason the prior companies offered higher prices were lack of competition.
Now, one year later, the other companies still have 1Mbps service, but prices dropped to half as before. All major large ISPs now have top service of at least 8Mbps.
However all you need to do is drive 100km south/north/west and the fastest broadband you can find is still 1Mbps. On those 3rd tier cities there was no broadband competition until 3g from the mobile carriers arrived, before that it was ADSL or usually crappy Wifi based wireless access, ADSL is those cities something is so bad that you get far better service from 3g broadband than Oi ADSL. Let's call first tier cities mega metro areas like São Paulo/Rio de Janeiro, our New York and Miamis in economic importance.

The lack of competition in small / medium countryside cities is so poor that the federal government bought a bankrupt nationwide fiber company and is using that to create its own nationwide IP backbone (Telebras / PNBL = National Broadband Plan). In the country side there are lots of ISPs paying US

No Wikileaks

[oldhack]

Any and all subversives will be zapped out. Like in the good old days.

Tipping point: whether websites buy into this

[noidentity]

Like companies holding monopolies, the tipping point seems to be whether website owners pay ISPs to avoid getting slowed down. Here's hoping that affected sites put up an intro page on any ISPs that slow them down, explaining to the user that the site is slow not because of problems on the site's end, but rather that it's the user's ISP, the company he pays to get access to the internet, that is artificially slowing things down.

Re:Tipping point: whether websites buy into this

[westlake]

Here's hoping that affected sites put up an intro page on any ISPs that slow them down, explaining to the user that the site is slow not because of problems on the site's end, but rather that it's the user's ISP, the company he pays to get access to the internet, that is artificially slowing things down.

That tells the user you can't afford life in the fast lane. That you are strictly second tier.

Re:Tipping point: whether websites buy into this

[Totenglocke]

No, it tells the user that their ISP is using Mafia tactics and saying "Pay us for speed protection or something unfortunate might happen".

Re:Tipping point: whether websites buy into this

[Musically_ut]

That is the route MegaUpload is taking for some French ISPs who were caught doing it.

Re:Tipping point: whether websites buy into this

[Khyber]

So it's time we sued the ISPs under RICO

Re:Tipping point: whether websites buy into this

[Totenglocke]

That or arrest them for tax evasion! ;)

Re:Tipping point: whether websites buy into this

[TheRaven64]

Take it a step further. Don't explain that the page is slow, simply block access to that ISP for anything other than a page saying that the ISP is attempting to extort money from web sites and that you are not prepared to do business with them (and that other sites that they visit are likely to be slow if the owners have not paid their protection money). Google would be in a good position to do this - imagine how many complaints an ISP would get if their customers couldn't visit YouTube...

Re:Tipping point: whether websites buy into this

[noidentity]

But then users would think this means that the websites simply aren't paying their bandwidth bills. By allowing it to run slowly, that makes it clear to the user that the sites are paying for their, just that the user's ISP is slowing them down intentionally.

Isn't it past time...

[Anonymous Coward]

...for the internet to route around damage like this 2-tier system? Seems to me if enough systems refused to route traffic to ISPs that do this, and I'm not talking backbone DNS, I mean grassroots mom and pop places, it might be a step. Time for the revolution! (or at least a fork of the internet).

Re:Isn't it past time...

[GameboyRMH]

That's the problem, the Internet doesn't really route around censorship or damage or anything like that, that's little more than a bunch of hand-waving hippie-speak quite frankly, it's actually a highly centralized, highly hierarchical system that doesn't route well around anything short of total disconnection (when alternate routes are available). It's not a cloud, it's more like a tree, it's rooted in the US, you're on the outer leaves and anything that happens further in can screw you over.

A 403,404 or "access denied, you have been reported" page from the Great Firewall when you try to access a website is as good as the real thing as far as the Internet is concerned. Of course a throttled connection is fine and dandy too.

This is why we need a new Internet, the infrastructure and up must be replaced. It must be highly decentralized, p2p-oriented, with a logical and physical mesh topology, and have integrity controls and a karma system built into the protocols, sort of like Bittorrent. It should not only be difficult to control, it should actively resist control. Then the Internet really will route around censorship and manipulation like damage.

Already here

[mrsam]

There's an Akamai server on my ISP. www.foxnews.com resolves to it, traceroute reaches it two hops off the router on the other side of my DSL bridge, and the homepage loads up blazingly fast.

On the other hand, my packets to www.cnn.com wander around a series of various tubes, until they find their way to Atlanta. www.cnn.com is noticably slower to load. traceroute shows that about twice as much latency accumulates, until it stops at CNN's router.

FOX news is paying my ISP, indirectly through Akamai, for a higher tier of service for my ISP's customers. Their competition does not, and their tier of service is noticably slower.

I try my hardest, but I can't think of a damn thing that's wrong here.

Re:Already here

[mikkelm]

The problem isn't really that content providers can have their applications hosted in end-user service provider networks. The problem is that the TalkTalk representative seems to be open to the idea of content providers paying them money to block out the competition entirely.

Re:Already here

[russotto]

Nothing's wrong with your scenario. Let's consider if the Internet were not a series of tubes, but more like trucks. Then your trucks to Fox News would get there, load up, and turn around faster because Fox News had a warehouse in your neighborhood. Your trucks to CNN take longer because they've got to get on the highway, head down to Atlanta, and head back to your neighborhood. That's not the proposal here. Suppose both NBC news and CNN were outside your neighborhood. The proposal here is that if NBC paid off your neighborhood association and CNN did not, any trucks coming into your neighborhood from CNN would be made to take the crappy two-lane road with traffic lights and a 25mph speed limit, whereas the NBC trucks would be allowed to use the highway.

Re:Already here

[macpacheco]

Akamai is very cost effective. The only reason CNN doesn't use it is due to its AOL ties. Bandwidth is probably almost free for them using AOL.
Here in Brazil most serious sites host with Akamai that avoid the trip all the way to the USA/Europe. Akamai's value is huge for users outside the US-Europe area. Just normal fiber (speed of light) latency from Brazil to USA is around 100ms. Real ping ranges from 130ms to 250ms.
But still then, my ISP has very decent performance when accessing normal http/flash/light video non Akamai content in the USA.
Things get dicey when you try to access a movie site that offers DVD or higher quality content. Content that requires 2-3Mbps throughput can get past 1Mbps in peak hours.
Even then, not all sites are the same, sites with direct connectivity to Global Crossing reach full speed without trouble.
Why all this technical detail ? For instance in my case, the bottleneck seems to be the sites in the US that are not using the premium worldwide backbone providers instead of my ISP in Brazil.
Not all ISPs are doing this.
My ISP is actually a nationwide carrier, just not one of the huge main three. It's the same in the US, avoid Comcrap, Verizon and the other 4 largest ISPs and you might get good quality access. Of course this isn't always possible.
Things got so bad for the countryside that the government is bringing it's own nationwide IP backbone to provide with an economical alternative for a small city ISP.
This isn't a premium content thing, in those cities a small ISP needs to pay 3x-4x more per Mbps than in the cheapest market.

Re:Already here

[Toasterboy]

Akamai is very different from a "two tier strategy".

Akamai is all about having local data centers nearer to high traffic population centers. This has the side effect of relieving congestion on the main internet backbones by essentially doing local caching. You want the data, and it happens to be located on a server closer to you, which by coincidence does not have to bottleneck through the backbone as much, so you get better scaling and performance. This strategy is net positive because the internet as a whole benefits by reduced waste and the hosts can deliver content more efficiently with a better user experience.

A two tier internet is something *very* different. That's taking the same pipe, and allocating priority to the rich and powerful at the expense of those who don't pay the premium; there is still the same amount overall of bandwidth available but they want to allocate less of it to you and more of it to companies that pay. How that will actually work is that those who pay more get internet hosting that works, and everyone else gets screwed with a broken, high latency, congested network. Oh, and the price for them will also go up while the service goes down.

