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Nobody's Neutral In Net Neutrality Debate

ygslash writes Michael Wolff at USA Today has a long list of the many stakeholders in the net neutrality debate, and what each has to gain or lose. The net neutrality issue has made its way into the mainstream consciousness, thanks to grassroots activism and some help from John Oliver on HBO. But it's not as simple as just net neutrality idealists versus the cable companies or versus the FCC. One important factor that has raised the stakes in net neutrality is the emergence ("unanticipated" by Wolff, but not by all of us) of the Internet as the primary medium for distribution of video content. And conversely, the emergence of video content in general and Netflix in particular as by far the most significant consumers of Internet bandwidth. So anyone involved in the distribution of video content has a lot to gain or lose by the outcome of the net neutrality struggle.

132 comments

  1. No one's neutral by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    But some are more neutral than others

    1. Re:No one's neutral by sycodon · · Score: 1

      I think it's pretty neutral to say that I should get what I pay for and not have some toady at Time Warner deciding what's worthy of being passed along at advertised rate.

      --
      When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
    2. Re:No one's neutral by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No one is supposed to be neutral about the issue of net neutrality. The net is supposed to be neutral.

      The people defending it against takeover and biasing attempts are not neutral. They are heavily biased against asshattery, at least where it affects the ability of the internet to be used for any particular technical use.

      The people attempting to assume control of the internet are extremely biased in favor of removing the ability to use the internet for certain things, in order to make more money at the expense of the users (which, incidentally, is the very definition of asshattery).

      So this summary's title is squarely in the "no shit, sherlock" category. I'm honestly surprised it wasn't from that department.

      CAPTCHA: "biased" - Yep! And proud of it!

    3. Re:No one's neutral by jonsmirl · · Score: 4, Informative

      "As much as 70% of Internet-distributed data is now video, 50% of it from Netflix. This new video industry — growing exponentially and transforming the nature of entertainment — is getting a free ride on the cable and telco investment in broadband. Arguably, this is unsustainable free distribution, overtaxing networks and slowing the Internet for everyone."

      I just gag on "free ride". 11M Netflix subscribers pay Verizon/Comcast/etc $50 * 12 * 11m = $6.6 billion a year for this "free" ride. Margins on Internet services at Verizon/Comcast are believe to be in the 90% profit range.

      I can help the FCC solve this. Require that ISPs provide at least one settlement free peering point for each customer in their network with no peering point providing access to less that 10,000 customers. 10K because after all they are ISPs and they should do something for that $50/mth (i'm sure Verizon would immediately declare this settlement free peering point to be the customer's wifi node without this rule).

    4. Re:No one's neutral by MooseTick · · Score: 1

      "I just gag on "free ride". 11M Netflix subscribers pay Verizon/Comcast/etc $50 * 12 * 11m = $6.6 billion a year for this "free" ride. Margins on Internet services at Verizon/Comcast are believe to be in the 90% profit range."

      Two things.

      1. You didn't even bother to mention the fact that Netflix themselves most likely pays a hefty bandwidth bill to their ISP(s). So both consumers and Netflix themselves are paying for bandwidth on both ends of the cable.

      2. I doubt margins are at 90%.

    5. Re:No one's neutral by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I worked at a Telecom that paid AT&T for line use.

      90% is entirely feasible. Even with us buying it resell from AT&T, we averaged between 40-70%.

    6. Re: No one's neutral by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "As much as 70% of Internet-distributed data is now video, 50% of it from Netflix."

      As far as I can tell, no source is given for these numbers and I can't find corroboration anywhere else. The closest thing to it is a CISCO study that predicts this will happen by 2017-18.

      Is this just BS or can someone find a basis?

    7. Re: No one's neutral by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I would appreciate you help understanding you last paragraph.
      Thanks,
      service@computersteve.ca

    8. Re:No one's neutral by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Agreed with GP.

      And it should not be forgotten that companies like Netflix also pay for their internet access - and considering the bandwidth they required, they probably already pay quite a lot for that access.

      Just because a company provides an online service that is popular (and bandwidth intensive) doesn't mean they should be punished by having to pay extra to provide the service the "public" desires.

  2. Why I Support Net Neutrality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    I could list off all the benefits of neutrality and all the pitfalls of slow lanes and go on and on about "fairness" and "justice."

    Instead, I just think of this: There's a large overlap of people who are against net neutrality with people who believe Jesus rode on dinosaurs and that the tides can't be explained by anything but magic. That's enough of an argument for me to support it.

    1. Re:Why I Support Net Neutrality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There's a large overlap of people who are against net neutrality with people who believe Jesus rode on dinosaurs and that the tides can't be explained by anything but magic. That's enough of an argument for me to support it.

      So there are only two people who are against net neutrality, and they both live in mental institutions?
      No one believes these things, and despite what you might think, a large majority of America is religious or spiritual in some vein. Furthermore, nearly all of them recognize that you're disparagingly talking about them, not mental patients. Unfortunately, not all will be able to divorce your idiocy regarding them from your position. So if your meme becomes widespread, you might convince (via emotion) a large group of people to be against net neutrality just because they don't like being called names. Runs counter to your implied intentions.

  3. Nobody's neutral because it''s important by gurps_npc · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Similarly, if you ask people any of the following questions, almost everyone will have answer:

    Is slavery wrong?

    Is the First Amendment a good idea?

    Is the Second Amendment a good idea?

    Are civil/gay/religious rights a good idea?

    Etc. etc. Important things matter and people care about them. That's why we call them 'important'.

    --
    excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
    1. Re:Nobody's neutral because it''s important by rossdee · · Score: 1

      And of course there are far more people that don't live in the USA that don't have those 'rights'

    2. Re:Nobody's neutral because it''s important by Thanshin · · Score: 2

      Which number is bigger? 15 or 5.

      Are there hats?

      Do owls exist?

    3. Re:Nobody's neutral because it''s important by thaylin · · Score: 1

      And they will still have an opinion.

      --
      When you cant win, ad hominem.
    4. Re:Nobody's neutral because it''s important by ArcadeMan · · Score: 2, Funny

      Which number is bigger? 15 or 5.

      Depends on the font size.

      Are there hats?

      Yes there is, and there will always be as long as two children left home alone for a short while one afternoon get visited by a very interesting yet troublesome cat wearing a tall striped hat.

      Do owls exist?

      Of course they do. Just ask Dr. Whooooo.

    5. Re:Nobody's neutral because it''s important by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yeah, and if you ask most people who have an opinion on net-neutrality, "should an ISP with settlement-free peering arrangements be able to give preferential QoS service to their paying customers on congested interfaces?" most of them will have their eyes glaze over and start rambling about censorship or something.

      You don't conduct a man-on-the-street interview to understand the energy of the Higg's Field, you build an LHC. Engineering and economics can work around opinion polls and popularity contests, but they sure aren't goverend by them, no matter what anybody wishes were true.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    6. Re:Nobody's neutral because it''s important by mrchaotica · · Score: 2

      Everyone on the planet (or in orbit, for that matter) has those rights. It's just that some people live in jurisdictions whose government fails to recognize them.

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    7. Re:Nobody's neutral because it''s important by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, and if you ask most people who have an opinion on net-neutrality, "should an ISP with settlement-free peering arrangements be able to give preferential QoS service to their paying customers on congested interfaces?" most of them will have their eyes glaze over and start rambling about censorship or something.

      So if I understand you correctly, if I am trying to access Netflix, and my neighbor is trying to access Verizon On Demand, and we are the only two houses that are doing anything on Verizon's network, you would find it perfectly ok for Verizon to allocate 90% of the bandwidth to my neighbor?

      Managing traffic is one thing. Giving my neighbor more bandwidth than me because "fuck you, you should be using our video service" is wrong.

    8. Re:Nobody's neutral because it''s important by SeaFox · · Score: 1

      ignore this. accidentally modded it

    9. Re:Nobody's neutral because it''s important by rioki · · Score: 1

      Only a technicality, but you don't have any right whatsoever. There is a broad consensus that you should have basic human rights, but there no natural right to them.

    10. Re:Nobody's neutral because it''s important by rioki · · Score: 1

      What people are up in arms is not that the ISPs are shaping traffic*. But that they are using that as an extortion to get the content provides to pay for preferential treatment. That is, pay for bandwidth that was already payed for by the subscriber. Or using it to quench competition to a service they provide. The problem is that there is no world where traffic shaping can exist and rent seeking through these means not.

      * For example prioritizing VoIP is something that almost nobody would object to and that is something that is done in ATM networks since they where conceived.

    11. Re:Nobody's neutral because it''s important by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The problem is that there is no world where traffic shaping can exist and rent seeking through these means not.

      Sure there is. If there are X subscribers on the network, each subscriber gets (100 / X) percent of the bandwidth. Any traffic shaping happens within each subscriber's portion of the bandwidth. Boom, problem solved.

    12. Re:Nobody's neutral because it''s important by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do owls exist?

      Are you sick of piles of owls constantly blocking your driveway?!

      Well then you gotta get Owl Trowel!

    13. Re:Nobody's neutral because it''s important by lsatenstein · · Score: 1

      Is the constitution the zeroth amendment.

      Does the 1st amendment amend the zeroth?

      Does the 2nd amendment amend the 1st?

      Ohh! The amendments are independent of each other.

      Thanks for telling me.

      --
      Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
  4. The people by Thanshin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And yet, only one side should matter; the people.

    And no, corporations aren't people and each person counts as one, regardless of their bank account and army of lobbyists.

    1. Re:The people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Indeed. And to anyone who would say otherwise... Fuck off.

