How 'Fast Lanes' Will Change the Internet

An anonymous reader writes "Net neutrality has been looking pretty shaky in recent months. Netflix has started paying Comcast and Verizon directly and the FCC is saying that's perfectly fine. We may be witnessing a fundamental change in the nature of the internet. Timothy B. Lee at Vox explains how all of this works, and what it means for the future of the web. Quoting: '[S]ome of the largest ISPs now seem to view declining network performance not as a technical problem to be solved so much as a source of leverage in business negotiations. Another reason is that regulating interconnection is much more complex than a "classic" network neutrality rule. When all of an ISP's traffic comes through one cable, it's not too hard to write a rule requiring that the packets in that cable be treated equally. But it's harder to write a rule governing when and how ISPs must interconnect. Someone needs to pay for the cost of these connections, and the fairest way to split the costs depends on many subtle factors, including geography, traffic patterns, and the relative size of the interconnecting networks. A poorly written interconnection rule could create a lot of work for lawyers without actually preventing abusive practices.'"

Comments

Micro transactions.

[Kenja]

Provider pays to provide information, customer pays ISP for access to internet and then has to pay a per view fee to view content at reasonable speeds. So long as there's money to be extracted, the consumer will be squeezed.

Re:Micro transactions.

[Anonymous Coward]

Those two words encompass all of the worst things of the internet.

Re:Micro transactions.

[sinij]

You forgot about "just because" fee, otherwise you have them covered.

Re:Micro transactions.

[Anonymous Coward]

Reasons like this is why I'm so glad the Netherlands chose to enshrine net neutrality in law.

Otherwise we'd have to put up with shit like this:

http://cdn5.geekinsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/2221.jpg

USA, enjoy your tiered priced internet service, your net neutrality is no more.

Re:Micro transactions.

[Penguinisto]

Only one rule that would prevent this crap. Unfortunately, it would have to come from Congress:

"All Internet Service Providers are required to treat each data packet and/or stream passing within its networks with equal priority, without regard to source, content, or destination. Failure to do so will incur a fine of 1% of the provider's calculated annual revenue for each week this condition is not corrected to the satisfaction of prosecutors, plus an additional 1% of annual revenue for each week the condition has existed from the date it was first reported to the Justice Department, plus an additional 1% of annual revenue to the person or entity which first discovered and credibly reported the infraction."

I suspect that even Verizon and/or Comcast would want that shit solved awful quickly, and the bounty makes sure that any technically-minded customer can keep them honest (I mean, damn - the chance to win 1% of a big ISP's revenue would be enough to get me to script something to monitor that shit...)

Re:Micro transactions.

[TopherC]

One problem is that folks have to pay Comcast for decent internet service, and also they have to pay Netflix for a subscription. Fine of course, but if Netflix has to pony up extra fast-lane and direct-lane fees, ultimately their subscription prices increase. So Comcast+Netflix customers essentially get a hidden charge for their video streaming, one directly to Comcast and the other indirectly to Comcast (through Netflix). The real problem is that the indirect fee also applies to DSL and satellite customers, so you can't even avoid this fee by choosing a Comcast competitor.

I can understand wanting a free market system to avoid tragedy-of-the-commons types of issues with Netflix customers causing other non-streaming subscribers to get worse performance, but this present "solution" is clearly broken and gives Comcast and other last-mile providers a significant economic influence over other companies like Netflix that does not derive from consumer choice.

Re:Micro transactions.

[Anonymous Coward]

Another idea. Provider maintains its network and customer pays flat fee. If provider fails to maintain its network, it is taken from provider and auctioned off to other provider. Original provider can sell sandwiches on the street.

Re:Micro transactions.

[amorsen]

The whole summary and article is about why exactly that is insufficient.

Re:Micro transactions.

[rogoshen1]

please don't make it sound like the american public is in favor of this kind of crap. We're divided into 3 camps.

1. those who don't care (95%)
2. those who are against it (4.999999%);
3. the guilty greedy fucks who are implementing it. (0.000001%)

Re:Micro transactions.

[Anonymous Coward]

What this solution fails to account for is the impact of false positives, or rather the disputation of events that may or may not be the product of malfeasance on the part of the ISP. Do we really want the court calendars clogged up with cases filed by every Tom, Dick, and Harry seeking damages for day to day performance fluctuations while ISPs scramble to "prove" their innocence? Could encumbent providers keep up with the legal costs of defending themselves? The larger ISPs, maybe, but such a system would make it all but impossible for new competitors to enter the market.

Re:Micro transactions.

[rogoshen1]

Since by and large the public paid for the infrastructure -- nationalize it ,and grant leases to companies like Comcast to administer it. That way they'd have to actually compete on price and service.

Think MNVO's for internet service. Internet access is basically approaching the rank of necessity, and frankly leaving necessities in the hands of for-profit monopolies sounds like a recipe for gouging consumers.

Re:Micro transactions.

[Chelloveck]

Unfortunately that rule would cripple the net. The wording doesn't leave any room to filter out DDoS and other malicious traffic. It's essential that ISPs retain that ability.

Re:Micro transactions.

[Dare nMc]

> The real problem is that the indirect fee also applies to DSL and satellite customers,

That is interesting, it seams like Netflix needs a surcharge to customers using Comcast or other providers that make them pay up. Netflix tried shaming them by showing the worst providers, didn't work.

I think the worst problem is for possible Netflix competitors, Netflix was big enough to make agreement and pay for preferred access. A new competitor cannot compete with Netflix until they make the same agreements.

Re:Micro transactions.

[Anonymous Coward]

The real problem is that the indirect fee also applies to DSL and satellite customers, so you can't even avoid this fee by choosing a Comcast competitor.

Not necessarily. Netflix has, in the past, imposed an extra cost for certain account features like BluRay discs. If Netflix added a $2/mo Comcast charge, Comcast might back off of trying to charge Netflix for the fast lane if Netflix made it clear to users that Comcast was double dipping.

Re:Micro transactions.

[Hamsterdan]

Customer has to pay overquota fees because the same ISP don't want you to use resources...

Re:Micro transactions.

[currently_awake]

Almost got it there. Nationalize it, then run it as a government department like highways. Let Comcast be a content provider if they want but the wires belong to us.

Re:Micro transactions.

[mosb1000]

I can understand wanting a free market system to avoid tragedy-of-the-commons types of issues with Netflix customers causing other non-streaming subscribers to get worse performance

Non-streaming subscribers?! How many internet users are there really who don't stream video? Isn't that the reason people buy the top-tier internet connections? It seems more like a case of ISPs not wanting to render services their customers have already paid for. Or it's a case of ISPs who also happen to own content providers, working to promote their content over a competitor's content. Either way, the ISP is abusing their position to screw over their customers.

It's the same kind of anti-compeditive bullshit we've seen time and time again in the US. There is definitely something wrong with the way the government works that they keep allowing abusive monopolies to spring up with every new technological innovation.

Re:Micro transactions.

[Anonymous Coward]

When You don't say no, You say yes.

won't matter for 90%

[Anonymous Coward]

as long as the "slow" lane is "fast enough".

This is equivalent of showing a bad movie on an HD TV and a good movie on an old CRT. The audience will still prefer the good movie, and if you asked them about the picture quality most wouldn't have noticed.

Re:won't matter for 90%

[arth1]

as long as the "slow" lane is "fast enough".

That's the problem - they are not creating any "fast lanes". They are artificially creating slow lanes to get more money. It's like if the state put down continuous rumble strips on all right hand lanes, and charged you extra for the privilege of driving in the left hand lane.

Re:won't matter for 90%

[AK Marc]

If nobody buys the fast lanes, then Internet will be neutral. So long as they don't get to block/redirect/attack traffic in the slow lane indiscriminately.

Re:won't matter for 90%

[ntshma]

Sure, until they make the "slow" lane ever slower. Eventually everyone's paying extra for "fast" which started off as regular.

Re:won't matter for 90%

[FictionPimp]

And then you create ultrafast lanes!

Re:won't matter for 90%

[Bengie]

As long as the "slow lane" still allows me my full bandwidth, I see no issues. The only difference is latency, but closeness to reduce latency comes at a price of the party that needs it. A game server may be willing to pay a premium to be closer and have fewer hops, but Netflix may not care about latency as long as their bandwidth is unfettered.

If the "slow lane" starts affecting my bandwidth, then the ISP is not holding up their end of the bargin. They must provide me uncongested access to all of their interconnects. Once the packet leaves my ISP's network, my ISP has no more control and therefore, cannot be directly responsible anymore. Although, they could be indirectly responsible, like making sure they use a quality transit provider or not using overloaded peers to get cheaper routes.

Re:won't matter for 90%

[Noah Haders]

the problem is, they won't be selling the fast lanes to consumers, they'll be selling them to providers. like netflix and youtube. so prices will continue to go up for services, and the consumers (us) won't connect the dots.

Re:won't matter for 90%

[Penguinisto]

as long as the "slow" lane is "fast enough".

No - just, no. That gives them the excuse to keep the paying customers at ~30mb/sec or so on a semi-permanent basis, while moneybagged interests could get massive boosts - paid for with government incentive funds. Meanwhile, the rural folks would still be borked back to dial-up or satellite.

Re:won't matter for 90%

[westlake]

This is equivalent of showing a bad movie on an HD TV and a good movie on an old CRT. The audience will still prefer the good movie, and if you asked them about the picture quality most wouldn't have noticed.

Frozen grossed one billion dollars in first run theatrical release. Blu-Ray and CD audio sales have been strong.

If you can forgive the pun, I think it's long past time the geek let go of the notion that audio and video quality doesn't matter to the home audience.

