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

arstechnica.com

121–130 of 156 posts

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

#121

> and prohibit state governments from enacting their own net neutrality laws. So much for "States' rights", huh? Fucking hypocrites. A man is known by the company he keeps, as the old adage goes. Anyone who supports Republicans in any shape and form is also a fucking hypocrite and a liar.

Republicans broke "State's rights" a long time ago when they abolished slavery.

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

#122
post #117

In regards to preempting state laws, did Congress forget about the 10th Amendment? I know they tend to skirt around it in law school according to my colleagues who are all attorneys.

Regulating Internet Service Providers ranks pretty low on the list of ways in which the Commerce Clause has been stretched.

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

#123
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.

> Nobody is going to pay for a white-list only internet. That is fear mongering by the pro-NN side.

White-list only after the first few gigabytes is already happening. It's called zero-rating.

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

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And neither am I, but I could see how the paid prioritization may be considered a "specialized" service. I am leaning towards reading it as double-speak.

But even if it does end up being a paid service, the FCC still, potentially, has the power to determine that it either A) "offered or provided in ways that threaten the meaningful availability of broadband internet access service", or B) has "been devised or promoted in a manner designed to evade the purposes of this section" So, the devil is in the details, and the FCC seems to have the power to write those details,…

> the devil is in the details, and the FCC seems to have the power to write those details

The bill explicitly prohibits the FCC from writing rules fleshing out the details, and restricts the FCC to adjudicating specific cases (such adjudications are subject individually to review by the courts, so inasmuch as someone is empowered to define general standards, it's the course through case law, not the FCC, whose adjudications do not create binding precedent.)

The FCC is that of essentially a trial court, not a rulemakers, under this bill.

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

#125

Can someone explain to me how it's evil for them to charge more money for a "bigger pipe"? Their networks can only service so much traffic; not sure why supply and demand are seen as evil in this case.

Should the power company charge you more based on what appliances you plug in at home, block appliances that it doesn't like, or slow down power to appliances it doesn't like on a whim?

That's basically what the ISPs want to do.

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

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was not attempting to avoid the topic at hand, as evidenced by my other comment ITT discussing the actual text of the bill. I'm sorry it came across that way. In my attempt to avoid partisanship I usually end up denouncing both "sides", as I think the money in the back room is what decides the law of the land, and which party happens to accept it for a given issue.

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

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Do the actual math. You first. You made a claim which was woefully inaccurate, I called you out in an admittedly childish way and now the burden of proving you wrong is on me? Here is my ballpark, Both sides will want redundant fiber connections between two edge routers at 10gbps. SFP+ 10g from cisco is ~60 bucks. We need at least 4 (2 on each side), plus a reserve of 4 for faster recovery from failure. In addition…

The ISP doesn't have costs on each side, the other side is the peer's equipment. And you're just intentionally setting money on fire. You can get more than 16 ports into five rack units, which would result in less amortization on the chassis and less colo per port. And 5U worth of colo is not $1000/month almost anywhere, but that was >75% of your total cost.

Which is still using the numbers where equipment only lasts two years and you're expecting 100% continuous usage from all customers. And even using all these ridiculous numbers it's still only $3.31/month per customer. If we adopted a 10:1 oversubscription rate (which is still conservative) it would be $0.33/month even with you setting money on fire, having the ISP pay for both sides, and using full double redundancy rather than some kind of N+1 or N+M.

Peering is just not a major cost for ISPs.

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

#128
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.

It's the party of “The party of small businesses”™ not the party of small businesses. It's been a trademark in the same way McDonalds uses "Grade A"™ beef.

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

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do the actual math. You first. You made a claim which was woefully inaccurate, I called you out in an admittedly childish way and now the burden of proving you wrong is on me? Here is my ballpark, Both sides will want redundant fiber connections between two edge routers at 10gbps. SFP+ 10g from cisco is ~60 bucks. We need at least 4 (2 on each side), plus a reserve of 4 for faster recovery from failure. In addition…

The ISP doesn't have costs on each side, the other side is the peer's equipment. And you're just intentionally setting money on fire. You can get more than 16 ports into five rack units, which would result in less amortization on the chassis and less colo per port. And 5U worth of colo is not $1000/month almost anywhere, but that was >75% of your total cost. Which is still using the numbers where equipment only lasts…

You are moving the goal posts. I put my estimate in the same context you put your estimate in (no over subscription, 100% continuous usage etc).

The ISP doesn't pay both sides, but someone pays somewhere. So, if we are talking about the "cost of peering" it doesn't serve to talk about it from only one side.

You can get more than 16 ports in the 5u unit, so rent is probably under-amortized but not by the two order of magnitudes that would make up the difference between my estimate and your original.

Peering is not a major cost for ISPs because ISPs don't have a lot of peers. As more services want direct peering relationships, there are some overhead costs which go up to manage the explosion of peering relationships.

My initial objection was that you over-simplified. I feel pretty fine resting on my argument as is. You may have the last word. I cede all my remaining time to whomever wants it.

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

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But even if it does end up being a paid service, the FCC still, potentially, has the power to determine that it either A) "offered or provided in ways that threaten the meaningful availability of broadband internet access service", or B) has "been devised or promoted in a manner designed to evade the purposes of this section" So, the devil is in the details, and the FCC seems to have the power to write those details,…

> the devil is in the details, and the FCC seems to have the power to write those details The bill explicitly prohibits the FCC from writing rules fleshing out the details, and restricts the FCC to adjudicating specific cases (such adjudications are subject individually to review by the courts, so inasmuch as someone is empowered to define general standards, it's the course through case law, not the FCC, whose adjudi…

The bill only explicitly forbids them from expanding the obligations. It does specify that the FCC has authority to adjudicate complaints. I don't know if that prevents them from publishing guidelines ahead of time, or if that will evolve from adjudication. And, as you point out, the courts will ultimately have oversight over the adjudication- so I suppose in the end, the Supreme Court may end up writing the rules... Of course, this is an early proposal, maybe the final bill will provide the FCC/courts with more guidance.

Why don't we provide feedback to our representatives and work with them on how the Bill can be improved by providing more guidance on rules and penalties?

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