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FCC forced by court to ask the public again for feedback on net neutrality

theregister.co.uk

151–160 of 169 posts

Re: FCC forced by court to ask the public again for feedback on net neutrality

#151
My opinion on this is really unpopular on HN, but I still hold it's the correct approach: Net Neutrality is a policy destined for continuous failure and we need to abandon it.

* Creating competition is the only surefire path for improvement

* State/Local governments should not subsidize players to avoid entrenching ISPs and creating local monopolies.

* In areas with entrenched ISPs, the only way to break the cycle is to bring in new players (Google Fiber successfully proved this)

The FTC should regulate ISPs, not the FCC:

* An "internet service" provides internet access unfiltered subject to a well defined classes. Anything that is not an ISP is an "information service" provides a narrow walled garden and must be advertised as such.

* ISPs should be regularly investigated for false claims on advertisement.

Re: FCC forced by court to ask the public again for feedback on net neutrality

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for that, my comment was: Just as the commission has always held it was the responsibility and duty of all users of a particular part of the spectrum from intentionally or unintentionally interfering with any other legitimate users, the commission should make rulings that require that providers of Internet service (ISPs) shall not intentionally or unintentionally interfere with any legitimate use of the networ…

> the commission should make rulings that require that providers of Internet service (ISPs) shall not intentionally or unintentionally interfere with any legitimate use of the network bandwidth between the end user and the service provider communicating with that end user. You forgot the most important part of the comment that the FCC really wants to hear from the public : why?

This is certainly a valid observation, I don't necessarily agree that "why" would be ranked as most important. And why I don't agree with that could use some elaboration.

I see governance as having two primary missions, preventing harms and preserving rights. That said, rulemaking is a policy action, it creates rules much like a programmer does, that are provided input and act based on that input.

An example of the latter that many readers here are familiar with would be sanitizing user input prior to displaying it on a web page. The programmer creates a rule like "always change the '' characters to &lt and &gt." That is a rule and the 'why' is implicit. Without making that change, a user might type in their input an arbitrary piece of javascript which when displayed becomes part of the page. So the 'rule' prevents the 'harm' while preserving the 'right' for users to put in their input, like we do here in comments all the time.

The other aspect of policies (or rules) is that making them consistent allows users or clients to not be surprised when something they think should be allowed, isn't. This is sometimes shortened to the principle of least surprise.

In this case the FCC is rule making in what is, relative to there original mission around RF spectrum, a new communication medium, the Internet.

To someone at the FCC, within the context of their past policy/rule making and their understanding of the Internet as a communication mechanism, they have the tools to understand that ruling against interference to other legitimate users of the spectrum is a core principle of their rule making in the RF world. This is particularly true in the portions of the spectrum that are unlicensed, like the 2.4GHz ISM bands.

My comment was written for a commissioner to read and to tie the 'old' with the 'new' and to perhaps dent a little bit the argument that ISPs use of "my wires, my house." Such a commissioner will already have heard hundreds, if not thousands, or arguments which stress the harm that is caused when one entity using spectrum and interfere with another using the same spectrum.

Using our WiFi examples it would be trivial for Cisco access points to recognize Ubiquity access points nearby and jam their channels. That would give Cisco users a "good" experience, and Ubiquity users a "bad" experience. And no doubt there have been examples of access points that had this sort of behavior, intentionally or not, and have been brought before the commission and adjudicated as being interferers and causing harm.

My hope is that one or more commissioners will have that context and read my comment and think, "Hmm, he has a point, it is just like spectrum and we treat people who interfere there as the 'bad guys', why should it be ok here?" And with that thought will come many, many, "Why equal access is the correct policy choice" examples from their work in the management of RF spectrum.

Re: FCC forced by court to ask the public again for feedback on net neutrality

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for that, my comment was: Just as the commission has always held it was the responsibility and duty of all users of a particular part of the spectrum from intentionally or unintentionally interfering with any other legitimate users, the commission should make rulings that require that providers of Internet service (ISPs) shall not intentionally or unintentionally interfere with any legitimate use of the networ…

Appreciate your posting the filing. Keep in mind, what you post to FCC is public with your contact info. Posting it here verbatim creates a linkage between your persona here and IRL. You may not mind, but it's something to consider.

Yeah, that train left the station a long long time ago. But it is good advice for people who haven't been on the net long enough. Another fun fact, get your HAM license and "whoops" they use your address as the station address.

Re: FCC forced by court to ask the public again for feedback on net neutrality

#154
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not independent and not net neutral.

It also doesn’t cross the ISP boundary.

