Slashdot Mirror
Why is Comcast Using Self-driving Cars To Justify Abolishing Net Neutrality? (theverge.com)
Earlier this week, Comcast filed its comments in favor of the FCC's plan to eliminate the 2015 net neutrality rules. While much of the document was devoted to arguments we've heard before -- Comcast believes the current rules are anti-competitive and hurt investment, but generally supports the principles of net neutrality -- one statement stood out. The Verge adds: Buried in the 161-page document was this quirky assertion (emphasis ours): "At the same time, the Commission also should bear in mind that a more flexible approach to prioritization may be warranted and may be beneficial to the public... And paid prioritization may have other compelling applications in telemedicine. Likewise, for autonomous vehicles that may require instantaneous data transmission, black letter prohibitions on paid prioritization may actually stifle innovation instead of encouraging it. In other words, Comcast is arguing for paid prioritization and internet fast lanes to enable self-driving cars to communicate better with other vehicles and their surrounding environment, thus making them a safer and more efficient mode of transportation. The only problem is that autonomous and connected cars don't use wireless broadband to communicate. When cars talk with each other, they do it by exchanging data wirelessly over an unlicensed spectrum called the Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) band, using technology similar to Wi-Fi. The FCC has set aside spectrum in the 5.9GHz band specifically for this purpose, and it is only meant to be used for vehicle-to-everything (V2X) applications. That includes vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I), and vehicle-to-pedestrian (V2P) -- so cars talking to other cars, to traffic signals, to the phone in your pocket... you name it. Soon enough, all cars sold in the US will be required to include V2V technology for safety purposes, if the Department of Transportationâ(TM)s new rule goes into effect.
I'm guessing they will advertise these cars as running in the internet fast lane...
Last time we had this discussion Verizon claimed we needed to have "fast lanes" to help handicapped people on the internet. None of this has anything to do with reality, just trying to muddy the waters.
Do you have ESP?
What else can they do when their position has no rational defense?
Clearly they are writing for an audience that doesn't understand any of the issue behind Net Neutrality - and they are throwing anything at the problem that might sound like a "job killer" that might 'stick'.
If they say that autonomous cars need a non-neutral net - then that will be believed by the lawmakers - who are told continually about the US lead in this technology and how it's very popular with the general public...and lawmakers up and down the country are rushing out laws to allow them to be driven in various states. They wouldn't want to throw a valuable/popular idea like that out the window because of Net Neutrality - so this makes a great throw-away line for Comcast - even though it's a blatant falsehood. That falsehood will never become obvious to lawmakers until it's far too late.
Comcast are now "officially evil" - but since I think they were already on my "officially evil" list, I guess not much changed.
www.sjbaker.org
Years ago when ESPN goal line was new and directv did not have it made a big deal about it but kind of lied a about one big thing the ad's where in HD but the channel was not and is still not in HD on comcast.
Comcast has marking that says unlike satellite we don't have contracts (but they do for some deals)
That doesn't need a high priority channel. High priority channels should be for emergencies. A self driving car should be able to handle emergencies without an internet connection, otherwise the technology isn't ready.
It's not like Comcast is well known for their truthfulness and transparency. To them, the best way to destroy NN is pile on "alternative truths" via PR like this. They know it's a sound idea on the technical side, so using a false pseduo-technical argument against it is the best way to confuse "the masses". We all know they started with some boiler-room with "destroy NN" on the whiteboard, and the marketing drones have a long list of potential knock-downs, focus groups, test campaigns, etc. Comcast knows full well that NN has nothing to do with V2V, but are just throwing everything to the anti-NN wall to see what sticks.
We all know that, especially with the current administration, "public comments" really have little affect. The real "voice" is the lobby money behind the scenes. This is just a "reason" for the FCC to overturn, so they won't seem to be too corrupt to "the public".
Not this again. They're trying to say that Net Neutrality interferes with traffic shaping, which it doesn't. Net Neutrality prevents discrimination against *from whom* a certain type of data transfer is provided, not discrimination of the data type itself. We need an XDCD comic to clear this up.
My understanding is that the internet has always had a provision for marking Quality of Service (QOS) on packets. But I've never understood how that is supposed to work. And to what extent is this different from the whole anti-neutral fast lane.
My past thinking is that the difference is precisely this: Neutrality means content neutrality. If streaming movies need a higher QOS not to stutter then they could be placed in a lower latency channel without violating net neutrality, provided every movie content provider had equal access to claim that QOS.
Where it gets fuzzy is if you have to pay for QOS. Does an ISP have to charge every movie provider in the above example the exact same rate? If it's the same rate Could they for example barter special deals for their "partners" and claim "equivalent" compensation through phoney booked charges?
or is QOS meant to be done without charging. How does one not have a tragedy of the commons if it's free to mark your packets urgent.
lots I don't understand here.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Why is Comcast Using Self-driving Cars To Justify Abolishing Net Neutrality?
Because they CAN. Besides, it's a car analogy, and everyone understands car analogies. Only nerds use those weird computery things, unlike phones.
