Live data from Hacker News

FCC weakens net neutrality rule in a prelude to larger rollbacks

techcrunch.com

241–250 of 322 posts

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

#241
post #239

Let me put my hat in the ring here. Deregulation of access to consumers will result in cheaper internet and most likely faster internet speeds. However, it will concentrate power to those who already have it. Large ISPs will charge heavy bandwidth companies and only the largest heavy bandwidth companies will be able to afford the fees. Those heavy bandwidth companies paying the fees will recoup the money through adve…

I would amend that to say it may result in the illusion of cheaper internet. Your internet bill will go down, but services on the internet you use will either get more expensive, or degrade (as with adding advertisements).

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

#242

I can see how a bit of outrage about this is how the NRA got to the place it is today. This by itself isn't that meaningful, but anything can be politicized, turn public opinion and gain momentum. That's why the NRA's position is to say NO to any kind of gun regulation, because they know that's how you ensure guns are made available and gun culture is for sure secure. In the tech community I see people rising up agai…

>That's why the NRA's position is to say NO to any kind of gun regulation, because they know that's how you ensure guns are made available and gun culture is for sure secure.

There also exist groups whose sole purpose is to make gun ownership infeasible for the vast majority of Americans. Given this, I don't believe their position is unreasonable - the threat to their values and culture is very real.

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

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, your "arguments against net neutrality are all about legalizing extortion" already sounds a bit "ultra biased". What if someone wants to start an ISP, and charge less for a lower QoS band? Is that legalized extortion? (Not to say it would be a good idea, I agree that it is a slippery slope)

What do you mean "charge less for a lower QoS band"? Net neutrality has nothing to say about an ISP that wants to offer both 10Mbps and 100Mbps plans, or business-class plans that offer an SLA for a higher price than ordinary residential plans.

This hypothetical company wants to drop packets from lower tier customers first, when congested, and oversubscribe their fiber to reduce costs.

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

#244
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Net neutrality refers to packet shaping by source and destination . QoS refers to packet shaping by type of content .

I don't fully agree with those definitions. ISPs need to be prohibited from preferring HTTP and TCP over other protocols. They should be permitted to perform only the kinds of QoS that will treat two traffic flows with the same data rate and packet sizes equally even if they are using different protocols and port numbers. Overt discrimination rules that specify preferences for certain endpoints or certain types of tr…

ISPs need to be prohibited from preferring HTTP and TCP over other protocols

If anything, it would be the reverse.. HTTP and TCP (which doesn't care if its packets arrive out of order) getting deprioritized in the face of streaming content (which does). That kind of blows your restriction away. QoS under heavy load is the difference between everybody getting to use their apps and one or two people getting to use their apps.

Thing is, there's no successful ISP in the world that has enough capacity to service maximum bandwidth from all of their customers at the same time. There's always going to be a fudge factor worked in, and QoS to help out when that goes wrong.

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

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$30,000 seems like a lot unless you live in a very rural area. Where I live in Michigan it's $1,410 for a hookup within 500 feet of a road. Why is it so expensive where you are? Also, fiber would probably be pretty cheap once the infrastructure was already in place. A single phase overhead power line is often provided for free to new homes and underground service runs about $3.50/foot so I imagine fiber would be simi…

Where in Michigan? Here's the fee schedule in my county: http://www.aacounty.org/departments/inspections-and-permits/... . Fairfax County, where my parents live is similarly expensive: about $25,000 for a smallish house.

Midland county. Here's a similar document for an area near me; the city doesn't seem to have a fee schedule online anywhere.

http://www.lincoln-twp.org/forms%20policies/New%20Water%20Co...

$2,520 is what they charge for water; not sure what it is for wastewater - they may not have a public sewer system - but it's about $3,500 where I live. It used to be $150 (seriously, not a typo) and people got really upset when they raised it by a few thousand dollars all at once a few years ago.

I guess it's not a very densely-populated area and the state is surrounded by water so that might explain why it's so cheap.

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

#246
post #148
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The person you’re referring to has three comments in total, and of their submissions only ONE has anything to do with FCC. You’re attacking person, not argument, and rather ineffectively. EDIT: Okay, you meant someone else. Still, calling someone with almost 10 year active account a shill requires more evidence than this. Stick to the facts.

I think you are mistaken it says created: 43 days ago

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

#247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean "charge less for a lower QoS band"? Net neutrality has nothing to say about an ISP that wants to offer both 10Mbps and 100Mbps plans, or business-class plans that offer an SLA for a higher price than ordinary residential plans.

This hypothetical company wants to drop packets from lower tier customers first, when congested, and oversubscribe their fiber to reduce costs.

That sounds like something that could be badly implemented, but there's nothing unreasonable about the idea in general. Oversubscribed services are par for the course. If your neighborhood's uplink is saturated during a period of heavy usage, do you really expect each customer to get 1/N share of the bandwidth, or do you expect the customers paying for the 100Mb plan to get up to 5 times more bandwidth than the customers paying for the 20Mb plan? Either way, it's obviously not suffering from the kind of unfairness that gives preference to certain usage patterns over others, and it doesn't involve any extorting of upstream content providers or other form of double-charging for services.

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

#250
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, I'm painting a picture to illustrate the point. But reductio ad absurdum can be a useful way to explore the problem. I don't think there's anything in my scenario that's beyond the pale. We could get there by degrees in an aggressively unfettered market.

>We could get there by degrees in an aggressively unfettered market. Don't you mean the heavily regulated market we have now that prevents new ISPs from easily servicing customers? The entire reason ISPs can behave like this is because customers realistically have no alternatives. Look at how Comcast behaved in markets where Google Fiber showed up. They often increased bandwidth and reduced prices effective immediate…

Your "unfettered market" would still leave incumbents with the massive advantages conferred by their natural monopoly; it just lessens the artificial barriers to competition on top of that. Your "unfettered market" would not be a healthy competitive market. Government intervention akin to local loop unbundling would be necessary to create a freely competitive market where one will not naturally develop.
Post reply on HN