Re:won't matter for 90%

[Ramirozz]

That is right... they are making money with scarcity, the service will not improve

Re:won't matter for 90%

[Ichijo]

The ISPs aren't creating "slow lanes." They're simply refusing to widen the freeway until they're paid to do so. It's like a multiple-item auction seller who, in order to increase the auction price, refuses to make more items available in the auction.

Re:won't matter for 90%

[Anonymous Coward]

How would you know? Tracking that an ISP isn't artificially limiting your ability to access content is very difficult from an end user's perspective.

Re:won't matter for 90%

[AK Marc]

If no providers buy the fast lane, then no harm will come to users or the provider's services.

Re:won't matter for 90%

[XopherMV]

The ISPs aren't creating "slow lanes." They're simply refusing to widen the freeway until they're paid to do so.

Funny. Customers pay their ISPs for an advertised bandwidth. Content providers also pay ISPs for advertised bandwidth. Yet, ISPs are still able to turn up the speed if content providers pay them extra. It sounds like ISPs are purposefully not living up to their advertising in order to extort money from people who aren't their customers.

Re:won't matter for 90%

[Charliemopps]

They must provide me uncongested access to all of their interconnects.

No they don't. It all depends on your contract. If you have residential internet service they are under no obligation to provide you any service at all. Granted you could dump their service if it were bad enough. If you want guaranteed uncongested access to all their interconnects you'd need that stated in your contract. Those are generally considered "Business lines" and are your classic T1s, T3s, etc... and even those can have issues. But you have your contract to back you up should you have a problem.

Re:won't matter for 90%

[Noah Haders]

yes but if you're a provider trying to compete against another company the fast lane might be a good value if it gets you a leg up. of course they'll buy.

Re:won't matter for 90%

[alen]

the slow lanes are a made up of a small minority of people who cut out cable TV and demand netflix to be crystal clear
most cable companies can't even send regular TV in full HD on every channel. even in NYC full HD is only on a few channels. some supposedly HD channels look worse than SD

most people like me don't care. cartoons look fine on netflix and that's good enough for me.
i'll take the current cheap service over a more expensive guaranteed speed that a minority demand. ISP's need to make a higher paid tier since only business accounts get guaranteed speed. the people ranting about this on the internet want the same thing as current cable TV super bundles instead in a different form. they want someone else to pay for their top tier service

Re:won't matter for 90%

[arth1]

most people like me don't care. cartoons look fine on netflix and that's good enough for me.
i'll take the current cheap service over a more expensive guaranteed speed that a minority demand

The way this works is that they will degrade your current cheap service, and call the undegraded service a "fast lane". So you may not be able to watch your cartoons anymore, because your internet service will be slowed down.
Do you find that acceptable?

Re:won't matter for 90%

[Aryden]

You mean like in Georgia on I-85.

Re:won't matter for 90%

[Anonymous Coward]

Then what exactly am I paying my ISP for? They're not obligated to provide service but I'm obligated to pay them?

Re:won't matter for 90%

[alen]

i've had internet for over 10 years and never had my service degraded. the only time it sucked was when wifi became popular and i had to go back to ethernet cable.
youtube was a little slow after it became popular. after a year or so ISP's upgraded, google made up caching servers and it became better. same here. you have to wait. internet and TCP/IP is a shared medium and big demands in data like this means you have to wait. netflix should have never cancelled their CDN contract

netflix used to pay for so called fast lanes, like CDN's. they stopped paying and problems started. if they want to retain customers they will pay up.
contrary to most cord cutters dreams, netflix is a secondary service for most people. people will cancel it and just watch cable TV on demand for cartoons which is getting better all the time. and lots of cable sub services like disney streaming are popping up as well. so there are netflix alternatives

Re:won't matter for 90%

[amorsen]

Netflix bought the fast lane. What do you suppose a would-be Netflix competitor should do, serve streams with 50% packet loss to Verizon customers?

Re:won't matter for 90%

[Somebody Is Using My]

Forget Netflix; most of the internet providers own their own content stores. The ISPs will just relegate Netflix (and others) to the "slow lane" while the in-house content gets the usable speeds. It would not matter if third-party content providers were to ignore Verizon/Comcast/etc.'s attempt at extortion because they would still suffer from the effects. The customers of the third-party content providers would get the unusable service while VerizonTV gets usable bandwidth. Customers would abandon Netflix in droves.

The problem can't be fixed by just ignoring it; even if content providers refuse to play ball, the ISPs will drive the third-party content providers out of business by giving the in-house content an unfair advantage. This will radically change the Internet from an open broadcast medium to one controlled by a small subset, just like print, radio and TV are today. Legal, technical, or economic sanctions /must/ be imposed to keep the network neutral. Or we need to accept the Internet as we know it today is dead.

Re:won't matter for 90%

[Anonymous Coward]

The ISPs aren't creating "slow lanes." They're simply refusing to widen the freeway until they're paid to do so.

And then once the freeway is widened, they only allow buses down it... But.. What they're doing is taking an already existing lane and re-purposing it as a bus lane or highest bidder lane at the detriment of other traffic.

Re:won't matter for 90%

[Bengie]

That's why I said it should be regulated that this is the case, not that this is the current case.

In my case, my residential ISP actively advertises advertises that this is the case, that I get "dedicated" bandwidth to the Internet and I will not get congestion on their networks or to their transit provider, Level 3.

Re:won't matter for 90%

[AK Marc]

So the fast lane doesn't exist yet, and Netlfix already bought it. I'm not sure I follow.

Re:won't matter for 90%

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes very funny. Especially because a good deal of bandwidth gets eaten by advertisements and trackers and such (for the over 90% of customers who don't block those).

Re: won't matter for 90%

[Anonymous Coward]

You arr paying best case up to max speed

If you want guaranteed you get business class service. And that is guaranteed point to point. No one can sell guaranteed bandwidth to every site or service

Re:won't matter for 90%

[fropenn]

If I wanted the same thing that cable TV provides, I'd buy cable TV. But this isn't about Netflix - they are just the first since they use so much bandwidth. Rather, it's about who gets to decide what is delivered to your computer at what speed. Today the argument is over Netflix. But tomorrow it could be CNN. Or Slashdot. Or YouTube. Or Facebook. It's bad for consumers because it will cost you more for the services you like and use and it discourages competition (just wait and see what "doesn't work" when Comcast decides they want to start a streaming video service).

Re:won't matter for 90%

[amorsen]

What makes you think the fast lane does not exist? Netflix paid to avoid the 50% packet drop tax that Verizon inflicted on their traffic.

Re:won't matter for 90%

[AK Marc]

What makes you think the fast lane does not exist?

That it's a non-existent proposal by the FCC. The fast lane, as defined by the FCC, can't exist until the FCC defines it.

Re:won't matter for 90%

[Rich0]

The ISPs aren't creating "slow lanes." They're simply refusing to widen the freeway until they're paid to do so. It's like a multiple-item auction seller who, in order to increase the auction price, refuses to make more items available in the auction.

The problem is that they actually advertise a certain bandwidth to consumers. If a turnpike charged you $2 to travel some length and issued a guarantee that you'd be able to maintain an average speed of 50mph, and then you found it was congested, they couldn't just point to the speed limit signs and say that it wasn't their problem.

Re:won't matter for 90%

[Charliemopps]

ok, but if you want guaranteed speeds its going to cost the same as a business line. So $500+ a month. and I'm not kidding, that's what it would cost and the ISP would probably be losing money. They keep those rates as low as possible because the real profit is in services like Managed phones, VOIP, cloud storage, etc... I'm the head DBA for a major telecom's sales force so I know the numbers. Data lines are always sold at a loss. This idea people seem to have that they should be able to get 10mb\s+ of guaranteed bandwidth for under $50/month is laughable to anyone that works in the industry. That rate wouldn't even pay for the card you're plugged into back at the CO for YEARS. That's not even including all the intermediary equipment, cables, fiber optics, repairs, installs, manpower. It's a joke.

Now if the ISP can get you to pay them $100 per month to "manage" you phone system... which basically means you're using some software package they threw together and basically costs them nothing... now it starts to become profitable. Cloud storage, backup software, antivirus. All that stuff is basically free, or close to it for the ISP, so they can start making money off the customer. But if you're sitting there on a Resi line with no other services, and many customers aren't even in contracts anymore... they're losing money on you big time. If you're using netflix heavily? You're a huge problem for them, and likely generating support tickets with their other customers that are having latency issues and therefor costing them even more money. You don't have to feel sorry for us in the telecom industry, but we're certainly not raking in huge profits at your expense as many seem to think. My industry is dying.

Re:won't matter for 90%

[jordan_robot]

Data lines are always sold at a loss.

So they're being dishonest. You sell me a car that you say drives at 150 mph, I expect the car can go to 150 mph. I understand that it won't run at 150 mph every second I'm driving, but there are a lot of people that never see the speeds advertised.

You don't have to feel sorry for us in the telecom industry, but we're certainly not raking in huge profits at your expense as many seem to think. My industry is dying.

Bullshit. Looking at the past five years of financial data, I see that the big cable companies' value and returns have increased in leaps and bounds.

Re:won't matter for 90%

[Anonymous Coward]

The "fast lanes" have always existed and this is how most CDNs are structured. The FCC merely said that it will not forbid the practice.

Re:won't matter for 90%

[AK Marc]

CDNs don't use fast lanes. Fast lanes are about preferential treatment at handovers. The Akami and Google CDNs are more about caching, with transmission to them at "slow lane" speeds.

