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FCC Rescinds Claim That AT&T, Verizon Violated Net Neutrality (arstechnica.com)
jriding writes: The Federal Communications Commission's new Republican leadership has rescinded a determination that ATT and Verizon Wireless violated net neutrality rules with paid data cap exemptions. The FCC also rescinded several other Wheeler-era reports and actions. The FCC released its report on the data cap exemptions (aka "zero-rating") in the final days of Democrat Tom Wheeler's chairmanship. Because new Chairman Ajit Pai opposed the investigation, the FCC has now formally closed the proceeding. The FCC's Wireless Telecommunications Bureau sent letters to ATT, Verizon, and T-Mobile USA notifying the carriers "that the Bureau has closed this inquiry. Any conclusions, preliminary or otherwise, expressed during the course of the inquiry will have no legal or other meaning or effect going forward." The FCC's Wireline Competition Bureau also sent a letter to Comcast closing an inquiry into the company's Stream TV cable service, which does not count against data caps. The FCC issued an order that "sets aside and rescinds" the Wheeler-era report on zero-rating. All "guidance, determinations, and conclusions" from that report are rescinded, and it will have no legal bearing on FCC proceedings going forward, the order said. ATT and Verizon allow their own video services (DirecTV and Go90, respectively) to stream on their mobile networks without counting against customers' data caps, while charging other video providers for the same data cap exemptions. The FCC under Wheeler determined that ATT and Verizon unreasonably interfered with online video providers' ability to compete against the carriers' video services.
its a fake like climate change!
Well, gentleman, we've been sold out.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
well I guess the SALE of the internet has started
It was good while it lasted.
Will the last one out please turn off all the lights?
--
BMO
That a "conservative" wants to limit speech (ie indiscriminate network access) to those that can pay for it. Especially from a sand nagger. They have motivation to tear down public opinion.
your gonna get what you deserve
they are changing their name to the Ministry of Communication.
Goddammitsomuch.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
everything thats wrong with 'murika.
Do we start peering a new Internet to steer around The Matrix? Routers of The World Unite? Or worse.. HAM radios and QPSK modulators? One can only hope it won't to that point. We shall see.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
Did anybody here believe that President Trump (nee: Drumpf) would ignore all of those intartubes in his efforts to control (or at least neutralize) the media?
The last FCC chairman rushed through a number of propaganda edicts on the last few days. How is that not the ultimate in Government Disinformation?
How valuable is the content of people people's emails from the last few days on the job? He just wanted to blast some companies regardless of the harm the FCC can do from its high perch.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Why do Trump supporters have small genitalia?
The FCC is changing its name. It will now be known as the Federal Communications Commission of Alternative Facts.
This clearly shows admin law is a verbal call
I have interacted with regulators and even when the regs clearly state a thing is legal, they often call a verbal it needs further compliance efforts and if you fail to comply they fine you. Yes, really.
Well, gentleman, we've been sold out.
Yeah, well... about that.
The problem with net neutrality isn't the stated goals, it's the way the left went about it. instead of a law saying "no paid prioritization, no throttling, and no blocking", they pushed through a bill that reclassified the ISPs as utilities, opening them up to enormous regulation in addition to net neutrality requirements.
Pai is against this (Title II) classification, and that's all he's against. He's stated several times in the past that he wants a free and open internet, and has specifically mentioned the "no paid prioritization, no throttling, and no blocking" thing as something he supports.
Furthermore the bill was passed with no study, and several economists have chimed in saying that zero-rating (the practice mentioned in the OP) isn't necessarily a bad thing, sometimes it's a good thing, and that there's no clear indication overall that can be used to guide legislation.
So yeah, it 'kinda looks like neutrality is the right and obvious way to go, and it makes perfect sense to us technical people, but that's not the whole story here. The legislation was so overreaching and awful that dumping it along with the neutrality provisions was the right choice. (Also the economists who felt that it was unnecessary and counter-productive.)
Perhaps if the left had passed legislation that confined itself to the obviously good parts we wouldn't be in this situation.
But hey, don't let me get in the way of a good Trump bashing.
