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FCC Chair: It's Ok For ISPs To Discriminate Traffic
sl4shd0rk writes "Remember when the ex-cable lobbyist Tom Wheeler was appointed to the FCC chair back in May of 2013? Turns out he's currently gunning for Internet Service Providers to be able to 'favor some traffic over other traffic.' It would set a dangerous precedent, considering the Open Internet Order in 2010 forbade such action if it fell under unreasonable discrimination. The bendy interpretation of the 2010 order is apparently aimed somewhat at Netflix, as Wheeler stated: 'Netflix might say, "I'll pay in order to make sure that my subscriber might receive the best possible transmission of this movie."'"
All I see is a bunch of telecom fiefdoms expanding their influence. It was nice having an internet for a while, but TCP/IP was never built to enforce network neutrality, and you can't stop technology from breaking old protocols and extracting value from communication before that value can be delivered to the real intended recipient.
Deep Packet Inspection is Piracy. Return the favor.
Here I thought the outrageous check I write to Comcast every month was supposed to pay for them to pipe me the best possible signal from whatever website I choose. Silly me.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
The revolving door of DC squirts another lobbyist/shill into a position of public power and we're left holding the bag.
But there again, most shee..rrr...Americans will only complain if something keeps them from watching the latest Idol.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
The internet is turning into cable. Pay money to see what we want you to see and nothing else.
I might be okay with this if it came with a regulatory requirement that ISPs practice full disclosure of their preferences w.r.t. traffic type. That way at least consumers can "vote with their wallets" in markets with more than one provider.
The Fox is guarding the hen house and who is surprised?
Netflix already pays for their connections to the internet. Consumers already pay in kind for their connections. The middlemen are already making money hand over fist. They would just like to avoid playing in a free market so they can make even more money.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Jesus, it's like he's testing the public to see if they can be convinced to care at all about net neutrality. NETFLIX is the example you choose? What were some examples you decided wouldn't be good to mention?
Wheeler: "Say a hospital doesn't want children to die unnecessarily because they couldn't get information, maybe their ISP will charge them highway robbery to prevent your son or daughter from dying. Oh, my secretary is shaking her head at that, okay, maybe a bad example. Porn? If you don't pay the monthly fee, you won't be able to see boobies unless you stop me? Hmm still no... Oh, I know! NETFLIX will pay more because AT&T will demand it. Yes? Okay, sounds like that's the best example I could come up with. Oh, and your ISP will also charge you an arm and a leg, on top of the arm and leg you're already charged, so they'll be getting double the money for less service if I'm allowed to make the rules, which I am. Oops, I think I'm back over the line. I'm also having second thoughts about strangling this puppy to demonstrate what this will do for the economy."
Between the patent wars and the ISPs soon racketing you if you want to reach customers, the US is quickly becoming a very hostile place for tech and internet startups. The big guys will buy the few who somehow make it.
Innovation, being risky, won't be favored by the remaining huge consortiums living off virtual monopolies, so any progress will have to come from abroad.
Is it OK for streaming communication (YouTube, Netflix) or online gaming (StarCraft 2, FPS) to take precedence over email?
You got what you voted for.
I think it's fair. If Netflix (or any other content provider) doesn't like it - they are free to create their own network and do as they wish.
Only if the incumbent ISP will get there wires and fiber out of my paid for public right of way first. Then it would be fair. I am sure Comcast would work really well with all of that coax and fiber rolled up in their own repair yard. At that point Netflix could then go about buying up right of way for a new network.
'Netflix might say, "I'll pay in order to make sure that my subscriber might receive the best possible transmission of this movie."
Verizon might also say, "We're not going to allow Netflix traffic to a subscriber in excess of 1mbit/sec, PERIOD."
Because it is nothing short of bribery. We have anti-trust and anti-competition laws in place for a reason.