Re:won't matter for 90%

[Charliemopps]

Of course they're being dishonest. It's called advertising. You can dislike it all you want, but its the profession that got that first guy to buy the oldest profession in the first place.

Telecom is NOT cable. Cable companies are almost completely un-regulated. They get to pick and choose who to serve. Telephone companies cannot. The Cable companies have their own problems, but I've not worked for them so I can't speak with authority on that. I do know that Coax is a lot more problematic than copper, so I Suspect their maintenance costs are rather high.

Re:won't matter for 90%

[Anonymous Coward]

The term "fast lanes" here is referring to direct connection between content provider and ISP, i.e. without going through transit links. Many CDNs (including Netflix) do that. Here is a diagram showing these connections. The pink lines labelled "paid transit" are the "fast lanes".

Re:won't matter for 90%

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, of course that should have said:

The pink lines labelled "paid peering" are the "fast lanes".

Re:won't matter for 90%

[AK Marc]

There are "paid transit" links to the CDNs. Also, many providers have CDN caches on-site, which isn't represented in that diagram. Now, it indicates "paid" links, but doesn't indicate which side is paying.

Re:won't matter for 90%

[Bengie]

Around here, Level 3 charges about $2 per mb for minimum commits of 10gb or greater which is nothing for an ISP selling 1gb fiber to residential, but residential users on average you can over-subscribe you trunk 20:1 without congestion. You could get congestion at a micro level because of a few high data users in a local area, but at the trunk, 20:1 should work fine.

This means you can purchase 100mb of dedicated bandwidth from Level 3 for $200/month, then resell 100mb to 20 customers, while guaranteeing not having congestion "on average"(I guess a port is "at capacity" around 80%, so really they'd need 120mb). Customer could have a burst of data usage, but that's why Level 3 allows burst data by charging on the 95th percentile.

You mentioned 10mb of dedicated bandwidth at $50/month can't be done and that's ignoring the port cost. Well, a chassis with 400 Active Ethernet ports that have 40km ranges and 4 100gb uplinks is going for about $100 per port. The port price is the same whether the user has a 1mb connection or a 1gb connection, because they're all 1gb ports and they always run at 1gb. The port cost does not change.

What about bandwidth? Well, 10mb of dedicated bandwidth for residential users is really only 0.5mb of bandwidth on average for the 95th percentile. So that's what.... $1/month for the ISP at a rate of $2/mbit?

I've talked to a senior network admin, he told me by "dedicated bandwidth", they mean you have non-blocking dedicated bandwidth within their local network, but their trunk and uplinks are sized to 3x general 95th percentile usage. $40/month for a 15/15 line and $60 for a 30/30. They do offer 50/50, 100/100, 200/200 and 1gb/1gb, but the prices start going up quickly after 30/30.

If you're having issues, it's because you're using old equipment. Modern 1gb fiber equipment is freaking cheap.

They actually don't have "residential" lines. All businesses get the same homes. They only have two tiers of service. Business, which is dedicated bandwidth, but you're not supposed to run proper general public servers; and Enterprise, which is a whole other ball game and is like any other company that sells commercial grade SLA'd Internet access. But I can get static IPs on my "residential" line, so fun times, $10 for a /29.

Re:won't matter for 90%

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, there are "paid transit" links to the CDNs, and there are on-site cache servers but that is not what this is about.

The "fast lane" is specifically, about the pink "paid peering" links (which I unfortunately mistyped as transit in the previous post) from CDNs to ISPs. In these "paid peering" arrangements, the CDN pays the ISP.

Here is the article where the image comes from.

Re:won't matter for 90%

[mgcarley]

I think your numbers are a bit off, both as far as the price of hardware vs ROI and as far as the "huge profits" are concerned - aren't Comcast and Verizon supposedly making 40-90% profit on multiple Billion dollar revenues? (Granted, for these companies this may be an overall company margin including all business units, not necessarily the margin on HSI).

In any case, my own companies are much smaller than them (so higher cost per customer for equipment and more expensive bandwidth because I'm not buying nearly as much as they are so I don't get quite the same volume discounts) and if it weren't for our expansion projects, we'd be doing pretty tidily.

And assuming people aren't dicks about bandwidth usage (eg hogging all of their bandwidth all of the time), we can even make residential services a little bit profitable without cross-subsidizing between plans (eg higher tiers aren't subsidizing lower tiers and vice versa). In the US, we'd be looking at something around 80% profit before equipment & overheads, and with a PON setup working out to under $1,000 per port (assuming brand-name gear, 10gb optics in the back and GPON for the customer-facing ports), our RoI really isn't as long as one might expect.

Re:won't matter for 90%

[AK Marc]

I must be old. Old version, the ISPs pay CDNs to improve service to their customers and lower their costs spent on upstream providers. And ISPs thought that was a good thing. Now, you abuse your monopoly and customers to "monetize" the service you promise to provide. Charge multiple times for the same bit because your business plan sucks. I'm too old for this. And not psychopathic enough.

Re: won't matter for 90%

[locke.th]

Hm. They manage to give extremely high speeds for significantly less than North America in places like South Korea and Japan. By comparison, we're getting ripped off.

Real Solution

[Stormy Dragon]

Break up the big providers to ensure meaningful competition. The end consumers wouldn't tolerate ISP's that deliberately provide crappy service if they weren't forced to because most areas only have one broadband provider.

Re:Real Solution

[rlp]

I agree - but with the proposed Comcast / TW merger, things appear to be moving in the opposite direction.

Also, I'd like to see a defined split between bandwidth and content providers. Allow companies to offer one or the other, but not both.

Re:Real Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Break up the big providers to ensure meaningful competition.

Even if you go wireless everywhere, somebody still has to own the tower. That last mile and the wire that jacks you into the net, make the internet act more like a utility, no?
 
smitty_one_each

Re:Real Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

The solution is to make the physical infrastructure a municipal commodity. Then providers can openly compete on service.

Re:Real Solution

[Stormy Dragon]

Yes, but interconnection issues aren't a last mile problem.

Re:Real Solution

[Stormy Dragon]

Problem is that I don't trust the municipalities to stay out of content filtering. Access to sites based on what's political popular is even worse than access to sites based on who can pay the most.

Re:Real Solution

[westlake]

Break up the big providers to ensure meaningful competition.

That doesn't solve the problem of the 2K and 4K video download from Netflix and other services. Fully half of prime time download traffic in the states was a Netflix stream before Netflix offered a streaming only service, before Netflix had HD service.

Re:Real Solution

[arth1]

The solution is to make the physical infrastructure a municipal commodity. Then providers can openly compete on service.

No, that's not the solution, that is the problem. The monopolies and oligopolies exist precisely because of this - the municipal powers will gladly sign over near-perpetual rights to the highest bidder, not the ones offering best service.

Re:Real Solution

[Penguinisto]

Break up the big providers to ensure meaningful competition.

Even better - regulate them like any other utility, right down to capping their profit margins.

Re:Real Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Not just break up. Separate into 3 distinct companies.
1. owns the cables. especially the local loops. rents it out to anyone who wants to be an ISP, at FRAND terms.
2. the ISP. provides the internet service.
3. The content provider.

Make it illegal for any single company to supply services in more then 1 category.
And because the cables are a natural monopoly it should be either owned by a Municipality or strictly regulated.

Re:Real Solution

[khasim]

The monopolies and oligopolies exist precisely because of this - the municipal powers will gladly sign over near-perpetual rights to the highest bidder, not the ones offering best service.

So don't let them do that.

The city (or whatever) should run fiber (or whatever) to each house. That fiber should terminate in a CITY OWNED site.

The city then rents/leases space at that site for whichever companies want to provide Internet access to the city people. The rent/lease being high enough to pay for the maintenance and equipment that the city needs for that.

So you end up with:
a. ZERO cost for any ISP to connect to your house.
b. Every company pays the same rate per cubic meter at the city site.
c. Switching ISP's should be as easy as moving a patch cord (at worst).

Since the rent/lease is for space instead of rights to a market there is a chance of real competition.

Re:Real Solution

[Agares]

If that is what it takes I am with you on that one. The greed in this country is so ridiculous.

Re:Real Solution

[Bengie]

Even better, they should allow multiple ISPs over the same connection at the same time via vlans, which could be done via tagged or untagged ports.

Re:Real Solution

[Flammon]

Instead of using force to break things up, I would remove the laws that give large corporations an advantage and special privileges over smaller companies. The problem however is that most of these laws are sponsored by the large corporations and the corruption is rampant. We can either take our government back, in a possibly painful and bloody revolution or reduce the size of government to make it a less effective weapon for large corporations.

Re:Real Solution

[khasim]

You're getting a little technical there but that's a great idea.

Particularly if you combine it with IPv6.

Re:Real Solution

[spazdor]

Inevitably, there will be reciprocity deals between content providers and transit providers. Either above the table or under it.

Re:Real Solution

[Stormy Dragon]

That might work if we were starting from scratch, but as it is we'd be starting from a place where the big corporations are already so entrenched that merely leveling the playing field is unlikely to make up for the decades of corruption.

Re:Real Solution

[ewieling]

Telecommunications Act of 1996 forced local phone companies to sell access to their copper. In many parts of the country the wholesale price for a copper loop to the customer was MORE than the retail price for similar service from the ISP part of the telco. When those requirements were removed ISPs promptly stopped renewing the copper access contracts.

This is why you have a choice between the local phone company or the local cable company for internet service.

Re: Real Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Companies would LOVE that, as it doesn't CAP their profit, it GUARANTEES it. Plus, the government keeps competitors out of your market. So the regulated company gets a GUARANTEED profit at LOW RISK.

