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Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

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Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#151
post #120
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue here seems to be the landlord.

Yes. It's the so called Berlin issue. If you're lucky enough to find an apartment, you have a good chance of getting a slumlord who does everything to make your life miserable. I'd buy my own place, if there would be anything available. Probably need to move to another city or country.

How one can still buy into Berlin's hype in 2025?! Fuck their rental market, their landlords, three months deposit for completely empty apartment without even lightbulbs, copyright trolls, rundfunkbeitrag, rude customer service, schufa. Turn around and walk away.

Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulation isn't good enough. The government needs to make their own competing ISP. Hell, at least in the US, there's precedent for this: government builds and maintain all the roads; they run most transit and intercity rail operations; and they run physical mail delivery. At one point they even owned most of the railroads[0]. Communications and travel infrastructure are things government is moderately good at. For s…

As I’ve stated in other comments, the reason western governments don’t do this more often boils down largely to regulatory capture. Every single time there’s been a large mobilization of efforts to regulate some aspect of tech - municipal broadband expansion, cable box standardization and openness, right to repair, DMCA reform, privacy reforms, mandatory binding arbitration clauses, EULA’s, provider monopolies, etc -…

What you are describing sounds mostly like a US-problem, not sure it's a western gov problem in general?

In my city, the municipality owns much of the fibre. The country I live in owns a bank where you can get a mortgage pretty cheap. The good parts of GDPR or CRA are very good and was not disrupted by large corporations?

Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#153

Bell Canada also has had a long-standing policy of refusing to peer with internet exchanges. They'll only truly peer with other direct backbone providers and a handful of one-off peer with other large networks (google, cloud flare, etc), but their historical position as Canada's base backbone (not so much anymore, but it was definitely a thing pre-2005) has meant their policy is most people should pay them to peer. I…

It's annoying how they're the only big ISP offering fiber everywhere when they're also the ones that don't support ipv6 and have the shitty peering policy. I've heard you can use another isp though (teksavvy maybe?) that uses Bell's fibre and supports ipv6

Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the internet is out, it's going to be just as visible and probably will yield as many complaints as losing power, sewer, and water. More. Far more visible. Much easier to go without municipal power than without internet.

I don't find that it is usually even possible to have internet without power. How would that work?

After a famously bad wind storm in 2008, my house (along with thousands of others) was without power for about two continuous weeks.

The internet connection, which was FTTN VDSL, never skipped a beat. It was completely solid.

This was accomplished by using batteries and generators.

The ISP was The Phone Company, so their Cold War-era central office had very good backup power.

The VRAD nodes scattered all over town had enough battery backup that (at least in my neighborhood) things stayed up until they brought out generators for those nodes.

And at my house, the VDSL box had its own UPS. And I also had a rather overkill UPS, and a portable generator

We ran the generator intermittently, mostly to charge batteries and chill down refrigerators.

It wasn't an awesome time. It was hot as hell. It was a pain in the ass to keep the generator fueled. We didn't even try to run the desktop PC rigs.

But, yeah: The internet was working fine.

(We charged batteries for neighbors, too. One or two neighbors also dragged over extension cords to run their own fridge. And I opened up the WiFi completely so everyone nearby could use it.

So if you were my neighbour in that 2008 power outage, I'd have just taken care of that internet problem for you. The range at 2.4GHz was amazingly good in that abnormally-quiet RF environment.)

Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the internet is out, it's going to be just as visible and probably will yield as many complaints as losing power, sewer, and water. More. Far more visible. Much easier to go without municipal power than without internet.

I don't find that it is usually even possible to have internet without power. How would that work?

One doesn't have to rely on others for power. One can run their own generator, or set up a solar power system, or if you live out in the sticks, run a mini hydro system or use wind power. All of these can provide power to the home.

Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#156
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. It's the so called Berlin issue. If you're lucky enough to find an apartment, you have a good chance of getting a slumlord who does everything to make your life miserable. I'd buy my own place, if there would be anything available. Probably need to move to another city or country.

How one can still buy into Berlin's hype in 2025?! Fuck their rental market, their landlords, three months deposit for completely empty apartment without even lightbulbs, copyright trolls, rundfunkbeitrag, rude customer service, schufa. Turn around and walk away.

You forgot the government who spends billions to 3km of motorway a few people uses. To an airport that is one of the worst in EU and almost a decade late. And of course now cut from arts because of all this.

And every single construction project takes forever. And costs a fortune. And it is impossible to build housing fast enough.

The reason to be in Berlin has always been its great art scene. Now they are actively destroying it. What's left is a few Rossmanns and an Edeka.

Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI writing cadence I presume. Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45850683

Thanks. I thought it was something factually wrong.

It is also likely factually wrong as most major ISPs use GGC for popular traffic

Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#159

Using Starlink as your Internet provider does not protect you in any way when it comes to changes in pricing, speed or connectivity.

Yeah, the blog post took a bit of a weird turn there + the AI slop headers are also quite off putting. I know this may be conspiracy territory, but it does make me wonder whether this is guerilla marketing to ensure big E meets the sale goals for his $1T payment.

except the only infrastructure to replace is the satellite dish, and not the fiber that goes into your home. Or am I wrong here.

Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#160

I think the open internet like it existed in the late 90s and early 2000s is never coming back. Luckily tech got cheap enough that I believe we eventually will have continent wide grass roots mesh networks and uncensorable free communication again.

Mesh networks don't really scale to continent size and there really isn't a lot of free/unlicensed spectrum to work with, it's already really crowded. WISPs do a lot with what they have to work with but it's still not going to supplant the internet without some major technical breakthroughs.

I do not think this is about replacing the current Internet and watching Youtube or Netflix using a mesh network.

It would be more about having a slow, free and backup internet available. Nowadays, we talk a lot of cyber attacks and WW3. I am pretty sure the Internet would be the first thing to go out if things would escalate (at least at the same time as the grid).

I am not sure how long a "modern" society can operate without connectivity. The idea of a mesh network is also very cool.

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