There is, however, nothing stopping Netflix from doing something within their power to improve their service without resorting to paying off ISPs. For example, they can pay for caching servers to be in place at those same ISPs so that content can be provided to its customers quicker and cheaper.
Come on, government nut suckers... show me the power of your heavy handed regulation now. Show me how the government is going to have me from an assfucking in this case.
Whitehouse.gov Sign the petition, and at least get your voice out there.
Who know's? It might not fall on deaf ears.
If I am Netflix, Google/YouTube, Amazon, etc. and an ISP comes to me asking for money for preferential treatment, I would just say: "Pay me $1/subscriber, or I will block your users from my site--you know, just like how you pay ESPN for their content..." I find it hard to believe these sites need ISPs more than ISPs need these sites.
"I am in this race to tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over. I have done more than any other candidate in this race to take on lobbyists â" and won. They have not funded my campaign, they will not run my White House, and they will not drown out the voices of the American people when I am president."
-- Barack Obama, Speech in Des Moines, IA
November 10, 2007
Wheeler: "Netflix might say, "I'll pay in order to make sure that my subscriber might receive the best possible transmission of this movie."
Huh, that's funny. I though I ALREADY PAID the ISP to get the best possible transmission.
Oh, I'm sorry, you wanted to buy access to ALL of the Internet? You only bought basic Internet. That simply doesn't include Netflix. But it includes Youtube now that Google ponied up some cash. You need to pay the premium rate to get Netflixs. Plus an extra surcharge for Wikipedia because they said something nasty about us once.
Three cheers for letting cable companies abuse their government-assisted monopolies! At this point, most of us get our internet from the same people who offer on-demand video services on top of regular television for a much higher price than Netflix. Options in most areas are limited to one sometimes two sources for broadband (Sources that also provide TV) or dialup, if you can still find that. Now, they're going to take advantage of their near complete control of the internet to shut out any possible competition to the outdated and undesirable cable TV overpriced bundle business model, full of stuff nobody will watch. If only there were some system of rules that was already in place meant to prevent businesses from leveraging a monopoly in one market to take control of another... If only...
Can someone tell me how the cost of an Internet connection breaks down. As I see it there are 3 components:
I do realise that my breakdown is somewhat simplistic; net neutrality is all about the cost of (3) compared to the cost of (1)+(2). If (3) really is much greater than there might be an argument for not streaming lots of data (eg video) round the globe. If (3) is not the lion's share of the cost then attempts to prevent net neutrality are more about controlling access to the consumer for the ISP's commercial gain.
I assume that any cost in paying for a free consumer broadband modem, installation costs, and similar, have been amortised (ie not part of the above calculation)
No way, no how! Such a thing could only have happened during a RethugliKKKan Presidency. You must've gotten the date wrong.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The internet already provides the viable infrastructure for on-demand video delivery, as demonstrated by the litany of devices that support Netflix playback.
The Great Recession already saw many people belt-tighten by canceling their cable TV. Subscriber numbers are in slow decline. Netflix, YouTube and Hulu are just a few content deals away from completely destroying the value proposition of cable TV for remaining subscribers. Cable companies believe their only hope of keeping that revenue from disappearing is to make sure their internet service isn't viable for video delivery. Net neutrality means they can't manage their network traffic and make netflix et al unusable for their subscribers.
Cue the new FCC chief.
On K Street whoever funnels the most money to a politician gets the most sympathetic ear. Wheeler is proposing the same corrupt concept for ISP traffic. It likely comes natural to him as a lobbyist and I doubt he even realizes there's anything wrong with it.
I just posted a thread over on reddit about Time Warner throttling my server. A 200mb download file download from them at 100kiB/s even though many TWC clients had 50mbit connections. That same 200mb file could be downloaded at 10mbit (2,000 kiB/s) when a proxy server was used.
there is a place for QoS, which is useful for things like VoIP and streaming video. The question is who pays, and how do you insure it's fair?
