It's not as clear as that video makes it sound. The NN crowd is actually looking for tons of extra regulation and limits. They don't want corporations to do anything, but they're just fine with the Government telling you and me what we can and cannot do.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:It's not as clear as that video makes it sound. The NN crowd is actually looking for tons of extra regulation and limits. They don't want corporations to do anything, but they're just fine with the Government telling you and me what we can and cannot do.
Um... that article just sounded like a rant against the left, using Net Neutrality as a primary target cause it's another form of regulation. It didn't actually say anything about Net Neutrality other than "ahh leftist regulation bad". Which sorry, I'm not convinced. Can you provide a more substantial argument against Net Neutrality please?
And it mis-construed what Net Neutrality is. The Openness and Anti-discrimination stuff that the NN folks are fighting for just means that companies that provide the Internet connection shouldn't be allowed to choose what you get through that connection.
Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
I think anyone selling a network connection ought to be allowed to limit it any way they want, as long as they're up front about the limitations.
However, since "Internet service" has a common meaning now of providing access to everything, vendors who wish to restrict should not be allowed to use the term "Internet" to advertise their product.
If people care, they'll look for Internet providers. If they don't, and everyone flocks to "limited network connection providers," then we'll have proof that the public didn't actually care.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
The real problem on this issue is that so far it's been much ado about nothing. I can think of only two cases where an ISP blocked a competitor's service and the immediate customer outcry caused the ISP to rescind their choice very quickly.
A more touchy thing is p2p. Most ISP's throw up roadblocks against stuff like Bittorrent because it really causes service degradation for a lot of people. Should the NN people get their way, it could conceivably become illegal to do that, and then ISP's have a very serious, expensive problem.
Posts: 1281 | Registered: Feb 2001
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posted
It's not that we can't deliver it, we just can't deliver it when you have a select few (invariably <2% of your customer base) using more than 80 percent of the available bandwidth. And it's always for illegal purposes. I have no problem with that, but they don't get to hinder Sally Checksheremail by doing so.
Posts: 1281 | Registered: Feb 2001
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quote:It's not that we can't deliver it, we just can't deliver it when you have a select few (invariably <2% of your customer base) using more than 80 percent of the available bandwidth
You advertise unlimited use of a pipe with a particular bandwidth. You should advertise unlimited use of a pipe with a particular bandwidth that will be throttled under explicitly spelled out conditions, to a minimum constant throughput of X. The only reason it hinders Sally Checksheremail is that you haven't taken basic steps to guarantee minimum levels of service. If bandwidth were sold honestly instead of what you can get when no one else on your trunk is using the pipe, this wouldn't be a problem.
There's no reason to throttle by content-type. The usage profile - that is, how many bits are going back and forth in certain intervals of time - is all that's needed.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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I have a link going into a neighborhood that can support 10 mb/s. I then serve 30 users from that pipe.
What you are saying is that I should spell out some sort of minimum guarantee per home, based on what happens if everyone uses their service at the same time (which NEVER happens, btw). So, theoretically, I can guarantee a minimum bandwidth of 333kb/s, and I can set up my bandwidth controller to reflect that, certainly.
Let's take this into the real world now. About 4 of the homes will be using their service at any given time, with 1 of them using their entire pipe to download the latest Battlestar Galactica episodes from torrentspy. So, assuming I can deliver, say, 10 meg to each home, I have one user consuming all the bandwidth for the neighborhood. What do you have me do in this circumstance?
I can guarantee that everyone gets 333k (1332k used out of 10000). But who gets the rest? Does the downloader get whatever's left, or do I divide the remaining available bandwidth between the 4 (2167k per user)? And what about users 5-10, should they decide to get on? I imagine you are going to say that they should all contend equally for that remaining bandwidth.
However, the point you are missing is that the single downloader is causing EVERYONE to have a degraded service. I would much rather give the 3 people great service, and the one guy who is breaking the law anyway can wait 10 extra minutes to finish downloading his movie. Balancing everyone out seems like a great idea in theory, but in the real world, it just doesn't work as well as you'd think. As a result, in our experience, we find that slowing down Bittorrent and binary newsgroups in contentious situations (we don't bother doing it if no one else is using the service) increases the service quality for everyone by a rather marked amount.
Posts: 1281 | Registered: Feb 2001
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quote:So, assuming I can deliver, say, 10 meg to each home, I have one user consuming all the bandwidth for the neighborhood. What do you have me do in this circumstance?
