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NCTA Asks For Net Neutrality Law Allowing Paid Prioritization (arstechnica.com)
DarkRookie2 shares a report from Ars Technica: Cable industry chief lobbyist Michael Powell today asked Congress for a net neutrality law that would ban blocking and throttling but allow Internet providers to charge for prioritization under certain circumstances. Powell -- a Republican who was FCC chairman from 2001 to 2005 and is now CEO of cable lobby group NCTA -- spoke to lawmakers today at a Communications and Technology subcommittee hearing on net neutrality. Powell said there is "common ground around the basic tenets of net neutrality rules: There should be no blocking or throttling of lawful content. There should be no paid prioritization that creates fast lanes and slow lanes, absent public benefit. And, there should be transparency to consumers over network practices."
Despite Powell's claim of "common ground," his statement on paid prioritization illustrates a divide between the broadband industry and proponents of net neutrality rules. Obama-era Federal Communications Commission rules banned paid prioritization as well as blocking and throttling, while Trump's FCC overturned the ban on all three practices. Net neutrality advocates are trying to restore those rules in full in a court case against the FCC, and any net neutrality law proposed by Democrats in Congress would likely mirror the Obama-era FCC rules. Republican lawmakers are preparing legislation that would impose weaker rules. The report notes that Powell's proposal for paid prioritization is full of caveats: "There should be no paid prioritization that creates fast lanes and slow lanes, absent public benefit." "His testimony to Congress didn't explain how ISPs can charge online services for prioritization without dividing Internet access into fast lanes and slow lanes, and his statement seems to indicate that slow lanes would be allowed as long as the paid prioritization creates some 'public benefit,'" reports Ars. "How 'public benefit' would be defined or who would determine which paid priority schemes benefit the public are not clear."
Despite Powell's claim of "common ground," his statement on paid prioritization illustrates a divide between the broadband industry and proponents of net neutrality rules. Obama-era Federal Communications Commission rules banned paid prioritization as well as blocking and throttling, while Trump's FCC overturned the ban on all three practices. Net neutrality advocates are trying to restore those rules in full in a court case against the FCC, and any net neutrality law proposed by Democrats in Congress would likely mirror the Obama-era FCC rules. Republican lawmakers are preparing legislation that would impose weaker rules. The report notes that Powell's proposal for paid prioritization is full of caveats: "There should be no paid prioritization that creates fast lanes and slow lanes, absent public benefit." "His testimony to Congress didn't explain how ISPs can charge online services for prioritization without dividing Internet access into fast lanes and slow lanes, and his statement seems to indicate that slow lanes would be allowed as long as the paid prioritization creates some 'public benefit,'" reports Ars. "How 'public benefit' would be defined or who would determine which paid priority schemes benefit the public are not clear."
You can't make one thing faster without making something else slower. That's just how the internet works. So if throttling wouldn't be allowed, but prioritization would, you've just made a contradiction as they are exactly the same thing.
Correct. So when Facebook offeres priority speed internet to itself and partners while limiting everyone else to 1kbps it will be legal.
A freeway full of gridlocked traffic and their " fix " isn't to improve the freeway but rather build a Toll Road which allows you to bypass all that gridlock.
For a price of course.
Once the Toll Road becomes saturated with traffic as well, the fix is to simply build another Toll Road :|
-facepalm-
While they're writing this law, they should write an anti-rape law that allows surprise buttsecks. This would be helpful.
Prioritization doesn't take effect unless the network is at max capacity. If there's 3 people at a supermarket and 5 empty checkout lanes, nobody has to wait. Still, having this applied to internet traffic is a stupid idea unless it was for some imminent emergency.
When the link is at max capacity, iPv4 and 6 know what to do.
That's when we start routing around the slow link, or capitalize and spend money upgrading the link.
OH WAIT, I SAID SPEND $$$$$. That means less shareholder return and more capital costs! OMG DID I SAY THAT?????
Hire more cashiers??? There's a Kroger MBA who's head is exploding with your metaphor.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Sure, then all the telcos have to do is nothing.
As all available bandwidth is used as demand grows, netflix and the like will be foeced to pay in order to keep their business viable.
