FCC votes in favour of net neutrality

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r25198980-Congestion-by-CHOICE-ISP-s-create-it-for-profit-

BTW congestion by choice so they can profit off of it is something ISPs routinely do.

...for now. That can very easily be changed by the stroke of nothing more than a pen. At this time, I'm neutral (pun intended), on this issue. I can see pros and cons on both sides and I really don't know where I fall yet. I honestly don't know enough about it.

That's three pages of it. What are in the other 325 pages? What about the change to Title II, which Congress specifically exempted for the Internet?

How do ISP's profit from delivering your message slower? Do you get an extra bill at the end of the month?

Which is why I said this:

The political system is broken because it could not provide net neutrality without the "nuclear option", nor healthcare without 2,000 pages of indecipherable bureaucracy. If the parties were prepared to cooperate, the opposition would serve as a corrective rather than a mere binary obstacle.

Ok, but let us be clear. You detractors are not arguing about what actually is but instead are making some slippery slope argument about what you fear might, possibly, maybe, but not really likely... to happen in the distant future.

Neither the Internet nor the political system around it were broken. Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, exempted information companies from Title II regulation so the Internet would grow rapidly, unfettered by having to spend five years to get FCC permission to do something new, which is what they were seeing throughout the 1980's.

But a few years ago some activists got upset with the idea that the Internet is built and run by corporations, because corporations are evil, and they looked for excuses for the FCC to put it back under public control. Their push long predates any Netflix or Comcast issues.

Oh, that is super easy. "Gee, sir, you say your connection is really slow on our $90 per month plan? Well, I can certainly help you with that if you upgrade to our $150 per month plan."

It provides incentives to act like a toll booth and keep squeezing more cash for the same basic service. Especially since ISPS can control congestion very easily either by limiting sure subscriptions or doing routine network maintenance. That is before we even talk about simple network upgrades every few years which don't cost much as computer and networking hardware tend to get better yet go down in price a high rates.

http://www.itworld.com/article/2742...re-overstating-their-congestion-problems.html

Netflix traffic is only really last mile traffic and not backbone traffic since netflix has everything cached at data centers as close to customers as possible. Thus the claim that netflix is 30% of traffic are mostly bullshit as virtually none of it is backbone or even spoke level traffic. The actual impact is much, much less as it is all at the edge of the network for short distances and it tends to be grouped predictably for a few hours after people get home from work.

http://arstechnica.com/business/201...ion-is-not-a-problem-impose-data-caps-anyway/

Not surprisingly, congestion isn't really a problem and most can be easily mitigated but ISPs love to play it up to justify data caps which are all about profits and not network congestion.

https://gigaom.com/2011/11/13/traffic-jams-isps-and-net-neutrality/

A related article on a similar topic, prioritozation, or fast laws, are a major disincentive for ISPs to expand capacity because the the slower the standard service gets the more they can charge for priority service. Thus instead of investing in better networks with more capacity the way they maximize profits is to not expand network capacity and just keep charging more for the same service.

This tactic works especially well if it is a monopoly which faces no real competition; which is the exactly what we find in 90% of the country.

http://phys.org/news/2014-12-limiting-internet-congestion-key-factor.html

Same issue different source.

The "fast lane" is exactly what Netflix and Google are benefitting from. Comcast and others wanted to monetize this business channel and not just give access. This is what triggered the current frenzy for net-neutrality in the states with netflix and google spearheading (and probably funding) the PR.

No one outside of China, North Korea, Iran are blocking content or contemplating it. There is only one instance of a Canadian ISP throttling peer sharing. There was also the issue of Comcast's apparent throttling of Netflix but they are keeping their cards pretty close and Netflix resolved the problem by paying Comcast to place Netflix servers in Comcast data centers.

Why do you think "net neutrality" is important? Are you concerned about North Korea? Iran?

Well, no, that's gturner. The rest of us are saying throttling, fast lanes, etc., are a good thing, because they allow the market to work and avoid socializing cost.

They didn't until 2014! This is what they are paying Comcast for. This is the central issue.

And it's not "near" it's in Comcast's data centers (and the other ISP's). On their raised floors. Using their electricity and operators.

The "near" model is Google's. They have mega data centers in every major population area close to ISP's data centers so they can physically run fiber, their own private fiber, to connect to the ISPs.

Bingo, you found a forum talking about the instance of a Canadian ISP throttling peer sharing. A bloody forum. This is your concern? Oh and Canada.

It's not routine, this is the only known instance (outside of the Netflix/Comcast battle last year.)

Doesn't Germany block known hate sites (the kind with that well known symbol denoting good luck). How does this conform with net neutrality in the EU or here?

It doesn't block them, but it outlaws hosting them;
it's not a good luck symbol, just similar to one;
outlawing them is censorship, and I firmly oppose it, as I've often said;
none of the above has anything to do with net neutrality.

Court orders are different from a company like Comcast abusing it's monopoly position to extort protection money out of websites. "Pay up or we will either block or throttle you".

BTW Netflix is already trying to get out of Comcast's extortion "deal". They are not trying to get out of this because of the net neutrality rule but because they never wanted to pay billions in extortion to begin with.

http://arstechnica.com/business/201...-fcc-is-ready-for-interconnection-complaints/

My heart bleeds for Comcast...

Maybe gturner and the others will offer to pay more since they believe Netflix was treated fairly and teh market shall overcome.

This reminds me of the "deregulation" of the cable companies. The federales run it and we get to pay more. They control ALL public utiklities and the internet was just became one. Yippee!!!!

NEWSFLASH:

You're going to pay more either way, whether it's a "net tax" or eating the charges for ISPs charging content providers more. And yes, eventually they would have hit a content provider you use.

