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Dear Internet: Let’s Demo The Slow Lane

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Re: Dear Internet: Let’s Demo The Slow Lane

#101

Post by Jtsummers »

josho wrote: post #94
shubb wrote: post #36

Can anyone think of any advantages to a non-neutral internet? I can think of a few - Netflix and Skype would work better. Most likely, we'd be able to pay for priority traffic, just like we pay for a large AWS instance. Non-priority traffic might be cheaper than current bandwidth. It would be crazy to suggest all sites be forced to use the same size AWS instance... Some types of traffic are bandwidth sensitive, like…

> Can anyone think of any advantages to a non-neutral internet? Yes. In the early days there was a competing networking technology called ATM. It provided quality of service (QoS) aspects in the protocol. So, you could prioritize packets, e.g. protocols affected by latency could be prioritized (e.g. VOIP, gaming), while those that weren't could be given a low priority (FTP, email). The beauty of ATM was that on a rel…

But QoS at the protocol level is different than non-neutral. Non-neutral is a way for someone, not the user or application developer, to reprioritize content. You're not using Comcast VOIP? Fine, we'll slow down your Facetime chat. Don't want to use Mediacom Streaming Movies? Fine, we'll slow down Netflix.

That's what non-neutral means. QoS is different, that's applications behaving themselves. BitTorrent, for instance, led to the development of uTP (micro transport protocol). One of its nicest features for torrent users is that it will slow itself down now in response to congestion and play nice with other network-using processes on the client side.

Putting this into the underlying connection like ATM did just means that you at least have to pick a default QoS and hopefully applications/systems pick a sensible assignment for the traffic. Rather than the default being to treat every connection as equal.

Re: Dear Internet: Let’s Demo The Slow Lane

#102

Post by carlosvergara »

One quick, effective and probably not entirely illegal manner to raise the issue would simply be putting a sign on top of any comcast user's pageview saying something like, "Since your internet provider has forced us to pay X amount of money per GB to provide our service to your specific account, and we currently haven't figured out a cost scheme to account for that, your movie viewing experience is being adjusted to fit our current costs. (hyperlink)Tell Comcast how you feel about this."

Re: Dear Internet: Let’s Demo The Slow Lane

#103

Post by exelius »

wmf wrote: post #69
exelius wrote: post #64

I don't know that this is the solution (or even that there's a problem). I know my opinion isn't very popular on HN on this issue; but I continue to share it because I feel it's important that people understand the view from the other side of the fence. I expect to get downvoted because people disagree with me, but then magical internet points never really mattered much to me. I think all this talk of the "slow lane"…

QoS mostly decides which packets get dropped, but ISPs shouldn't be dropping any significant fraction of packets. (I was tempted to downvote you for your persecution complex, but that would only validate it so I'm torn.)

Packets get dropped when links are saturated as they often are during peak hours. I know a network admin would think "well the links should never be saturated" but the economics of that just don't work in the consumer ISP space. You aim for a target level of service that means certain portions of the network will be saturated, and use QoS to ensure things like DNS and HTTP remain responsive.

Regardless, the point is that QoS exists to keep non-video traffic from getting trampled out by video traffic. Video traffic is such a disproportionately large amount of total Internet traffic that virtually the only services that would be significantly impacted by being in the "slow lane" are video services. The links wouldn't even be saturated in the first place without video traffic.

EDIT: Also wanted to add that congestion is almost guaranteed with adaptive bit rate streaming. Netflix will use as much bandwidth as is available up to like 9 mbit/s.

Re: Dear Internet: Let’s Demo The Slow Lane

#104

Post by exelius »

edoloughlin wrote: post #51
ihsw wrote: post #27

Why stop at the slow lane? There is nothing preventing ISP gatekeepers from wholeheartedly denying access. Slowness is just the beginning -- the end-goal is making the internet into multiple competing walled gardens where users are treated as silos that require permission to access. The global reach of the internet is at risk here. Imagine if Netflix wasn't accessible to Comcast users from the beginning because they…

Imagine if Netflix wasn't accessible to Comcast users from the beginning because they wouldn't pay the toll. Would it have thrived and grown as quickly as it did, or would it have died in it's infancy? If I was building a bandwidth-intensive startup in the US at the moment, I'd be seriously looking at using port-hopping p2p as my distribution mechanism with some randomisation of the payload to make profiling/identifi…

p2p is a terrible distribution mechanism; it's pretty flaky and it destroys battery life on mobile devices which is where most of the growth in the tech sector is right now. Also there are issues with DRM in p2p. Yeah I know, DRM isn't popular, but video content owners insist on it and distributors can't do anything about that.

Re: Dear Internet: Let’s Demo The Slow Lane

#105

Post by wmf »

exelius wrote: post #103
wmf wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

QoS mostly decides which packets get dropped, but ISPs shouldn't be dropping any significant fraction of packets. (I was tempted to downvote you for your persecution complex, but that would only validate it so I'm torn.)