The solution may be to allow a source to pay for a better QoS classification (since that's where the marking is done), but also force ISPs to be charge all comers equally. That means separating existing companies which provide both content and transport into separate legal entities. Alternately, they remain combined but are not allowed to provide QoS treatment to their own services, so they can't do cost shifting.
But it's all pretty pointless unless the various backbone providers agree to honor the markings coming into their networks - QoS simply doesn't work unless it's end-to-end. Good luck with that. How does a service on ISP A get better service guaranteed for traffic going to a customer on ISP B? I think that's the real problem, QoS is only guaranteed within a provider's network, which naturally favors their own services (and other services contained within their network).
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
caches installed at Comcast locations would be a great idea, and honestly big ISPs ought to pay Netflix for hosting such things because it reduces the amount of traffic that comcast must switch outside of their network (which is part of their costs). The "pay" might be a discount for co-location that helps cover the rack space and electricity, but seems like a useful idea.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Got to keep the money supply happy you know. What did you expect? A free, open, level playing field? This is playing the politics game for keeps man.
While I tend to agree with most people posting and I'm generally in favor of net neutrality, I also like playing devil's advocate, looking at both sides.
My SSH connection uses about 0.001 Mbps. Latency on SSH is really annoying, because it means each time you type on key you have to wait for that letter or number to show up on the screen. So for SSH you use very, very little bandwidth, but it needs to be low latency.
Netflix is opposite - it uses up 1,000 times more bandwidth, and latency doesn't matter at all (though jitter does). During peak hours, when the ISP is 1 Mbps short of perfect performance in a certain area, does it make more sense to annoy the shit out of 500 customers using SSH and other interactive low bandwidth applications, or should the one customer's Netflix packets get queued, which he won't even notice. (The Netflix movie will just begin one second later).
Given the very real choice of annoying 500 customers who aren't asking for much bandwidth vs. an imperceptible difference in one customer's movie, I think the choice is obvious. Better to not annoy any customers by giving the interactive packets priority.
That's what I'd want my ISP to do even if both connections are mine. I'd much rather have an unnoticeable 1% quality reduction in the YouTube video I'm watching than have lost or slow packets in my SSH. I WANT my ISP to discriminate between low priority, high bandwidth sites (video) versus high priority interactive.
It might also be useful to get real and talk about what this actually means in practice. YouTube and Netflix are HALF of the traffic load. Without those two, the existing infrastructure would deliver everything else TWICE as fast. Philosophical discussions are interesting, but at the end of the day, would you rather get stuff done much, much faster and allow the cat video to buffer for 1.5 seconds?
Netflix should encourage every customer to call Comcast tech support. which ought to cost the company more money than it's worth. But it would still result in Netflix going out of business, Amazon shutting down their video on demand services, and Comcast finally being the only option available. We can go back to cable company monopolies like in the good old days!
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Agency functionaries wait impatiently for their chance to try the revolving door.
There is no technical solution for regulatory capture. We (voters) don't pay as much as lobbyists. Our wallets don't support campaigns. Few of us after a long day at work care to read the congressional record.
15TW = 15,000 Nuclear Reactors. (Approx. one accident a month.)
Your local government has picked Charter to be the local monopolist. The solution isn't to get Verizon to lay lines, it's to allow alternative cable providers to operate. If it comes down to it, require Charter to sell access to their lines. If Charter throws a fit, see how they like running cable without government granted right-of-ways.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
"I'll pay in order to make sure that my subscriber might receive the best possible transmission of this movie."
Why? They're already paying for the bandwidth from their massive content network.
And their clients are ALREADY paying their ISPs for "best effort" delivery.
It's the ISP's customers who are requesting the traffic in their first place. If these providers don't want to deliver best effort, their clients can (ideally) move to services that WILL.
But nooo! That'd mean that these fucking bloodsucking middlemen would have to compete solely on price and performance. Can't have that! We'll just hold everyone hostage until they pay MORE!
