"The FCC Still Doesn't Know How the Internet Works" (eff.org)

An anonymous reader writes: The EFF describes the FCC's official plan to kill net neutrality as "riddled with technical errors and factual inaccuracies," including, for example, a false distinction between "Internet access service" and "a distinct transmission service" which the EFF calls "utterly ridiculous and completely ungrounded from reality."

"Besides not understanding how Internet access works, the FCC also has a troublingly limited knowledge of how the Domain Name System (DNS) works -- even though hundreds of engineers tried to explain it to them this past summer... As the FCC would have it, an Internet user actively expects their ISP to provide DNS to them." And in addition, "Like DNS, it treats caching as if it were some specialized service rather than an implementation detail and general-purpose computing technique."

"There are at least two possible explanations for all of these misunderstandings and technical errors. One is that, as we've suggested, the FCC doesn't understand how the Internet works. The second is that it doesn't care, because its real goal is simply to cobble together some technical justification for its plan to kill net neutrality. A linchpin of that plan is to reclassify broadband as an 'information service,' (rather than a 'telecommunications service,' or common carrier) and the FCC needs to offer some basis for it. So, we fear, it's making one up, and hoping no one will notice."
"We noticed," their editorial ends, urging Americans "to tell your lawmakers: Don't let the FCC sell the Internet out."

Comments

Honest Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, what can we do? This is an unelected board with a majority that will change this no matter what we say. Congress has not taken up the issue in any way, and doesn't seem to have any intention of ever doing so, so what would be the purpose of writing to them? It just looks to me like Ajit Pai is going to force this measure through, no matter the science, business, societal, or ethical concerns.

In short, the current FCC doesn't give a damn about any of us.

Re: Honest Question

[PopeRatzo]

If that's your goal, then you're about 10 to 15 years too late.

The modern Internet is an abomination compared to what it once was like, when things were far more decentralized and much less corporate-controlled than they are today.

Net Neutrality is an effort to bend the curve back. It's better than just ceding the remaining control of the internet to Comcast.

Look at web sites like Reddit, Stack Overflow, Hacker News and even Slashdot. These discussion sites are rife with things like "voting", "moderation" and/or "banning users", which normal people consider to be acts of censorship.

Oh, you're one of those jackoffs. No, "normal people" do not consider moderation and voting to be acts of censorship.

You should really learn the difference between the content on the internet and the delivery of bandwidth. You're very confused as to what Net Neutrality means.

Re: Honest Question

[king neckbeard]

It probably has to do with the fact that this will do NOTHING to improve competition on the internet, while all the concern trolls opposing Net Neutrality were dead silent while AT&T and Comcast stopped Google from efficiently wiring competing infrastructure in Nashville.

Series of tubes

[backslashdot]

Come on it's just a series of tubes, it's not that hard to figure out.

Don't blame the FCC, blame the 48% that voted to put a lunatic administration in charge. If you assign a wolf to protect the chickens, you don't blame the wolf for eating the chickens.

Re:neutrality breaks shared resources

[duke_cheetah2003]

You have to classify traffic to prevent congestion. Congestion will break the interwebz. As soon as you're classifying traffic, which is already happening, you have no neutrality If you want a simple example of how neutrality breaks shared and limited resources, remove quotas from your file system or schedulers from CPU resource management.

https://tools.ietf.org/html/rf...

Please don't be a moron. Proper network traffic management is perfectly ok under NN. Networks have to have traffic controls, you just can't have a network without it. ISPs already tried to put this forth as a reason for no NN. Where NN comes in is what traffic management ISPs are allowed to do. Doing it for network health and usability is perfectly ok. Giving some customers preferential treatment? No.

Learn the difference, stop spreading misinformation.

Re:This argument works both ways

[fafalone]

Can't have it both ways. If they get to keep their government-protected monopoly and benefit from taxpayer subsidies, the government gets to attach strings like enforcing basic fairness. I often hear arguments like yours from the free market types that don't fully understand the issue, who seem to have forgotten that monopolies aren't a free market and prevent fair market competition and allowing them to expand horizontally with unfair competition, and allow other large providers to pay them to abuse their own dominant positions, is the very antithesis of the free market.

Re:Everything hinges on the legal definition

[mikael]

The ISP's were considered to be "common carriers" like telephone companies. Telecom companies could charge different prices for residential/business telephone lines. They could charge for value added features like caller ID, voicemail, three-way dialing, as well as international, national, local and emergency calls, but they could not bill you according to what you were talking about or who you were talking to for a particular distance.

ISP's can charge you for particular data rates (although with ADSL/DSL that varies according to how far you are from the telephone exchange. With fibre-optic cable networks, the signals travel at a fixed bit rate, but you get a maximum data transfer rate based on your pricing option).

The fear is that they'll start trying to charge you value-added features such as bundles of websites (video, social, messaging, photographs) or even levels of video compression.