    2. Re:The people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      BTW the - Lord Thomas MacCauley, May 23, 1857 attribution is bogus but the truth is still real. Seems as though it is a compound quote for a full discussion onthe subject if anyone is actually interested see http://www.lorencollins.net/tytler.html

    3. Re:The people by irq-1 · · Score: 2

      Why is it called a "debate"? Are the ISP oligopolies putting forward new ideas for discussion? This is nothing but ISPs trying to define the market to their advantage, and get the FCC to endorse their definition.

      Further, this is the media reporting on the interests of big business and (surprise!) re-casting it as a important national issue. Why do newspapers have a Business section instead of a Labor section?

    4. Re:The people by bigpat · · Score: 1

      Yes, unfortunately we have two political parties in the US who believe they represent their faction and not the people. They have made undermining the majority preferences of the people that live in their districts into something noble that they can sell to their supporters to raise money. Parties which were formed claiming to protect American values of Liberty and democracy now undermine our institutions.

      Except for protecting and defending the constitutional rights enshrined in the constitution, a Congressman's ONLY job should be trying to understand what the majority of people in their district want and vote accordingly.

      Sure Congressmen can and should lead on issues and argue for policies they believe in, but when it comes time to vote on legislation their own unbiased polling of their constituents should be what is the deciding factor. Instead we have politicians pandering to special interests based on their level of activism or whether they can raise money for them. With thousands of pages in many legislation there are bound to be contradictions. Still a Congressman good at their job should be able to explain what parts of legislation they vote for or against they would have otherwise supported or opposed if it hadn't been included with legislation they don't support. It is complicated, in part to obfuscate and bury unpopular laws within popular ones or vice versa, but it doesn't have to be that way.

    5. Re:The people by MooseTick · · Score: 1

      "And yet, only one side should matter; the people."

      Unless they are wrong. If 95% of the people are ok with slavery, that still doesn't make it right.

    6. Re:The people by MooseTick · · Score: 1

      Are you saying when civil rights laws were passed in the 60s and were unpopular in some areas of the country, that their congressmen should have voted against them because that's what their constituents wanted?

    7. Re:The people by Jawnn · · Score: 1

      What you describe, in typical quasi-Libertarian fantasy manner, is a recipe for chaos. Let everyone who wants to string their own copper, or fiber, or fire up their own wireless infrastructure. Right? What could possibly go wrong?

    8. Re:The people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except, I am not libertarian, nor as a network engineer am I much in the fantasy world.

      But those dismissive points aside, what could go wrong? Competition is great and would lead to a much more open internet.

    9. Re:The people by markass530 · · Score: 1

      The average age of the world's greatest democratic nations has been 200 years. Each has been through the following sequence:

      From bondage to spiritual faith. /p>

      Care to name even one example?

    10. Re:The people by markass530 · · Score: 1

      Just because you saw a picture on facebook with that quote written on top of a picture of MacCauley doesn't mean he said it, next time at least check snopes http://www.snopes.com/politics...

    11. Re:The people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why do newspapers have a Business section instead of a Labor section?

      REALLY! good question!!!

  5. "Stakeholders" by mrchaotica · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Who are the stakeholders? Well, let's see:

    • Telcos
    • "Big Data" Internet companies
    • the FCC
    • the Public

    Only one of these "stakeholders" have opinions that actually matter, and that stakeholder sent "a groundswell of 3 million citizen comments, most of them, presumably, against the FCC's approach" [and in support of regulating ISPs as Common Carriers].

    I think we're done here.

    --

    "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    1. Re:"Stakeholders" by Charliemopps · · Score: 0

      That's an incredibly myopic view of the situation and I get a bit tired of it here on Slashdot. Enforcing net neutrality is a lot bigger of a deal to the public than it appears at the outset. It would be the government is now regulating the actual traffic on the internet. You may think it's a good idea in this regard... but what about when the feds decide they want to enforce other laws via their new powers? Decency laws? Cyber bullying? That doesn't sound so great to me...

      Don't get me wrong, I fully support "Net Neutrality" What I don't like is the feds touching the internet. The longer we keep them out, the better. So, I look at the root of the problem. Why do the ISP's want to break net neutrality? It's related to an ongoing fight between Netflix and pretty much every ISP on earth.

      To me, if the feds have to get involved, I'd rather see them involved in the peering agreements. They are already heavily involved in a lot of inter-carrier agreements so it wouldn't be anything new. If they simply passed regulation that said Peering agreements must be agreed to by both parties prior to signing, this entire issue would die with no federal involvement in the high level network traffic.

    2. Re:"Stakeholders" by Jason+Levine · · Score: 1

      I think the number I heard was 1% of the comments opposed Net Neutrality. Assuming that's true, and that there were 3 million comments, then a mere 30,000 comments opposed Net Neutrality and 2.97 million supported it. Politicians might be many things, but unable to count votes isn't one of them. Hopefully, they realize that such one-sided support of Net Neutrality means that opposing it would be committing political suicide.

      --
      My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
    3. Re:"Stakeholders" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Don't get me wrong, I fully support "Net Neutrality" What I don't like is the feds touching the internet. The longer we keep them out, the better. So, I look at the root of the problem. Why do the ISP's want to break net neutrality? It's related to an ongoing fight between Netflix and pretty much every ISP on earth.

      To me, if the feds have to get involved, I'd rather see them involved in the peering agreements. They are already heavily involved in a lot of inter-carrier agreements so it wouldn't be anything new. If they simply passed regulation that said Peering agreements must be agreed to by both parties prior to signing, this entire issue would die with no federal involvement in the high level network traffic.

      Where's my '-1 deliberately obtuse' mod when I need it?

      Reclassifying *all* ISPs as common carriers (as opposed to some and not others) isn't anything new or original, nor does ir require additional regulation by the Federal government. Many people make this as being all about Netflix. That's just a sideshow. ISPs who are not classified as common carriers routinely block traffic, throttle bandwidth and offer "service" plans with extremely restrictive TOS. Common Carrier status would change some of that -- and put these ISPs on notice that they are providing a useful utility with our consent -- consent that can be revoked.

    4. Re:"Stakeholders" by king+neckbeard · · Score: 1
      That would be a much better argument if the ISPs weren't bending over backwards to bend us over for the NSA.

      You may think it's a good idea in this regard... but what about when the feds decide they want to enforce other laws via their new powers? Decency laws? Cyber bullying? That doesn't sound so great to me...

      That's what we have the first amendment for. The best way to address your concern is to fix the bad precedents set and make it universally clear that Federal Communications Commission v. Pacifica Foundation and Miller v. California are wrong.

      --
      This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
    5. Re:"Stakeholders" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, you are the one being obtuse, you cannot fix a problem of government involvement by adding more government involvement. Common carrier would do just that. Instead abolish the monopolies at the state level.

    6. Re:"Stakeholders" by mrchaotica · · Score: 2

      It would be the government is now regulating the actual traffic on the internet

      You are a liar, doing nothing but spreading FUD.

      Regulating ISPs as Common Carriers would "regulate the actual traffic on the Internet" exactly as much as regulating phone companies as Common Carriers censors the content of telephone calls -- which is to say, not in the slightest.

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    7. Re:"Stakeholders" by king+neckbeard · · Score: 1

      Monopoly agreements have been illegal for decades. It's just that infrastructure like this is just naturally monopolistic. The problem here is not government involvement, at least not current government involvement.

      --
      This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
    8. Re:"Stakeholders" by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · · Score: 1

      It would only mean committing political suicide if the population actually cared enough. Are most people willing to vote out the existing lizard on the off chance the lizard from the opposing party gets elected. We can't have the wrong type of lizard being elected.

      --
      Time to offend someone
    9. Re: "Stakeholders" by jd2112 · · Score: 2

      Problem is that politicians are even better at counting dollars than counting votes.

      --
      Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
    10. Re:"Stakeholders" by TubeSteak · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Why do the ISP's want to break net neutrality? It's related to an ongoing fight between Netflix and pretty much every ISP on earth.

      I think you fundamentally misunderstand the point of Net Neutrality.
      It's not just about the Netflix fight.

      The biggest ISPs are increasingly turning into content providers and this puts them in direct competition with online service providers.

      The idea behind Net Neutrality is to prevent these conglomerates from using their control of the network to either force payments from other companies (extracting rent from Netflix) or to force consumers into using co-branded offerings.

      If you look at the wireless world, where the same rules don't apply, carriers are already taking money from other corporations to give you Facebook access (a co-branded offering) with no data charges.

      Net Neutrality is fundamentally about preventing monopolistic and anti-competitive behavior.
      Just because a market is "free" does not magically make it competitive.

      --
      [Fuck Beta]
      o0t!
    11. Re:"Stakeholders" by DoctorBit · · Score: 2

      What surprises and disappoints me is that Intel has sided against net neutrality. Here's a link to the letter signed by Intel and other anti-net-neutrality companies:

      https://www.ncta.com/sites/prod/files/TitleII-AssociationLetter-2014.PDF

      I guess some commercial routers and network equipment have Intel chips in them, so Intel might just be doing what their router manufacturing customers have requested, but this has to be a bad move from a public relations point of view. Intel is a household name and lots of consumer products have "Intel Inside" stickers on them.

    12. Re:"Stakeholders" by dgatwood · · Score: 1

      Right. The correct solution is to break up the monopolies, requiring the company that owns the physical infrastructure to be a nonprofit that non-prejudicially leases access to that infrastructure to any other company that wants to use it. Such a design gives the wire provider the natural advantages of a monopoly without them being able to capitalize on it for profit (in part because they are limited to providing point-to-point fibers, and are forbidden from ever providing Internet service), and ensures that multiple ISPs can easily compete in any area without having to buy their way past the high barrier to entry.

      And those wire providers should be common carriers, complete with the requirement for universal access within the areas they serve, and the state should build out infrastructure as needed to make it truly universal, spawning off nonprofits as it does so.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    13. Re:"Stakeholders" by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      Don't get me wrong, I fully support "Net Neutrality" What I don't like is the feds touching the internet.

