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FCC aims to reinstate net neutrality after us Democrats gain control of panel

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Re: FCC aims to reinstate net neutrality after us Democrats gain control of panel

#211

Post by toast0 »

salawat wrote: post #202
toast0 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

T-Mobile USA has a pretty user friendly version of this on many/most of its plans. If a music streaming service participates to label its traffic, that data is zero rated for eligible users. If a video streaming service participates to label its traffic and limit bandwidth (advertising says 480p, but I think it's really a bitrate cap), then data is zero rated for eligible users. On plans with a high speed data cap, u…

So are you trying to sell the ability to graph who has seen what? Because that's essentially what that scheme does. No more dumb pipes, you're handing over tons of business recod based metadata out to ISP's to inevitably monetize, which, oh, coincidentally, waives any expectation of privacy legally speaking between the endpoints given our current judicial attitude toward Third Party Doctrine.

No. While it's certainly easiest to identify video streaming if the content is served in the clear, it's also possible to mark streams as video without making the content (or its identifiers) available. If everything is limited to 1.5 Mbps, you're just letting the carrier know who is watching something; but it's not hard to guess that someone is watching something based on the origin of traffic and other signs: if you download a short burst of data from Netflix CDN, you're probably running the fast.com speed test; if it's about 40 minutes of sustained data transfer, you probably watched a TV episode, if it's more like 2 hours, it was likely a movie, etc.

There's a benefit to the video providers, the carrier, and users, if this is done in a reasonable way. And I think T-Mobile's approach is the most reasonable way I've seen (at least from what's been said publicly)

Re: FCC aims to reinstate net neutrality after us Democrats gain control of panel

#212

Post by brightball »

rsingel wrote: post #161
brightball wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mobile providers are a different beast because there’s a limit on radio spectrum. Throttling is necessary.

No, it's not. Cutting back each user's allotment temporarily during times of congestion is necessary, but otherwise there's no technical reason to throttle, let alone choose one particular kind of app. If radio spectrum is so scarce, how are Mobile and Verizon selling unlimited 5g home internet service?

Additionally, 5G is closer to wifi than anything else. They're putting a lot more access points with shorter range around closer to homes. And it does become congested during high traffic times.

That's an ideal example of the limitation. A single tower with a wide range can't handle the same volume of devices in the area. So by using 5G it's just closer and closer to home, with fewer people using it at each point.

No question that it solves the last mile problem for these companies though. It's a lot easier to run fiber to an access point at the edge of your neighborhood than it is to run it to every house in that neighborhood.

Re: FCC aims to reinstate net neutrality after us Democrats gain control of panel

#214

Post by TheCaptain4815 »

Isn't the entire notion of NN outdated given the mass censorship that's sprung up the past 4-5 years?

Isn't it vastly more important to ensure free speech on the internet than the speed of your netflix stream. Seems like a misguided battle.

Re: FCC aims to reinstate net neutrality after us Democrats gain control of panel

#215

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

Guvante wrote: post #155
josephg wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Australia my first broadband internet connection worked like that - though when you went over, your bandwidth was heavily throttled until the end of the month unless you upgraded your plan for the month. As inconvenient as it is, honestly I think data caps are fair pricing. The load difference between a light internet user and a heavy user is orders of magnitude of capacity for the ISP to deal with. Having a flat…

A 1 gigabit connection represents 384 Terrabytes of data over a month. You can certainly say using 100% of that is excessive and not many disagree. The question is what is excessive? 50%? 10%? For me it is 0.4% without up charges. Additionally on the topic of costs bandwidth is by definition free. Pretty much everybody is okay with $0/gb pricing for network traffic. Capacity costs money. How much capacity does an exc…

> You can certainly say using 100% of that is excessive and not many disagree.

If it does not affect other customers, and if it does not exceed the ISPs peering agreements such that they must spend extra to serve that bandwidth beyond what would pay normally...

Then how is it "excessive"? But even if it was, then the ISPs are ethically obligated to publish what they consider to be excessive so that its customers can avoid any penalties and/or animosity. Network bandwidth is by its very nature a commodity whose demand will only increase into the future, after all, and some people are "getting there first". They shouldn't be chastised as troublemakers or gluttonous or whatever.

Re: FCC aims to reinstate net neutrality after us Democrats gain control of panel

#216

Post by AnthonyMouse »

josephg wrote: post #70
cptskippy wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was the guise to justify the caps but Comcast was setting caps around the data usage of someone streaming Netflix. The overage charges were ridiculous as well, if you used 2x your data cap it would cost you 100x your regular bill. I had some Nest cameras in addition to Streaming and ended up taking them down because I kept going over.