This is basically extortion. Nothing more.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Netflix is already turning this around by offering some ISPs higher quality streams for establishing partnerships.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2425696,00.asp
"U.S. ISPs that have signed on for Open Connect include Cablevision, Frontier, Clearwire, and Google Fiber. British Telecom, TDC, GVT, Telus, Bell Canada, Virgin, Telmex, and more have also signed up overseas. Those who sign up have the option to stream Netflix content in Super HD or 3D." Other ISPs like Verizon Communications and Time Warner Cable, have declined to sign up for Open Connect.
They are also working to get integration with set-top boxes.
You know what, sure, let's let ISPs discriminate traffic. Let's let them outright block any site that doesn't pay them enough. But in exchange, they lose their safe harbor protection.
So anyone who launches a DoS or other "attack" over that ISP? They're partially liable. After all, they could have slowed or stopped that attack.
Anyone pirates anything? Liable. If they're blocking sites for their own purpose, they can obviously block illegal downloads as well, right?
Somebody posts a threat on Facebook? Cyber-bullying? LIABLE. Fraud? LIABLE.
Basically, if it's illegal and done through an Internet connection provided by that ISP, that ISP is a co-defendant in any civil or criminal suit.
Of course, the only way for an ISP to operate in such a legal environment would be to block everything by default, and only whitelist acceptable sites. Which of course cannot include anything with user-generated content - no Facebook, no Wikipedia, no Ebay. Of the 23 sites in my bookmarks bar, the only one that probably wouldn't get blocked is Wolfram Alpha.
So sure! Let ISPs start filtering traffic - as long as they take responsibility for anything that they allow through.
Over the last few years we have seen a concerted effort by corporations and government (even though, where's the difference these days anyway?) to bring an end to the "wild west" of a truly free and open Internet. The whole idea of normal individuals being able to say whatever they want and their message to be heard around the world...? Dangerous, let's stop that. The whole idea of small, independent companies disrupting established markets? Bad for the bottom line, let's stop that (it's been going on for too long already).
Let's add porn filters to protect the children! Of course, the same filter infrastructure can be used for other things as well, such as ... oh, I don't know... stop free and open discussion in forums, brand and block legitimate sites as criminal, stop people from sharing information, etc. We all know that this is NOT a coincidence!
The free and open Internet was nice as long as it lasted. I will always fondly remember living in a time when the Internet came to be and we looked at something truly unique and powerful, something capable of really making a difference in everyone's life, something that could fundamentally change society and could be used to make this world a little bit of a better.
But of course, in the end - as always - greed wins. The masses with a vague feeling of how things should be stand no chance against the focused and deliberate efforts of a few that know exactly what they want in order to line their pockets.
Video: Netflix logo
Audio: Comcast cable in [your area] expects Netflix to allow them to provide our excellent programming at no cost to them. They have refused to pay our entirely reasonalbe price of only 1/10 cent per megabyte for all our programming. Netflix is sorry to announce that as of [one week from now] we will no longer allow Comcast to freeload on our valuable property.
Video: Local telco DSL order info
Audio: Please consider one of the following ISPs to continue to view classic TV shows, great movies, and original programming.
I think it's fair. If Netflix (or any other content provider) doesn't like it - they are free to create their own network and do as they wish.
Only if the incumbent ISP will get there wires and fiber out of my paid for public right of way first. Then it would be fair. I am sure Comcast would work really well with all of that coax and fiber rolled up in their own repair yard. At that point Netflix could then go about buying up right of way for a new network.
Exactly. The incumbent ISP has the benefit of privileges granted by the pubic.
Exactly. The incumbent ISP has the benefit of privileges granted by the pubic.
But sadly, the privileges often end up being no-hairs-attached.
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, by Dr. Adam Smith, 1776
"Lobbying" and "monopoly" are not "capitalism". Even Smith recognized that a capitalist economy must have a reasonable body of antitrust laws to keep everybody "playing within the rules".
