The link doesn't go anywhere FYI. What are people here even commenting on?
I couldn't get anywhere on the provided URL either. I believe this is the correct URL.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/04/isps-cant-find-a...
ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law
21–30 of 329 posts
Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law
#22The link doesn't go anywhere FYI. What are people here even commenting on?
As IMcD23 commented, the real link is here: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/04/isps-cant-find-a...
It would be nice if the mods/dang would update the link.
Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law
#23Can 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?
To start, there's no single globally recognized definition of net neutrality. California enacted a law with a few specific provisions such as disallowing exemption of selected traffic from data caps and artificial throttling. Setting up CDNs doesn't go against that law. Of course you could say that prioritizing certain traffic means throttling the rest, but if those servers are physically close to the ISP then you can't really argue against physics doing its job.
Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
I think the question becomes who should be charged for bandwidth. The ISPs in this case are arguing they want to charge a small subset of above normal bandwidth consuming services rather than the ISP customers.
Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law
#25Can 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?
Most definitions of net neutrality simply don't prevent ISPs from hosting CDN nodes (although it would be nice if ISPs treated all CDNs the same). Likewise net neutrality doesn't prohibit direct connections between broadband ISPs and content providers because such connections generally benefit everyone involved.
Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
> Why not price the network equally for everyone?
It's not clear what this means. I guess in the context it means everyone pays the same unit rate per amount of data transferred?
I think there's more subtlety than this. I pay more for a 100MBit connection than a 10MBit connection, and also pay more for the data transferred over those connections? Are they allowed to charge higher speed customers a lower unit rate?
Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law
#27> 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…
Depending on how this is applied/interpreted, I could see reasons to oppose it.
For example, there can be a lot of "lawful traffic" that is harmful to a network. T-Mobile's T&C say that these things are disallowed: "Uses applications which are designed for unattended use, automatic data feeds, automated machine-to-machine connections, or applications that are used in a way that degrades network capacity or functionality", "Uses applications which automatically consume unreasonable amounts of available network capacity". I'm sure someone here is going to "but fetching RSS automatically..." but I'm going to ignore those straw-man objections. If someone is doing something that harms the network and the enjoyment of other users, it does seem reasonable to restrict that.
Likewise, many ISPs deprioritize data if a user has hit a certain threshold of usage. It isn't throttling, but they give priority to users who don't use as much data given the shared nature of the connection. That seems reasonable to me. It allows heavy users to use as much data as they want while light users aren't impacted by their heavy usage.
Many mobile ISPs throttle types of content like video. That's certainly controversial, but has become common.
> It also prohibits requiring fees from websites or online services to deliver or prioritize their traffic to consumers
This always makes me wonder if that means that ISPs must deliver free transit. Most people aren't really aware of how money is paid to transmit things over the internet. For example, let's say that I want to transmit a video to a Comcast customer in LA. Can I hand it off to them in NY and say "it's your problem now since you can't charge me to deliver the traffic"? Or do I have to get it within a certain distance of the customer and pay for the transit myself? If Comcast won't advertise BGP routes non-locally if someone isn't wiling to pay them transit, is that a violation?
I know a lot of people say that they just want a "dumb pipe", but I think that's mostly because many companies are kinda scummy. We've seen ISPs do crappy things. But there is reasonable network management. For example, I've had friends who have worked at universities where 1% of the users end up consuming 50-75% of the bandwidth. They've done things like put BitTorrent traffic at a lower priority. They don't block it, but they do manage it so that the shared network works well for everyone. If a lab starts using a crazy amount of bandwidth, they don't want everyone else's usage to suffer. It's quite reasonable to manage traffic in good faith - and I think a lot of the no-management/dumb-pipe stuff comes from the fact that we've had some scummy ISPs.
Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law
#28If 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.
There have been several real issues not just one, but I don't think colocation was one of them.
Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
I think the question becomes who should be charged for bandwidth. The ISPs in this case are arguing they want to charge a small subset of above normal bandwidth consuming services rather than the ISP customers.
That's simply ISPs seeing a lucrative revenue stream and wanting in on it. Let's put company size and market cap out of the picture and think of the network architecture. I set up a server in Romania. Someone from USA makes a request to it and gets a response. Can their ISP (Comcast or AT&T or whoever else) now send me a bill at the end of the month?
Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
I think the question becomes who should be charged for bandwidth. The ISPs in this case are arguing they want to charge a small subset of above normal bandwidth consuming services rather than the ISP customers.
That's double dipping on both the rate and the amount. Charge for one or the other.
We already have massive media conglomerates which have consolidated even more in the last decade.
In order to maintain a competitive space, a neutral internet must be maintained. Otherwise you're cementing the position of those who own the content and means to provide it.