I don't think a solution requires that cities build and own the fiber. City owned is what the telco/cable co's are complaining about. The companies are competing against government which isn't fair. If the city makes it easy for another company to come in and compete with the other companies, then I don't see how they would have a legal argument against it. The exception to that is if the local cable company has an exclusive franchise agreement with the city and the city is trying to violate that contract. A lot of infrastructure was built because the city offered no-compete to the cable company so they would drop a lot of money to build out the system.
The other issue is access to poles. Some states have passed rules that allow new companies to touch or move cables that are not theirs while pulling their own new cable. This streamlines things by reducing paperwork to coordinate and get permission to touch each pole with the other companies..
It seems to me that cities should start issuing infrastructure-only franchise agreements. It be great for at least two or more per city. The idea is that the infrastructure only company builds out the cables and terminates to a meetme building. ISP can come in and sell Internet to anyone on the cable. The ISP's pay the infrastructure-only company for maintenance and service of the cable. This would be much closer to the old dialup and early DSL days
The FCC involvement is an "easy fix" (e.g. NN), but better management at the local level would be huge.
A distributed locally managed/scoped system is better for this. This was THE way things were done in the US. Churches, ethnic groups, and groups like the Shriners help pay people's medical bills. True charity. The government has slowly stepped all over this. What ever happened to separation of church and state? People only think it goes one way (no religion in government), but what about the other direction?
Maybe Netflix is just simply trying to save on transit costs. If it is an unknown ASN that could mean the traffic would traverse their costly transit link. Ya can't blame a company trying to save a buck, right?
You're wrong because the issues that Netflix had didn't have anything to do with Net Neutrality. It was in issue with letting a third party handle their peering. That third party (Cogent) prides itself in settlement-free peering agreements. When Cogent took on Netflix as a customer, they started sending way more data from their network then they were consuming and therefore went outside of the settlement-free part of their agreements. Cogent doesn't like to pay for peering and decided to drag their feet upgrading the ports. Netflix was much better off when they negotiated the peering agreements themselves, outside of any settlement-free parameters.
Stop using Netflix as an example of a violation of NN. Can we talk about real violations of Net Neutrality? Do you have an example outside of Netflix?
... and most people are wrong. People thought that ISP's were shaping Netflix traffic. ISP's were NOT shaping Netflix traffic. It was a peering problem where one party didn't want to upgrade the peering links. Most people assume the culprit must be the evil ISP, but that wasn't true. Cogent didn't want to upgrade the links because they like their settlement-free peering links. When they took on Netflix as a customer, those numbers changed and they didn't want to pay for it. The best solution was for Netflix to make their own peering agreements outside of Cogent. Problem solved.
In an interview Pai said that went to figure out way to increase competition everywhere. This building issue is just one aspect of what he wants to take on. He also noted that the FCC can only do so much at the municipal level.
Bottom line, it isn't a matter of "willing to pay for" (I would LOVE my fiber idea), it is a matter of *capable* of paying for.
Yes, exactly. But the point still stands that there are choices. For example you can use cable company fiber to pull into a large building and just buy Ethernet service from them. That way you can choose your transit and bypass the possibility of Net Neutrality issues. You can also re-sell the bandwidth to others in the building so the cost can be shared. It works! It took months (only!?) to get all the permitting and agreements done to pull the fiber into the high-rise building.
I don't know about where you live, but I have exactly *one* choice for high speed Internet where I live. I am sure I could get ADSL -- maybe even 3mbits, but I don't think I will be streaming Netflix on that.
You have exactly one choice that you're willing to pay for. I'm sure there are more options, but they could be a lot more money. In order of cost you probably have, dialup, cable/DOCSIS, DSL, WISP, satellite, cellular LTE, 2Base-TL (a cheaper form of metro Ethernet via copper pairs), T1/T3, metro Ethernet (via the cable company, but you can choose your transit. Also, construction cost).
Exactly! Thank you! People keep mixing up the Netflix issue with Net Neutrality. It was NOT an issue of Net Neutrality. Once Netflix took an interest in negotiating their own peering agreements, the issues went away. Netflix could have also chose NO peering and let all the traffic flow over transit. But that is expensive. Peering saves money and improves the total Internet experience for end users.
Not AppArmor, SELinux. I know the accusation has been around for quite sometime, but I have yet to find anyone pointing out the backdoor. The code is GPL'd so people can audit the code.
If anything, SELinux has saved systems from 0days by restricting the vulnerable process to only what it should do. Filesystem permissions or chroots only get you so far. SELinux goes farther. For example, it prevents a process from making outgoing IP connections.
I love ideas, but CA the place that hates building infrastructure. Even for simple things like.... water. Arizona has been building infrastructure for water to handle increasing population. California? Nope. But like I said, Elon is quite the salesman, maybe he'll pull it off.