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
The way QoS is supposed to work is that the endpoints (e.g. you and/or the website you are trying to visit) set the QoS values in the packet header and the infrastructure in between is supposed to honor that. Nobody would complain about that if it's what was happening, but it's not.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Problem is that's a system which relies on trust. Ie: in actual practice every one would set inappropriate priorities, and the system would be much the same as it is now ( all traffic "equal" ).
The problem with net neutrality is that there is a legitimate argument to be made against it. Network Admins prioritize traffic on their networks, after all, in order to deliver better service. It's not unreasonable for internet carriers to have the same goals. Where it goes off the rails is that every single person involved knows that the carriers can't be trusted to appropriately prioritize traffic, instead leveraging it to the point of breaking the internet all to make a few bucks.
I'd be interested in a Internet Prioritization solution which did not allow carriers to blackmail service providers but instead were forced to apply and respect appropriate QoS flags.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
You started off Comcast's quote with an opening double quote, but you never closed it. So it looks like the rest of the summary is the quote when it's clearly not.
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
Fr0st P1st, baby!
You must be using Comcast :-) Pay your lobbyist better.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
QoS is about prioritizing certain types of traffic independent of who is sending or receiving it.
Net neutrality is about prioritizing traffic based on who is sending or receiving it.
You're suggesting that we should allow for the possibility that vehicle safety will come to depend on a paid service from a cable company. And calling other people morons.
Interesting.
The problem with net neutrality is that there is a legitimate argument to be made against it.
Perhaps there is, but I honestly have yet to hear such an argument.
Problem is that's a system which relies on trust.
That's not a problem if your QoS settings are evaluated against only your traffic. In other words, if you mark all of your packets high-priority, none of them really will be because they're all in the same priority queue. If implemented properly, the only one you can screw is yourself.
You buy bandwidth from your ISP, your bandwidth, in aggregate, is equal to everyone else's. You open a connection to Slashdot and begin sending and receiving packets with "normal priority" QoS headers; you then open a connection to your VoIP provider to make a call and begin sending them packets with "high priority" QoS headers. If you, then, saturate your available bandwidth, your connection to Slashdot will suffer but your VoIP call should not. Setting both to "high priority" negates any possible benefit to yourself but does not affect anyone else because your traffic isn't being evaluated against theirs.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
RTFA Moron:
"To be sure, all cars of the future will need to communicate wirelessly, but what Comcast won’t acknowledge is that they won’t need the internet to do it. "
Fucking stupid people.
I'd want my car's autopilot to be completely autonomous.
Have gnu, will travel.
That's not my understanding of net neutrality at all. I always thought it was more a packet / host level prioritization thing. Blocking is, arguably, different, and does not fall under net neutrality. Nor does end point firewall and filtering.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
We have net neutrality now. You don't understand what it is, but the legislature is designed to keep it has it has been. The people against it want to change the rules to game the system so that rich people get to richer and the poor are SOL.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Why would you make the ridiculous claims that "most use ATM", or that ATM changes TCP? ATM is a transport mechanism like ethernet, and TCP works the same over it. Are you just trying to sound smart? If so, EPIC FAIL.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
QoS is a suggestion, not a directive, so ignoring it is within spec.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
No, I got your point; you still seem to be missing mine, though.
If your traffic is only measured against your other traffic, your QoS headers have no effect on anyone else's traffic. Follow?
It's a simple implementation, actually; your ISP already splits its aggregate bandwidth into rate-limited streams (or buckets, if you prefer) based on the speed you pay for. They can just as easily apply QoS rules defined for each stream on an individual basis.
Hell, my consumer-grade router can do that. I can assign vnets a fixed amount of bandwidth and each vnet can have its own QoS rules; one vnet having rules that set every packet to high priority doesn't affect the other vnets (of course, it also doesn't benefit that vnet, either).
In other words, your QoS rules decide which of your packets get dropped or delayed if one or more of your packets need to be dropped or delayed; they don't, in this hypothetical (and easy to implement) scenario, determine whether your packets or someone else's get dropped or delayed. That latter determination would need to be made by the ISP's own traffic management system and a fair way to determine that is to determine what percentage of the aggregate bandwidth belongs to each user (e.g. we've sold 100Tb/sec and you pat for 100Mb/sec, you "own" 0.0001% of available bandwidth) and ensure that each user gets that percentage of whatever aggregate bandwidth is actually available during times of congestion.
Then, you can set all of your QoS rules to high priority all day long and your rules don't affect me in the slightest.
To put it another way, call me when you've implemented this and know what you're actually talking about. I have and I do or I wouldn't be repeating it.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I'm not going to buy a car that requires a low latency internet connection to function correctly.
That's just fucking stupid.
No, "QoS" is about prioritizing traffic. Period. Doesn't matter whether you applied the tags based on the type of service, or on the identity of the sender or the receiver, or for any other reason you felt like it.
That's the point of net neutrality -- it's an attempt to keep ISPs from abusing QoS controls. Net neutrality does not prevent legitimate uses of QoS controls.
That's the point of net neutrality
I keep hearing that, but never seeing an actual policy document that says how. Other than vague plans completely cripple the use of QoS.
Someone had to do it.