Everyone else should get really pissed off about this crap, once they figure out how bad the deal is for them.

Let me put it this way: if this sort of thing is allowed, more advanced internet services developed over the next few years will only be possible when they are run by huge corporations with deep pockets, and all other innovators will be shut out in the cold. And that means you get to pay more for those services because there won't be any competion.

Re:Already here

[Toasterboy]

Also, what people don't realize is that the internet is already a loose confederation of networks owned by only a few corporations who have peering deals with each other, and they already throttle each other under the table.

There have already been incidents where the Internet experiences massive failures when these companies get into pissing contests with each other and shut off each other's access to influence negotiations.

Re:Already here

[noidentity]

The proposal here is that if NBC paid off your neighborhood association and CNN did not, any trucks coming into your neighborhood from CNN would be made to take the crappy two-lane road with traffic lights and a 25mph speed limit, whereas the NBC trucks would be allowed to use the highway.

To flesh out the story, remember than NBC, CNN, and the end-user all pay their taxes as well, so they've all paid for the roads already, it's just the gated community the user lives in that is delaying CNN's trucks because they haven't paid extra.

Re:Already here

[aaaaaaaaargh]

Akamai is firstly about LARGE numbers of hits at certain times. I worked for a company that expected a surge of hits and bought and paid for Akamai to come in. Turns out we never needed them because we sucked. What that experience told me was that Akamai was mostly for Victoria's Secret ads during the Superbowl. They explained their strategy to me, and having caches around the outside of the net is certainly a good thing. We weren't streaming video but we had an MMO and it's sister website up. Akamai exists at least partially to take your heavy hit and spread it out, because you did something PUBLIC (Superbowl Ad is the best analogy). I feel that they are good for Net Neutrality in the terms that if YOU advertise and cause a MASSIVE hit, you better be prepared for it. But everything else is bull-oney. First post and died at the end sorry.

Re:Already here

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the thing i am really confused about. Youtube is mentioned, despite the fact that the whole of Youtube is transmitted over edge networks owned by Google. None of that stuff congests the general internet.
They can't make BBC pay either. It is already paid for by the licence. It applies to both sides of the coin, all sides of the coin even. (hence why they can't even put up ads on the site, or have rentals or whatever)

Already i can see this wasn't really thought out particularly well, and as a TalkTalk user, this severely pisses me off.
You can't just throw "low low prices" at us, then whine years later because everyone is using you!
Go whine to BT and government some more, it helped last time! It actually helped!

Re:Already here

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm one thing does bother me, this kind of gives larger ISPs competitive advantage over other ISPs. Now there will be competition among ISPs that some services work better at one network then other. Like one ISP signs contract to have exclusive "fast lane" for youtube while other has same for netflix. Not cool...

Re:Already here

[GameboyRMH]

This is the trucks and tubes analogy, done right.

Re:Already here

[Anonymous Coward]

Solution: How about you pay money for a decent ISP that doesn't hate its customers?

Try Zen, IDNet, AAISP or Aquiss.

a quality of service above best efforts?

[nigeljw]

Clearly their best effort should be the service we currently pay for with hard earned cash, not some multitiered bastardization of the internet...

Wrong

[SuperKendall]

And how exactly do they do that? They do it by delaying the packets sent by those who don't pay extra.

No, they locally cache the content providers data so that you don't have the round-trip of getting it over the "real" internet. Realistically it's far too much trouble to manage networks by doing anything to the traffic itself, which implies all kinds of expensive packet inspection. It's far simpler to improve performance by local caching or by QOS for traffic to specific destinations - that the user would want improved access for anyway...

Re:Wrong

[dangitman]

No, they locally cache the content providers data so that you don't have the round-trip of getting it over the "real" internet

How do you locally cache content that is "live" or "streaming"? I think you are naively overlooking what they actually plan to do here, which is throttle content from non-partner websites.

Re:Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you a little fucked in the head or something? Or just honestly retarded?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_delivery_network

Just in case it's the second case for you. These have existed since 1990s!!

or by QOS for traffic to specific destinations

I take it back. You belong in the first group I mentioned.

Re:Wrong

[10101001 10101001]

It's far simpler to improve performance ... by QOS for traffic to specific destinations

And on a saturated line, QoS translates into special-group A having their traffic get through while neutral-group B having their traffic dropped, even if there's inherently as many requests for A as B (inherently in that if A or B were alone, they'd both generate the same amount of traffic).

that the user would want improved access for anyway...

Users can already get what they want with a neutral, best-effort packet network. Such a network of user desired is already reenforced through regular router reconfigurations and companies buying up use of caching networks. The latter of which, btw, already places enough of an advantage and self-feeding loop that the idea that content providers can or should buy even further lock-in to maintain their position or effective lock-out to take bandwidth that would otherwise have gone to extant user demand is disgusting, at best. At worst, it's tantamount to rigging the self-correcting free-market nature of the internet. How is that remotely acceptable?

Re:Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they locally cache the content providers data so that you don't have the round-trip of getting it over the "real" internet.

Ah, but for a cache to be maximially effective it has to hold the most popular data given the goal of minimizing fetches over the real net. The only motivation for anyone to pay the ISP is to boost their footprint in that cache above what simple popularity should indicate. Therefore, an ISP that skews their cache priority based on money rather than popularity will actually *increase* the amount of data they need to fetch from the 'real' internet.

If a content producer pays enough that all their content is in cache and almost none of their competetors is it won't take long for the consumers of that type of content to migrate to the producer with the low latency... that's not a level playing field for the content producers nor does it encourage variety/choice/competition, all of which benefit the consumer greatly. We need to think beyond 'net neut' and think 'cache neut' too as this caching thing will quickly become an end run around net neut.

Re:Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Local caching

1. Is entirely legitimate as a means of speeding stuff up by reducing long-haul transmissions

2. Is already deployed, by (among others) Youtube

3. Is actually a boon to everyone else, whose content now doesn't have to fight for long-haul transmission bandwidth.

4. Has nothing to do with extorting money from content providers at the expense of those who don't pay and the rest of the open internet

Re:Wrong

[Raptoer]

They might also implement it via RED. As an outbound queue fills packets going into that queue start getting dropped. This is done to prevent TCP global synchronization, and is standard practice. But if you change the rules a little, saying that packets coming from payer X get into the queue more often than non-payer Y, you've effectively lowered Y's performance during congestion without impacting Y during non-congestion.

Or it could be done via managing router queues. In order to route a packet you must inspect it anyways. Instead of having 1 outbound queue from a router you have two, three, or more. The outbound port sends from the high-priority queue more often, but still sends from the lower priority queues, or else to the hosts it appears to be congestion or a dead connection.

It could also be done via policy based routing on the AS level. An AS is a set of routers divided from other routers by political divisions rather than any technological reasons (AT&T routers vs Verizon routers). Each AS communicates routes and speeds via BGP. You direct the payer packets towards the faster AS you're connected to, then send the non-payer packets over to the slower AS.

There is no real way to speed up some packets without slowing down others, unless you literally build a whole new faster network, in which case why not put the other packets on there too?

Re:Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if they did just that, caching "sponsored" data locally, then that would still be an incentive to avoid upgrading the actual network links. The more congested access to non-sponsored content becomes, the more pressing the need for a web content provider to have their content cached locally. This means that "best effort" will stagnate and become unusable for all but non-interactive use. When a network operator says to a web site, "our links to the internet are congested, but you can pay us to get local access to our network," then they're really admitting that they're defrauding their paying customers.

Re:Wrong

[Lennie]

It's called (like) a CDN, think: Akamai, etc.

Re:Wrong

[TheRaven64]

You don't cache, but you do proxy. ISPs actually do this quite often because it saves them money. When you connect to the BBC's streaming services (in the UK), you are usually connecting to a server on your ISP's network, which streams the content to your computer. There is just one copy of the stream going from the BBC to your ISP, which saves both the BBC and the ISP money by cutting down the BBC's network load and also by reducing the amount of off-network bandwidth that the ISP needs. If the stream is 3Mb/s, then the ISP just needs 3Mb/s of external bandwidth to deliver it to all of their customers, not 3 times the number of customers Mb/s.