It's Trump's fault that we have to roll back the good parts along with the bad.
Of course the Internet pipes are essential utilities, or public infrastructure like highways, take your pick. Title-II classification was logical. But I guess logic is inherently left-wing, now that you mention it :-/
If utilities are somehow over-regulated that's a separate issue.
Just like we don't want tollgates on the highways only allowing you to go through after paying a bribe or making a side-deal with the highway operator, we don't want favored pay-to-play content suppliers clogging up the Interwebs at everyone else's expense.-
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Trumpco. is only getting started.
Your whole f**king country is one giant reality TV show now. It's going to be so-o-o-o-o entertaining! It's going to be FABULOUS!
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
"Any conclusions, preliminary or otherwise, expressed during the course of the inquiry will have no legal or other meaning or effect going forward." - Not quite true; I'll remember.
Who are these "economists" who felt net neutrality was unnecessary and counter-productive?
It's too bad there isn't some place once could go to look for answers to questions like these.
Some sort of repository of information, indexed by topic that someone could use to track down answers.
I feel your pain. Without such a resource, highly intelligent and technical people such as ourselves are often left clueless and in the dark when it comes to these matters.
It's impossible to be well informed in the modern age.
(Ans: Dr. Mark Jamison, economist at the University of Florida)
As they defend anything the cheeto insurgent does. Oh, you cry about Democrats, the corruption and how they forget the little guy, and give your vote to the guy that was already price checking stuff like this for his corporate buddies during the campaign. But this is really what you wanted, isn't it? As long as you can fuck over the liberals in your head, as long as you can stomp on people that do nothing to you, you will readily sell down the river all the principles you claimed to stand for here on Slashdot. Net neutrality? Fuck that! Who cares about that nerd shit as long as Trump does the MAGA song and dance?
You certainly don't. And we are paying for your incompetence as voters.
> something that obviously has helped small companies and the internet grow all these years
Huh? We haven't HAD net neutrality regulations "all these years". The FCC rule on network neutrality was issued in mid 2015 and the first enforcement letters sent in the last couple of months. If you think what we've been doing "all of these years" has helped the internet and small companies grow, that's an argument AGAINST Wheeler's new net neutrality regulations.
The argument FOR network neutrality is that ISPs might in the future stop continually improving service and switch to a model that would be bad. That's a legitimate concern, and the intention behind the network neutrality rules was good.
HOWEVER, modern carrier networks are exceedingly complex, and getting more complex all the time. "A packet is a packet is a packet" is a recipe to create horrible service for everyone. Modern are WAY more intelligent than that, and need to be if youb want usable voip that doesn't sound like satellite news coverage, with 1000ms of delay after each thing you say. Laws enforcing network neutrality, if they were written to avoid a lot of unpleasant, unintended consequences, would need to be perhaps 500 pages long. That's *my* issue with Wheeler's regulations - I like general concept, but it was horribly oversimplified, dumbed down to the point of being stupid. A draft rule (not the final rule) would have outlawed blocking spam - you have to treat every source equally means you can't discriminate against spammers. The final rule was *slightly* more nuanced than that, but not by much.
My own opinion is that we should have very specific rules, tailored to objectional behaviors that ISPs are actually doing or about to do, rather than a huge overbroad rule based on a nebulous fear of what some ISP *might* someday do. The overbroad, dumbed down rule criminalizes intelligent network management, in the name of trying to prohibit something that nobody is doing anyway. As an example, one sender, a major mailing list, sends emails to 35,000 of your customers. Then another sender, Bob, sends an email to *one* of your customers, an email from one person to another. It'll take your mail server an hour to churn through the 35,001 emails and deliver them all. Should Bob's person-to-person email sit in the queue for an hour while you first process the 35,000 copies of the "Deal of the Week" email? Intelligent management of your service says that you deprioritize the bulk sender. Is that allowd by Wheeler's rule? Maybe, maybe it'll get you in legal trouble. (That may depend on if the bulk sender is the DNC or not.)
