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ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

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Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#11

Can someone explain a technical issue I see with net neutrality? From a network engineering perspective, it seems sensible to me that CDN servers are located as close as possible to end users. So I assume that implies residing in whatever data centers the ISPs use at their edge. Is there some way to get the networking-efficiency benefits of those colo arrangements while still having net neutrality?

I'm not sure I understand - why is edge datacenter colocation incompatible with bet neutrality?

Fairly confident it existed pre-Ajit Pai.

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#12
post #2

> California's net neutrality law is similar to the federal rules repealed under former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. California prohibits ISPs from blocking or throttling lawful traffic. It also prohibits requiring fees from websites or online services to deliver or prioritize their traffic to consumers, bans paid data cap exemptions (so-called "zero-rating"), and says that ISPs may not attempt to evade net neutrality prot…

I don't support this, but I can try to steel man this position. Largely it comes with the idea that use = cost, and that infrastructure has limited capacity and is therefore zeroish sum. For example, a common idea is that we should tax trucks more than other cars because they cause a large amount of damage to our roads. Following that logic, the companies that encourage users to consume more bandwidth should be charg…

There are reasonable arguments to be made for allowing infrastructure providers to limit the ability of bad actors to consume extreme amounts of resources before they tragedy-of-the-commons the whole shebang for everyone else. But any such system has to acknowledge that qualifying as infrastructure means that society relies on it to function, which means that demand for the infrastructure is, at the low end, inelastic, which means that a typical market structure would make no sense.

The conscientious way to do it is to determine what qualifies as a "reasonable" amount of consumption, then provide that level of consumption at a subsidized rate to all participants, then let market forces kick in if someone consumes more than that. Then the rub is to define "reasonable", which obviously the infrastructure providers shouldn't be allowed to do.

There's no denying that the internet is essential communications infrastructure. And in this era of videoconferencing and work-from-home, the network should be built out such that everyone can stream good-enough-quality video at peak hours without congestion; that seems reasonable to me. The government should also guarantee the availability of this minimum level of service to all citizens. If the network can't handle that, then the infrastructure providers need to build it out. Of course, they will drag their feet and complain, but that's because companies are self-serving sociopathic AIs.

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#13

Can someone explain a technical issue I see with net neutrality? From a network engineering perspective, it seems sensible to me that CDN servers are located as close as possible to end users. So I assume that implies residing in whatever data centers the ISPs use at their edge. Is there some way to get the networking-efficiency benefits of those colo arrangements while still having net neutrality?

I've been asking this exact question for years. I feel like most people got some well-meaning propaganda on this and see net neutrality as an anti-censorship thing (which, hooray for anti-censorship) without thinking through all the totally reasonable and useful things that would violate the letter of it.

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#14
If I remember correctly, the issue with Net Neutrality legislation (as with almost all legislation) isn't what you think it is. It had to do with services like Netflix being able to host servers within ISPs to make them close to the end users.

Not sure what article I had read though, it was quite a few years back.

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#15

Can someone explain a technical issue I see with net neutrality? From a network engineering perspective, it seems sensible to me that CDN servers are located as close as possible to end users. So I assume that implies residing in whatever data centers the ISPs use at their edge. Is there some way to get the networking-efficiency benefits of those colo arrangements while still having net neutrality?

Sure, it's likely they will continue.

My guess, instead of charging netflix to place a CDN in their data center, they may offer youtube / netflix et all free CDN space/power, perhaps even PAYING youtube to put their stuff inside their network perimeter.

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#16

Can someone explain a technical issue I see with net neutrality? From a network engineering perspective, it seems sensible to me that CDN servers are located as close as possible to end users. So I assume that implies residing in whatever data centers the ISPs use at their edge. Is there some way to get the networking-efficiency benefits of those colo arrangements while still having net neutrality?

I've been asking this exact question for years. I feel like most people got some well-meaning propaganda on this and see net neutrality as an anti-censorship thing (which, hooray for anti-censorship) without thinking through all the totally reasonable and useful things that would violate the letter of it.

I don’t fully understand how anti-censorship is a virtue when defending Google and Netflix but then becomes a vice when defending regular people’s ability to not be arbitrarily banned on Twitter.

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#17
post #2

> California's net neutrality law is similar to the federal rules repealed under former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. California prohibits ISPs from blocking or throttling lawful traffic. It also prohibits requiring fees from websites or online services to deliver or prioritize their traffic to consumers, bans paid data cap exemptions (so-called "zero-rating"), and says that ISPs may not attempt to evade net neutrality prot…

I don't support this, but I can try to steel man this position. Largely it comes with the idea that use = cost, and that infrastructure has limited capacity and is therefore zeroish sum. For example, a common idea is that we should tax trucks more than other cars because they cause a large amount of damage to our roads. Following that logic, the companies that encourage users to consume more bandwidth should be charg…

The solution for that is already in place – charge for bandwidth. If users pay $30 for 100 Mpbs or $60 for 500 Mpbs etc., and on top of it there are caps on total data consumed, where does the idea of further segmenting and prioritizing traffic even come from?

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#18
post #2

> California's net neutrality law is similar to the federal rules repealed under former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. California prohibits ISPs from blocking or throttling lawful traffic. It also prohibits requiring fees from websites or online services to deliver or prioritize their traffic to consumers, bans paid data cap exemptions (so-called "zero-rating"), and says that ISPs may not attempt to evade net neutrality prot…

I don't support this, but I can try to steel man this position. Largely it comes with the idea that use = cost, and that infrastructure has limited capacity and is therefore zeroish sum. For example, a common idea is that we should tax trucks more than other cars because they cause a large amount of damage to our roads. Following that logic, the companies that encourage users to consume more bandwidth should be charg…

On the roads, we have a very rough estimate of the amount of the externalities of a given vehicle. On the Internet, we can have precise information on every bit of bandwidth consumed. Why not price the network equally for everyone?

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#20

Can someone explain a technical issue I see with net neutrality? From a network engineering perspective, it seems sensible to me that CDN servers are located as close as possible to end users. So I assume that implies residing in whatever data centers the ISPs use at their edge. Is there some way to get the networking-efficiency benefits of those colo arrangements while still having net neutrality?

My impression is net neutrality is oriented for the end user to preserve fair content deliverability, not necessarily the content provider, with the primary goal to prevent throttling any or all content based on who is willing to pay for no or less throttling. This is not incompatible with cdn colo at an isp. Colo is not akin to providers paying to not be throttled, but more like having a data center very close to the isp, which like the colo would still be subject to physical rent costs.
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