Exactly! And don't forget that LA used to be a decent oil producer. There are still pockets of natural gas under LA. The current subway project has run into them.
He's going to run into the same issues Google has running fiber in some cities. My guess is that LA much be at the top of bureaucratic nightmares compared to other US cities. I've seen first hand how it took months for fiber to get pulled into a building because they had to tear up a section of the street. That was ONE building and the fiber was a short block away!
Then again, he was able to get CARB to buy into features of the Telsa that weren't available yet (I'd say it was a scandal). He's quite a salesman.
Define toll. Are you talking about shaping traffic? Or are you talking about peering? Peering pricing is based packet delivery to the destination network. It is a different pricing model than transit, but an important part of how the Internet works. The example people usually use is Netflix, but that wasn't an issue of net neutrality. It was a three party dispute over peering and content delivery. Once Netflix took charge of their peering agreements, the problems disappeared. It wasn't a shakedown. The problem was the CDN partner they used (Cogent) prides itself in their settlement-free peering agreements. Cogent didn't want to pay for peering and had no reason to upgrade the peering ports. Netflix had another option. They could have just used standard transit into the ISP. It would have cost them a bundle, but it would work.
Yup, that is where the real fight is! Not at the FCC level! People need to get involved with LOCAL politics and make sure that local policy changes with regards to pole access and permitting. The telco's will complain, but support your local elected officials and make it happen! This is where the action is, not some peering oversight bureaucracy.
You should also note that Pai wants the FCC to push for easier access to poles, it is just not clear on how much can be done at the FCC level. More competition is good and would greatly reduce issues with Net Neutrality violations.
Considering what a handful of bittorrent users can do to a network, it is not surprising an ISP would try to figure out a way to manage it. I consulted with a small ISP and torrents could really cause problems for customers just wanting to watch the videos on ESPN.com. Eventually the small ISP was able to upgrade their transit, but for a time, it was painful.
I've heard small rural WISPs ask users not to use bittorrent and put that in their customer agreement. Another reason that I don't like the government making these rules. If I were to start a small rural WISP I would ask people not to use bittorrent because I want all my users to have a good experience with the service. Are you saying that I, as a small WISP, shouldn't have the ability to block or strictly manage bittorrent usage?
If government was efficient, then Google wouldn't have so much trouble getting fiber into some cities. Google Fiber in Los Angeles is a long shot. Way too much bureaucracy.
Who positioned the cable companies to have a monopoly for a city? The local city government did. They agreed to give the cable company an exclusive for the area. Why? Because, like you said, it costs a heck of a lot of money to string wires around the city. Now that cable companies have made their money, the city should be doing everything that they can do to encourage others to compete.
Maybe the best thing the FTC could do is break up the cable companies so that at least two entities exists where a single one used to exist.
There was a lot of finger pointing. But I am fairly certain that the blame was Cogent's. Cogent prides itself on a transit-free network. Cogent has plenty of settlement free peering agreements. When they took on Netflix, that changed the traffic flow. They started sending way more traffic out of their network than they were used to. This violated the peering agreement and the network asked them to pay up. Cogent didn't have any interest in paying up. They like settlement free peering. Their best play at the time was not to upgrade the peering ports. This fact was pointed out during all the finger pointing, but based on what I know of Cogent, it is the most likely. Netflix did the right thing and found another CDN and started negotiating their OWN peering agreements. Netflix has much better control over the peering now that they have done that. The upside is that Netflix still saves on their transit costs.
What do you call FCC oversight of peering? Peering wasn't even mentioned when the topic of Net Neutrality first came up years ago. Even when I did bring it up, people just said, "As long as the packets are not prioritized or blocked." Then the Netflix thing happened and now people seem to think it is a good idea to get the FCC involved with peering agreements. Even with Net Neutrality, I'd say NO to FCC oversight of peering.
Most people don't understand how the Internet works, even people on slashdot. I've been pointing out for years that peering could be pulled into Net Neutrality discussions. Either people didn't understand what I was saying or the idea seemed to stupid to believe. But look where we are now. People seem to think that the government should get involved with Netflix, Cogent, and ISP's. It wasn't required, Once Netflix fired Cogent as a CDN, things improved dramatically. The whole thing was easy to understand if you know how Cogent works.
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Exactly! Why don't people understand this? Of course the cable/telco's had grounds to complain about this.
I don't think a solution requires that cities build and own the fiber. City owned is what the telco/cable co's are complaining about. The companies are competing against government which isn't fair. If the city makes it easy for another company to come in and compete with the other companies, then I don't see how they would have a legal argument against it. The exception to that is if the local cable company has an exclusive franchise agreement with the city and the city is trying to violate that contract. A lot of infrastructure was built because the city offered no-compete to the cable company so they would drop a lot of money to build out the system.