Adam Smith believed in "an invisible hand", ie, the marketplace, that has the ability to regain sanity after a period of insanity, through the force of the combined participation of each and every participant (whether it be consumer / banker / manufacturer / miner / farmer).
On the other hand, Washington D.C. (no matter it be Democrats or Republicans) believes in their own version of "invisible hand".
The invisible hand those politiscums believe in is "BIG BROTHERHOOD", or in other words, an entity which OVERSEES everything that is happening, no matter it happened in the public sphere or otherwise.
That is why we have all the illegal spying on the American citizens by none other than the American government.
I am an American citizen, and have been an American citizen for almost four decades, and I am sad to say that the country which I signed up on, back then, was very different from the country which I am looking at, today.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
> really the monopolies need to upgrade the BW infrastructure but they won't
Upgrades are always nice. I'm glad they've upgraded from 28Kbps to 28,000Kbps in the time I've been using the internet. 100,000 Kbps would be even better.
However, impossible virtually impossible to upgrade so much that you never exceed capacity, and it would be really stupid to try . The thing is, in the busiest five minutes, users want 5 times the bandwidth that they demand during a normal "busy" period. In order to provide 10Mbps of clean bandwidth during that 5 minute period, you need infrastructure capable of delivering 50Mbps 95% of the time. You could either provide 50 Mbps all day but only bill for 10, which would be stupid, or artificially limit it to 10Mbps, letting 80% of your capacity go to waste, which would also be stupid. The only reasonable thing to do is build enough capacity to provide the full speed 98% of the time, and allow it to be slightly congested for a few minutes per day.
The Internet will split three ways. One for the filthy rich, another for those that don't care, or too dumb to care that they can't see the whole Internet at good speeds, and the third internet will be put in place by a group of people that gives a damn for the people.
'Netflix might say, "I'll pay in order to make sure that my subscriber might receive the best possible transmission of this movie."'"
Isn't that exactly what net neutrality people are worried about? Because it's hardly a big jump from that to "pay us or your subscriber will get the worst possible transmission of a movie".
My position has always been "I am the ISP's customer. I am not the thing they sell to Netflix." If it's more expensive for the ISP to deliver me video than emails, that should be a negotiation between my ISP and me. It shouldn't be a negotiation betwen my ISP and Netflix, that I end up paying for anyway. Or even worse, that negotiation goes bad, and Netflix just sucks for me with no way for me to improve it... and my ISP tells me "but Hulu works fine... you should just switch to Hulu... trust us."
Have gnu, will travel.
This fast lane/slow lane analogy makes this sound more reasonable than it is. Netflix, or anyone else, can't pay to have their traffic go faster. They can only pay to have someone else's traffic go slower. ISPs are talking about taking bids to selectively slow traffic. How, exactly, is this different from a denial of service attack?
While still appalled, I'm just no longer surprised. A cable lobbyist passes through the revolving door, Obama/ does his usual PR game (in addition to the usual industry bought PR), the corporate media barely makes a peep about it (or presents a misleading view of it) despite the blatant conflict of interest and despite reputable public interest advocates sounding the alarm, and then the ex-lobbyist advocates for anti-competitive practices that will hurt the vast majority of Americans and further enrich the plutocrats he formerly worked on the behalf of (just like the public interest advocates said he would). And just watch this guy's compensation skyrocket when he transitions back through the revolving door into private industry--he will be rewarded well.
And it's the same story over and over again. The US continues to degenerate into a plutocracy as a result of rampant corruption (*legal* corruption, but still a corruption of the intent of the system itself--the intent being to serve the public good). More and more Americans seem to be arriving at this conclusion, but the vast majority still gets its "news" from the corporate media and is thus completely uninformed and misled. The corporate media is quite happy with this situation due to the vast monies being spent on political advertising, and candidates that actually have the public interest in mind do not even end up on the radar because getting coverage means competing with the wealthy-donor funded candidates (in other words, it's too expensive, e.g. a senate seat is usually around $4 million).