It gets complicated when you get into the technical details of actually implementing it without making service worse for everyone. For that reason, I think we're better off narrowly targeting specific actual problems, rather than Wheeler's shotgun approach.
... and mud in the eye of greedy corporations, just like Trumpty dumpty promised... right? I can't wait to see more such tremendous initiatives from Pai.
You could certainly achieve net neutrality without regulating it. It's fairly simple, and many other countries have done it, by making sure that there is competition in the internet service provider space, and breaking up the monopoly/duopoly structure.
And yet, the self-proclaimed champions of the free market haven't done jack squat to try to put that into effect, and are instead happy to proclaim that the status quo of third-world internet service and bloated profits from rent-seeking monopolists is the "free market" at work, and needs to be defended against those evil leftists. In short, denying that there's any problem at all, instead of offering up alternate/better solutions.
The Democrats are not, and never have been, the "champions of the free market" as you describe. They've been the ones in power for the last 8 years, and have done nothing to improve any of our infrastructure. Capital buildout for the last 2 years or so (since the Title II rule) has been less than the buildout before the rule.
Here's a good quote, something you can find if you bother to try:
Pai’s first big crusade as commissioner has been addressing what the “digital divide,” or the discrepancy between areas with abundant broadband and those without it. On Tuesday, he announced the formation of a new committee that will give advice on how to expand fast internet to more areas, and develop a general set of policies that communities can use to purportedly make deployment easier. Who exactly will be on that committee is yet to be determined. Pai laid out a wider plan for this initiative in September, where he mentioned creating tax incentives, reducing “unfair and unreasonable fees,” and adopting more “shot clocks” to encourage ISPs to build out sooner.
So it seems like the Democrats failed to do anything to help us build out the internet and, in fact, slowed it down a little.
The Republicans plan to address the actual issues, without resorting to socialism.
Or terrorism, which is what they're doing now.
Perhaps the best compromise is to allow differential treatment of TYPES of packets / packet streams, but not allow differential treatment of packets /streams FROM particular source IPs / identities / organizations nor allow differential treatment of packets / streams TO particular IPs / identities / organizations.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Trump begins to prove he is just another liar in office.
The whole reason the republican party is so willing to tolerate his bullshit theatrics is that his actual policies are a wet dream come true for the people who have been fertilizing the swamp. They are letting coal mines pollute streams again, repealing laws that protect grandmothers from being ripped off by "financial planners." And reducing the safeguards on the kind of real-estate bank lending that caused the housing meltdown. Its open season on the little guy like never before.
He was formerly one of the most powerful lobbyists in Washington for both the cable and wireless industry. Many, including myself, expected him to be a revolving door stooge who would eagerly do the bidding of the telecoms industry.
Proving me wrong, he ultimately did a fine job as head of the FCC. Thanks for proving me wrong, Mr Wheeler.
Tom Wheeler
That sounds good at first, for a second or two, any is a reasonable *general concept*, a one-sentence summary of a 500 page policy.
Let's look at "differential treatment". I've got three connections in rural Arizona, microwave, copper, and satellite. The microwave connection has the most *bandwidth*, it can send the most packets per second. It also drops the most packets - data sent over that link may or may not arrive. The copper is reliable, and packets get there soon, but it has the lowest bandwidth- it can't carry very much data. The satellite connection can carry more data, but each packet takes a long time in transit - it has to go to space and back. So I've got different options, different treatment for different flows. None are "preferential", none *better* than the other, all *different*. Btw I also have two ways of getting packets to Arizona in the first place - a direct fiber connection with relatively low bandwidth, and a higher bandwidth connection that takes a 500 mile detour through Los Angeles. Again two differentb routes, neither *better* than the other, but with *different* characteristics.
Over half of the traffic on a residential ISP comes from one source - Netflix. If you've worked a few days as a carrier network engineer, you know the flow characteristics that Netflix needs - the right balance of bandwidth, delay, jitter, and packet loss that provides your customers a good experienceb with Netflix. You quickly learn how to set up your queuing strategies, shapers, policing, and routing to optimize customer experience for *most* of your evening traffic, the Netflix traffic. Some would pass a law requiring us to pretend to be stupid and ignore all that we know about providing good service, making it illegal to set the shapers, routes, and queues properly knowing what we know about Netflix traffic. That's just really ignorant. The result would be that your experience for *all* flows would get worse, if it's illegal for us to use our knowledge of the requirements of the major services you want to use (Netflix and Youtube mostly, those two are 75% of residential traffic.)
