FCC weakens net neutrality rule in a prelude to larger rollbacks • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by IshKebab » Fri, Feb 24, 2017, 9:32 PM UTC

snuxoll wrote: post #91

wtallis wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For anything other than a dedicated "business class" circuit with hard performance guarantees, speculation and shaping is involved in delivering the end product. The alternative to a connection with a SLA guarantee is a best effort connection, not discriminatory traffic shaping. Underprovisioning part of your network doesn't require you to show favoritism to certain traffic—the normal way to cope with larger than e…

> the normal way to cope with larger than expected usage is to just start dropping packets where there's congestion. And lo and behold, that's what ISP's have always offered to consumers. There's a reason connections are always advertised as "up to 50Mbps" instead of "50 Mbps", hell, even my "business" connection with the local cable company has absolutely no guarantee beyond "we'll have someone out to repair your se…

No it isn't. The "up to" is because the last mile is over copper wires which are variable so not everyone will get the same speed.

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

#102

Post by subverter » Fri, Feb 24, 2017, 9:35 PM UTC

fragmede wrote: post #97

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…

By the way, every time I've noticed the FCC has come up on HN in the recent past, an aged account has always posted a pro Trump's FCC comment with an argument tweaked for HN's biases, as seen above, and if that is the only comment you read in the thread, you'd falsely conclude that they're right and believe that Ajit Pai's version of the FCC will be better for business than Tom Wheeler's. Ajit Pai's FCC will be bette…

I'm certainly not sitting here agreeing with everything Pai's FCC has or will do, nor am I pro-Trump (not that it matters). My belief is their decisions will be a mixed bag in the long term.

What I've noticed is that almost every FCC decision since Pai took over has been spun as weakening net neutrality, which I think is incorrect and unfair.

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

#103

Post by necessity » Fri, Feb 24, 2017, 9:38 PM UTC

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…

>Isn't more competition among providers what we want?

If that was the case no one would support net neutrality. We got it in Brazil and smaller ISPs are all shutting down (e.g. Viavale, Telenorte, etc). And poor people do not benefit from free data plans anymore (like free WhatsApp/Twitter, etc - WhatsApp is a major form of communication in Brazil, both socially and professionaly; personally I use Telegram but most people use Whats).

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

#104

Post by bluejekyll » Fri, Feb 24, 2017, 9:39 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #98

wtallis wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't more competition among providers what we want? Only at some levels. Physical last-mile connectivity is a natural monopoly; we shouldn't want more than one trench along each driveway. If an ISP has a local monopoly that only covers one city rather than a whole state, that doesn't change the dynamics of what's fair to their users.

I would think that any many decently populated areas, it's at least a "duopoly". You would have the cable company and the phone company competing. I have a choice between Comcast and AT&T.

It's not really a choice. AT&T in my area of SF is still crap compared to Comcast.

So yes, I could choose to use AT&T, but I would be getting substantially worse service. All cities should be investing in building out infrastructure themselves, as it would increase the desire for companies and people to live and work where they have better connectivity.

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

#105

Post by walshemj » Fri, Feb 24, 2017, 9:39 PM UTC

wtallis wrote: post #58

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…

> Isn't more competition among providers what we want? Only at some levels. Physical last-mile connectivity is a natural monopoly; we shouldn't want more than one trench along each driveway. If an ISP has a local monopoly that only covers one city rather than a whole state, that doesn't change the dynamics of what's fair to their users.

Local loop unbundling is what you need like the UK has

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

#106

Post by wtallis » Fri, Feb 24, 2017, 9:39 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #98

wtallis wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't more competition among providers what we want? Only at some levels. Physical last-mile connectivity is a natural monopoly; we shouldn't want more than one trench along each driveway. If an ISP has a local monopoly that only covers one city rather than a whole state, that doesn't change the dynamics of what's fair to their users.

I would think that any many decently populated areas, it's at least a "duopoly". You would have the cable company and the phone company competing. I have a choice between Comcast and AT&T.

This is a short-term situation that is already mostly dead. The pre-existing infrastructure of POTS and CATV wiring was re-purposed to provide Internet connectivity. But the last-mile POTS infrastructure is completely saturated and xDLS services cannot compete against DOCSIS. Comcast can upgrade you from 20Mbps to 1Gbps by replacing the box down the street and selling you a new modem. AT&T has to dig up the street and run new cables through the walls of your house to accomplish the same.

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

#107

Post by necessity » Fri, Feb 24, 2017, 9:40 PM UTC

fragmede wrote: post #97

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…

By the way, every time I've noticed the FCC has come up on HN in the recent past, an aged account has always posted a pro Trump's FCC comment with an argument tweaked for HN's biases, as seen above, and if that is the only comment you read in the thread, you'd falsely conclude that they're right and believe that Ajit Pai's version of the FCC will be better for business than Tom Wheeler's. Ajit Pai's FCC will be bette…

People agree with someone you disagree, so it must be a conspiracy. Also I think you underestimate the intelligence of the average commentor.

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

#108

Post by rayiner » Fri, Feb 24, 2017, 9:40 PM UTC

asciimo wrote: post #81

badsock wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, just like sewers: http://www.ajc.com/news/local-govt--politics/atlanta-area-st....

Also, nobody advocating for "treating telecom like a utility" is actually advocating for that. Try looking up the cost of a county water/sewer hookup sometime. It's not free, and your $50/month water bill doesn't pay for it. I'm paying off a $30,000 bill to get "public utility" water and sewer access. That's pretty typical.

If we required every house builder to pay thousands of dollars up front to install fiber people would be frothing at the mouth.

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

#109

Post by AnthonyMouse » Fri, Feb 24, 2017, 9:42 PM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #87

and0 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. An…

> 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.

...until the ISP decides to charge a large amount of money for the ability to do that, and then under-provision their peering links so that there is no other way to have adequate performance.

But there is a simple way to fix that. Require last mile ISPs to do free peering with anyone who has traffic for their last mile customers. If you bring traffic directly to their local central office, they have to take it and deliver it up to the speed that they've sold to their customers.

Then they can offer all the CDN service they like, which people will use as long as they're charging market rates but decline and rely on peering (and install their CDN equipment across the street) if they try to charge monopoly prices.

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

#110

Post by wtallis » Fri, Feb 24, 2017, 9:45 PM UTC

IshKebab wrote: post #101

snuxoll wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the normal way to cope with larger than expected usage is to just start dropping packets where there's congestion. And lo and behold, that's what ISP's have always offered to consumers. There's a reason connections are always advertised as "up to 50Mbps" instead of "50 Mbps", hell, even my "business" connection with the local cable company has absolutely no guarantee beyond "we'll have someone out to repair your se…

No it isn't. The "up to" is because the last mile is over copper wires which are variable so not everyone will get the same speed.

ISPs will generally not sell you a plan that advertises throughput in excess of the achievable modem sync speed, unless your achievable speed is already below their lowest tier of service. AT&T won't let you sign up for 18Mbps DSL if you live 2km from a DSLAM that doesn't even have ADSL2+ equipment. The "up to" provision is because their backhaul capacity is less than the sum of the last-mile connection speeds.