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FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet

washingtonpost.com

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Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet

#111

Post by jarrett »

twoodfin wrote: post #48
ColinDabritz wrote: post #20

"And he promised a series of measures to ensure the new paid prioritization practices are done fairly and don't harm consumers." I have a measure in mind that won't harm consumers. Don't allow ISPs to discriminate against users regarding their already paid for internet traffic based on what they request. (Gee that sounds a lot like net neutrality.) Anything less is open for abuse. Perhaps "Discrimination" is a good w…

Don't allow ISPs to discriminate against users regarding their already paid for internet traffic based on what they request. It's (relatively) cheap for Netflix or their CDN partners to connect their content-serving systems to a few dozen "meet me" rooms where it's "easy" for Comcast to hook as many wires up as necessary to receive the requested data into their network at an acceptable rate. That's all Netflix or the…

> Should "network neutrality" force Comcast to spend billions every time Netflix doubles its streaming rate?

It wouldn't force an ISP take any action. Each ISP would only be forced to decide how much bandwidth to offer each consumer, and at what price point. If a particular ISP did not feel it wise to upgrade its infrastructure simply because Netflix increased its streaming rate, that ISP would be free not to make the investment.

So how do you deal with network congestion in that scenario? ISPs can continue to offer different pricing plans with different download rates. They can be transparent about the real download speeds for each plan. Perhaps they can even offer a speed estimator tool where the user picks a geographic endpoint and a time of day.

That solves part of the problem of congestion, in that consumer are (roughly) paying for the bandwidth they use. (Theoretically, the users' fees would be scaled to account for the cost of infrastructure upgrades.) But I'd still like to be able to quickly download, say, an API reference page from rubydoc.org without having my connection starved by torrents and video streaming. To that end, perhaps ISPs could grant each consumer a certain GB/month quota of "guaranteed max speed." I.e. until you exceed your quota of X GB per month, your traffic never falls below Y MB/sec, regardless of current network congestion. If you wanted to get really slick, you could even let customers opt certain traffic types out of that program. So I could say, for example, "use my max speed quota for regular HTTP, SSL, etc. usage, but never use it for video."

Ideally, each consumer would have several ISPs to choose from. In that case, the market could discover the optimal plan selections.

Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet

#112

Post by dragonwriter »

sinak wrote: post #81

The title and post are both quite misleading. The commissioners didn't approve Tom Wheeler's plan (to regulate the Internet under Section 706), but voted to go ahead with the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and commenting period. Tom Wheeler stated multiple times that Title II classification is still on the table. There'll now be a 120 day commenting period; 60 days of comments from companies and the public, and then 6…

> WaPo have now updated the title of the article to make it more accurate: "FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet"

That makes it only marginally less of a misrepresentation. The only universe in which this is a change toward allowing/considering paid prioritization is one in which the D.C. Circuit did not strike down the old Open Internet order. Its plain and simply a plan, on the question of paid prioritization, to restrict it, not "allow" or "consider" it, given that it is currently allowed without restrictions.

Any policy change can only be accurately be described in relation to the status quo to which it is a change.

Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet

#113

Post by politician »

grandalf wrote: post #45
hpaavola wrote: post #22

I don't get this whole net neautrality discussion that is going on in US (and maybe somewhere else, just haven't paid attention). Consumers pay based on speed of their connection. If ISP feels like the consumers are not paying enough, raise the prices. Service providers (not ISPs, but the ones who run servers that consumers connect to) pay based on speed of their connection. If the ISP feels like service providers ar…

> 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.

Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet

#114

Post by moultano »

mwsherman wrote: post #101
ColinDabritz wrote: post #20

"And he promised a series of measures to ensure the new paid prioritization practices are done fairly and don't harm consumers." I have a measure in mind that won't harm consumers. Don't allow ISPs to discriminate against users regarding their already paid for internet traffic based on what they request. (Gee that sounds a lot like net neutrality.) Anything less is open for abuse. Perhaps "Discrimination" is a good w…

CDNs are essentially identical (technologically and economically) to what Netflix bought from Comcast: http://clipperhouse.com/2014/05/07/what-netflix-bought-from-... To my mind, I can’t imagine a rule that describes a fast lane that doesn’t also describe a CDN.

