Net Neutrality

[Skuzzy]

What would prevent this from being adopted?

All the large ISP's.  They have worked hard killing off the small ISP's.  Anything that could introduce potential parity into this business would be viewed as a danger to their monopolies (where applicable).

Companies like Netflix, who depend on the current billing practices, would be screaming about it as well.

[rogwar]

Basically, we have an unsustainable business model.

That's a key point. Should be interesting to see how it works out in the next few years,

[Skuzzy]

That's a key point. Should be interesting to see how it works out in the next few years,

We do not have to wait.  It has been playing itself out for years.  A company invests millions of dollars into its infrastructure only to have a Netflix open up and then they have to invest millions more, without any growth, in order to be able to deliver the service.

What happens when the next high demand service gets online?  The ISP sells or merges with another one.  Process repeats itself until there is only one or two ISP's left in the U.S., at which time they double or triple the price to the end-user.  ta-da.

That is what will happen if we just sit about waiting for it.

[Masherbrum]

Good points gents!  I just hope some sort bi-partisan middle ground can be reached to minimize the lobbyist tactics.  When does this get voted on?

[Simaril]

Am I confused, or have I also heard net neutrality referring to flat charges to end users?

My first thought when hearing the phrase is that Mr J. Auff, the guy down the street whose constant P2P file sharing uses enormous bandwidth, will get charged the same as the little old lady whose only use is checking email once a day. The usual pricing structure around here is based on potential speed, not based on bandwidth usage.

[Simaril]

I just hope some sort bi-partisan middle ground can be reached to minimize the lobbyist tactics. 

Somehow, wishing this seems appropriate during the season of Santa, elves, and New Year's resolutions....

[Shuffler]

I am warning everyone.  This topic is difficult to discuss without dragging politics into it.

So, be forewarned, if you do, you will be suspended from the board for four weeks.

I was not aware of Polly ticks..... I thought Polly had fleas. Those dang birds.

[Eagler]

I can't see why the providers are obligated to carry bandwidth hogs such as netflix without being compensated by netflix for their load on the system.
They OWN the fiber -  they installed and maintain the lines to their customers homes, they should have the right to do with it as they please - then let the consumer make the final call - not our over reaching government.

[Eagler]

A restructuring of how all the access points on the Internet needs to be done.  The current structure allows any given service to simply put an ISP out of business by allowing users to flood the network with data from the remote service.  It is not fair to the ISP to have to upgrade their network to be able to handle a remote companies network load.

ISP's are already being sued for trying to limit that flow so their networks do not suffer from DoS (denial of service) to other services.

Basically, we have an unsustainable business model.

A potential solution is for each and every company to pay for their guaranteed outbound bandwidth and only the outbound bandwidth.  No inbound traffic would impact the specified outbound bandwidth.  In this model, Level3 would pay Comcast for a specific amount of bandwidth into their network.  Comcast would pay Level3 for its outbound bandwidth as well.

Now the onus for Netflix performance into Comcasts network falls to Level3, who is Netflix's ISP.  If Netflix wants more bandwidth into Comcast, then Level3 can pay Comcast for it and charge it back to Netflix.

This model allows both small and large ISP's to compete fairly, which is why it will never be adopted.  So that is why I did not go into extreme detail about how it would work.  No sense in wasting time on an idea that will never happen.

what Skuzzy said ^^

[BrownBaron]

When does this get voted on?

Yesterday. The FCC approved the plan set before them. (Pretty sure said plan hasn't been made public yet)

[Skuzzy]

Am I confused, or have I also heard net neutrality referring to flat charges to end users?

My first thought when hearing the phrase is that Mr J. Auff, the guy down the street whose constant P2P file sharing uses enormous bandwidth, will get charged the same as the little old lady whose only use is checking email once a day. The usual pricing structure around here is based on potential speed, not based on bandwidth usage.

The whole 'net neutrality' issue is really based on one problem.  ISP's having to eat the cost of upgrading their network infrastructure to be able to carry services they do not derive any financial benefit from.  Everything else is a derivative of that base issue.

 

[Tigger29]

Am I confused, or have I also heard net neutrality referring to flat charges to end users?

My first thought when hearing the phrase is that Mr J. Auff, the guy down the street whose constant P2P file sharing uses enormous bandwidth, will get charged the same as the little old lady whose only use is checking email once a day. The usual pricing structure around here is based on potential speed, not based on bandwidth usage.