      Keep your government hands off my ARPANET!

      (with apologies)

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    14. Re:"Stakeholders" by Charliemopps · · Score: 0

      I love this argument. You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about yet you tell "Common carrier fixes everything!" When it's not even relevant to this debate at all.

      Read about Common Carriers and telecommunications here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
      (if you trust Wikipedia)

      Please follow the links and read about the communications act of 1934 and the changes to it made in 1996. It's about Phone service. Even the telcos are not regulated in regard to their ISP services. Only the pots lines are, and most ISPs are trying to talk customers into IP phones to get around those laws as well.

    15. Re:"Stakeholders" by Charliemopps · · Score: 0

      You can do all of that without regulating the traffic.

      Force the parent company into not creating video content. Done. Telephone companies are already prevented from creating video content due to the 1996 telecommunications act. The Telcos still hate Netflix and want to shape their netflix traffic in return. Yet they have no vested interest in hurting Netflixes product. So why are they mad? Is it possible because Netflix really is behaving badly?

    16. Re:"Stakeholders" by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 1

      Aye,
      Other issues like abortion, taxation levels, foreign affairs are much more significant to voting than net neutrality.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    17. Re:"Stakeholders" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Please follow the links and read about the communications act of 1934 and the changes to it made in 1996. It's about Phone service.

      And the next section is about pipelines. Just because one section is about phone service doesn't mean the idea should be limited to phone service, because it isn't. Your own link says so.

    18. Re:"Stakeholders" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You can do all of that without regulating the traffic.

      Force the parent company into not creating video content. Done. Telephone companies are already prevented from creating video content due to the 1996 telecommunications act. The Telcos still hate Netflix and want to shape their netflix traffic in return. Yet they have no vested interest in hurting Netflixes product. So why are they mad? Is it possible because Netflix really is behaving badly?

      Sure they do. They provide TV Services. They might not create any of it, but they certainly do provide it. Just look at Verizon FIOS and AT&T uVerse - they both have TV services, and those directly compete with NetFlix.

  6. Big fat red herring... by jedidiah · · Score: 3, Informative

    If streaming video is a problem for ANY one then it should be a problem for EVERY one. That's the basic idea of equality being fought about here. A natural monopoly should not be able to abuse it's position to sabotage competitors in different markets. This is also basic anti-trust.

    The entire issue only exists because we tolerate (if not actively encourage) monopolies.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    1. Re:Big fat red herring... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The day is coming when it won't be a country taking up space in the USA's borders but a corporation.

  7. Curious by DaMattster · · Score: 1

    I would really like to see the true cost of bandwidth, that is what it costs to run day to day. I'm guessing that the telcos are exaggerating more than a little bit. I really don't believe for a New York minute that video content is putting much strain on resources. Heck, I'd really like to see the honest, undoctored resource use statistics. I think the argument against net neutrality is all about wanting an additional revenue stream: nothing more, nothing less.

    1. Re:Curious by spitzig · · Score: 1

      I live in Taiwan. I have internet access far cheaper than I had in the US. Bundling with cable is not an issue.

      Given that net neutrality is not an issue in the legislature here, I doubt video bandwidth is actually a cost problem in the US.

    2. Re:Curious by Ravaldy · · Score: 1

      When you assess what you think is the cost of bandwidth, what do you include?

      Based on how much I used and how much I'm allowed to use I would pay 16 cents per GB. Considering what I actually use it cost me 21 cents per GB.

      Do you have a link for what you call undoctored resource use statistics.

    3. Re:Curious by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm assuming you're basing costs on some paid monthly fee / data cap. The question we all really want an answer to is "how much do I really cost that ISP?". Just some thoughts off the top of my head:

      1) How much is the low-level infrastructure? Routers powered on, no traffic, AC on, etc...
      2) How much does it cost to run a single router at half capacity? full capacity?
      3) How much do I actually contribute to that capacity?
      4) How frequently does hardware need replacing?
      5) How long does the replacement typically take?
      6) How much does the guy doing that replacement cost?

      I think we all can agree that there is a some cost associated with the actual power draw from an outlet as a switch/router actually does its job. There's an associated heat as well. Then again, exactly what am I paying $60 a month for? Does that not cover all of the above significantly enough that my ISP needs to start bullying Netflix/Google(youtube)/Hulu/Pandora/whoever just because I happen to be using that service over a connection I've already paid for?

    4. Re:Curious by jonwil · · Score: 1

      Although the ISPs like to talk about bandwidth costs and such the REAL reason the ISPs are doing what they are doing is because it helps suppress alternatives to the overpriced pay TV service said ISPs offer.

  8. Thought it was only for pirating? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    But lots of Goody-Two-Shoe types for the past 10 years have been saying that nobody legitimately needs lots of bandwidth.

    Only those bandwidth users were evil pirates and no one else is doing anything wrong on the internet at all....

    Now it seems consuming a lot of bandwidth watching legally purchased video services is simply the norm.....

    Where are all those people from years ago lining up to admit they were wrong? For years and years I was just a dirty little pirate for my large bandwidth usage (streaming electronic music legally) and my old ISP used to give me crap all the time about my top 10% usage.

    Now I'm just "normal" which properly indicates that my past usage was in fact needed, allowable, required, and not illegal.

    Suck it conservative naysayers. Lots of bandwidth usage is *LEGAL*.

    1. Re:Thought it was only for pirating? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm conservative and I agree with you.

  9. Royally Angry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    My family back in the UK get 60mbit down and 20 up whilst I get crap here in the US, supposedly the most advanced nation on earth. BTW, my family in the UK are not in a majorly built-up area. They live in a smallish village of about 12000 people.

    Not happy...

  10. Robert Cringely by Tokolosh · · Score: 2

    He anticipated and wrote perceptively on the subject five years ago - http://www.cringely.com/2009/0...

    It is ludicrous that the mainstream media is only now getting a clue. This says much about the media in general.

    --
    Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
    1. Re:Robert Cringely by NeutronCowboy · · Score: 1

      Correction: it says much about the general public about what they know about the technology that powers their life. For most people, it might as well be Magic.

      --
      Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
  11. There is no "controversy" by guruevi · · Score: 2

    In the 90's we (the tech-geeky people that had been on the Internet since the 80's) were telling everyone including the FCC that within a decade we would be streaming live and on-demand high-definition video over the Internet. At that point we were already doing it with audio (Net2Phone, SIP, MP3, Napster, Icecast, ...) We even formulated protocols for it and reserved space in the IPv4 range for things like broadcast and multicast (and multicast works incredibly well for distribution).

    The problem is that neither the FCC, Congress nor anyone that was able to put pressure on the ISP's made sure that the ISP's kept up with the advances in technology. I moved to where I live now almost a decade ago and I still have the same amount of bandwidth than I did back then. TWC/Comcast, AT&T and others haven't upgraded their base broadband speeds since the early 2000's. DSL in most of the US is stuck at ~2Mbps, Cable at 10Mbps. In the mean time the world has moved on to 100Mbps and 1Gbps being 'normal' for respectively DSL and Cable. Heck, these days I can get satellite at the same speeds and cost (longer delays though) than Cable and DSL.

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    1. Re:There is no "controversy" by Jason+Levine · · Score: 4, Interesting

      In the case of Time Warner Cable/Comcast and other ISPs who also provide TV services, this is by design. The last thing they want is for you to realize that you don't need to pay them $100+ a month for a thousand channels - only four of which ever have anything decent on. They don't want you to decide that you'd rather stream videos from Netflix, YouTube, Amazon VOD, etc. The speeds they give you are "good enough" for normal web browsing. Any faster risks their monopoly Internet service provider business hurting their non-monopoly TV business and that can't be tolerated.

      And just to make sure that Internet video doesn't supplant cable TV, they'll institute caps and "fast lanes" to kill off Internet Video, and keep charging you hundreds of dollars every month. Cable TV service - as it stands now - is going to be dying business a generation from now. The cable providers see this too and are working as hard as possible, short of actually innovating with their service (e.g. IP Television service or ala carte), to stave off the death for awhile longer.

      --
      My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
    2. Re:There is no "controversy" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      DSL in most of the US is stuck at ~2Mbps, Cable at 10Mbps. In the mean time the world has moved on to 100Mbps and 1Gbps being 'normal' for respectively DSL and Cable.

      ADSL2+ (Annex M) has a maximum downstream rate of 24Mbps and a maximum upstream rate of 3.3Mbps. "ADSL 4" will roughly double that when it's approved, but that hasn't happened yet. It's notable that VDSL can reach 100Mbps, and VDSL2 maybe more. But most of the VDSL/VDSL2 providers have outdated upstream equipment that only supports ADSL2+M speeds, making everything slower. I call your 100Mbps assertions into question.

      Also, I get 100Mbps cable internet for $39.95/mo. in the US. Sure, that's not available everywhere, but it's not unheard-of. I'm in a "rural-ish" suburb of St. Louis. Just a few months ago, I was getting "only" 30Mbps (and it consistently tested near that, too) for the same price. But Charter rolled out a huge upgrade, and everyone went from 30 to 60, and some areas (mine included) went even further from 60 to 100. It consistently tests in the mid-to-upper-80's, even at peak times. Charter Cable is the opposite of "comcastic", thankfully.

      The alternative here is "The Lowercase at&t" (a.k.a. BellSouth after they looted SBC), which doesn't serve my area, and only offers VDSL2 (up to 24Mbps) in the areas it does serve. I used to have it (before I moved to an unserved area). It's pretty stable, and you always get the speed you're sold... unless you're a non-Uverse customer in a Uverse-served area. Then they intentionally degrade your service to push you to switch. If you're a victim of this, be sure to disappoint them by only subscribing to internet access. They must make way more money from TV subscribers, because they never seem to be satisfied with internet-only people.