This may mean that the customer sees a faster connection, because there is no contention off the ISP's network for this stream. Of course, with IPv6 we'd all have multicast so this wouldn't be a problem...

Re:Wrong

[arkhan_jg]

BIg ISP's already have equipment to perform realtime deep packet inspection on their user's traffic - it's cheaper to put everything through say, sandvine DPI equipment to throttle the hell out of P2P traffic than to buy in more capacity. *Every* mainstream British ISP throttles torrent traffic at least for part of the day, and they all have quotas - again, managed as part of the same equipment.

Yes, providing akamai caches inside the ISP network in order to speed up access is one thing, but that's not what they're talking about. They're talking about using the DPI kit to put certain traffic at the top of the priority, and leave those who haven't paid the extortion fee down in the same slow lane they relegate P2P traffic to.

Re:Wrong

[SuperKendall]

A proxy is essentially a cache, since you store a small amount of the data to transmit on.

Re:Wrong

[SuperKendall]

Therefore, an ISP that skews their cache priority based on money rather than popularity will actually *increase* the amount of data they need to fetch from the 'real' internet.

Wrong, because the money pays for extra equipment dedicated to feeding up that one service, the rest of the internet is cached or not as the ISP would have done otherwise.

Cancel your talktalk account

[Dan667]

nothing says no like losing money.

Re:Cancel your talktalk account

[kronosopher]

I can't possibly agree with this more. This kind of mafia mentality needs to be strictly prohibited. The only thing that consumers can do is vote with their dollars(or pounds).

Re:Cancel your talktalk account

[LingNoi]

Actually I was just wondering if I could block all access from their IP range and get other sites I know to do the same. Once enough site owners do this they'll reconsider the idea.

Content providers take it up the ass too much from ISPs. Time to fight back, rally up people to stop this behavior by mass blocking of ISPs that attempt to do such things. All it needs is someone to organise the whole thing, provide information and a clear message to get people engaged.

Article's flamebait is misdirection.

[jthill]

Once again they pound in their lies about what neutrality.is.

The notion that neutrality means being source neutral must never be mentioned. The reporter simply uncritically accepts and repeats the premise.fed him by an."executive director of strategy and regulation".

Everything else in this article is just wrapper for that poisoned payload.

IBM anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Once upon a time, a company created the first Personal Computer. They could have patented it and become the sole producer and seller of Personal Computers, but they realized this device had huge potential and could evolve into something big. But for that to happen, there had to be competition. There also had to be lots of buyers, therefore prices had to remain affordable.

So the company did not patent the Personal Computer. Other companies started producing their own and soon the competition forced them to improve their products. Here we are today, with very powerful computers all because the manufacturers had an incentive to improve the first Personal Computer design. Had IBM patented the first PC, we might be discovering the first 3D First Person Shooters only about now.

ISPs who force websites to pay them or be throttled/blocked are decreasing the content their network offers to their costumers. As the original article explains, you could one day be unable to access Facebook just because your ISP blocks it.
These ISPs say that this is business and makes them earn money. WRONG! The Internet is popular today because we can access any website. The moment we can't access all websites, the moment 2 hyperlinks out of 10 don't work because your ISP blocks them, people will stop relying on the Internet. They'll just think "I don't need a big subscription with lots of bandwidth since half of the websites I want to visit are blocked. I'll just get the minimum I need - enough to send e-mails" (and that's assuming domains/websites aren't blocked when it comes to sending e-mails. Imagine being unable to send an e-mail to someone using hotmail because your ISP blocks hotmail...).

ISPs will loose money in 2 ways:
1) People will stop using the Internet entirely or will learn to use it less and go for the cheapest and smallest offers.
2) Just like the Personal Computer evolved so much and so quickly because everyone could contribute to it and make their own (and usually, improved) computer parts, the Internet grows because people who have a cool idea of a website can create that website and make it available to the entire world. The day websites have to pay a fee to every single ISP, new websites will no longer be made or only by the biggest and richest corporations of the Internet, like Google.

If an ISP is stupid enough to throttle or block websites, then let them do it. They'll go bankrupt and make place for true professionals who understand what the Internet is and that it is built on neutrality.

By the way, I already got rid of the TV since I must pay extra to get more cable channels and since no single channel has programs I like 24/7. I can only watch one channel at the time anyway, so why should I pay more simply for more options? So if any ISP out there thinks I won't stop using the Internet the moment I'm limited in the content I can access with it to the point that the Internet is quite useless to me, they should snort 5 lines of Reality.

Rename the product then...

[ewhenn]

They shouldn't be allowed to sell "Internet access" then. If I'm paying for service, and I can't get to a site because my "ISP" has it blocked, then they aren't providing Internet access. They should be forced to advertise the service as a "Restricted web portal". Yeah, they might not like it, but it would be a lot closer to the truth.

Side note: "TalkTalk" sounds cutesy. I have another cutesy for them: "Bye-Bye", as I cancel my service.

Re:Rename the product then...

[edbosanquet]

+1 Insightful Agreed, if access to a site is fully blocked, a ISP shouldn't be able to advertise as and ISP. "RWP" or "RSP" (Restricted Service Provider") works fine for me.

The question remains, what should happen if they decided to give priority to a given content provider and all other competing providers at "best effort" or "worst effort". (Best effort means, I will try to comply with your request if I'm not "too busy". Worst effort means I will comply with your request if I have nothing better to do. Both valid computing and networking preferences.)

While you may prefer to call "TalkTalk" "Bye-Bye". I may enjoy the discount I receive from my ISP accepting the low priority of sites that don't wish to pay the toll. It may even be possible that I receive free RSP or RWP service due to the number of content providers that are willing to pay the toll. I may even receive free ISP access, although, I won't hold my breath. I agree with you, truth in advertising. Please agree with me, don't restrict my informed choices.

Re:Rename the product then...

[wallyhall]

I have to admit, I 100% agree.

I'd honestly rather pay 2x for my broadband and have full Internet access than have my access based upon the "highest bidder". BBC et al are already forking out for bandwidth their end. I'm fed up of these "£5.99 a month" broadband deals followed by people bemoaning the BBC for not paying for *their* broadband.

Makes Matt mad.

Great example

[Anonymous Coward]

Let them make BBC iplayer unusable at peak times and watch customers go elsewhere, this is a terrible problem for small companies who don't already have the mindshare, their websites performing poorly will only further hurt them, but iPlayer? The moment it becomes apparent to people that their ISP is deciding to stop them from catching up on eastenders, and watchdog may well make it apparent to them at some point, TalkTalk are going to be in serious trouble.

a shitload of dimes

[Alien Being]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbWg-mozGsU

The ISPs are playing a pretty ballsy game

[Kjella]

If they start trying to gang up on the content providers, what's to stop the content providers from ganging up on them? Oh yeah you want to offer Internet... bring say the top 5 companies like Google (search, youtube, docs), Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and eBay on board and hand ISPs the ultimatum - don't charge us or put us on second tier, or we will all block your ISP from using our services. The customers will scream bloody murder and complain that what you're delivering isn't the Internet, but your call. In fact, once you've pushed them together in an alliance maybe they find that they are in a position to charge the ISPs, not the other way around. After all, many people have more than one ISP to choose from but there's only one YouTube and one Facebook.

Re:The ISPs are playing a pretty ballsy game

[Polyphagic]

>If they start trying to gang up on the content providers, what's to stop the content providers from ganging up on them?

Why gang up when you can purchase like, say, Comcast did NBC Universal? Shhh....it will all be over soon. Just like ripping off a bandage over the info artery.

Re:The ISPs are playing a pretty ballsy game

[NeutronCowboy]

To some extent, that's not what I'm worried about. The end result of this will be that Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and Ebay don't get charged. But everyone else will. They'll either have to pay the ISPs extra to be "On the Internet", or they will be relegated to a no-man's land that only people can reach who pay the ISPs extra.