Re: Real Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong - break up the local governments, so that your local government won't sell you to providers (for cash and other consideration) in return for a monopoly on selling services to you. Have you never thought about WHY you only have 1 cable provider, 1 ISP, 1 phone company? It's YOUR GOVERNMENT.

Ah, you're thinking (first time for everything), I benefit from my government receiving those franchise fees. Uh - how's that working out for you? Customers always pay for a company's costs, plus a profit. So YOU are paying that franchise fee, and you're getting to choose from 1 provider in return for it!

The theory of "natural monopoly" is wrong. Where there is regulatory reform (Kansas City, Austin), you see multiple providers move into the market and compete.

Re: Real Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, great. Then I can pay for bloated public union salaries and benefits - with a huge kicker down the road due to unfunded pension liabilities that my children will pay. Then when the public union goes on strike, the whole community gets it's internet service cut. Or they stage an "Internet slowdown."

Oh, and you need a new hookup at your house? You can be penciled in next month. It's a new house? You're in luck - it's already hooked up! You didn't even pay for the hookup! No, your city was looking out for you and made the builder pay a $500 "impact fee" for the hookup - and, if course, there is NO WAY that fee worked its way into the price of the house.

Good ideas, keep 'em coming.

Re:Real Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, please. at least those that operate with at least partial market exclusivity via agreements with local governments or who (or a corporate parent or sibling) has ever collected public funds to build-out... which would cover every incumbent telco and primary cable tv provider in the country; and in instances where a telco also does cable tv (e.g. prism), or a cable tv provider also does phone (most big ones do these days).. regulate both -- and of course any data services any of those offer.

there's even some areas around here with the *same* company providing both wireline telephone (pots, dsl) AND fiber/coax cable/docsis... thats right. think it's bad with just a choice of one telco (e.g. verizon, att or centurylink) for telephone line-based services and then one cableco (e.g. comcast, time warner or charter) for cable line services?... think of those folks who only have one wireline communications provider that owns both those distribution systems in the same town - their rates are crazy-ridiculous high and service offerings (number and variety of channels for tv, speeds for broadband, etc) are poor.

Re: Real Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with that thinking is thatÂonly reducing the size of government does nothing about the actual problem, which is large monied private interests exerting too much control. In fact, that makes it worse because like it or not government properly run is the only effective check against them.

Now if you want to reduce government AND breakup large monopolies and oligopolies, let's talk.

Re:Real Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Even better - regulate them like any other utility, right down to capping their profit margins.

You're advocating they increase profits then by increasing costs (which permit them to charge a higher rate).

Frankly, I don't care if your profit margin is 99% so long as you provide the best value. Why the f do you care...

Like they care

[Ramirozz]

"A poorly written interconnection rule could create a lot of work for lawyers without actually preventing abusive practices" Like they care... if it generates profits (and it will or will appear it will) they will do it... this is not about best use of technology or even fighting piracy or reducing latency... this is just about money and control.

Re:Like they care

[Anonymous Coward]

"this is just about money and control"

Ding! ding! ding!

Re:Like they care

[RedShoeRider]

" this is just about money and control."

It always was.

As long as...

[Anonymous Coward]

they treat like-services the same, won't it be okay?

For example, if the ISP wants to throttle video, they better throttle all video alike and not play favorites with YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, whatever. Treat all like-services the same.

Rule #1 Lawyers Win

[RichMan]

Whatever happens it will be constructed so that lawyers get their danegeld. And a non-trivial amount.

Every carriage agreement will require verifiable traffic levels and performance all of this will have to have minutly agreed upon measurement processes.

The whole notion is very B-Ark worthy. And will result in a lot of work for the providers.

Re:Rule #1 Lawyers Win

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever happens it will be constructed so that lawyers get their danegeld

As a lawyer, I can assure you that our profession is royally fucked in the ass. We aren't getting shit.

Re:Rule #1 Lawyers Win

[Anonymous Coward]

Lawyers represent clients, they don't do anything on their own. They are proxies for real parties. Easy to blame the lawyers, but you really should be looking at who gets the real money.

Finally

[thule]

Someone actually pointed out something I've been saying for a while. My point was that traffic shaping rules don't make any sense if an ISP peers with preferred providers of services. Say they want to provide quality VoIP. They don't need to shape competitors packets, they just need to keep their VoIP traffic off congested links. Duh! Net neutrality rules wouldn't have covered peering.

So now the government is talking about regulating peering. I feared this would happen once someone woke up to how the Internet actually works. I really don't see how any good can come of this. As I've stated previously, there was an article YEARS ago that pointed out that Yahoo! only paid for half of their bandwidth requirements. They had their own national network that they would deliver content directly to ISP's. It was a win-win because the traffic would stay off the transit links of both Yahoo! and the ISP's. They were connecting content to eyeballs. It wasn't traditional settlement-free peering, but it was a good thing. Nothing wrong with it. Peering is good. Why should the government get involved with this?

As far as Netflix is concerned, they painted themselves into a corner. They used a CDN (Cogent) that had settlement-free peering with many networks. Once Netflix started sending their traffic over those links it broke the settlement-free agreement. Netflix might have been in a better position if they didn't use a CDN and all their traffic went over transit. Then make agreements directly with the large ISP's that didn't involve existing peering ports.

Re:Finally

[samkass]

As far as Netflix is concerned, they painted themselves into a corner. They used a CDN (Cogent) that had settlement-free peering with many networks. Once Netflix started sending their traffic over those links it broke the settlement-free agreement. Netflix might have been in a better position if they didn't use a CDN and all their traffic went over transit. Then make agreements directly with the large ISP's that didn't involve existing peering ports.

And since there mathematically can be only one example of a single company pushing 60% of all the data into the tubes during peak hours, nothing done in response to their situation is generalizable to the rest of the Internet in the US. Let's just leave the Netflix situation out of it and we'll end up with better proposals.

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

Peering was a stupid arragement to begin with. Trading bytes? Really? Make a joint venture company, pay it to operate the interconnection points, and split the costs.

Re:Finally

[AK Marc]

Someone actually pointed out something I've been saying for a while. My point was that traffic shaping rules don't make any sense if an ISP peers with preferred providers of services. Say they want to provide quality VoIP. They don't need to shape competitors packets, they just need to keep their VoIP traffic off congested links. Duh! Net neutrality rules wouldn't have covered peering.

At least with that, they couldn't target competetor's VoIP. They'd have to sacrifice *all* their peered HTTP etc. just to harm competitor's voice. So long as there was any competition, that would end them.

So now the government is talking about regulating peering.

That's because anyone smart enough to understand the issues is smart enough to stay away from politics. The problem is our democracy is broken. Peering is secondary. The simpler solution is to regulate the customer experience. I don't care how you peer, how you deliver services, how many QoS levels you honor in your network. If you offer a value-add service (like voice or video), then you must ensure that you take no deliberate action to harm the equivalent services from a competitor. Yes, this makes me side with Netflix, who you seem to indicate is the one that made the error. Deliberately harming traffic from Cogent to hamper Netflix is anti-consumer, and in a regulated market, should be illegal.

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

So now the government is talking about regulating peering.

And? What's wrong with that?

1. you have X pipes coming in
2. you have 1 pipe going to your customer
3. you put an Fair Queue going to your customer that then gets filled from the X pipes coming in in a round robin fashion.

The end. No more "preferred access". What's so difficult about it?

Netflix might have been in a better position if they didn't use a CDN and all their traffic went over transit.

That is incorrect. You collocate to *reduce* costs. If it is cheaper to send data over shared transit than collocate to add another pipe closer to customer, then you use shared transit. If shared transit is clogged up due to capacity constraints, then it is the fault of the transit - they are overselling. If the ISP is fucking around, preferring one incoming transit over another, then the ISP should have the book thrown at it. And that is why we need laws to have the capacity to throw said law book at the ISP for *purposely* manipulating traffic to create artificial congestion.

ISPs should be metering their transit and billing transit provider for traffic. Not traffic shaping popular sites to extract money from them directly!

Re:Finally

[smartr]

Netflix is a perfectly good example to look at. There's no reason Netflix's media should be getting privilege over Amazon media, AT&T media, Google media, Comcast media, or some guy in Delaware's media. If I want to use a less popular service or run things over a corporate network linked through the internet, it should not be throttled so that Netflix gets priority. The two main problems seem to be:
1. The internet service providers don't want to upgrade their infrastructure.
2. The internet service providers are unwilling to meter the activities that would actually make them upgrade their network because they can make more money degrading service, not upgrading the network, and not fixing their peering arrangements. ...
How do you "meter" Netflix? ICANN has the root addresses to blocks in networks that can very easily be used to calculate an abstract "distance". If a customer exceeds a certain amount, say X gigabytes from a "long distance" provider, you need to "meter" it and bill them more. This would be neutral and a way of fairly charging customers for their usage. Shady backroom deals with Comcast and Verizon are no way to do honest business when the wires have a right of way through my property.

Re:Finally

[Bengie]

There are thousands of peering points that change from year to year. I'm not sure how scalable it would be to create thousands of new companies that come and go every year, just to decide how a $10k/month interconnect gets charged. not to mention that the data coming over the link is constantly changing. The route the data takes also gets into the equation to decide what's "equal". It's a term called "bit miles".

If Level 3 has to route the data 1,000 miles but Verizon only has to route it 10 miles, then Level 3 can tell Verizon a 100:1 ratio is considered balanced. But the data getting routed over a link constantly changes.