      So it's 100Mbps or nothin'. Poor, poor me. I feel so picked-on to live in the USA, where I can't even get any competition to fight off the "evil" cable company that gives upgrades to your service for no additional cost except for that other evil (no air-quotes) phone company that provides fast-enough service in most areas for a similar price. Or, you know, the myriad of "business" connections you can get from local, regional, and national providers that will come and, for a hefty fee, lay an actual fiber line to your location and provide an OCx leased-line connection. It ain't cheap, but, hey, do you want internet connectivity or not?

    3. Re:There is no "controversy" by Jawnn · · Score: 1

      This, precisely and completely, is what's really going on here, and you'd better believe that there is a lot, and I mean a staggering sum, of money being spent by the ISP's and cable companies to ensure that things go their way. "What is your stance on net neutrality?" should be the question most frequently asked of aspiring and incumbent politicians because this is a very, very big deal.

  12. Oh Well and by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Who cares, let the free market decide(fuck themselves up). If companies like Verizon want to add data caps, throttle speeds, use legislation to block competition, not upgrade their hardware to meet demand, charge $$$ companies like Netflix, hulu, youtube, and amazon for streaming videos to customers. Well let them! The way to hurt these ISP's back is not to buy their service even if it means an end to U.S internet. But, on the plus side the U.S government will force to end ISP monopolies to better the economy.

    Netflix was very dumb to give in to these ISP's.

    1. Re:Oh Well and by Jason+Levine · · Score: 1

      There is no free market when it comes to ISPs. If I don't like Time Warner Cable's service or business policies, I have no other ISP to go to. Yes, I could leave entirely, but then I'm without Internet access (not an option when you're a web master, like I am) and Time Warner Cable still won't change their policies. If your only plan of action to force a group of companies to change is "everyone in the US cancels their Internet service", your is doomed to failure. Saying "let the free market decide" when it comes to ISPs is essentially saying "let the big ISPs do as they please no matter what they do."

      --
      My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
  13. BS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Unanticipated my ass... I worked in the telecom industry and it was well known 10 years ago that this is the path that broadband was headed... This is disingenuous spin by greedy corporate fat cats...

  14. This article gets the details wrong by MobyDisk · · Score: 3, Insightful

    As with most mainstream articles on this topic, it just simply doesn't get what network neutrality really is. The problems start with the first sentence.

    Net neutrality, the FCC's effort to govern broadband providers who supply Internet access, enters a new chapter as

    Net neutrality is not the name of an FCC plan. It is the principle upon which the internet was created. They make this out to be some new regulatory effort, rather than something that has been around for decades.

    There's the pro-business side, reflecting the interests of the companies that have paid for the broadband — cable operators and telcos. They naturally want to be able to charge bigger users higher prices

    So now the author implies that net neutrality means that they can't charge bigger users higher prices. Bigger users do pay higher prices! They always have, that makes perfect sense. Then it says:

    That's the logical growth area of their businesses —charging the distributors of data as well as the consumers (you and me).

    Distributors and consumers do pay for their data.

    The article is trying to be "nice" to everyone: identify each player in this topic and paint them out to have a reasonable interest. But to do that, the article must omit the core issue which is that cable and telecom monopolies want to double-charge distributors who have already paid. But if you mention that, it is kinda tough to make it look like each side has a fair and balanced interest in this. The article paints out 5 different interested parties, but there are really only two: the greedy monopolies who want to make more money without having to invest in infrastructure, versus everyone-else.

    I am loathe to read the article linked within this one titled "RELATED: A Q&A about net neutrality" because I fear yet more inaccuracy.

    1. Re:This article gets the details wrong by MobyDisk · · Score: 3, Informative

      I read it again, and I missed the funniest part the first time.

      "Imposing utility-like regulation, as in treating broadband like the telephone or even railroad tracks, inevitably creates a bureaucratic morass that in fact slows growth and innovation."

      MASSIVE. ANALOGY. FAILY.

      The author draws an analogy between broadband and telephone companies. Umm.... broadband companies ARE telephone companies dude. That's like saying "Imagine treating a Collie like a dog, that would be ridiculous!" Applying "utility-like regulation" to regulated monopoly utilities makes perfect sense.

      Comparing to the railroad is the best though, because the "net neutrality" laws actually originated with the railroad when they were called called "common carrier" laws. These laws have been in place for hundreds of years, yet it is painted to be some kind of new heavyweight regulation.

  15. The solution is simple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Internet providers should have two choices:

    1) They choose to be neutral, but in doing so get government monopoly protection. They also must keep their prices to a reasonable level, as defined by the FTC.

    2) They choose to not be neutral. Now they can make deals with websites to boost their performance or throttle whatever services they want, but they must now offer to rent their lines out to any company that promises neutrality for a reasonable rate, again set by the FTC.

    It's the best of both worlds, really. This pretty much guarantees consumers have a neutral option, but non neutral companies can gain customers who are interested in "the fastest Netflix around" or whatever other partnerships ISPs can produce.

    1. Re:The solution is simple by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 1

      The rental idea has been tried but doesn't work.

      I forget the exact reason but essentially they find a way to put in extra costs which they can refund to themselves. Another way... they set a high cost for line upkeep and they perform the line upkeep so the essence for them is taking money out of the left pocket and putting it back in the right pocket while the cost is unprofitably high for everyone else.

      You basically need an iron wall between bandwidth and content providers. Separate companies with separate employees and entirely separate management.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
  16. Re:Cable -vs- FCC -vs- Freedom by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There are two kinds of Net Neutrality. There is the original which means leave the Internet alone. It's the one a vast majority of us think about and talk about. The other is a plan that Obama and the FCC came up with that will in effect, give control of the Internet to the government. Obama and the FCC called this plan "Net Neutrality", same name, different idea.

    Thank you for your fact-free and completely erroneous analysis.

    I'd ask for citations, but you don't have any because it ain't true. Facts are soooo inconvenient!

  17. We need competition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't care if providers limit bandwidth. I have a problem with the fact that another provider isn't easily allowed to come in and provide service. If providers weren't given these exclusivity deals, we could have true competition and providers wouldn't stay in business if they provided shitty service.

  18. Everyone has an interest by nine-times · · Score: 1

    Whenever you enter into a debate on any issue, no one debating is neutral. If they're neutral, they wouldn't debate. They need to have some level of interest, and some set of concerns about the outcome of the debate. You can't expect people to be neutral, but you should know what their interests are and let that information inform your understanding of their argument.

    Me, for example. I have an interest in the net neutrality debate. I'd like to have a good/fast internet connection that is not filtered/throttled based on business interests that don't align with my personal interests. I'd like to have access to things like Netflix. I also work in IT, and I don't want to have to deal with, fix, or work around any random/stupid restrictions that I might face due to Verizon deciding that some kinds of traffic don't suit their profit targets for this quarter. Beyond that, I also believe that free and unfettered access to the Internet has become a 'free speech' issue, to some extent. I'm in favor of net neutrality because I'd like to live in a free and well-functioning society.

    So those are my interests. What are the interests of some of the people who oppose net neutrality?

  19. How about just give me what I've already paid for? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If I've paid my ISP for a XX Mb/s connection, then my ISP damn well better flow data at that rate to the best of their abilities. If they are not capable, then I will go to their competitor. If there are no competitors, then their monopoly should be busted.

  20. Net neutrality: good and bad points by Beeftopia · · Score: 1

    1) On the one hand, it seems to be fair to force users - be they companies or individuals - to pay based on usage. Based on how many packets they put on the network. Currently they do not do that. What they do is to pay for their connection. If you want a very high speed connection, you pay for that. The ISP won't guarantee that speed, except in bursts. Kind of like how a 2 x 4 piece of lumber is really 1.5 x 3.5. Conflicts arise when people try to use the full connection bandwidth in a sustained manner.

    2) On the other hand, lack of net neutrality would open the floodgates for corporations to manipulate traffic. To create slow and fast lanes, to favor content, to create yet another pricing tier for American consumers who already pay among the highest prices in the world for high speed internet.

    Based on the fact the government is already under regulatory capture (head of FCC is a telecom executive, head of FDA is a Monsanto executive, 2nd in command at the central bank is a Citigroup executive, etc, etc), allowing net neutrality to be defeated will result in a bad outcome for consumers.

    Net neutrality is not perfect, but it's much better than ceding more control to cable companies.

    1. Re:Net neutrality: good and bad points by king+neckbeard · · Score: 1

      On the one hand, it seems to be fair to force users - be they companies or individuals - to pay based on usage. Based on how many packets they put on the network. Currently they do not do that. What they do is to pay for their connection. If you want a very high speed connection, you pay for that.

      Except for the part where it doesn't make sense because total usage (e.g. 300 GB in a month) has virtually nothing to do with the actual costs. The costs are tied to the peak bandwidth usage (e.g. 50 mbps), which is what consumers pay. There may be some added costs associated with total usage, but they are insignificant enough that it would cost more to calculate them than the costs they would have.

      --
      This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
    2. Re:Net neutrality: good and bad points by MobyDisk · · Score: 1

      Regarding your point #1: Network neutrality has nothing to do with usage-based billing. This is the #1 biggest misconception. If an ISP wants to charge based on the number of packets on the network, they can do that.

    3. Re:Net neutrality: good and bad points by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Net neutrality is about ISPs trying to / not being allowed to charge businesses which aren't direct customers of those ISPs. It is not about different billing modes for direct customers. If an ISP wants to charge by traffic volume, they can do that. It would be wrong and create an opportunity for the competition to take their customers, but that's not a network neutrality issue.