A la carte Internet access is coming, and it will be the death of the Internet. Kiss the next Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Amazon and Ebay goodbye. Only the existing versions will be able to make it.

Re:The ISPs are playing a pretty ballsy game

[Kjella]

Well what I suggested can also be done on a mass scale of smaller websites, individually that would hurt each site but if large parts of the Internet goes dark then customers will complain, consumer authorities will start questioning if they're really selling Internet access and things like that. As a purely practical matter I don't think it's possible anyway, my ISP in Norway is never going to get in direct talks with slashdot's ISP and the thousands of other ISPs out there. They'll just have some broad deals with an upstream provider to send and receive traffic, it's possible to put some sites on a shitlist but I think there will always be "everything else" traffic.

Re:The ISPs are playing a pretty ballsy game

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, what's to stop a company like Google from just starting their own ISP. It actually fits their MO: Internet Explorer not fit for purpose, Google supports and promotes Firefox, then creates Chrome; constant threat of MS Windows leads Google to launch their own OS (based on Linux) etc. Google has the money, they launch or support an ISP that's free or cheap. Remember, it's in Google's interests that the net remain open and equal because they themselves are less content producers and are more about monetising the content of others.

Re:The ISPs are playing a pretty ballsy game

[reallyjoel]

That sounds equally horrible, tbh. ISP's are not inherently evil and need to be stopped or punished. If they are ganged up upon, they will have a tougher time - and that would probably translate to higher prices for the customers.

Re:The ISPs are playing a pretty ballsy game

[Polyphagic]

Well what I suggested can also be done on a mass scale of smaller websites, individually that would hurt each site but if large parts of the Internet goes dark then customers will complain, consumer authorities will start questioning if they're really selling Internet access and things like that.

Web 2.0 doesn't really seem to include some "original" parts like Usenet, and what of it that still exists has been monetized. My employer, a large university, has given that segment over to Google and probably will do the same for email.

They'll just have some broad deals with an upstream provider to send and receive traffic, it's possible to put some sites on a shitlist but I think there will always be "everything else" traffic.

I sincerely hope you're correct.

Re:The ISPs are playing a pretty ballsy game

[Bloodwine77]

What is more likely is that the top 5 companies like Google (search, youtube, docs), Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and eBay secretly support two-tier internet because they can afford it and it'd hurt their competition and further hinder any upstarts from taking their places.

Cory Doctorow must be feeling sheepish

[it5complicated]

I've heard that he campaigned for Lib Dems. Ho Ho!!

Great way to stifle innovation

[saleenS281]

If we allow this, it will effectively create yet another monopoly for those with the capital to be the highest bidder. I love google, but I also love knowing that they have to constantly be redefining themselves, or any college kid with a little bit of skill and luck can create competition from their dorm room. If the *next big thing* is so slow it's unusable because of the ISP's "preferential" treatment of those paying tariff's, it won't ever become the next big thing. And THAT will be yet another nail in the coffin of the downfall of mankind.

Re:Great way to stifle innovation

[datsa]

And THAT will be yet another nail in the coffin of the downfall of America.

Fixed that for ya.

Re:Great way to stifle innovation

[cdrguru]

The problem is, Google has taken over web advertising so completely that anyone would be an idiot to either advertise with someone else or place ads from some other ad vendor on their web site. They wouldn't get any revenue or customers.

So the "barrier to entry" for Google is the domination of the ad market, really. Until you can displace them from that there can be no "next big thing" because the "next big thing" will just starve. No venture capital because nobody will see any way to get money from a venture. So the dorm room startup stays in a dorm room with all the network capacity of a dorm room.

Sorry, but because we have allowed Google to become the data vendor of choice and the ad delivery vehicle of choice they are going to be really, really hard to displace, no matter what the technology might be in the future. Alta Vista died partly because of a lack of a real working revenue model and because of a lack of doing anything really innovative. Google started with innovation but now has a lock on both marketing data and ad delivery. This isn't going to be changing anytime soon.

I don't think Google paying off ISPs is going to make any difference at all, except it would mean lower bills for consumers.

Re:Great way to stifle innovation

[saleenS281]

Given that there was an ad just yesterday about how poorly the search results have gotten lately, I'm going to call bullshit. If someone out-googles google, and comes up with a superior search engine, advertisers will quickly flock to the up-and-coming. Bing currently has no issues competing. Partly because MS is dumping money into the problem, and partly because the search engine actually works as advertised.

Ah, capitalism at its finest

[nashv]

This is going to lead to situations like : "YouTube recommends ISP X for optimal viewing experience". And high traffic sites will probably end up extorting money from the ISPs. I know Facebook isn't going to pay anyone for access, for example.

And pretty soon, websites will form unions and the ensuing partitioning of the Internet will give us consumer choices "ISP X offers about 50% of the Internet at this price, while ISP Y offers 75% of the Internet for only a few cents more.". Competition between ISPs will spiral out of control.

Things are going to end up more complicated for the ISPs themselves - and if they had a shred of intelligence to them, they'd stop this moronic talk."

Re:Ah, capitalism at its finest

[mysidia]

Maybe... maybe not... just because someone asked them if they'd be willing to consider that deal does not necessarily mean Youtube will go asking for that deal.

I think the best thing for the internet right now, would be for anyone trying to make a deal like that to be exposed publicly, so the public can choose whether they still want to patronize that web site.

Re:Ah, capitalism at its finest

[NoSig]

You've got it backwards. That would be the absolutely best scenario the ISPs could ever in their wildest dreams imagine. They would all be selling a unique product and could charge for it as such. Right now they are all selling pretty much the same thing which there isn't much profit in. It's the difference between selling designer (=unique) handbags and plain plastic bags. The ISPs would love it all to be ungodly complicated because they can hire people to figure it all out, but their customers only have 5 minutes on a Wednesday to choose their ISP. You don't actually think that it would have to be so hard to figure out which mobile phone company would be the better deal, do you? It's complicated exactly to prevent you from figuring that out and this would be the same thing.

Re:Ah, capitalism at its finest

[SeaFox]

This is going to lead to situations like : "YouTube recommends ISP X for optimal viewing experience".

Ha. That cuts both ways. Thanks to the duopoly system ISPs have been supporting (because it reduces competition in their designated markets), its not possible for a website to pick a "preferred" ISP without alienating a large geographic region's worth of users that don't have the choice for a provider to begin with.

Re:Ah, capitalism at its finest

[mistralol]

What about websites simply getting there own back. Redirecting users to a page with the information on it to describe what the end users isp is doing. Where the redirected page looks something like an IE6 warning going something like this. Dear ...... We notice that the internet connection you are using is BT based. We have some issues with this because they do not provide enough bandwidth to deliver content from our site to its end users (that would be you) etc.. etc.. We would recommend that you switch to one of the following isp as they do not traffic limit content providers .. Talk talk, BeThere, O2 .... etc.. etc... Great chance for the web sites to actually extort money from the other isp's to appear on the recommended list which is really getting their own back on the isp's but probably not recommended :) I for one say to them let them try and see what happens. When things stop working for the end user. they are going to speak with the nearest techie they know and that techie is going to recommend a different isp anyway.

Re:Ah, capitalism at its finest

[reallyjoel]

..which is eaxactly why this will happen. =(

Re:Ah, capitalism at its finest

[Anonymous Coward]

Insane, barely manageable complexity is not necessarily bad for business. Wherever there is complexity, there is a man with deep pockets and an army of lawyers to exploit loopholes and subdue those without the financial means to do likewise.

So the answer to fragmentation. . .

[JSBiff]

. . . is *more* fragmentation?

wrong yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for a company that is heavy involved (among other things) in just that sort of deep packet inspection technology. If you don't think that large ISPs are (or will shortly be) doing traffic shaping, you're a fool.

Re:Yeah, it is

[Anonymous Coward]

and it's back to the much more reasonable and sensible "you pay for what you use".

