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Keep the Internet Open

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: Keep the Internet Open

#351

Post by dsharlet »

rdl wrote: post #191
rybosome wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...I'm even more unhappy about the idea of government bureaucrats dictating network engineering standards to carriers and ISPs. Why? Government bureaucrats dictate aviation engineering standards to airplane manufacturers, automobile engineering standards to car manufacturers, radio engineering standards to electronics manufacturers, and so on. These are generally good things: they ensure that citizens can have a re…

Your examples are all safety (including public safety), or shared-resources (radio spectrum). Fiber I lay in the ground isn't a shared resource, and no one's safety is impaired by prioritizing my on-network traffic over off-network traffic. A more direct analogy is government regulation of something like how food tastes or how entertaining TV shows are. There's some justification for regulating carriers who have an e…

> Fiber I lay in the ground isn't a shared resource

I disagree, and you are trivializing serious issues that lead to this regulation.

There's a good reason there's a lot of regulation in this space: people don't like it when companies tear up their street (or yard or driveway) to install utilities, and complain to their local elected officials when it happens. Democracy really works at this scale. For every person that is willing to have their street torn up for a second (or 10th) time to install a competing ISP's infrastructure, there are 49 people that don't understand and will keep paying comcast, and 50 people that don't care at all, but they sure as hell care about backhoes and construction workers in their yard.

Honestly, the local officials preventing competing ISPs from operating aren't even wrong, even if you view it as short sighted to represent their constituencies accurately. It's monstrously inefficient and stupid to lay competing physical networks.

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#352

Post by dlubarov »

blhack wrote: post #234
reggieband wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a closer analogy would be: Should the power company be able to offer you a discount based on the brand of appliance you use. e.g. If you had a GE fridge in your house should you get a discount on your power usage (all other things being equal). So if you have a GE fridge you pay $0.10 per kilowatt, but a Samsung fridge will cost you $0.15 From my perspective, along the last mile a bit is a bit. The fact that…

I really want the electricity analogy to be good, but the reality is that it isn't. A bit is not a bit. Some bits actually are cheaper to deliver than others.

The major ISPs don't pay much for transit though. E.g. Comcast is is not tier 1, but with their peering arrangements they pay for less than 1 percent of their traffic.

The notorious Comcast/Netflix case was certainly not motivated by transit costs, since Netflix offers video content free to any ISP - see https://openconnect.netflix.com/

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#353

Post by ctack »

It's a terrific plea from Sam. He speaks for Ycombinator and by proxy, independant hackers like myself. But there is just so much peace of mind in it for the big boys.

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#354

Post by ctack »

mikx007 wrote: post #341
sama wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am happy to help, and honestly if I had more time right now I'd take this on directly--right now is an unusually busy time for me. I agree with you it's critical to Silicon Valley.

I propose to organize and for 1 week limit bandwidth to all of our websites to 56k to FCC IP block. I believe it will send much stronger message than any other form of protests. Google, wikipedia, netflix, amazon, facebook, linkedin and everyone else join and show everyone where you stand.

I love this idea, but where do they all stand? Surely someone is paying the lobbyists - or is it only internet providers?

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#355

Post by MarkSummer »

guelo wrote: post #242
bifrost wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstand - NN is new, the internet worked fine on its own prior to it. NN is not a colloquial "neutrality" agreement, its a "lets force carriers to do things because we don't understand how it works". I've worked on the carrier side, on the last mile side and on the consumer side and I'm not a fan of most of the proposed legislation. We need to prevent anticompetitive practices, but thats about it.

I've worked in big ISPs, I know exactly how it works, and it's never to the benefit of the customers. Especially when there's zero competitive pressure.

Out of curiosity (by someone who doesn't know exactly how it works), is there no way for society to go completely off-grid with respect to ISPs, like power customers do with solar panels? Couldn't we then people build an inexpensive wireless black box server/partial cache nodes that everybody owns (stronger ones or bridges for rural users), and that communicate as a smart distributive network - physically detached from the existing GIG and ISPs?

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#356

Post by MarkSummer »

azundo wrote: post #238

We see the consequences of a non-open Internet every day where we work in Uganda. It is common there for people to have "social bundles" that only work for Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, etc. Our users believe they have Internet access but don't understand why data from our app is not syncing when Facebook is working. It's a large barrier for us and adds a huge moat for the incumbents. We're considering more integratio…

> We see the consequences of a non-open Internet every day where we work in Uganda. It is common there for people to have "social bundles" that only work for Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, etc.

This is an important perspective. Recommend sharing this insight with the article author to consider appending to their original article.

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#357

Post by lsseckman »

azundo wrote: post #238

We see the consequences of a non-open Internet every day where we work in Uganda. It is common there for people to have "social bundles" that only work for Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, etc. Our users believe they have Internet access but don't understand why data from our app is not syncing when Facebook is working. It's a large barrier for us and adds a huge moat for the incumbents. We're considering more integratio…

This is a really good example of the pitfalls here. All the way down to the micro-level decision influences.

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#358

Post by inapis »

rdl wrote: post #58

While I like the Internet being open, I don't like "net neutrality" extremism. 1) While I dislike monopoly carrier antics, I'm even more unhappy about the idea of government bureaucrats dictating network engineering standards to carriers and ISPs. If you build a network with caches/content servers close to users, and expensive backhaul back to your network core, you can offer essentially unlimited traffic to users hi…

1. Till an extent. Free markets are not always in the interest of consumers.

3. Terrible idea. No one wants FB to be the gatekeeper. And no its not the only way. Many state govts (especially Telangana) are rolling out programs to provide data access to poor people. Telangana in particular is laying out the fiber optic network statewide wherever the ground is being dug up for more critical infrastructure projects like water and gas.

Your point stand only when the markets are ideal and utopian. Unfortunately it can only happen when the companies are not beholden to shareholder interests.

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#359

Post by yulaow »

dsr_ wrote: post #100
guelo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's right. It will be a major shift of power from Google/Facebook/Amazon to the ISPs. Comcast could charge Google or Facebook extortionate prices to keep their websites fast. Theoretically there would be nothing stopping Comcast from completely blocking a website. Cable vs TV channel negotiations periodically end up with blackouts for the channels.

Google and Facebook now run networks larger than most major ISPs -- among the largest on the planet. Demand for Youtube and FB are so high and ubiquitous that pretty much any ISP will immediately cave in. Comcast is the most disliked company in the USA. Guess what happens when G runs a banner under each search or Youtube video mentioning that performance is bad because Comcast is blocking things, here's Brian Roberts…

If only ISP didn't work that hard to create artificial monopolies in the most part of their net.

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#360

Post by rbanffy »

marknutter wrote: post #304
rbanffy wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can always make the government take care of what is becoming increasingly fundamental infrastructure. But then you'll be called a communist.

And rightfully so, since taking care of it would mean the Ministry of Communications has deemed the current available bandwidth sufficient for serving the government's approved content (propaganda), thus eliminating the need for improved infrastructure. People should be in the fields growing food for their comrades anyways, not sitting on the internet.

How are the Ministries of Firefighting, of Police and of Roads going?
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