FCC Commissioner Blasts Verizon On Net Neutrality 157
destinyland writes "FCC chairman Julius Genachowski says that net neutrality rules 'will happen,' promising the FCC 'will make sure that we get the rules right... to make sure that what we do maximizes innovation and investment across the ecosystem.' But the same week, FCC Commissioner Michael Copps announced that the public should not stand for deals 'that exchange Internet freedom for bloated profits,' mocking the tiered-data plans of the 'Verizon-Google gaggle' and accusing them of wanting 'gated communities for the affluent.' Speaking at a New Mexico hearing, the commissioner warned the audience against proposals that would 'vastly diminish' the Internet's importance, blasting 'special interests and gatekeepers and toll-booth collectors who will short-circuit what this great new technology can do for our country.' (The text of his speech is available as a PDF file at FCC.gov.) He concludes by acknowledging that 'you can't blame companies for seeking to protect their own interests. But you can blame policy-makers if we let them get away with it!'"
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Please Read The Fucking Article (Score:5, Insightful)
Should there not be words of support on Slashdot for such a clear and unambiguous stand from the FCC Commissioner and the FCC Chairman? This is exactly what we need to begin turning the tide.
Look at the discussion below: sidetracked in a shouting match and out of topic all the way down (at least at the time I write this...).
Please!
Re:Please Read The Fucking Article (Score:4, Interesting)
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Your RIGHT!! We need more corporate overlords, shipping our jobs over seas and charging us double for something we already get!!
Fuck off.
Re:Please Read The Fucking Article (Score:4, Insightful)
Its funny, but I think this troll feeding brings up a real question here for me... why is it that we can only discuss this as an "either/or"?
Why is every argument about regulation reduced to "more government vs more corporate overlords"?
I think that both sides really do have points here.
It isn't hard to dislike the FCC. Even if you, as I do, admit that they were started for fairly valid reasons. They have, as is the nature of political beasts, been pushed by vocal minorities to impose censorship of content, and to actually enforce it.
That said, its easy to dislike companies on this net neutrality issue. My ISP is going to take my money for providing service, and then sell my network performance to third parties? They already sold it to me, now they are going to let someone else pay to make it better?
I can understand the need to shape traffic, or outright limit bandwidth. That I am ok with, what I am not ok with is other companies being given the option to bribe my ISP to affect my service. Even more so, that my ISP would, essentially, want to use it as a form of blackmail. "We have X users, we will degrade all of their traffic to your site unless you pay us". As a paying customer, I resent being used in such a way, especially in such a way as to mean that my service, which I paid for, is going to be degraded for the scheme. Its one thing to offer less, or degrade service to capacity reasons, but... just to blackmail other companies? Its my service, the service which I pay for shouldn't make any distinctions about what I want to connect to.
Of course, we have that problem of, many agree that something should be done. This move by the FCC is something. It doesn't really follow that that makes it the right thing.
Oh boy (Score:5, Insightful)
Tsk America. How on earth did this guy slip through the net? Isn't the name a bloody clue this is a pinko who will undermine your countries economy... oh wait... to late.
On a more serious note, novel way to resign. I wonder how many policy-makers choked on their breakfast or had to have it explained to them that some people think that it is not their job to protect the interests of companies at the expense of everything else.
Brave guy, but somehow I feel any praise I write is like writing a eulogy.
Re:Oh boy (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is this modded troll? It's completely accurate. Net Neutrality will never happen in the US for two reasons:
1. The Republicans are against any regulation of companies at all, so they'll never support it.
2. The Democrats want to censor the Internet in the name of reducing piracy/protecting children from "cyber bullying." Anything called "Net Neutrality" that comes from a D will actually be a way to censor "unpopular" thought from the 'net (read: anything remotely conservative), along with massive fines for anyone caught "pirating" data.
As long as either of those parties are involved, net neutrality will never happen.
Re:Oh boy (Score:5, Insightful)
The Democrats want to censor the Internet in the name of reducing piracy
I'm pretty sure the Republicans are right there with them on that one.
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I wouldn't be so sure. The Republicans are rarely, if ever, the ones introducing those bills.
Politicians love money. I doubt very many people would turn down the entertainment industries bribes. Here's one. [wikipedia.org]
I'm not sure exactly how many they passed, but it's likely that they would bow down to the entertainment industry if they commanded them to.
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Which is simply to say, that kind of stuff is less likely to happen with a divided Congress, since it generally won't get introduced on the side controlled by Republicans.
Yes.. what people don't seem to get is that its a good thing to have a ravenously partisan congress in these days of idiocracy. It prevents them from getting the particularly stupid bills passed. Or at least it slows them down.
Ugh, I hate this argument because it's so absurd... and I subscribed to it when I was young!