It probably doesn't need to, bottleneck is usually at the customers side. (Mainly due to bad upload)

Re: FCC forced by court to ask the public again for feedback on net neutrality

#155
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fundamental problem here isn't how contracts work in the US — it's that in many places there is effectively zero competition for wired broadband services. If there were meaningful competition, then consumers would have somewhere to turn. It doesn't matter what the contract says if you don't have any meaningful alternatives for service.

> It doesn't matter what the contract says if you don't have any meaningful alternatives for service. This is conditional on resources or on the possibility of a class action. In practice I agree that this condition is almost never satisfied.

Class actions are also impossible, because of those mandatory arbitration clauses.

Re: FCC forced by court to ask the public again for feedback on net neutrality

#156
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(1 tb) / (1 (mb / s)) = 11.5740741 days Ah, I see. mbps v. MBps. Capitalization error! Also, you're arguing against the past point which is fine because I messed up the capitalization (though the point still holds, because I wasn't doing anything abnormal; it was a two person household with a game console), but not against present use-cases: 4k 24fps video for Netflix is 7GB, and 1080p 24fps video is over 3GB/hr (HD…

Even at 7GB an hour, they'd have to both be watching separately for over seven hours a day, every day. At 3GB an hour, 16 hours a day. It's not impossible, but it certainly isn't blowing through the cap quickly.

Sometimes people leave the TV on.

Re: FCC forced by court to ask the public again for feedback on net neutrality

#157
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure about that? It doesn't fit what I understand and I've talked to a friend who works for Comcast and he says the only difference is the customer support. The rep I talked to and the price I gave $156/mo does not include a static IP. That was something like $10/mo more. Sure, the firmware they tftp to my modem will be different but it's not giving me dedicated RF bandwidth on the exact same RF hardware path…

It's definitely different circuits, and you definitely get dedicated bandwidth. You won't burst anymore either (a thing you get with shared lines), but you'll get 100% of your allocated bandwidth all the time, even if you peg it out 24/7. You can do a traceroute and see the reverse-dns names of the hops you go through too. Also remember, TCP has 8Mb of overhead per 100Mb, so you'll get maximum theoretical speed of 92…

> TCP has 8Mb of overhead per 100Mb

So to reach that number, I guess you're talking about 60 bytes of headers for each 1500 byte data packet, then again for an ACK packet?

That's partly or entirely wrong in multiple ways.

First, the combined IP+TCP header is only that big for IPv6 connections.

Second, under general circumstances an ACK is only sent for every other packet, halving that bandwidth.

Third, that 100Mb is going to be for one direction, so the ACK traffic going the other way doesn't affect it at all.

Typical overhead is generally 3%, not 8%.

Re: FCC forced by court to ask the public again for feedback on net neutrality

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even at 7GB an hour, they'd have to both be watching separately for over seven hours a day, every day. At 3GB an hour, 16 hours a day. It's not impossible, but it certainly isn't blowing through the cap quickly.

Sometimes people leave the TV on.

For seven hours every day? Once again, I'm not saying it's impossible, just that it is in fact quite extreme for two people to use it up with Netflix.

Re: FCC forced by court to ask the public again for feedback on net neutrality

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes people leave the TV on.

For seven hours every day? Once again, I'm not saying it's impossible, just that it is in fact quite extreme for two people to use it up with Netflix.

For sixteen or twenty four hours a day.

Re: FCC forced by court to ask the public again for feedback on net neutrality

#160
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Local loop un-bundling does not solve the problem. You are still back to the same situation. A single pipe can only handle so many providers, thus limit local competition to 2 or 3 providers. So either all will collude, or the one with the deeper pockets will under-price the other ones until they go out of business. (sure you can add more "regulation", but this just throwing duct tape on a broken system)…

> A single pipe can only handle so many providers A single pipe can handle only so many customers. I don't see how it limits the number of providers? There actually are countriess with such rules, and they seem to work well. The difficult part is the need to set some uniform price providers must pay for that "last mile" connection to their customer. I seem to remember something like $8/month in Germany. That's actual…

I guess you are right. You can really put as many "providers" on a pipe as you want. But are they really providers from a competition standpoint, or just the same pipe with a different logo?

The problem is that they can't compete on price (in the downwards direction), and they can't compete on building new infra with latest technology. The minimum price is established by the price the owner of the pipes charges. Which is usually set by the gov't. So the can only compete on value added services (i.e. hey we are not going to sell your data hooray!)

The core competition we want in local infrastructure is faster internet and cheaper prices. I think the dual bid system can accomplish that (i.e. separate bids on building/upgrading infra, and bids on maintenance/support)

As for gas and electricity, I think a similar bid system would work as well.

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