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FCC weakens net neutrality rule in a prelude to larger rollbacks

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Re: FCC weakens net neutrality rule in a prelude to larger rollbacks

#81

Post by asciimo »

badsock wrote: post #67
seibelj wrote: post #54

I know several people who are highly involved with the FCC, telecom industry, and telecom law that think that "network neutrality" is just 2 words. Until 1970, and only because of lawsuits, it was illegal to connect anything to your phone line. You could get any phone you wanted from Ma Bell as long as it was black.[0] If you wanted a different color you had to pay extra. It took force to make Ma Bell and the FCC all…

Telecoms are a classic example of a natural monopoly - which is to say it would be monopoly whether there's regulation or not. How do you imagine there would be competition in, say, fibre? A bunch of companies all running their own last mile? That's incredibly inefficient.

The whole thing should be a public utility like water, electricity, and sewer.

Re: FCC weakens net neutrality rule in a prelude to larger rollbacks

#82

Post by jackmott »

superioritycplx wrote: post #42
aanm1988 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and then paint them all as crazy left wing idiots who want to censor everything. Then they whine that democrats are jerks when dems call them anything.

Calling names is fine. It's the violent riots that are getting annoying.

going to be more and more of them until the people demand this president is gone.

Re: FCC weakens net neutrality rule in a prelude to larger rollbacks

#83

Post by subverter »

guelo wrote: post #44
subverter wrote: post #39

This raises the limit on the number of subscribers a provider can have before regulation kicks in. In other words, a larger number of smaller providers have one less regulation to worry about. Isn't more competition among providers what we want? Shouldn't we be doing everything we can – even if it's saving 6.8 hours per year in regulatory compliance – to help these smaller guys be able to take on these horrible behem…

Do we want secret network caps and slowdowns to be how they compete against the big boys?

They wouldn't be able to compete without offering a service that differentiates them from the competition in a way that appeals to consumers. "Secret network caps and slowdowns" doesn't sound very appealing, so why assume they'd all take that route?

I think it's more realistic to assume they'd differentiate through better service, faster speeds, higher/no caps, etc. That's what we want and are willing to pay for.

Re: FCC weakens net neutrality rule in a prelude to larger rollbacks

#84

Post by neumann »

and0 wrote: post #56
guelo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we want secret network caps and slowdowns to be how they compete against the big boys?

This ^ I say this every time and no one has ever been able to answer: how is a simple "don't prioritize traffic" some kind of competition-killing regulation, and how would removing it actually create competition anyway?

Agreed, and given there isn't a convincing answer, this 'solution' is more of a ways to insert deregulation into law on a small level for later expansion (probably when comcast complains that it is anti-competitive).

Re: FCC weakens net neutrality rule in a prelude to larger rollbacks

#86

Post by grandalf »

woah wrote: post #33

I asked this in another thread a few days ago, but why are edge servers and CDNs not a violation of "net neutrality"? If you've got an edge server on an ISP, and are paying extra for a leased line from your main data center to that server, you are effectively paying the ISP an additional fee for priority over other traffic on their hardware.

To the end customer it's not priority, consider the two cases:

customer:

GET www.site.com/images/rounded_corner.gif

first hop to ISP, then n hops to www.site.com

vs

GET cdn001.site.com/images/rounded_corner.gif

first hop to ISP, then second hop to cdn001

The overhead takes place in the routing mechanism, not in the prioritization mechanism. In both cases, it costs the ISP the same amount to send the data back to the customer. The data is not prioritized, it just happens to be available in fewer hops, which is often (but is not necessarily) faster. A CDN could exist that imposed greater latency in exchange for an improvement elsewhere, such as reliability.

Re: FCC weakens net neutrality rule in a prelude to larger rollbacks

#87

Post by JoshTriplett »

and0 wrote: post #56
guelo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we want secret network caps and slowdowns to be how they compete against the big boys?

This ^ I say this every time and no one has ever been able to answer: how is a simple "don't prioritize traffic" some kind of competition-killing regulation, and how would removing it actually create competition anyway?

If you phrase it as just "don't prioritize traffic", you've just broken most CDNs, as well as QoS that optimizes for latency/bandwidth to improve VoIP and similar.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with, for instance, a content provider handing an ISP a box that sits on their network, mirrors/caches content, and serves it up to that ISP's customers. That helps the content provider, the ISP, and the ISP's customers. And I don't think the majority of "net neutrality" advocates want to break that.