Slowing down bad bills is good, but slowing down good bills is bad. A divided, ineffective congress is also unable to repeal crapy old legislation, implement better policies, or react in sufficient time to a crisis. This can be seen in the current congress where issues with overwhelming public support aren't being addressed because congress is hamstrung by itself.
Re:Oh boy (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, those Democrats sure do want to discourage people from having conservative thoughts. That's why they have a 24 hour media machine that scares the bejesus out of people, claiming that sinister conservatives are destroying the fabric of America, building a knee-jerk association in peoples' heads between "conservative" and "anti-American traitor," selectively editing out-of-context video footage to make people from groups that liberals don't like look bad...
No, wait, those are the OTHER guys. I know Slashdot has been getting somewhat more paranoid and wingnutty, but seriously. Have you LOOKED at the Democrats, who couldn't even "suppress the conservative thought" inside their own damn caucus for two years? Breathe, come back from conspiracytown, and join us back in the real world.
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Yes, those Democrats sure do want to discourage people from having conservative thoughts. That's why they have a 24 hour media machine that scares the bejesus out of people, claiming that sinister conservatives are destroying the fabric of America, building a knee-jerk association in peoples' heads between "conservative" and "anti-American traitor," selectively editing out-of-context video footage to make people from groups that liberals don't like look bad...
No, wait, those are the OTHER guys. I know Slashdot has been getting somewhat more paranoid and wingnutty, but seriously. Have you LOOKED at the Democrats, who couldn't even "suppress the conservative thought" inside their own damn caucus for two years? Breathe, come back from conspiracytown, and join us back in the real world.
Have you LOOKED at MSNBC? Were you not watching CNN when a reporter called a giant Hitler at a protest a George Bush "look-alike".
I understand that it's hard to recognize bias when it's bias you agree with, but seriously man, open your eyes! Say what you will about Bill O'Reilly, but I've never seen a conservative on Olbermann's show.
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Say what you will about Bill O'Reilly, but I've never seen a conservative on Olbermann's show.
Would you really want to? Have you ever seen a left-winger on a fox news show? What happens? They get shouted down/talked to like they're five. I'd imagine the same thing would happen should a right-winger appear on MSNBC.
The REAL question is, why are you watching the big news services? You realize they're nothing more than fear, polarization, and embellishment, packaged to sell advertisements...right?
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What do you consider a "real" news source?
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You're joking, right? The left-leaning people I've seen on Fox are almost invariably meek, timid people who can't even get a word in edgewise between interruptions. You can't tell if they are thoughtful or well-reasoned, because they get at most half a sentence out before some jerk right-winger interrupts them and shouts over them. And the interviewer never has the balls to tell the right-wi
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What we really need are journalists who understand the issues and have the guts to catch politicians in lies and noisespin and call them on it.
I recommend Current, particularly the series Vanguard. You want to see REAL journalism? Watch it. They even have all the episodes available on podcast (vodcast, actually).
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Holy shit. I guess I'm done with Slashdot. I hadn't realized the demographic had become filled with such idiots. This comment and its +5 moderation is the intellectual equivalent of canceling real programming to show Ghost Hunters. This comment is ridiculous on several levels:
I have always been used to swimming in a sea of Libertarians on Slashd
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"only liberals who 'deserve it' are shouted down ... any reasonable discourse ... involves shouting down."
Gosh. This takes me back to my Compuserve days, in the Canopus forum. (Clears throat.) Do you a problem with reading comprehension? I never said that, and only YOUR bias could possibly have interpreted my post in that manner. :)
Yes, in political philosophy, I'm actually more of a libertarian than anything else. The reason why I watch Fox news is because, most of their evening programming (again, ignorin
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Or, more likely, you never understood the purpose of moderation to begin with. Here's a hint: "+5, Interesting" != "+5, 100% Majority Opinion".
Moderation is about rewarding discourse contributions, not alignment with group-think. If you have never modded a post you disagreed with as "Insightful" or "Interesting", then you are a part of the problem with modern civil discourse. Seek more intellectual curiosity, post-haste.
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"Moderation is about rewarding discourse contributions"
Absolutely. And for the record, anytime I have mod points I make sure that I find posts with which I personally disagree, but which have been well-argued. I mod them up.
It's that "free marketplace of ideas" thingie. :)
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Sure there's MSNBC, but the reality is that pretty much all of the networks have a notable bias in favor of the right. Ever wonder why that death panels story got any airplay? I'll give you a hint, it's not because the networks were exercising any sort of journalistic integrity, it's because th
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2) this is not net neutrality.
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1. The Republicans are against any regulation of companies at all, so they'll never support it.
You must be thinking of those libertarians. Republicans have certainly rallied behind regulations on businesses, just not the ones that make the headlines as "socialist regulations." For example, take a look at how many Republicans support "decency" measures and the regulation of pornography.
