Net neutrality evaporating

[rob4001]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2...rules/9116157/

[wasabi]

My inner idealist wants net neutrality. My inner bloke who ran the web gateway and proxies for a few major companies and watched the website stuuter while managers streamed HD world cup / tennis.....

Some kind of compromise needs to be met to stop old-skool cable companies protecting their overpriced TV/phone services by blocking Netflix/SIP et al - BUT Netflix et al need to somehow pay back into the infrastructure that they heavily use. I like HD streaming media, but I also appreciate it is expensive and somewhat parasitic.

[badass]

My inner idealist wants net neutrality. My inner bloke who ran the web gateway and proxies for a few major companies and watched the website stuuter while managers streamed HD world cup / tennis.....

Some kind of compromise needs to be met to stop old-skool cable companies protecting their overpriced TV/phone services by blocking Netflix/SIP et al - BUT Netflix et al need to somehow pay back into the infrastructure that they heavily use. I like HD streaming media, but I also appreciate it is expensive and somewhat parasitic.

They do - they pay for the bandwidth usage their end. It's up to the ISP's to then decide how to charge the customers for their usage.
Appreciated, they get moaned at when they do but it's a small vocal minority.
Water is supplied on a meter and I don't see why data should be any different. Of course, with larger consumers there are economies of scale so bundling packages makes sense and then simply charging for over usage at a reasonable rate such as 10-20p/gigabyte

[wasabi]

They do - they pay for the bandwidth usage their end. It's up to the ISP's to then decide how to charge the customers for their usage.
Appreciated, they get moaned at when they do but it's a small vocal minority.
Water is supplied on a meter and I don't see why data should be any different. Of course, with larger consumers there are economies of scale so bundling packages makes sense and then simply charging for over usage at a reasonable rate such as 10-20p/gigabyte

Problem is most people have gotten used to 'unlimited' internet, even though it isn't with fair usage etc. Video is by far the worst offender for eating bandwidth (followed by P2P etc) Customers paying for it directly would mean a big shift in pricing strategies at ISPs, which is why they're trying to shift the cost to Netflix. In a roundabout way this causes the heavy bandwidth users to pay as Netflix have more overheads so have to put prices up. Is this 'right' - probably not, but financial reality makes it the path of least resistance. A bit like stealth taxes it is easier to get through.

[Andeh13]

Problem is most people have gotten used to 'unlimited' internet, even though it isn't with fair usage etc. Video is by far the worst offender for eating bandwidth (followed by P2P etc) Customers paying for it directly would mean a big shift in pricing strategies at ISPs, which is why they're trying to shift the cost to Netflix. In a roundabout way this causes the heavy bandwidth users to pay as Netflix have more overheads so have to put prices up. Is this 'right' - probably not, but financial reality makes it the path of least resistance. A bit like stealth taxes it is easier to get through.

Still not seeing the issue here. I have unlimited broadband with BT, pay over the odds for it (ie I could pay less for a 10gb limit etc etc) and all seems well here Those that upload pay for their bandwidth, those that download pay for their bandwidth. If I am abusing my bandwidth I get rate capped, even on an unlimited tariff. I doubt I have ever come close to it though. Why si the USA so different? Big companies, big lobbyists, big money...

[Agent]

I don't think for a second a ISP (or anyone on route) should be able to charge those making the content available. If their infrastructure can't handle it, they need to charge more so it can.

The second you start allowing these companies to charge and dictate the costs to others, they will abuse it. We've seen it endless times from large and multinational companies: Power grab, charge everyone they can as much as they can, then hear them whine about how they need even more power.

It's even worse than most people realise though. It looks like the UK is going to be the ones who veto the EU's net neutrality law: http://www.dailydot.com/politics/net...ty-uk-eu-veto/

At issue is a new provision that critics argue would restrict the British government’s “ability to block illegal material.” The amendment made it so that only a court order would allow for the banning of content, and not a legislative provision, as originally proposed, according to RT.

Pathetic. The thought that what they want to ban might have to be done at a court level must terrify them. Probably because the list of things banned would be much shorter.
But wait for it....

“We do not support any proposals that mean we cannot enforce our laws, including blocking child abuse images,” a government spokesperson told BuzzFeed.

Had to happen....the good old child fiddling clause again. Because the EU clearly want to allow child abuse, and this law goes against the ability for it to be stopped

and...

Remarking after the European legislation passed recently, Vaizey waded into the debate again, claiming the British government “will not agree to any proposals that restrict the ability of parents to protect their children from inappropriate content on line.”

WTF? I don't even have words for this. Parents have total control over their machines and their connections and have done since day one.

Very little gets me truly angry, but this pushes me over the edge. I am so sick and tired of seeing our government have no idea about the internet (or playing dumb so they get their way anyway) and the constant jumping into bed with the US to please them.

[watercooled]

I think the issue is that the likes of Netflix *don't* necessarily pay for their share; if they're peering with an ISP then it's possible no money is changing hands. Once one member starts causing a disproportionate amount of stress on an ISPs network (Netflix can be around a third of total net flow in the US) and degrading other services, you can see where the problems arise. And even in the case of transit, both the ISP and content provider may be paying the transit provider, but again the ISP is getting no money to compensate them for the huge percentage of traffic flowing into their network.