Except for the internet, that isn't reasonable (or even close to necessary). What you end up with is a piece of garbage that costs a fortune to use fully that all of the technologically illiterate imbeciles just accept.

It's something that easily lived without.

Tell that to people who make money because of the internet (yes, I know, impossible).

And that's called freedom. Freedom for those companies. And that's the point.

And this is called regulation. It is to prevent widespread abuse to consumers everywhere and society itself.

Until then, you'll have no idea.

"It doesn't take a chef to taste bad food."

It's frightening how there are actually people who believe some (or all) of what you said.

they are taking tips out the DDOS playbook

[Anonymous Coward]

nice website you have there, shame if "something" was to happen to it

Network neutrality

[fnj]

This is what happens when idiots who don't know what words mean convince you that laws and regulations promoting network neutrality are a bad thing.

Re:Network neutrality

[Lehk228]

Oh they know EXACTLY what they are doing, corporate cock suckers.

Re:Yeah, it is

[NoSig]

Wow, you'd prefer to see the internet destroyed rather than have the serfs enjoy it. That's either a mediocre attempt at trolling or a deeply sad level of misanthropy. I pity you either way.

facebook - maybe a good thing

[evanism]

If they do this, I would love to have it as an option via router or ISP for services I hate. I'd love to put facebook et al on the "really fucking horrible slow/strangle" option so I can get my employees time back!

Re:facebook - maybe a good thing

[Penguinisto]

I'd love to put facebook et al on the "really fucking horrible slow/strangle" option so I can get my employees time back!

You know you can do that with a proxy server and appropriate port blockage at your company firewall, right?

Re:facebook - maybe a good thing

[toriver]

What? Then they will just spend even more time there since it takes longer to load. You want the opposite, that Facebook has the highest speed known to man.

U.K. consumer protection laws ...

[aegl]

I'd think that any company that advertised "internet access" and then blocked access to BBC iPlayer in favour of Youtube (or vice versa) would run into a wall of lawsuits from dissatisfied customers - who would win as U.K law takes a dim view of companies posting false or misleading advertisements.

Re:U.K. consumer protection laws ...

[techhead79]

I'm very sure this will happen. But till then they will run their extortion ring....and the CEOs will get huge bonuses as their profits increase...and once lawsuits start up the CEOs will rush out the back door leaving the company in a shallow grave for the dogs to tear the rest of it up.

It's called paid peering and CDN

[George_Ou]

These priority lanes have existed since the beginning of the broadband era.
http://www.digitalsociety.org/2010/12/video-level-3-versus-comcast-peering-dispute/
http://www.digitalsociety.org/2010/12/division-of-labor-between-broadband-and-cdn/

Re:Yeah, it is

[aaaaaaaaargh]

Except it's capitalism right? So I would like to compete against you, just lemme know what industry and eventually I'll get it down to the brass tacks. What do we do? I can do anything better if I've seen it before, without cell phones and without your overhead being our CEO.

Re:Yeah, it is

[aaaaaaaaargh]

Perhaps I would, and I'm sorry if you think it's trolling, consider me frightfully stupid then. After 20 years I think everything I have seen in the last few months is everything I told myself wouldn't happen when I was 18

TCP/IP

[aaaaaaaaargh]

Is TCP/IP that great? Get over it already I'm waiting.

No, there is something very wrong...

[KonoWatakushi]

"Best effort" is what we had for years without a tiered Internet. Using that label for a second tier is seriously disingenuous. Before, effort was made to ensure that pipes had sufficient capacity, and that congestion was the exception, and not the rule--that is "best effort". No longer.

Relegating all second class traffic to a permanently congested and insufficient pipe can hardly be considered "best effort". There is no incentive for them to provide sufficient capacity for Internet services which compete with their own services. In fact, quite the opposite.

The reason that the Internet was such a powerful engine for innovation, is exactly because it had excess capacity, and the ability to support new applications. If all Internet traffic is now to be relegated to the scraps of bandwidth remaining from so called "managed services", it is dead for all practical purposes.

Sure, it will hobble along, but a tiered Internet can never provide the rich opportunities for innovation, or even competition with established services. That is why it is crucial that this not happen. Under a neutral Internet, there is every incentive to provide sufficient bandwidth so that it works well for everyone. Once you start carving it up, those incentives disappear, and the incumbent monopolies will prevail.

Re:No, there is something very wrong...

[ultranova]

The reason that the Internet was such a powerful engine for innovation, is exactly because it had excess capacity, and the ability to support new applications. If all Internet traffic is now to be relegated to the scraps of bandwidth remaining from so called "managed services", it is dead for all practical purposes.

And that's just fine, as far as powers-that-be are concerned. Free exchange of information threatens both political and commercial interests, and as the Wikileaks affair shows, it's even a threat to the Three Letter Evils. That's why it will be taken down by them, and there's nothing you can do to stop that.

I hope you've enjoyed it, for the Internet is simply too good to last.

Re:No, there is something very wrong...

[raddan]

It is also very important to note that the net effect of carving networks up into bandwidth classes means that the network will be less able to handle congestion events. Why? Because network traffic is bursty. The greater your pooled resources, i.e., the greater your excess capacity, the better you are able to handle large transfers. QoS policies should be the exception, not the norm, and they are best used on private networks where the traffic distribution is understood (like your corporate LAN).

There's a great paper on pooled resources from the 1970's that I can't locate, but that gives a rather convincing argument using the probability of failure (memory allocation) given n users.

Re:No, there is something very wrong...

[AmiMoJo]

I wish I could vote with my feet but where I live (major densely populated city on the south coast) Virgin cable is the only option. I am 2.2km from the exchange but ADSL is never stable for me. BT don't care because they only certify the line for voice, ADSL is an unsupported bonus. Therefore I have to put up with Virgin Media's throttling, the inability to play 720p YouTube or iPlayer videos in the evenings (even 480p fails some times) etc.

Their tech support days say "do your downloading at night" - what exactly are they suggesting? Pirate TV shows instead of watching them on iPlayer? I work all day and sleep all night so I can't just watch outside of peek times.

Bad for small business

[senorpoco]

How can a small courier compete if the big guys are able to pay to have the speed limit changed for their vans? As with content delivery, the internet has allowed small companies to compete because content delivery is a level playing field, when the big boys can pay to leverage the medium itself everyone who can't afford to pay has their content devalued.

Re:Bad for small business

[DalDei]

How can a small courier compete if they can only afford vans, where the Big Boys can afford fleets of their own 747's and their own airport hub, train rails and ships. And how can these Big Boys compete against a government subsidized international (mail) delivery service paid for largely by taxes which the Big Boys *pay* instead of receive. Clearly competition is impossible in the face of an unlevel playing field. Wait, damnit !

Class Action lawsuit against ISPs

[techhead79]

These guys are morons and have no idea what wonderful lovely gold mines they just became for a large number of lawyers. Not only will customers of the ISP sign up to sue them so will every two bit operation from here to China claiming they were shut out of a market due to their throttling. Let them gamble with their company's future....I mean after all the CEOs will get a huge bonus and all the low income serfs will get the boot when shit hits the fan. Another lovely day in stupidity and lack of government action thanks to greed.

What about the users?

[Tomahawk]

I know us customers generally mean nothing to businesses, but surely even ISPs can see that they are primarily there to allow us poor users to use their service to access to the big bad Internet. And by that, I mean _all_ of out. I'm paying my ISP for access to the sites _I_ want to access, not access to the sites that they, out of the goodness of their profits, they'll allow me to access.

Perhaps they can run this another way - 3 tiers. I pay for 8mb broadband, so I get 8mb to any site - after all, that's what _I'm_ paying them for. Or, I take their _free_ package, which is paid for by the corporations, and thus can only access (quickly) those that paid to allow me access - if I'm not paying, I can hardly complain. That way, everyone wins.

Or am I just making too much sense for these guys to comprehend?

This is a war. Fight back.