2. The Democrats want to censor the Internet in the name of reducing piracy/protecting children from "cyber bullying."
So do Republicans, so what is your point? Neither of the major parties has any interest in protecting free speech or any other individual freedoms.
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Even more moderate things like ensuring quality healthcare for all is opposed
Re:Oh boy (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>pinko who will undermine your countries economy...
The local internet, by definition, is not a free market. It's a monopoly just like the phone and electric monopolies and needs to be regulated the same way. IMHO rather discuss net neutrality, the FCC should just impose the same Common carrier rules the phone company must follow, where they are required to handle all calls equally regardless of content.
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Re:Oh boy (Score:4, Interesting)
And yes the DoJ does have the ability to go in and break it up. And really, the DoJ shouldn't have allowed it to happen in the first place.
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Probably prices haven't dropped because your fees are being used to upgrade other people from 50k dialup to 7000k DSL (people like me).
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>>>It's only a monopoly if a government has forbidden another company to enter that market.
And that's precisely what's happened. Local or state governments have blocked competition from entering, via the use of exclusive licenses to Comcast (or cow or time-warner or ...)
Re:Oh boy (Score:4, Informative)
That hasn't been true for fourteen years. The Telecommunications Bill of 1996 [fcc.gov] made exclusive licenses illegal.
What we have now is basically collusion between the major ISPs. The phone companies have all agreed that only one phone company will ever serve any particular area, and the cable companies have all agreed that only one cable company will ever serve any particular area, meaning that, for the majority of the area of the US, broadband customers have at most two choices.
For example, I have a choice of AT&T DSL or Time Warner cable, period. My parents live a five minute drive away and they have a choice of Verizon or Comcast, period. Verizon doesn't serve my area, despite the fact that they have hundreds of FIOS installations less than a mile from my house, and Time Warner doesn't serve my parents, despite the fact that they have a regional office less than a mile from their house.
This has nothing to do with government conspiring with business, and everything to do with too few players falling into a Nash Equilibrium [wikimedia.org]: a state where nobody competes with anyone else, and instead work to squeeze as much money out of customers as possible.
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>>>The Telecommunications Bill of 1996 made exclusive licenses illegal.
I don't believe you, especially since states like Michigan and cities like Baltimore are still signing exclusive franchise agreements with Comcast (i.e. govt-granted monopolies). That fact alone negates your fallacious claim, but such a bill would also be unconstitutional, because Congress has no authority to interfere with state or local governance.
looting language (Score:2)
It's only a government sanctioned monopoly if a government has forbidden another company to enter that market. Don't confuse the costs of the last mile with government intervention and restriction of the market.
The hallmark of clear thinking and good writing is that the verb carries more weight than the noun. "Has forbidden" what exactly, using which powers, on which continent, under whose dim scrutiny of the passive voice? Not important, I guess, for you, after you trumpet the golden noun "government".
In a democracy, most government sanctioned monopolies are introduced with the phrase "national security". Another example of government sanctioned monopolies (under law) are professional sports leagues (MLB, NFL,
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You're not quite right on the sports leagues. In the US, Major League Baseball benefited from a bad Supreme Court decision, and is explicitly allowed to use anticompetitive practices. The other sports leagues aren't.
The fact that you don't see a difference suggests to me that whether a monopoly is government-sponsored matters less than some people think.
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>>>"Has forbidden" what exactly, using which powers, on which continent, under whose dim scrutiny of the passive voice?
You sure do ramble. Let me boil it down for you:
- 30 years ago county desired CATV for its citizens.
- It contacted Comcast.
- Comcast said, "Okay we'll roll-out the cables, but we want exclusive rights."
- County agreed, thereby creating a government-protected monopoly (i.e. no choice for customer).
End of tale.
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So, to be exhaustive, there are three basic types of monopoly. The most common is one where other groups are forbidden by law to enter the market. As you will see shortly, this is the version we were talking about through a quick process of elimination.
The second is where there are too-significant economic barriers to enter the market. We just discounted the last mile argument, and I've seen ISPs run in basements with cast-away servers, so that d
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You state that we have monopolies here because of a combination of 1) high cost of entering the market, and 2) existing government restrictions to enter the market. Your solutions are both variants of c
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It hasn't even been established that there is a problem that requires net neutrality as a solution.
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Your scenario has subjects, not citizens. And a whole lot more lobbyists.
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Would those rules be complex? (Score:5, Insightful)
I fail to see where does the complexity of those rules lay. It seems that the only need for complexity starts exactly where net neutrality ends.
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This would imply that net neutrality can be easily defined in simple terms; what, according to you, are those terms exactly?