Throttle him to the minimum.
quote:But who gets the rest? Does the downloader get whatever's left, or do I divide the remaining available bandwidth between the 4 (2167k per user)?
*shrug* However you want to do it.
quote:However, the point you are missing is that the single downloader is causing EVERYONE to have a degraded service.
The single downloader who is operating within the confines of the large-print advertising is causing this problem. Simply stop the misleading advertising and I have no problem with how you want to handle it.
By the way, you have no basis for saying "the point I am missing is..."
I get that 1 person can degrade service for others. Either make that not possible and advertise accurately the way the prevention is done or live with it.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:Originally posted by jasonepowell: It's not that we can't deliver it, we just can't deliver it when you have a select few (invariably <2% of your customer base) using more than 80 percent of the available bandwidth. And it's always for illegal purposes.
Nitpick: I might note that its pretty easy to disprove "always", given that you only need one example and I can think of many of the top of by head (World of Warcraft distribution, Linux distros, or well WB movies).
I think the term you're looking for is "the majority".
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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posted
Ok, fair enough. In our case, we advertise a maximum speed. We're pretty clear about "Up to 3 meg" for instance.
Also, it's technically very difficult to do what you are suggesting without throttling based on content type. If we throttled everyone who was using as much bandwidth as they can (for any purpose) down to the minimum, everyone would always get the minimum, due to the bursty nature of traffic on the internet. Perhaps some kind of time limitation (if the downloader pegs his limit for 10 minutes, start throttling him back).
Unfortunately, while I expect the big guys to be able to do that, a smaller ISP can't. And that's why small ISP's are terrified of NN regulation, because we just can't afford it.
Posts: 1281 | Registered: Feb 2001
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I'm not saying that people don't peg their usage caps - hell, it happens every time a windows update comes out. And yes, there are legitimate uses for BT. Personally, I don't even have a problem with BT for illegal uses, honestly. I should have been more clear though, because when I meant "always", I really meant the people who have their BT session pegging their cap for long periods of time are *almost* always using it for illegal purposes. And the "almost" is anecdotal, as I've never seen a case where someone was downloading crap with BT for 3 days or something and it was Linux Distro's or something legit.
Posts: 1281 | Registered: Feb 2001
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posted
Here in Utah we've got a law that gives occupants of homes a right to heating gas in the winter. That means my gas bill has a charge tacked onto it to help provide heat for people who have somehow forgotten how to chop wood and shovel coal.
Now we're saying that people have the right to an Internet connection. How long before we start providing subsidies to people who can't live without their porn surfing?
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
Is your argument that people shouldn't be guaranteed heat in the winter, and therefore it's a stupid law?
Posts: 1281 | Registered: Feb 2001
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posted
My argument is that when government states that something is a right, such as a woman's right to abortion, that often implies subsidies to secure that right. The connection between rights and subsidies is stupid.
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
I'm going to leave the abortion angle out of it.
The reason there are subsidies is because some people can't afford gas, but can't chop their own wood or shovel their own coal either. Disabled folks, for example.
I don't think that broadband should be a utility, although I don't think that it should be denied for any reason either.
Posts: 1281 | Registered: Feb 2001
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posted
I don't think you understand what net neutrality is about. Its not about a right to an Internet connection, its about how that connection should be run.
The idea is that your ISP (or anyone upstream on the network) cannot decide what you get or how quickly you get it.
An analogy would be, GM can charge whatever they want to sell you a car, but once you buy it, the government will regulate that you can drive it wherever you want, and that GM cannot tell you where to go or how fast you can go there.
posted
So when you say everyone has a right to a connection, the next question will be, what level of service shall we extend to those who cannot afford a connection. The answer to that will be the average level of service provided to those who can afford it. So we're talking broadband.
I say if you can't afford heat, hang out at the library. You can get your Internet fix there as well.
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
I'm getting the sense that you're trolling a bit here, skillery. I think I won't feed the trolls any longer.
Posts: 1281 | Registered: Feb 2001
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Yes, I understand that facet. But that is not the only facet of the NN issue.
We've got this Utopia project going on in Utah, which will provide a fiber link between several communities. In order to secure government funding for the project they had to demonstrate that a broad spectrum of classes and communities would be connected. Consequently, they spent all their funds this year running fiber to rural communities. Because suddenly someone who chose to live on a farm away from the hustle and bustle of the city needs a lightning fast connection to shop for tractor parts.
