Stanford Engineers Propose A Technology To Break The Net Neutrality Deadlock (phys.org) 199
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: Stanford engineers have invented a technology that would allow an internet user to tell network providers and online publishers when and if they want content or services to be given preferential delivery, an advance that could transform the network neutrality debate. Net neutrality, as it's often called, is the proposition that internet providers should allow equal access to all content rather than give certain applications favored status or block others. But the Stanford engineers -- Professor Nick McKeown, Associate Professor Sachin Katti and electrical engineering PhD Yiannis Yiakoumis -- say their new technology, called Network Cookies, makes it possible to have preferential delivery and an open internet. Network Cookies allow users to choose which home or mobile traffic should get favored delivery, while putting network operators and content providers on a level playing field in catering to such user-signaled preferences. "So far, net neutrality has been promoted as the best possible defense for users," Katti said. "But treating all traffic the same isn't necessarily the best way to protect users. It often restricts their options and this is why so-called exceptions from neutrality often come up. We think the best way to ensure that ISPs and content providers don't make decisions that conflict with the interests of users is to let users decide how to configure their own traffic." McKeown said Network Cookies implement user-directed preferences in ways that are consistent with the principles of net neutrality. "First, they're simple to use and powerful," McKeown said. "They enable you to fast-lane or zero-rate traffic from any application or website you want, not just the few, very popular applications. This is particularly important for smaller content providers -- and their users -- who can't afford to establish relationships with ISPs. Second, they're practical to deploy. They don't overwhelm the user or bog down user devices and network operators and they function with a variety of protocols. Finally, they can be a very practical tool for regulators, as they can help them design simple and clear policies and then audit how well different parties adhere to them." The researchers presented a technical paper on their approach at a conference in Brazil.
While you're at it... (Score:5, Funny)
Could we please get everyone to implement RFC3514?
https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3514.txt
Please? It would make network security a lot easier to deal with.
Re:While you're at it... (Score:5, Funny)
Could we please get everyone to implement RFC3514?
https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3514.txt
Also, could we please get everyone to implement hyperlinks [ietf.org]
Got to be kidding me. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is like the "do not track" button.
Only worse.
Every advertiser in the universe will want to programmatically toggle this option "for the convenience of the user."
No. Treat all traffic identically. Bits from CNN are more more important than bits from lemonparty.com
Nobody gets special treatment, that's what net neutrality IS.
Idiots.
Re: (Score:2)
NO MORE IMPORTANT, stupid phone!
(Yes Slashdot, I am using all caps because I AM yelling.)
Re: (Score:2)
Bits from CNN are no more important than bits from lemonparty.com
True. But I wouldn't mind if my Skype bits, Netflix bits, and online gaming bits arrived faster and more reliably than my torrent bits.
Re:Got to be kidding me. (Score:5, Informative)
That isn't what net neutrality is about. You can already implement something like this.
Net neutrality is not destination-focused but source-focused. How fast does traffic from server X arrive at whatever destination? Or how fast does traffic of the X kind arrive? It's not about you vs your neighbor, it's about Youtube vs. Tubgirl (don't google it, people, just don't!). It's not whether your YouTube traffic gets priority over your torrent traffic, it's about whether YouTube traffic in general gets preference over torrent traffic.
Re:Got to be kidding me. (Score:4, Interesting)
Please mod this up. TFS repeats the intentional incorrect framing of the network neutrality debate that its opponents like to promulgate. Network neutrality is about a level playing field, not about making QoS illegal. It's completely fine for an ISP to prioritise HTTP over BitTorrent, for example, as long as HTTP is the same priority whether it's coming from some no-name blog or from Facebook.
More importantly, most useful traffic shaping is not so much about relative priorities, it's about identifying whether the traffic is latency, jitter, or bandwidth sensitive. If I'm doing VoIP, the bandwidth is tiny in comparison to pretty much anything a typical user does, but I'll notice jitter a lot and I'll notice latency. I want my ISP to treat the optimisation goals of this stream as jitter then latency then bandwidth. For normal web browsing, the priority should be latency, bandwidth, jitter (I want the page to start loading quickly, ideally I also want it to finish loading quickly, and I really don't care how bursty the packets are). For BitTorrent or big downloads (including video streams, where you can assume that it's buffered a bit on the client), you want bandwidth, latency, then jitter.
