Canadian ISPs Speak Out Against Net Neutrality 213
Ars Technica reports on a proceeding being held by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission regarding net neutrality. They requested comments from the public as part of the debate, and several Canadian ISPs took the opportunity to explain why they think it's a bad idea. Quoting:
"One of the more interesting responses came from an ISP called Videotron, which told the CRTC that controlling access to content ... 'could be beneficial not only to users of Internet services but to society in general.' As examples of such benefits, Videotron mentioned the control of spam, viruses, and child pornography. It went on to suggest that graduated response rules — kicking users off the 'Net after several accusations of copyright infringement — could also be included as a benefit to society in general. ... Rogers, one of Canada's big ISPs, also chimed in and explained that new regulations might limit its ability to throttle P2P uploads, which it does at the moment. 'P2P file sharing is designed to cause network congestion,' says the company. 'It contributes significantly to latency, thereby making the network unreliable for certain users at periods of such congestion.'"
Stop overselling (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can't provide what you're being paid for, stop overselling the network you have.
"Designed"? (Score:5, Insightful)
'P2P file sharing is designed to cause network congestion,' says the company.
Yes! Clearly, when designing a P2P protocol, my first concern was to make absolutely sure that your network would be congested, because I hate the Internet!
This isn't all about you, ISPs. It's about us, and what we want to use our bandwidth for. And yes, P2P filesharing does have design goals other than clogging your tubes.
People with handcuffs and shackles on (Score:5, Insightful)
are hard pressed to hurt others. Indeed, we are quite safe when everyone is controlled and limited. Sadly, Videotron is playing the typical "think of the children" and "trade freedom for safety" thing because they think it'll get them in good with the media companies.
Or something retarded like that.
accusations (Score:5, Insightful)
notice how he used the word "accusations" instead of anything that would imply the necessity of evidence.
Re:want the old slashdot back? (Score:5, Insightful)
But that's just the genertional gap just being shown.
Back in the old days, /. was a purists tech site. They had some funnies as in (groan), but mostly was discussion and Linux advocation. Then, we really didnt care about the legality of whatever. As long as it was technologically feasible and interesting, it was worth doing.
Fast forward past the Napster years....
We now live in a world of "Papers Please", and surveillance tech. Most of our cool ideas have been deemed "illegal", as they were gray first. The 2600 judgment said that just linking was violating. Now, most of our efforts are to try to turn this tide around, telling politicians how stupid their policies really are.
We now talk about network neutrality, but that's solved by encryption. Next they block encryption and we set it up to look like html over http "share servers". And then we have the 750-35000 dollar fine if we are found trading. Look at NewYorkCountryLawyer for those situations. He's a techie geek lawyer who fights on our side.
o, canada... (Score:5, Insightful)
Net neutrality (Score:5, Insightful)
Would you be upset if companies were allowed to contruct paying-subscriber-only lanes on the freeway? Or if they were able to just throw out traffic cones wherever they wanted?
It really is that fucking simple. There is no benefit from any deviation from net neutrality.
Videotron as everything to loose to P2P (Score:5, Insightful)
Videotron is not not just an ISP.
They are also a cable company, phone company
and they own stores where you can rent dvds
and games.
The are own by Quebecor, which is a publishing
company, which also owns TVA, a tv station,
and stores selling video games, and the list goes on and on.
Basically, they tend to be a monopole which
wants to make you pay for everything you watch and
play.
They are certainly not neutral about net neutrality.
Re:"Designed"? (Score:5, Insightful)
p2p was designed to cause congestion in the same way that cars were designed to cause traffic jams.
Re:"Designed"? (Score:5, Insightful)
HTTP wasn't designed to congest networks, but as it is unicast, if lots of people "tune in" online to watch the latest Presidential address, the networks get congested. Arguably, P2P would be better in this, and multicast streaming would be even better.
