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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

#181

Post by jordanthoms »

orthecreedence wrote: post #163
shubb wrote: post #36

Can anyone think of any advantages to a non-neutral internet? I can think of a few - Netflix and Skype would work better. Most likely, we'd be able to pay for priority traffic, just like we pay for a large AWS instance. Non-priority traffic might be cheaper than current bandwidth. It would be crazy to suggest all sites be forced to use the same size AWS instance... Some types of traffic are bandwidth sensitive, like…

> Can anyone think of any advantages to a non-neutral internet? Yes! People who are always crowing about how the free market will save us all and how regulation is the enemy will start bitching about their slow Netflix speeds. Some of them may even realize what a terrible idea an unregulated free market is. > don't you expect consumers to choose ISPs and services that don't do it? Most ISPs have a monopoly in their l…

Keep in mind though, the ISPs got those monopolies from the governments in those areas. Not exactly free-market.

I don't have a problem with regulating them though - As far as I'm concerned, if you've been exploiting a state-granted monopoly for the last 40 years you don't get to demand a free market when someone might pass regulations less favorable to you.

However, the real fix here is going to be removing the monopolies and getting a competitive marketplace for bandwidth.

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

#182

Post by jellicle »

ihsw wrote: post #27

Why stop at the slow lane? There is nothing preventing ISP gatekeepers from wholeheartedly denying access. Slowness is just the beginning -- the end-goal is making the internet into multiple competing walled gardens where users are treated as silos that require permission to access. The global reach of the internet is at risk here. Imagine if Netflix wasn't accessible to Comcast users from the beginning because they…

Well, it will be like anything else - the first hit is free, then you have to pay. Netflix wouldn't have been killed in its infancy; it would have been killed as it became a toddler and started to walk and to run.

So your startup will be going like gangbusters for the first couple of months, then you'll get a letter noting that your "abnormal usage patterns" require "an agreement" or else you "will be subject to rate-limiting".

And the fee will be set as close your estimated profits as the ISP can come...

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

#183

Post by timthorn »

arh68 wrote: post #177
addisonj wrote: post #6

How about something simpler - Make images load slowly using JS. A ton of popular consumer sites - facebook, instagram, reddit/imgur are hugely image based. A few lines of JS to make them slowly load (perhaps PNG artifacts for bonus points) and you could very effectively get the point across all while quickly serving a nice large banner. Offtopic: As a google fiber customer myself, his mention of not remembering the u…

Remember the days before PNG, before JPEG, when GIFs loaded several times over ? That sure was fun, watching the image get slightly clearer and clearer and then just stop, leaving you wondering about that final level of detail. Back then of course you'd be opening an image that big & detailed in a separate window, but now we've got some image-heavy websites with dozens of these things. Retina screens don't make thing…

They didn't load several times over, they loaded progressively. It was all the same file, but as soon as one level of detail could be displayed, it would - a very sensible optimisation in dial-up days.

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

#184

Post by danelectro »

zacinbusiness wrote: post #82
coldcode wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forget that the customer would be forced to choose what sites they could access as pay per site. The ISPs (generally a future Comcast monopoly) want to charge both ends to connect. You want Facebook at all - pay $5 per month. Facebook, pay us $1 per customer. You want some random blog, sorry they didn't pay us. Or maybe they will connect you at such a low rate as the site is unusable. The end result is that only…

I wonder if this will have an effect on web design? Less JS, fewer images, no web fonts. I can see a website going back to plain text. I realize that even plain text can be throttled to the point of uselessness, but would it help at all?

How about an augmented form of plain text, where a SMALL MINORITY of special undisplayed characters invoke formatting options which can be utilized by consoles not much more powerful than dumb terminals. We could call it Hypertext . . . Could even give rise to a "markup language", we could call it HTML . . . Once you start going down that road it could be a slippery slope . . .

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

#185

Post by cddotdotslash »

orthecreedence wrote: post #166
cddotdotslash wrote: post #109

Best idea I've heard so far is to intentionally slow traffic only for known government IP blocks. If we can convince Google, Wikipedia, and other big sites to do this, Washington would definitely notice. I'm thinking of writing a script that site owners could use to do just this.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7712345 You may want to get in touch with rubbingalcoholic/FFTF and see if you can help out! I've demoed the widget they're working on and it's painfully awesome.

Thanks! I sent them an email. If anyone else is reading this later, my code is here: https://gist.github.com/matthewdfuller/69f990f58f1e0850443e

It's pure JS and simulates the old dial-up-style loading of pages.

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

#186

Post by awor »

pault wrote: post #135
ihsw wrote: post #27

Why stop at the slow lane? There is nothing preventing ISP gatekeepers from wholeheartedly denying access. Slowness is just the beginning -- the end-goal is making the internet into multiple competing walled gardens where users are treated as silos that require permission to access. The global reach of the internet is at risk here. Imagine if Netflix wasn't accessible to Comcast users from the beginning because they…

I live in Belize and until a few months ago skype was blocked by the government granted monopoly telecom. Welcome to the future!

I remember finding this out on a trip there in 2007, glad to see it has changed

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

#187

Post by Retric »

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.

p2p can work well, world of Warcraft being a prime example. DRM is also no problem for an easy solution just have a few important bits in another file which is downloaded separately. The real issue is rock solid multithreaded low level networking code is way beyond the skill level of the average ruby on rails code monkey.

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

#188

Post by pdabbadabba »

ep103 wrote: post #175
pdabbadabba wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true. But actually, on that score, it seems like the new rules are likely to be an improvement. (!!!) Now, if you think that Comcast is blocking content in the guise of "service problems," the most you can do, realistically, is call customer service. But if they do that with an explicit "no blocking" rule in place, they're just asking to get sued--either by a consumer, a state communications commission, or the…

It doesn't matter if its no-blocking, if they allow their current service to degrade to the point that it is unusable. That's exactly the same as blocking for everything, except a few specific services that paid for the 'fast lane'. And its already happening http://bgr.com/2014/05/06/comcast-internet-service-criticism...

I don't think the FCC is so stupid as to not catch on that this constitutes "blocking." But only time (and seeing the actual rules) will tell.

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

#189

Post by M4v3R »

petenixey wrote: post #92
ihsw wrote: post #27

Why stop at the slow lane? There is nothing preventing ISP gatekeepers from wholeheartedly denying access. Slowness is just the beginning -- the end-goal is making the internet into multiple competing walled gardens where users are treated as silos that require permission to access. The global reach of the internet is at risk here. Imagine if Netflix wasn't accessible to Comcast users from the beginning because they…

Slow is so more infuriating - as perfectly illustrated by this Oatmeal... http://theoatmeal.com/comics/no_internet

I agree with this 100%. When my internet gets slow I'm wasting so much time, because I'm still thinking it will finally work for me, whereas if its not working at all, I can go and do something else that is productive and doesn't require internet access.

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

#190

Post by randac »

exelius wrote: post #168
orthecreedence wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But more generally, slow-loading websites make the ISP's service look shitty Exactly, so people will just leave that ISP and sign up with one that doesn't throttle traffic. Except most people have only one ISP in their area. Yay free market!

Even in a truly free market, most areas would only have one ISP. See how Verizon and AT&T have dramatically scaled back or stopped their FiOS/U-Verse rollout plans. If a company with easements and existing infrastructure (and thus lower costs) has decided it can't justify the investment, how would anyone else?

You only need look outside the US to see that's garbage.
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