In order to avoid saturating parts of the network and degrading everything else, short of using magic, you have basically two options: Reduce the impact the customer is having through throttling, or improve the network to lift bottlenecks, which costs money. Where do you get that money from? Well you can either pass it (which could be a significant cost) on to every one of your customers, even the ones who don't touch the service, or as wasabi says get it indirectly through the content provider who can pass it onto customers who do actually use the service.

Cable, broadcast and satellite companies all have to spend fairly astronomical amounts of money on getting video/TV to the end users, but at the moment it seems the likes of Netflix have it very easy, riding on the back of what is in many cases the cable companies' networks and essentially forcing them to spend more money on maintenance/upgrades. Again as wasabi puts it, my inner idealist likes the idea of a completely 'free' Internet, but the realist knows it's not always quite that simple, especially with exceptional cases like massively bandwidth intensive VoD providers.

Politically, it could quite easily get very messy as Agent said - how do you set out the rules for what is a fair price for content providers without having them abuse it wherever possible? And where would the cut-off point be for what constitutes a bandwidth hog?

However I don't think that's necessarily what the OP article is about. TBH I've not been following it all that closely lately, but I think the bit people have a problem with is big companies like Netflix being able to get priority on ISP networks, while other/less wealthy companies ending up suffering from congestion.

It's also important to remember the 'Internet' works quite differently in the UK vs USA though. Do a traceroute to the likes of Facebook/Google/Twitter/Microsoft and other big CDNs and you generally won't see a transit provider, rather direct interconnects/peering is almost ubiquitous here. (Note websites often use different routes to the actual CDN). So the stuff happening in USA isn't necessarily relevant in other countries - the large land area and distances between population centres means quite a different market vs never really being more than 50-100 miles from a major interconnect point in the UK.

[badass]

Where do you get that money from? Well you can either pass it (which could be a significant cost) on to every one of your customers, even the ones who don't touch the service, or as wasabi says get it indirectly through the content provider who can pass it onto customers who do actually use the service.

Or, charge the heavy users for it as I said earlier. That way, those that cost the most money get charged the most money.

[watercooled]

Hmm, I'm not a fan of metering for data though. I'm not a heavy user myself but I still much prefer the idea of a fixed cost, with FUP if necessary, for non-consumables, like how you get 'unlimited' texts, calls and often data with even mobile contracts (we don't actually have a water meter either, but that's besides the point). Even if you end up paying a bit more, you still feel more 'free' to do stuff without thinking of the cost every time you refresh a web page, etc. And, if necessary, hit users who are royally taking the mickey with FUP penalties if they're causing problems.

Charging per MB is also not fair in terms of how users are impacting/costing the network - someone doing some bulk HTTP/FTP downloads overnight from a peered server is going to have far less impact than someone downloading via P2P with dozens+ of connections to peers all over the globe at peak time, for example. Like, potentially orders-of-magnitude-unfair.

TBH I didn't have a big problem with Virgin's criticised peak time throttling, which they've now largely scrapped, as it would encourage people to schedule downloads for off-peak times or get throttled back if they were likely to impact congestion. I've actually noticed some peak-time congestion recently which I don't recall seeing while the throttling was still in place.

No, metering seems like a huge step back to me in terms of neutrality etc, especially considering data has different 'costs' depending on the time/day/etc, hence percentile billing for enterprise connections. Some residential ISPs do actually offer something similar i.e. pay-for-what-you-use with time-based weighting e.g. AAISP, if that's what you'd prefer - just like how PAYG and contract co-exist for mobile networks.

[badass]

Hmm, I'm not a fan of metering for data though. I'm not a heavy user myself but I still much prefer the idea of a fixed cost, with FUP if necessary, for non-consumables, like how you get 'unlimited' texts, calls and often data with even mobile contracts (we don't actually have a water meter either, but that's besides the point). Even if you end up paying a bit more, you still feel more 'free' to do stuff without thinking of the cost every time you refresh a web page, etc. And, if necessary, hit users who are royally taking the mickey with FUP penalties if they're causing problems.

In the same vein, I think I should get all the fuel I want for my car and pay a fixed cost.

Charging per MB is also not fair in terms of how users are impacting/costing the network - someone doing some bulk HTTP/FTP downloads overnight from a peered server is going to have far less impact than someone downloading via P2P with dozens+ of connections to peers all over the globe at peak time, for example. Like, potentially orders-of-magnitude-unfair.

Answered that one yourself below.

TBH I didn't have a big problem with Virgin's criticised peak time throttling, which they've now largely scrapped, as it would encourage people to schedule downloads for off-peak times or get throttled back if they were likely to impact congestion. I've actually noticed some peak-time congestion recently which I don't recall seeing while the throttling was still in place.

