FCC weakens net neutrality rule in a prelude to larger rollbacks • Hacker News Board

Re: FCC weakens net neutrality rule in a prelude to larger rollbacks

#251

Post by kalleboo » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 4:32 AM UTC

IshKebab wrote: post #101

snuxoll wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the normal way to cope with larger than expected usage is to just start dropping packets where there's congestion. And lo and behold, that's what ISP's have always offered to consumers. There's a reason connections are always advertised as "up to 50Mbps" instead of "50 Mbps", hell, even my "business" connection with the local cable company has absolutely no guarantee beyond "we'll have someone out to repair your se…

No it isn't. The "up to" is because the last mile is over copper wires which are variable so not everyone will get the same speed.

My last mile is 1 GBps fiber. I have a choice of a hundred or so ISPs over that fiber. The cheapest ones drop to single-digit megabit speeds during peak hours because the ISPs have such oversubscribed interconnections.

Re: FCC weakens net neutrality rule in a prelude to larger rollbacks

#252

Post by tempestn » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 4:32 AM UTC

chris_va wrote: post #243

wtallis wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean "charge less for a lower QoS band"? Net neutrality has nothing to say about an ISP that wants to offer both 10Mbps and 100Mbps plans, or business-class plans that offer an SLA for a higher price than ordinary residential plans.

This hypothetical company wants to drop packets from lower tier customers first, when congested, and oversubscribe their fiber to reduce costs.

That still doesn't sound like it would violate net neutrality. NN is about not discriminating based on content. In this case all content is still treated the same. Now, if they throttled everything except a few 'vital' resources, then you'd have an issue.

Re: FCC weakens net neutrality rule in a prelude to larger rollbacks

#253

Post by bobbington » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 4:33 AM UTC

wtallis wrote: post #218

morgzilla wrote: post #207

I can see how a bit of outrage about this is how the NRA got to the place it is today. This by itself isn't that meaningful, but anything can be politicized, turn public opinion and gain momentum. That's why the NRA's position is to say NO to any kind of gun regulation, because they know that's how you ensure guns are made available and gun culture is for sure secure. In the tech community I see people rising up agai…

There are pros and cons to gun ownership; it both contributes to and harms the public good. Net neutrality is a more lopsided issue—the arguments against net neutrality are all about legalizing extortion and promoting a tragedy of the commons, or else they're non-specific arguments against regulation of any kind. Taken on its own and rationally, the net neutrality issue is much less amenable to producing a permanent…

You want these companies to profit. If they don't profit they won't build out infrastructure. I think you should be much more grateful to ISPs for the service they provide instead of angry for chargin what is in your opinion too much

Re: FCC weakens net neutrality rule in a prelude to larger rollbacks

#254

Post by wtallis » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 4:34 AM UTC

adrianpike wrote: post #49

riskable wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone actually believe we will "run out of bandwidth" to the point where traffic shaping will become essential? Traffic shaping of saturated links sounds like a waste of time and resources when it's so much easier to just upgrade the hardware. It's cheaper too! It also happens to be the fucking purpose of the ISP (to provide adequate bandwidth for their customers). Think of how much it costs to pay people to ma…

> Does anyone actually believe we will "run out of bandwidth" to the point where traffic shaping will become essential? Traffic shaping has always been essential. Bandwidth has never been infinite, and there's always been latency vs. bandwidth tradeoffs that need to be managed.

> Bandwidth has never been infinite, and there's always been latency vs. bandwidth tradeoffs that need to be managed.

Dropping packets has always been necessary. Traffic shaping has never been necessary, and modern fair AQM algorithms are a net win to both throughput and latency relative to the most commonly deployed congestion management strategies, so that latency vs bandwidth tradeoff is far more illusory than you think.

Re: FCC weakens net neutrality rule in a prelude to larger rollbacks

#255

Post by wtallis » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 4:46 AM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #244

wtallis wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't fully agree with those definitions. ISPs need to be prohibited from preferring HTTP and TCP over other protocols. They should be permitted to perform only the kinds of QoS that will treat two traffic flows with the same data rate and packet sizes equally even if they are using different protocols and port numbers. Overt discrimination rules that specify preferences for certain endpoints or certain types of tr…

ISPs need to be prohibited from preferring HTTP and TCP over other protocols If anything, it would be the reverse.. HTTP and TCP (which doesn't care if its packets arrive out of order) getting deprioritized in the face of streaming content (which does). That kind of blows your restriction away. QoS under heavy load is the difference between everybody getting to use their apps and one or two people getting to use thei…

Out of order delivery is a complete red herring. Modern QoS systems don't cause packet re-ordering, though they do cause some re-transmits for flows that don't support ECN and thus need packet loss as a congestion signal. Video streaming like Netflix and YouTube has buffering far in excess of the RTT, so retransmissions don't hurt noticeably.

But you're still missing the main point, which is that good QoS doesn't need rules that single out and privilege or deprioritize any specific classes of traffic. Discrimination rulesets are obsolete. A network with good AQM at points of potential congestion will support full bandwidth utilization with sufficiently low latency for applications like VoIP and gaming, which can coexist alongside video streaming and bulk file transfers. QoS can be both effective and neutral with respect to content type and transport and destination.

Bad obsolete QoS shouldn't be used as an argument against net neutrality regulations. If it happens that net neutrality regulations both prohibit unfair business practices and require ISPs to fix broken congestion management, that's a good thing.