Re:Would those rules be complex? (Score:5, Informative)
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All right. This appears simple. Now *is* it simple, i.e., how do you go about implementing this in practice?
Re:Would those rules be complex? (Score:5, Interesting)
Your question makes no sense. The answer is obvious: You would handle all packets identically regardless of content.
If the "pipes" start to get full, install new faster pipes to relieve congestion. If that's not practical impose ~250GB limits + 5 cents/extra GB so people will limit themselves (in the same way they limit how much electricity or water they use).
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My question makes no sense only in a situation of infinite resource availability. Alas, such a situation is unrealistic (and a waste of resources which, at this point of our history, would seem quite inappropriate). Even a network which would be sized to withstand, on average, the current demand, occasional peaks are inevitable, and packets have to be dropped then -- how do we choose which packets to drop?
Or, IOW, how do we choose which packets to keep, and which ones do we send first? How do you "handle" c
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It sounds like what commodore64_love is suggesting is making the decision entirely on source and destination IP address. If some destination IP attempts to receive more bits per second than their advertised download rate, drop packets until they aren't getting faster throughput. If some source IP attempts to send more bits per second than their advertised upload rate, drop packets until they aren't getting faster throughput.
If those aren't technically feasible, then the advertising needs to change to match
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So that would be an "equalize by IP address" rule. But not all IPs consume the same amount of data; so that would be "weighted equalize by IP address", or it would favor small traffic IPs -- not neutral.
But then, the weight for an IP would be provided by an IP... Honest IPs would send out their real needs (if they ever can determine that, actually) and dishonest IPs would send out exaggerated needs to be sure to get what they actually need, thus causing the honest ones to starve.
Doesn't seem neutral to me.
Re:Would those rules be complex? (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless you're a specialist in sociology, employment law, and politics, I don't think you can comment on racial equality except in universals and ambiguous terms. The same applies to networking engineers commenting on network neutrality. However, both can agree that having a general concept of either is a Good Thing, and can probably agree on the basics of each.
Leave the technical details to the specialists; I simply wanted to put the concept into simple terms anyone could understand.
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Leave the technical details to the specialists; I simply wanted to put the concept into simple terms anyone could understand
Why do you think the saying "the Devil is in the details" exists? Because, precisely, any solution where you "leave the technical details to the specialists" means someone just *assumed* that what they see as a solution is feasible, whereas actually only the detailed analysis by a specialist will tell if it is -- and usually conclude it is not, at least not without a good load of devilling.
We French have a name for such holy solutions, we call them yakafokons ("Y'a qu'à - faut qu'on", i.e. "You just ne
Re:Would those rules be complex? (Score:4, Insightful)
Works for the power grid.
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It would be hard to say what you suggest, because of the N customers among whom the bandwidth should be shared, not all *require* 1/Nth of it. Some will happily use far less, and some will want far more. So in this model of equality, some bandwidth would be wasted to people who did not even ask for it, and will be unavailable to some people who could have made use of it.
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If I'm using 1.5x the minimum, and my neighbor is using 0.1x the minimum, then there should be no throttling because between the two of us, the pipe is only 80% utilized. Should I get up to 1.8x, at that point the pipe is 95% utilized between the two of us, so my entire connection should probably b
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But the cable company doesn't sell me an infinite resource. They clearly sell me a stated amount of bandwidth. If they don't have the resources to service the bandwidth for which they are collecting compensation, they should be arrested for theft.
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Make sure to read the contract. What bandwidth exactly do they sell you? Usually, bandwidth is guaranteed, if it is at all, between you and them only. Beyond that, they cannot and will not guarantee anything.
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>>>packets have to be dropped then -- how do we choose which packets to drop?
I already answered this: Don't drop packets. Instead:
(1) Install faster servers so there's no need to drop.
-or-
(2) Raise prices higher to discourage users from being hogs. (Same thing that raising gas prices or electric prices does.) Maybe users would download SD movies instead of HD in order to limit their consumption & monthly bill.
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Strategy (1) of always making sure that the resources are there just doe not work, because there will always be more demand than the available resources and these resources are ultimately limited.
Strategy (2) does not work because people downloading (and payingà more will still clog the net to the point that people paying less (and downloading less) won't be able to download what little they pay for.
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I disagree.
(1) is not true because there's no limit to how many fiber optics can be laid. Simply lay more until the capacity exceeds the usage. AND:
(2) is not true because if customers start getting $200/month bills, they WILL lower their internet usage to bring it back down to a reasonable level, just as they limit their long distance calling or electricity or gasoline usage. Economic science has proven that raising prices does result in reduced consumption.
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So this model works on a strategy of waste and artificial pricing ?
Re:Would those rules be complex? (Score:5, Informative)
Your question makes no sense. The answer is obvious: You would handle all packets identically regardless of content.