Re:Finally

[thule]

They weren't traffic shaping Netflix traffic. Netflix was depending on Cogent peering. Cogent had existing agreements. Netflix created the imbalance which violated those agreements. The ISP had no reason to upgrade those ports. Netflix could have stopped using those ports entirely as the expense of causing higher transit prices for themselves. Instead they choose to make a new, entirely different agreement to accommodate the imbalance and keep peering. It might eventually be a win-win situation. Netflix may reduce their bandwidth requirement in other places in exchange for paying for peering with ISP's. Again, Yahoo! was doing this *years* ago.

Re:Finally

[dlt074]

"So now the government is talking about regulating peering. I feared this would happen once someone woke up to how the Internet actually works. I really don't see how any good can come of this."

it's the government, "good" has nothing to do with it. they want control and power. regulate, is what they do. control is what they want. outcome is not important to them. repeat.

Re:Finally

[Bengie]

So now the government is talking about regulating peering. I feared this would happen once someone woke up to how the Internet actually works. I really don't see how any good can come of this.

A simple fix would be to regulate residential facing ISPs to not allow congested links. ISPs may run business connection however they want, because businesses have SLAs protecting them, but residential users do not have the time or professional knowledge to properly protect themselves from being taken advantage of. If an ISP decides to hand out 100mb connection to all customers and suddenly their link to Netflix is congested, then that ISP best fix the issue by either upgrading the link or changing to another link that is not congested.

I'm sure this can be gamed some how, but it would be harder to game than our current system. Just address the issue when it comes back up.

Re:Finally

[thule]

Deliberately harming traffic from Cogent to hamper Netflix is anti-consumer, and in a regulated market, should be illegal.

Did they actively *harm* Cogent? If the original agreement was settlement-free peering and Netflix changed that balance dramatically, who is at fault? It seems to me the right way to handle the situation is for Netflix to come in and create a new peering agreement that is not settlement free. Just like Yahoo! did 10-15 years ago. The problem is that Netflix is way more demanding than Yahoo! ever was. ISP's saw Yahoo!'s imbalanced peering a win-win. Netflix has a harder sell because the huge amount of data that is required to stream HD content. So Netflix payed for it. What is wrong with that?

If I'm a new up and coming video streaming service, I might initially pay for transit. Once it get bit enough and transit is costing me way too much and putting demands on ISP's transit, we may come to an agreement to peer. Maybe it is a free agreement. Maybe I have to pay for the peering, but it might save me the cost of transit. This is all a business decision and shouldn't have the government sticking their nose into it.

Re:Finally

[Charliemopps]

...Yahoo! only paid for half of their bandwidth requirements. They had their own national network that they would deliver content directly to ISP's. It was a win-win because the traffic would stay off the transit links of both Yahoo! and the ISP's.

Exactly right. This is what most major content providers do. Google, Microsoft, etc... etc... There are actually major companies that help facilitate this sort of thing. This was the central problem with Netflix. The refused to do any of this. The told the ISPs to go to hell, they'd do what they wanted rather than get themselves locked into an agreement that my prevent them from saving money on a better peering deal down the road. Netflix forced the Net Neutrality issue on the ISPs and the ISPs unfortunately won.

Re:Finally

[alen]

hey stupid, cogent is not a CDN. they are a tier 1 network
they have a huge national fiber backbone with end points in a lot of locations where you can peer with them to upload your data to send to ISP's with smaller network foot prints. that's the whole point of tier 1, most ISP's are still somewhat regional networks and if you're netflix you can't peer with them unless you have a presence in the same facility.

a CDN company has a server inside the ISP's networks with a lot of storage to hold content and media. like when i stream my itunes the data comes from inside time warner's network from an akamai server so a 5GB movie doesn't have to travel a thousand miles and compete with other traffic. or if you watch game of thrones via HBO go, the content is on a limelight server inside your ISP

Re:Finally

[alen]

yeah, but it should also be on netflix on then to send their data in a more efficient manner and pay for this if needed. netflix used to pay limelight for CDN until last year

those of us who don't care about netflix that much should not pay higher ISP bills for a small group of people who demand this service

Re:Finally

[amorsen]

Netflix offers to bring the bandwidth to the ISP for free, with their content boxes. They will happily deliver their content directly to the ISP. But free was not good enough for Verizon.

Re:Finally

[AK Marc]

Did they actively *harm* Cogent? If the original agreement was settlement-free peering and Netflix changed that balance dramatically, who is at fault?

You are presuming a contract breach by Netflix. I've seen nothing to indicate that any "agreement" was changed or not followed. Do you know what the agreement was that you are asserting wasn't followed?

The Internet was "originally" not designed as you describe. Current agreements lean towards ISPs paying for downstreams, not upstreams. In "fairness" the users who paid for Internet Access are the ones paying for the Internet, and the ISP is required to deliver it. Small ISPs solve this by buying transit. Large ISPs have enough content/connections that others pay them for transit. They should have been paying Netflix for transit, as Netflix was generating the content.

If content didn't cost, why do so many ISPs pay Google and Akami to reduce their demands for content?

Re:Finally

[Bengie]

Netflix is trying to drop all CDNs and just do direct peering. They have an open peering policy at all major IXs. Networking gets dramatically more efficient at scale, which makes it hard for Netflix to cater to the smaller ISPs. But the issue here isn't actually smaller ISPs, it's the big ones, who can afford the $5k/month for 100gb ports. Yes, so expensive /sarc. Dear lord, how could a large ISP ever survive buying peering bandwidth at $5k per 100gb, plus a one time cost of $6k for the hardware.

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like you want to bring the local/long distance paradigm of the POTS network to the internet. I'm not sure many others would think that's a good idea.

Re:Finally

[thule]

Yes, I know Cogent is a large network provider. I am a Cogent customer. Some articles I have read referred to Cogent's relationship to Netflix as a CDN despite the fact that Cogent does not offer a CDN service. Netflix was building their own CDN using Cogent Here’s How The Comcast & Netflix Deal Is Structured, With Data & Numbers. I wasn't completely comfortable with the term when I first read it, but it did make sense that Netflix was using Cogent's peering to deliver content to ISP's and to their content caching boxes. If it makes you feel better, I will stop referring to their relationship as a CDN

Re:Finally

[thule]

The told the ISPs to go to hell, they'd do what they wanted rather than get themselves locked into an agreement that my prevent them from saving money on a better peering deal down the road. Netflix forced the Net Neutrality issue on the ISPs and the ISPs unfortunately won.

No, they were trusting that Cogent would deliver the content. Cogent had peering agreements with ISP's but didn't want to upgrade or pay for when the bandwidth ratio went outside of the agreement. So, Netflix is doing it themselves. They are doing what Yahoo! did years ago. Nothing new here. It has *nothing* to do with net neutrality.

Re:Finally

[thule]

You are presuming a contract breach by Netflix. I've seen nothing to indicate that any "agreement" was changed or not followed. Do you know what the agreement was that you are asserting wasn't followed? The Internet was "originally" not designed as you describe. Current agreements lean towards ISPs paying for downstreams, not upstreams. In "fairness" the users who paid for Internet Access are the ones paying for the Internet, and the ISP is required to deliver it. Small ISPs solve this by buying transit. Large ISPs have enough content/connections that others pay them for transit. They should have been paying Netflix for transit, as Netflix was generating the content. If content didn't cost, why do so many ISPs pay Google and Akami to reduce their demands for content?

Netflix didn't breach contract. Cogent did by going outside the agreed ratio for peering. When that happens, the person taking on the extra traffic gets payed to transport it. Cogent wasn't prepared to handle all the extra traffic Netflix generated. They needed to charge Netflix more for the service so they could cover their transport costs with their peers. They also needed to upgrade the links.

Again, nothing to do with net neutrality. It is just business.

Re:Finally

[AK Marc]

When that happens, the person taking on the extra traffic gets payed to transport it.

It isn't transit when it's going to the ISP's customers. Cogent paying "transit" to an ISP to reach that ISP's customers is the opposite of all agreements before. If the ISP is actually acting as transit for some, then it's a different matter, but the idea of Cogent needing to "pay" an ISP to reach that ISP's customers is the opposite of all agreements I've ever seen.

Re:Finally

[Bengie]

CDNs do not always have caching servers inside of ISPs, they may have caching servers at a local IX where they can be peered with. Level 3 offers CDN services this way.

Capitalism Rulz

[Anonymous Coward]

The awesome thing about capitalism is the tendency towards least generally acceptable everything. A side effect is individual inefficiency in the name of global efficiency. Eg, few customers are going to spend the effort needed to optimize their cable bill, so by constantly changing rate structure you can charge most people more than they need to pay.

Re:Capitalism Rulz

[Anonymous Coward]

The awesome thing about capitalism is the tendency towards least generally acceptable everything. A side effect is individual inefficiency in the name of global efficiency. Eg, few customers are going to spend the effort needed to optimize their cable bill, so by constantly changing rate structure you can charge most people more than they need to pay.

This isn't free market capitalism. This is government supported oligopoly. Its exactly what happens when taxes are taken to support those "deemed worthy" by providing the lines and area monopolies. If ACTUAL capitalism, ya know where actual competition were to occur, then this wouldn't be happening.

Re:Capitalism Rulz

[Anonymous Coward]

No offense, but the end result of unregulated capitalism is 1 corporation that owns everything and anyone who thinks of competing is anhilated at every turn by being denied access where possible, bought where not, and finally undersold until bankrupt as a last resort - see robber barons.

Some industries are more naturally resistant to it than others due to being easy to enter, but running fiber/cable to everyone's individual homes is not one of those industries.