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
Maybe y'all think Mr. John Deere doesn't have an interest in seeing that all his customers have a fast connection.
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
It probably isn't your intention, skillery, but jasonpowell is right in saying that your are coming across a bit trollish. No one here is arguing about a right for universal internet service. To bring that up here does nothing other than to confuse the issue. What we are arguing about is what sorts of limits are permissible for people who have paid for internet access.
Posts: 2437 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
I thought you were talking about having the government force AT&T and ISPs to grant all content providers, including competitors equitable throughput rates when pushing their content to consumers.
But that's not what brought out the troll in me. It was that fat congressman talking about Internet "rights," an idea that comes with all kinds of baggage, both on the consumer side and on the provider side. I fear we'll see all sorts of entitlements and incentives for all sorts of "disadvantaged" groups on both ends of the wire.
I prefer jungle rules.
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
I didn't hear any evidence at all that anything is working to make Internet one-way. There's a claim that phone companies want to charge extra for downloads of certain types of files -- which will be technically impossible, since you can compress any kind of file into any other kind -- but there's no reason for thinking that this will cause Internet to become one-way.
Why did they think we would fall for this?
Posts: 1877 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Will B: since you can compress any kind of file into any other kind
Yeah, but favored providers could stamp their files with a digital watermark that would be granted a fat pipe. Of course the watermark would be hacked within a couple hours, and we'd be back up to speed.
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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quote:Originally posted by skillery: So when you say everyone has a right to a connection, the next question will be, what level of service shall we extend to those who cannot afford a connection. The answer to that will be the average level of service provided to those who can afford it. So we're talking broadband.
I say if you can't afford heat, hang out at the library. You can get your Internet fix there as well.
We've got free wireless in this city. It's not all over the place yet (as in, not at my house ), but they're working on it, apparently.
posted
Speaking of wireless broadband, the coverage maps in section F of this document show wireless coverage in the US for several technologies.
It is conceivable that we could bypass AT&T's cable, satellite, and land-based microwave network with overlapping wireless broadband networks. Unfortunately, there's a gap in wireless coverage that splits the country in half on a line running from north to south, passing through Rapid City, South Dakota and Clovis, New Mexico.
Of course you still need to get across the oceans, which requires going through the big boy's switchgear. On the other hand, nobody outside the U.S. wants our content and vice-versa.
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: skillery: How was Utopia running of rural fiber lines affected by net neutrality legislation?
Legislation? As far as I know, there is no net neutrality legislation. The Markey ammendment to the "Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act of 2006" failed.
On the other hand, FCC policy, and the government's involvement in funding broadband networks is doing a fairly good job of advancing net neutrality and non-discrimination.
I have it first-hand from the Utopia office that this year's government funding round was earmarked for expanding the fiber network into rural areas. (Last year's build was focused on covering the corridor with the highest concentration of potential corporate customers.)
The private owners of the wires into those rural areas are having a fit that the government is funding a competing network. And the FCC is doing their share by granting licenses to wireless broadband operators to extend their networks into those areas.
These types of actions may effectively muzzle the tiered pricing and prioritized service proponents without have to codify anything into law.
But I hate seeing government dollars being used to compete with the private sector. And the funny thing is, there's a clause in the Utopia proposal which allows the network to be taken over by a private entity if it fails to show a profit within a certain time frame.
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
And the other side of the coin is that with the government funding broadband infrastructure, there will be demands to require that those broadband services be extended to disadvantaged classes. The Scrooge in me doesn't feel like paying first to lay the cable, and again to subsidize the ISP to make sure that inner-city kids get a fast connection.
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: The lack of legislation is my point.
So you were baiting me when you asked:
quote:How was Utopia running of rural fiber lines affected by net neutrality legislation?
Nice. There's got to be a more economical way of getting your jollies.
Anyway, it looks like rather than trying to limit the telecoms through legislation, Uncle Sam has opted to pump a lot of tax dollars into the competition.
They've still got at least three big hurdles:
Spanning the oceans
Spanning the breadbasket states
Securing high-speed access for disadvantaged businesses and individuals
So we paid Ma Bell to build the infrastructure, and now we've got to pay somebody else to compete against Ma Bell because Ma Bell might get nasty. All this because someone had the novel idea to tie three computers together, and now we can't do without.
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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), but they're working on it, apparently.