[The Master Control P]

The enemies of net neutrality are waging a war against the Free and Open Internet as we know it. We all know where this campaign is going.

This is what must be done to win: Fight back against their campaign of lies about net neutrality at every single turn. Make certain that you are armed with the facts:

Network neutrality is what the Internet has always had - since forever. And it's what you have right now. It only means not discriminating against traffic based on source.
You and the content providers both already paid for Internet access - why should anyone pay again?
ISPs demanding money for the same access you currently have is no different from the Mafia demanding protection money so that nice store doesn't burn down.
Invoke the Mafia image - the visceral negative reaction associated with what they're trying to do is essential. People don't react to facts, they react to feelings: the Mob is bad so anything Mob-like is bad. It doesn't matter if you think this is in poor taste or something - if the enemies of net neutrality win, it was all for nothing anyway. Every column you see written opposing network neutrality, write the author. Write in the comments section. Never let the lies go unchallenged, because then people will start to believe them! And no one who's informed with the truth regarding Network Neutrality would stand to see it taken away.

Re:This is a war. Fight back.

[slysithesuperspy]

ISPs demanding money for the same access you currently have is no different from the Mafia demanding protection money so that nice store doesn't burn down.

No it's not you can just change ISP. If there is only one ISP then maybe that's more to do with the government or you living in some place in the middle of no where. You are essentally just calling for a government take over of the internet. I say take away all the legal privileges etc that telecom/cable companies have so as to force them to respond to actual consumer demand.

Re:This is a war. Fight back.

[lingon]

No, for two reasons: First, many people can't do that. From the looks of it, in the US at least, many people have only one or two providers to choose from. Second, many average Joes won't recognize what's wrong with their Internet -- they will only notice that some sites load very slowly, then they will blame those sites and not their ISP which is actually at fault. If you want competition to work, you need to fix this first, and good luck with that.

I can't wait!

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't wait - this will make the internet both faster and cheaper for me!

When will slashdot be paying up t.......website blocked due to non-payment of QOS fee - access only permitted between 03:00am and 04:00am).

Solutions ?

[Anon8---)]

How will this be solved to our (the people) advantage ? afaik rallying or protesting won't help. In the end the same thing as that counterfeiting act will happen - everything will be done behind closed doors.

Would it be possible to create a organization like the w3c or ieee for worldwide free internet ? Driven by a system like the pirate party where every member has an equal vote.

I'm a noob at this stuff but would a free internet even be possible ? Say the organization gets together, defines a set of rules for a preconfigured device that anybody can buy, allowing them join or a create network with certain standards defined by the organization. E.g default IP protocol is IPv6, a suitable link layer WiMAX, 3G, 4G or even 5G using tor or freenet in the application layer.

Initial funding could be done with kickstart or flattr.

Everyone, Relax, Calm Down

[BeanThere]

Pause, and think about it for a minute. Does anyone REALLY think an ISP can afford to make 99% of the Web intolerable for its users, without immediately dying a horrible death in the market? No. It won't happen.

This is just more irrational fear-mongering from those interests pushing for government control over the Internet under the guise of so-called 'Net neutrality', claiming power in order to solve a problem that doesn't exist under the guise of 'helping you'.

The reasoning fallacy behind the promotion of 'net neutrality' is something like this: The market might be perfectly capable of providing everyone decent-speed, usable Internet (it's done a reasonably good job so far), but because it doesn't apparently recognize a legal 'right' to decent service, then "oh noes, panic, it means we won't get decent service". Wrong. The market will provide decent service because that is the very service they offer.

Here's a car analogy. There are no laws dictating a car has to be able to go at least 50 miles per hour. But is there a crisis of car manufacturers trying to get away with selling very slow cars? No, not at all, in spite of such laws. How could this possibly be? Because if a car company started selling cars that could only go 30 MPH, nobody would buy them. "But, but, we need laws just in case they do! Government must regulate and control the whole thing!" ... nope. Calm down, relax, don't be taken in by such blatant hysteria-creating propaganda.

(correction)

[BeanThere]

"No, not at all, in spite of such laws" => "in spite of the complete lack of such laws" (sorry, didn't use preview)

And incidentally, before anyone goes into over-hysterics over some of the recent performance problems encountered, first read up on, and understand Jim Getty's analysis of that, that was recently covered by slashdot.

Interesting post from a UK ISP owner in November

[cheeseandham]

Two Speed Internet
I would have thought it would be difficult in the UK as there is more competition. If Fred Bloggs finds his ISP slows down BBC iPlayer then he can change ISP pretty easily. What's the problem?

Actually, that's a good opportunity...

[Anonymous Coward]

... to make this Freedom thing clearer.

> "...and we should have freedom to sign whatever deal works."

Should they really have such Freedom?

Should M$ have liberty to plot their usual schemes, while everybody babbles "this has nothing to do with me"? Should a country have liberty to fsck up the world weather? Should another country have liberty to invade whomever they want? Should yet another have liberty to kill all those who criticize it?

Whenever people argue *BSD is freer than Linux, this comes to my mind: Freedom is a limited asset. If someone receives too much liberties, someone else is set to lose.

By limiting the distributor of program rights to deny the source, the GPL actually ensures the recipient will keep his/her/its rights to receive the source. Less Freedom for someone means exaclty more Freedom to the next person.

Of course, Capitalism being Capitalism -- and specially when it's badly conducted -- some businesses will throw fits because if things work that way they will have to innovate at a greater pace, and not just sit lazily waiting for money to be thrown on their "professional" laps.

It's just "less work for more money" IMHO -- while surely someone will stand up and say "What did you expect? That they want less money and more work?", well... being a common defective human trait would never be a valid excuse for any sin, is it? If so, whenever someone accused me of doing something wrong, instead of examining the larger context, a judge would just (lazily) state: "oh, well, he's just doing what everybody does..."

Long rant, huh? For the record, I'm not against capitalism or profits... I'm just gainst that mentality of "It's a business, so anything goes".

Their freedom, is your repression

[unity100]

TalkTalk's Andrew Heaney replied: 'We'd do a deal, and we'd look at YouTube and we'd look at BBC and we should have freedom to sign whatever deal works

see. they are free to sign whatever deal works. and not one isp, two, all of them. and, just like it happened in similar cases in ALL other industries, ALL will sign whatever deal that works. and in the end what will happen ?

excuse me, but youre talking like a moron

[unity100]

Pause, and think about it for a minute. Does anyone REALLY think an ISP can afford to make 99% of the Web intolerable for its users, without immediately dying a horrible death in the market? No. It won't happen.

stop believing in the 'market' bullcrap. market is the foremost thing that is manipulated on this planet. there is more profit in tiering internet, and ALL isps will be doing it. there will be no problem of 'surviving' at all. it will just be 'standard industry practice', just like how things like these have been, in all other industries unless they were banned.

as a simple example, you can look at how, for some reason, music album/cds are being sold from almost the same rates as records, despite technology changed a lot, manufacturing went to china taking the production cost to dimes, and many corporations seemingly competing in the field.

where is cheaper music in the mainstream market ? where is the competition ?

nowhere. this is what you will end up with internet too, if you keep believing that 'market/competition' bullshit. its something that doesnt apply in real world. it lives in econ 101, 102 books.

PC Pro 'asks' if it is end of the internet

[unity100]

as we know it ....

this is our problem. as long as there are fools who are still ASKing whether 'is it the end of internet as we know it', it WILL be the internet as we know it, because IT IS the end of internet as we know it ...

Re:Interesting post from a UK ISP owner in Novembe

[Spad]

Well it doesn't really work with the iPlayer - the BBC will tell ISPs to fuck off because it would be a massive waste of licence-payer money to give in to their extortion and pay for "better" service (Outside of the fact that the BBC is one of the bigger Peers in the UK) and the BBC Trust wouldn't let them do it.