> Email takes almost no bandwidth these days.
Let's talk about what the majority of bandwidth *is* for a residential ISP. Netflix. Not "streaming video", Netflix (and Youtube is huge too). We know the source of traffic, and we know which mix of latency, jitter, packet loss, and bandwidth will provide a clean Netflix stream for our customers. We know exactly which bitrate each flow needs, hell we even know how much the CLIENT is buffering, which tells us how much jitter and delay is acceptable, and when a packet is late enough that it should be dropped. So Netflix (and youtube) is *most* of our traffic, and we know a *lot* about it's requirements. Any competent carrier network engineer quickly learns how to set up your queuing strategies, shapers, policing, and routing to optimize customer experience for *most* of your evening traffic, the Netflix traffic, and which parameters work best for Youtube traffic. We don't know the bitrate needed for some other random streaming video and we damn sure don't know how much the client is caching for random streaming video, or if it's caching at all.
You said you want to ban " prioritization". Let's spend 60 seconds to get a clue about that. I've got three connections in rural Arizona, microwave, copper, and satellite. The microwave connection has the most *bandwidth*, it can send the most packets per second. It also drops the most packets - data sent over that link may or may not arrive. The copper is reliable, and packets get there soon, but it has the lowest bandwidth- it can't carry very much data. The satellite connection can carry more data, but each packet takes a long time in transit - it has to go to space and back. So I've got different options, different treatment for different flows. Btw I also have two ways of getting packets to Arizona in the first place - a direct fiber connection with relatively low bandwidth, and a higher bandwidth connection that takes a 500 mile detour through Los Angeles. Again two differentb routes, neither *better* than the other, but with *different* characteristics. Obviously I'm going to send different flows over different links. Which of those links is "preferential"? We want to toss me in jail or fine me if I send the Netflix flow over the "better" link, so tell me which one is "better" so I can avoid using it.
As I said, any competent carrier engineer in the field knows which link will provide the best experience for Youtube, and which will provide the best experience for Netflix. You're asking them to become incompetent. Nay, you want to pass a law forcing them to become incompetent.
> we all know what net neutrality is about: banning the application of arbitrary and unnecessary prioritization of the ISPs own video, VOIP and similar services relative to competing services.
Oh I know what you want. Actually better than you do - you don't know when you want low jitter and when you want low loss. I said I agree with that general concept as a goal. The thing is, while you can set up several different shaping, routing, and policing algorithms in a Cisco router, none of those algorithms is called "you know what I mean, be fair".
I've had to study over 5,000 pages to learn how to choose and configure algorithms for choosing routes, traffic shaping, traffic policing, etc just on Cisco equipment alone. I say "over 5,000", it could easily be 10,000 pages. You seem to be under the impression that none of that science exists, that proper configuration of a carrier network can be defined in a sentence or two.
I'll tell you what, why don't you go spend 15 minutes learning about what some of the most important queuing algorithms are. While you're reading about them, think about how they might apply to a) Netflix, a huge number of large packets with well-known characteristics, b) Youtube, with different characteristics, and c) unknown video, with unknown characteristics. Then we can come back and talk about your series of tubes. See you then.
In theory, you can have the general concept of network neutrality, and also have QoS. Heck, in theory you can have network neutrality and still have a quality *network*, but writing a net neutrality LAW that doesn't seriously damage efforts to provide quality service is very, very difficult. Carrier network is just complicated. For more information with an example or two see:
https://slashdot.org/comments....
In theory, you can have the general concept of network neutrality, and also have QoS.
In practice you can too. Net neutrality is about the source of the data. QoS is about the content. They are very easily distinguished by law.
HEY YOU!! RAGING NARCISSIST!!!
