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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

#41

Post by Karrot_Kream »

unityByFreedom wrote: post #39
bberenberg wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, munici…

I agree with your general point (a lack of competition is why they can get away with double-charging for traffic), though this feels like a theoretical concern as of yet.

But you're conflating different ISPs with different types of anti-competitive behavior. Prioritizing non-streaming-service (e.g. throttling Netflix at prime time) packets could, for example, help a regional ISP stay competitive. That's different than the anti-competitive behavior the big ISPs engage in when they lobby governments/help pass laws which _block_ ISP competition in regions like Denver. Different issues with different effects.

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

#42

Post by bombcar »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #35
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is exactly why it started because Netflix switched to a lower tier provider (Level3 iirc) and the big ISPs wanted money pay for the transit which Level3 and Netflix didn’t want to pay.

It all went away when Netflix started installing CDN caches.

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

#43

Post by bombcar »

fn-mote wrote: post #26
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The question comes into play at the edges - when your ISPs upstream connection is filled what happens? Can they selectively drop packets or do they have to drop them randomly? And can you pay to be in a “never drop my packets” group?

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

#44

Post by Karrot_Kream »

unityByFreedom wrote: post #40
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you're just angry at ISPs (I don't blame you, they're usually monopolies or oligopolies which engage in dirty behavior.) But given the state of the market, I don't know a _single_ ISP or customer that would confuse DIA for regular bandwidth. Buying DIA involves getting a quote from the ISP and going back-and-forth with an operator over how to connect. And the fine print for most ISPs explains what "unlimited bandwidth" generally means.

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

#45

Post by wrycoder »

bberenberg wrote: post #7
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…

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…

This fight is not so much about usage “bandwidth” as it is about ISPs who want to prioritize traffic depending on the source and whether the source is paying them an additional “priority” fee.

Allowing them to do that creates an non-level playing field, which disadvantages the smaller sources that many users would be very interested to view.

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

#46

Post by jmyeet »

The whole net neutrality saga just exposed the deep regulatory capture between ISPs and the FCC (the Republican Commissioners at least). Pai's argument for repealing net neutrality was that it wasn't a Federal government concern. That was originally what prompted California to institute these rules. But suddenly it wasn't a state issue either.

Weird.

The US has some of the most expensive Internet access in the world. In most places it's pretty crap too. Many places have no competition. Some providers are in clear breach of contract in not providing customers service as they promised to do.

But apparently all that's not enough. We get the argument that the likes of Netflix are "pushing" their data at no cost onto "their" network. This is such a ridiculous argument and is nothing more than an effort to extort Netflix and other streaming services because it's eroding their cable TV services.

No one is "pushing" data onto the network. Customers are pulling that data and those customers, by definition, are already paying for the bandwidth and the network access. But this doesn't stop lobbyists pushing this narrative onto Luddite elected officials. It's double-dipping. No more, no less.

I really hope CAlifornia's net neutrality laws stand and get copied by other states.

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

#47

Post by jwommack »

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…

The primary beneficiaries of this are basically Netflix and Google, no?

My understanding is most of these policies have always been targeted at the large streaming services that are putting the most burden on the networks and who often already have special interconnect agreements.

The claims that these policies would be aimed at small businesses seem largely to have not been realistic.

The whole situation with lying about what you’re ad spend is getting you seems like a much bigger small internet business issue.

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

#48

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

paxys wrote: post #17
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…

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?

Because they want to sell you 3Tb of bandwidth but you only use 2Gb, and they want you to pay extra for that 2Gb to not be slow - despite that you already paid for it to be a set speed.

There's no growth left selling bandwidth. So they need to get growth by being anti-consumer.

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

#49

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]

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

#50

Post by bombcar »

wmf wrote: post #28
hateful wrote: post #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.

There have been several real issues not just one, but I don't think colocation was one of them.

Collocation is how Netflix solved the actual problem which was ISPs not wanting to give additional free transit to Level3.
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