Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 343 posts

Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet

#131

Post by mschulkind »

twoodfin wrote: post #106
mschulkind wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is indicative of why this discussion is so difficult to have and why it's even tougher for the general public to understand or even care. The way this has always works, and is not changing based on anything 'network neutrality' related, is that generally the sending network (Netflix) pays the receiving network (Comcast) based on something like the 95th percentile of their sending rate. It maybe not be li…

It maybe not be linear, but if Netflix starts sending 2x traffic, they will pay something like 1.8x-2x. That's not changing, and nobody is disputing this. Are you arguing that Netflix's costs to scale traffic into Comcast are commensurate with Comcast's costs to scale the delivery of that traffic to consumers? I don't think that's true. Didn't Level 3 just blog[1] that they largely operate on a settlement-free basis?…

Well, there's no gold standard for how any of the contracts are setup, but if I had to guess, it's because you're talking about Level 3 Comcast. The profile of Netflix is far different from Level 3. Generally the fee is based on the net (as in net total, not net internet) traffic.

If Level 3 sends 100Mbps to Comcast, and Comcast sends 100Mbps back to Level 3, or at least approximately even most of the time, they very well may have a settlement free agreement. This is believable because Level 3 is a transit provider, as in if you send them traffic bound to anywhere on the internet, they'll get it there, so the amount of traffic that Level 3 receives from everybody to get to Comcast could be roughly equal to the amount of traffic Comcast wants/needs to route through Level 3 to the rest of the internet.

In the NetflixComcast case, it's not a transit peering. Netflix can only send traffic over that link that is destined for Comcast customers. These peering arrangements are generally drastically cheaper per Mbps than the transit peering. The difference here though is that the only think Comcast sends to Netflix is HTTP request for the most part, and then Netflix sends a video stream back, so there's a HUGE imbalance in the traffic going each direction.

All that said, what Netflix pays to Comcast may scale with Comcast's costs, but there's no direct relationship. To simplify it a bit, Netflix is paying to get traffic to the Comcast central brain. Customers are paying Comcast to get a pipe laid connecting them to the central brain. The two costs are not very directly related.

Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet

#132

Post by dragonwriter »

xhrpost wrote: post #5

So what happened? It seems like just yesterday that the FCC was the one creating the rules around net neutrality. A federal court over-turns this and all of a sudden the FCC decides to go the complete opposite direction?

> So what happened?

Media misrepresentation happened.

> It seems like just yesterday that the FCC was the one creating the rules around net neutrality.

It still is.

> A federal court over-turns this and all of a sudden the FCC decides to go the complete opposite direction?

No, this is an attempt to revive, within the constraints of the court decision, what was struck down. The reporting that this is about "allowing" or "considering" paid prioritization ignores the fact that, as a result of the court decision, paid prioritization is allowed now, without any restrictions. This proposal would declare some paid prioritization (where it is offered exclusively to an affiliate of the ISP) presumptively illegal, and seek to restrict paid prioritization even outside of that which is presumptively illegal. This is in the exact same direction (though not the exact same mechanism, since that was ruled outside of the FCC's authority) as prior net neutrality orders from the FCC, which is why the same 3-2 partisan alignment on the FCC exists on the issue that has existed on net neutrality as a broad concept for quite some time.

Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet

#134

Post by lutorm »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #92
twoodfin wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that a network that can stream 20Mbit continuously to every customer (so they always can get the "advertised" bandwidth) would be absurdly expensive, and rates would have to go up accordingly. Why should someone who doesn't consume Netflix pay for this? Why should Comcast be afraid to sell you a 100MBit "bursty" connection (essentially the same kind of service they actually advertise now) because they'…

The problem is that a network that can stream 20Mbit continuously to every customer (so they always can get the "advertised" bandwidth) would be absurdly expensive, and rates would have to go up accordingly Then maybe they should advertise a different bandwidth?

This is sort of like car advertisements, that always touts "350hp V8" or whatever, even though in the vast majority of real-life usage you can use that power for at most a second or two at some freeway onramp or in a passing lane.

Saying that the connection is technically capable of 20Mbit/s is different from guaranteeing 20Mbit/s in any possible usage situation. The problem with my analogy is that people generally have an idea that you can't go faster than maybe 80mph regardless of what car you have, but there is no way to know if the "up to 20Mbit/s" connection means actual usage will show 15, 5, or 1... So yeah, they should somehow be required to tell you, at least at signup, what the typical throughput on your connection will be.

Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet

#135

Post by worace »

dragonwriter wrote: post #127
worace wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding to the confusion, the NYT has an article up right now which seems to report the opposite. To quote from the NYT article lede: "WASHINGTON — The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 on Thursday to invite public comment on a set of proposed rules aimed at guaranteeing an open Internet, prohibiting high-speed Internet service providers from blocking or discriminating against legal content flowing through t…

You are reading it correctly. And the NYT seems to be reporting it correctly. While the text is not published yet anywhere I can see, the FCC fact sheet states that the proposal (direct quotes with only formatting/presentation changes) [1]: - Proposes to retain the definitions and scope of the 2010 rules, which governed broadband Internet access service providers, but not services like enterprise services, Internet t…

awesome, thanks for the thorough clarification; will have to take some time to peruse that doc

Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet

#136

Post by shmerl »

dragonwriter wrote: post #96
DevX101 wrote: post #34

> approved in a three-to-two vote along party lines, Why the fuck are there party lines in the FCC? Or any other regulatory body for that matter?

