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Net Neutrality Alone Won't Solve ISP Throttling Abuse, Here's Why
MojoKid writes Net neutrality is an attractive concept, particularly if you've followed the ways the cable and telco companies have gouged customers in recent years, but only to a limited extent. There are two problems with net neutrality as its commonly proposed. First, there's the fact that not all traffic prioritization is bad all of the time. Video streams and gaming are two examples of activities that require low-latency packet delivery to function smoothly. Email and web traffic can tolerate significantly higher latencies, for example. Similarly, almost everyone agrees that ISPs have some responsibility to control network performance in a manner that guarantees the best service for the most number of people, or that prioritizes certain traffic over others in the event of an emergency. These are all issues that a careful set of regulations could preserve while still mandating neutral traffic treatment in the majority of cases, but it's a level of nuance that most discussions of the topic don't touch. The larger and more serious problem with net neutrality as its often defined, however, is that it typically deals only with the "last mile," or the types and nature of the filtering an ISP can apply to your personal connection.
...then you won't be able to decide what traffic gets priority except through port designation.
Fighting "net neutrality" a silly thing to get hung up on; sooner or later, the need for high speed, low latency connections will be ubiquitous. Hiding from that very real fact, will only make that process uglier in the future.
"Video streams... examples of activities that require low-latency packet delivery to function smoothly."
No they don't. Bad example.
It'd be like having Ford control traffic flow on the Interstates. "All Express lanes are only open to Ford vehicles and the 'partners' who've bought premium service for their customers."
Neutral prioritization is giving priority to streaming video/music/gaming over other types of data like e-mail without regard to the hosts providing the services.
This critical distinction seems to be ignored by the poster.
Net Neutrality doesn't demand that no network optimization by the ISP's ever occur, it states that the host should not be a factor in the ISP's optimizations. If the host does factor into the optimizations, then the ISP's begin extorting hosts to pay for priority service which the ISP's customers have already paid for. Additionally, hosts that can't afford to pay for priority distribution by the IPS's soon find that users can't access their services.
-TheDawgLives suckitdown
I remember slashdot not polluted with anonymous cowards making up 50% of the comments. You wont be missed.
Before Net Neutrality got on the radar of the mainstream media, everyone involved in the discussion did understand that we were talking only about throttling based on origin or destination, and explicitly not about QOS based on protocol latency needs.
It is only after the media (and politicians) started paying attention that all the cableco shills came out of the woodwork to try to confuse the issue.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Latency is usually the first problem. You'll have trouble when you're running up against the speed of light.
But you can usually run a 2nd pipe to add bandwidth. With the same latency as the 1st pipe. And a 3rd pipe. And so on.
And that's where I think TFA gets it wrong. Network Neutrality cannot be about prioritizing one kind of traffic over another. The ISP's already lack the incentive to add more bandwidth. Even though that bandwidth is what they are selling. Allowing them to prioritize traffic means that they will be more incentivized to NOT add more bandwidth.
That was the problem that Netflix had with Comcast. And once Netflix coughed up some money, Comcast instantly found more bandwidth.
FFS, we've been over this a thousand times. No one is suggesting that Net Neutrality does away with ISPs performing QoS. Net Neutrality just means that ISPs can't prioritize traffic for their services of video/VOIP/etc over competing video/VOIP/etc. It's one of the few problems that has a relatively easy solution and the only reason we haven't implemented it is because there are enough special interest groups with enough power and money to make sure that they're not forced to play fairly with their customers' traffic.
Unadulterated bullshit.
The point of net neutrality is not to ensure that your stupid reruns perform adequately well but that they perform equally well regardless of whether they are coming from your last mile monopoly or some other competing service.
If my Netflix performance has gone into the crapper then Time Warners competing service better be suffering the same problem.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Email and web traffic can tolerate significantly higher latencies, for example.
Bullshit. You don't know which of my traffic is higher priority. The end user can and should have network management tools, but the ISP better damned well not decide that my kids watching Nemo in HD is more important than my rsync transfer of a log file telling me why the master server just barfed. That is my choice, not the ISP's.
Similarly, almost everyone agrees that ISPs have some responsibility to control network performance in a manner that guarantees the best service for the most number of people,
Bullshit. Just, bullshit. Citation needed. No, people who understand networks do not believe that the pipeline providers should be doing traffic prioritization based on endpoints.
or that prioritizes certain traffic over others in the event of an emergency.
Vague fear mongering. What if the network companies prioritize the wrong things in their search for a little more revenue and something bad happens to the children? THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
These are all issues that a careful set of regulations could preserve while still mandating neutral traffic treatment in the majority of cases, but it's a level of nuance that most discussions of the topic don't touch. The larger and more serious problem with net neutrality as its often defined, however, is that it typically deals only with the "last mile," or the types and nature of the filtering an ISP can apply to your personal connection.
I don't know if this is intentional or not, but throwing piles of vaguely related and confusing facts at a story then saying, "Therefore, we shouldn't regulate now!" is a standard tactic from the Koch plalybook. Shove it.
The public, including tens of thousands of network administrators, have spoken without equivocation: We want net neutrality. Period. When the ISPs come up with better regulation, they can propose it, and we will consider it. Until then, we will not move an inch on our demand for Net Neutrality. It has worked since the first day of the Internet. It is why the Internet made so many people, including the ISPs, rich. If they don't like it, they can GTFO or DIAF.
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