Net Neutrality?

[Xanikk999]

I thought the issue concern ISPs?

Ok i guess i dont know then.

 

[Godwynn]

So is it possible now for our ISP's to not allow us to visit some sites entirely, or make them so slow that we cannot?

 

[mdwh]

Here's a short summary:

Site A gets 80¤ of traffic each day
Site B gets 80¤ of traffic each day
Site A and Site B are both hosted by Provider C
C has only 100¤ of bandwidth each day.

Under the suggested Net Neutrality rule, C would have been forced to treat A and B equally, randomly allocating 40¤ of bandwidth to each of them.

As it is now, C can choose to prioritise Site A, so that it gets 80¤ of bandwidth each day and Site B gets only 20¤ of bandwidth.

I don't know if I'm misunderstanding, but I thought the particular problem is that this could happen even when Site A and Site B are hosted by a *different* provider? I.e., so an ISP is choosing to restrict bandwidth between the ISP's customers and a site, when the site is not a customer of the ISP?

 

[Pontiuth Pilate]

Yep, you would have to bribe the trolls at both end of the bridge in order to keep your site reliably online.

Needless to say, that's a lot of ISPs and a lot of money.

 

[Adamb0mb]

The should have made the intenet out of bigger tubes.

 

[Xanikk999]

The should have made the intenet out of bigger tubes.

Can you please tell me who said that quote? I want to put it in my sig. And i need the actual quote also.

 

[Pontiuth Pilate]

Senator Ted "You Kids Get Offa Mah Lawn" Stevens.

 

[CIVPhilzilla]

Senator Ted "You Kids Get Offa Mah Lawn" Stevens.

The world's foremost internet expert. "The Internet is not a big truck."

 

[Cuivienen]

Can you please tell me who said that quote? I want to put it in my sig. And i need the actual quote also.

Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska): "The internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's, it's a series of tubes."

 

[Pontiuth Pilate]

The world's foremost internet expert. "The Internet is not a big truck."

It's a series of boobs!

 

[Brighteye]

Here's a short summary:

Site A gets 80¤ of traffic each day
Site B gets 80¤ of traffic each day
Site A and Site B are both hosted by Provider C
C has only 100¤ of bandwidth each day.

Under the suggested Net Neutrality rule, C would have been forced to treat A and B equally, randomly allocating 40¤ of bandwidth to each of them.

As it is now, C can choose to prioritise Site A, so that it gets 80¤ of bandwidth each day and Site B gets only 20¤ of bandwidth.

Do you really want to hear ISPs saying "Pay me $X or your site will go slower, and if you pay me $X+Y I'll make your site load faster than you competitors"? I don't.

Shouldn't that be 50(random symbol)?

 

[sysyphus]

I have always thought that the internet was neutral in the first place .

Where there's influence, the powers that be will will be sure to be there to control it.

 

[Erik Mesoy]

Shouldn't that be 50(random symbol)?

Oops. Good catch. The random symbol is the metasyntactic variable for "currency" or "unit".

 

[Erik Mesoy]

This might be mildly relevant.

Hi everyone,

Sorry it's been so long (nearly a year) since the last Peacefire
newsletter went out. We hope most of our subscribers haven't forgotten us!

<snip>

We have also become involved in the issue of "Net Neutrality", a
buzzword that you may have heard bandied about in the news but is usually not
clearly defined. Basically, major Internet providers are considering
plans that would enable them to block their users from accessing certain
Web sites, or slow down their users' access to those sites, unless the
Web sites pay a "fee" to stay unblocked. If this is allowed to go
unchecked, there might come a time where every time you are trying to
access a Web site and it appears to load slowly or not at all, you'll have
to wonder if maybe the site isn't down, maybe your ISP is just blocking
it or slowing it down for you!

This issue has special personal significance for me because a few years
ago, two large Internet backbone companies, AboveNet and TeleGlobe,
were blocking their users from accessing the Peacefire.org site because of
a political dispute they had with the owner of our Web hosting company.
This was pretty ironic to me, since we were already blocked by every
major Internet blocking program, which is what you'd expect since the top
link on our site is "How to disable your blocking software". But in
this case, these were not Internet companies selling "filtered" Internet
access; they were pretending to provide full Internet access to their
customers but still blocking some Web sites. In other words, even if
you thought you had an uncensored Internet connection at home, you might
still have been blocked from reaching us.

