RIP net neutrality? FCC mulls FAST LANES for info superhighway US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Tom Wheeler has had a major change of heart when it comes to net neutrality, it's reported. The The Wall Street Journal claims the FCC will propose new rules on net neutrality that would allow companies to pay for faster access to their websites and services, so long as they …
"Please explain why net neutrality is bad for me."
Mr Orlowski already went some way towards explaining why it's potentially bad. RFC791. The Internet Protocol-
There are no mechanisms to augment end-to-end data reliability, flow control, sequencing, or other services commonly found in host-to-host protocols. The internet protocol can capitalize on the services of its supporting networks to provide various types and qualities of service.
The pro-neutrality people argue that all packets should be treated equally, so should remain a best efforts network. The RFC should be revised to say the internet protocol cannot capitalize on the services of it's supporting networks because this is politically unacceptable to some lobbyists. If your real-time apps suffer because people are streaming or downloading, that's just too bad and the price you pay for an equitable, neutral Internet.
Reality is there are strong technical reasons to use the network to differentiate traffic based on requirement. The Internet community recognises this and there's another RFC, 2474 which explains how traffic could be managed. But only on private networks it seems. Enabling this on the public networks would arguably be beneficial, but the pro-neutrality lobbyists don't seem to want it.
The rest is largely an economics and education problem. Enabling QoS on the public Internet would allow differentiated rate plans. If you don't want video or voice, take a basic <=XXMbps Best Efforts service. If you want video, take a service with <=8Mbps of AF4 assigned. If you're getting VoIP, throw in 100Kbps of EF and you can make a phone call or two depending on your codec. This is all stuff we've been doing in industry for years, even across peering connections, but only really for private IP networks. Then it's just arguing the rates per class.
That shouldn't need to be a complex argument. Regulators have used principles like RAND and FRAND to determine market behaviours, especially in monopoly or SMP conditions. Rates are published and applied in a non-discriminatory fashion and neutrality remains, other than larger players being able to get volume-based discounts. Operator's own services get tested using EOI (Equivalence of Input) to (try and) ensure fairness. Users get a better quality experience and a choice of something other than best efforts. Do you really think this is a bad thing?
And as for-
and above all else that no internet provider is allowed to prioritize packets from services they own above those of services from competing providers.
Not even the routing and control protocol traffic required to maintain your network's stability?
Trust a nerd to believe you can solve social problems with technology. *sigh*
Look, I don't care what the technology can do. Just because TCP has the ability to do QoS doesn't mean that QoS should be used on the public internet. I'm perfectly aware that this is a capability of the protocol, and I use it within the bounds of my own network so that I, and only I can decide what priority different classes of traffic get on my network. In fact, my edge routers are even able to look at QoS settings on the network and determine which packets get priority for access to the internet. That is how I determine the quality of service of my network.
There's the critical bit there. I determine the quality of service of my network. Nobody dictates it to me, certainly not by discriminating based upon whether or not I am requesting packets from a company that competes with my my ISP.
You can bang on about FRAND/RAND as a solution to the social issues of abuse of monopoly or pesudo-monopoly position, but I've yet to see many examples of that actually working in the real world. Unless I'm missing something, your anti-net-neutrality stance is lodged firmly in mistaken economic beliefs like "the free market actually works". It doesn't, certainly not when there is the option for a monopoly to exist. It's as big a myth as trickle down economics.
So really, that's what this boils down to. There are plenty of examples in our history in which companies - including many of the very same companies that are in question with this very issue - have abused monopoly power, influenced regulators and politicians to the detriment of customers and generally been gigantic assholes. There are far fewer examples of "the invisible hand of the market" simply clearing everything up and making abuses go away.
If you have a means of guaranteeing that investment gets plowed into ever better infrastructure perpetually, that service is universally available, that speeds and quality increase over time, that prices won't become gougingly predatory for end customer and that barriers to entry will remain low-to-non-existent for new entrants, I'm all ears.
So far, imposing net neutrality and a shitload of regulation seems like the only way to achieve the above. Simply letting those in power do whatever they want is absolutely, positively, without a shadow of the remotest doubt going to result in the exact fucking opposite. There is no reason whatsoever to believe otherwise.
Additionally, as for your parting missive:
"and above all else that no internet provider is allowed to prioritize packets from services they own above those of services from competing providers.
Not even the routing and control protocol traffic required to maintain your network's stability?"
Don't be asinine. You're attempting to pin an extremist viewpoint on me when under no circumstances have I evidenced such. Routing and control traffic is and should be considered to be part of the infrastructure itself. It is necessary overhead to make the system work.
