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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

#121

Post by wtallis »

grandalf wrote: post #118
kelnos wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe Youtube makes a deal with T-Mobile to keep videos playing longer (before packets start dropping) in exchange for money. This money might allow T-Mobile to invest in other parts of its infrastructure. That half of it isn't the problem, and I doubt anyone would argue against reasonable things that make it easier for a provider to increase their network capacity. The problem is what it does to YouTube's competit…

> The problem is what it does to YouTube's competitors: they now suffer because YT can afford to ask T-Mobile to make their traffic more important. But simply by virtue of YouTube's market share, an economic incentive exists to install backbone links that help route YouTube's traffic (as opposed to others'). In other words, if two backbone links might be installed, the one whose outcome makes access to Youtube more r…

> In other words, network topology adapts to traffic demand (albeit more slowly than traffic shaping).

A fair traffic management policy would allow for YouTube users to consume bandwidth in exact proportion to their share of overall demand for bandwidth. Traffic shaping on top of that could only have the effect of meaning that a YouTube user will get more bandwidth than their Netflix-using neighbor even if they're both paying for the same service and both content providers have CDN nodes at the same local peering point. That's not adapting to demand, that's artificially distorting the market.

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

#122

Post by Retric »

necessity wrote: post #107
fragmede wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Look at the comment and submission history of the account he responded to. It's a well maintained shill used for propaganda and likely one of many.

This is then kind of thing you see in authoritarian states and rather chilling.

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

#123

Post by JoshTriplett »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #109
JoshTriplett wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> ...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.

The latter is the primary problem here.

> Require last mile ISPs to do free peering with anyone who has traffic for their last mile customers.

What does "last mile ISP" mean here? DSL is no longer competitive, and most implementations of cable and fiber have no separation between "infrastructure provider" and "bandwidth provider".

> 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.

What if their central office isn't connected to anyone else directly, because they get all their bandwidth and peering from one or more of the major backbones? Presumably they can say "go to those backbones", rather than having to start making peering arrangements with individual services.

> but decline and rely on peering (and install their CDN equipment across the street) if they try to charge monopoly prices

What if their central office doesn't have an "across the street" where you can put servers? Or what if they don't have a "central office", period?

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

#124

Post by and0 »

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…

Thanks for the robust answer.

I think the CDN fix could be built right into net-neutrality laws: If you're going to support that functionality then also do it equally to any CDN that is also willing to foot the bill and/or meets certain criteria. For example, don't only let Netflix's smaller competitors let that box sit on your network.

(No, this regulation wouldn't be burdensome either.)

QoS is something I'm unfamiliar with when it comes to ISPs. I personally wouldn't be offended if some small % of bandwidth was dedicated to services consumers and businesses use that require priority, such as VoIP. As long as that applied to all VoIP services and apps equally, though I'm not sure how you would be able to tell.

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

#125

Post by st3v3r »

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…

I don't buy that argument for a second. Especially with this rule.

Why should who I choose to do business with effect my rights?

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

#126

Post by rayiner »

bluejekyll wrote: post #104
scarface74 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Cities have no money. All across the country, they're insolvent and drowning in pension and other liabilities.

SF is flush right now, which makes it particularly outrageous that it doesn't invest in infrastructure. But SF's behavior also tells you how cities got so deeply in debt with nothing to show for it.

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

#127

Post by wtallis »

massysett wrote: post #112
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Netsc…

As a NN opponent, you have somewhat captured my viewpoint. Mostly I think NN is fighting the last war. NN proponents continually assert there is no competition for wired Internet and, therefore, it must be regulated. I think looking at wired Internet defines much too narrow a market. As wireless proliferates, it will become increasingly important, and competition in wireless is alive and well. The recent reignition o…

> As wireless proliferates, it will become increasingly important, and competition in wireless is alive and well.

Ignoring the laws of physics tends to make for bad public policy.

Wireless will never be able to compete against wired services. This disparity will only grow over time, not shrink. There are only two ways for wireless providers to substantially increase the speed of their offerings: by acquiring more spectrum, or by increasing spectrum re-use by shrinking cell size. Since all the good spectrum is in use, acquiring more means using spectrum that is inherently more limited in coverage. Thus, both strategies boil down to deploying more wired infrastructure.

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

#128

Post by scarface74 »

noxToken wrote: post #114
scarface74 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Same as the other child comment. Every locale I've been to has had at least 3 choices with an occasional 4th: a cable company, a phone company, and a satellite company. The 4th is typically a very small, local ISP. The cable company has always had the most bang for the buck. It's something like 60Mb down at about $1/Mb. The phone company is the underdog that gets you from under the thumb of the cable company at a low…

I have gigabit internet from AT&T - $70 a month. On my best computer I routinely get 900Mbps+/900Mbps+. No data caps, no extra fees.

Even in the few areas where Comcast does offer 1Gbps they still only have 35Mbps up stream. It's the cable companies that are being left behind by fiber deployments.

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

#129

Post by jocose »

guelo wrote: post #50

I hate these types of articles that provide extensive quotes and even a screenshot of part of the pdf, but refuse to link to the actual documents. It's probably an advertising thing where they don't want people to leave the site. The actual statements are available here https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-addresses-unnecessary-accou...

Look like the date is wrong at the start of the article. http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2017...

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

#130

Post by grandalf »

wtallis wrote: post #119
grandalf wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just start dropping packets where there's congestion Aside from being normal, do you think this is preferable because it is fair? I think of QoS as a way of allowing more types of SLA to exist. Maybe Youtube makes a deal with T-Mobile to keep videos playing longer (before packets start dropping) in exchange for money. This money might allow T-Mobile to invest in other parts of its infrastructure. Isn't any backbone…

Backbone capacity is a separate issue from last-mile connectivity. Only one is truly a natural monopoly. I don't care whether YouTube directly builds out backbone capacity or whether they outsource that to Level 3. Incumbent last-mile providers enjoy a privileged position that gives them unfair bargaining power over end users. They should not be allowed to decide which content providers and applications get to have a…

> If anybody gets to pick winners and losers like that, it should be a democratically elected government, but it would be far better to just prohibit last-mile providers from imposing unfair artificial limits or costs.

Isn't it the proper authority of the FTC or DOJ to enforce anticompetitive behavior? Do we need the FCC also dipping in to impose penalties on firms who may have already spent a lot of money in the spectrum auction?

What privileges does winning the spectrum auction permit companies?

To your last point, what if T-Mobile showed that by following its preferred QoS scheme it actually transferred more information over its last mile link?

Economic incentives typically reward the highly efficient use of a resource. Being able to get an extra bushel of corn from an acre of land is one example, as is being able to get an extra Megabyte of data over a pipe each hour.

In the case of residential bandwidth packages, the metric for how effectively an ISP is maximizing the available resource should simply be its own competitive choices. Should T-Mobile sacrifice $1M in profit each month simply so that any customers who happen to be using an obscure protocol can get slightly better service?

It seems that Net Neutrality is akin to the government forcing corn farms to plant 25% of their fields with different crops, just in case anyone wants to buy them, and to force those farmers to offer them for sale even if they don't believe anyone wants to buy them.

I think if we want to go down the path of the fine-grained allocation of the spectrum as a public good, there would be large scale, sweeping changes that we'd make. Why should we waste spectrum broadcasting over-the-air TV in 1080i? Why should soap operas be broadcast in full quality or even broadcast at all? Why should anyone have LTE bandwidth when some people can't afford 2G?

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