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

arstechnica.com

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

#31

Post by wmf »

mdasen wrote: post #27
wrycoder wrote: 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 California's net neutrality law is similar to the federal rules repealed under former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai.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…

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 functional…

a lot of the no-management/dumb-pipe stuff comes from the fact that we've had some scummy ISPs.

This is true, but that's how politics works. ISPs abused their position and lost the public's trust so now there's going to be an overreaction in the opposite direction.

...1% of the users end up consuming 50-75% of the bandwidth...

The correct and neutral solution to this is per-customer fair queueing. (It's not my problem that there isn't any equipment to implement that.)

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

#32

Post by bberenberg »

paxys wrote: post #29
bberenberg wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I agree that they're setting up a revenue stream. I also think that a business that charges customers on both sides isn't as crazy as you want it to be. For example, a customer of our pays SAP Ariba to be the SaaS for their procurement process. We also have to pay SAP Ariba to submit invoices to this customer. In your example I expect they wouldn't send you a bill for the request. I do expect they would send you a notice to join whatever program they run or they will stop routing to your server.

Again, I don't agree with what the ISP is doing, but I can rationalize how they think it makes sense.

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

#33

Post by gregmac »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #9

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?

It seems to me more about charging extra or artificially throttling.

If a streaming provider has massive connection at a shared upstream peering location as an ISP, but their competitor doesn't, the result could likely be that the bandwidth is better to that provider, while it's congested going to anywhere else on the internet (including competitors). Is this a violation of net neutrality, and if so, by who?

Some other situations I can think of that are less clear:

"Sorry streaming service, we can't host your CDN appliance because we already have an appliance from your competitor and our agreement with them disallows it"

"Sorry streaming service, we can't host your CDN appliance because we have no more physical space"

"Sure we'll host your CDN appliance, if you pay $$,$$$,$$$ to cover the cost of expanding our datacenter"

"Sure we'll host your CDN appliance, it will cost you $,$$$,$$$ per year"

"Sure we'll host your CDN appliance, it will cost you $$ per month per client IP"

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

#34

Post by auspex »

bberenberg wrote: post #24
paxys wrote: post #17

Earlier 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.

Why should the companies pay for it? There are agreements in place for bandwidth between the peering companies and last mile providers. They shouldn’t care how it’s consumed.

The issue is not use it’s prioritization. That’s the danger.

Netflix pays to prioritize their traffic over Discovery+ or your video streaming startup. Now when it’s busy and the pipe is fully consumed, Netflix is perfect and your company is dropping frames and buffering.

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

#35

Post by Karrot_Kream »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #18
bberenberg wrote: post #7

Earlier 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?

In spirit I agree with you. The reality gets more complicated. The canonical example here is Netflix. Netflix's traffic is _mostly_ outbound and because it's video streaming, there's lots of it. If an ISP has a 10G circuit, then Netflix may end up taking up 50% of that circuit during prime after-work time. Because the circuit is limited in throughput, if Netflix takes up 50%, then remaining internet services need to fit in the other 50%, which can lead to a bad time for everyone (dropped packets from Netflix, dropped packets while trying to fetch your email, it's whatever the router decides to prioritize.) Now of course the ISP can add another circuit or upgrade their current circuit, but that costs them money. Or, the ISP could choose to drop Netflix packets first, which may degrade Netflix quality but not make it completely unusable the way dropping email packets might. The latter is an opposing perspective to net neutrality (the ISP is specifically choosing to drop Netflix packets at a higher rate than other packets.)

I'm not against net neutrality myself, just trying to add a bit of background behind why certain folks may oppose it.

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

#36

Post by unityByFreedom »

paxys wrote: post #29
bberenberg wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I think the imaginations of some who would strike down net neutrality go far beyond that.

They would disconnect the net at every border imaginable and charge for access along every gateway. It's an authoritarian's wet dream to have such control, and we the people should oppose it at every turn.

Setting up a framework that cements existing monopolies isn't capitalist, it's anti-competitive.

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

#37

Post by Karrot_Kream »

smw wrote: post #8
bberenberg wrote: post #7

Earlier 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…

But customers are already paying for 'unlimited internet' -- or for some amount of data up to a cap. You're suggesting that we should double charge the providers that the customers want to access, as well?

Unlimited internet is mostly a marketing term. Until you buy a DIA circuit you are just getting regular ISP access or prioritized ISP access.

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

#38

Post by Karrot_Kream »

bberenberg wrote: post #24
paxys wrote: post #17

Earlier 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.

Not always. This is why ISPs refuse to peer with certain customers. If they don't see mutual benefit, they charge for network connections instead, aka IP Transit.

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

#39

Post by unityByFreedom »

bberenberg wrote: post #32
paxys wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I agree that they're setting up a revenue stream. I also think that a business that charges customers on both sides isn't as crazy as you want it to be. For example, a customer of our pays SAP Ariba to be the SaaS for their procurement process. We also have to pay SAP Ariba to submit invoices to this customer. In your example I expect they wouldn't send you a bill for the request. I do expect they would send you a no…

> I don't agree with what the ISP is doing, but I can rationalize how they think it makes sense.

It only makes sense if they perceive no backlash for overreaching.

We need to look closely at what they are currently doing. They're expanding zero rating on mobile, and also on broadband in some areas by claiming that their network is "proprietary technology" and not subject to such net neutrality laws.

Meanwhile, municipalities are prevented from building their own networks to compete with regional broadband monopolies. It's internet-highway robbery.

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

#40

Post by unityByFreedom »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #37
smw wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But customers are already paying for 'unlimited internet' -- or for some amount of data up to a cap. You're suggesting that we should double charge the providers that the customers want to access, as well?

Unlimited internet is mostly a marketing term. Until you buy a DIA circuit you are just getting regular ISP access or prioritized ISP access.

Companies can be held accountable in court for words used in their marketing.
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