While you're busy linking to your own brilliance, you're completely ignoring ZERO-RATING. People don't give a shit about your QoS sk1llz d00d. People care whether you're FUCKING BILLING for FUCKING DATA.
GET IT STRAIGHT YOU FUCKING MORON.
ZERO-RATING IS THE ISSUE HERE.
Another screw of us by Trump and his flunkies...
The FCC has been switched off. Good night.
I've heard about net neutrality since the mid 00s. The closest I've seen so far, is requiring Netflix, a giant consumer of bandwidth, to pay up for an improved connection. There has been all this talk by activists about ISPs extorting average websites for a better connection, but I have not seen it happen. Why should I believe it would happen with an unregulated internet? Why should I believe these activists?
I'm not aware of any Net Neutrality law that prevents path selection by ISP. This is about equal treatment of packets on an individual link. But I'm not an expert, do you have a source?
I'd really like to see a list of books that equal 10,000 pages that you think you "have to study" to configure policing/shaping and dynamic routing. I know plenty of very competent CCNP and CCIE who haven't read anything near that. You're talking 15-20 books specifically on routing and traffinc shaping. Seems excessive, certainly not a requirement.
The autism-hating, custom EpiPen-hating, Musk-hating Slashdot troll!
It seems that customers are still 'paying' by watching advertisements. While the customer is not sending cash anywhere, it is clear AT&T and Verizon are still making profits when they push their own video services that serve ads, which advertisers do pay them for. T-Mobile is a little bit different in that it doesn't own the video services so it isn't directly making revenue from offering say youtube to not count towards data caps. AT&T and Verizon do make money from their own video services and partnerships though so yes, they are indeed violating net neutrality. Comcast data does not violate net neutrality, I believe, because their customer already paid for the TV service and simply wants to watch it on a different screen in their home. The idea being that the TV was in fact purchased already and to place it against a data cap would be charging twice for the same service.
> I'm not aware of any Net Neutrality law that prevents path selection by ISP.
I'm pretty sure that most people who say "all video packets must be treated the same", they would *not* be happy with selecting the "best" link for Netflix and the "worse" link for a no-name video stream from a random source. Maybe they need to say what they mean, but that's difficult because any of the three links is the "best", depending on what you measure.
You say "this is about ...". We all know what it's *about*, writing the actual text is very difficult if it's going to a) achieve the objectives and b) not prohibit smart network management.
I understand your point, I believe I know what you want.
I think what your missing is that the *majority* of peak traffic is from two *known* sources - Netflix and Youtube. Very well known sources. We *do* know the bitrates that Netflix uses, and we know the bitrates that Youtube uses. We even know that both are buffered significantly by the client, so jitter does not matter for these flows. We know they are pre-precorded, not live, so a delay of even 1000ms or more doesn't matter. We know that alotting more bandwidth than they use would be wasteful and alotting less will make the customer's experience worse. Pretending we don't know this stuff just makes everything worse all around.
On the other hand, you mentioned a flow from "MyFunnyHomeVideos.com". We DON'T know anything about the stream we see as packets sourced from 24.76.120.56. We don't even know if that video stream is a live teleconference, so 1000ms delay would be really bad. For Netflix, we *know* huge delay is fine. For random video stream, the samw delay could be really bad. Treating them the same makes for unhappy customers.
When you make shaping and routing decisions, you can trade bandwidth for packet loss and latency for jitter, on a flow-by-flow basis. I don't need to upgrade anything in order to deliver the right mix of jitter, rate, loss, and latency that works well for Netflix streams. The only reason I wouldn't be able to deliver what customers want is that some of you want to make it illegal for me to do so.
> In practice you can too. Net neutrality is about the source of the data. QoS is about the content. They are very easily distinguished
Okay so I've got some packets from 45.83.129.42. I can tell it's some kind of video. Maybe it's a live teleconference, meaning delay would be really bad and any late packets need to be dropped - they won't be used anyway. Or maybe it's a pre-recorded video and the client is caching 30 seconds, so delay doesn't matter and late packets should be delivered and even retried several times. *We don't know.* How should I treat those packets? When a packet is late should I drop it, forward it, retry it?
