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One Step Closer to a Closed Internet

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Re: One Step Closer to a Closed Internet

#131

Post by BinaryIdiot »

Jtsummers wrote: post #91
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> None. DoD doesn't require Firefox, Chrome, or IE. But the base install is typically IE only with the option to install Firefox or Chrome upon request. Hmm, maybe depends on where you are in the crazy large DoD system. Our company was told the DNI office passed down requirements to use specific versions of Firefox and Firefox only for security purposes but IE was typically installed for when you were forced to use i…

This is an example of the DoD's insane bureaucracy. I can absolutely see this being the requirement or recommendation passed on to contractors. But the USAF, in building their default images, uses IE only. Like I said, other browsers can be installed on request.

Ah fair enough that's probably true. Though at the time we were told it would be considered a security violation if anything but Firefox version X.XX was used for govies or contractors. But who knows.

I do not miss the insane amount of bureaucracy :)

Re: One Step Closer to a Closed Internet

#132

Post by orthecreedence »

weberc2 wrote: post #101
orthecreedence wrote: post #4

I want to say this first: I love net neutrality and I support it 100%. That said, I think this battle will go on forever until either - We have a decentralized network anybody can plug into without ISPs (mesh net) or - Cities build their own fiber infrastructure (or 4G towers for rural areas) and rent it out to companies. Cable/DSL become a thing of the past, and you connect via radio/public wifi/direct fiber. This b…

> Until then, let's all just agree the net neutrality is a common-good consumer protection, and there's absolutely no reason, at all, to get rid of it until we either have a viable marketplace or we don't need ISPs.. On the other hand, we likely won't ever get either until it becomes sufficiently inconvenient for a huge swath of the first world. Necessity being the mother of invention and whatnot. Personally, I would…

> I can live with hypothetically throttled Netflix

Sure, Netflix, boohoo.

But what about when Comcast blocks savenetneutrality.org? This throttling argument comes up a lot, but it's just the first small step in a logical progression that allows big corporations to censor anything they don't like.

Think, the private version of the Great Firewall of China. But it's ok, because the free market did it, right?

I see your point: things most likely won't change until they get really bad for a good number of people. However, things can get much much worse without John Q Public giving much of a shit. That's why NN is really important now and we can't just let things devolve in the hopes it will spur some bigger shift.

Re: One Step Closer to a Closed Internet

#133

Post by thomastjeffery »

orthecreedence wrote: post #75
rocky1138 wrote: post #73

Do the people in the USA elect the leader of the FCC? If so, can't they elect someone better? If not, why not?

The FCC is "ruled" by five people: two democrats, two republicans, and a chair. The president appoints the chair of the FCC and at any given point, there have to be at least two members of each of the two political parties on the FCC. The the position(s) in the FCC are not elected, except indirectly by who you vote for as president. (Please someone correct me if I'm wrong).

> each of the two political parties

What about all the other parties? Independents?

Edit: cnnsucks explained it more clearly:

> The commission may not have more than 3 members from the same political party.

Re: One Step Closer to a Closed Internet

#134

Post by amq »

durandal1 wrote: post #12
orthecreedence wrote: post #4

I want to say this first: I love net neutrality and I support it 100%. That said, I think this battle will go on forever until either - We have a decentralized network anybody can plug into without ISPs (mesh net) or - Cities build their own fiber infrastructure (or 4G towers for rural areas) and rent it out to companies. Cable/DSL become a thing of the past, and you connect via radio/public wifi/direct fiber. This b…

My Stockholm apartment had multiple ISPs competing for service over fiber laid down by a state-owned company. In 2007 this meant symmetric 100mbit for about $30/month.

Hard to believe, but in a certain Eastern European country, ISPs are competing to lay fiber to private houses, for about $10/month. That's a symmetric 100mbit to Frankfurt.

Re: One Step Closer to a Closed Internet

#135

Post by loup-vaillant »

lilei wrote: post #109
nulagrithom wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I'm at in the US, we have a Public Utility District that's "owned" by the city (top position is an elected position too). They've run fiber everywhere and leased it to local ISPs. I can get gigabit for under $90/mo. Lowest tier is 100x10 for under $50. One of our local ISPs even built a real nice wireless mesh network with a fiber "backbone". You can get low-latency 35x2 service way up in the hills of nowhere.…

> It's amazing what happens when Internet is treated like a utility. It's not really like a utility though. A utility usually has a low fee and charge per use. Not that I encourage data or bandwidth limits, but there's a difference. Consider you could either get gigabit for $90 or you could get a fixed speed or data (say 10 mbit or 100gb) for $30 but full speed access to Netflix, YouTube, Windows Update etc. is inclu…

First, bandwidth is limited. It's whatever download and upload you sign for.

Second, there is no such thin as "full speed access to Netflix" or whatever. It's limited by your own bandwidth at least.

Third, when you pay for an internet access, you pay for a public IP and associated bandwidth, so you can send and receive as much IP packet as your bandwidth will allow you, no matter the provenance or destination.

In practical terms, your ISP will be connected to other operators (either other ISPs, or transport/backbone operators), with peering agreements (data flows freely in both directions at no charge), or pricing schemes where the sender pays the receiver for the privilege of having the data transmitted. What your ISP will not have is a direct connection to each and every service out there. They don't have to update their infrastructure every time a new web site comes up. As such, access to Netflix, Youtube, or http://loup-vaillant.fr are not separate services.

ISPs that treat access to particular web sites as separate services are just plain lying. The real "separate service", for which they actually spend money, is the throttling/filtering/censoring infrastructure they have to put in place to charge different web sites differently. Text book malicious features, not unlike DRM.