  21. So-called Mainstream Media by sjbe · · Score: 1

    It is ludicrous that the mainstream media is only now getting a clue. This says much about the media in general.

    No insult intended but I'm guessing you haven't had to deal with "mainstream media" much directly. I have on several occasions and let's just say that they were severely clueless. This sort of technical argument is WAY too subtle for them to deal with properly given that it isn't the sort of thing most people really care about or notice in their daily lives. They could do it but it requires too much effort and doesn't draw enough eyeballs. Furthermore a lot of them have some built in conflicts of interest. NBC is owned by Comcast. I very much doubt they are capable of being truly independent reporters on this issue.

    1. Re:So-called Mainstream Media by dgatwood · · Score: 1

      This. You pretty much have to explain things in an anvilicious way for them to "get" the basic concepts, from what I've seen. They're just like the American public when it comes to technology; most know how to turn on a computer, open "the Internet" (Internet Explorer or, if you're really lucky, Safari), and "go to" Facebook. If you want them to understand, you have to explain it to them like you'd explain it to someone in the 1800s, except with the assumption that they know the names (and little more than the names) of websites.

      For example:

      The purpose of net neutrality is to prevent cable/Internet companies like Comcast from artificially limiting the speed (and thus quality) of movies on Netflix to pressure you to rent more expensive movies through Comcast On Demand instead, and to prevent them from extorting extra fees from Netflix in exchange for not limiting them in this way.

      That's the minimum level of anviliciousness required. Not only does it have to be simple, but it has to be incredibly obvious why every random person who doesn't understand computers should care. When you word it like I worded it above, they get the point. When you don't, their eyes glaze over.

      If you get a really highly educated journalist, you might be able to go on from there to say that every time a new technology comes out, it uses more bandwidth than what came before it. And every time, the ISPs have fought to restrict it to keep costs down. The only thing that has enabled the Internet to become as amazing as it is is that customers have fought back and demanded that their service get fast enough to handle the traffic. But ISPs are now fighting against that by pressuring companies like Netflix to pay them money to keep the service to their customers fast. And the goal of net neutrality is to stop that anticompetitive extortion.

      But this requires you to get someone who didn't sleep through high school economics, so don't count on it.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

  22. What a bullshit article by swb · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It creates the impression that everyone is a "stakeholder" with reasonable motivations and roughly equal claims. This seems false, since the cable/telco positions aren't transparent at all about what their "stakes" are and their position isn't about some "fair" outcome but about achieving an UNFAIR outcome where they are in a position to approve/disapprove and charge rents over circuits already paid for by their own customers.

    It totally ignores the business Comcast, et al is trying to defend against competition -- video distribution, as well as their underinvestment in networks which have left whatever legitimate claims they may have -- oversubscription of their last mile networks leading to congestion and problems.

    From the outset, it seems biased in Cable's favor -- "There's the pro-business side, reflecting the interests of the companies that have paid for the broadband â" cable operators and telcos." You're fucking kidding, right? They "paid" for nothing -- we, the consumers, purchasers of their services, have paid for the broadband. Underinvesting in your network and then wanting to squelch service until you get paid again is what's happening.

  23. This issue by stoatwblr · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Is currently ONLY happening in the USA.

    And ONLY on ISPs which are both effective monopolies and where what's coming off the 'net competes with something they offer themselves as a core business.

    If there was effective competition in the USA, this wouldn't be happening. Handwaving about "Net Neutrality" is a dog-and-pony show to try and distract from the elephant in the room - which is for the vast majority of affected americans, the ISPs in question are the ONLY game in town for broadband connectivity.

  24. You can debate without taking a side by sjbe · · Score: 1

    If they're neutral, they wouldn't debate.

    I debate things all the time that I have a neutral viewpoint on. Usually I do this to point out that there is another side to an argument that has some validity that the person I'm debating is not acknowledging. Sometimes I debate a topic to help figure out what I believe about a topic. Only an idiot takes a side in a debate without first trying to understand the relative merits of the different sides being debated. Having a debate where the goal is to poke and prod arguments rather than to convince the other side can be extremely useful.

    Hell slashdot itself is pretty much clear evidence that you do not actually have to believe in a position to debate the issue at hand.

    1. Re:You can debate without taking a side by nine-times · · Score: 1

      Usually I do this to point out that there is another side to an argument that has some validity that the person I'm debating is not acknowledging.

      So you're not neutral. You're picking a side that you feel is under-represented, and you're taking that position. You're doing so... probably either to educate, or because you have some feeling that the under-represented side is important somehow.

      I'm not saying that, in order to debate, you need to be biased and serving selfish ulterior motives. It's just that, on some level, you need to be interested, and you need to have some kind of agenda-- even if that agenda is just "entertainment at flexing my intellectual capacity".

    2. Re:You can debate without taking a side by king+neckbeard · · Score: 1

      You don't have to be disinterested to be neutral. If your goal was simply to point out logical flaws in arguments made by either side, that wouldn't mean that you favored either side.

      --
      This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
    3. Re:You can debate without taking a side by nine-times · · Score: 1

      Ah, I see, you're thinking of some kind of high-school debate format, where I take the pro- position and you take the against- position, and we have a formal silly little discussion that gets graded by an English teacher, or some nonsense. That's not what I'm talking about. In fact, my point in my original post was partially to point out how silly it is to approach an argument/debate that way.

      There's no such thing as being truly neutral without being indifferent and disinterested. If you are not disinterested, then you must have some aspect of the debate which interests you and which you care about. Everyone who cares is going to have specific points of the debate that they care about, and reasons why they care about those things. That doesn't necessarily mean that they have a strong binary position on the issue that's being discussed, either 'yes' or 'no'. The fact that someone has some kind of interest in the debate is not a good reason to dismiss their arguments as biased, since if they had no interest, they wouldn't participate.

      A position in an argument may be subtle, complex, conflicted, ambivalent, and altruistic. That's still a position.

    4. Re:You can debate without taking a side by king+neckbeard · · Score: 1

      Unless what you are interested in is something other than the sides of the debate, in which case, you may be neutral to the sides of the debate (which is what we are talking about here). It's lots of fun to enter a debate where you don't care about the issue, but you have the debate chops to push others around, possibly doing that to the arguments made by both sides. You also may want to play devil's advocate because you care about not having the debate insulated by hivemind (in which case you are arguing against your own actual position) or have a pet peeve or two about usage of certain logical fallacies. I will agree that having an interest in debate is not by itself a reason to dismiss a debater, but to claim that you can't feel neutral towards the issue of debate is unimaginative on your part.

      --
      This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
    5. Re:You can debate without taking a side by frank_adrian314159 · · Score: 1

      Or, rather than being pugilistic, as both you and the GP are wont to do, it can simply be that you use it as way to make pleasant conversation to pass the time and potentially to learn something about something you hadn't much thought about before. But don't let me stop both of you guys sparring - it's quite entertaining.

      --
      That is all.
    6. Re:You can debate without taking a side by nine-times · · Score: 1

      Unless what you are interested in is something other than the sides of the debate, in which case, you may be neutral to the sides of the debate

      And to repeat, "Ah, I see, you're thinking of some kind of high-school debate format..." Which is nice and all, but not terrifically helpful. Debates and arguments in the real world aren't so easily broken down into two sides. Like if I said, "Let's debate the following idea: America should go to war with other countries. Either you're in favor of this idea, meaning you want America to always go to war with all countries, or you're against, and believe that America should never go to war with any other country under any circumstances." That's a great little nice dumb false dichotomy.

      Now you probably don't agree with either side, but you probably also aren't actually neutral. You have an opinion. You have a position. If opinion doesn't fall neatly into the false dichotomy as presented, that doesn't mean you're neutral.

      I think what's unimaginative is, you seem to think that opinions fall on a neat, nice little spectrum, and being "neutral" is falling dead in the center between two endpoints on the spectrum. The reality is that, if you're involved in the debate and you care about the income, then you've got something at stake. All kinds of people have different things at stake. Not everyone in favor of net neutrality have the same interests, and neither do all those who oppose it. People will be in-favor or against for different reasons and to different degrees, with different degrees of passion. There will be those who are undecided, or people who are in favor of some other solution, some "middle road" solution. They may be passionately in favor of a "middle road solution", or even passionately "undecided", feeling that there are just too many complex factors to make a real decision right now. Those passionate positions are not "neutral".

      What's more, you could be arguing in favor or against, not because you genuinely believe in either side, but because you want to sound smart, or because you have some other agenda you're interested in pushing. Those people aren't neutral, but the people who refuse to alignment themselves with one side or the other, for those same reasons, are equally not-neutral. They've taken position in the argument, and may be just as hard to sway from their position.

      If it helps, how about a metaphor: Each of the two "sides" of the argument are like a team playing tug-of-war. One side pulls in one direction, one side pulls in another. You're saying that their are "neutral" people in between, because they're sitting in the middle, holding onto the rope, but not pulling in either direction. My point is, if they're holding on tightly, then they're not neutral. They're still having an effect on the game by adding inertia to the system, making it harder for either side to win. The only way to be truly neutral would be to let go of the rope.

    7. Re:You can debate without taking a side by king+neckbeard · · Score: 1

      The reality is that, if you're involved in the debate and you care about the income, then you've got something at stake

      Who says I care about the outcome? Perhaps I'm just really bothered by appeals to emotion, regardless of the source or subject. No, debate in real life is not like debate club, but that doesn't mean that people don't go into debate with similar mindsets and respect for logic, or that people going in with such mindsets are bad actors. Even in debates where I do hold a certain position, I will sometimes correct the errors of people who are taking positions similar to my own and I appreciate that in kind if my ego allows.