If Netflix can pay for faster internet, the Public gets faster Netflix, which is a Benefit. Duh
All depends how narrowly they define "Benefit" - it can mean anything they want it to mean. You can bet they don't define it as "the greatest overall good for consumers and providers".
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
IPv4 packets have had mechanisms for prioritization since 1984. Ethernet has had mechanisms for prioritization since 1998.
So us, Network Engineers realize prioritization is important, usefull and beneficial.
having said that. Is perfectly logical to want videoconferencing have more priority than tv streaming, which in turn will have more priority than text chat, which in turn will have more priority than web browsing, which in turn will have more priority than email, which in turn will have more priority than conventional file download, which in turn will have more priority than torrenting/p2p
nothing wrong with that.
the problems begin when we try to make movie streaming from, say, hulu, faster than movie streaming from netflix.
if the change comes about because hulu pays my ISP, that's a big no-no. If the change comes because my ISP just felt like it, that's also a big no-no.
But if the change comes because I explicitly told my ISP that I like it that way, and I am willing to pay for said change, welcome indeed.
You can't make one thing faster without making something else slower. That's just how the internet works.
Uhhh, what?
If I upgrade from a 100Mbps service to a gigabit, does that mean your 100Mbps service slows down? No.
But "prioritization" is not a case of faster or slower. It's a case of whose packets get routed first. If the network has enough capacity then it doesn't matter if my packets get priority over yours, they're both getting through without delay.
Or, in other words, QoS has been part of the Internet forever.
So if throttling wouldn't be allowed, but prioritization would, you've just made a contradiction as they are exactly the same thing.
Uhhh, no. Throttling is applying an artificial limitation on bandwidth. You can get 100Mbps on your line all day even if I get priority on the backbone. The "throttling" is part of your service level. Or do you expect that NN means that you get gigabit throughput to your home because one part of the network somewhere is gigabit? You do realize that the data source that can pump out data at a gigabit rate is throttled by the network when it gets to your 100Mbps connection, right?
Prioritization doesn't take effect unless the network is at max capacity. If there's 3 people at a supermarket and 5 empty checkout lanes, nobody has to wait. Still, having this applied to internet traffic is a stupid idea unless it was for some imminent emergency.
Prioritization means many things. About the only one I favor is you have a link with some capacity. Your ISP may, with your consent, prioritize say your high priority traffic from your modem back to the isp and the high priority traffic the other way. Similarly if its network is congested it could apply similar rules such that it fails gracefully rather than abruptly. Basically real time stuff first, like phone or gaming, then web page interactions, then streaming, etc... Nowhere in here does it say you can prioritize for profit.
Think of it more as a ISP having a direct network all over the USA.
Pay extra and thats the users direct and protected ISP network too.
Don't pay and its what peering telco deals can do that hour, day.
The packets got down to TX, out to Florida for a while and finally return to CA.
Never slowed but it was the most low cost network deal at that time.
The ping will reflect that round trip and packet holiday all over the USA.
Pay extra and its the ISP direct pipe for ISP network users only to CA.
Low ping and not networking out to Florida that hour.
The packets never got treated different never got slowed.
One ISP, two networks.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
You can't make one thing faster without making something else slower. That's just how the internet works. So if throttling wouldn't be allowed, but prioritization would, you've just made a contradiction as they are exactly the same thing.
Only in the "one is faster one is slower" sense are they the same. NN never defined things so broadly however, and we really don't want them to be either.
You have to look at the "pattern matching" side, not the "action" side.
Throttling adjust speeds after a preset limit, such as bytes transferred or a time period.
Prioritization adjust speeds based on the source/destination, and also implies one of those two paying an additional amount to be such a source or destination.
In that sense they are unrelated to each other.
Comcast slowing all video streaming except their own (prioritization) would occur independent of you transferring 5 or 5000 GB that month.
Similarly, you hitting a transfer amount limit and having your throughput lowered (throttling) would happen no matter if you are trying to transfer data from youtube, netflix, or "other".
It may seem like nit-picking but these are the differences that really do matter.
Confusing the two things above will cause more harm than not.
Those knowledgeable about networks know you can't transfer more than 100% of a lines capacity.
Prioritization based on WHERE the traffic is going is considered unfair.
