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Taking The Profit Out Of Killing 'Net Neutrality' (cringely.com)
Robert Cringely has a plan to ensure that internet providers will never profit from the end of net neutrality:
We are being depended upon to act like sheep -- Internet browsing sheep, if such exist -- and without a plan that's exactly what we'll be. The key to my plan is that this is a rare instance where consumers are not alone. There are just as many or more huge companies that would prefer to keep Net Neutrality as those that oppose it... Those companies in favor of Net Neutrality obviously include the big streamers like Amazon, Hulu, Netflix, YouTube and a bunch of others. They also includes nearly every big Internet concern including Google, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft. Those are some pretty big friends to have on your side -- our side...
So I suggest we all join ZeroTier (ZT), a thriving networking startup operating in Irvine, California. There are other companies like it but I just think ZeroTier is presently the best. ZeroTier is a very sophisticated Virtual Private Network (VPN) company that has created a Software Defined Network that goes beyond what normal VPNs are capable of. To your computer or almost any other networked device (even your smart phone), ZT looks like an Ethernet port, whether your device has Ethernet or not. Through that virtual Ethernet port you connect to a virtual IPv6 Local Area Network that's as big as the Internet itself, though the only users on this overlay network are ZT members.
The trick is to get all those big companies that are pro-Net Neutrality to join ZT. The most it will cost even Netflix is $750 per month, which is probably less than the company spends on salad bars in their Los Gatos HQ. Embracing ZT doesn't mean rejecting the regular Internet. Netflix can still be reached the old fashion way. I just want them to add a presence on ZT, too... What the ISPs won't like about this plan is that ZT traffic can't be read to determine what rules or pricing to apply. They could throttle it all down, but throttling that much traffic isn't really practical.
So I suggest we all join ZeroTier (ZT), a thriving networking startup operating in Irvine, California. There are other companies like it but I just think ZeroTier is presently the best. ZeroTier is a very sophisticated Virtual Private Network (VPN) company that has created a Software Defined Network that goes beyond what normal VPNs are capable of. To your computer or almost any other networked device (even your smart phone), ZT looks like an Ethernet port, whether your device has Ethernet or not. Through that virtual Ethernet port you connect to a virtual IPv6 Local Area Network that's as big as the Internet itself, though the only users on this overlay network are ZT members.
The trick is to get all those big companies that are pro-Net Neutrality to join ZT. The most it will cost even Netflix is $750 per month, which is probably less than the company spends on salad bars in their Los Gatos HQ. Embracing ZT doesn't mean rejecting the regular Internet. Netflix can still be reached the old fashion way. I just want them to add a presence on ZT, too... What the ISPs won't like about this plan is that ZT traffic can't be read to determine what rules or pricing to apply. They could throttle it all down, but throttling that much traffic isn't really practical.
Running away from walled gardens to another walled garden is not a solution to the net neutrality problem and certainly doesn't "take the profit out" of it. It just moves that profit to another company. /vertisement.
The internet is not for sale by any pseudo owner. Fuck them. This is the commons and we can control it if we organize.
Why woudn't throttling this be practical? If the ISPs are free to throttle everything else, and they don't mind their customers suffering, why would they stop at a VPN, especially a VPN that is meant to stop throttling. In fact they can throttle it much more than any other type of content, since it just means that the users will stop using it and switch back to accessing their content directly.
Yeah, lets solve this buy paying ZT a ransom instead of AT&T or Verizon.
No, I don't think so. This is just a (very) thinly veiled ad for yet another company trying to make a profit off providing access to services people are already paying for.
What the ISPs won't like about this plan is that ZT traffic can't be read to determine what rules or pricing to apply. They could throttle it all down, but throttling that much traffic isn't really practical.
If they can throttle popular destinations like NetFlix, or protocols like BitTorrent, why wouldn't throttling a VPN be practical?
Once all the video companies are on ZT, followed by social media and search, (don’t forget gaming!), that’s probably 80 percent of all Internet bandwidth.
For fast-paced games, low latency is very important and any kind of additional layer will add latency.
So everyone in the country should send their traffic through a single VPN? How does that scale to 300m citizens, and what will stop the VPN company from throttling webpages that don't pay their internet baksheesh?
Somebody doesn't know what Ethernet is apparently. I don't know what Cringely was trying to say, but nothing upstream knows about or cares if your system connects via Ethernet, WiFi, ATM, Token Ring, or IPoAC. Ah ... this explains it ...
"The sex symbol, airplane enthusiast and adventurer continues to write about personal computers and has an active consulting business in Silicon Valley, selling his cybersoul to the highest bidder." - [Emphasis Added]
After seeing this, he should really drop the "L" from his last name.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
1) Blatant slashvertisement. Seriously. Stop it.
2) "They could throttle it all down, but throttling that much traffic isn't really practical."
If they can throttle the entirety of the Internet, except Netflix, they can certainly throttle all of ZT too.
The FCC wants to roll back imperial fiat which should have been legislated properly. The FCC also doesn't want to have to regulate ISPs as common carriers, because that's an incredibly expensive piece of work. Your internet is no different with the rollback of this fake "network neutrality" then it was for the 8 years Obama was in office and it was okay. And, for the record, nothing about this "network neutrality" prevented anything you feared happening to the internet. It would only have changed the words that ISPs use to throttle traffic. Instead of "throttling Netflix" they would just "throttle encrpted video playback" but still could have given preference to their data which is a live stream.
You got suckered.
The ISP will just route all traffic 10m across the border and throttle it there.
They're posting this crap on a tech site, and they expect people to actually buy into it?
This is advertising bullshit. There is nothing about ZT that would prevent ISPs from throttling the shit out of it, or banning the traffic altogether. That's assuming that ZT would even have the capacity to deal with the traffic in the first place, which they don't.
It doesn't matter what kind of gateway you're running. ISPs can throttle/block any point of entry they want without net neutrality. If you run over their lines, they can bend you over and no amount of of garbage like this will help.
~X~
What the FCC proposes to end in December isn't network neutrality; it never was. It's an impostor masquerading as network neutrality because some influential wonk put that label on it and legions of ignorant fools propagated it.
Meet the real network neutrality: citizens owning the very same physical network that they use. It's time for eminent domain to be applied against that network and get rid of this chatty impostor once and for all.
There is a solution which allows for a competition of ISPs - open local loop. When I lived in Sweden I could choose from between at least 10 ISPs - all running through the same Fiber to the Apartment. There is one thing that the EU does better than the US and that is maintaining a competitive market and protection of the the consumers interests.