Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

FCC moves ahead with Title II net neutrality rules in 3-2 party-line vote

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 202 posts

Re: FCC moves ahead with Title II net neutrality rules in 3-2 party-line vote

#171

Post by quitit »

mptest wrote: post #147
arghnoname wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not clear to me which party is more supportive of a 'free' internet. During the Trump and COVID era Democrats became much more aggressive in advocating for and explicitly pushing censorship regimes against what they consider to be misinformation. Probably any political faction on earth is going to want to control information flows to their advantage. Whoever you vote for will probably want to censor or limit the…

Side A : repeals net neutrality Side B: Puts net neutrality in place. You: "It's not clear to me how these are different." Seriously? You have to be kidding or downright silly to be an enlightened centrist in this situation.

It's people trying their absolute best to be opaque while holding completely obvious political views.

Re: FCC moves ahead with Title II net neutrality rules in 3-2 party-line vote

#172

Post by mptest »

quitit wrote: post #171
mptest wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Side A : repeals net neutrality Side B: Puts net neutrality in place. You: "It's not clear to me how these are different." Seriously? You have to be kidding or downright silly to be an enlightened centrist in this situation.

It's people trying their absolute best to be opaque while holding completely obvious political views.

Yeah, I know and agree, but I've had (my only) two comments flagged for being more direct in accosting enlightened centrism.

Disgusting to me to see people on this forum of normally highly intelligent people comparing in any degree the side that tried to over throw democracy, denies basic science from vaccines to climate, is against voter rights like mail in ballots/accessible polling stations, against women's and gay rights, with the democrats, even with all their problems. Frankly it is straight evil, or supremely ignorant at best to do so.

Enlightened centrism is indeed a fog used to hide conservatism though, just like "libertarian", "centrist", and "independent" (in the US), but you have to be careful calling out centrism on this forum.

Re: FCC moves ahead with Title II net neutrality rules in 3-2 party-line vote

#173

Post by JacobThreeThree »

rich_sasha wrote: post #82

Not an American: what is the non-libertarian public-facing argument against net neutrality? I'm sure its opponents say it's bad for the general public for some reason, and one of them might be some kind of "let market competition work it out" etc. If you discard that, what is left? There is probably also the argument that various businesses want this repealed, this is kind of clear.

One group of corporations lobbying for a brand new law to cripple another group of competing corporations, with the side effect of good PR and a theoretical benefit to consumers, is not the proper way to regulate this issue.

The primary reason for people supporting net neutrality is due to the existence of clear-cut ISP monopolies. This problem of monopolistic ISPs could be easily solved by enforcing the existing anti-trust laws that have long been on the books. Net neutrality essentially gives these monopolies a pass, so long as they make some vague promises about not throttling.

Net neutrality is the convoluted nonsense regulation that gets written by politicians who are trying to balance the various sets of competing lobbying interests.

The correct and proper solution would be to simply enforce existing anti-trust laws.

Re: FCC moves ahead with Title II net neutrality rules in 3-2 party-line vote

#174

Post by supertrope »

darknavi wrote: post #57
RHSeeger wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My phone plan (Verizon, common plan) limits the resolution of videos I can watch on my phone.

Ignorant here, do these FCC rules only apply to residential ISPs or do they also apply to cellular networks?

These proposed rules apply to both wireline and cellular broadband. See item 60 on page 35 https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-397309A1.pdf.

The original Net Neutrality rules exempted cellular. The FCC used Title I regulatory authority hoping to use a "light touch" least ISPs sued and an appeals court voided the regulation with the rationale the FCC did not have the authority to do as long it continued to classify broadband as Title I "information service" instead of "telecommunications."

When the Net Neutrality regulations were re-done the FCC re-classified broadband as Title II "telecommunications" for more solid legal authority.

When the FCC changed to Republican majority they repealed the regulation and reclassified broadband back to Title I.

Re: FCC moves ahead with Title II net neutrality rules in 3-2 party-line vote

#175

Post by supertrope »

bombcar wrote: post #96
rich_sasha wrote: post #82

Not an American: what is the non-libertarian public-facing argument against net neutrality? I'm sure its opponents say it's bad for the general public for some reason, and one of them might be some kind of "let market competition work it out" etc. If you discard that, what is left? There is probably also the argument that various businesses want this repealed, this is kind of clear.

In a simplistic view, net neutrality prohibits QoS bandwidth allocation. You can't prioritize video over Linux ISO downloads. In reality that would be solvable.

The former Net Neutrality regulations provided exceptions for an ISP's own VoIP (phone), IPTV and other managed services. That means the bundled phone service is inherently more reliable than an unaffiliated VoIP service using best effort delivery. As long as they did not anti-competitively block or hobble a competing over the top phone service they were legally fine.

On cellular the effect of priority is much more apparent. The "bundled" phone call service has very high priority and can function normally under network stress/congestion. Over the top Whatsapp or Facetime calls will suffer audio glitches or fail to connect under the same conditions.

Re: FCC moves ahead with Title II net neutrality rules in 3-2 party-line vote

#176

Post by supertrope »

hn_acker wrote: post #170
r00fus wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not true at all. What it means is that an ISP can't prioritize their own video service over say, Netflix. Or their own (perhaps ad-infested) download service vs a straight ISO download from a distro's site.