As I had stated plainly in my posts, I have zero problem with certain items having priority on the public internet, so long as the rationale behind their having priority was obvious, transparent and clearly grounded in the common good. (For example, 911 or telemedicine traffic.)
As a society we make "common good" exceptions for every traffic and communications network. In times of emergency our governments have all sorts of powers ranging from your duty to pull over when an emergency vehicle has lights/sirens on so they can pass to priority use of comns equipment by government officials during a crisis.
Do not try to set up a straw man by pretending that I am some ideological purist trying to impose a radical and absolutist agenda. That's bullshit and you fucking know it.
What I am seeing is the best outcome for small business owners and end customers in a fashion that doesn't completely ruin the ability for ISPs, CDNs, content distributors and even the rightsholder mafia to make money. I seek to prevent any one group from gaining absolute control and I seek to prevent vertical market integration which would lead to monopoly positions, anti-competitive barriers to entry and egregious - I would go so far as to say economically dangerous - pricing.
Let me be even more clear here, just so that we can all speak the same language: western society is becoming one that is based on the production and distribution of intellectual capital. We cannot - we must not - allow the distribution system of that intellectual capital to become controlled by a small oligarchy.
To do so would place us at a spectacular disadvantage compared to other nations which see the value in ensuring fast, reliable, cheap and (mostly) equalized access to the economic "market" that will define the twenty-first century. Everyone - rich or poor - needs to be able to both buy and sell wares in that market place and they need to be able to do so unfettered.
If you hand an oligarchy the vice and place our collective economic testicles in the middle, don't be so shocked and shaken when the start tightening the thing demanding money.
No "technical capability of the TCP/IP protocol" is going to solve that. Even toothless FRAND/RAND rules (that don't solve the issue of barrier to entry int he first place, they only assure that the few who make it over the barrier get equal prices) just don't solve the problem.
People aren't rational actors. It's about time those who worship disproven economic theory got that through their heads. It's kind of important when you're trying to build a society based on rules and technologies that not only have never existed before, be up until a few generations ago, we couldn't have even imagined ever would exist.
Every service provider (be it me with my VPS for $5/mo or CNN with its clusters or even Google with its private cables and data centers that span continents) have to pay for bandwidth. Smaller services buy it per Tb and per mbit/s, larger services... too.
What's changed?
Will this new set of rules require service providers to pay twice (to their ISP and to their endpoint user's ISP)? Theoretically, it should be up to my ISP to make sure the bandwidth I pay for is accessible to my clients, not up to me. And clients pay to their ISPs to have access to the Internet, not to their "favorite servers". The proper solution to net neutrality should be a mechanism for ISPs to re-distribute their incomes so that used bandwidths sum up, not new ingenious ways to extract money and make the already uneven playground totally inaccessible.
@~mico
Because it's not just bandwidth but latency (priority) and data caps.
The thing about priority is that when you prioritise one service, you by default de-prioritise other services.
Now, if adequate bandwidth is available for everything, all the time then there really isn't a problem. If you use a single internet line for VoIP, Internet browsing and a VPN tunnel then you have the option of figuring out how much bandwidth - and switching speed! - everything uses, total it up and provision accordingly. Doing so means that applying QoS is unnecessary.
That is expensive, however, and networks simply aren't going to be built that way on the large scale as it would be very wasteful.
Obviously, the endpoint ISP should prioritize the service that his clients use, that's why they pay for the internet access, after all. Oh the ISP doesn't have the capacity? So when it offered its users 100 mb/s, it lied? And now seeks compensations for that? How refreshing.
I am aware of data caps, they are part of the package for the service provider, both server-side (e.g. my 5$/mo included 100mb/s bandwidth, but 1tb monthly cap (which will obviously be exhausted after just several minutes of maximal load), and client-side (my mobile service has 1gb cap)). If I pay for more, I fully expect it will be available effectively, not on paper. Neither end-users nor service providers should accept overallocation, especially not codification of this fraudulent practice under laws and regulations. If it means more granular tariffs, that include QoS - so be it, but a service provider shouldn't be expected to get into separate agreements with all the planet's endpoint ISPs.
The Internet was the only part of US communications that was not divided into little pieces, with the high prices augmented by taxes. The FCC just served notice that the US government will now extract their tribute from that vital segment as well. In the guise of "Maintaining Net Neutrality'" that existed before they stuck in their noses.
The USA . A government of the people , by corporations for the corporations .
n'uff said.
( Note : The USA is not a democracy by any stretch of imagination. That's what a political system turns into when it accepts company contributions for politics. They buy politicians with millions in campaign contributions . F*** the People , who cares about the people when money is involved ? Certainly not the politicians .. they're the ones who have been bought .. ( right answer is noone that could change things they are too busy counting their company contributed dosh ) ).