A final note about bandwidth: operators tend to bill themselves to the 95th percentile of instantaneous bandwidth spend in the last month. Spikes cost as much as a flood. Because in practice, what matters is how much bandwidth you expect the other operator to sustain —because it determines how much they need to spend on infrastructure. Because of this, is it perfectly legitimate for a user to max out her bandwidth, continuously throughout the month. ISPs should calibrate their network, and bill, accordingly.

Re: One Step Closer to a Closed Internet

#136

Post by kpil »

rayiner wrote: post #100
VLM wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same political and market forces have an equally interesting effect on your cost of medical care and lifespan.

To the extent you're implying that the public/private distinction is relevant, I'm not sure I agree. Our infrastructure (trains, subways, roads) is also generally inferior even though its mostly publicly owned and operated. It costs our public entities five times as much to build a mile of subway as it costs Spain's public entities. We're just bad at doing things.

Edit: I ranted about publicly operated trains in Sweden on a post regarding US. Sorry for that. Since I spent 10 minutes ranting on the subject, I will keep the rest of the rant...

The only subway in Sweden that I am aware of is operated by some company from Hong Kong. Or was that last week and we have now someone else?

The "free market" muppets have had free reins for 30 years, and they are still claiming that an invisible hand will turn everything great.

In reality, the invisible hand seems to be picking cookies out of our jar filled with tax money, while trains are falling apart, women are getting unnecessary gynecological surgeries since doctors get a bonus out of the publicly funded invoice (one even inexplicably got sterilized against her will), and some entrepreneurs in the refugee-industry are making millions by keeping refugees in sub par barracks for 200 USD per day.

Many schools are privatized, and the only reason that is not a regarded as total disaster is that it they are a nice break from the schools run by the local municipalities.

(To be fair, a lot of the privately operated hospitals seems to be doing a great job and delivers good services.)

There is nothing inherently wrong with privately operated schools, hospitals, etc, but when turning away from a system where it was primarily seen as an obligation to take care of the ill and poor, and educate our children, it's very hard to set the economic incentives correctly.

Even if the system and the incentives are not gamed, the effects are often not what you want on the macro level, as each transaction is optimized on the micro level.

Re: One Step Closer to a Closed Internet

#137

Post by orthecreedence »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #133
orthecreedence wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FCC is "ruled" by five people: two democrats, two republicans, and a chair. The president appoints the chair of the FCC and at any given point, there have to be at least two members of each of the two political parties on the FCC. The the position(s) in the FCC are not elected, except indirectly by who you vote for as president. (Please someone correct me if I'm wrong).

> each of the two political parties What about all the other parties? Independents? Edit: cnnsucks explained it more clearly: > The commission may not have more than 3 members from the same political party.

Thanks, that makes sense.

Re: One Step Closer to a Closed Internet

#138

Post by orthecreedence »

Jtsummers wrote: post #61
orthecreedence wrote: post #4

I want to say this first: I love net neutrality and I support it 100%. That said, I think this battle will go on forever until either - We have a decentralized network anybody can plug into without ISPs (mesh net) or - Cities build their own fiber infrastructure (or 4G towers for rural areas) and rent it out to companies. Cable/DSL become a thing of the past, and you connect via radio/public wifi/direct fiber. This b…

A third option: Standard net, but everything end-to-end encrypted including what protocol is being used. If this information can't be discerned (easily), then priority cannot be given or taken away for any given data, only for certain data sources/destinations. If two computers (could be mobile devices, PC, server, doesn't matter) have an encrypted channel connecting them then anything could be transmitted across tha…

If the destination is encrypted, how does the ISP know where to send the packets? You could use some form of garlic/onion routing (Tor/i2p/etc) but that's really slow generally, and there's a decent chance the ISP at the end of the chain will be in the US anyway (and can still throttle).

Re: One Step Closer to a Closed Internet

#139

Post by rayiner »

kpil wrote: post #136
rayiner wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the extent you're implying that the public/private distinction is relevant, I'm not sure I agree. Our infrastructure (trains, subways, roads) is also generally inferior even though its mostly publicly owned and operated. It costs our public entities five times as much to build a mile of subway as it costs Spain's public entities. We're just bad at doing things.

Edit: I ranted about publicly operated trains in Sweden on a post regarding US . Sorry for that. Since I spent 10 minutes ranting on the subject, I will keep the rest of the rant... The only subway in Sweden that I am aware of is operated by some company from Hong Kong. Or was that last week and we have now someone else? The "free market" muppets have had free reins for 30 years, and they are still claiming that an i…

I mean subways and trains in the US are publicly owned and operated.

Re: One Step Closer to a Closed Internet

#140

Post by kpil »

nulagrithom wrote: post #44
mulletbum wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the country and have this right now. 100mb for $50 or 1000mb for $100.

Where I'm at in the US, we have a Public Utility District that's "owned" by the city (top position is an elected position too). They've run fiber everywhere and leased it to local ISPs. I can get gigabit for under $90/mo. Lowest tier is 100x10 for under $50. One of our local ISPs even built a real nice wireless mesh network with a fiber "backbone". You can get low-latency 35x2 service way up in the hills of nowhere.…

I'm connected to one of those municipal networks in Sweden, and after paying about 1000 USD for getting the fiber laid to my house, I now pay $28/month for 100/100 mbit.

10 mbit costs $12, and 500/500 mbit costs $80, which is the fastest option. I don't really know what I would do with 500 mbit except host a lot of servers in my garage and use the heat for heating the house.

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