Should ISPs prioritize P2P above HTTP, and multicast above P2P?
and that makes Videotron a ..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Fantastic shining example of why we NEED network neutrality; to stop companies like this from having a monopoly on all entertainment and in doing so drag your business and information needs into the same quagmire of unregulated information highway robbery.
Time for an information age robin hood?
This sort of greed is disgusting.
company regulation? (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh wait. I thought it was the government's job to regulate businesses. The latest economic crisis has pretty much shot businesses in the foot on that matter.
Last time I heard, they have 100 mbps in Japan and Korea, a great infrastructure, and no bottleneck issues. If Videotron, or any other western ISP, can't keep up with technology, maybe they just need to fail, and admit that our communication infrastructure isn't something to be entrusted to people out to make a buck.
Re:"Designed"? (Score:5, Insightful)
And yes, P2P filesharing does have design goals other than clogging your tubes.
The way I see it, the portion I paid for is my tubes. And unlimited means unlimited.
Re:People with handcuffs and shackles on (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Net neutrality (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:accusations (Score:3, Insightful)
And of course abusive "we do what we want" style EULA's mean you don't have recourse, as it's one of those "sole and final discretion" deals.
Re:"Designed"? (Score:3, Insightful)
And yes, P2P filesharing does have design goals other than clogging your tubes.
The way I see it, the portion I paid for is my tubes. And unlimited means unlimited.
Indeed. If they received even one cent of public money towards building their infrastructure then net neutrality should be an absolute and uncompromised requirement. If they have a government-enforced monopoly like most (all?) telecoms, then net neutrality should be an absolute requirement.
Re:company regulation? (Score:2, Insightful)
Hey Harper (Mr. Prime Minister), repeat after me: there is no need, at present, to break network neutrality. If congestion becomes an issue in the future, due to all bandwidth running through only two "pipes" (Bell & Videotron/Rogers), then maybe it's the competition laws that need to be reworked rather than internet usage laws.
Re:"Designed"? (Score:2, Insightful)
I get 100 mbit fiber for $65/mo in a small town in Iowa. WTF is taking the rest of you so long?
One word, comcast...
Re:Net Neutrality vs QoS (Score:3, Insightful)
Kicking users off the 'Net after several accusatio (Score:2, Insightful)
First of all last time I checked and looked at my stack of blank cdr's I paid for the right to legally download music all I want. Want it any other way best remove the levi and pay me back the money I paid into it for the pleasure of storing my own Photos and documents.
I'll sending Shaw off a nice letter today and a pre cancelation notice they can keep and use the day they decided to limit my rights and INTERNET connection.
Re:Stop overselling (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're selling a 50MB/s to 1,000 people at "5MB/s per person", you deserve anything bad that comes your way. I can see putting maybe up to 20 people on that 50MB/s on a supposed 5MB/s per person, but anything more than that is definitely asking for trouble. Even regular users are going to max their connections simultaneously during peak hours.
Re:"Benefit to society." (Score:5, Insightful)
Not the same (Score:3, Insightful)
Would you be upset if companies were allowed to contruct paying-subscriber-only lanes on the freeway?
No, I would not be upset by this because I would be paying for exactly what I got. What would upset me would be if I found I could not leave at the exit I wanted to because the local town had reached the maximum number of cars that day and refused to pay for a larger quota from the highway company despite the fact that they had built an exit easily capable of handling more.
I pay my ISP for access to the internet at a particular bandwidth. The company I connect to is also paying their ISP for a particular bandwidth access to the internet. Some of that money should go to ensuring that there is sufficient infrastructure to connect us together without the ISP trying to extort more money from either of us just because they have realised that they can.
Re:want the old slashdot back? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Net neutrality (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep, or VoIp,
Or game data traffic over torrent data.
My own cheesy home NAS router pretty much chokes if I torrent something, and no other IP services like web browsing, or real time network game data gets any real bandwidth, even if I set my torrent client to limit connections and speed.