In Australia my first broadband internet connection worked like that - though when you went over, your bandwidth was heavily throttled until the end of the month unless you upgraded your plan for the month. As inconvenient as it is, honestly I think data caps are fair pricing. The load difference between a light internet user and a heavy user is orders of magnitude of capacity for the ISP to deal with. Having a flat…

> Having a flat price for internet sounds similar to having flat price for electricity or water - where your grandma (who turns off all the light switches whenever she leaves a room) would pay the same for electricity as a frat house mining bitcoin in the cupboard.

The difference is that to provide you with more electricity, the power company has to burn more natural gas, and pay more for that. When a data network is at less than 100% capacity, higher usage doesn't cost anything, the extra capacity is just lost. So to begin with, data caps that count traffic during off-peak hours are a pure scam; there is no reason for anyone to conserve bandwidth then.

Then you have the on-peak hours. Now, there are different ways to handle this. One is to set pricing that will deter usage, the other is to share the capacity. So you have a 1Gbps fiber connection but the uplink is oversubscribed and during peak hours you each get 800Mbps. People generally prefer this to paying more.

But some people want to have the 1Gbps per second all the time, so they should prefer metered billing, right? Still no. What you have instead is business service. If you want to be sure you have 1Gbps all the time, you pay a higher monthly fee and then get a higher class of service so that you do. Now the lower cost connection gets 1Gbps for 80% of the day and 500Mbps during peak hours -- which is a completely reasonable trade off for your grandma because she gets to save money and 500Mbps is still plenty enough. Whereas if you have some important need to always have the full speed, you can pay more and get it.

There is never any reason to meter it, and some pretty good reasons not to. It screws the people who actually need the guarantee if the metered pricing is ever insufficient to keep the network below 100% capacity. It also makes inefficient use of available capacity, because then you need to keep the network below 100% capacity, but that results in wasted capacity. And, of course, it creates a perverse incentive for the ISP when they can exempt their own services from the cap.

Re: FCC aims to reinstate net neutrality after us Democrats gain control of panel

#217

Post by thomastjeffery »

_chu1 wrote: post #73
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It really seems unnecessary at this point. Now that we have satellite based internet and 4G/5G are legit competitors to regular wire based ISPs None of those things compete with wireline, on either performance or price. Satellite internet is 2x-10x more expensive and requires expensive equipment. It has significant lag and greatly reduced upload. 5G speeds exist in small, limited zones. Cellular internet in general…

I actually get badass 5G speeds in the middle of nowhere rural Alabama with T-Mobile, the only issue is it being a CGNAT preventing me from playing most PS3 games online.

If you're lucky enough to live near an updated and uncongested tower, then yeah.

The same thing happened for my parents in rural Utah, just with FTTH instead. Unfortunately for them, they are overcharged enough that it's probably worth it at this point to switch to 5G.

Re: FCC aims to reinstate net neutrality after us Democrats gain control of panel

#218

Post by deltarholamda »

mattnewton wrote: post #80
deltarholamda wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like many government regulations, it has a great name, "Net Neutrality," which, when it is actually implemented, will do much more than make the 'Net neutral. Maybe, at first, it will have something to do with "you can't throttle Web services," but it will morph into "you MUST throttle this particular Web service, it spreads disinformation, which makes the Net less neutral." It is what always happens. It is more reli…

What? How would regulation that “you must not throttle” lead to regulation for “you just throttle”? That makes no sense.

How much of the Patriot Act was patriotic?

The US government does this sort of thing all the time.

Re: FCC aims to reinstate net neutrality after us Democrats gain control of panel

#219

Post by [deleted] »

andrewla wrote: post #186
dd36 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am going to repeat this in every chain: net neutrality is the law in California.

Wait -- I'm genuinely curious -- does that mean that data-throttling plans from mobile providers do not exist in California? All the plans I see (in New York) say things like "unlimited but video will be SD instead of HD" which seems a frank violation of the principle of net neutrality (not to mention a bit of a technical marvel). Are these plans legal in California, or is the California law not sufficiently specific…

[deleted]

Re: FCC aims to reinstate net neutrality after us Democrats gain control of panel

#220

Post by EricE »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #216
josephg wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Australia my first broadband internet connection worked like that - though when you went over, your bandwidth was heavily throttled until the end of the month unless you upgraded your plan for the month. As inconvenient as it is, honestly I think data caps are fair pricing. The load difference between a light internet user and a heavy user is orders of magnitude of capacity for the ISP to deal with. Having a flat…

> Having a flat price for internet sounds similar to having flat price for electricity or water - where your grandma (who turns off all the light switches whenever she leaves a room) would pay the same for electricity as a frat house mining bitcoin in the cupboard. The difference is that to provide you with more electricity, the power company has to burn more natural gas, and pay more for that. When a data network is…

wow - go read up on oversubscription; you might get a better idea about how networks work. The idea that any provider has 100% back end capacity for the full bandwidth of every node connection is beyond laughable.
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