A SuperPAC to demand neutrality and end corruption

[mattr]

I would expect Lawrence Lessig's MAYDAY SuperPAC could solve this.
As far as I can see, it aims to set up congressmen who will take money out of governing, and I bet it will also wipe out FCC corruption and reset pointers to net neutrality as a consequence of where I expect it will go.
https://mayone.us/
http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/...

poorly [sic] written

[Anonymous Coward]

> A poorly written interconnection rule
> could create a lot of work for lawyers
> without actually preventing abusive practices.'

The people who profit from the abusive practices are the people who hire the lawyers to write the rules and hire the lobbyists who get them enacted.

Everyone benefits!
(That is, everyone who counts)

Increase competition.

[Richy_T]

More regulations will just end up causing more exploitable loopholes. If someone will eat their lunch if they provide crappy service, they'll fix things sharpish.

Re:Increase competition.

[Anonymous Coward]

But that's the problem. Cable companies have virtual monopolies in any given area.

Throttle this....

[wbr1]

There will always be some sort of peer-to-peer sharing mechanism. Interconnect or peering agreements have no power over me pirating the content. You do not want to play fair? You want to chose when and how I can consume content I paid for? You want to get money from three different directions and still give me crappy service? Then the only one earning my money will be the local ISP (grudgingly because I have no choice), and my VPN provider. If I have a direct route to give to the artist(s) involved I will do that. For the most part I do not even consume their content. I do not watch TV, I rarely watch a movie. I do listen to quite a bit of music and play some games, but I lean further towards truly independent and local more and more. Hopefully all will do the same until their back is broken.

Keep Pushing The Petition and FCC RFC

[Bob9113]

It's also important to keep the pressure on via the official channels, even if we're skeptical whether it will work. Documenting public sentiment and the government's consideration (or lack thereof) is a critical step on the path to better government. Please sign the net neutrality petition and reply to the FCC request for comments, and promote them on your favorite social networks.

The petition is almost up to half the needed signatures in about one week, but the signature rate has been slowing down with the weekend approaching as peoples thoughts turn to beer and barbecue. Please help give it a boost, and/or light it up again Monday or Tuesday, to keep the momentum going during the more active weekdays.

Pretending

[Anonymous Coward]

Government officials like to pretend they want the US to increas it's bandwidth to compete with the rest of the world, but then they make this ability for ISPs to slow everybody down so they can provide the "faster" speed to big wig players.

What ....wait....you mean...

[WaffleMonster]

I'm shocked... large ISPs (e.g. Comcast) would never deliberately load links to point of saturation in a bid to leverage access to millions of captive eyeballs.

In all seriousness TFA misses the larger point. It is impossible and foolish to even try and legislatively correct distortions arising from provider and content monopolies. The only viable solution is to deny monopoly status and break up large providers into little byte sized bits.

If only you are able to keep everyone from getting too fat then the problem solves itself as normal market forces keep the BS in check.

Re:What ....wait....you mean...

[silas_moeckel]

It's not even that hard. Government fiber and administrative control of a all passive (all encrypted) cwdm network. Everybody gets a pair and they interconnect all comers at a given rate. Cities are already seeing what happens when you make bandwidth cheap and available. IPv6 pretty much makes this work well. A city network that could act as lifeline internet along with library, school and government access, hell it could make one great p2p network and let businesses interconnect. Multiple ISP's to connect to along with phone and cable overlay services, a single gige can carry about 20 blue ray movies simultaneously (and we have 10ge that fits in the same format for 200 or roughly 50 4k movies).

Really want your connection to be fast?

[mmell]

Don't listen to APK. He's trying to sell his particular brand of snake-oil. Let's face it - he's just out to substitute his (proprietary, non-standard, non-best-practices) method for DNS.

This is the part where APK starts posting how butt-hurt he is that everyone with an IQ over sixty can readily see he's just shilling. His product may or may not be malware; his approach to marketing by spamming /. is a sign - draw your own conclusions.

Re:Really want your connection to be fast?

[mmell]

Stop referring to yourself in the third person. It's disingenuous (although I will admit, it's really amusing).

Re:Really want your connection to be fast?

[mmell]

I took you for Alexander Peter Kowalski of 903 East Division St., Syracuse, NY 13208.

Oh, I'm sorry - did I blow your cover?

Re:Really want your connection to be fast?

[Anonymous Coward]

APK tore you up on DNS and HOSTS here http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

Re:Really want your connection to be fast?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apk tore you up again a 2nd time hahahaha http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

its not going to change it for me.

[nimbius]

Call me the neckbeard prime but traffic shaping doesnt bother me much as its based on the notion that internet = future of infotainment.
movies: check them out, free, from my local library these days. And much better quality too (you get more independent films with better plot and writing than the crap hollyoaks delivers.)
music: If i like a song and can support the artist, Ill buy it from their site. I dont scrape along with a jolly roger screwing over every artist I see. Again, the library is your friend for some stuff.
e-books: never bought into this racket. Ill check it out from the library, read it at my own leisure, and not worry about the risk that my rented copy will be reposessed wirelessly without notice. Books i enjoy will be bought used from the local bookstore.

I use IRC, and my firefox is so incapable of showing advertisements its like a time machine to 1989. Hell, my hosts file wont even route most of it.
Also from most of the slashdot community: fuck your social networks.

Re:its not going to change it for me.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a parasite.

Stop the ISP mergers and break them up.

[Anonymous Coward]

They can solve all this just by stopping the mergers of ISPs! No net neutrality needed. If the companies were broken up, and multiple allowed to service a market, then Netflix can just say "fine, we are going to block anyone on your networks from using our service".. Putting them at a huge disadvantage. But if they keep being allowed to be monopolies in markets, they have the power.

This makes your connection unreliable.

[mmell]

'Cuz we all know how much easier and more reliable it is to manage host files instead of using DNS. If you really want speed, just download the internet and access it locally.

This is the part where APK starts posting how butt-hurt he is that everyone with an IQ over sixty can readily see he's just shilling. His product may or may not be malware; his approach to marketing by spamming /. is a sign - draw your own conclusions.

They were already paying

[XopherMV]

Provider pays to provide information, customer pays ISP for access to internet and then has to pay a per view fee to view content at reasonable speeds. So long as there's money to be extracted, the consumer will be squeezed.

This buys into the framing of the argument pushed by the ISPs. The content providers were already paying for their own connection to the internet. Now if content providers want to provide fast connections to their customers, then they not only have to pay their own ISP, but they also need to send money to every other ISP in the world. This fundamentally changes the structure of the market.

And you, as a customer, get a crappy connection to the internet unless the content providers pay. That's true regardless of what you pay your ISP for their advertised bandwidth.

If this goes too far, customers will eventually start suing their ISPs for false advertising. ISP customers are paying for a certain amount of bandwidth, not a certain amount of bandwidth IF the content providers also pay.

Re: They were already paying

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with that is your isp DOES provide the guaranteed bandwidth you're paying for. The issue is they only provide it from your home to their network. Once it leaves there network there's no guarantee. I've been fighting this battle with both AT&T and now Time Warner cable. I can sit at home with my computer hardwired to my 30mbps TWC modem connection and can't watch a YouTube video without buffering. I can pull up the same YouTube video on my Verizon LTE phone and it's perfect. Better yet, I can enable my phone's hotspot and get the same performance on the computer that was buffering before. Yet when I call TWC, they tell me that because I'm seeing 30mbps to THEIR speed test site, there's nothing they can do.

Nationalize Broadband

[fallen1]

I realize that this is not a popular subject and, to be honest, not one I'm 100% in love with either but it would solve a lot of problems -- and keep network neutrality as a top priority while providing for competition.

Simply (or not so simply) nationalize all of the copper, fiber, other wires that make up the internet today including all interconnects - everything needed for the internet to be the internet. Write in a complete HANDS-OFF policy (no piping the internet into the NSA's back room and then piping it back out) and figure out what each connection should be worth to a) expand and upgrade the system so that everyone, even those in rural areas, could have good speed (10mb/s in both directions minimum) and b) maintain what's already in the ground/on the poles.

Once you have the above number, allow anyone with the technical ability and resources to start an ISP in a region and then they can compete on price, quality, and service. Everyone would already know that each connection will cost $XX.xx because that's what the government collects; it is the +$YY.yy for the final price that would be where things get interesting. Some regions would still have higher speeds initially, but with enough people working on upgrading the system (the new New Deal perhaps?) then speed and availability will come.

Re:Nationalize Broadband

[Anonymous Coward]

Nationalize no.

Ran by local cooperatives that are 100% seperate from government but still non-profit and answerable to local and state governments, absolutely.

We solved this issue for power utilities, not sure why communications is so hard.

Re:Nationalize Broadband

[alen]

if you think the government owning the fiber will mean instant upgrades next time netflix decides to double their network traffic to upgrade to 4K or 8K or whatever, you're an idiot

because this is what happened. netflix changed their networking topology, killed their CDN contract and doubled their data. since no one can upgrade their network that fast, a few whiny cord cutters are now ranting mad

Re:Nationalize Broadband

[fallen1]

I'm pretty sure I said jack and shit about Netflix, instant upgrades, or any of the rest of your rant. Don't take my word for it, please actually read what I wrote and then get back to me when your reading comprehension is greater than your ability to punctuate and capitalize sentences correctly. Argumentum ad hominem notwithstanding.

Also, this is not because some "whiny cord cutters are now ranting mad." This is because some very wealthy corporations have bought some nice shiny congressmen and other government officials and are now trying to triple dip into the internet money stream. I proposed a way to stop that practice and, at the same time, provide greater competition which should also provide better prices for the consumers. You know, save money for those of us who don't own mega-wealthy multi-national corporations.