If the "pipes" start to get full, install new faster pipes to relieve congestion. If that's not practical impose ~250GB limits + 5 cents/extra GB so people will limit themselves (in the same way they limit how much electricity or water they use).
I want you to do something for me... Let's do a demonstration, then think this through.
Disconnect any devices from your modem (both wired and wireless).
Now, look at that "Activity" light; Notice that it keeps blinking even though you are not using the Internet?
That's because of Internet Background Radiation. There are packets of unrequested data arriving at your modem many times a second. The sources are numerous, distributed, and many are malicious.
In a $x per Gig model a distributed denial of service attack directed at your IP will drive your bill to absurd rates; If you're lucky you have a hard cap on your monthly consumption, if you're unlucky you pay for the overages (as you suggested above).
The current answer to IBR is a NAT/Firewall that drops all unrequested packets, but NAT makes using your connection to run a server difficult. Now, you can come up with clever ways to "open ports" on your NAT router, but they all rely on having admin access to the router.
Even with a NAT router connected to your modem, you would still be paying for all those IBR packets with a $x per Gig model -- they would be delivered to your modem before being dropped.
So, the ISPs can put a NAT router / firewall on the other side of your modem, in their facilities where you have no admin access to the router (indeed, some already do this). Then, they can charge you only for the packets that make it through -- the ones you specifically requested. The problem is that now, you've limited the way you can use the Internet. You can't very well host a (game) server if you can't accept incoming (read: unsolicited) connections.
Protocols like STUN help bypass the "behind NAT" problem, but require a 3rd party to help coordinate the connection... (3rd party AKA MITM).
The phrase "only pay for the bits you use" depends on your definition of "use"; Treating all packets as equal doesn't really describe how most people expect they are "using" the Internet...
This is a very complicated thing indeed.
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Perhaps a better solution would be to pay for all the bits you send, or at least request. Implementing the second part efficiently may require some new protocols, but the basic idea would be to label each outgoing (non-reply) packet with a projected reply cost. Normal packets, including ones with this label, would be charged to the originating network, but packets which are marked as replies, which match the source and destination IDs in the original outgoing packet, and which do not cost more than their re
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>>>Notice that it keeps blinking even though you are not using the Internet?
No. I have DSL and when my computer stops, so too does the modem. I mean it's still on but there's nothing being transmitted. It stop blinking.
.
>>>Nationalise the network hardware... Works for the power grid.
Not true in the U.S. With just a few minor exceptions (Hoover Dam), the entire electric grid is privately owned not nationalized. Although it is heavily regulated to prevent abuse by natural monopolies.
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>>>Notice that it keeps blinking even though you are not using the Internet?
No. I have DSL and when my computer stops, so too does the modem. I mean it's still on but there's nothing being transmitted. It stop blinking.
I too have access to a DSL line/modem, and disabling my NIC via my OS control panel results in the modem's activity light continuously blinking (indicating incoming or outgoing traffic) even though I'm sure than none of my machines are "using" the Internet. 10 hours pass, and still the activity light is blinking furiously away. I have also encountered modems that do not consider inbound packets as "Activity", and therefore only blink when outgoing data is being transmitted.
My first reply included a very b
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You propose a terrible solution. There should be prioritization of data. A DNS lookup request should never be dropped. It is a minuscule amount of data but is a major bottleneck if it cannot be completed. If I am surfing the internet while I am downloading something on bittorrent, I would be fine with the ISP dropping 100 torrent packets per DNS request I make, as long as they never drop my DNS requests. Similar situation for VOIP. If I am on the phone with someone, I want my ISP to prioritize the VOI
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If that's not practical impose ~250GB limits + 5 cents/extra GB so people will limit themselves (in the same way they limit how much electricity or water they use)
Usage caps are so 1990s, and with more streaming applications and more tools moving into the cloud, I don't think it's realistic to expect end users to accurately estimate their bandwidth usage.
Internet has quickly become an essential infrastructure. I don't know the situation in the US, but in The Netherlands, public infrastructure (rail, road, power, water) is either owned or intensely regulated by the government -- though most maintenance is performed by private contractors. I expect the Internet to be no different in the future.
So you use a 250GB limit and throttle down once it is exceeded.
And I'm sorry but "Internet" is not as essential as water or electricity. And, oh golly gosh, people are charged for their water and electricity according to metered usage.
And of course it's trivial for people to accurately estimate their bandwidth usage, the provider can give them a (close to) real time meter and they can watch and see. They can get a notice when they hit X% so they can think what changed and why it's increased over last month,
Easy peasy. (Score:4, Insightful)
unhindered: when you get a packet, move it on when you can.
when you ask for 300GB/sec it won't be in one packet, so you ask for a packet and get a packet back. Over a 100GB/sec pipe, you can't ask for 300GB/sec so no hindrance in effect
Keep going? On what?