So.. would you be for or against that type of practice?  In their infancy, a lot of ISPs had unlimited bandwidth plans, but they also had limited bandwidth plans.  Similar to cell phones, you could have a cheaper plan, but only be able to use so many 'minutes'.. or 'bytes' of data.  In this case, the little old lady might save some money.  Kind of reminds me of old Local Bulletin board systems.  Every couple of weeks, I had to call a 900 number to reload the points I needed for access (that is until the sysop gave me free access for hacking into his system while he watched.  Helped him to close a lot of backdoors LOL)

My problem with this reasoning is that if something is advertised as 'unlimited' and I subscribe to it, I don't want to be penalized for using too much, as I bought into it BECAUSE of the 'unlimited' advertising.  Kind of like AH.  I pay my $15/month just like everyone else here.  If I play.. say.. 100 hours one month, I don't want to be charged an extra fee because I played too much!

[Vulcan]

My first thought when hearing the phrase is that Mr J. Auff, the guy down the street whose constant P2P file sharing uses enormous bandwidth, will get charged the same as the little old lady whose only use is checking email once a day. The usual pricing structure around here is based on potential speed, not based on bandwidth usage.

Over here (NZ) and in a lot of countries outside the USA it's based on bandwidth usage. But that creates another problem - peak periods. ISPs find at peaks periods utlisation goes through the roof while off-peak it drops to virtually nothing. BTW CIR=Commited Information Rate, what the ISP guarantees you will get if the smelly brown stuff hits the fan. IIRC NZ consumer internet is ~35:1 on contention, for every 1Mb of bandwidth there are 35 users. Sounds bad but it works well, as most of those 35 are the little old ladies checking their email. My ADSL connection at home is 15Mbps down 1Mbp up, and I can get my full 15Mbps no problem. Occasionally during peak periods it might drop to 5Mbps throughput, but that is rare.

Generally this only applies to consumers, business plans are usually much more pricey but have a CIR that matches their connection speed.

ALL the ISPs here use traffic management, interestingly the cheaper the ISP the cheaper their traffic management solution is and it tends to be a crappy experience for anything but browsing. So you can buy cheap internet plans and be happy if you're just checking email and surfing. Or if you want gaming you go to the decent ISP who know's what they're doing and get awesome performance - this has given the smaller guys some space to play in. Take my ISP for example, I can ring their help desk and talk to a guy that knows WTF he's doing. I had a problem last year with int'l routing going via a carrier that prioritized icmp packets to make their performance look better 'on paper' but in reality they sucked, rung up the help desk, explained what I'd found - help desk guy is like 'sure we'll pop you onto a different international route' : problem solved.

You'd be surprised at how much ISP equipment is produced to give ISPs the capability to deliver tiered services depending on what the customer wants.

[Simaril]

My bias:

Prices ought to reflect actual cost, which lets people make informed decisions about risk (or cost) and benefit. That should apply to big companies, small companies, and consumers.

If flood insurance were priced based on actuarial cost instead of some politically acceptable number, very few people would choose to live in areas likely to get flooded. Those who chose to do so would have been paying their share of the actual risk, meaning less for the tax payer to pick up.

If something like Skuzzy's outline or the NZ system were in place, then you'd basically get what you paid for - and you'd only be paying for what you got. It allows niche providers to survive when they might get buried by megacorp. Also, we wouldn't pay for Netflix related ISP upgrades, except to the degree that we actually used that kind of bandwidth. The little old ladies wouldn't be stuck subsidizing the kid who was P2P downloading every movie he could find whether he wanted to watch them or not. And the kid (or his parents) might get surprised with a bill that encouraged them to change their behavior.

It's an approach based on something called "signaling theory", and it seems to me that a great degree of economic problems could be solved by allowing prices to reflect actual costs - and then relying on people to make the judgments that make the best sense for them as individuals.  Anything that distorts the actual costs (subsidies, collusion between corporations, monopolistic behavior) causes inefficient allocation of resources and reduces the amount of good stuff the economy can produce for all of us.

[Skuzzy]

Just to make sure I am not misreading your post;  You do realize there are real costs associated with the amount of data being moved, over a connection, at any given point in time?

I ask that question as there are a high number of people who really believe there are no costs associated with any amount of data being moved around on the Internet.