Re:Nationalize Broadband

[alen]

you're an idiot. content providers PAYING FOR THEIR DATA has been around for many years. this is how the internet works. CDN's have been sending content for almost 20 years.

netflix is only changing WHO THEY PAY. instead of Level 3 or Cogent it's directly to ISP's since a few now have huge coast to coast backbones.

Re:Nationalize Broadband

[Bengie]

A single $40k fiber chassis supports more bandwidth than the entire USA Internet, but only has to support 400 residential users. Don't worry about having to "upgrade" to support more bandwidth. Netflix says they have a peak bandwidth usage of a bit over 1tb/s, but for $40k, you can bring 2tb/s to 400 customers.

So you have a small city of say 30,000 homes. That will take 75 chassis, leaving you with 150tb/s of total bandwidth. Is 150tb/s really that slow that you're concerned about immediately upgrading in a few years when Netflix goes 4k or 8k? Mind you, this is faster than the entire world wide internet for a small city.

I think you dramatically over estimate the cost of a high speed municipal network.

Re:Nationalize Broadband

[Bengie]

Netflix paid them for bandwidth AND CDN service. Now Netflix is paying for bandwidth, but not getting the CDN service. Kind of a loss as it puts more work on Netflix without saving any money.

Of course that's fine.

[jeffmflanagan]

>Netflix has started paying Comcast and Verizon directly and the FCC is saying that's perfectly fine.

Yes, it's completely fine that Netflix now pays Comcast for direct access to their network, rather than continuing to pay Cogent for transit when Cogent couldn't handle the traffic.

Of course if you only read about this on the perpetually outraged SlashDot, you might have been seriously misled regarding the situation. I know I was.

Re:Of course that's fine.

[Rich0]

>Netflix has started paying Comcast and Verizon directly and the FCC is saying that's perfectly fine.

Yes, it's completely fine that Netflix now pays Comcast for direct access to their network, rather than continuing to pay Cogent for transit when Cogent couldn't handle the traffic.

How could they handle it? The destination was on Comcast's network, and Comcast was not providing an adequate connection to accept all that traffic, despite advertising to their own customers that they could download data at a higher rate than was achievable. If you want to deliver data to a Comcast customer, there is no way to do it without Comcast's help.

I'd say that the solution is for people to stop buying broadband from Comcast, but when they're the only provider in your area, or one of two, then you don't get much choice. It is like telling stores that if they think that Visa charges too much for transactions that they shouldn't accept Visa.

That's a great way to increase competition...NOT!

[Anonymous Coward]

xxxx

Not A Real Solution. Here Is The Real Solution.

[Jane Q. Public]

Break up the big providers to ensure meaningful competition. The end consumers wouldn't tolerate ISP's that deliberately provide crappy service if they weren't forced to because most areas only have one broadband provider.

That's not a solution. That's like mowing the lawn; they'd just come back.

Proof: they started out small. That didn't stop things from getting where they are now.

The solution is change the rules of their business. How? By getting the FCC to regulate them as Title II Common Carriers, as they should have in the first place. Then almost all of these problems simply disappear overnight.

Common Carriers are not allowed to discriminate based on content (in fact -- wonder of wonders -- they are not even allowed to access that content to tell what it is). They are forced to charge a fair price while making a "reasonable" profit. Etc.

It's a far better situation all the way around.

Do that FIRST. Then worry about whether they need to be broken up, which doesn't address the main problem.

Re:DNS & Kaminsky redirect flaw

[mmell]

Shill away. You're still trying to sell a non-standard solution. Have fun.

Tell ya what - you want to create a new standard? Fine. Get an RFC going. Until then, stop trying to break the internet for your own profit.

WTF are "fast lanes" anyway?

[alen]

CDN's and direct peering have been around for many years. networking best practices say to make as direct a path with less hops as possible.

and yet a few bloggers decided the internet needs to work the opposite way, with large content providers sending their content on longer routes through different networks just to comply with someone's idea of a fair internet

Doesn't seem complicated to me....

[Anonymous Coward]

Fact #1:
I pay comcast for my bandwidth to the internet.

Fact #2:
Netflix pays its ISP(s) for their bandwidth.

Fact #3:
If I go to watch netflix and can't because there's not enough bandwidth then comcast is failing me or netflix's ISP is failing them. Deals between netflix and comcast should never ever ever enter the equation.

Fact #4:
Comcast gets away with this not only because the FCC is letting them, but because they are going before congress asking to buy Time Warner and saying "But we don't really compete with each other anyways." as a good reason to let it happen and oh btw "after this merge 70% of the US will get their service from us."

Not only should they not be allowed to merge, but THIS SHOULD BE EXHIBIT A IN A MAJOR TRUST BUSTING LAWSUIT THAT RESULTS IN COMCAST & TIME WARNER BEING THE MA BELL OF THIS DECADE. THEY ARE COLLUDING AND NOT COMPETING BY THEIR OWN ADMISSION.

Continuing to make you look stupid... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

1st: Not selling a thing - my program's free.

2nd - Custom hosts files fix DNS issues.

Additionally: I'm not *trying* to replace DNS fool - I work WITH it in fact!

* E.G.-> I put 25 favorite sites of mine @ the TOP of my custom hosts file (which goes unsorted, very KEY, into the local diskcaching kernelmode subsystem - THAT equates to roughly 2-3 million indexed seeks by doing that, first of all). They're the sites I absolutely "must" get to (& hosts do that by favorite sites hardcoded in them, since hosts = 1st internet resolver queried & @ local speed too from RAM). I have an EXTREMELY large hosts file (2nd largest I know of in existence in fact) loaded MOSTLY with known bad sites-servers/hosts-domains that are exploiters of varying kinds, as well as trackers/phishers, etc..

Get it now?

I also notice you won't take the challenge I put to you earlier in my last post you avoided -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

APK

P.S.=> If you want to keep looking stupid? Keep "trying me"... it's up to you! apk

a penny a page

[Trax3001BBS]

A very long time ago HowStuffWorks had an article I took as filler: http://computer.howstuffworks.... and even snubbed the thought of paying to view what one wants me to see, but it may be upon us. At which point I'll ignore anybody who request a credit card to participate pretty much what I do now.

Damnedest thing I found this with: a penny a page to view site:\howstuffwork
The \ was an accident and required.

we've decided to dispense with civilization

[Thud457]

THE SYSTEM working exactly as designed - ex

Stop Worrying and Let People Vote with Their Money

[Anonymous Coward]

Even without broadband competition, people can respond to bad ISPs by cancelling their service. Contrary to popular belief, high-speed Internet access isn't an absolute necessity.

If my Internet service becomes too expensive or poor in quality, I'm 100% willing to go back to dial up. I'll miss being able to watch videos and download large files, but I'll still be able to do all the important things like email, online banking, stock trading, and basic Web browsing.

I'm not afraid to play hardball. I'm sure I'll find a good use for the $50 I'll be saving a month anyway. So bring it on.

DNS Kaminsky redirect flaw (& more)... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject-line, "& tell us another one" about how reliable DNS is.

Ever heard of ,b>DNS Amplification attacks too?

How about "FastFlux" &/or Dynamic DNS utilizing botnets (as well as rogue DNS servers they use also)??

* Guess what cures these things (making your connect more reliable)? You guessed it: Custom HOSTS files do!

(I just made managing & gathering data from 12 reputable & reliable sources in the security community easy, as well as giving you a ROCK-SOLID absolutely LEAN & MEAN custom hosts file).

APK

P.S.=> You're also MORE THAN WELCOME to disprove 17 points of fact on great benefits using a hosts file gives you in added SPEED, SECURITY, RELIABILITY, & even ANONYMITY for end-users of them, enumerated here ->

WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

... So we've already accepted net hostility? I was under the impression it was too evil and ridiculous to be accepted so soon.

Content providers need to be hands and comcast

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't want comcast to have control as they will use caps and more to get you to buy there cable tv loaded with there own channels

Re:For the fastest connection possible

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, this is great info. This reminds me of the way Spybot Search & Destroy immunized against threats.

Thanks! I'd mod this up if I could!

Impressive

[Oxygen99]

Well. Congratulations America on finally fucking the internet. You've spent the last thirty years trying to undo and legislate against a technology you designed to withstand a nuclear war. Now you've succeeded. I'm not sure whether to be impressed or appalled. If only the Soviets attacked with lawyers rather than warheads you wouldn't have stood a chance.

people care about getting fsked

[globaljustin]

I agree with your distribution but I disagree with how you define your first category & your numberic distribution

1. "those who dont care" is wrong...virtually ***everyone*** cares about getting screwed over by a corporation

the problem is the reporters, editors who chose news stories, and the non-tech people who read the information **don't undrestand that they are getting screwed**

and that's just the people who still feel it is within their power to change if they *are* getting screwed

that's your problem...you say they "don't care" but really they've "given up" or never were empowered in the first place!

2. "those who are against it" is figured like this: n - [guilty greedy fucks] - [those who are unaware of how it affects them] = those who are against it

THIS IS ABOUT EDUCATION...SPREAD THE WORD...**VOTE FOR POLITICIANS WHO FAVOR NET NEUTRALITY**....CALL YOUR CONGERSSMAN AND DEMAND REAL NET NEUTRALITY BILL IN THE HOUSE

did you hear me?

demand the Republican-controlled house pass a law encoding it...that is how our system is designed to work

what party opposes Net Neutrality?

always Republicans

Re:people care about getting fsked

[rogoshen1]

I think you'll find a fair number of democrats with their ties to the content industry who salivate over a tiered internet, or turning the internet into cable TV 2.0. but the rest of it, yeah i'd agree.