      If it helps, how about a metaphor: Each of the two "sides" of the argument are like a team playing tug-of-war. One side pulls in one direction, one side pulls in another. You're saying that their are "neutral" people in between, because they're sitting in the middle, holding onto the rope, but not pulling in either direction. My point is, if they're holding on tightly, then they're not neutral. They're still having an effect on the game by adding inertia to the system, making it harder for either side to win. The only way to be truly neutral would be to let go of the rope.

      By similar logic, even an automaton referee is not neutral because they hold both sides to follow the rules, and a judge is not neutral because they decide the case based upon what the law says. You are conflating neutral with non-interference.

      --
      This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
  25. the best evidence by slashmydots · · Score: 1

    You know what's funny about this? AT&T owns almost all physical phone lines in my area. They're legally forced to lease the lines to lesser, more local and 2nd rate DSL providers at a "reasonable" price. Now if TDS leases lines and uses a ton of bandwidth on AT&T's lines, AT&T doesn't bill them per 100GB or something like that. So even AT&T has to admit that it's not being damaged by high bandwidth or they would be charging lesser carriers more money if a bunch of their customers hop on Netflix, BUT THEY DON'T. Less infrastructure upgrades means more profits and that's it. It's not like netflix is collapsing their backbone.

    1. Re:the best evidence by Brew+Bird · · Score: 1

      Thats because the uplink isn't public shared bandwidth. TDS gets a private handoff for all the DSL customers, at a tariffed rate, and then it's TDS's problem to put them on their OWN network (not AT&Ts). Netflix bandwidth is in no danger of collapsing anyone's backbone. The issue has always been how it gets handed off between carriers. When you have huge amounts of high speed eyeballs on your network, (netflix's target audience), you should be asking 'why isn't netflix buying bandwidth from networks with a high amount of my target cutomer?' instead they just go with the cheapest carrier they can cut a deal with, without taking into consideration the realities of 'why things work on the network', and stomp their feet about how unfair those evil carriers are. until you can show some widespread example of carriers who have streaming video services with the same library at netflix, and are actively redirecting people's browsers to netflix, there isn't any predatory practice going on here.

  26. Ok, so how do we want TV to work? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Given: TV will be working over the Internet.
          What's great about this new TV over Internet is that it is a lot more flexible than traditional cable TV.
          This means more diverse program program content.
          It means new content providers.
          It means new delivery funding models.
          This will challenge the existing access and content providers.

    Given: There is and will continue to be a natural monopoly in Internet access to the consumer.
          The major access provider is the cable company who has a separate, vested interest in TV.

    Question: Would the consumer be better served if this access monopoly did, or did not limit/control how this new TV works.
          If the answer is it should not control TV, then how does this work?
          How is the bandwidth necessary to support this funded, and at what margin?

    Answer: This is silly. If we had fiber we would not care about the bandwidth.
            There is likely enough revenue in Internet pay for the fiber, but maybe not with the business models the providers are accustomed to.
            The cable folks are in a conflict of interest because is would gut the TV part of cable.
            The phone companies don't seem willing to make the leap, which is understandable given that they have no clue as to what regulatory environment they will see.
            Municipal Broadband is a possible kickstarter.
            We need competition among ISP's, but the natural monopoly prevents this.
            One answer is to separate this natural monopoly from the ISP role.
            This might make the folks owning the pipes common carriers who sell through separate, competing ISP's.
            To be useful, this would have to strike a balance on the price these pipes so that both
                    a) ISP's can offer service at a reasonable price
                    b) the pipe owners have an incentive to put in fiber
            It's not clear if such a balance is possible with the phone/cable or municipal utility business models.

  27. Why what you think Net Neutrality is, is wrong by Brew+Bird · · Score: 2

    I have spent a lot of time on this. I will share where the rabble rousing going on here is _off_, and let you decide.
    1) Net Neutrality is...
    A new buzzword hijacking 'Open Internet', which is the philosophy carriers and network operators have been using since day one to guide their decisions on how to make the network work. It is based on the idea of fairness, openness, and equal access for everyone as an ideal, but allows for the reality of private ownership of infrastructure, and business drivers that dictate how the network infrastructure is managed and operated.

    2) Net Neutrality is NOT..
    .
    a) a fight to ensure you 'get what you paid for'. If you believe this, you have been mislead as to what you paid for. You did not pay for 100Mb/s to netflix. You did not pay for 5Mb/s to netflix. You paid for shared public access to the rest of the networks your carrier has connections with, subject to availability of common shared resources, with NO guarantees of uptime, packet delivery or even that it will work when you switch it on. The mentality that 'I'm not getting what I paid for' is promoted by content providers in order to make you feel cheated. it is not reality.

    Since people like using roads as an example, I will just point out, your road taxes are small, because you share the roads with everyone in your city. When you all try to go someplace at once, you end up creating congestion. Why are you not out protesting that 'I paid for my lane, the city just needs to build more roads so I don't have to wait'? Because it's a ridiculous statement, thats why. a large percentage of the time, those roads simply aren't over-used, so it would be a poor use of time and materials to make it larger to absorb a short window of time when it's running at capacity.

    For those who like to point out how much America sucks for Internet speeds, Whip out your calculator, and tell me how the hell you expect to connect 300 million people spread out over an area of nearly 4 MILLION square miles, for a comparable cost to connecting 25 million people over 38,000 square miles. and 10 million of those people live in one relatively small metro area. Distance covered increases costs, and it's not only unfair but profoundly unrealistic to expect costs to be anywhere close to similar comparing such vastly different infrastructure requirements.


    b) a gimmick for your ISP to shake you down for more money to get what you want. If this were true, you would already be paying for access by country or site or anything else. You don't. You won't. The technical challenges alone make this a non-profitable exercise. Anyone remember when some LD companies figured out that billing in 5 minute increments instead of 1 minute increments meant they actually made MORE profit, because they saved on the time and effort it took to do all the accounting?

    c) some way to force content providers to choose a slow lane or pay extra for a fast lane. I wouldn't call this 'force'. I would call it the same option that has always been present in the design of the network. I would also observe that the reality of 'fast lane/slow lane' is based on our freeway example, not on some kind of toll road vs HOV lane example. The fact is, the way things work now, the 'fast lane' is dedicated bandwidth a company buys to improve it's performance when transferring larger amounts of data than the shared best effort peering infrastructure is willing to invest in supporting. Throw a little math at the problem. If you have a shared exchange interface with 20 other networks, and ONE network is consuming > 50% of the bandwidth, that is UNFAIR to all the other networks, if that also means the total bandwidth begins to regularly exceed the available bandwidth. To further simplify matters, lets say 95% of that bandwidth is coming from ONE customer on that other network. The network engineers all look at each other and say 'this isn't natural growth of the network, this

    1. Re:Why what you think Net Neutrality is, is wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      For those who like to point out how much America sucks for Internet speeds, Whip out your calculator, and tell me how the hell you expect to connect 300 million people spread out over an area of nearly 4 MILLION square miles, for a comparable cost to connecting 25 million people over 38,000 square miles. and 10 million of those people live in one relatively small metro area. Distance covered increases costs, and it's not only unfair but profoundly unrealistic to expect costs to be anywhere close to similar comparing such vastly different infrastructure requirements.

      Tell me again how the world's only superpower can't provide decent Internet speeds in huge metropolitan areas, when countries with much less population density can pull it off?

      Nobody expects OC-192s to Assendofnowhere, Iowa. To claim otherwise is disingenuous at best. So, just how much of a slice of your portfolio does Comcast or Time Warner take up?

    2. Re:Why what you think Net Neutrality is, is wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      2a) get what you paid for

      For service a wide geographic area, the cost for the edge access circuits is a sunk cost.
      The issue here is the concentrated bandwidth behind the edge.
      That seems less related to the wider service area.

    3. Re:Why what you think Net Neutrality is, is wrong by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 1

      The counterpoint to this is that comcast had exceptional problems providing netflix which cleared up literally instantly when netflix signed a payment agreement.

      I.e. comcast already had the required capacity and was disabling it for netflix traffic.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    4. Re:Why what you think Net Neutrality is, is wrong by markass530 · · Score: 1

      Nice try Comcast PR Guy,

    5. Re:Why what you think Net Neutrality is, is wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, OC-192 is an expensive technology which provides about 10Gig.

      I would expect 10GigE to a small town in Iowa.
          Same B/W but a much smarter/cheaper deployment story.

    6. Re:Why what you think Net Neutrality is, is wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > For those who like to point out how much America sucks for Internet speeds, Whip out your calculator, and tell me how the hell you expect to connect 300 million people spread out...

      I live in San Francisco, CA. My options are ~$250/month for 100/20 service from Comcast, or (if one is lucky enough to have LOS to their antennas [which I don't]), $35/month for 20/20 service from our local WISP.

      In Chattanooga, TN, you get 1000/1000 service for $70/month. Chattanooga, TN has cheaper per MB/s internet access than I do. Indeed, they have cheaper internet access then anywhere in Silicon Valley, or New York, NY.

      This population density argument is bunk. You know this. Google knows this. Savvy PUCs know this. It's obstructionist laws and ordinances that keep independent ISPs and PUCs from opening their fiber rings or stringing new ones and providing wholesale access to them to all comers.

      You *do* know that ATT, Comcast, Knology, *all* run gigabit+ fiber into every town they serve, right? Comcast and Knology call this their HFC network. They run fiber from their HQ somewhere near or in the town out to each neighborhood, then run coax to homes. ATT calls this U-Verse. ATT runs fiber to a box about 500 feet from a neighborhood, and then run DSL from there. DSL. From a fiber line that's capable of greater than *gigabit* service.

    7. Re: Why what you think Net Neutrality is, is wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yes. Netflix got their own line into comcast, complete with service level agreements, and bypassing the peering interconnect with their it her ISP.