So I'm probably just about as apathetic as any other American, but here's at least a start on a solution: the problem itself, a solution in the works, an online movement to accompany that solution, another related movement, and a motivational speech for these movements.
That's certainly one way to view this...I completely understand. However I think we can look at this as a challenge and not an inevitability.
*We run our government* to the degree to which we claim that power. We can demand the FCC end this nonsense! We should all email the FCC and tell them any discrimination in traffic, even if contextualized as a "speed boost" or "preferred delivery" is just marketing language for ending Net Neutrality. Tell them "No"
That's a starting point.
Techies have to get out there and make our voices heard on this. We need to explain why any tiered service is a method to get us to this.
The Net Neutrality blackout day worked...it got the conversation going in the right direction.
I honestly believe that this FCC chairman may be just an airhead. They hire these guys to "create jobs" and "foster innovation" so they are business types usually with a law background. They aren't hired for their technical knowledge.
I can envision a scenario where the FCC chairman said this because he heard some damn TED talk or some kind of one-sided presentation from Verizon.
We need to give the advisors of the FCC chairman and Obama the intellectual meat to use as bait for their bosses when they explain what's happening on a policy like Net Neutrality.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Yeah I came to post the same question.
GP may be the type that looks at this all as "inevitable" and will just keep lobbing criticisms of policies while never stating what an alterative would be...that happens alot around these parts.
We need Net Neutrality. Eventually technology will end scarcity such that providing free secure internet will be viewed like the government providing roads.
Thank you Dave Raggett
I have so much I could say about this, but instead of trying to preach to the choir or deconvert the atheists I'll just post this:
Leaked ISP Net Neutrality market research video The Internet Must Go (No, it's not a dune reference.)
Additionally: The First Honest Cable Company
When we can no longer laugh about the horrible state of things, I'll know it's time to leave.
your old clients' money still paying for favors i see. it was probably them that lobbied successfully (i.e. paid) for you to get that post, too.
Not by a long shot. So there's little point in fawning over the free market where ot has not existed for some time.
Everytime I mention 802.11s, I get this reaction from people: wait, what? We don't need ad-hoc mesh networks, we have this much faster wired internet and so why would I want this...? And then you get the FCC guy yelping about 'oh its all good, net neutrality is aribtrary, just like privacy and security. 802.11s should be in before someone says 'never'.
so are you for or against Net Neutrality?
what is your alternative?
Thank you Dave Raggett
I WANT my ISP to discriminate between low priority, high bandwidth sites (video) versus high priority interactive.
As an online gamer, I can sympathise with that position, but realistically, it is not going to happen. Given the approval to prioritise traffic, you know that the ISPs will do whatever they want that works out best for their bottom line.
For example, assume that Netflix caves and pays the ISPs for preferential traffic, which the ISPs have tried to bill them for, and which could happen. All of a sudden, their bandwidth hogging traffic has higher priority over your SSH. I doubt the 500 SSH using customers you mentioned could or would be willing to outpay Netflix.
On the other hand, you might take comfort in the many ads being delivered blistering fast to your screen.
If they do this, let them lose Common Carrier status (and the legal protection it gives them).
What they want is another way to gouge the customer and prevent competitors.
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
... if you want the internet to work. why? because we don't have commit rate for every use to access everything at full end user line rate. There is over-subscription as connectivity fans out to the edge. Over-subscription means that in order for things like VOIP and video to work, some traffic MUST be prioritised and other traffic MUST be dropped in order to accommodate this reliably.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
At least three reminders on /. alone of how corrupt the government is within the span of an hour. And I missed breakfast, too!
I'm sorry, but what does a low speed, differential serial bus network used primarily in Automobiles and Industrial controls have to do with preventing ISPs from changing content providers to provide faster transport?
Yes, even though I use CAN in my job, I did Google looking for a version that fit your post, but did not find one on the 1st page of results.