Re: FCC weakens net neutrality rule in a prelude to larger rollbacks

#256

Post by wtallis » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 5:03 AM UTC

bobbington wrote: post #253

wtallis wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are pros and cons to gun ownership; it both contributes to and harms the public good. Net neutrality is a more lopsided issue—the arguments against net neutrality are all about legalizing extortion and promoting a tragedy of the commons, or else they're non-specific arguments against regulation of any kind. Taken on its own and rationally, the net neutrality issue is much less amenable to producing a permanent…

You want these companies to profit. If they don't profit they won't build out infrastructure. I think you should be much more grateful to ISPs for the service they provide instead of angry for chargin what is in your opinion too much

This isn't about the overall pricing, though since ISPs are a natural monopoly they do require regulation to keep their pricing fair. The end result of both effective competition and regulation of non-competitive markets should be minimally profitable companies.

This is about ISPs having unfair power to manipulate a market that isn't even part of their core business. Traffic carriers shouldn't have control over the competitive landscape for content providers.

Re: FCC weakens net neutrality rule in a prelude to larger rollbacks

#257

Post by kalleboo » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 5:06 AM UTC

rhino369 wrote: post #135

walshemj wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Local loop unbundling is what you need like the UK has

The problem is that most americans get their internet over coxial cable owned by the local cable co. Most cable company networks don't have individual loops to unbundle. You share a loop with the whole neighborhood. I've heard people claim it is possible, but I'm not really sure how.

It won't technically be "loop unbundling" but it's not like it's particularly difficult - it's how MVNOs work.

Re: FCC weakens net neutrality rule in a prelude to larger rollbacks

#258

Post by hueving » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 5:25 AM UTC

wtallis wrote: post #250

hueving wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We could get there by degrees in an aggressively unfettered market. Don't you mean the heavily regulated market we have now that prevents new ISPs from easily servicing customers? The entire reason ISPs can behave like this is because customers realistically have no alternatives. Look at how Comcast behaved in markets where Google Fiber showed up. They often increased bandwidth and reduced prices effective immediate…

Your "unfettered market" would still leave incumbents with the massive advantages conferred by their natural monopoly; it just lessens the artificial barriers to competition on top of that. Your "unfettered market" would not be a healthy competitive market. Government intervention akin to local loop unbundling would be necessary to create a freely competitive market where one will not naturally develop.

Google Fiber gave up on silicon valley because of the regulatory burden of convincing local governments to let them install fiber. Let that sink in.

Google, who has enough cash to pay for nearly half of the entire Comcast company, was not able to rollout fiber to the area because of government regulations.

Why do you think they started in Kansas City of all places? It wasn't because they thought that was the strongest market for fiber in the country. It was because they actually convinced the government to let them bring fiber to peoples' homes.

>Government intervention akin to local loop unbundling would be necessary to create a freely competitive market where one will not naturally develop.

While this would make it even cheaper to get into the market, there is no proof that a market wouldn't develop if the government wasn't already intervening to make it so difficult to build networks.

Re: FCC weakens net neutrality rule in a prelude to larger rollbacks

#259

Post by amazon_not » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 6:02 AM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #178

amazon_not wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "this is complicated and needs to be handled with care, not with a trivial attempted fix like 'dumb pipes only' the way people often seem to think" Why do you think turning ISPs into dumb pipes only would not fix most, if not all, problems? The reason we have all these problems is that the ISPs do not want to be dumb pipes only.

Because many customers don't actually want a dumb pipe. Dumb pipes don't come with email addresses. Dumb pipes serve YouTube more slowly, and might not have the capacity for HD/4K video. (Look at what server the video comes from; if you're on a major ISP, the server name likely has your ISP's name in it.) Dumb pipes serve Netflix more slowly. Dumb pipes can't hold as many customers. Dumb pipes might not get as many c…

> Because many customers don't actually want a dumb pipe.

Yes, they do. That's exactly what they want. A dumb pipe that transports their bits and nothing more.

I'm omitting your list about dumb pipes, as nothing you write has anything to do with dumb pipes and is all completely wrong.

> Personally, I'd like a dumb pipe only as far as the nearest major datacenter, and then quite a lot of smarts in that datacenter. I don't just want a raw connection to a major bandwidth provider, though.

Hate to disappoint you, but there are no smarts in any ISP datacenter. It's just a big router and some interconnects. Raw bandwidth is all you get, if you are lucky.

> See also the last paragraph of my previous reply: I'd be in favor of separating out the "dumb pipe" as a utility, and then having ISPs operate independently from that. I think that would solve the majority of the problems.

It's not that simple, there are a lot of implementation details that matter. Do you want local loop unbundling, bitstream access or only resale?

Re: FCC weakens net neutrality rule in a prelude to larger rollbacks

#260

Post by JoshTriplett » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 6:23 AM UTC

amazon_not wrote: post #259

JoshTriplett wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because many customers don't actually want a dumb pipe. Dumb pipes don't come with email addresses. Dumb pipes serve YouTube more slowly, and might not have the capacity for HD/4K video. (Look at what server the video comes from; if you're on a major ISP, the server name likely has your ISP's name in it.) Dumb pipes serve Netflix more slowly. Dumb pipes can't hold as many customers. Dumb pipes might not get as many c…

> Because many customers don't actually want a dumb pipe. Yes, they do. That's exactly what they want. A dumb pipe that transports their bits and nothing more. I'm omitting your list about dumb pipes, as nothing you write has anything to do with dumb pipes and is all completely wrong. > Personally, I'd like a dumb pipe only as far as the nearest major datacenter, and then quite a lot of smarts in that datacenter. I d…

I think we have a serious problem of definitions (which goes back to what I said about this being not trivial to define): we're both saying the phrase "dumb pipe" and apparently meaning quite different things by it. Defining terms differently does not invalidate arguments, it just means we're talking past each other.

> Do you want local loop unbundling, bitstream access or only resale?

In an ideal world? A form of local loop unbundling, with a not-for-profit entity running/maintaining the local fiber, and umpteen ISPs readily available to handle termination and routing at the other end.