Comcast & Verizon Subscribers to Pay Netflix M

[Anonymous Coward]

Future headline

Re:Comcast & Verizon Subscribers to Pay Netfli

[Anonymous Coward]

Netflix should charge extra to those subscribers.

You take this challenge first.

[mmell]

Given the benefits you tout, I'm sure there are a number of large organizations using your software. Who are they?

Incidentally, what is DNS fool? I've never heard of the DNS fool protocol.

Keep those ad hominem attacks coming - they tell the readers here exactly what you're about (and me, baiting the troll. Way too easy!)

Break-up the ISPs long distance vs local.

[CraigCruden]

The simple solution is to have municipal public exchanges that all ISPs must connect to. Then all services that are made available locally have to connect up to that exchange. This same model was used in phone service to break up local and long distance services many decades ago. It is also a model that is used for exchanges all around the world for co-location and interconnection between networks. This allows for a more regulated local connection, while allowing anyone to off "add-on" services to those customers. I would be able to tell my local ISP -- route all my traffic through the exchange to another service provider which provides interconnections to the rest of the world. Local cable TV, or phone service could then be able to connect up to the exchange and offer service. It would allow for more competition in offering services. For business this is already done with carriers like Cogent, Level 3, etc.

They're not adding "fast lanes"

[Eric Smith]

They're adding "slow lanes", and moving services that don't pay up into the slow lanes.

The whole thing is nothing but greed. The ISPs at both ends are already being paid for the bandwidth, but the ISP at the consumer end wants to be paid for it twice, once by the consumer and once by Netflix.

Telecos HATE municipal options

[Rujiel]

What you said is incorrect. how do i know? because every time municipal wifi is offered, ISPs are there to prevent it from happening. Case in point: in 2004, the legislature in Philadelphia was going through the motions to allow this sort of thing for inner city folk. Verizon arrived and, and with some help from their puppet then-mayor Randall, drafted up a bill to prevent this sort of thing and pushed it through the legislature. So, the ISPs don't agree with you at all about what they would prefer.

As if government regulation were the problem

[Rujiel]

When, in reality, the control ISPs have over our government, and the resulting lack of competition, is why broadband in this country is so expensive, and why the principle of net neutrality is on life support. You harbor the illusion that there exists a free market for broadband. There isn't, and our country's uncompetitive broadband scenario has unfolded as it chases the fleeting free market fantasy you just expressed.

I can paste a 100++ on /. alone... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you like that pasted in, as many as a time as I can currently? I don't track anyone (unlike browser addons, mind you), so I couldn't tell you exact numbers or from where exactly.

APK

P.S.=> The Killer of Giants http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... (sorry, had to - great tune, tuning into it now)... apk

So the answer is . . . zero.

[mmell]

Got it.

Argue with you /. peers.. apk

[Anonymous Coward]

"I want my surfing speed back so I block EVERY fucking ad. i.e. http://someonewhocares.org/hos... and http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/ho... FTW" - by UnknownSoldier (67820) on Tuesday December 13, @12:04PM (#38356782)

"this is not a troll, which hosts file source you recommend nowadays? it's a really handy method for speeding up web and it works." - by gl4ss (559668) on Thursday March 22, @08:07PM (#39446525)

"I use a custom /etc/hosts to block ads... my file gets parsed basically instantly ... So basically, for any modern computer, it has zero visible impact. And even if it took, say, a second to parse, that would be more than offset by the MANY seconds saved by not downloading and rendering ads. I have noticed NO ill effects from running a custom /etc/hosts file for the last several years. And as a matter of fact I DO run http servers on my computers and I've never had an /etc/hosts-related problem... it FUCKING WORKS and makes my life better overall." - by sootman (158191) on Monday July 13 2009, @11:47AM (#28677363)

"I actually went and downloaded a 16k line hosts file and started using that after seeing that post, you know just for trying it out. some sites load up faster." - by gl4ss (559668) on Thursday November 17, @11:20AM (#38086752)

"Ever since I've installed a host file (http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm) to redirect advertisers to my loopback, I haven't had any malware, spyware, or adware issues. I first started using the host file 5 years ago." - by TestedDoughnut (1324447) on Monday December 13, @12:18AM (#34532122)

That's 4 of 100++...

APK

P.S.=> Per my subject-line above? Addendum: Argue with the numbers... apk

Re:Argue with you /. peers.. apk

[mmell]

4 of 100++...

None of those look like enterprise users to me.

100++

Wow! That's some userbase. I'm sure your software is well on its way to becoming an industry standard. Let me know when there's a set of best practices associated with it and I'll gladly consider it a worthless adjunct to just managing my own host files and/or using DNS.

What is really needed

[Anonymous Coward]

What is really needed is an 802.11s network providing data at 20MB/s. No government spying, unlimited data. Leave your computer 24/7 and get all the data you want. There has to be a nice 'free' option to bandwidth. Commercial restriction, government censorship, government spying are all things that are working against a free and fair internet. Too much power is in too few hands. That must change. Democracies don't do well with this much centralized control.

really? i mean really?!?

[sgt scrub]

Is it really too much to ask to be able to toss the cable and telco suits into a pit of fire, vat of acid, or both?

Forbid flatrates

[drolli]

IMHO that would sole the problem. Instead of making a complex bet on the custromer behaviour, ISPs should just provide access as cheap and fast as possible. Customer should take responsibility for usage.

Unlike browser addons I don't track users

[Anonymous Coward]

It's more than YOU have, that's certain & it fixes your "choice' in DNS & its security issues in redirection issues (kaminsky flaw), vs. FastFluix + Dynamic DNS using botnets too ( & it also speeds you up for resolutions since hosts = 1st resolver queried, locally vs. remotely slower mind you, & in RAM, cached).

FUNNY YOU CAN'T DISPROVE THE 17 POINTS IN FAVOR OF CUSTOM HOSTS FILE USAGE IN GIVING USERS MORE SPEED, SECURITY, RELIABLITY, & ANONYMITY I enumerated here -> http://start64.com/index.php?o...

APK

P.S.=> Here's more (another 6 ontop of the last 4 = 10/100 so far) of what I CAN show you, as to who uses hosts here on /. & why (every p.s. in our conversation will have more):

"Better than an ad blocker, imo. Hosts file entries: http://www.mvps.org/winhelp200... " - by TempestRose (1187397) on Tuesday March 15, @12:53PM (#35493274)

"^^ One of the many reasons why I like the user-friendliness of the /etc/hosts file." - by lennier1 (264730) on Saturday March 05, @09:26PM (#35393448)

"They've been on my HOSTS block for years" - by ScottCooperDotNet (929575) on Thursday August 05 2010, @01:52AM (#33147212)

"I'm currently only using my hosts file to block pheedo ads from showing up in my RSS feeds and causing them to take forever to load. Regardless of its original intent, it's still a valid tool, when used judiciously." - by Bill Dog (726542) on Monday April 25, @02:16AM (#35927050)

"you're right about hosts files" - by drinkypoo (153816) on Thursday May 26, @01:21PM (#36252958)

"APK's monolithic hosts file is looking pretty good at the moment." - by Culture20 (968837) on Thursday November 17, @10:08AM (#38085666)

"I also use the MVPS ad blocking hosts file." - by Rick17JJ (744063) on Wednesday January 19, @03:04PM (#34931482)

... apk

I took you for Forrest Gump

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you're running from this: You ran from disproving 17 points in favor of hosts files giving users more SPEED, SECURITY, RELIABLITY, & ANONYMITY that I enumerated here -> http://start64.com/index.php?o...

* :)

APK

P.S.=> You were challenged to do so here http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... and for all posts afterwards (5-6) you pulled a "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!" rather than face that challenge (which you clearly can't - since it's impossible to disprove my points & it makes you look even more stupid, lmao)...

... apk

You're welcome & enjoy (it's free)

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlike Spybot S&D, I provide my data for more speed, security, reliablility, & anonymity from 12 reputable + reliable sources in the security community (a lot more than Spybot does in other words)...

APK

P.S.=> Enjoy the program if you use it - it works for better online speed, security, reliability, & even anonymity... apk

Hey Forrest: Quit "running" (lol)... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

You're MORE THAN WELCOME to disprove 17 points of fact on great benefits using a hosts file gives users in added SPEED, SECURITY, RELIABILITY, & even ANONYMITY for end-users of them, enumerated here -> http://start64.com/index.php?o...

* :)

(Good luck - you'll NEED it: More like a miracle...)

APK

P.S.=> Funny you've RAN from that, eh, Forrest? Not... you can't meet that challenge & you know it, I KNOW IT, & so does anyone else reading here... how embarassing for you, ontop of my ripping you apart on DNS here too -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

... apk

Incidentally, EVERYONE uses hosts

[Anonymous Coward]

By default it's the 1st net resolver in any std. BSD derived IP stack on ANY platform that uses the BSD IP stack unaltered, which is most everyone & anything!

* Fact....

APK

P.S.=> That's just fact - I only make it EASIER & SIMPLER to populate it with solid data from 12 reputable & reliable sources in the security community to give users more SPEED, SECURITY, RELIABILITY, & even ANONYMITY online - period!

You're MORE THAN WELCOME to disprove 17 points of fact regarding that, enumerated here -> http://start64.com/index.php?o...

Which I know DAMN WELL you can't do (so do you, as does anyone else reading here or you would've by now - along with any other troll "naysayer" with their ineffectual downmods & ad hominem attacks (the "best you've got" which is ZERO)... lol!)

... apk