Net neutrality prohibits ISPs from restricting internet traffic based on content, senders, and recipients [1]. It is not exclusively about restricting internet for profit reasons. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality

The former Net Neutrality regulations provided exceptions for an ISP's own VoIP (phone), IPTV and other managed services.

Re: FCC moves ahead with Title II net neutrality rules in 3-2 party-line vote

#177

Post by ImJamal »

thfuran wrote: post #134
ImJamal wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Wickard vs Filburn is one of the worst decided cases out there. If I live in California and visit a website hosted in California there is no reason why there should be any interstate commerce involved.

What if all the traffic ends up routed through Nevada?

That is possible, but not guaranteed. I don't think the federal government has any authority to regulate the traffic that remains in one state only the traffic that goes through another state. I would also mention that not all traffic would be commerce as well. Going to HN isn't commerce so I don't think the federal government would have any authority even if the traffic crosses state boundaries unless it is genuinely commerce.

Re: FCC moves ahead with Title II net neutrality rules in 3-2 party-line vote

#178

Post by KETHERCORTEX »

verdverm wrote: post #81
KETHERCORTEX wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simplest way to do this: good speed on Speedtest, rubbish everywhere else. Also, by default Speedtest tests the connection from you to the nearest testing node. A lot of times it's the one hosted by your ISP, so the measured speed is the speed inside the ISP's local network and not the speed from you to outer Internet.

I've been using the Google widget when you search "speedtest" It tests using a node 200+ miles away (they tell you where) AND it actually shows slow numbers when the pipe is slow. Turns out Amazon Video was the culprit, somehow using 80% of a 100Mb connection for a single stream...

> I've been using the Google widget when you search "speedtest"

Google doesn't show me this widget, but the speed test on Google Fiber's website is just a frontend for Ookla's Speedtest I mentioned. So I suspect that the widget does the same or similar stuff. I don't know for sure though.

> It tests using a node 200+ miles away (they tell you where)

"200+ miles away" from your physical location doesn't mean "outer internet outside your ISP". It doesn't mean "far away from your ISP's network" either.

For example, some mobile carriers may operate country-wide, but route everything through Important Central Connector To Outer Internet™ in the capital city. Consequently, internet services think that user's phone is in capital city.

So while you see "City 200 miles away" as a test node, it may actually be the closest one because your ISP's network structure adds these mandatory 200 miles. ISP's internet access node and speed test node may be literally across the street or in adjacent server racks.

Not saying that it is certainly the case, just trying to explain why words on test screen may mean things different from the ones we assume.

> AND it actually shows slow numbers when the pipe is slow. Turns out Amazon Video was the culprit

From your words, it didn't show you slow pipe. It showed you regular one that was busy with streaming video.

Also, ability to watch streaming doesn't necessary indicates actual internet speed since streaming services like Netflix can provide ISPs with the hardware for caching [1] and streaming from inner ISP network. Not sure if Amazon does that though.

> Amazon Video was the culprit, somehow using 80% of a 100Mb connection for a single stream...

Amazon streams with a higher bitrate than most of the competitors. 80 Mbps isn't that surprising given that Bluray disks have 40 Mbps bitrate for 1080p video. With streaming you also preload some video ahead in a buffer, so hitting 80 Mbps is completely normal.

[1] https://openconnect.netflix.com/

Re: FCC moves ahead with Title II net neutrality rules in 3-2 party-line vote

#179

Post by tstrimple »

SllX wrote: post #79
calgarymicro wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth noting that California's net neutrality law[0] probably stymied most efforts by ISPs to start prioritizing traffic nationwide. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Internet_Consumer_P...

What I’ve never understood is the argument that what California does regulating ISPs could actually affect the service plans in 49 other States. Think about it: these are service plans offered through cables that already exist, and that cross defined borders right? But what all an ISP has to do to offer different service plans in California, Oregon, Nevada and Arizona is to merely offer different terms to different p…

Same way California auto standards impact auto standards across the entire country. California is the most populous state with a higher disposable income. At some point, creating a product specifically for 12% of the US population with money to spend while maintaining a separate product for the rest of the country becomes too much of an economic burden and the standard gets applied across the board instead.

Re: FCC moves ahead with Title II net neutrality rules in 3-2 party-line vote

#180

Post by slaymaker1907 »

hn_acker wrote: post #163
slaymaker1907 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some applications want extremely low latency compared to pretty much anything else such as cloud gaming. Net neutrality rules might get in the way of a cloud gaming service negotiating with an ISP to route their traffic more efficiently. It's kind of like how when ordering stuff online, sometimes you don't care if it takes 3 weeks to arrive but other times you want same day shipping. It would be a bad experience if U…

> Net neutrality rules might get in the way of a cloud gaming service negotiating with an ISP to route their traffic more efficiently. This is not convincing to me at all. ISPs could have supported low latency internet for everything, not just for gaming. If latency is too low then it's because the large ISPs are purposefully doing a bad job of upgrading to fiber and expanding fiber to places without internet access.…

You can believe whatever you like, but the fact is that it is may be expensive to get the necessary agreements on the backend for extremely low latency. I'm not talking about negotiating for 15ms, I'm talking about negotiating for 2ms latency.
Post reply on HN