They stopped doing it after an article ran on Slashdot exposing the
issue, but the practice might make a comeback if Net Neutrality is not
defended. For more on the issue of Net Neutrality, visit
http://www.SaveTheInternet.com/

Also, UserFriendly has a funny series on this. (5 strips long)

 

[Truronian]

I imagine that if current ISPs start blocking sites or giving some sites priority there would be a lot of maoney to be made in neutral ISPing.

 

[Aphex_Twin]

Well, we have to consider that bandwidth (and traffic) is a scarce commodity. It can either be rationed in a socialist manner (the net neutrality way), or it can be left to the market to reveal the best distribution. You can argue that in the latter case, only the rich would have (fast) internet access. But then, how can you explain that the poor get reasonable access to services like like cellular telephony or cable TV? (empirical evidence)

Net Neutrality, at its core, seeks to nationalize the Internet infrastructure in the US. When the owner cannot put his property to the use he deems most advantageous (when someone else has a right to tell him what to do with it), he is not the real owner. If the owner cannot get the best use of his property, there is less of an incentive to invest in that field of activity. Therefore, the internet under NN will develop less than it otherwise would have in the US. <-- apriorically true

Now, let's analyse this further. We have a major ISP (or group) which wishes to charge Google of YouTube for faster access from its customers. Google or YouTube will look at the offer, and if the potential benefits of these new customers outweigh their costs, then they will take the deal, if not, they will reject it. Now, considering Google of YouTube rely on massive numbers of users to be profitable, the offer from the ISP(s) would have to be pretty sweet. You need tens to hundreds of millions of valuable users to be on top. But in such a case, there is not a decrease of access speed for individual users, rather a way to distribute higher access capacities. This can happen for the users as well: if they see better access to Google or YouTube is worth the extra costs, they will pay for it.

Looking from the other side: ISPs decide together to restrict internet access to their users. What happens? They get some more money. But essentially, this moves increases the costs of their customers. You don't need NN laws to prevent the ISPs from charging higher prices (they would be doing it right NOW). If you see things in the "save-the-internet" way, you are really afraid of higher prices. And there is no evidence that this fear is well founded.

Just as a sketch of an argument...

 

[Erik Mesoy]

No time for a detailed analysis, but the first thing I see in Aphex's argument that I find wrong is his use of "socialist" on enforced neutrality, which resembles calling mandated noncorruption "socialist", as officials should have the right to sell better services to some people.

May post more later.

 

[Aphex_Twin]

I call it socialist because NN seeks to transform otherwise private property into a common. The officials example is irrelevant because politicians and bureocrats don't act in a market place.

 

[mdwh]

Net Neutrality, at its core, seeks to nationalize the Internet infrastructure in the US. When the owner cannot put his property to the use he deems most advantageous (when someone else has a right to tell him what to do with it), he is not the real owner. If the owner cannot get the best use of his property, there is less of an incentive to invest in that field of activity.

It's not about socialism or nationalising any infrastructure. It's about having some regulation in an industry (yes, even capitalist America has laws and regulation). Basically, if you want to advertise yourself as an Internet company, you have to abide by certain rules.

Now, let's analyse this further. We have a major ISP (or group) which wishes to charge Google of YouTube for faster access from its customers. Google or YouTube will look at the offer, and if the potential benefits of these new customers outweigh their costs, then they will take the deal, if not, they will reject it.

But you're forgetting the ISP's paying customers - the users!

If they've paid for a service, the ISP better damn well not restrict their access just because the websites haven't paid their extortion fee.

 

[Aphex_Twin]

It's not about socialism or nationalising any infrastructure. It's about having some regulation in an industry (yes, even capitalist America has laws and regulation). Basically, if you want to advertise yourself as an Internet company, you have to abide by certain rules.

I treat all regulations of these sorts as attacks on property rights. But can you elaborate upon your second statement?

But you're forgetting the ISP's paying customers - the users!

If they've paid for a service, the ISP better damn well not restrict their access just because the websites haven't paid their extortion fee.

If they paid for a service they expected to receive - as mentioned in a contract, then the ISPs not delivering on that is breaking that contract and can be taken to court. If there is no explicit contract, the person in question has the option of not being a customer anymore.


Of course, the general question we must ask: is Internet access a fundamental human right?