But, with other services who are willing to pay to stifle their competition it's going to be very tempting for ISPs to accept that money; it's a lot easier to take the moral high ground when people aren't lining up to throw money at you. That said, there are a *lot* of ISPs in the UK (Over 100 according to ISPA) so it's going to start getting very, very expensive for companies to pay them all off.

Re:Yeah, it is

[asdf7890]

the much more reasonable and sensible "you pay for what you use"

That this isn't what this is about, you appear to be conflating two different issues there.

This isn't about someone signing up of TalkTalk or BT for Internet access (which, BTW, would never happen unless all other ISPs suddenly turned up and they were the only options left) and transferring several terabytes each week just for the hell of it. This is about them selling to the customer "open access to the Internet" but giving to the customer "access to the bits of the Internet we can make money from", and I see there being a case for investigation for false advertising under the Trades Descriptions Act if they go ahead with anything like this without making it very clear to the consumer from the outset (though I have no official legal training, so don't take my word on that without a few pinches of salt.

You can bet your last penny that if a user reports iPlayer (to pluck one of the common examples at random) being slow, the support drone would say "yeah, their site is unreliable at times" rather than "yeah, they didn't pay the right bribe so we are giving priority to their competitors who did pay the bribe".

Content providers, not ISPs, have power

[DaveGod]

ISPs seem to be confused about who is en route to achieving monopoly powers.

In the UK, consumers have a real choice of ISPs and negligible brand loyalty to any of them. iPlayer, Facebook, Google and YouTube on the other hand border on being a staple part of lifestyle. Most people I know also use iPlayer and I'm quite certain they'd all change ISP if theirs stopped delivering it. On that subject, TFA is on shaky ground about contract lock-in because ceasing to provide a significant service is a failure to deliver/material variation which renders the contract unenforceable, and, in my (limited) understanding of contract law, it is nigh on impossible to have valid terms in standard-form contracts to waive such rights.

OK, ISPs could speed up certain companies and not others, and this could get to a point where they're not literally barring access but it's impractical for bandwidth heavy content to compete without doing so. But you're still going to have consumers who are more concerned about content and you're still going to have the 3rd party options like Akamai. The risk for consumers, as the article correctly points out, is the barriers that are created preventing new startups gaining traction.

If it wasn't enough that people are already more bothered about the content than their ISP, all of those companies have various content-sharing and other agreements already, they are clearly not averse to forming agreements on other issues. The balance of power is forming overwhelmingly in the hands of the big content providers.

ISPs should think twice. Some content providers are already showing signs of some monopoly power and by creating further barriers to competition the ISP is throwing itself towards an inevitable conclusion: the content providers charging the ISP.

Hey! Just like our Railway Network in the UK!

[Anonymous Coward]

...oh the joys of shared infrastructure

WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

what a f#cking joke. if you want "faster" internet, you just buy a fatter pipe.
if i have dial-up but want a faster internet, i apply for ADSL ... sheesh.
that's how we p'(eers) do, that's how B(usinesses) do it ... wtf, wtf!
-
if a end-user ISP can't peer / route their data around the world to
ANY place in the world, then that ISP will die!

Re:Yeah, it is

[holophrastic]

It takes a chef to know what it takes to make good food.

You don't need the internet to live. those who make money off of it can afford to pay for it. Welcome to business.

Paying for what you use is, oh yeah, fair. Communism doesn't work.

What you end up with is identifying which people are garbage and not worth supporting in the first place. There are many people who simply do not pull their weight -- and these days, they have mobile phones, cars, and high speed internet access. Maybe they should eb focusing on their mortgage payments instead of on luxuries.

Regulation is not to stop providers from abusing consumers. It's to stop consumers from being stupid -- like new mothers with baby formula, and mobile phone consumers not knowing how to read fair contracts.

It's frightening that so many people need so much assistance with their daily lives -- because they contribute little or no value back to society.

Re:Yeah, it is

[holophrastic]

I don't think it'll be destroyed, as much as it'll become something quite different. Think about how much of the internet today isn't what you want it to be because it targets the mass stupid.

Spam shouldn't be successful. People shouldn't be giving their banking details to a site they didn't type in themselves. People shouldn't be substituting 140 character messages in place of real business communication. And there should be a limit to the number of cat-centric videos a given person sends to me as the coolest cat video they've ever seen.

None of that would exist on an Internet used by people for legitimate profitable value propositions. And a technology switch for ipv4 to ipv6 would be embraced.

That's what I call destroying the internet. And it's already happening.

Re:Yeah, it is

[holophrastic]

Of course you can. And you're welcome to do so. And we'll see if you get the quality of employees that I have. And we'll see if anyone supports your company as a consumer/community/clientele. And more importantly, we'll see if you can actually carry your business without such additions and have an easier time doing so.

For me, as for most, it's a lot easier to control employees when you control their tools.

Re:Yeah, it is

[holophrastic]

And that's why they are cohosing to tell people, making it very clear indeed. You don't actually need access to seventeen million web-sites. You need access to the two hundred that you use every day. Just like you don't need every television channel available. You get to pay less for less and more for more.

Just like with any other business.

It works from the other side too. You don't need to reach every internet user -- because your market isn't every human being. You need to access only this particular demographic. So you get to pay this amount to be expedited to that demographic.

Remember, it works in each direction too. My site can be faster for users who pay more to their ISP, or it can be faster for users who pay less, if that's the market I want to hit.

We're talking about an ISP provider's business. We're talking about that provider having greater control over their business. We're talking about that business connecting suppliers with customers -- you know like with each and every single other business on this planet. We're talking about that connection being managed by the provider -- which is the added value of making the best connections possible.

um no

[Anonymous Coward]

why don't you get back to sucking cock rollingchunder

Re:Yeah, it is

[asdf7890]

And that's why they are cohosing to tell people, making it very clear indeed.

I'll buy "very clear indeed" when the half-way educated man on the street is aware of the situation.

We're talking about that connection being managed by the provider -- which is the added value of making the best connections possible.

Fair enough. If you want you ISP to decide which sites you have a decent connection to then their offering is right for you, but I prefer to access what sites I chose to access no the ones that pay my ISP. This is what it is really about. They want to make money out of both ends of the spectrum: you and the content provider, essentially selling the same thing to two different entities at the same time. Three entities, if you remember that these ISPs are two of the ones that were in bed with Phorm until it became clear that such schemes could attract negative publicity in an audience wider than a few techies.

Your TV analogy doesn't quite work. The reason TV access is like that is because the content providers and distributors are in control and the companies that provide access to us have to pay for the privilege. Internet access is more like the telephone model - I would not like to find I could not make a good quality call to Peter & Peter Inc. because Paul & & Paul Co. have paid BT for priority. While it may cost a little more for cross network talk (well, a lot more when they covertly arrange price fixing, but regulators are cracking down on that a good bit these days) but that is expected as there are extra complications for them to deal with in this case and they pass that cost on to me, they don't just silently reduce the quality of the line because I'm not calling their preferred partner.

The TV/phone difference suggests another reason for this stance though: they might simply be heading off the content providers at the pass to ensure that the phone model wins out as that fits their current business model better. By making it clear that they are able to, and are willing to, differentiate traffic in this way they are telling the content people that they should not think about doing the same. This could be the start of a cold war style dance with the threat of mutually assured inconvenience!

Re:Yeah, it is

[NoSig]

I thought the Grinch was a fictional character but I guess not.

Re:Yeah, it is

[holophrastic]

Half-way educated deserves nothing. It's said, it's advertized, and most importantly it's on the terms of service when you purchase the product/service. That's the only place it needs to be. Reading is required. Not sorry.

You can't use the telephone model as a comparison. Telephone is considered an emergency service -- you actually do have to purchase telephone service. But like television, internet is not required.

I do get to decide which sites have priority because I get to call my ISP and tell them I'm willing to pay more for some than for others. I get to decide with my dollars. I get to fund the ISP that makes the most sense to me.

That's the choice in a free market. I get to choose between the big bad ISP that expedites youtube, and the small one that doesn't. I get to say that I could care less about youtube's funniest home videos and pay for an internet that doesn't have them. That's tops with me.