Net Neutrality is WHAT YOU HAD ALREADY. These laws, unlike most (because, probably, they don't serve commercial interests but the american people) had a sunset clause and the clause ended recently.
You know, all those companies and innovation and money and increased revenue you had in the 70's to 2000? Under Net Neutrality.
But COMPLAINTS about Net Neutrality? Now THERE'S a money-to-lawyers scheme...
Nothing is easy. (Score:5, Informative)
when you get a packet, move it on when you can.
Over which connection? The 1000000 gigabit/nanosecond pipe for the paying content providers (Disney, etc) or the 14.4kbps modem for everyone else?
Over a 100GB/sec pipe, you can't ask for 300GB/sec so no hindrance in effect
You can ask - you just won't get it. It's called denial of service. You don't (normally) ask for speed, you ask for a volume of data. But if it comes over too slow a connection (intentional or not) you clog up the network like a highway at rush hour. Clever networks WILL intentionally route traffic they don't want over too congested a connection knowing that they can then shake down content owners and end users to fork over more dough for less freedom. It's not remotely difficult to intentionally under-invest in a network to keep it slower, especially when there is little/no competition.
Keep going? On what?
Plenty. If you are going to define how network providers are going to route traffic, you're going to have to get quite detailed about what that means. Doing this in a manner with no loopholes is REALLY hard. You're also going to have to define how it will be monitored, what will be monitored, what the consequences are for violating the rules, who is going to monitor it, and for how long and with what funds will the oversight be conducted with. Easy? I wish it were but it won't be. Net neutrality is important but keeping it is going to be quite a challenge.
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Clever networks WILL intentionally route traffic they don't want over too congested a connection ...
There was a talk I saw at MIT many, many years ago that, in hindsight, was brilliant, although I don't think even the speaker knew why. He was proposing that every packet get routed first to a randomly selected node, and thence to its intended destination. The idea being that this ensures even distribution of load across the entire network at small cost of bandwidth (it was a small cost that surprisingly was well below a factor of 2, but I don't recall what it was, the talk having been probably 20 years a
Another what? (Score:2)
The laws already existed. ISPF already defined which connection. BGP routing already defines what interface and route.
The laws quite clearly do NOT exist in sufficient form and the ones that do exist are in danger of being changed. If the situation were otherwise this debate would not exist. Many laws governing the internet have yet to be written. Technological standards do not carry the force of law and are easily subverted.
But Disney doesn't pay for MY connection, *I* pay for it.
??? That's a meaningless statement. It's like saying you pay for your driveway. True but the little piece of infrastructure you pay for is useless by itself. I'm an accountant and do cost account
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Devil's advocate: it's possible to create a network that complies with these rules that is still unusable for many purposes. Multimedia communication is becoming a more and more important part of the Internet landscape, whether you're talking about AIM A/V, Skype, HTTP live streaming, or whatever. HIgh latency or large variations in latency can kill all of those sorts of uses of the Internet. Sending packets on as soon as you receive them produce
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Re:Projecting again, kid (Score:5, Insightful)
No, he's not stupid. Rather he has indeed defined in unambiguous terms how to do this.
Layers 2&3 of the ISO/OSI stack (International Standards Organization, a body the US contributes to and uses for referential standards) refer to the transport and routing of information. Service neutrality is easily defined. It doesn't exist today on many US ISPs. Between deep packet inspection and service throttling, we lost net neutrality (if we indeed ever really had it) a few years ago.
Every word doesn't have to be defined clearly. Please stop drinking so much coffee before you hit 'submit'. Your anger and argumentative posture do nothing to quell the biases, especially the network biases under consideration here. Name calling and intimidation is characteristic of the insecure.
Re:Would those rules be complex? (Score:4, Insightful)
The question was to define the concept of network neutrality, not come up with an implementation. How ISPs go about this is something they need to work on.
Re: (Score:2)
Unhindered in this sense is defined as not prioritising or retarding progress of a packet based upon content, including destination and source.
Indeed. The whole notion of common carriage is that all that matters is the cost of transport; pricing should not depend what's being transported. We decided this was a good idea when it came to railroads over a century ago by passing the Interstate Commerce Act in 1887. We thought it was a good idea when applied to telegraphy and telephony when we passed the the C
Re: (Score:2)
Destination IP/port may NOT be considered when queuing/dropping outbound packets source IP/port may not be considered when queuing inbound packets. Customer set QOS may be considered.
With current technology, a good implementation is to assign each customer a slot in a fair queuing system with a documented committed rate. QOS flags should be honored within that slot. Bandwidth should be sharable.