I also have some packets from Netflix (actually most of my packets are from Netflix. I *do* know it's not a live teleconference, and latency doesn't matter. I even know how the client-side caching works. How should I treat this flow? Should I pretend I'm stupid and drop late packets, causing the sender to retry them and slow down the network for everyone?
No one is talking about the real reason net neutrality actually matters, and the real problem that needs to be solved: ISPs are content owners/creators! The fact that Comcast owns NBC Universal gives it direct and irresistible incentive to throttle (or charge extra to carry) content created by competing creators like Netflix and Amazon, who are not ISPs and therefore in no position to strike back with retaliatory throttling/pricing. AT&T owns Time Warner so Comcast would never dare to throttle it, but again, Netflix and Amazon can't fight back against AT&T either if it chooses to throttle (or charge extra to carry) their competing content. AT&T and Comcast are in a state of detente because AT&T would never dare to throttle NBC's streaming feed while Comcast would never dare to throttle HBO's, but Netflix and Amazon are fair game for any anti-competitive discrimination by both AT&T AND Comcast.
As soon as content ownership is divested from the ISPs then they will no longer be in direct competition with content owners who access their networks, and will no longer have any incentive to throttle/charge them. Suddenly all packets will be created equal regardless of their source, and all customers can be treated equally regardless of their product. Yes, the ISPs will still have to manage their networks to provide the best possible service with traffic shaping and such, but they will be doing so ONLY based on the requirements for maintaining quality of service, without bias based on who the customer is! Once the playing field has been leveled we can feel comfortable that any charges to content creators are being fairly assessed based on actual bandwidth consumption, but until then we must assume they are unfair and retaliatory in nature due to the inherent conflict of interest built into the ISPs today.
The reason this state of affairs persists is that ISPs are not classified as the necessary infrastructure utilities they have become, and therefore are not subject to regulations that could potentially be used to split them up; this is what Wheeler was attempting to address by classifying them under Title II. I'm not saying that he was going to try to force them to divest their content-creation divisions (though I'm sure he would have loved to!), but by defining them as the utilities they are he was at least able to forbid them from discriminating against packets based on origin, and focus only on QoS. Of course that was only a half-measure because discrimination in the network is difficult to prove and hard to enforce, and the "free data" plans Wheeler was investigating are a blatant example of the ISPs trying to cheat by restricting competitors' to promote their own services/content.
There's no way the current administration would have the balls to pass a law saying ISPs can't own content and Pai clearly isn't going to do it through regulation either, so welcome to the end of the free and open Internet as we knew it!
Hey, raymorris -- rather than barrage us with an unending series of bullshit examples, why don't you volunteer to write the legal text that would enable the objectives of net neutrality (and everyone here, including you, knows damn well what those objectives are) and post it for review? I mean, you've got a good grasp of the technical details, but your stance that carriers ought to be able to do anything they want with the traffic ignores the fact that AT&T, Verizon, and several other behemoths have already engaged in anticompetitive practices, and will surely do so again if nobody stops them.
Stop barraging us with bullshit and offer a workable solution.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
As the military's C in C, he should be obliged to do so as well.
Please put down your crack pipe and listen. There has been no need for NN rules because NO ONE WAS FUCKING VIOLATING THE PRINCIPALS OF NETWORK NEUTRALITY BEFORE.
It wasn't until media companies and ISPs merged into the same vertically-integrated shit show that this has become a widespread issue and the Internet as a technology and a cultural institution was essentially threatened. Hence the need to formalize what was for decades de facto Internet behavior.
You know what we called the non-network neutral Internet before these rules were needed? AOL.
Maybe it's a live teleconference
Why maybe? It's a video conference. If it's important it would be a H.323 stream using something like RTP to send data via specific ports. As for netflix coming over HTTPS maybe they should use one of the established standards for identifying their traffic *type* via QoS. How should you treat traffic? That depends on how it has identified itself, no based on who has identified it.
