61–70 of 281 posts
Net neutrality within the US is likely to affect the content available to people around the world, so it's reasonable for them to have an opinion. How should foreign nationals legally advocate for their positions in such a debate?
Thank you for doing this AMA, for your investigation, and for your well spoken remarks at yesterday's press conference.
Will you also pursue whether the FCC legitimately experienced a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack?
Personally, I think that one of these two scenarios is likely:
1. The signs of the reported DDoS are natural artifacts of heavy traffic load on the FCC's web application. Large groups may have submitted through mechanisms unintended by the FCC, and users may have created malformed requests. When large groups of people use your system, it can be in ways you didn't anticipate when the system was designed. If this is the case, the FCC falsely claimed there was a DDoS -- this could be due to incompetence (poorly written application) or malevolence (willfully ignoring authentic human input that overwhelmingly supported net neutrality). Either of these outcomes are contrary to the FCCs mission.
2. There was legitimate DDoS activity. In this case, we must find out who committed this DDoS. Furthermore, we need to analyze whether there is any correlation between the faked identities and the DDoS activity. For example, let's say there is a clever ISP against net neutrality. They conduct this DDoS against the FCCs commenting system to drown out the voices of real US citizens. However, they know the DDoS might be analyzed, so they conduct the DDoS with pro net neutrality comments -- the content of the comments doesn't matter to them, so much as the ability to point the finger elsewhere while knowingly suppressing authentic comments. If there is extreme overlap between IP addresses used for such a scheme and other anti net neutrality comments, the true intention is revealed. Again, this is just an example. For your investigation, you would likely be interested in this angle in order to rule out whether the entity that conducted the DDoS was also responsible for the massive case of identity theft you are pursuing.
Either way, if the state of New York could compel the FCC to release anonymized logs, our entire country would benefit.
Thank you! Remain steadfast.
For those of us who have used the internet 1989 to present, and who are dubious anytime we are told government is taking broad sweeping actions to "protect" us. Please explain the need for this regulation to exist. 1. Please define "network neutrality" - if possible do so without using hand-waving nonsense words, but technical definitions. What strictly defines a "neutrality infraction"? 2. If the internet existed fo…
Personally, I think our bits and bytes should be treated as our other methods of private communication are (theoretically, anyway)--allowed to pass back and forth between two parties, unimpeded, without having been tampered with or spied upon. But that requires regulation.
For those of us who have used the internet 1989 to present, and who are dubious anytime we are told government is taking broad sweeping actions to "protect" us. Please explain the need for this regulation to exist. 1. Please define "network neutrality" - if possible do so without using hand-waving nonsense words, but technical definitions. What strictly defines a "neutrality infraction"? 2. If the internet existed fo…
My understanding is that the technical implementation of net neutrality is a ban of traffic policing (dropping prior to complete congestion to signal senders to slow down) for purposes other than "reasonable network management" So Comcast shaping Netflix when Cogent won't pay their share to upgrade their peering point is probably still legal, but they would probably have to go to court to prove that it was "reasonabl…
Thanks for the points. A few further thoughts.
1. There are two sides to every connection. Couldn't Netflix itself traffic shape?
2. Can I pay for QoS from an ISP for elevated service (for instance say I also have VOIP service for my office and want low-latency to trunk)? Doesn't my elevated status neccessitate shaping of others packets (for mine to arrive with lowest latency, others must be delayed)?
3. Lastly, given that all communications (everything from postal mail, to TV, cellphone, etc) relies on oversubscription, QoS traffic shaping is baked into the pie, there is no network access without shaping. Literally every single packet is shaped constantly along the way. Given this fact, QoS is the not optional. It is in fact the entire business process. Thereby, how could an ISP ever be shown to not be engaging in "reasonable network management"?
NOTE: I'm asking these questions somewhat rhetorically. My point always when NN discussions arise is to try to engage in actual technical discussion about the matter for the purposes of illustrating to others that its largely an undefined, impossible to enforce concept. In fact, the idea is impossible. To my repeated disappointment, few people - even on technical places like HN - bother to think about the technical aspects. To me this shows that NN is like a mind virus. Its the 2015 version of "won't someone think of the children" from the 80's. It is a crafty bit of wordsmith that makes it impossible for people not to support. Who could be for a "non-neutral" net? All of this is crafted for the politicians benefit, since they gain the power (and their monopoly lobbyist).
How can you enforce Net Neutrality today? I'm an ATT & Comcast user. It's clear to me that these companies are already throttling my service based on which websites I visit, which I understand is illegal. I have deduced this by switching to a VPN whenever a website does not immediately come online. In over a hundred trials in the last two years I have confirmed that over 80% of the time a website will immediately appear once it is masked to my phone ISP or to my home internet ISP. This is despite the increased distance the traffic must take to route through the VPN server. It seems to me Net Neutrality is a fight we are already losing because we cannot enforce it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How do these comments harm real people? When they are used to justify policies that harm real people. That question is so silly I first thought it was rhetorical.
Do you really think regulatory decisions are made based on which side gets more public comments? And that that is so obvious anyone who disagrees is silly?
For those of us who have used the internet 1989 to present, and who are dubious anytime we are told government is taking broad sweeping actions to "protect" us. Please explain the need for this regulation to exist. 1. Please define "network neutrality" - if possible do so without using hand-waving nonsense words, but technical definitions. What strictly defines a "neutrality infraction"? 2. If the internet existed fo…
1. Net neutrality is to not treat differently (to not change speed/latency/access) of a packet depending on source, destination or content/protocol. A "neutrality infraction" is e.g. throttling some streaming services and not others, or blocking access.
Note that this is NOT the same thing as prioritizing packets depending on behavior (amount and size to same destination, etc) and other parameters (like DSCP); this is called Quality of Service (QoS), which can be done without violating Net Neutrality.
2. There has been some of those "not neutral" behaviors (we need a word to define this!) in the last 10-15 years, but much more in the last few, as economies change and ISPs realize they can be nasty. The regulation was needed because these violations started to occur more. You only hear the cases of the US, but you don't hear of other countries. (e.g. Youtube and Movistar/Imagenio in Spain)
3. The problem of ISP monopolies is a different issue, and Net Neutrality doesn't change it a bit. If anything it helps. Since Net Neutrality is the _default_ state of computer networks, you wouldn't need to do anything special to comply. But if other companies are playing nasty, new ISPs would probably be forced to do a similar thing, as most people would want the cheap/free "internet".
4. That's the broken window fallacy. Let's create a problem so there can be more companies offering a solution. Also it wouldn't guarantee that there is at least one ISP everywhere offering unrestricted internet access at a reasonable price, which would stifle innovation and free market in web services.
edit:
Source in English about Telefonica Movistar throttling https://www.ft.com/content/f07c61d4-ea24-11e2-913c-00144feab... (I can't find much but I did suffer the problem and could confirm with a VPN)
Nice table I've just found (not about NN in general, but rather about the bittorrent protocol) https://wiki.vuze.com/w/Bad_ISPs
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you really think regulatory decisions are made based on which side gets more public comments? And that that is so obvious anyone who disagrees is silly?
Regulatory decisions are supposed to be made with public input. We're all aware that the agencies often ignore input. That doesn't mean it's ok to make fake input. The FCC will use these fake comments to create the illusion that the public has given them a mandate. That's unacceptable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you really think regulatory decisions are made based on which side gets more public comments? And that that is so obvious anyone who disagrees is silly?
Regulatory decisions are supposed to be made with public input. We're all aware that the agencies often ignore input. That doesn't mean it's ok to make fake input. The FCC will use these fake comments to create the illusion that the public has given them a mandate. That's unacceptable.