When people talk about "net neutrality", the problems they have in mind tend to look like either an ISP extorting content providers to extract extra revenue, or an ISP giving their own first-party services an advantage by deliberately degrading third-party services. For instance, see Comcast and Netflix.

But even then, how do you draw a bright line between "deliberately degrading", "not giving an advantage to", and "not doing anything to address bandwidth problems when they arise"? (Comcast could claim the latter regarding Netflix, even though it seems obvious what it means when they don't arrange additional bandwidth on those saturated links.) What if the ISP provides the CDN infrastructure, rather than the content provider? What if the ISP contracts with a third-party CDN?

How would you suggest writing a regulation that doesn't break CDNs and similar, and that can tell the difference between "deliberately hurting" and "not helping"? How will that regulation adapt when people come up with new ideas to make the web faster?

(One angle I could imagine working: limiting the ability of one company or family of companies to run both an ISP and network services via that ISP. Still hard to write something robust, though.)

Re: FCC weakens net neutrality rule in a prelude to larger rollbacks

#88

Post by iamatworknow »

and0 wrote: post #56
guelo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we want secret network caps and slowdowns to be how they compete against the big boys?

This ^ I say this every time and no one has ever been able to answer: how is a simple "don't prioritize traffic" some kind of competition-killing regulation, and how would removing it actually create competition anyway?

Say you have an area with two ISPs -- Provider A with 400k subscribers and B with 50k. Both have a soft data cap of like 50 gigs/month.

Netflix could approach Provider B and say, "Hey, how about we pay you to remove the data cap on Netflix traffic?". All of a sudden Provider B can advertise that their customers can watch all the Netflix they want with no buffering! People will jump ship and leave Provider A for Provider B, thus "creating competition".

Disclaimer: I personally think the internet should be treated as a public utility, but the above scenario is (probably) what anti-net neutrality proponents believe.

Re: FCC weakens net neutrality rule in a prelude to larger rollbacks

#89

Post by brightball »

and0 wrote: post #56
guelo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we want secret network caps and slowdowns to be how they compete against the big boys?

This ^ I say this every time and no one has ever been able to answer: how is a simple "don't prioritize traffic" some kind of competition-killing regulation, and how would removing it actually create competition anyway?

Just to take a stab at answering it:

What if a company wanted to offer 2 networks for customers: 1 in which they tell you they'll shape the network traffic to ensure consistent performance for all non-video traffic and another in which they tell it's completely unshaped?

It would be interesting to see the two side by side as actual consumer choices. If I'm buying for an office, for example, I'd take the shaped-kill-the-video plan all dang day. If I'm at home...not so much.

Re: FCC weakens net neutrality rule in a prelude to larger rollbacks

#90

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

and0 wrote: post #56
guelo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we want secret network caps and slowdowns to be how they compete against the big boys?

This ^ I say this every time and no one has ever been able to answer: how is a simple "don't prioritize traffic" some kind of competition-killing regulation, and how would removing it actually create competition anyway?

There is a case to be had for how vertical-integration makes businesses more efficient and means there can be some cost-savings for consumers (e.g. if Comcast zero-rated their own streaming video service and included it in their customers' cable Internet fees then consumers would save $10/mo they wouldn't be paying to Netflix - in much the same way Microsoft's bundling of Internet Explorer meant no-one pays for Netscape or Opera anymore).

A problem with simplifying the problem to "prioritizing traffic" when engaging with laypeople is that opponents of net-neutrality can set-up a strawman argument presenting NN as "treating gaming and porn traffic the same as vital 911 and emergency services traffic on the Internet!" (i.e. conflating NN with QoS), or arguing it's only fair that popular services pay for the extra data transfer they use (that's what peering agreements are for and is unrelated to NN), or worse: proclaiming NN will enable child pornography: https://thenextweb.com/us/2010/08/19/riaa-speaks-out-against... - we should call it what it is: anti-economic rent-seeking behavior on the part of the monopolistic audience gatekeepers.

I believe NN is an example of a "good" regulation necessary to enable free markets - I'd wager the majority of genuine (non-astroturf) NN opponents take the stance in the sincere belief that Government 'interference and regulation' should not impact ISPs' internal business practices - so you should frame it as something "that enables free-markets and increases competition which is better for the consumer and industry" (and avoid the R-word)

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