News - Internet Slowdown Day will see top websites join in protest

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The symbolic event hopes to raise awareness of internet 'fast lanes' proposal.

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Read more.

To be blunt, if this isn't targeted specifically at US IP addresses only, I (and I'm sure many others) will get very annoyed, very quickly, seeing this stuff on a bunch of sites we use.

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Originally Posted by MaverickWill

To be blunt, if this isn't targeted specifically at US IP addresses only, I (and I'm sure many others) will get very annoyed, very quickly, seeing this stuff on a bunch of sites we use.

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The general idea is for you to get "very annoyed, very quickly". Socalled "managed services" are big on the agenda of European telecommunication providers as well. The sooner the public at large is made aware of these plans and they are stopped the better.

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Originally Posted by MaverickWill

To be blunt, if this isn't targeted specifically at US IP addresses only, I (and I'm sure many others) will get very annoyed, very quickly, seeing this stuff on a bunch of sites we use.

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From the last such protest I remember hearing that part of the deal being worked out by Comcast, TimeWarner, etc was that "premium" US traffic would also get priority over any/all "non-US" data.

So if the website/email-service/porn-pic-sharer that you're trying to get to is in the US, then it stands to reason that you'll get affected by the prioritization. If this is the case then I'm all in favour of the protest - why should a couple of megacorps with deep pockets and bought politicians be able to dictate to the rest of us?!

Sorry if this sounds horribly anti-American, it's not, it's anti- some US businesses.

EDIT: good point azreal, I'd forgotten about the EU looking at this kind of idiocy - but I thought that they were generally "anti" whereas HMG was "pro" (especially if they could auction the rights to priortize presumably).

Haven't Hexus been doing this for months?

I view as anti-internet, anti-human knowledge sharing and basically another way business is trying to extract more money from the general public all over the world. As others have said this effects more than just the US.

:censored:

We need to be concentrating on upping our speeds to reach Japan's 1Gbps speeds and here we are , trying to slow the net down. LOOOOL

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Originally Posted by virtuo

Haven't Hexus been doing this for months?

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Sick burn. Nah, but seriously, we are rolling out stuff that'll fix that, it's just that Gabe Newell is project manager.

lets be honest here... this is going to do nothing, it's actually going to help the isps in the states because they can now reference this 'slow down' at the server end as the reason the user has slow speeds.

Now don't get me wrong I think the 'double dipping' in the US is dreadful and should have been dealt with by the government but like most countries big businesses usually get away with things that little people can't.

And I agree we do need to increase our internet speeds in general, even adsl2 is slow in world speed terms

Why let individuals 'sub-let' their faster bandwidth if they choose and receive the cash? :)

I agree with the protest.
Putting a tiered system in so my neighbour gets his website a bit quicker because he spends a bit extra money on his connection is just wrong.
It's a money making exercise. It would probably cause a lot of problems too, with a new "response time" added to ISP adverts.... Your response time for this website will be up to 5 seconds or if you can't afford that service you can have up to 15 seconds.

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Originally Posted by Steve

Sick burn. Nah, but seriously, we are rolling out stuff that'll fix that, it's just that Gabe Newell is project manager.

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Version 2.999999999999 incoming?

In all seriousness, net neutrality has been adopted over here, or was at the very least being finalised as of April this year, so ISPs in the EU can't pull this stunt - linky.

We're quite literally protected from this, not only by EU law, but the fact that in the UK, all landlines and exchanges have been made available for any provider. In the US, there are monopolistic areas where only one ISP provides to a whole area, with no competition. Huge problem for the USA, absolutely meaningless to the rest of the world.

On to the point RE: slowing down non-US connections, that's fair enough, but our connections go through companies such as Level 3, who have famously come out against the fast-lane plans (linky) and shamed ISPs in the process. I doubt anything will change on that end, since the issue being debated now is domestic US connections to content providers.

I get this is a big thing for the US, but it's not for the rest of us, and we can't exactly influence US politics/business regardless. I mean, sure, we in the EU/RoW can pull up the popcorn and observe, but we're still having to load this if it isn't geographically targeted, despite it not affecting us directly and us having no input on it.

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Originally Posted by MaverickWill

We're quite literally protected from this, not only by EU law, but the fact that in the UK, all landlines and exchanges have been made available for any provider. In the US, there are monopolistic areas where only one ISP provides to a whole area, with no competition. Huge problem for the USA, absolutely meaningless to the rest of the world.

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Not sure I agree with that "absolutely meaningless" assessment. To take a simple example, supposing you are trying to access the website of the Acme Corporation and they've got a business deal with - for example - ComCast. I've not seen anything on this "prioritisation" that says it's definitely going to be limited to residential accounts.