Prioritization based on WHAT traffic however is a necessary thing for networks to even function.
For example, DNS being UDP has no delivery guarantees, but is a pretty critical protocol.
So long as "DNS" is the type of traffic given a higher priority, there is nothing wrong with this, and in bulk transfer situations is almost required if you plan to have more than a single TCP stream going.
Only after "where" your DNS goes or doesn't go comes into play are there abuse potentials.
With proper definitions like the above it is very possible to enforce policy to limit the worst of the possible abuses and at the same time still have properly functioning networks.
because buying a bigger, faster 'big dumb pipe' (e.g. a 1000mbps fiber vs a 1.5mbps T1) also gives you lower latency to go with the faster throughput... so long as your provider is required to deliver the speeds you're paying for.
boom. 'priority' traffic just out of sheer speed. no exploitable loopholes needed. just true network neutrality.
This isn't going to stop until someone loses more than just an eye. Corruption is rampant, everyone "advising" or deciding on communications and free speech is dirtier than an office keyboard after a scat orgy, and there is no profit nor authoritarian incentive for protecting citizens in any way, but plenty against it.
These criminals 'remind' us that everything should be done their way under the system they've utterly infested for a reason. The only way we can keep things from getting any worse is to stop their continued presence on this world.
But there is a place for QoS. For instance, prioritizing VoIP makes it work, at the expense of web browsing being slightly slower.
I don't have an issue with paid prioritization, as long as it's bandwidth added to the promised service level, or perhaps no more than 10% in the case of "unlimited."
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Quote: "There should be no blocking or throttling of lawful content." Wrong, Wrong, Wrong. That is like the water company saying "There should be no blocking or throttling of lawful water use.". What? They sell water they have NOTHING to do with what you do with what the water! If someone used the water for something unlawful that is NOT their problem. If someone uses the Internet for something unlawful that is NOT the ISPs problem, nor should they get involved.
Pai was the republican pick. Obama appointed him to maintain the bipartisanship that existed in 2012. Trying to make it seem like he was "Obama's pick" isn't really honest at all. Nobody knew Pai was such a faggot back then either.
"Pai was nominated by President Barack Obama to fill an FCC seat allocated to a Republican in May 2012. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell recommended Pai, who was a former aide to Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback."
common ground around the basic tenets of net neutrality rules: There should be no blocking or throttling of lawful content.
THERE SHOULD BE NO THROTTLING OR BLOCKING AT ALL. 'Cause the only way to know if there is unlawful content is to LOOK AT THE CONTENT. This is implicitly allowing ISPs to sniff all traffic. No thank you.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Throttling is artificially slowing something down. Like if you have a project or task at work, and you refuse to do it. The bandwidth is there, but is being wasted.
Prioritization (QoS) is ensuring that the critical tasks that need the bandwidth or attention get it first. It matches the principles behind Steven Covey's 4 quadrant system for being effective. Very important when you have insufficient resources. When the bandwidth isn't there, and nobody wants to pay billions for better infrastructure.
In a perfect world, the internet would have a googolplex of bits, and never have any bandwidth congestion or contention, and everything would download/upload instantly. In our world, certain things need priority, like voice communication. Everything else needs to "wait in line" like we were taught in kindergarten. (Just a few months ago somebody asked why QoS gets brought up everytime, this topic would be why QoS gets brought up everytime.
That means higher costs for subscribers for better bandwidth. Costs tend to trickle down from peering agreements to ISPs to subscribers.
Or you just keep to a financial schedule and recoup the costs, instead of spending more money chasing perpetually bandwidth hungry users in a reckless drive towards poverty.
Seriously, the protocol is designed to allow the user to use as much bandwidth is available, and only runs slower when many users are online on the same pipe simultaneously. Nobody is allotted only their slice of the bandwidth pie.
How much does the population of the USA times 1 tbps each to Netflix, and Amazon Prime, and iTunes, and YouTube, and Facebook cost? Because you have to have the 1 tbps locally, and then enough tbps to meet the demand to each service over 2 peak hours of the day. Beyond that 90% of that bandwidth will be at 1-2% load for 22 hours a day. (The services are typically active, but a significant amount of cable wouldn't be).