The other issue is access to poles. Some states have passed rules that allow new companies to touch or move cables that are not theirs while pulling their own new cable. This streamlines things by reducing paperwork to coordinate and get permission to touch each pole with the other companies..
It seems to me that cities should start issuing infrastructure-only franchise agreements. It be great for at least two or more per city. The idea is that the infrastructure only company builds out the cables and terminates to a meetme building. ISP can come in and sell Internet to anyone on the cable. The ISP's pay the infrastructure-only company for maintenance and service of the cable. This would be much closer to the old dialup and early DSL days
The FCC involvement is an "easy fix" (e.g. NN), but better management at the local level would be huge.
A distributed locally managed/scoped system is better for this. This was THE way things were done in the US. Churches, ethnic groups, and groups like the Shriners help pay people's medical bills. True charity. The government has slowly stepped all over this. What ever happened to separation of church and state? People only think it goes one way (no religion in government), but what about the other direction?
Maybe Netflix is just simply trying to save on transit costs. If it is an unknown ASN that could mean the traffic would traverse their costly transit link. Ya can't blame a company trying to save a buck, right?
You're wrong because the issues that Netflix had didn't have anything to do with Net Neutrality. It was in issue with letting a third party handle their peering. That third party (Cogent) prides itself in settlement-free peering agreements. When Cogent took on Netflix as a customer, they started sending way more data from their network then they were consuming and therefore went outside of the settlement-free part of their agreements. Cogent doesn't like to pay for peering and decided to drag their feet upgrading the ports. Netflix was much better off when they negotiated the peering agreements themselves, outside of any settlement-free parameters.
Stop using Netflix as an example of a violation of NN. Can we talk about real violations of Net Neutrality? Do you have an example outside of Netflix?
... and most people are wrong. People thought that ISP's were shaping Netflix traffic. ISP's were NOT shaping Netflix traffic. It was a peering problem where one party didn't want to upgrade the peering links. Most people assume the culprit must be the evil ISP, but that wasn't true. Cogent didn't want to upgrade the links because they like their settlement-free peering links. When they took on Netflix as a customer, those numbers changed and they didn't want to pay for it. The best solution was for Netflix to make their own peering agreements outside of Cogent. Problem solved.
In an interview Pai said that went to figure out way to increase competition everywhere. This building issue is just one aspect of what he wants to take on. He also noted that the FCC can only do so much at the municipal level.
THIS!
The FCC can only do so much. It seems to me if we want to make Net Neutrality a non-issue, we need to get cracking at the local level.
Bottom line, it isn't a matter of "willing to pay for" (I would LOVE my fiber idea), it is a matter of *capable* of paying for.
Yes, exactly. But the point still stands that there are choices. For example you can use cable company fiber to pull into a large building and just buy Ethernet service from them. That way you can choose your transit and bypass the possibility of Net Neutrality issues. You can also re-sell the bandwidth to others in the building so the cost can be shared. It works! It took months (only!?) to get all the permitting and agreements done to pull the fiber into the high-rise building.
I don't know about where you live, but I have exactly *one* choice for high speed Internet where I live. I am sure I could get ADSL -- maybe even 3mbits, but I don't think I will be streaming Netflix on that.
You have exactly one choice that you're willing to pay for. I'm sure there are more options, but they could be a lot more money. In order of cost you probably have, dialup, cable/DOCSIS, DSL, WISP, satellite, cellular LTE, 2Base-TL (a cheaper form of metro Ethernet via copper pairs), T1/T3, metro Ethernet (via the cable company, but you can choose your transit. Also, construction cost).
If there is no WISP, why not build one?
Stop talking about stuff you don't understand. Netflix was not a Net Neutrality issue.
Exactly! Thank you! People keep mixing up the Netflix issue with Net Neutrality. It was NOT an issue of Net Neutrality. Once Netflix took an interest in negotiating their own peering agreements, the issues went away. Netflix could have also chose NO peering and let all the traffic flow over transit. But that is expensive. Peering saves money and improves the total Internet experience for end users.
Not AppArmor, SELinux. I know the accusation has been around for quite sometime, but I have yet to find anyone pointing out the backdoor. The code is GPL'd so people can audit the code.
If anything, SELinux has saved systems from 0days by restricting the vulnerable process to only what it should do. Filesystem permissions or chroots only get you so far. SELinux goes farther. For example, it prevents a process from making outgoing IP connections.
I love ideas, but CA the place that hates building infrastructure. Even for simple things like.... water. Arizona has been building infrastructure for water to handle increasing population. California? Nope. But like I said, Elon is quite the salesman, maybe he'll pull it off.
