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GOP net neutrality bill would allow paid fast lanes and preempt state laws

arstechnica.com

101–110 of 156 posts

Re: GOP net neutrality bill would allow paid fast lanes and preempt state laws

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, they are evil in different ways, with money at the root of both sides. We've all seen how they (Dems) handled the primaries last year. If what they did doesn't scream fraud to you, what will?

Whataboutism is fun.

So, it wasn't fraud then? Disclaimer: I am not registered with any political party. I find their political machines to be in bad taste.

The GP is probably right, they would probably have impeached Clinton already if she had Russian ties like Trump and his cronies appear to have. And if the Dems controlled the congress, he would probably be gone already also. Seems like some equivalence there...I'm not sure how that is a whataboutism when I am pointing out that neither party is perfect...

Re: GOP net neutrality bill would allow paid fast lanes and preempt state laws

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Direct peering increases the capacity of the ISP's "edge" but only for the services available on the peer. Co-location puts those services on the internal side of the bottleneck, again increasing effective capacity, but only for the services that are co-located in the ISPs datacenters. Almost all major providers (google, akamai, netflix, facebook) offer some form of co-locatable server however, those cost money to…

you are over-simplifying. If we want to be pedantic, and assume that the two edge routers are just switches and we would use a consumer level 10gbps port and that the switchers are already in the same rack in the same facility and that that rack in that facility has direct access to our distribution PoP and that there are no firewall rules that need to be in place on that port (they can be in the DMZ sure) and that w…

You're just listing things that add small linear costs that are rounding errors in a ballpark estimate like this, and fixed costs that don't add anything because they're the same for two ports as twenty.

Do the actual math. Show me something with an aggregate cost of more than, say, $1/month/customer.

Especially using realistic numbers rather than the "10Gbps port for a hundred 100Mbps customers" ones I gave to make a point.

Re: GOP net neutrality bill would allow paid fast lanes and preempt state laws

#103
post #5
post #2

If it allows paid fast lanes, then clearly it allows degradation.

Priorization and throtting aren’t exactly the same. Throttling implies rate limiting even if there is surplus bandwidth. Prioritization would only occur when bandwidth was limited. Think of it as QoS based on a list of sites provided by the ISP.

"We don't have the factory capacities at the moment, therefore your car is missing the back seat" is no better an excuse than "It's cheaper for us to leave out some parts, therefore your car is missing the back seat".

There is no such thing as "surplus bandwidth". How much bandwidth there is is as much the decision of the ISP as what gets prioritized or throttled. If you make it illegal to throttle below available bandwidth, they will simply reduce available bandwidth (or even simpler, fail to increase available bandwidth).

If there is more than one way to achieve the exact same result at exactly the same cost, it's completely pointless to make one of the ways illegal.

Re: GOP net neutrality bill would allow paid fast lanes and preempt state laws

#104
post #13

It's funny how they always vehemently advocate for states rights unless these states rights get in the way of their agenda.

Just because the Republican party is traditionally associated with states' rights doesn't mean they should always have to give precedence to states. The sway of ideologies should be balanced with a willingness to judge issues on their own merit. Allowing states to enact their own regulations in this case would be incredibly burdensome to internet businesses looking to operate in multiple states (so all of them), ther…

> incredibly burdensome to internet businesses looking to operate in multiple states (so all of them)

Not all of them. Just the ones that want to lay cable in that particular state. Most internet companies are only concerned with deploying physical infrastructure to a handful of data centers, and leaving the rest of the connectivity up to their ISPs. ISPs providing major backbone links would be subject to the hassle of different state regulations, but ISPs providing last-mile service only need to care about the laws of the states their particular customers reside in.

Re: GOP net neutrality bill would allow paid fast lanes and preempt state laws

#105
post #8
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GOP didn't expect us plebs to see through that.

They're in charge. Their supporters will vote for them no matter what so long as the guns and abortion issues are untouched, because they get their news from a parallel system in which this is all presented as a good thing. They don't depend on floating voters because there aren't any.

I don't know, the polls seem to suggest that 3 out of 4 Republicans polled support net neutrality (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/12/12...). I suppose it boils down to where in the priority list this falls for the average voter.