And that's precisely how smaller ISPs will compete. Especially when businesses don't want their employees to access the big consumer sites. So a savvy business ISP will simply offer faster access to business-worthy sites, and lesser access to consumer-valued sites. Makes a lot of sense.

As for your long distance calls, you in fact do have differences among carriers when it comes to the quality and reliability of the long-distance connections and cables. If you were to frequently call half-way around the world, you would choose the telephone provider that has the better cables.

Re:Yeah, it is

[holophrastic]

Paying for things means getting paid for things.

If you aren't willing ot pay others, who pays you?

Re:Yeah, it is

[NoSig]

How impressively unrelated to the topic of you.

Packeteering

[vanyel]

How is this different from a protection racket? "we wouldn't want anything to happen to your packets now, would you? Pay us and we'll make sure they're safe..."

BOO HSSSSSS

[Anonymous Coward]

Put the lobster down. If that hobo in the corner can eat soup out of a shoe so can you.

Here's a radical thought

[Anonymous Coward]

All customers want their Internet to be as fast as possible, right? So how about the ISPs get their customers to pay some sort of fee in exchange for providing them with fast access to the Internet? I imagine it could be like, a monthly payment, in exchange for which the ISPs buy and maintain infrastructure and whatnot to make their customers' Internet reasonably fast. Then the customer could decide what they want to use their fast Internet for, and all this hassle becomes unnecessary. Well, perhaps the world is not quite ready for that yet.

Re:Yeah, it is

[asdf7890]

Half-way educated deserves nothing. It's said, it's advertized,

Well until this actually happens (unless it has already) it is a moot point, but mentioning it in an interview with a magazine does not (legally or otherwise) constitute a product description or advertising.

and most importantly it's on the terms of service when you purchase the product/service. That's the only place it needs to be.

Actually not, under most jurisdictions around the world including the UK there are limits to what you can enforce via a terms of service, especially when the terms could be seen as transforming the product away from what is seen by the costumer from the advertising.

Reading is required. Not sorry.

As long as the service is opaquely advertised as selective I would agree. If it is sold just as any other Internet service then I don't.

I do get to decide which sites have priority because I get to call my ISP and tell them I'm willing to pay more for some than for others. I get to decide with my dollars. I get to fund the ISP that makes the most sense to me.

But that is not what is happening here. Here they are talking about charging the content providers for access to you, not the other way around. You don't get to chose, the size of the content provider's wallet chooses.

That's the choice in a free market. I get to choose between the big bad ISP that expedites youtube, and the small one that doesn't.

Until youtube decides to stop paying for such expediation or another company pays more to replace them. This is not about you having a choice, it is about BT and TalktTalk making extra money by selling the same chunk of bandwidth twice - once to you and once to someone else.

And that's precisely how smaller ISPs will compete. Especially when businesses don't want their employees to access the big consumer sites. So a savvy business ISP will simply offer faster access to business-worthy sites, and lesser access to consumer-valued sites. Makes a lot of sense.

Such a product would not sell enough units to be more than a niche operation, and no company wants to just be a small niche operation. What is business worthy to you will differ to what is business worthy to others, and if an ISP caters for all markets you have the same problem at the ISPs peering arrangements: the same sets of traffic coming in and needing to be prioritised so you would not see benefit due to the ISPs backbone not carrying the other traffic so you'd pay extra for a filtering service that doesn't actually work.

Never dropped

[SuperKendall]

QoS translates into special-group A having their traffic get through while neutral-group B having their traffic dropped

Wrong, QoS is never about dropping packets, just delaying them. Remember it's a delay that's at the request of what the user is doing - if they are watching video that will take precedence, whereas if they don't have any video playing other traffic will proceed at the normal rate of speed.

Re:Yeah, it is

[holophrastic]

and that's why it is my choice. You can talk to your suppliers and providers and tell them what you want -- especially business-to-business.

As for the charging content providers, I'm also a content provider and would love it if I could offer my clients the option of a faster web-site by just paying dollars to ISPs in their markets. That's awesome.

Re:Yeah, it is

[asdf7890]

As for the charging content providers, I'm also a content provider and would love it if I could offer my clients the option of a faster web-site by just paying dollars to ISPs in their markets. That's awesome.

You and every other provider in those areas. I may be missing something but I fail to see how that could work out any other way than costing a fortune for little return - your competitors will be bidding against you and everyone trying to game the system by other means will be against you to. Good luck with that.

Re:Yeah, it is

[holophrastic]

It's not against me, it's against my client. I get to advocate on behalf of my client, tell them what it will cost and why. Just like I do now for adwords and other search engine campaigns.

I make money off of that. It's value to my clients because they are competing with their competition anyway. Today they compete in adwords, yesterday they competed for the front page of the newspaper, tomorrow they'll compete for bandwidth.

It's actually even better than that. Because I can offer to build their site with lower bandwidth requirements to save that provider costs, or I can offer to build their bigger fancier features where they'll need to pay those provider costs.

And all the while, it's more work for me, more value for them, better quantified measure of competition in their industry. I can absorb the cost, I can discount the cost, or I can mark it up.

Any way you look at it, it's another service for me to offer, and provides new value in either direction for my client -- because I can manage that feature better than my competitors.

Just like I do now with e-mail, SSL, DNS, and server stuff in general.

What makes this one even better is that for those clients who need to justify their expenses in power point presentations to investors, they can say that their site is a "high bandwidth" site and get credit from their investors on that alone.

It's good for everyone involved in my equasion. I understand that it may suck for you, but it's great for me, great for my clients, good for their investors, and it's even good for my client's customers -- which may sometimes be you.

Of course, my clients are all businesses, not consumers, and for the most part their customers are businesses too.

I certainly see how this concept sucks for my sister watching youtube all day long, but really, I don't ascribe any value to youtube as a recreational activity. I feel that it's easily substituted for juts about any form of entertainment. And at present, I spent real dollars on other forms of entertainment.

Between video games, movies, live theatre, sporting events, drives, and general fun, I spend upwards of $300 weekly. Add restaurants and I spend $1'000 weekly. If I sit down and spend 5 hours on youtube in a given week, taht's five hours not spent on the other things -- I've got money for that.

Of course, I'm not wasting money on cigarettes, drugs, lotteries, or additional alcohol. And since even my cousin spends over $5'000 annually on cigarettes, I'm really not surprised that the average idiot lacks the dollars to pay for general stuff.

Re:Interesting post from a UK ISP owner in Novembe

[davecb]

Consortia of ISPs will see this as a competitive advantage, and "offer" it to Google et all as a package deal. If they don't buy, they'll get degraded service. Downstream providers who don't agree to buy in will also get the degraded service.

That means the honest ISPs will get the slow service, and that's all they will be able to offer you.

You'll be the person complaining of slow service and switch to the mafiosi who offer the fast service, rather than to the honest folks who have been starved.

Bummer!

--dave

So say everyone pays for the higher tier?

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't we then left with what we have now?

This is it!

[Alistair Hutton]

This is the (lack of) net neutrality disaster we were talking about, this is the future where the small start up cannot compete with the entrenched big corp because the playing field is tilted against them.

Does it matter ?

[Anonymous Coward]

In an age if potential cable/gigbait speed to the home, will this really matter all that much ? - I'm not for it or anything, just wondering in the round if it will make that much difference, technology is still moving faster than the politicians and greedy business

net neutrality

[ThinkTwice]

"End of the free internet" what, there is a free internet? As far as I know everyone is paying to get internet access now. The next step in America's net neutrality is the creation of a two tier network. What no one saw this coming? There will be basic (net neutral) and premium service. Every time the government tries to breakdown class barriers, it creates larger barriers and more separation.

Hmmm. Food. Land. Metals. Oil.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm. Food. Land. Metals. Oil. All resources that are finite and close to exhaustion (for the rate we wish to extract them).

Then again, you're probably an accountant and don't know how money works.