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Why the FCC Will Probably Ignore the Public On Network Neutrality
walterbyrd writes The rulemaking process does not function like a popular democracy. In other words, you can't expect that the comment you submit opposing a particular regulation will function like a vote. Rulemaking is more akin to a court proceeding. Changes require systematic, reliable evidence, not emotional expressions . . . In the wake of more than 3 million comments in the present open Internet proceeding-which at first blush appear overwhelmingly in favor of network neutrality-the current Commission is poised to make history in two ways: its decision on net neutrality, and its acknowledgment of public perspectives. It can continue to shrink the comments of ordinary Americans to a summary count and thank-you for their participation. Or, it can opt for a different path.
The CRTC is no different. Managed by former Rogers/Bell/Telus executives.
Buck Feta. You know what to do.
If you need to prioritize voice traffic on your network then you're network is in serious need of an upgrade. 20 years ago when VOIP was brand new this was a necessity as 6.4k/channel was actually a chunk of your connection. In the modern world we live in with 10, 40, and 100gig ethernet available to the players being discussed in this thread and you're talking about 6.4 being a laughable amount of traffic. The only reason it needs to be prioritized is because of the DPI systems imposing completely unnecessary bottlenecks on these networks.
As someone that manages hundreds of networks for companies ranging between 5 computers and 5000 I can confidently tell you that VOIP doesn't require QoS anymore. The only remaining prioritization comes in the form of HD video transmission, this can be throttled during times when there is legitimate congestion. Of course the ISPs in question actually aren't congested to the point where Level 3 is trying not to break its sarcasm unit when Verizon trumps out that old chestnut. When a single 10gig link costing about $1500 to deploy at the most is all it takes to alleviate congestion its pretty easy to come to the conclusion that the cause of the congestion isn't the network, but that of business policy creating a problem that doesn't need to exist.
I'm sorry, but there is no easy way to say this: You are an idiot.
There is a clear difference between a Kickstarter campaign and direct subsidies from taxpayers. So let's try another example: I put money into a company in the form of an investment (shares) and, in your world, I don't get any say over how the company is run?
Kickstarters are just an end-run around rules that limit certain types of risky investments to the wealthy. They don't represent a wider example. They are not even investments.
Companies pay for use of the rights of way? They pay the homeowners for the use of the poles that are in back gardens, do they? I think not.
You buy a connection that is supposed to be 10meg and if they purposely slow it down for any reason they are intentionally defraudint the consumer by not delivering the services they charged for. And the up to language does not save them because you can never get up to 10megs if they are purposely limiting it to 2 megs.
They can deliver you 10 MB/s even while they throttle the connection between you and Netflix to 2 MB/s or less. This is, in fact, what was done during the "negotiations." Bandwidth is throttled upstream of the client link, so the client, if he tried, could run a "speedtest" in parallel with his crappy, stuttering video, that would show healthy, full-bandwidth connection to other upstream sites. He could, if he tried, see a perfectly fluid Hulu video in one window, next to a crappy, stuttering Netflix video in another. The client has no way of knowing whether that's because Netflix's servers are overloaded, Netflix's ISP is overloaded, or if Verizon is throttling Netflix: they all look the same to the end viewer. This also makes it essentially impossible to determine fraud (aside from the fact that your contract with your ISP does not - can not - guarantee you a bandwidth to any particular service.