I think you could easily give supporters in this realm, that aren't quite aware of the worst case scenarios people fear about net neutrality repeal, food for thought using news as an example. Comcast for instance owns NBC Universal. If Comcast, often the de facto Internet provider in some areas, decides to favor vertical integration in news and "prioritize their outlets"... let's just say that the news outlets NBC Universal owns tend to be exactly opposite of the "parallel news system" outlets you are talking about. :)

Re: GOP net neutrality bill would allow paid fast lanes and preempt state laws

#106
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

QoS does not stand for Quality of Service. It stands for Quantity of Service. It also seems that you believe that QoS works by magic and not by dropping packets on the floor that meet certain criteria. Those criterias are gasp protocol and destination. It is no different from you putting a rate limits your API based on the token used to authenticate a client or a route used. But hey, yes, NN is telling me I should at…

> QoS does not stand for Quality of Service. It stands for Quantity of Service. Fuck you. You aren't even trying to have a reasonable conversation, are you? You're welcome to attempt to argue that there's an unavoidable equivalence between QoS as everybody defines it and the other concept you're trying to equate it to, but you have to actually make that argument, not just declare the definition of QoS to have changed…

> You're welcome to attempt to argue that there's an unavoidable equivalence between QoS as everybody defines it and the other concept you're trying to equate it to, but you have to actually make that argument, not just declare the definition of QoS to have changed because you don't like what it means. QoS still stands for Quality of Service.

QoS being a quantity of service is a very well known term, pioneered and popularized by Dave Rand/Avi Freedman to describe that QOS establishes which packets are to be dropped on the floor first. QOS might work OK on networks with microspikes but it completely breaks on networks that are > 20% oversubscribed.

If I were made to pick between positions of Dave Rand and Avi Freedman and positions of all people supporting Net Neutrality, I would go with the first two as those people actually built networks.

> Net neutrality doesn't require you to ignore the past 20+ years of research into QoS.

This only works within a single AS. It has been demonstrated when a pair of crazy dudes built a Sprintlink on a top of ANS without ANS' knowledge.

> The technical requirements of having large, reasonably direct links between big producers and big consumers does not say anything about whether Netflix has to negotiate with Comcast and Verizon directly, or whether they can outsource those concerns to Level 3. That's purely in the domain of business shenanigans.

It does. Without that you end up with Enron.

Re: GOP net neutrality bill would allow paid fast lanes and preempt state laws

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whataboutism is fun.

So, it wasn't fraud then? Disclaimer: I am not registered with any political party. I find their political machines to be in bad taste. The GP is probably right, they would probably have impeached Clinton already if she had Russian ties like Trump and his cronies appear to have. And if the Dems controlled the congress, he would probably be gone already also. Seems like some equivalence there...I'm not sure how that i…

I'm not saying it wasn't fraud. I'm saying that the argument has no place here when we're talking about a GOP-lead attempt to effectively destroy the internet as we know it. Any attempt to shift the debate towards 'both parties are bad' is the definition of Whataboutism and an attempt to avoid the actual topic at hand.

Re: GOP net neutrality bill would allow paid fast lanes and preempt state laws

#108
post #7
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Priorization and throtting aren’t exactly the same. Throttling implies rate limiting even if there is surplus bandwidth. Prioritization would only occur when bandwidth was limited. Think of it as QoS based on a list of sites provided by the ISP.

But throttling is really hard to prove. They can always downsize some hardware to "prioritize" and "retarget their budget", but effectively they just throttle. Basically they can do whatever they want with the proper wording now.

Sabotaging their network just to throttle just doesn't make sense. Nobody is going to pay for a white-list only internet. That is fear mongering by the pro-NN side.

Re: GOP net neutrality bill would allow paid fast lanes and preempt state laws

#109
post #50

From now, until the day I die, I will never vote or donate to the republican party again. This last year was the straw that broke the camel's back. This isn't the party of small businesses and tax cuts any more. This bill is a handout to large ISPs at the expense of the economy, and the tax bill last night raises my taxes so people making 100k+ more than me can see a tax cut. I'm done with them.

Good thing you will likely be districted in a way that prevents your vote from mattering for the rest of your life, and your donations are paltry in comparison to corporate ones.

Re: GOP net neutrality bill would allow paid fast lanes and preempt state laws

#110
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But throttling is really hard to prove. They can always downsize some hardware to "prioritize" and "retarget their budget", but effectively they just throttle. Basically they can do whatever they want with the proper wording now.

Sabotaging their network just to throttle just doesn't make sense. Nobody is going to pay for a white-list only internet. That is fear mongering by the pro-NN side.

...except for it already happening in other countries without protections.
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