Packets get dropped when links are saturated as they often are during peak hours. I know a network admin would think "well the links should never be saturated" but the economics of that just don't work in the consumer ISP space. You aim for a target level of service that means certain portions of the network will be saturated, and use QoS to ensure things like DNS and HTTP remain responsive. Regardless, the point is…

the economics of that just don't work in the consumer ISP space

A citation is needed here. Somehow consumer ISPs got along for 15 years without "permanent congestion".

Re: Dear Internet: Let’s Demo The Slow Lane

#106

Post by microtonal »

revelation wrote: post #95
shubb wrote: post #36

Can anyone think of any advantages to a non-neutral internet? I can think of a few - Netflix and Skype would work better. Most likely, we'd be able to pay for priority traffic, just like we pay for a large AWS instance. Non-priority traffic might be cheaper than current bandwidth. It would be crazy to suggest all sites be forced to use the same size AWS instance... Some types of traffic are bandwidth sensitive, like…

You are burning an artificial technical straw-man. There is no technical capacity limit at play here. Networking technology has leapfrogged the bandwidth available to consumers many times over, and to boot, it is pretty much infinitely scalable. So when theres no problem transferring all of Netflix, Skype and BitTorrent simultaneously, why slow any of it? Sure, at times hardware fails, fiber is damaged, and ISPs can…

There is no technical capacity limit at play here.

This. The US market is ripe for disruption or regulation. Sure, if you live remotely in Arizona, it may be hard to get a fat pipe, but it seems that even most cities have outrageous prices.

I currently live in Germany. We have 150MBit downstream, 5 MBit upstream, plus phone and television for 40 Euro per month. When we lived in The Netherlands we were on 130 MBit downstream internet. Even in the stone age (2004) we had 20MBit downstream DSL for 20 Euro per month. Since downloading music and movies was legal in the Netherlands until recently, many families were saturating their connections. Netflix is not that demanding in comparison.

The current situation in the EU shows that it is possible to get high-speed low-cost internet with net neutrality.

Re: Dear Internet: Let’s Demo The Slow Lane

#107

Post by Jtsummers »

shubb wrote: post #36

Can anyone think of any advantages to a non-neutral internet? I can think of a few - Netflix and Skype would work better. Most likely, we'd be able to pay for priority traffic, just like we pay for a large AWS instance. Non-priority traffic might be cheaper than current bandwidth. It would be crazy to suggest all sites be forced to use the same size AWS instance... Some types of traffic are bandwidth sensitive, like…

Traffic priority should be set by the users and the application developers, not by the ISP. Streaming video/audio should have a way to signal that they're high priority traffic (because latency is noticeable quality of service absolutely essential). BitTorrent should be able to signal that it's low priority (unless being used for streaming like Popcorn Time) since it's often used in the background as a way to get large files or file sets. HTTP traffic should be able to sit somewhere between the two, with some services announcing themselves as high priority (services that stream media over HTTP or games or whatever) and the rest announcing themselves as "Guarantee me decent latency, I need to be there in a few seconds, but under a second is overkill".

> If you think that an end to neutrality will 'ruin the internet', don't you expect consumers to choose ISPs and services that don't do it?

I have 2 wired ISPs to choose from and several wireless (well, primarily via tethering with a cellphone) ISPs. My apartment has shitty wireless reception so Verizon, Sprint and AT&T are out. That leaves Cox Cable (who repeatedly disconnected me when they meant to disconnect a neighbor, costing me two days of leave to fix their fuckup) and Windstream (a DSL provider). So if both of my providers decide to play the non-neutral game, I, the consumer, am screwed. There are no options for me in your scenario. That's the reality of the ISP situation in the majority of the US.

Re: Dear Internet: Let’s Demo The Slow Lane

#108

Post by nitrogen »

shubb wrote: post #36

Can anyone think of any advantages to a non-neutral internet? I can think of a few - Netflix and Skype would work better. Most likely, we'd be able to pay for priority traffic, just like we pay for a large AWS instance. Non-priority traffic might be cheaper than current bandwidth. It would be crazy to suggest all sites be forced to use the same size AWS instance... Some types of traffic are bandwidth sensitive, like…

QoS is perfectly fine if it's set by the user, not the ISP. This is a red.herring anyway, because the Netflix problem has nothing whatsoever to do with prioritization.

Re: Dear Internet: Let’s Demo The Slow Lane

#109

Post by cddotdotslash »

Best idea I've heard so far is to intentionally slow traffic only for known government IP blocks. If we can convince Google, Wikipedia, and other big sites to do this, Washington would definitely notice. I'm thinking of writing a script that site owners could use to do just this.
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