I think we had a good time with the Internet, let's hang onto those memories. The NSA and Social Media were starting to ruin it anyway...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The price of my Netflix goes up, it isn't going to make me change from Netflix to them, it will just force me to dump Netflix and torrent more or just flat out do without as I already watch less than 3 hours per week to TV anyways.
But honestly, they need to hurry up and bar them from stuff like this and FORCE them into common carrier status. Also would like to see more decentralized and encrypted systems in place to head this (and the NSA bullshit) off before it starts.
'Netflix might say, "I'll pay in order to make sure that my subscriber might receive the best possible transmission of this movie."'"
And where does Netflix get it's money? Oh, that's right, from it's customers.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
You can do your own QoS within your home or office, but that does nothing for congestion on the ISP's network during peak periods. So yes, I'd also like the ISP do "do it for you", doing QoS on their network. Video, specifically, is bandwidth heavy and insensitive to latency, whereas VoIP, for example, is light on bandwidth and very sensitive to latency and jitter. So yes, I do want my ISP to handle my video and different from my VoIP. For my VoIP traffic, I want them to provide low latency and low throughput is fine. For video or FTP, I want high throughput and don't care about latency.
> yes i truly feel that cable companies go out of their way to help the consumer by lowering costs and operating at a minimal profit margin there by leaving no room for upgrades.
What the heck are you talking about? Did you read any of what I wrote, or did you just make up something to argue with?
> and never over subscribe.
That's precisely the point, that they DO over subscribe, and it would be wasteful for them not to subscribe enough that 2% of the time, it'll be oversubscribed in the sense that not everyone is getting the connection they'd like during those few minutes.
Picture a certain neighborhood. When people are at work 8:00-5:30, there are fewer than 200 people downloading at any given instant. From 6PM-9PM, no more than 300 people. After 9PM, again no more than 200 people. Each subscriber should get 10 Mbps. How much bandwidth does that neighborhood need? 300 people X 10 Mbps = 3,000 Mbps, right?
Right, that's what should be provisioned, 3,000 Mbps. Notice our usage pattern talks about 8:00-5:30 and 6:00-9:00. What about 5:30PM-6:00PM? As it happens, somewhere during that time period is when everyone gets home from work and checks their email, their Facebook, etc. For the busiest five minutes, maybe 5:40-5:45, there are 900 people downloading at once. Each wants 10 Mbps, so we need 9,000 Mbps, just for that five minute peak.
So, should we build 9,000 Mbps of infrastructure and buy 9,000 Mbps of backhaul in order to provide excellent service during those five minutes? If so, that money is being wasted 99.995% of the time. Spending three times as much, only to have that equipment sitting idle 99.99% of the time seems wasteful and stupid to me. The smart thing to do is buy about 3,000-5,000 Mbps of equipment and backhaul. That provides full speed 99.995% of the time. 0.005% of the time it's noticeably oversubscribed.
Note that it doesn't change anything if we upgrade and offer the customers higher speed. If we build 9,000 Mbps, we can provide the customer 30 Mbps ... 99.995% of the time. The only way to never have congestion is to build enough infrastructure to provide 30 Mbps, but only sell 10 Mbps, so most of the bandwidth goes to waste most of the time. That would be dumb.
* I work on the server end of things. I don't know what the exact peak times are for residential service, but I do know it has high peaks, because I see part of those peaks hitting the web server. The web server serves multiple time zones, so it's peaks are spread, meaning the ISP sees higher peaks within each specific area.
There is another solution if this comes to fruition. Netflix and similar content providers horizontally integrate and start selling internet service. Another option would be for content providers to team up together (possibly with google). Include one or two content services (ie netflix, hulu) with the price of the service and get Aereo onboard and it would be a juggernaut.
