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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

#121

Post by at-fates-hands »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #113

But we already have such a slow lane. And it already made the internet less free and less useful. It's the upload bandwidth. Weak upload effectively killed peer to peer. File sharing is slower than it could be, and e-mail, chat, blogs… are all in the "Cloud". Very convenient, but also dangerous (insert random EFF or FSF argument here —they all apply). With a worthy upload bandwidth, all these things could use a serve…

>>> But we already have such a slow lane. And it already made the internet less free and less useful.

I'm pretty sure you can still get ISDN lines from your local telecom provider. I know a long time ago there was talk of binding ISDN lines to together to increase upload and download speeds. This was right around the time DSL was blowing up so I'm sure it got lost in the wave of DSL hype.

Of course compared to DSL. GigaFiber, or any of the current technologies, it's downright pathetic.

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

#122

Post by devcpp »

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"…

>Companies like Comcast have no interest in slowing down web site traffic

Yeah? How about money?

As a comms engineer, I too think about the technical implications of this.

But you have to remember that the people who push for the abolition of net neutrality are mainly the finances guys, i.e the ones responsible for bringing as much money as possible to the company. And when you put yourself in their shoes, all of a sudden you get dreams of Comcast turning the Internet into the same kind of market it has in cable television. And you very quickly forget about QoS, bandwidth, latency and the job of "delivering the bits" and just think in terms of profits. You wouldn't know what most of those terms mean anyway...

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

#123

Post by Jtsummers »

Karunamon wrote: post #116
pas wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They want to maximize profits. So keeping costs down is important, but it's even more important to keep competitors out of the game. Currently they have no serious competitors, so they see the Comcast-tax as a pure added cost. But if this practice goes big and becomes an added cost to the market, barriers to enter it become higher, which keeps their position entrenched. Of course this would require a lot of formalisa…

>Currently they have no serious competitors Prime video. Hulu. >most of the same questions are going through Netflix executives' heads. Conjecture. Contrary to populist belief, not every corporation is a soulless, amoral entity. Netflix has yet to demonstrate in even the smallest way that they are for anything but complete neutrality.

Indeed, it's hugely to their benefit to be for net neutrality these days. A non-neutral internet would drive up costs for them and/or their customers for the data connection. If it drives up their costs it eats into their profit margin and they either soak it or raise prices. If it raises customer costs as a general increase on broadband cost, then customers have less money to spend on Netflix and other services. If it drives up customer costs because they now have to pay a Netflix prioritization fee, then they might not choose Netflix at all when Mediacom/TWC/Cox/whoever is offering a cheaper streaming media service.

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

#124

Post by bitJericho »

CocaKoala wrote: post #117
bitJericho wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you see no/little difference between an unethical ISP that's cheaper than a more expensive ethical one? I'm not sure what you think this debate is about.

I'd love to support a more ethical ISP, but as a practical matter, internet is already expensive and spending more for the same or less isn't really a workable option. Downgrading my connection is also not a great option; if I'm forced to choose between a fast expensive connection and a cheap slow connection, then yeah; it's great that Net Neutrality is a thing, but now I'm stuck in the shitty situation I was trying…

When money's the deciding factor, decisions are easy. There's more to life than money sometimes, though.

I could shop at Walmart and have an extra 20 bucks for my internet bill. Instead, I choose the slower internet with the ethical provider so that I can shop not at Walmart.

Not to say I'm perfect by any means, but this is just an example of the decisions I try to make every day. These decisions are hard sometimes.

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

#125

Post by devcpp »

pdq wrote: post #118
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"…

The other part that virtually no one talks about is how this would be regulated. Are we going to have "internet inspectors" from the FCC doing periodic surprise checks of every ISP? Will ISPs be required to have a neutrality license with full historical audit logs? This reminds me of when the TSA took over airport screening after 9/11, over the belief that only a government agency could screen passengers securely. Th…

Same way the NSA would be regulated against spying on the general population: remove money from the equation.