If you upgrade to 1gbps and we run the same routes to the same content, then yes, my 100mpbs slows down. Though, I likely will not notice. If we both upgrade to 1gbps then we both might notice instances where we're not getting the full 1gbps, but are having to share it.
Prioritization doesn't necessarily imply prioritization based on purchasing power.
There is a cash grab, greedy mindset that wants to use it that way. A regulatory body, similar to the FCC should be in charge of determining what gets priority. Barring ISPs bribing this regulatory body, it should accomplish the job.
Web browsing is slightly slower? Who would even notice unless there was a national calling frenzy (All circuits are busy) after all Telcos switch to VoIP and kill copper POTS.
If your VoIP causes noticeably slower web browsing, then your connection isn't fast enough to begin with.
But any web browsing can cause noticeable hiccups in VoIP without prioritization, because it is a real-time protocol.
So they want to cripple torrenting?
reminds me of segregation and integration. You may recall the Southern states arguing that separate but equal access to facilities would work really well and provided equivalence to all races.
Net Neutrality with paid prioritization is (mostly) an oxymoron, and the same vein as separate but equal. Separate virtually gaurentees not equal. And paid priority isn't neutral.
I'm okay with content classes that have priorty over others. e.g. low latency channels for tele-medicine, medium latency for video, and high latency for text.
And i'm even okay with people having to pay more if they are in the low latency class designation. (which could be a dangerousloophole if abused, but a very reasonable concept if not abused).
but paid priority among equivalent content is by definition not content neutral
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
B.S. My cable internet connection was 5 Mbps in 1998. It's 150 Mbps today. That massive speedup did not come at the expense of slowing down someone else's connection speed.
The problem with fast lanes / paid prioritization is not that the extra speed must come at someone else's expense. It can come at someone else's expense. Or it can come from improving the infrastructure. The problem with fast lanes / paid prioritization is that the customer can't tell which case is happening. This creates an incentive for ISPs to try to cheat and use it to try to sneak in a speed reduction for some customers without a corresponding reduction in their price.
If you're going to make paid prioritization legal, then it must come with the stipulation that the slowest speeds regular customers experience cannot become slower. If it does become slower, the ISP should be required to lower prices for those customers by a proportional amount. That removes the incentive to cheat and degrade connection speeds for non-fast lane customers, while preserving the carrot of the ISPs getting paid extra for giving faster connection speeds to the customers who want it. The result then is same or faster speeds for everyone.
You have to throttle all traffic to reserve bandwidth for those priority packets, or else they will get lost like everything else when the network is at max capacity.
But these things aren't evil. When you pay for X Mbps and someone else pays for 2X Mbps obviously your traffic is throttled at X and their traffic is throttled at 2X. That's fair.
It's the new way ISPs want to abuse both customers and other business that is evil - throttling and prioritizing and discounting (or zero-rating) by destination. That is what net neutrality is about preventing.
"Barring ISPs bribing this regulatory body"
They didn't bribe it, they installed a malicious insider. Much more effective. Fuck them and fuck Pai.
I think it's time for the internet to grow up and allow guaranteed transmission or "End to End QOS". Guaranteed bandwidth. I think it's reasonable for telecommunication applications (which include games which need low latency). I can see people wanting remote pilot drones over the internet as well. Surgeons that have consultants watching and talking to them as they perform surgeries.
The problem is that it's technical and not easy to understand. Too easy for the big telecoms subvert to extort big streaming companies. This is what the FCC should be doing for the public good rather than giving the big ISP's what they want. How it can be done across borders is beyond me. I think it will require new standards and protocols to make it easier to for end users to manage. Possibly mandate that it work over IPv6 and work though proxies.
But it's tricky. As far as regulation I think the money must come from "users" rather than servers and services. But it will be difficult to regulate to make that distinction. First thing to do is get rid of all talk of unlimited anything. Every internet plan has minimum bandwidth spelled out that is guaranteed if everyone uses the internet at the same time. Internet providers must deliver that total bandwidth of all users to a backbone in full. Second they spell out in the plan how unused bandwidth gets redistributed. As far as fast lanes that total "fast" bandwidth must but separate and above all the general use bandwidth and may not be subtracted from it. Standard providers can purchase that bandwidth from all the backbones with fine grained QOS guarantees provided that it does not slow down the internet for standard users and uses.