Exactly! And don't forget that LA used to be a decent oil producer. There are still pockets of natural gas under LA. The current subway project has run into them.
He's going to run into the same issues Google has running fiber in some cities. My guess is that LA much be at the top of bureaucratic nightmares compared to other US cities. I've seen first hand how it took months for fiber to get pulled into a building because they had to tear up a section of the street. That was ONE building and the fiber was a short block away!
Then again, he was able to get CARB to buy into features of the Telsa that weren't available yet (I'd say it was a scandal). He's quite a salesman.
Define toll. Are you talking about shaping traffic? Or are you talking about peering? Peering pricing is based packet delivery to the destination network. It is a different pricing model than transit, but an important part of how the Internet works. The example people usually use is Netflix, but that wasn't an issue of net neutrality. It was a three party dispute over peering and content delivery. Once Netflix took charge of their peering agreements, the problems disappeared. It wasn't a shakedown. The problem was the CDN partner they used (Cogent) prides itself in their settlement-free peering agreements. Cogent didn't want to pay for peering and had no reason to upgrade the peering ports. Netflix had another option. They could have just used standard transit into the ISP. It would have cost them a bundle, but it would work.
Yup, that is where the real fight is! Not at the FCC level! People need to get involved with LOCAL politics and make sure that local policy changes with regards to pole access and permitting. The telco's will complain, but support your local elected officials and make it happen! This is where the action is, not some peering oversight bureaucracy.
You should also note that Pai wants the FCC to push for easier access to poles, it is just not clear on how much can be done at the FCC level. More competition is good and would greatly reduce issues with Net Neutrality violations.
Yup, that is why this one rural ISP specifically states that they don't want people using bittorrent. It is explicit and understandable.
I wasn't saying that Comcast is a small rural ISP. I'm just saying that sometimes a network needs to manage their traffic, specifically smaller ISPs.
Considering what a handful of bittorrent users can do to a network, it is not surprising an ISP would try to figure out a way to manage it. I consulted with a small ISP and torrents could really cause problems for customers just wanting to watch the videos on ESPN.com. Eventually the small ISP was able to upgrade their transit, but for a time, it was painful.
I've heard small rural WISPs ask users not to use bittorrent and put that in their customer agreement. Another reason that I don't like the government making these rules. If I were to start a small rural WISP I would ask people not to use bittorrent because I want all my users to have a good experience with the service. Are you saying that I, as a small WISP, shouldn't have the ability to block or strictly manage bittorrent usage?
If government was efficient, then Google wouldn't have so much trouble getting fiber into some cities. Google Fiber in Los Angeles is a long shot. Way too much bureaucracy.
Who positioned the cable companies to have a monopoly for a city? The local city government did. They agreed to give the cable company an exclusive for the area. Why? Because, like you said, it costs a heck of a lot of money to string wires around the city. Now that cable companies have made their money, the city should be doing everything that they can do to encourage others to compete.
Maybe the best thing the FTC could do is break up the cable companies so that at least two entities exists where a single one used to exist.
... and bureaucratic.
There was a lot of finger pointing. But I am fairly certain that the blame was Cogent's. Cogent prides itself on a transit-free network. Cogent has plenty of settlement free peering agreements. When they took on Netflix, that changed the traffic flow. They started sending way more traffic out of their network than they were used to. This violated the peering agreement and the network asked them to pay up. Cogent didn't have any interest in paying up. They like settlement free peering. Their best play at the time was not to upgrade the peering ports. This fact was pointed out during all the finger pointing, but based on what I know of Cogent, it is the most likely. Netflix did the right thing and found another CDN and started negotiating their OWN peering agreements. Netflix has much better control over the peering now that they have done that. The upside is that Netflix still saves on their transit costs.
Bad business is not a Net Neutrality violation.
Can you give me an example of an ISP shaping traffic? The Netflix example is not valid because there was no shaping. Any other examples?
What do you call FCC oversight of peering? Peering wasn't even mentioned when the topic of Net Neutrality first came up years ago. Even when I did bring it up, people just said, "As long as the packets are not prioritized or blocked." Then the Netflix thing happened and now people seem to think it is a good idea to get the FCC involved with peering agreements. Even with Net Neutrality, I'd say NO to FCC oversight of peering.
Most people don't understand how the Internet works, even people on slashdot. I've been pointing out for years that peering could be pulled into Net Neutrality discussions. Either people didn't understand what I was saying or the idea seemed to stupid to believe. But look where we are now. People seem to think that the government should get involved with Netflix, Cogent, and ISP's. It wasn't required, Once Netflix fired Cogent as a CDN, things improved dramatically. The whole thing was easy to understand if you know how Cogent works.