Maybe some services are stupidly tunnelled in ways to look like standard traffic. Drop them at random and let the end user see the stupid design decision made by their company of choice. Instead what you're proposing is creating end user lock-in and an artificial monopoly based on the size of a company because you're managing your network in a dumb way.
I hope you are anyway, the vast majority of Net Neutrality problems actually arise not based on doing this for network management but rather doing this for profit.
> your stance that carriers ought to be able to do anything they want with the traffic
I've said the exact opposite several times in this thread. I've said I think we need specific rules directed at specific issues.
> why don't you volunteer to write the legal text that would enable the objectives of net neutrality
(and everyone here, including you, knows damn well what those objectives are)
I note you used the plural objectiveS. That's insightful given that other people posting in this thread have referred to the OBJECTIVE, singular, but three different people posting have said three different objectives. If you want to address zero rating, make a rule about zero rating. If peering agreements are a problem, make a rule about that. If providing different services to paid hosting customers than you do for unpaid, unrelated companies is a problem, that's a separate rule.
The issue that's probably most clear to me is if Comcast was artificially slowing Netflix traffic at one point in time. Maybe probably they were - only certain locations experienced the issue, suggesting that the cause *may* have been related to peering, a legitimate business negotiation. It's a lot simpler to address *that* issue, if they were artificially throttling it within Comcast's network, without conflating it with zero rating and other issues.
The discussion of NN heated up, and started appearing on the Slashdot regularly, a few years ago when Netflix, which was smaller at the time, was basically demanding transit service for free. They thought they should be the only web site in the world who doesn't have to pay their web hosting bill. "Everybody here knows", but some here were suckered by Netflix into confusing that peering negotiation with network neutrality. On *that*, Netflix's wish for free peering, I don't think we need any regulation - they can negotiate those arrangements just like every other business in the world does.
A trickier issue is this. Suppose I have a server with some videos on it and I want to stream those to the internet. Obviously I need to connect that server to the internet, through some kind of ISP. So maybe I go to Comcast Business and buy a 100Mbps or gigabit connection for my server(s). That's standard procedure for how you set up a web site. I pay my monthly bill, they sell me a gigabit of connectivity to their network. In real life, I currently have servers in three locations, connected to three ISPs (the B2B side of the ISPs, selling dedicated bandwidth to their network and transit off of their network). Like anyone else hosting a web site of any significant size, there are two numbers that describe how much bandwidth I get, basically the minimum guaranteed and the maximum possible (CIR and signaling rate). I decide how much guaranteed bandwidth I want to buy and what signaling rate I want. The guaranteed bandwidth (CIR) can be guaranteed only because it's prioritized over any non-guaranteed bandwidth. Does that make sense so far? Thr point is that to host servers, you pay for two bandwidth rates - minimum guaranteed and maximum possible. Everybody's minimum bandwidth is prioritized over everybody's non-guaranteed portion. So ...
Suppose Hulu does the exact same thing that everyone with a large web site does and buys an internet connection for one of their servers. They happen to buy this connection from Time Warner. Picking from the price list, they choose 1Gbps CIR (guaranteed) on a 10Gbps connection. That's a normal web hosting contract. But ... fuck! It's also "paid prioritization"! Many people think "paid prioritization" should be illegal, but there's no technical difference between "paid prioritization" and "web hosting". I'm not sure *how* you'd write that law. Do you say that any given web site is only allowed to have servers at one location, so they aren't buying hosting (with traffic guarantees) from several different ISPs? That seems like a bad solution. There's literally no difference between me paying Time Warner to host my one server for raysvideos.com and Netflix paying them to host a cache server. Do *you* have any ideas for an effective rule on that topic?
Zero rating does bring up a couple of important issues, agreed.
I think there has been confusion all around. A few years ago, the big controversy around "network neutrality" was basically that Netflx wanted to be the only web site in the world who didn't have to pay their hosting bill. They intentionally confused that with network neutrality and many people on Slashdot, perhaps most, fell for it. That's a *completely* separate issue from anything related to zero rating.
> Drop them at random and let the end user see the stupid design decision made by their company of choice.