Content providers will pay for prioritization over other content providers. ISPs that own content will stealthily prioritize their own content over competitors. Costs escalate and are passed on to the consumer. Plus a modest "prioritization handling fee" tacked on by the ISP.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
They vety well understand how it works and they want to milk it.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Here's the lie that exposes the bias of the whole article:
"Obama-era Federal Communications Commission rules banned paid prioritization as well as blocking and throttling while Trump's FCC overturned the ban on all three practices."
Those obama-era rules were not in effect during the first 7 years of the Obama era, and were under challenge and not yet in full bureaucratic effect in his last year; they were rules set to actually kick in with full bureaucratic rules and enforcement as he left office. The 2012 election cycle when Obama was re-elected was conducted on a free (as in speech, not beer) internet untainted by the fraud of "net neutrality" whereas an actual Obama priority (Obamacare) was implemented as rapidly as possible after he was elected. Yeah, people were free to do bad stuff back before Obama's "net neutrality" but they were also free to do great stuff, that's precisely the point of freedom. The fact that some telco in the future might do something really bad was never sufficient to trigger a federal government takeover of the internet for the benefit of Google-Facebook-Netflix.
Had the Bush administration enabled all sorts of internet badness and then Obama implemented his "net neutrality" early on in his administration and produced good results, followed by Trump taking away the Obama rules and returning the badness, then the article would be honest. That's not what happened however and this article is thus just a piece of Orwellian history rewriting. A population that pays attention is not fooled by such sloppy attempts to rewrite.
I worry this whole debate has gotten mired down in the wrong language/descriptions.
Everyone believes that some kinds of internet traffic need to be sent faster, more reliably and with less lag. Absolutely no one wants a legal regime in which you can't torrent files while streaming a movie because your ISP isn't allowed to prioritize the streaming packets over your torrents. Fundamentally, different levels of QoS are a good thing
This fact doesn't change just because one has to pay for QoS. As long as the ISPs came out with a fair universal pricing policy for high QoS or high bandwidth services that treated like content as like it really wouldn't matter how we accounted for the extra data usage. If adding a netflix subscription to your account boosts your data usage by 10GB it's really irrelevant if you want to pay an extra $10/month to your cable company to bump your cap or pay an extra $10/month to netflix so they can pay to bump your cap.
The real problem is that attempts to repeal net-neutrality are end runs around regulations limiting utility pricing and attempts to leverage monopoly control over the internet into other businesses but that's hard to explain
So here's my suggestion. Instead brand the fight as giving the people control over their own internet. You could imagine a slogan like: "Would you like to choose when your internet video plays nicely or let netflix?" That answer is so obvious it might force people to realize something else fishy is going on with paid prioritization.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
It's called virtual circuits, isn't it?
Ezekiel 23:20
Not quite.
Paid prioritization is supposed to screw everyone else over equally.
Throttling by contrast is a direct and specifically targeted act of sabotage.
Degrade based on saturation of each QoS tag format and daily/monthly quotas for that type of traffic from that IP/account.
There are QoS tags for ethernet and IP if I remember correctly, so there is really no excuse for not using them to prioritize traffic, so long as limits are in place to ensure everyone gets a slice and no one is overprioritized over others.
Next question?
(Irony department: $CAP=="Preempt" )
The only content that needs the benefit of paid prioritization has a high enough bandwidth that giving it prioritization will screw too much other content to provide it. This will lead to a world where the text you want to read has to wait for the video advertisements in the margins that you don't want to tolerate.
Even if that didn't happen, paid prioritization would still be inherently anti-consumer, because it means that companies with more money get prioritization over companies with less money, which fundamentally distorts the free flow of information that has made it possible for so many Internet companies to get off the ground.
That, in turn, means that fewer new services will start up, which means less consumer choice, which means consumers get screwed. It really is that simple.
There is no form of paid prioritization that can ever be for the public benefit, because the very nature of paid prioritization is fundamentally anticompetitive. Anyone arguing otherwise is someone who benefits financially from that market distortion.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I don't have an issue with paid prioritization, as long as it's bandwidth added to the promised service level, or perhaps no more than 10% in the case of "unlimited."
