First Net Neutrality Lawsuit Will Target Time Warner Cable

An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. government's new net neutrality rules finally took effect last Friday, and a company is already using them to line up a lawsuit against Time Warner Cable. A firm called Commercial Network Services, which runs a bunch of webcams, says TWC is charging them unreasonable rates to stream video to their customers. "The [FCC's] regulations establish hard and fast rules against slowing or blocking Web traffic, as well as a ban on content companies paying for speedier service once their traffic enters a provider's network. But by design, they don't say nearly as much about how companies should negotiate the private agreements that ensure Web traffic flows smoothly into an Internet provider's network — and to your home." TWC has been arranging "settlement-free peering" with various companies, but refused such a deal with CNS. The complaint will ask the FCC to rule that ISPs must strike free peering deals with website operators.

Comments

The Real Winners...

[rjune]

The real winners with "Net Neutrality" is the lawyers. Always the lawyers.

Re:Frivolous

[sabri]

Peering IS an Internet "fast lane," at least in a coarse sense. Your paying customers have the most favorable data rates in to and out of your network. Next come your reciprocal peers. Finally, you keep the connections you have to pay for at the highest congestion levels in order to minimize your cost.

You clearly don't understand the internet.

Peering (as opposed to transit) is two private networks deciding that they exchange enough traffic that it justifies the capex and opex of a dedicated network port or dedicated peering session between the two networks.

If large network A already sees small network B through peering with large network C (in which case usually B is a customer of C), there is little reason for A to peer with B unless bi-directional traffic reaches certain levels. Those levels are part of network A's peering policy.

This has nothing to do with net neutrality.

By refusing peering to a third party, you force them to either pay you or suffer degraded data rates through your paid channel. This is throttling.

Total and utter bullshit, and FUD originating from Netflix etc in their "peering dispute" with Comcast. Network B can purchase enough bandwidth from network C. If there is an issue with bandwidth between network B and network A, they will figure it out and add additional ports.