On the radio this morning the spokesdrone was claiming that business users like Netflix (a wildly popular movie-on-demand thingy) were taking up too much room on the "highway" which was unfair of them and so if they paid more the internet user experience would be improved.
Said drone did not pause so one might ask "but aren't these 'internet users' also the viewers of Netflix, who will now be charged more for their usage of same, and how exactly does this translate into an enhanced experience for them?"
To paraphrase Big Daddy: there's an almighty stink of mendacity in the air.
Users should get the content they want to upload/download past the last-mile monopoly at reasonable rates. User generated content for family skyping or 24/7 business purposes must be uploadable for those who create it, just as downloads from family and business associates must not be stopped by monopolists. Do-Badders, pretending to be neutrality advocates, are harming people in need with hypothetical claims of harm to competitors or people who have no current interest in the information available only through the internet.
Google wants ATT business and can give FTC staff a bill of materials and how they would do it. ATT wants Verizon business and can say what non-abusive margins for reaching users should be. Comcast is sitting on a content monopoly and a last mile monopoly. Comcast's dual monopolies can be picked apart in short order. With help from Google, Verizon, and ATT, Should-Cost estimates will keep alternate ways to connect users who generate info-content in touch at reasonable rates.
>net neutrality that would allow companies to pay for faster access to their websites and services, so long as they are sold on "commercially reasonable" terms.
Obviously we are going to have to wait and see what this really means. But currently companies do pay for faster/big pipes to their websites and services, likewise they also pay to use content delivery networks such as Akamai. The issue is how this translates into the service delivered to the end user.
For a US company say to ensure their content gets delivered to an end user (in the UK say) in the way they want they are ultimately going to have to pay the various carriers and the end customer's ISP some monies - just like telco's do today.
However, the companies paying for the improved service are going to have to get the end user's consent, plus they are going to have to be able to set their own priorities. So for example a company may wish to push 3.5GB of content to a customer (or potential customer) and pay to have it express delivered, however, if the user has set their traffic profile to only permit this type of content (or content from this provider) to be delivered in background or according to some other criteria then my preferences need to take precedence, unless I've explicitly permitted it (so content priority rules effectively become just another firewall/AV popup.
I disagree. There is competition. It comes in the form of the bendy human beings doing incomprehensible things with trapeezes or the folks in costumes on the stage, or the gardeners who maintain the local devonian gardens or the local ski hill, or the...
Look, fuck the internet. There's a huge, great world just outside our door. Let's go play in it.
My recently installed FTTH telco also offers telephone and "Cable" television service over the same fibre. The telco is reusing "THE INTERNET" (at least the "last mile" or last 4+ km) for their own nefarious purposes. Unlike previous Cable TV triple plays, the fibre folks are actually using IP.
EVIL !! EVIL I SAY.
Telus does this over copper ADSL (technically VDSL 2+) and uses this as an excuse for why they don't need to invest in fiber, or faster internet. If it can carry their TV (while reducing everything else to a useless crawl), then it's "good enough". I happen to disagree. Loudly.
The saddest part about this question is that what we are moving away from isn't net neutrality in the first place. This is the watered down, media megacorp-approved version of net neutrality that our government had the courage to temporarily demand, but it was never net neutrality. Net neutrality was what America had in the 90s, when you could buy your internet from the local newspaper or the local computer store, or any other provider even if they weren't local if you wanted to. Now, aside from satellite I have exactly two service providers I can choose from - Verizon and Comcast. If I lived 15 miles south of where I am, I could buy CenturyLink but I'm not allowed to use their service in our current system. That isn't net neutrality and it is a pathetic excuse for a free market competition. Net neutrality is what South Korea has today, which is why their internet is not only 10 times faster than ours, but that 10 times faster service is half as expensive as our slower service. The biggest part of the speed difference is cause by technical factors but the price difference is due to competition enforced by an a regulatory environment that puts competition and the consumer first instead of making the big money of corporations king. In America the only "consumers" that have a place at the table in our system are the corporate consumers like NetFlix. The individual consumers aren't even part of the equation. This decision doesn't end net neutrality, it just makes the media corporation playground that passes for net neutrality a bit more tilted in favor of the media corporations.
Net Neutrality always was a bizarre idea, like socializing prices to a scare resource. Looking at healtcare, this results in lousy service and long waiting queues.
Now, will Big Content fug things up or will there be better networks for appropriately moneyed customers? It could go either way.
Anyway, the next big crash is coming, we will see how the landscape looks after that.
Or not.
My time preference is currently rather low, so I shall opt for buying popcorn.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