That isn't really prioritization though.
Let's say Customer A pays for 100 Mbps, and Customer B pays for 100 Mbps. Their ISP has 500 Mbps available, so there's no problem. If Customer A decides they need more bandwidth and wants to pay more for 250 Mbps, there's still no problem.
Now, if both Customer A and Customer B decide they need 500 Mbps, there may be some issues. If they're both trying to use all of their bandwidth at the same time, which customer gets priority? In a neutral network, the decision would not at all be based on who the customers are. In this example, the fairest prioritization would be to alternate packets (i.e. split the bandwidth), so neither customer is prioritized over the other. If Customer A was paying for 200 Mbps and Customer B was paying for 800 Mbps, then it would be reasonable to handle 4 packets from Customer B for every 1 packet from Customer A, so that both customers are still getting from the available bandwidth the share that they're paying for.
The situation that needs to be avoided is allowing Customer B to pay for priority over Customer A. If they did, you would end up with Customer B getting all 500 Mbps and Customer A maybe being able to sneak a few packets through in the quieter moments. Or even worse, Customer B getting all 500 Mbps without paying anything, since they're just a subsidiary of the ISP anyway.
Or ISPs could take their enormous revenue, spend it on increasing the available bandwidth, and actually deliver the service that they're advertising. But, well, fuck the customers.
Exactly. This matches my opinion as well. But to that, I would add that QoS only works to prevent failures in the presence of inconsistent traffic levels.
Certain types of traffic inherently must be prioritized to prevent them from failing (VoIP, video chat, gaming). This works as long as the pipes are only occasionally completely full, because sending those packets earlier by a matter of milliseconds matters to those types of traffic, but doesn't make any difference over the long run to bulk traffic like downloads or video streaming.
If the pipes stay full, though, even QoS approaches break down, because other things like streaming video start to fail, and then your customers set the building on fire.
Either way, as you said, none of this allows wiggle room for one company to pay for prioritization over any other company. In fact, the proposed change effectively reverses the entire purpose of net neutrality, which is to prevent ISPs who also provide VoD services from having an unfair competitive advantage over third parties unless they pay them a prioritization fee. These companies are, in effect, saying "We don't want net neutrality, but we'll be okay with it if you just use the name "net neutrality" while letting us continue to abuse consumers in exactly the same way we have been doing it before." The result is no longer net neutrality at that point, in any meaningful sense of the word.
The not-so-hidden goal of these companies, of course, is to shift the burden for Internet service onto companies like Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, etc. so that those companies have to raise their fees and the ISPs can keep their fees lower. This effectively raises the cost of almost everyone's Internet service (because nearly everybody uses at least one service that would be affected), but hides the cost from consumers, so that they can say, "See, we're providing better service now that net neutrality is gone, and we haven't raised your cable rates" even though the net effect to consumers is almost identical.
Moreover, by raising the cost of those video-on-demand services, it makes them less attractive when compared with cable TV service, which discourages cable cutting, and makes the ISPs (most of whom are cable companies) more money.
In other words, this is 100% anticompetitive behavior by cable companies right here, and anybody who can't see that is likely being paid by a cable company to not see that. For that reason, I pledge to vote against any politician that supports this, regardless of political party affiliation, and I encourage others to do likewise.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
>Prioritization doesn't take effect unless the network is at max capacity
in a world not ruled by profit at all costs this is a true statement.
in our world, however, how long before "it turns out the network is at full capacity teh whole time so you should by some priority' ads start appearing on the home screen of your phone?
Letting others pay for higher priority? Yes, that's ok.
Making someone slower on purpose? No, that's not ok. Whether it's by the ISP's own choice or because someone bribed them to screw over a competitor.
Letting prioritization be bought on equal terms by everyone? That's ok.
Giving sweetheart deals to partners and jacking up prioritization prices for competitors or someone else the ISP doesn't like? No, tha'ts not ok.
Basically, as long as the ISP doesn't cheat, it should be allowed to offer paid prioritization. Or better yet, allow somone to trade bandwidth for latency. Like, say, you have a quota of X megabytes a month of interactive traffic, beyond which you either have to pay for more, or you forfeit the privilege of prioritization.
