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F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

nytimes.com

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Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

#651

Post by rdxm »

so a few things:

1) i'm somewhat skeptical that this will result in noticable price or service degredation scenarios.

2) there is now way in hell trump gets a second term so pai wil be gone soon, i.e. this was a tempest in a teapot.

3) it's fundamentally unclear that this will actually be harmful. of course the investment argument is total bull shit, but realistically, wireless is going to obviate classical monopoly power that exists today for incmbents.

maybe my views are silly, but, most peopel really won't notice a difference..

Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

#653

Post by njarboe »

wlesieutre wrote: post #425
noetic_techy wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this compare to municipal electricity companies? Do you think the same model could be applied?

Coming in 2019, electric companies monitor your usage profile to tell when you turn on different appliances and charge you a higher rate for running your TV or charging your electric car. But don't worry, the free market will fix it.

In California you do get different rates if you get an electric car. You also get different rates (higher) if the State thinks you don't "need" air conditioning.

Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

#654

Post by maxsilver »

pnash wrote: post #640
maxsilver wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a private citizen, can I (snip) just lay a super long fiber cable straight to (the internet). Yes. I worked on a startup ISP for a few years, which attempted to do this. It's actually really easy to do : 1) Pick a point where you can get connection to the internet. (Backhaul). This is usually a phone companies central office, but it can also be at a data centre or other point of presence. 2) Run fiber cable from…

You've covered the "last mile", but there is the upstream world to take into consideration. 1) Connecting into a CO is one thing, but your fiber is going to need to connect into something. Who is paying for your optics, is there a port or line card that can accept those optics? Does the CO actually have enough bandwidth upstream? This is a real issue. Back in the 90s, I helped set up an ISP in Boston proper and our m…

> Who is paying for your optics, is there a port or line card that can accept those optics? Does the CO actually have enough bandwidth upstream? This is a real issue. (snip) You better hope that your CO has upstream capacity and a fast path to netflix/hulu/facebook/google/akamai/etc.

Yes and yes. I don't want to dismiss this, it's a real need, but this is what you pay your upstream for. I've never seen a provider not take care of it.

I suppose if you cheap out on your upstream, this can be an issue. I can't imagine someone doing all the work to build a Fiber ISP, and then cheap out on the actual internet service, but I suppose anything is possible.

> This doesn't even cover where you are going to get your IP addresses, if your upstream provider will announce them in BGP for you, etc. Or maybe you connect in to two carriers, get an ASN and announce your networks yourself. You are still at the mercy of your upstream providers.

I don't know how common this is, but my upstream providers would just sell me the IP addresses and were flexible enough to handle either scenario.

> You are still at the mercy of your upstream providers.

Absolutely. This is always true, until you get large enough to be the upstream provider yourself and peer with others directly. But since upstream is competitive, and carries heavy contracts with teeth, you are mostly shielded from the worst atrocities.

It's kind of like forming a union. Sure, you're still "at the mercy of the employer", but you have way better bargaining power to prevent major problems, when you represent 10,000 internet users instead of just one. It's not perfect by any means. But it's worlds better than anything folks are used to on the residential side.

> The FCC/TitleII stuff, from what I've heard, negatively impacted small WISPs that were trying to start up,

Yes, fines should be lower for small business. But these guys could also just not break the law.

The complaints I've seen from some small WISPs are from people who are cheap and lazy, and want to do some pretty sketchy things. (Intentionally throttle Netflix to save upstream bandwidth, for example, because they want to sell 20mbps but can only provide 2mbps). These are blatant violations of Net Neutrality that would cause a shitstorm when AT&T/Comcast does it. But because they are 'small businesses', they want a bunch of sympathy despite doing the same slimy stuff.

I'm guessing there's probably an honest reason for some of the complaints, but the ones I've heard myself were all pretty shady. These providers give honest ISPs a bad name, and play into the false "everyone's just as evil as Comcast anyway" narrative.

Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

#656

Post by throwaway413 »

komali2 wrote: post #300
juris wrote: post #135

This wouldn't be a problem if ISP's weren't de facto monopolies. If there was competition in this space, then there would be incentive to improve the infrastructure and Internet speeds. However, ISP's kill competition by making legal arrangements with local governments to only do business with them, and by cutting competitors' cables. Since we have no way to guarantee reasonable speeds to small time websites now, we…

I've been thinking this over for the past couple months, because I was pretty sure this would be the outcome - that we would lose our net neutrality protection. So let's play out the worse case - Comcast, AT&T etc wait out the shitstorm and then start throttling traffic and packaging the internet, releasing cable-esque "plans." Is it feasible to just start running our own fiber to hubs? I want to learn more about the…

Along the same lines, curious, what if it was a WiFi mesh network connected to a gateway node. You could bridge cities/regions by gateway. Inspiration stemming from Havana’s 50mi mesh intranet.

Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

#657

Post by maxsilver »

snowpanda wrote: post #621
maxsilver wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a private citizen, can I (snip) just lay a super long fiber cable straight to (the internet). Yes. I worked on a startup ISP for a few years, which attempted to do this. It's actually really easy to do : 1) Pick a point where you can get connection to the internet. (Backhaul). This is usually a phone companies central office, but it can also be at a data centre or other point of presence. 2) Run fiber cable from…

Thank you maxsilver, this is one of the most informative posts I've seen on HackerNews. Question, you said: This is usually a phone companies central office Are there risks involved with that? Like for example, they could start playing games with you by saying 'sorry we're doing construction for a week, you can't access your office' ? Maybe a bad example, but I mean, would it make more sense to do it outside of their…

> Are there risks involved with that? Like for example, they could start playing games with you by saying 'sorry we're doing construction for a week, you can't access your office' ?

Probably? I've never written up a plan using an actual monopoly telco's CO, exactly for this reason. It's easier to find anywhere else to start from, and usually cheaper too.

I only mention it because my experience is mostly suburban / small city related, and I know the majority of small ISP / WISP guys are hyper-rural. They may not have any other options available to them.

Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

#658

Post by Azkar »

beal wrote: post #322
bjt2n3904 wrote: post #120

Common response on HN for the past two months has been nothing short of hyperbolic. "The world will end if NN is repealed". Speaking as a conservative: When Obama was president, I got told the same thing about the ACA. The world will end, the sky is falling, America is finished. But eight years later, here I am, nothing's that much worse. I have no reason to believe this is "the beginning of the end" of anything. Lif…

The hyperbole around NN on here and reddit has been annoying. My network carrier already does some anti net neutral things that I like. I do think the market for ISPs has failed. Regulatory patching won't always be able to stay up to date. The government should make it easier to start an ISP.

> My network carrier already does some anti net neutral things that I like.

What happens when they start doing things you don't like?

Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

#659

Post by analogmemory »

komali2 wrote: post #300
juris wrote: post #135

This wouldn't be a problem if ISP's weren't de facto monopolies. If there was competition in this space, then there would be incentive to improve the infrastructure and Internet speeds. However, ISP's kill competition by making legal arrangements with local governments to only do business with them, and by cutting competitors' cables. Since we have no way to guarantee reasonable speeds to small time websites now, we…

I've been thinking this over for the past couple months, because I was pretty sure this would be the outcome - that we would lose our net neutrality protection. So let's play out the worse case - Comcast, AT&T etc wait out the shitstorm and then start throttling traffic and packaging the internet, releasing cable-esque "plans." Is it feasible to just start running our own fiber to hubs? I want to learn more about the…

In San Francisco there's local ISP called MonkeyBrains that uses microwave tech to create a wireless network in the city. They put a receiver on top of your apartment/building and then run cat5 or use existing cable. It's pretty awesome and fast. So it can be done. I'm hopeful that people will be inspired to create their own local ISP in light of the new rules.

Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

#660

Post by grizzles »

Some bad policy there from the FCC. The best outcome now would be if Google + Facebook + AWS, etc partnered and started charging domestic ISPs a price to access their content. Amazon is the elephant here because they can introduce a clause in the AWS agreement giving themselves the power to negotiate like this.

If they did it now, at the outset of this policy, it would be hard for ISPs to claim "antitrust" since the four horsemen would effectively be protecting smaller websites.

The alternative is the charge going the other way, with ISPs gaining the power to slice and dice the internet up, with small websites possibly having to pay more than one ISP.

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