The rest derives from that. If they want to advertise VoIP as viable on the connection, the committed rate must be
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
Initial: All Connections Are Equal.
Later: But Some Connections Are More Equal Than Others.
no solution (Score:3, Interesting)
"How dare those popular internet companies be popular? They're making our customers use more data! Charge them money!"
Unfair price models are the problem driving that. X per month is simple and a good idea for most customers, X per gigabyte is simple and a good idea for most ISPs. Neither is exactly fair in every circumstance, and choosing between them is essentially the same as choosing who to give the benefit of the complex situation. Their only advantage is that they can be explained in under 5 words.
I'm not sure it's possible to come up with an alternative pricing system that doesn't end up as an even more unfair black box model where you only find out how much you've spent when the bill comes.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You think at X gig per month people will put up with bloated pages, flash, ads all over hell?
From the very same companys selling X gig per month?
I don't think so.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
ISPs like "x-per-month" because they can claim to sell you 100gb knowing you will only use 10gb. On a per-gig charge you would only pay for what you use.
Bandwidth should be charged more like electricity: you pay for what you use when you use it. It's not like the unused time can be saved for the busy period.
Of course, all of this is predicated on actual competition to keep the 'per-gig' charge
Re: (Score:2)
Australia gets it right.
I have access to 100s of internet plans with caps ranging from 2GB per month all the way up to 1 Terabyte per month and prices to match.
If you exceed the cap, you get your speed cut back to dialup speeds for the rest of the billing cycle. Never have to worry about extra expense on the bill.
Some ISPs even let you buy extra data blocks if you run out.
The problem with caps in the USA is that the cable companies are introducing very low caps with no option to buy more data or go to a hig
I'll believe it when I see it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Policymakers are great about talking up justice for everyone and saying no to special interests until thy actually have to put pen to paper. The FCC can make all the noise they want, but until this Net Neutrality is actually on the books and being enforced call me skeptical at best.
Re: (Score:2)
IOW, the bribes are not at the desire level, yet.
Can't blame them? (Score:5, Insightful)
Surely you can blame then when, in the course of protecting their interests, they bribe and corrupt a system designed to protect the interests of the majority, in order to create blockades that add no value whatsoever to a product that got paid for with tax money.
Re:Can't blame them? (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed. When everyone expects human greed and disregard for the public good to rule businesses, then businesses will meet that expectation. Public policy is supposed to be a check on that, but the first line of defense consists of decision-makers in business remembering back to some very basic lessons they were taught in the home and in kindergarten; the "sharing is good" and "be nice to others who aren't like you" kind.
Kindergarten and Business (Score:2)
Public policy is supposed to be a check on that, but the first line of defense consists of decision-makers in business remembering back to some very basic lessons they were taught in the home and in kindergarten; the "sharing is good" and "be nice to others who aren't like you" kind.
The decision makers in the tech business learned different lessons in kindergarten, such as "look out for yourself because nobody else gives a damn" and "you can't please anybody no matter how hard you try, so please yourself and let everybody else be damned". Such an upbringing explains why Ayn Rand remains in print.
I suspect... (Score:5, Interesting)
For one, American political discourse tends to shy away from anything that can even be remotely described as "class warfare". His comment doesn't really qualify; but once boiled into a contextless soundbite and replayed a few bazillion times on the news channels of the same cable companies on whose toes he is stepping, it sure will sound like it.
Second, it seems most likely that the rent-seeking model of tiered internet providers will be much closer to that of cable TV or old-school telco providers: that is, massive rent seeking; but much broader availability than "gated community" would imply. Everyone pays too much for cable, and everyone used to pay too much for long distance; but the companies realized that gouging everyone a bit was much more profitable than gouging half of the top quintile a lot. It may well end up being the case that only the affluent(and specifically the techy affluent) will be able to afford access to the real internet, as opposed to the "facebook and youtube over IP channel"; but that is too subtle a point to play in soundbites.
Third, and perhaps most serious, Telcos and Cable companies are actually superbly positioned to make a (dishonest; but superficially convincing) "friend of the common man" play. They are, in fact, bloated rent-seeking conglomerates; but, by the simple necessities of operating an infrastructure business, bloated rent-seeking conglomerates with very, very broad-based operations.
Most of the rents go right up the food chain to the big fish; but Verizon, Comcast, et al. have to have installers and linesmen, and technicians and whatnot in virtually every city and town. These guys aren't seeing much of those rents being collected, and are themselves paying too much for cable; but they know who their employers are. Also, since the marginal cost of adding an extra internet subscriber is nearly zero, doling out cheap/free internet access to schools, community centers, youth-centers-to-keep-at-risk-kids-off-the-street-after-school, etc. is very easy, very cheap, and good PR. All that adds up to a massive PR bonus in a broad based group of community groups, blue collar, semi-skilled and skilled tradesmen, and the like.(Obviously, it isn't as though a neutral internet wouldn't need linesmen, and a competitive internet would provide cheaper internet not as part of a cynical charity effort; but that isn't immediately visible...) This, along with a few modest, but strategic, monetary donations to the correct local charities, can be converted into a torrent of letters of support from various worthy local anti-poverty groups.
