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FCC Planning Rule Changes To Restore US Net Neutrality
Karl C writes "In a statement issued today, FCC commissioner Tom Wheeler announced that the commission will begin a rule-making process to re-impose Net Neutrality, which was recently struck down in Federal court. Among the standards Wheeler intends to pursue are vigorous enforcement of a requirement for transparency in how ISPs manage traffic, and a prohibition on blocking (the 'no blocking' provision.) This seems like exactly what net neutrality activists have been demanding: Total prohibition of throttling, and vigorous enforcement of that rule, and of a transparency requirements so ISPs can't try to mealy-mouth their way around accusations that they're already throttling Netflix. Even before the court decision overturning net neutrality, Comcast and Verizon users have been noting Netflix slowdowns for months."
There are many times I want to throttle AT&T and with these proposed regulations, I won't be able to do it?!
NO! We must preserve out right to throttle these people!!
I imagine there are some legal reasons for not invoking common carrier status for ISPs, legal reasons that will sound like bullshit to everyone not in possession of billions of dollars.
Wherever there are finite bandwidth connections, there will always be throttling. Whether the throttling occurs based on type of traffic, end user limits, or "naturally" sort itself out via TCP or other protocols, throttling will occur as the bottlenecks fill up. If the carriers will not be allowed to do any throttling based on traffic type/source/etc, then the guy that decides to run a p2p file server will have his 500 connections open while your measly 1 netflix connection will get drowned out, as the "natural TCP throttling" tends to divide the bandwidth equally per connection (not per user). Then people will complain about the quality of service, but it will be neutral. What people are really wanting here is "don't throttle me", but that obviously cannot be satisfied for all users.
On the other hand, the providers can implement another type of throttling - financial. Once they start charging you for bandwidth used, folks considering watching a netflix movie for $x per show may start throttling themselves.
So, when the FCC re-rules ISPs as Common Carriers, the real good news is that means that 6 strikes rules and other copyright stuff is out the window... after all, a big part of common carrier status is taht you are exempt from having any responsibility for controlling the content you're carrying - so you can't be sued by a copyright owner because user susy q used your infrastructure to share/copy movie x.
(Ok, so I bet they still WILL do crap like that because they're so far in bed with copyright owners... HHHMMM COMCAST/NBC? but it would be nice to stop them having their cake and eating it too... one can dream)
I really am happy that the FCC and the Obama administration "get it" - the Internet has become vital to our economy and a free, fair, open Internet is key to innovation and continued growth. If the 'net were allowed to become an expensive toll road, it would only feed the pockets of the already wealthy whilst simultaneously raising the barrier to entry for anything new/innovative.
The Digital Sorceress
You want to play unfair? Well, Comcast, guess what? I can download what I want at a better quality then you can offer, so no need for your cable. Oh, you don't like people using Netflix? Well, fuck you then, I'll just download off usenet and torrents (via a vpn).
You understand that's not sustainable, right? Only so many people can cancel cable and go internet only before internet prices increase and speed drops.
If this is so great, explain "total prohibition of throttling". Most networks are oversubscribed, and that's OK since most users use a small portion of their allowed bandwidth. One way or another, there will be throttling. What about QoS-based throttling? Voice traffic is harmed much more by dropped packets than torrents. The ISPs sell voice service, and they sell products that compete with torrents. Doing the right thing for QoS directly serves the financial interests of the ISPs. Should we cut off our nose to spiderface? Never spiderface.
So are we going to have clear rules about what you can and can't throttle? Simple rules won't work. ISPs will be better at gaming those rules than the FCC will be at writing them. As SuperKendall posted about 4000 times the last time this came up (and still most people didn't get it): the way Comcast was throttling Netflix was perfectly OK under the last set of rules. Do you think more rules will help? There are always corner cases to exploit, because each new rule just creates new corners.
Anyhow, we know where any complex set of rules ends: the big players end up writing the rules. I'm sure the cable companies would happily give up throttling Netflix if they get in exchange the ability to bar any new players from entering the ISP business. After all, they don't have local monopolies everywhere yet, but with a high enough regulatory barrier to entry they could get there.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Assume no. Proceed as if the announcement was made that things are going to get worse. E-mail the FCC, e-mail your congressperson. We should believe that this is merely PR to get us to calm down, then do nothing. Wheeler was a lobbyist for the people he's regulating. That doesn't prove he's corrupt and is doing this to screw us over, but I'd bet good money if I had it that he's corrupt and is doing this to screw us over.
I'm pretty sure networks are oversubscribed because ISPs have no motivation to improve them. The margins for large service providers are ridiculous. A lot more infrastructure can be built before providing internet access becomes unprofitable.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
"Oversubscribed" does not mean "congested". If your network is congested, then you're overselling it to the point that you are no longer providing what you're advertising. For wireless networks, I could see throttling until a better design or management solution is available, but fixed line should not do throttling. If an ISP needs to state two speeds, one for "Internal" ISP network speeds and "External" Internet speeds, so be it, but a customer should not have to guess what speeds they will have.
If an ISP sells a 10mb connection, they should not be the bottle neck. I repeat, the ISP should not have congestion on their networks. They cannot control other networks, but they can control their own. If you don't have it, don't sell it. If the competition is marketing faster speeds that you can't support, tough luck.
It really just comes down to false advertisement. You don't see people selling cars with "up to 40mpg", then you only get 5mpg in normal driving conditions.
Everybody else's full-handle is used in their submissions (including people with SPACES and names 3-5x longer than mine) so why am I "Karl C" and not "Karl Cocknozzle?"
Truncating my last name is an insult to generations of Cocknozzles that have come before me.
Who did what now?
"Oversubscribed" does not mean "congested".
Oversubscribed always means "congested sometimes". If the ISP is doing it's job (pause for laughter) then it's not congested most of the time.
If an ISP sells a 10mb connection, they should not be the bottle neck. I repeat, the ISP should not have congestion on their networks.
If you want guaranteed bandwidth price a T3 line sometime. Guarantees are very expensive. A service that's congested 5% of the time likely costs 1/10th as much as a service that guarantees no congestion. Chances are you want the oversubscribed product, not the guaranteed bandwidth for home use.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
So now you are going to make it so that any pipe the ISP has, if it becomes saturated with data, they are legally required to upgrade it to a larger pipe?
No? Because that is how netflix is being "throttled" today. They just don't have a large enough pipe to them to satisfy all the requests.
Wait, there is evidence that Netflix is SELECTIVELY throttled today, not that available bandwidth is exhausted.
In other words, when everybody jumps on Netflix in the evening, Gaming, YouTube, and just plain surfing should be dreadfully slow. Yet that does not appear to be the case for most people. Netflix is affected, but the spam and chock-full-of-ads pages load as fast as ever.
So your premise is wrong, which means your conclusion can't be supported.
HOWEVER, still, you make a good point, because when Netflix is not selectively throttled, the effect of everybody wanting one to five high bandwidth streams into every home could have a devastating effect on all parts of the network. Especially the last mile.
Even when Netflix (and similar) servers are located on the ISP's local head-ends, moving all TV viewing to IP traffic will swamp the last mile. It is dramatically more traffic than the same amount of programming traveling by digital cable, because every single user is a separate stream starting at separate times.
(Please don't anyone pop up and say Multicast. It doesn't work that way and won't help).
So you are left with the same problem, of potentially saturated bandwidth as everybody moves to IP-TV. And forcing cable plant upgrades to fiber everywhere is probably the only way around this. But the FCC probably doesn't have the authority to do that, and the natural Monopoly enjoyed by cable plants probably isn't going to make it easy for competition to come in.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.