(Yes, it's an artifact of a poor quality NAS router).
I would like to be able to set my router to de-prioritize torrents, but perhaps the guy next door would prefer it the other way..
The trouble is these ISP's use doublespeak and cash to hide the real intent which is to stop any competing services from running on their networks.
Seems to me the only place that traffic shaping is beneficial is in my own connection to the net. IE If I pay for 500kb/sec internet, I chose what data to fill my pipe with, not someone else.
If there were decent competition at the infrastructure level, I don't think there would be much of a debate, but these ISP's are operating in a classic conflict of interest..
Godwin's Law for Networks (Score:2, Insightful)
Hello, the Internet. I would like to propose Godwin's Law for Networks: In any discussion on network policy, such as net neutrality, traffic shaping, quality of service, protocol-based filtering, etc., if you introduce a claim that involves child pornography, you lose the argument.
The child pornography community will use whatever technology is available for information transfer, just like the rest of us. Any policy short of inspection of every document that passes through the network and forbidding any opaque encoding (which includes forbidding anything novel and forbidding all encryption), is irrelevant to the issue of child pornography.
The child pornography issue is being used for its shock value. It's as if "child pornography" is a magic phrase that is expected to turn people's brains off and prevent them from critically examining the surrounding proposal. We cannot allow this kind of irresponsible irrational advocacy to dominate our public discussion.
Fight sound bites with sound bites: "Godwin's Law for Networks".
Re:That's Videotron for you (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd like to see Bell and Videotron being split into an ISP and Other business.
I'd like to see their senior executives split into a couple different pieces too.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately Canada's Gov't Loves big Corporation (Score:2, Insightful)
Our country is continuously littered with news of regulators supposedly established to help me 'the little guy' when in fact all they do is help keep monopolies and oligarchies from losing control. In fact the regulatory bodies up here continually vote in favour of screwing the little guy for the big corps.
CRTC Forces us folks to keep lazy and lousy TV content providers in business through fees even though I only watch the Asian/Indian/Far East/5 french channels only for the few minutes per week when my fetish mood kicks in. The CRTC won't even touch the internet neutrality issues up here - 'not our problem' we don't regulate the internet - however they are the ones who require the fees set at X. DNS hijacking isn't our problem etc etc.
Heck - we have a regulatory body that allows a few farmers to charge whatever they want for milk and cheese and butter with NO ability for the 99% of the rest of the country who buy the damn stuff to voice an opinion that we should allow open market forces into the sway. Sounds funny - but since the rural ridings have a disproportionate amount of sway in parliament- the farmers get their way at the expense of the consumers.
Worst of all perhaps is the fact that we have governemtns who regulate the minimum price of beer to help the two large breweries and stifle competition. Enabling fat laziness to take hold in corporate Canada.
Re:Stop overselling (Score:3, Insightful)
The difference between an ISP and a University is that much of the traffic of a University stays on campus. That might not be true for the student personal traffic when they p2p their music, but the "official" traffic does. People on campus access servers on campus to move data on campus. Joe Engineering student connects to an on-campus server to run his programs and submit his term papers.
For example, all my data sits down the hall at the other end of a 100Mbit link. Switched. Other than transient web traffic, all the accesses come from other people with 100Mbit switched links in the same building. That data comes on-campus in megabyte chunks over the day, but originates at sites with 10Mbit or slower connections to start with.
At an ISP, there are very FEW people running servers to share data with other ISP users, so almost ALL of the traffic goes "off campus". Once your packets leave your house, it is almost a given they will go out the ISP's upstream connection. (Local proxies and caches are an exception, of course.)
So, basically, the assumptions behind sharing at a uni and at an ISP are two radically different things.