You could do that, but Netflix or Youtube doesn't work well on your ISP, the customers don't yell at Youtube. And when the server retransmits the packets you dropped at random, it makes the network more congested for *everyone*.
"Just make it worse for everyone" doesn't sound like the best idea to me.
As you indicated, high jitter is fine for a video stream from Netflix, it's really bad for for a stream from Webex. Knowing that, we can provide the flow from Netflix with what it needs, and provide the flow from Webex with what it needs - which are different. Everyone is happier if we treat an audio/video stream from Netflix differently from an audio/video stream from Webex.
Look I don't disagree with you, I'm just not aware of any legislation that targets this specifically. If there was any such legislation, I'd certainly oppose it. But what you're describing is essentially BGP in action on the Internet. If I decided to AS path prepend a particular link because it was congested, I don't think anyone would argue that violated net neutrality. At least I'm not seeing that argument anywhere.
How's life in the hypocrite lane?
Jumping back a post or two, not 5,000 pages or more just specifically on routing, traffic shaping, and policing, with nothing else, but to optimize those things at the level you should for Comcast's network, you need to understand things like how why and how Netflix uses Dash over TCP, while Webex prefers UDP but will also use TCP. Dash isn't a traffic shaping topic per se, but Comcast damn well better understand it, and figure out how to best shape it. I'm curious about "I know plenty of CCIEs" - in the whole world there are less than 40,000 active CCIEs, I believe, and less than half of those are R&S. There are more professional soccer players than CCIEs. So I'm curious where you work or whatever that you know plenty of them.
I'm getting ready to go to bed so I don't feel like looking it up, but early drafts of the 2015 FCC rule were just a few pages, and seemed to prohibit even blocking known spammers ("must not discriminate by source"). After many comments were submitted, they improved it. I read, partially or completely, a few drafts but I have to admit I haven't studied the final rule. Watching the draft and comment process was enough to see that it was a bit of train wreck. Now I don't have to study it, until the new replacement comes out.
> I know plenty of very competent CCNP and CCIE who haven't read anything near that. You're talking 15-20 books
Just the CCNA official study guide is two books of about 1,300 pages each, as I recall, and they don't cover all of the material on the CCNA. You need to read at least one other 800 page book, I'd say, for the current CCNA. I would say one should have more than CCNA level understanding before they design the configuration of Comcast's routing and shaping. So yeah, I think "at least 5,000 pages" is about right, on that basis. Certainly more than roughly 3,000 pages you need for CCNA, because you need to understand Dash and all that too, which isn't a CCNA topic.
So I'm curious where you work or whatever that you know plenty of them.
Well I actually said CCNP and CCIE, quoting myself here:
I know plenty of very competent CCNP and CCIE who haven't read anything near that
...but CCIE specifically? Pretty easy, I work in IT and interact with quite a few professionally. We have a couple that work as regular contractors. I also have a good personal friend who's an R&S CCIE and we have a regional ISP who's VP of Engineering has been a CCIE for a decade that I consider a good friend. I also just hired a guy a couple weeks ago who is a CCNP who's already passed the CCIE written. And I've met dozens over the years. I interviewed a guy once who was a WAN Switching CCIE (look that one up). To be honest, every single CCIE I know has their's in route/switch.
All I see here are more bullshit examples.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
There is only one solution that will ever really work: ban network providers from offering content. So long as we allow that kind of cross-ownership, the network companies will ALWAYS find ways to favor their own content.
Sadly, that's not going to happen. We'd have to shut down Go90 or require Verizon to divest it. We'd have to undo Verizon's purchases of AOL and Yahoo. We would have to block Sprint from buying a stake in Tidal. And the biggest one: we'd have to undo the merger of Comcast and NBC, which never should have been allowed in the first place. Neither party currently has the political will for that kind of restructuring of the industry.
Regulations that attempt to rein in the worst abuses of cross-ownership are a second-best solution. But at least they're better than not having them, which is what the Republicans and the Trump administration want. I expect to see some seriously anticompetitive behavior by internet providers in the upcoming years.
Since Trump, your country is getting more corrupt by the day.