CDNs increase the overall capacity of the network by caching content closer to its destination. This benefits everyone, even the traffic that is not cached by the CDN because it reduces congestion for everyone. The behavior we are worried about is zero sum (where some packets get prioritized and others lose out), or even negative sum (where some packets get held for ransom.)

Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet

#115

Post by arunabha »

sinak wrote: post #81

The title and post are both quite misleading. The commissioners didn't approve Tom Wheeler's plan (to regulate the Internet under Section 706), but voted to go ahead with the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and commenting period. Tom Wheeler stated multiple times that Title II classification is still on the table. There'll now be a 120 day commenting period; 60 days of comments from companies and the public, and then 6…

Thanks for the link to comments. Its important to let the FCC know what the people think, however I really feel that would take an organized effort to stop this now and I don't mean just tech companies. Turning internet users into a captive audience to be sold can't be good for tech workers in the long run.

I there any grassroots organization which can/is opposing this ? I'd love join and contribute against this effort in an organized fashion.

Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet

#116

Post by bitJericho »

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?

No doubt. A local company in town recommends customers sign up with some absurd number like 5mpbs per every device connected on a local network. In reality the majority of customers can use the lowest possible plan (in this case 5mpbs) and have trouble free browsing and streaming.

The reality is these ISPs make money by overselling services to customers and not having to deliver on it. And now they're tacking on fees on the backend as well? Absurd.

Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet

#117

Post by EvanAnderson »

lazyloop wrote: post #39

And now Comcast is planning data limits for all customers, what conincidence. http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/15/technology/comcast-data-limi...

Metered service is, ultimately, what they want. They are envious of the kinds of margin wireless carriers are getting for data transfer over their networks.

Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet

#118

Post by adamio »

api wrote: post #105
adamio wrote: post #12

The internet is slowly being transformed into cable television

That's been going on for a while now, and is due to many factors: https://www.zerotier.com/blog/?p=6

An interesting reason for the delay of widespread IP6 adoption

Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet

#119

Post by natdempk »

mwsherman wrote: post #101
ColinDabritz wrote: post #20

"And he promised a series of measures to ensure the new paid prioritization practices are done fairly and don't harm consumers." I have a measure in mind that won't harm consumers. Don't allow ISPs to discriminate against users regarding their already paid for internet traffic based on what they request. (Gee that sounds a lot like net neutrality.) Anything less is open for abuse. Perhaps "Discrimination" is a good w…

CDNs are essentially identical (technologically and economically) to what Netflix bought from Comcast: http://clipperhouse.com/2014/05/07/what-netflix-bought-from-... To my mind, I can’t imagine a rule that describes a fast lane that doesn’t also describe a CDN.

Not quite, this blog post from Netflix highlights a couple key differences in their case: http://blog.netflix.com/2014/04/the-case-against-isp-tolls.h...

> Transit networks like Level3, XO, Cogent and Tata perform two important services: (1) they carry traffic over long distances and (2) they provide access to every network on the global Internet. When Netflix connects directly to the Comcast network, Comcast is not providing either of the services typically provided by transit networks.

Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet

#120

Post by chc »

mwsherman wrote: post #101
ColinDabritz wrote: post #20

"And he promised a series of measures to ensure the new paid prioritization practices are done fairly and don't harm consumers." I have a measure in mind that won't harm consumers. Don't allow ISPs to discriminate against users regarding their already paid for internet traffic based on what they request. (Gee that sounds a lot like net neutrality.) Anything less is open for abuse. Perhaps "Discrimination" is a good w…

CDNs are essentially identical (technologically and economically) to what Netflix bought from Comcast: http://clipperhouse.com/2014/05/07/what-netflix-bought-from-... To my mind, I can’t imagine a rule that describes a fast lane that doesn’t also describe a CDN.

The bright and shining difference is that a CDN does not have a contract with the end user, and consequently doesn't connect directly to them. When we talk about a "fast lane" (or more accurately a "slow lane"), what we essentially mean is an ISP holding access to its users hostage. This is the opposite of how a CDN works, because those are paid by the provider to speed up access to its data, rather than being paid by the consumer for access to the provider's data.

Basically, what is proposed here is preventing an ISP (which is already a recognizable category) from starting a CDN business — a very bad one, since it only delivers content to itself — and artificially slowing down non-CDN traffic that has already been paid for on the other end in order to prop up its CDN business.

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