If you can't come up with anything interesting to say without ripping off a movie, badly, then how about just shutting the fuck up?
this whole thread is about me asking for specific policy alternatives from critics...
you're still avoiding the question...
the fact that, after all this, you ask "What does it matter?" repeatedly instead of giving specific policies leads me to believe there isn't any valuable discussion to be had from you
Thank you Dave Raggett
I honestly believe that this FCC chairman may be just an airhead. They hire these guys to "create jobs" and "foster innovation" so they are business types usually with a law background. They aren't hired for their technical knowledge. I can envision a scenario where the FCC chairman said this because he heard some damn TED talk or some kind of one-sided presentation from Verizon. We need to give the advisors of the FCC chairman and Obama the intellectual meat to use as bait for their bosses when they explain what's happening on a policy like Net Neutrality.
Sorry bud....that's simply incorrect.
This guy was appointed specifically to do what he's doing. That is, destroy net neutrality.
The Republicans killed it with their sad insistence on maintaining Voodoo/Trickle-Down Economics.
You are one dumb mother fucker.
WHAT THE FUCK DO THE REPUBLICANS HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING? IDIOT.
Last I checked, it isn't "the Republicans" who are in charge of the FCC, now is it?
Pull your head out of your ASSHOLE.
Really? A cable lobbyist said that? Wow i'm shocked. SHOCKED I TELL YOU!.
How on earth someone who is so biased could ever be elected to chair the FCC is beyond me.
You seem to think that people can just up and leave their ISP and choose a new one, but you're ignoring the fact that most people only have two options at the most. it's no surprise other countries have left us in the dust as far as broadband speeds are concerned.
No No No, you're looking at it all wrong.
In the idea, each user gets a connection, this connection goes back to the CO. This can be done for about 3% over the cost of a shared connection, so don't spout BS about shared vs dedicated, because dedicated is nearly the same price.
At the CO, the customer plugs into a chassis. This chassis has enough back-plane and uplink to support all users running at 100% at the same time. Then the chassis plugs into the trunk. Up to this point, there is no over-subscription, but that's because it's still relatively cheap. The trunk is where over-subscription becomes important for waste reasons.
At the trunk level, typical user usage is 20:1. This means 19 out of 20 users, on average, are not using their connection at any given time. This is a fairly reliable metric. This means you can run dedicated bandwidth from the trunk to the customers, but the trunk only needs 1/20th of the bandwidth.
An example of making this work would be something like this. Say you have 100 customers with 100mb connections. Each user gets a dedicated connection to the trunk. Each customer pays $100/month. Then the ISP only purchases enough bandwidth for 1/20th of those users to use their full connections at the same time, so 500mb.
The ISP only pays $1/mbit for 500mb, so they pay $500 for 500mb. But they can sell that to 20x the users at $100/month for $10,000 of revenue. Each customer effectively gets 100mb every time they use their connection, but the ISP only needs to provide 1/20th of that on average.
Some of that $100 goes back to supporting the connection to the customer, so carve out $30 of that $100 bill for that. This leaves $70/customer as revenue towards transit bandwidth. That is $7,000 in revenue for $500 in costs, so about $6,500 in gross profit.
You ask, "but what if someone uses their connection 24/7, like bit torrent?"
That's the pain of averages. In a small population, you may not get the average, but in a large population, you should. If you're a large ISP with 50,000 customers in the city, that 20:1 ratio should be quite reliable.
> Some of that $100 goes back to supporting the connection to the customer, so carve out $30 of that $100 bill for that.
> This leaves $70/customer as revenue towards transit bandwidth. That is $7,000 in revenue for $500 in costs, so about $6,500 in gross profit.
That sounds all evil and stuff, so I'm sure it would go over great on potheadmoronhippie.com, but it's completely divorced from reality. Take as an example the most successful ISP in the United States, Comcast. Last year, they had $63 billion in revenue and $6.2 billion profit. That's under 10% profit. In the previous year, $4 billion profit on $56 billion in revenue - 7% profit.
The most successful ISP is making 7%-10% profit, which is slightly less than the 93% you tried to claim.