No, metering seems like a huge step back to me in terms of neutrality etc, especially considering data has different 'costs' depending on the time/day/etc, hence percentile billing for enterprise connections. Some residential ISPs do actually offer something similar i.e. pay-for-what-you-use with time-based weighting e.g. AAISP, if that's what you'd prefer - just like how PAYG and contract co-exist for mobile networks.

It's got nothing to do with neutrality at all.
Neutrality is about not prioritising certain traffic.
Charging people for what they use is - well - charging people for what they use.

[watercooled]

In the same vein, I think I should get all the fuel I want for my car and pay a fixed cost.

I fully expected someone to say that. I specifically said non-consumables, so fuel/energy is not a suitable analogy.

Answered that one yourself below.

It's got nothing to do with neutrality at all.
Neutrality is about not prioritising certain traffic.
Charging people for what they use is - well - charging people for what they use.

How exactly did I answer myself? I said charging per MB is not 'fair', which it isn't, and I said nothing to contradict that in the next quote? Time-based can be a tad more realistic, but in reality the real 'cost' can be quite unpredictable - so do you start charging people extortionate amounts without notifying them when there happens to be a large Patch Tuesday for instance?

Again, data isn't a consumable. Someone downloading a huge file from a peered CDN during off-peak time is going to 'cost' the ISP pretty much zero vs if you hadn't downloaded it, etc, etc. Fair enough if people want to pay PAYG like how we've had contract and PAYG mobile phone plans alongside each other pretty much forever, but it's quite obvious a great deal of people (including myself) prefer the predictability of paying a flat tariff regardless of use (within FUP of course). Some people will end up paying over the odds if they happen to do their downloading off-peak, while the opposite would be true of others who contribute to congestion. It would be made to even out overall, you know, like 'unlimited' does...

My point being, no, 'charging people for what they use' isn't quite charging people for what they 'use' at all...

It's quite unreasonable to expect no form of QoS or prioritisation on pretty much any shared, packet-switched network. The current debate seems to be more about specific companies being able to pay to gain an unfair advantage, possibly at the expense of other transfers.

[Lucio]

I fully expected someone to say that. I specifically said non-consumables, so fuel/energy is not a suitable analogy.

Actually, why isn't bandwidth a consumable? A network has a finite capacity, and at the time that you're using the network, it's something that can't be used by another person. Whilst I agree that petrol and gas aren't exactly the best analogy, it doesn't mean the idea that what you use doesn't have a cost.

Perhaps a better analogy would be sunlight, whilst you're standing in the sun, someone behind you doesn't get as much, or even none at all. Sure once you're done, you can step out of the way, and the people behind you can carry on enjoying it, but you can't take away from the fact that you used up some of their time in the sun.


All of that said, I dislike the idea of giving up net neutrality, because I feel that the technologies used to power an unfair internet represent an unprecidented level of survelliance, even beyond the scope of what already exists within government agencies. You can't deliver priority traffic, without knowing what someone's traffic actually is, and I can't help but feel that implimenting packet bias leads to a greater and greater level of monitoring and censorship.

[watercooled]

Actually, why isn't bandwidth a consumable?

Because it can't be consumed? Petrol, or coal, or gas, when used is gone, used, burned. You don't irreversibly 'use' or consume anything with bandwidth. You may argue on the technicality of network equipment using electricity, but for the most part nothing will really change due to your use, and perhaps the 'intelligent' devices along the way that might perform some processing on your packets, the difference will be negligible. The amounts we're talking about really don't constitute metered charging, not even close to it.

Your use of a network is transient, but as far as consumers are concerned, the 'Internet' is packet switched, not circuit switched, so even bandwidth hogs aren't really 'depriving' anyone of anything. When enough people together manage to saturate connections and cause congestion, the speed will scale back to compensate. Your presence, or lack thereof, doesn't change the running costs of the network. In a way, more users would mean more people to share the running costs! Off on a slight tangent, but contract payment is likely also preferred by ISPs, again for predictability. Even if no-one uses the network, it still has to be paid for, with pretty much exactly the same running costs! So either the cost per MB would have to be very variable and subject to wildly fluctuating prices (not ignoring the possibility for ISPs to 'forget' to lower it again). That could be something like the electricity market with buy/sell prices, but with no competition to keep prices in check.

Dial-up OTOH is essentially circuit-switched, where you're actually taking up a line regardless of whether you're actually doing anything on it, so you're charged by the minute.

A network has a finite capacity, and at the time that you're using the network, it's something that can't be used by another person. Whilst I agree that petrol and gas aren't exactly the best analogy, it doesn't mean the idea that what you use doesn't have a cost.

(See above)

You can't deliver priority traffic, without knowing what someone's traffic actually is, and I can't help but feel that implimenting packet bias leads to a greater and greater level of monitoring and censorship.

'Knowing' may simply refer to an instantaneous decision made by a routing algorithm - it doesn't necessarily mean everything is logged. Reading packet headers and routing traffic based on their contents is necessary for the Internet to actually function. And as I said QoS/prioritisation is not some new thing, the Internet would pretty much cease to function without it. Assuming there's no QoS enabled on your home router, trying pinging a website while maxing your upload/download. Imagine if that happened on a larger scale every time a link reached saturation.