Consider, too, that "telecommunications" companies have ALWAYS made assumptions about sharing resources, even back in the glory days of Ma Bell and the local telco who owned your telephone. They never had one trunk per subscriber. They never even had one dialtone generator per sub. Nor did they have one step-by-step (relay) per sub. On a busy day, you could wait a minute to get dialtone. Even moving to the "computer" age and crossbar switches, there never was one DTMF decoder per sub, so you could still wait to get dialtone. And guess what? Computer modem users started reshaping the assumptions about line sharing that the telco's had to make. That's why they used to charge more for a "data" line -- it was going to be in use more and using the switching more than the "normal" user.
Now, most people never realized that they were sharing dialtone generators and DTMF decoders with other people, because they almost never had to wait for it when they picked up the phone. They didn't know there were only 10 or 20 trunks connecting their little central office with the rest of the world because when they wanted to call long-distance there was one available right away. (I remember visiting a CO when a friend was working there and being surprised that all the connections to the rest of the world came up to one small patch panel! And how simple it was to jack in to listen.)
That's no different than today. Most people don't realize they are sharing their cable modem network with anyone else because the system responds as fast as they ask it to. WE know because we are techies. Sometimes it IS better not to know what hotdogs are made of.
Re:Stop overselling (Score:3, Insightful)
You can use a round-robin scheduler to prioritize other traffic over p2p (in other words, let p2p soak up the bandwidth that remains after all the "normal" internet activities have taken their share). But there is a world of difference between that and what these companies apparently want to do: filter content selectively and block some protocols entirely.
I have no problems with assigning a lower-priority to p2p. I do have a serious problem with my ISP deciding what I can and cannot see and do.
Re:Stop overselling (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Stop overselling (Score:1, Insightful)
I'll go anonymous on this, as it's related to my job.
You said it yourself, it's not black and white, but you're still arguing it that way. It's not the customers/victims fault, as they just want to use the bandwidth they were sold.
It's not a choice of overselling or not - Bell/Rogers and every other ISP made it an issue by overselling *too much*. And then lying to the customers about what was sold.
They do this at the business level too, despite what you've implied. Bell/Rogers even oversell on ISP level bandwidth sales on occasion. Bandwidth is oversold all the way up.
And yes, they can build out the infrastructure. I worked on ISP bandwidth support/peering/routing...adding bandwidth is very doable - it just needs hardware and costs money. A nice steady, depressing hill-climb of money that keeps costing as equipment needs to be upgraded over time.
The business view is that it's currently just cheaper to upset the 1%-5% of heavy customers instead. Every year, costs to upgrade hardware drop dramatically as tech marches on. The ISP's then blame the customer/victim for the problem, which makes for acceptable PR and muddies the water.
If an ISP delays long enough, it becomes cheap to upgrade links from 10Mb->100Mb, or 1Gb->10Gb without even needing add cabling. By then, the upgraded link probably won't be enough, and they can blame this on the evil heavy users of the promised bandwidth again.
Re:Stop overselling (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Stop overselling (Score:3, Insightful)
QoS shaping and network neutrality are 2 separate issues. However, it's convenient for ISP's to lump them together - and 90% of the people in politics neither know the difference nor care to learn about it.
Network neutrality is about treating all sources & destinations as equivalent peers. Under network neutrality there is no difference between going to www.google.com or www.goat.se [shudder]. Opposing neutrality is arguing for the ability to treat the 2 end points differently - based either on moral standards or on a pay-for-play basis.
Under QoS shaping, traffic patterns are adjusted based on protocol and congestion. VOIP & Video conferencing are latency sensitive. HTML & SMTP are not. Bittorrent certainly isn't. By performing QoS shaping, the system ensures that VOIP calls are clear, while still allotting bandwidth to Bittorrent.
Putting the 2 issues together under the same argument allows ISP's to argue that denying them QoS would destroy them, while ignoring that their real goal is to implement tier-by-endpoint structures.
Or better yet: (Score:3, Insightful)
p2p was designed to cause congestion in the same way that carpool* was designed to cause traffic jams.
* note. "carpool", not "carpool lanes"