    8. Re: Why what you think Net Neutrality is, is wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      good points. but population density seems to line up quite nicely on where I would build fiber. (disclosure: I worked as a network architect for ISPs going all the way back to 1994, including a couple of nation wide fiber providers) why put fiber and strand hardware with excess capacity when I have little chance of overselling it?

      I did forget to include the 'help' municipalities throw down to make it harder to do business, but you have to realize (and San Francisco learned this the hard way) those guys have to keep these businesses under control, or run the risk of having their cities look like an Indian telephone pole at every intersection. controlling right if ways is important, and the last time I looked, San Francisco's fiber right of ways have been full for years. just because you can drop dwdm gear onto a fiber pair doesn't mean it's Needed, wanted or even financially sustainable, but in theory, it means you could run 100s of gb/s down a single pair of fiber. so what? that's only important if you have some place to take it. so, San Francisco crossed over the happy point where too many companies got access, built facilities, and then went out of business. no more room for expansion, high population density, and things start to suck. it's also why the cost of living there is so high compared to other places.

      finally, the long haul infrastructure to connect the metro areas of the us is substantial. and horribly expensive. for 20 million people, at 20:1 over subscription, a couple of 10g connections could service that entire country. now cross connect them I. a way that they have amazing speed to everywhere, and you have to create a lot more cross connects, so, if you want to keep the expense the same, you either have to lower the speed and increase the connections, and hope you don't get a hot spot, or just accept that a couple of fast connections that go to better connected networks is pretty good.

      now scale that to a few dozen large metro areas that all want to have netflix at top speed, and are a few thousand miles apart... who carries the freight? all those ISPs. who also have long haul networks to fund, peering costs to pay and network operators to keep busy.

      the end network is also constantly being renewed (a few billion a year per carrier) , at the rate it's being turned over, you would be replacing a smaller country's infrastructure every other year!

    9. Re:Why what you think Net Neutrality is, is wrong by Brew+Bird · · Score: 1

      But it's not a 'sunk' cost. Facilities have to be maintained, and upgraded. Right of ways have to be paid for and maintained. and municipalities expect more and more every year/contract cycle for the access to those rights of way. Bandwidth on the edge provider's network isn't the MAIN problem. it's getting it OFF that network to someplace useful that is.

    10. Re:Why what you think Net Neutrality is, is wrong by Brew+Bird · · Score: 1

      Consider it infrastructure. If you were to start building a new city from scratch in the last 20 years, you would know to leave plenty of room for multiple carriers to drop fiber and copper all over the place. Now come back to reality, where you have 100 year old copper in places where there may or may not be physical access to run fiber to replace it, may or may not be a place to put equipment to support your ideal high speed infrastructure (you can go further with an analog electrical signal, than with a digital one, hence DSL limits), and frankly, rolling out 30 cities worth of fiber infrastructure to cover a good percentage of the population is harder, more expensive, and takes longer than building out 1 city and 2 population centers that are barely 100 miles apart.

      The difference boils down to engineering and scaling problems. I would compare the two like this: lets say 'small country' is using a pickup truck to move his family across the street, while 'big country' has to use 100 tractor trailer rigs to move an office building worth of people 2000 miles. I'm sure the folks in the office look to have terrible performance from their moving company, if you decide to just compare how long it takes to move. Doesn't really capture the whole 'heft' of the project though, does it.
      what WOULD be interesting, would be to show how much each country 'lifts' with it's access, and create a consumption based metric for internet quality.

    11. Re: Why what you think Net Neutrality is, is wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > now scale that to a few dozen large metro areas that all want to have netflix at top speed, and are a few thousand miles apart... who carries the freight?

      Uh. Netflix? Netflix will drop a very effective cache box in any ISP's datacenter at no charge. If you're currently working as a network architect for an ISP of any size, you should already know that.

      > [No room for expansion is] also why the cost of living there is so high compared to other places.

      You're half right. NIMBYs and the like preventing buildings taller than three stories is why the cost of living is so damn high. In other words, anti-construction regulation and monied interests keep pushing rent up, and -likewise- keep competitively priced internet access out of the hands of ordinary people.

      > you have to realize (and San Francisco learned this the hard way) those guys have to keep these businesses under control, or run the risk of having their cities look like an Indian telephone pole at every intersection.

      Roughly 1/4 of the city has under-street wire routing. The rest of the has poles that *do* look like poles in Bangalore. What's more, SF already has a municipal fiber ring. Both of the major independent ISPs (and a slew of independent organizations) have petitioned the city CTO to get access to it, but the city has refused. The cables are already run, and already lit up. All that's needed is to permit ISPs to rack equipment in city datacenters and run fiber from the street into apartment buildings.

      > finally, the long haul infrastructure to connect the metro areas of the us is substantial. and horribly expensive.

      I haven't heard complaints from the folks in Sebastapol, CA, the Kansas Cities, or Chattanooga, TN about slow inter-continental (or even trans-oceanic) internet speed. Maybe you've been out of the game for too long to know just what sort of long range interconnects are actually in place.

  28. Yes you can be neutral by sjbe · · Score: 1

    So you're not neutral. You're picking a side that you feel is under-represented, and you're taking that position.

    Sometimes I genuinely am neutral. Just because I understand both sides of an issue doesn't mean I necessarily give a crap about the issue. To give a rather silly example I genuinely do not care one way or the other about the relative merits of emacs versus vi. I understand the arguments and can articulate them if someone seems to misunderstand something but I genuinely do not care about either side of that debate. I am the very definition of neutral there. (Actually my opinion is something along the lines of "a pox on both your houses") Whatever agenda I have has nothing to do with favoring one side or the other, hence I am neutral.

    on some level, you need to be interested, and you need to have some kind of agenda-- even if that agenda is just "entertainment at flexing my intellectual capacity".

    Interest is not the same thing as opinion. There are lots of things I like to understand but don't really care about the relative merits of one side or the other.

    1. Re:Yes you can be neutral by nine-times · · Score: 1

      To give a rather silly example I genuinely do not care one way or the other about the relative merits of emacs versus vi. I understand the arguments and can articulate them if someone seems to misunderstand something but I genuinely do not care about either side of that debate

      So then you won't participate in a debate, because you don't care at all.

      Like ask me whether I think the best college football team is, and I'll tell you, I don't care. I just don't. If you say it's the University of Alabama, I'll say, "Yeah, sure. Whatever." I don't care. If I engage, it's because I care and have some kind of position.

      (Actually my opinion is something along the lines of "a pox on both your houses")

      Ok, so that's still a position. If there's a debate between emacs and vi, and I say, "I don't like either," that's a definite position, even if it's neither pro-vi nor pro-emacs. If I bother to argue that position, then it must mean that I have some interest, I have something at stake in the argument, even if it's not really about emacs or vi. In fact, when people argue about things, it's very common for them to not-really be arguing about the thing that they're officially arguing about.

  29. depends on how the QoS is done by Chirs · · Score: 1

    I have no problems at all with an ISP prioritizing certain types of traffic, but that prioritization should be 1) under the control of the subscriber, and 2) it should *only* affect traffic belonging to that subscriber. My traffic and your traffic should be shaped (as a whole) based on the subscriptions that each of us has paid for.

    That is, I could ask my ISP to prioritize my Netflix packets over my bittorrent packets, but if you and I have paid for the same level of service then your VoIP packets shouldn't get priority over my Netflix packets.

  30. Re "Stackeholders" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Stakeholders" are the crowd that you see chasing the vampire in those old horror movies.

  31. Easy: Use Public Funds You must be net neutral by gral · · Score: 1

    If a corporation does not use and has never used public funds for infrastructure, then they can do whatever they want. If they use public funds to setup an area monopoly they should NEVER be allowed anything other than Net Neutrality, or lose their area monopoly.

    Broadband should be defined as anything 10Mb and above, continuous bandwidth. So they cannot use DSL as a competitor (If it is below 10Mb still), or UseNET as it is not continuous throughput.

    With this straigh forward definition, all this back and forth will go away. If a company wants to do crazy things with bandwidth, then customers will have options to go to.

    --
    Scott Carr
  32. Being neutral in this debate is bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Being neutral is not having an opinion, which means you let others decide for you and you don't participate in the debate. So being neutral in a debate is a contradictio in terminis.

  33. Ripoff pricing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Based on how much I used and how much I'm allowed to use I would pay 16 cents per GB. Considering what I actually use it cost me 21 cents per GB.

    Do you have a link for what you call undoctored resource use statistics.

    Perhaps you've been trained to be ripped off.

    Based on my actual usage, I pay about 5 cents per GB (actually eur0.045/GB); this is by no means the cheapest plan available, just the only one in my area. BTW, I live in the countryside in Finland (about 400km north of Helsinki), and have 100/100Mbit symmetric fiber with no limits. If I used the full uncapped capacity of the link, it would be rather less, of course. If I used a mere 1% of the bandwidth every second, it would come to about two thousandths of a cent per GB.

  34. Am I missing something here? by strikethree · · Score: 1

    What is with all of the offensive articles lately? Nobody is neutral? We are talking about the neutrality of handling packets. Either you want packets to be handled neutrally or you do not. By framing it the way he has, he implies that nobody is for handling packets in a neutral manner... and that is FUCKING FALSE.

    Jesus fucking christ people. Stop this shit. Stop it NOW. Stop INTENTIONALLY POLLUTING. YOU, yes YOU are absolutely the epitome of evil! Just shut up already.

    --
    "Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
  35. So what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You don't defend a position by remaining neutral. Non-news.

  36. Interest != a position by sjbe · · Score: 1

    So then you won't participate in a debate, because you don't care at all.