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Originally Posted by MaverickWill

On to the point RE: slowing down non-US connections, that's fair enough, but our connections go through companies such as Level 3, who have famously come out against the fast-lane plans and shamed ISPs in the process. I doubt anything will change on that end, since the issue being debated now is domestic US connections to content providers.

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First off slowing down "foreign" connections definitely ISN'T "fair enough". Just because some US businesses have decided to b.a.d. why the heck should the rest of us suffer? :mad: Secondly, the "shaming" of ISP's only works if they all aren't doing it - which if the "slowndown" doesn't work is distinct possibility.
Thirdly, there's been some in Congress/Senate (can't remember which, and to be honest I'm not bothered overly much) on the right-wing (Tea Party?) complaining bitterly that US companies are not able to take full advantage (commercial presumably) of "their" internet - so downgrading us rank foreigners would play well to that kind of narrow-minded, isolationist, group.

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Originally Posted by MaverickWill

I get this is a big thing for the US, but it's not for the rest of us, and we can't exactly influence US politics/business regardless. I mean, sure, we in the EU/RoW can pull up the popcorn and observe, but we're still having to load this if it isn't geographically targeted, despite it not affecting us directly and us having no input on it.

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You're right - we can't influence US politics - and personally I think it'd be an obviously broken system if we could. Businesses we can - to a limited effect - steer in the right direction. I'll keep the popcorn warm until it looks like I'm not going to be affected, but until then a sensible person would be on their guard.

Heck, at the end of the day, what's it costing US to support ISD?

Surely the response is to shun the big businesses that drive this on, whose sole aim (and legal obligation) is to increase share holder returns. I hope that I'm not being naive by suggesting that we take the web back to what it was by creating locally community owned and operated open nets, as I believe has been done in some parts of Europe and remote UK sites?

I do feel that this problem is a consequence of the fact that most internet users forget that there is no such thing as a free lunch and expect everything on-line to cost only the phone line subscription that they pay. That doesn't sit well with the big operator's long term business plans. However, to ask rhetorically, why should anything on-line be free? If we all paid for what we got perhaps this situation wouldn't arise.

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Originally Posted by RobbieRoy

Surely the response is to shun the big businesses that drive this on, whose sole aim (and legal obligation) is to increase share holder returns. I hope that I'm not being naive by suggesting that we take the web back to what it was by creating locally community owned and operated open nets, as I believe has been done in some parts of Europe and remote UK sites?

I do feel that this problem is a consequence of the fact that most internet users forget that there is no such thing as a free lunch and expect everything on-line to cost only the phone line subscription that they pay. That doesn't sit well with the big operator's long term business plans. However, to ask rhetorically, why should anything on-line be free? If we all paid for what we got perhaps this situation wouldn't arise.

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This is primarily aimed at us residents who will be able to vote with their wallets and speak to senators /congressmen. And I really don't understand your second point, these issues are (at least in part) caused by underinvestment in infrastructure. If for example virgin sold 120mbit broadband to everyone on my street I'd expect them to have the infrastructure to allow everyone to bomb it for some reasonable fraction of the time (my usage stats where about 80gb yesterday due to reinstall but are typically 50/60gb a week. Effectively what this allows companies to do is to double charge for line rental.

With regard to stuff being free, that just doesn't make sense. I have a commercial relationship with the content provider, and a completely distinct one with my isp. Just as they do with theirs.

The debate may have moved on some, but wasn't it originally about residential isps effectively prioritising some traffic over others following payment by the website not the consumer?

Obviously it's firstly about control, then secondly (or joint firstly) profit/greed/extortion.

It allows Timewarner, etc. to lock out any oppostion an maintain a monopoly. The take priority over all other companies. How can a competitor establish itself if Timewarner, etc. have priority and all the profit that comes with it.

The very fact that this is being debated is an insult to the populace and prrof that politicians answer only to cash advances.

So lets get this straight.

You pay for your internet right now, hard cash. They want to change it so they slow your internet down and get you to pay some more to get it back to current max speed... Who could possibly support this idea other than those making money from it and those completely fooled. This is pretty much a con.

We already get ripped off with false offers of speed, with this "up to" and "expected" rubbish. If we paid for per GB or per Mbps on our lines, you could say this is about giving more options, but NO, we'd be reversing the current way it works to make it even more expensive and worse as we do a lot of (legal) P2P. Nearly everyone is paying full price for pretty much every ISP's package of "unlimited".

I know this is US related, but also something for the EU.. Like someone said, we should be trying to achieve Gbps speeds. Instead we have some greedy, delusional, depressed losers sitting in an office thinking of ways to double profits for already rich people so they can get nothing of like for like value..