> Why the fuck are there party lines in the FCC? Or any other regulatory body for that matter? Because regulators aren't angels that descend from heaven, but people peforming a political function, appointed and confirmed by elected politicians. Or, more succinctly, because representative democracy .

I think the question was not why there are members of different parties in the FCC, but why do they differ in this vote based on partisan membership? I.e. why would one party find these rules good while the other not? It's as if one likes net neutrality, while the other doesn't.

Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet

#137

Post by rayiner »

politician wrote: post #113
grandalf wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why in the earth there is a need for slow/fast lanes and data caps? It's just an alternate way of pricing the service. You could ask similar questions about a lot of industries: - Why does Github charge the way it does and not just price the service per megabyte of data stored or per commit, etc? - Why do fast food restaurants offer free soft drink refills for $0.99 but not offer a single fill for $0.50? - Why do r…

- Why does the water supplied to my home come in clear and polluted varieties? - Why does the electricity supplied to my office come in normal power and brown power versions? Oh, wait.

Those examples are funny, because, e.g. our water infrastructure is the subject of underinvestment to the tune of $55 billion a year: http://geospatial.blogs.com/geospatial/2011/12/asce-report-o...

When you make an industry a public utility, and eliminate market-rate profit incentives, you get underinvestment, which is exactly what we see in water, power, etc: http://www.asce.org/failuretoact.

You can talk all you want about making internet service into "dumb pipes" but you can't make investors and shareholders pour billions of dollars a year into the "dumb pipe" business. They'll just dump their regulated business lines and shift the money to something more profitable, like Goldman is encouraging Verizon to do: http://stopthecap.com/2012/01/09/wall-street-encourages-veri....

Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet

#138

Post by joelhaus »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #84
joelhaus wrote: post #42

Can anyone make a serious argument on behalf of the carriers? Given the court decisions, the only way to protect the American people and the economy is to reclassify ISP's under Title II. For the skeptics, it appears to come down to the question: which route offers better prospects for upgrading our internet infrastructure? Choice one is relying on a for-profit corporation with an effective monopoly that is beholden…

> Can anyone make a serious argument on behalf of the carriers? Given the court decisions, the only way to protect the American people and the economy is to reclassify ISP's under Title II. If you ignore the various arguments about ISPs trying to get paid twice for the same content, consider the possibility of an ISP and a major high-bandwidth content provider (YouTube, Netflix, Akamai, etc) trying to build a deal th…

Thanks for the thoughtful response. Care to explain your CDN/ISP hypothetical further? Wouldn't the content providers who are capable of paying have an advantage over those who aren't?

I'm not clear on how money changes hands in your case, but undoubtedly this arrangement would favor the ISP. As far as peering goes, it's a bit more complicated... server locations are more mobile than consumer locations, so there is less concern about an effective geographic monopoly for backbone providers. Without fully thinking through the economics of peering, my initial thought is that there should probably be a regulated amount that ISP's can charge to peer with backbone providers. Maybe cost plus a maintenance fee based on traffic volume.

Regarding voting, I just feel it's the better of two imperfect solutions.

Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet

#139

Post by sinak »

dragonwriter wrote: post #127
worace wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding to the confusion, the NYT has an article up right now which seems to report the opposite. To quote from the NYT article lede: "WASHINGTON — The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 on Thursday to invite public comment on a set of proposed rules aimed at guaranteeing an open Internet, prohibiting high-speed Internet service providers from blocking or discriminating against legal content flowing through t…

You are reading it correctly. And the NYT seems to be reporting it correctly. While the text is not published yet anywhere I can see, the FCC fact sheet states that the proposal (direct quotes with only formatting/presentation changes) [1]: - Proposes to retain the definitions and scope of the 2010 rules, which governed broadband Internet access service providers, but not services like enterprise services, Internet t…

It's important to note that the FCC is avoiding dealing with the peering issue (so, for example, Netflix's issue) with their current proposal. Wheeler specifically said that they want to delay that part of the net neutrality debate until later. In my view that's a mistake.

Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet

#140

Post by hifier »

twoodfin wrote: post #83
natdempk wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically the answer to this is yes. If Comcast spends all of this money to upgrade their network and the cost to the end user goes up for the better service, then there are really no problems here. That's basically how a market should work. That plan would actually encourage them to upgrade their networks over time and install things like fiber to meet the new demands of customers, instead of providing poor service…

The problem is that a network that can stream 20Mbit continuously to every customer (so they always can get the "advertised" bandwidth) would be absurdly expensive, and rates would have to go up accordingly. Why should someone who doesn't consume Netflix pay for this? Why should Comcast be afraid to sell you a 100MBit "bursty" connection (essentially the same kind of service they actually advertise now) because they'…

So, charge consumers for what they use. Why does this seem to rarely come up?

The problem with the networks comcast and others currently maintain is they are saturated. And I'm not getting what I pay for as a result. They need a new pricing structure that properly values their product (bandwidth) and charges me for it.

Can anyone explain why the ISPs don't go down this road?

Post reply on HN