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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

#141

Post by knappe »

danielweber wrote: post #61
knappe wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We see this already with blackout outs in cable TV for various sports games ect. In fact, it took 4 months to resolve a dispute between DirecTV and the Weather Channel [0], which affected 20 Million people. There was some outrage, but not enough to for DirecTV to relent. Instead, the content provider was forced to change [1]. There are lessons to be learned here for other content providers, like Netflix. My worry is…

You have the sports blackout backwards. The content producer has demanded the blackout, not the gatekeeper, which would be happy to have the viewers.

Blackouts occur as a negotiation between local channels and the regional broadcasters (gate keepers), in general, such that local channels get priority over regional broadcasters.

Here is an example of a gatekeeper forcing blackouts the other way around [0]. The content producer was required to enforce a blackout on local channels as part of the deal with the gate keeper. Net result? Consumers lose.

[0] http://articles.philly.com/2014-03-27/news/48599544_1_philli...

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

#142

Post by colechristensen »

yaur wrote: post #35
colechristensen wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I live I have three choices, 1.5 mbit DSL, whatever small number of GB/mo I can get for $50 on 4G, or Comcast. There's no pretending, there are no alternatives. ISP access has weight when I'm considering moving which is sad.

T-Mobile is selling unlimited data plans for $80/month.

>UNLIMITED 4G LTE data (includes up to 5 GB of Smartphone Mobile HotSpot (SMH) service)

Not unlimited. Unlimited for 'phone usage' but not for legitimate usage outside your phone.

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

#143

Post by Timmmmbob »

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…

To be fair that was for technical reasons, and I think it will change soon with fibre. They tend to have sane upload speeds, e.g. 10 Mb/s.

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

#144

Post by wmf »

exelius wrote: post #140
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also there are issues with DRM in p2p. I never actually understood this. DRM is already largely ineffective, but how would P2P distribution make it any more ineffective? It would be trivial to distribute encrypted content using P2P and then DRM the decryption.

Modern DRM schemes use one-time keys. E.g. you can pull down a video stream, but you have to respond with your session ID and a login token which they then verify against subscriber information. And the whole point of DRM is to allow content providers to enforce the restrictions they place on content distribution contracts. For example, if there is a flag that says "this content can only be played on cell-phones and…

I think each file is only encrypted once and the file master key is then wrapped with a one-time key. That is completely compatible with P2P.

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

#145

Post by AnthonyMouse »

exelius wrote: post #112
wmf wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Because they didn't have 50% of their users trying to view 6 mbit/s video streams. EDIT: Just wanted to clarify that 50% is a number I pulled out of my ass. The general point is that the percentage of users who stream video online on a regular basis is increasing more quickly than the economics/logistics allow the ISPs to perform network upgrades.

> The general point is that the percentage of users who stream video online on a regular basis is increasing more quickly than the economics/logistics allow the ISPs to perform network upgrades.

This is another citation needed point. Bandwidth consumption has always increased over time, as has the performance per dollar of routing equipment.

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

#146

Post by redthrowaway »

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

You can't think of a few sites and services that TV cable providers would like to slow down? The issue isn't that the general web will get slower, but rather that cable companies will become the arbiters of which services survive and prosper.

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

#147

Post by darrinm »

x0x0 wrote: post #127
exelius wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They're shutting the p2p network down: http://www.digitaltrends.com/music/spotify-shuts-p2p-network...

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

#148

Post by revelation »

exelius wrote: post #111
revelation wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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's no technical capacity limit, that's true -- but there are operational and financial constraints. Replacing a half million routers across the country to remove the previous technical constraints isn't an easy or fast thing to do: the hardware will be obsolete before the implementation is finished. Think about everything that goes into this: they can't just pick a piece of hardware off of Amazon; they have to r…

I'm painfully aware of just what lengths telcos will go to to press the last bit of (downstream) bandwidth out of the taxpayer funded land line infrastructure they have been gifted. Thats what I'm saying: they have no interest in investing. Who will wake them up and tell them that no, you can't bridge another 20 years of progress on fucking bell wire? Do we like send them postcards explaining the Shannon-Hartley theorem?

But the terrible state of last-mile technology in the field isn't even what this is about. Netflix servers and the intermediaries they peer with are not in a shed in Nebraska with data coming in over microwave. Telcos don't invest in the last mile where they would have to create actual infrastructure, they don't invest where high technology rules in the heart of data exchanges all over the world.

(Of course ethernet isn't the relevant benchmark here, but at that time it wasn't just about what you could do over a hundred feet of copper, but also at what speed systems could actually communicate.)

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

#149

Post by zo1 »

devcpp wrote: post #125
pdq wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"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."

And because they weren't allowed to charge extra for "premium" traffic, they essentially switched over to the over-subscription model in order to make profit. The tighter you squeeze, the stronger it oozes out the sides. And never in the place or way you wish it would!!

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