There's nothing wrong with people hogging the pipes as long as they pay for the privilege. And if two different people want to hog the same pipe, then let the auction begin and the bandwidth go to the highest bidder.
The line is crossed when the ISP is sabotaging people who don't pay, or throttling in a discriminatory manner.
Aside, I would very much like if the low level TOS bits were given more exposure in higher APIs. Those bits exist for a reason and good network citizens are supposed to be catering to those bits.
Costs tend to trickle down from peering agreements to ISPs to subscribers.
LOL trick down. What other republican fag like to use those words like they were true? His name was raegan I think and his policies are still crippling America.
You failed. I suggest you go read up on the terms you used. Because you sound clueless.
If I rent a 1gbps pipe from the same supplier you do on the same lines, then we will notice because we are sharing the bandwidth. Do you think bandwidth just grows on trees?
You are an idiot. That's not how it works.
They upgraded their lines to hold more bandwidth. That's why you got more, now if they chose not upgrade, you'd still be sitting at 5mbps throttled to all hell.
If you upgrade to 1gbps and we run the same routes to the same content, then yes, my 100mpbs slows down.
Not necessarily. It might, if the network is not sufficient to handle 1Gbps. That problem will also slow you down if there are 11 people just like you all trying to get to the same source over the limited route.
It won't slow you down if the route that is traversed has enough for both.
Since the slowdown has nothing to do with prioritization, it is not a NN issue.
There should be no blocking or throttling of lawful content.
No. There should be no blocking or throttling of content.
1. They should not be the ones deciding what is or isn't lawful. If there is an actual concern, report it to the police.
2. It's not really any of their business what is in my communications. They should not be inspecting or keeping copies of my communications. Therefore how can they know what is or isn't lawful without sticking their noses where they don't belong?
I have no idea why an ISP would want to police content. If they do, they should be held liable for anything they missed, since they performed incompetently.
Cable industry chief lobbyist Michael Powell today asked Congress for a net neutrality law that would ban blocking and throttling but allow Internet providers to charge for prioritization under certain circumstances.
What the hell kind of compromise is that? So we don't get net neutrality, but in exchange for that, we can still call it net neutrality. Everybody wins, right?!
We're not throttling, just prioritizing less. We're not blocking, just dropping all the packets. You know, priority one over infinity.
"How 'public benefit' would be defined or who would determine which paid priority schemes benefit the public are not clear."
So, is anyone expecting folks who work around 100 days a year for 6 figure salaries to actually even COMPREHEND what we're going through? They don't understand us anymore than we actually understand what a filthy rich person's life is like. It's utterly detached, and therefore pretty easy to simply say "well it wouldn't bother ME, so it must be okay for them." Besides, I think this line right here pretty much sums up how this is REALLY going to be negotiated : "Powell -- a Republican who was FCC chairman from 2001 to 2005 and is now CEO of cable lobby group NCTA --" You've got the former FCC chairman lobbying for those who he once "oversaw". It's a bullshit scam, I'd imagine all of us know it. I just keep wondering why we collectively look the other way while it goes on.
Must be them illegals. They're stealing all the megabites and clogging up the internet tubes. The scoundrels.
Your mind is like a parachute. It works best when it's been opened.
Costs tend to trickle down from peering agreements to ISPs to subscribers.
LOL trick down. What other republican fag like to use those words like they were true?
Uhhh.. you have to be trolling, you have to know that the phrase "trickle down" is being used in an entirely different context with a totally different meaning, right? Did you just get triggered by the two words "trickle down" and couldn't think of anything else at that point?
The not-so-hidden goal of these companies, of course, is to shift the burden for Internet service onto companies like Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, etc. so that those companies have to raise their fees and the ISPs can keep their fees lower
I figured that was one goal, but the bigger goal was to compete directly with those services by offering their own. Degrade the Netflix experience so that customers will come to you for VOD and not Netflix. Set up a competing service, then use your ISP power make yours better.
Hence the next paragraph. :-) I think it's more competing against their actual cable offerings than their VoD offerings, which tend to not have that much overlap with Netflix (e.g. the cable companies' VoD services tend to offer recent movie releases, where Netflix tends to favor TV shows). But either way, yes, exactly.
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