    You seem to be having a hard time with this. I explicitly said I have and do participate in debates in where I don't care about the eventual outcome. Scientific debates are often like this. I might not actually care what the outcome is and I often don't have a position of my own (I'm neutral) but I do have an interest in the debate based in curiosity and an interest in the truth. I don't really care if dinosaurs had feathers or not and I am neutral on the subject but I am interested in whatever the answer turns out to be. Even when the issue at hand is solely a matter of opinion then sometimes people will debate the issue because they like to debate - not because they actually have a position of their own. Hang around law school students sometime. They LOVE to debate and don't really give a shit about whatever is being debated all the time.

    Ok, so that's still a position.

    Yes it is. A neutral one. The argument was that you cannot be simultaneously neutral on an issue and debate it. I'm explaining (for the last time) that that is demonstrably not true. I understand plenty of issues well enough to argue one position or the other while my own opinion on the matter at hand is neutral. I don't care if emacs is better than vi or vice-versa but on occasion in years far past I have taken one side or the other just to point out that someone isn't being factual. I don't actually have a preference between the two and use both but the debate itself I find rather pointless and annoying hence my "position" of "a pox on both your houses".

    it's very common for them to not-really be arguing about the thing that they're officially arguing about.

    Very true. Most of the time it is something tribal. You see our "leaders" in washington holding or disputing opinions based solely on whether the other side holds that opinion.

    If I bother to argue that position, then it must mean that I have some interest

    Not necessarily in the position being argued. Sometimes my only interest is in promoting a factual discussion. That means I am neutral on the issue. Scientific debate is often like this. I don't really care about what the outcome of scientific issues actually is (because the nature of the world doesn't care about my opinion of it) and I often don't understand the nuances well enough to have a well formed opinion of my own. But I do care that the debate happens, that it is accurate and that whatever is being debated gets sorted out.

    1. Re:Interest != a position by nine-times · · Score: 1

      I explicitly said I have and do participate in debates in where I don't care about the eventual outcome.

      Geeze, I'm getting really tired of explaining this to people who obviously just haven't bothered to think. You do care. Obviously you do, or you wouldn't bother. The debate might be between A and B, and maybe you don't care about A or B, but the outcome of real debates (contrary to what they teach you when you're a little kid) is not the choice between A and B. If you want the debate to be fair, or you want the debate to be interesting, or you want to avoid a certain kind of outcome to the debate, then you care about the outcome.

      And true neutrality would mean that you don't have *any* agenda and you aren't exerting *any* influence. If you're participating, you are doing those things. I'm guessing you're a guy who's maybe a math guy, to think about it like this: You have two force vectors pushing in opposite directions on the same object. A "neutral" party to the situation would be one sitting idly by, watching, having no effect on the outcome. You think you're being that "neutral" party when you engage in debates when you "don't care about the outcome". But in reality, you might be a 3rd vector pushing along another dimension. You're not pushing one way or another, but you're pushing to the side, moving the object in a completely different direction. Or maybe you're pushing straight down, and instead of moving the object, you're increasing the friction along the ground, making it harder for either of the other forces to cause the object to move.

      When you look at it that way, you're not neutral. You're just another force in the system. Your mistake is in thinking that "debates" are ever a simple one-dimensional binary question of "either A or B", and so if you don't care about A or B, you're neutral. But those debates only exist in the mind of extremely small-minded people who fail to see the other dimensions to the problem.

      I don't think I'm going to bother to respond anymore, unless you actually have something to offer.

  37. Custom hosts helps vs. bandwidth caps... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Up to 40% of sites = ads: My FREE hosts program adds speed, security, reliability, & more, by doing more, more efficiently vs. addons + fixes DNS' issues:

    APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ 32/64-bit:

    http://start64.com/index.php?o...

    ---

    A.) Hosts do more than:

    1.) AdBlock ("souled-out" 2 Google/Crippled by default http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/... )
    2.) Ghostery (Advertiser owned) - "Fox guards henhouse" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
    3.) Request Policy -> http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...

    B.) Hosts add reliability vs. downed/redirected dns (& overcome site redirects e.g. /. beta).

    C.) Hosts secure vs. malicious domains too -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... w/ less "moving parts" complexity

    D.) Hosts files yield more:

    1.) Speed (adblock & hardcodes fav sites - faster than remote dns)
    2.) Security (vs. malicious domains serving malcontent + block spam/phish & trackers)
    3.) Reliability (vs. downed or Kaminsky redirect vulnerable dns, 99% = unpatched vs. it & worst @ isp level + weak vs DGA, & Fastflux + dynDNS botnets)
    4.) Anonymity (vs. dns request logs + dnsbl's).

    ---

    * Hosts do more w/ less (1 file) @ faster levels (ring 0) vs redundant inefficient addons (slowing slower ring 3 browsers) via filtering 4 the IP stack (coded in C, loads w/ os, & 1st net resolver queried w\ 45++ yrs.of optimization).

    * Addons = more complex + slow browsers in messagepassing (use a few concurrently & see) & are nullified by native browser methods - It's how Clarityray's destroying Adblock.

    * Addons slowup slower usermode browsers layering on more - & bloat RAM consumption + excessive cpu use too (4++gb extra in FireFox https://blog.mozilla.org/nneth...)

    Instead, work w/ a native kernelmode part - hosts (An integrated part of the ip stack)

    APK

    P.S.=> "The premise is quite simple: Take something designed by nature & reprogram it to make it work for the body rather than against it..." - Dr. Alice Krippen: "I am legend"

    ...apk

  38. Ask yourselves these questions... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Can adblock do the following things (that custom hosts files can):

    1.) Secure you vs. known malicious sites/servers
    2.) Secure you vs. downed DNS servers aiding reliability
    3.) Secure you vs. DNS redirect poisoned dns servers
    4.) Protect you vs. fastflux using botnet attacks and stop their communications back to their C&C servers
    5.) Protect you vs. dynamic dns using botnet attacks and stop their communications back to their C&C servers
    6.) Protect you vs. domain generation algorithm using botnet attacks and stop their communications back to their C&C servers
    7.) Speed you up for websurfing not only by adblocking but also hardcoding favorite sites
    8.) Get you past a dnsbl you may not agree with
    9.) Keep you off dns request logs
    10.) Do all of those things and block ads (better than adblock) more efficiently in cpu cycles and memory usage
    11.) Work on ANY webbound application (think stand-alone email programs, for example).
    12.) Give you direct, easily notepad/texteditor controlled data for all of the above
    13.) Block out trackers
    14.) Block spam mails sources
    15.) Block phishing mails sources

    "?"

    * Simple YES or NO answers will do for repliers to this - that's all.

    APK

    P.S.=> Of course, ANSWER ="NO" to each enumerated item above as far as "Almost ALL Ads Blocked" (crippled by default & 'souled-out' defeating it's very base purpose) is concerned -> http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/...

    So, *IF* you feel like doing things LESS efficiently as well -> https://blog.mozilla.org/nneth... ontop of doing less than hosts do (by far) with more complexity + from a slower mode of operations (usermode with more messagepassing overheads vs. hosts in kernelmode, also starting up w/ the IP stack itself, before REDUNDANT inefficient addons even BEGIN to operate, & as the 1st resolver queried by the OS as well)?

    That's illogical, but up to you - I can lead a horse to water, but I can't make them drink!

    ... apk

  39. Addendum: True story, AdBlock vs. Hosts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    W. Palant wrote me by email 1st saying "hosts are a shitty solution" to which I replied:

    "Show us adblock can do more for added speed, security, reliability, & anonymity than hosts can, + that adblock does it more efficiently than hosts"

    Which on my latter 'point-in-challenge' on efficiency AdBlock's proven by research to be MASSIVELY inefficient -> https://blog.mozilla.org/nneth... & adblock does FAR less than hosts (especially crippled by default).

    I sent Wladimir Palant that challenge in response to his statement from 2 different email addresses I use!

    Result = Still no answer from him in regard to my challenge put to him to this very day MONTHS later - that tell you anything? It did me!

    He knows his addon is less efficient & features laden by FAR vs. hosts - Wladimir Palant RAN like a scared rabbit!

    ClarityRay's also DESTROYING AdBlock - via native browser methods to DUMP what addons you use (it can't DO THAT to hosts files).

    I only tell it how it is on hosts' superiority vs. AdBlock - Funny part is, Wladimir Palant running does too!

    Especially considering "Almost ALL Ads Blocked" has 'souled-out' -> Google And Others Reportedly Pay Adblock Plus To Show You Ads Anyway: http://news.slashdot.org/comme...

    APK

    P.S.=> Bottom-Line: Hosts = a superior solution that also fixes DNS redirect security issues (vs. browser addons & their inefficiencies + messagepassing overheads as well as myriad lack of abilities hosts have from 1 file that's part of the IP stack itself - faster, more efficient, & less redundant as well, since TCP/IP has 45++ yrs. of refinement & optimization in it, & runs in a higher CPU serviced ring of privelege & operations in kernelmode vs. slower usermode layering over browsers slowing them more, & hosts = 1st resolver queried by the OS itself also)... apk

  40. The Conclusion is All Wrong by tmjva · · Score: 1

    Obviously, they have forgotten to ask someone who doesn't give a shit.

    --
    Tracy Johnson
    Old fashioned text games hosted below:
    http://empire.openmpe.com/
    BT
  41. Netflix was already paying by beastofburdon · · Score: 1

    "As much as 70% of Internet-distributed data is now video, 50% of it from Netflix. This new video industry — growing exponentially and transforming the nature of entertainment — is getting a free ride on the cable and telco investment in broadband. Arguably, this is unsustainable free distribution, overtaxing networks and slowing the Internet for everyone."

    Netflix already pays for its bandwidth through its providers Level 3 and Cognet. Then if there is an imbalance in the traffic between them and the providers the one providing more traffic pays the other. This shit is just the big media companies trying to extort money from Netflix by intentionally slowing down their traffic.