Think about it, the only reason Comcast is doing all this is so they can charge premium fees on certain services. If you don't allow them to do so (which is very easy to enforce, as customers can report such pricing policies), they have no incentive to be against net neutrality.

This is why the current status quo has worked for so long: ISPs have no way to legally make profits out of "premium" traffic, so they (generally) don't apply outrageous QoS measures. Money is the only incentive, and removing that incentive solves the problem without the need for active policing.

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

#126

Post by chill1 »

Theodores wrote: post #97
chill1 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allow me to list a few reasons I run with JS disabled by default: - Poorly written JavaScript that causes my system to stall for a time, to the point where I have to kill all my browser's processes manually; more common than you'd think. - Websites that attempt to mine cryptocurrencies using my browser with JavaScript; without my knowledge or permission. - Then there's XSS and CSRF vulnerabilities that can leverage J…

Mining bitcoins in javascript on someone else's computer. Surely it would be quicker to get the 386 computers out of the landfill and use them than to mine bitcoins in javascript remotely in some botnet of sorts. I am intrigued. Can you send me a URL of somewhere that will mine bitcoins on my computer?

I don't have any websites bookmarked that employ such scripts, but DuckingIt (tm) yields the following links on that topic:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=9042.0

http://www.bitcoinplus.com/miner/embeddable

https://github.com/progranism/Bitcoin-JavaScript-Miner

You should probably not embed such scripts into your website(s). If it's not illegal, it's certainly super shady, and an extremely inefficient method of mining bitcoins.

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

#127

Post by x0x0 »

exelius wrote: post #104
edoloughlin wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

spotify made it work: their desktop client is a p2p network

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

#128

Post by secabeen »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #72
edoloughlin wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Then Comcast will simply charge out the nose for the ability to send more than a trivial amount of data.

That would impact the ability of users to access corporate VPNs and work from home. My hope is that that's a large enough user base that they can't limit it too much.

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

#129

Post by sp332 »

Theodores wrote: post #97
chill1 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allow me to list a few reasons I run with JS disabled by default: - Poorly written JavaScript that causes my system to stall for a time, to the point where I have to kill all my browser's processes manually; more common than you'd think. - Websites that attempt to mine cryptocurrencies using my browser with JavaScript; without my knowledge or permission. - Then there's XSS and CSRF vulnerabilities that can leverage J…

Mining bitcoins in javascript on someone else's computer. Surely it would be quicker to get the 386 computers out of the landfill and use them than to mine bitcoins in javascript remotely in some botnet of sorts. I am intrigued. Can you send me a URL of somewhere that will mine bitcoins on my computer?

Quicker, probably :) but not cheaper! You can be as inefficient as you want if it's other people's resources you're wasting.

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

#130

Post by CocaKoala »

bitJericho wrote: post #124
CocaKoala wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to support a more ethical ISP, but as a practical matter, internet is already expensive and spending more for the same or less isn't really a workable option. Downgrading my connection is also not a great option; if I'm forced to choose between a fast expensive connection and a cheap slow connection, then yeah; it's great that Net Neutrality is a thing, but now I'm stuck in the shitty situation I was trying…

When money's the deciding factor, decisions are easy. There's more to life than money sometimes, though. I could shop at Walmart and have an extra 20 bucks for my internet bill. Instead, I choose the slower internet with the ethical provider so that I can shop not at Walmart. Not to say I'm perfect by any means, but this is just an example of the decisions I try to make every day. These decisions are hard sometimes.

There's plenty more to life than money: there's a wedding I'm planning, a wife I'm going to support while she goes to school, pets that I take care of, artistic organizations I support, etc.

Giving up on all of my hobbies that require internet, and having my fiancee to the same, is not practical. Paying more for internet is not practical. This is not an unreasonable position to take, nor does it represent some tragic moral failure on my part.

In any case, it's a thought experiment that's not worth defending myself further, because there are no alternatives to Comcast where I live.

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