1) Interconnectivity and even hosting servers on the back end is still allowed but must be free and open to all comers.

2) Netflix already had server farms all over the fucking place and the only difference the extortion deal made was instead of down the block now it is in the same building. They can still do that but now Comcast has to allow that access for free.

3) You are just plan wrong that Comcast was not blocking and throttling websites selectively. They started doing it almost the second they legally could. There is no doubt in my mind that they would have gotten bolder with it as time went on until they really were just straight out blocking competition.

Of course, the cable companies claim they would NEVER do that, except when they were caught red handed doing exactly that, but if that was true then why are they complaining and whining so much? Answer: Because they damn well know that is exactly what they wanted to do! They are just another monopoly out to abuse their monopoly position to extract the highest possible rents out of people.

Google rent seeking and what Adam Smith thought about rent seeking behaviors and how they were economically extremely damaging. The FCC put an end to that shit and EVERYONE who uses the internet is better off because of it.

ISPs have been blocking Torrents for ages, it's just that there was not effective lobby for it since most torrents are pirated content.

I think that's what made them think they could start doing it to legit content too.


(not completely relevant, but I found it humorous and annoying when I was in Japan and my internet worked great...until I started downloading my American TV shows with bit torrent and my connection pretty much shutdown completely. Then they actually told me they aren't throttling anything)

Also let's stop lying and admit the obvious. The reason the cable companies were throttling and causing service interruptions to Netflix was because of cord cutters. People figured out $7.95 for Netflix was a great deal especially since they could already get local digital stations for free so why pay $200 a month to the cable monopoly when you could get buy with just an Internet connection for $50 and $8 to Netflix?

They were maliciously acting to protect their monopoly and stifle competition and nothing else.

Archangel, yes the no throttling rule is going to be really nice for torrent hounds.

Prior to Comcast hosting Netflix server on Comcast's floor (for which Netflix is paying a fee), Netflix used Amazon's CDN. Streams were still delivered over third party backbones.

The third party backbones were in violation of contracted peering agreements, delivering more traffic than they were taking from the ISP and not paying for the difference. The cause of this was Netflix. The ISPs had looked the other way for years until the disparity was too large not to. Comcast acted by throttling Netflix streams causing widespread user disruptions starting around November/December 2013. In 2014 Netflix agreed to pay Comcast to bypass the backbones placing servers on Comcast's floor.

These peering agreements, by the way, should not be affected by net-neutrality.

I think Comcast was wrong in how they handled their end. It should have been brought up in courts long before it reached this stage, rather than reducing service. Comcast failed and made their users suffer. The dispute was with the backbone, not Netflix.

I'm not finding any claims from the general public this was happening, other than people's netflix streams a year ago. Please provide links if you can. I've done my due diligence and did not find any substantive instances other than the Canadian ISP.

Anc's claim he was getting slower service than contracted is anecdotal and unrelated to net-neutrality.

There are lot's of anecdotal accounts of slow internet service. Most people don't understand that the perceived speed, the latency between when they click on something and see the response, is dependent on every device and channel the communication traverses. This includes their own computer, their ISP, a backbone in most cases, a remote ISP in most cases, the media providers' server and potentially a large private network on their end. A bottleneck at any of those places can result in the user perceiving a slowdown on their connection.

Net neutrality won't help any of these points of failure.

I wouldn't describe Comcast's behavior as rent seeking. They are providing the physical plant and expertise to allow/operate netflix's servers inside their data centers. This reduces traffic on the backbone giving the public a better internet experience for both netflix streams and other traffic that uses the freed-up bandwidth on the backbones. Netflix does provide the servers.

Previously Netflix was paying Amazon to be hosted on their CDN (and before that, Limelight's). Is that rent seeking?

Ars Technica says due to servers Netflix was not using backbone and I am inclined to believe them. I am not inclined to believe your interpretation either since the article I linked was written before the Comcast extortion deal. Lastly, net neutrality doesn't block or prevent such a deal other than it prevents comcast from charging for such an arrangement. I do believe Netflix will now attempt to get their billions back from the extortion it's at Comcast.

Exactly. Netflix may benefit (millions maybe, hundreds of thousands likely, billions?).

From your arstechnica link:

Interconnection (or "peering") allows networks to exchange traffic directly. Large network operators known as "transit providers" carry the traffic of many online content providers and connect directly to ISPs so that the traffic can get to Internet users. Occasionally, a content provider becomes so big that it builds out its own network infrastructure and seeks interconnection from the ISPs directly.

That's what happened with Netflix, but it wanted the ISPs to provide interconnection for free

​

Interconnection is not peering. Interconnection is the method. Peering is the agreement. Entities that interconnect may have peering agreements that state they will deliver no more traffic than they receive, or pay extra. This is how the backbones operate.

Netflix didn't want interconnection, they wanted to place their servers in Comcast's data centers. There's a big difference. Google wants free interconnection.

From your link:

Transit providers Level 3 and Cogent also warred with the ISPs when they were carrying Netflix traffic over congested pipes. While large network providers often interconnect without payment in what's known as "settlement-free peering," the ISPs demanded payments from Level 3 and Cogent when the additional Netflix traffic caused them to send far more traffic than they received.​

Level 3 and Cogent are backbones (aka transit providers). This makes your statement "Ars Technica says due to servers Netflix was not using backbone and I am inclined to believe them" factually wrong if not gibberish. Better stick to politics.

I'm not really on one side or the other, but I think it's a bit shortsighted to be cheering telecom's bitchslapping (as if that's not going to come back to bite us) in favor of ceding potentially a whole lot of power to an organization that thinks you can't handle the word "fuck".