By contrast, tech companies tend to have fairly geographically narrow(or, even if geographically distributed, as with Google, Akamai, and friends, pretty lightly staffed, mostly with engineers and programmers and such) operations and human resources bases. Their customer bases are fairly broad, and they are often much more popular than the local Telcos and Cable outfits(only paranoid privacy geeks hate Google, while cable companies are about as popular as the IRS); but they have much less of the sort of presence that can translate into thousands of letters from the "grassroots". The tech guys do benefit a great many people; but most of them in smaller, subtler ways. Outside of areas that are virtually company towns, or highly-educated startup hotbeds, there is virtually no blue-ish collar bread-and-butter coming out of the tech industry(particularly since, for anything that can be shipped, hardware assembly is largely offshore). Internet competition and tech company services are likely to save everyone some dollars a month, in addition to the free speech and innovation benefits; but that isn't nearly as concrete as having a layer of people, coast to coast, whose checks you sign...
huh? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:huh? Look at the bigger picture.. (Score:2, Interesting)
What is Net Neutrality? (Score:2)
No matter what, you still end up paying a monthly fee to a relative monopoly of ISPs
Caching vs. throttling (Score:5, Interesting)
I would hope that such "positive" preferential treatment wouldn't be banned along with throttling, but I can certainly see an upshot, namely enforcement. How is your average customer supposed to know whether or not you are throttling or merely just caching competing content?
Truth in advertising. . . (Score:3, Interesting)
I've gone back and forth on this issue. I do think ISPs who have monopolies to run cable to the home do warrant some regulation from the FCC, because of their monopolies. On the other hand, I also realize that in the end, customers have to pay for their access and it might not be completely unreasonable to have 'tiers' of service. If someone can't afford a more 'premium' connection, it doesn't seem out of hand to do things like throttling that customers bandwidth, but then also striking deals with content providers to open up the bandwidth for their traffic to those limited customers. So, maybe I get the cheapo internet connection, but when I download content I pay for from places like Amazon, iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, etc, I get faster download and no cap on the traffic, because the content providers setup a deal with the ISP.
Now, I don't think it's reasonable for them to completely block any (legal) traffic, but I do think it reasonable to allow them to setup tiered service and tiered pricing. The key is that they should fully disclose in their advertising and customer agreements, just exactly what it is the customer is paying for. If a customer buys "10Mb/s UNLIMITED Internet", then they shouldn't throttle any traffic, because the customer was sold unlimited service at up to 10Mb/s. If the customer only wants to pay for 768Kb/s, but a content provider has worked out a deal to actually send their content at *faster* than that 768Kb/s, I could totally see something like that.
Of course, I realize that's not what the big ISPs are trying to do, but I'm just saying, as a general principle, as long as the customer gets what they payed for and what was advertised, I'm kind of ok with some allowance of tiered service and agreements with content providers to enable a better experience.
Re: (Score:2)
So, maybe I get the cheapo internet connection, but when I download content I pay for from places like Amazon, iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, etc, I get faster download and no cap on the traffic, because the content providers setup a deal with the ISP.
Something like this being implemented is exactly how the internet could cease to be free in a very short time. Though your proposal sounds reasonable, It's not a far stretch to see such a tiered service offering increasingly slow service (relative to technological progress) to at all but the highest tiers, but then allowing extremely fast access to their corporate partners. Maybe the price gap between those services will also grow until eventually only a few will be willing to pay for the 'premium service
Re: (Score:2)
"Uh, you have COMPLETELY failed to get it."
Right back at'cha.
As I said, if you agree to pay a cheaper rate, in exchange for slower service, as a consumer that is an option that should be available to you. As I stated, you should get *at least* the service you have payed for. So, if you pay for slow 768k DSL Internet, and only have to pay like $20/mo, then you are only paying for 768k service. You should *definitely*, absolutely be getting the service you payed for, but what I'm saying is that if "Disney" or
getting it right" (Score:2)
Just like software patents.
We have heard that story before and we know how it ends.
Google actually evil? (Score:2)
Read the speech -- it's pretty good (Score:2)
It's not the same type of telecommunication service as a telephone network, to be sure, so you can't use exactly the same rules to regulate both services. But what the Internet is NOT is an "information" service, it's current, erroneous, regulatory c
Troll: Re:Net favoritism (Score:2)