All that's really needed is a mechanism for identifying which of these three characteristics is most important for your packets. Three bits per packet would be enough to identify all of the possible priority orderings, have a 'don't care' mode and leave one value for future use. I think that there are even enough available values in the DSCP field to express all of these, and DSCP also expresses more (for example, it's better to drop this packet than delay it), though it falls into the trap of trusting the sender and providing things that say 'I am important, give me all the things' rather than 'given the choice between these things, I prefer this one'.
Re:Got to be kidding me. (Score:4, Insightful)
The idea that I get to set my speed preferences (like, say, more speed for /., less speed for whatever godawful ad service is clogging my pipes...) is a good one. Too bad that it will either never be implemented that way, because the whole net neutrality "deadlock" or "controversy" is about making sure that exactly THIS does NOT happen, or if it gets implemented, it will be in the way the parent proposes: Companies will find a way to either trick people into preferring their traffic, or simply use some shady tactics to set it themselves.
Re:Yes they are (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is individual A's desire to see CNN load .5 ms faster more important than individual B's desire to see their friend pranked into being sent to lemonparty asap, given priority?
No. Traffic. Is. Traffic.
The person requesting the traffic wants it asap all the time. Now, an option to DELAY delivery, that may be useful. I am less interested in some kinds of data hurled at me than others. Especially data I don't particularly want, like flash ad streams.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No. Traffic. Is. Traffic. The person requesting the traffic wants it asap all the time.
Not true. If I am audio chatting with a friend, I want packets delivered in milliseconds. But if I am running a torrent in the background, anytime in the next hour or so is good enough. It would be nice to be able to set my own preferences.
Re:Yes they are (Score:5, Insightful)
If the line is not over subscribed, or bufferbloated, your traffic will not be impeded by that other traffic.
You can already set your torrent client to self throttle. The ISP does not need to do it for you, and should not be in the position or business of doing it for you.
Three different types of connection quality (Score:3)
> You can already set your torrent client to self throttle. The ISP does not need to do it for you, and should not be in the position or business of doing it for you.
You can reduce the *bandwidth* of the torrent or whatever between you and the ISP. You can't do crap about how it's treated for the other 99% of the route, currently. And reducing the torrent bandwidth isn't actually what you want. You're hoping that reducing the torrent bandwidth will have the side-effect of reducing the jitter or at
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
and what, exactly, do you suppose CAUSES jitter issues, eh?
When a packet has to wait to enter or leave an interface (gets buffered), the packet is not dropped unless the TTL expires. Instead, its latency just goes up.
Packets wait to enter or leave an interface when:
1) There is congestion (like from oversubscription)
2) Other packets are prioritized
Most torrent clients try to run balls to the walls on bandwidth. This is NOT ideal, because then the medium is saturated, and traffic can neither enter nor leave t
Re: (Score:2)
TTL is a hop count "time", not a clock time. A packet can't have its TTL expire in a buffer, the TTL is only decremented when it traverses a new layer-3 hop.
If consistent traffic,no buffers and no redundancy (Score:2)
You're right for a purely theoretical internet out of a textbook (though a very old one, using hubs rather than switches). A theoretical internet in which traffic on each link is consistent rather the peaky (no cable modems involved for sure), there is way more bandwidth available than is ever used, there;s no redundancy, meaning each packet takes the exact same path, and there are no buffers anywhere.
In the real world, we want our connections to be cheap, reliable, and fast. We want redundant, load balanc
Re: (Score:2)
If the line is not over subscribed, or bufferbloated, your traffic will not be impeded by that other traffic.
That's right. QoS doesn't come into play until there is contention for a limited resource. At that point, QoS is critical to allowing some services to work properly, and some services just don't need high priority processing. That Skype call your neighbor is making does need low latency traffic to work; your bittorrent of the latest and greatest Linux ISO does not. The fact that YOU might be able to rate limit your torrent doesn't mean that you WILL rate limit it, and I'm guessing that you wouldn't do it.
T
Re: (Score:3)
You can do exactly that via most routers. The whole idea is patently stupid and simply a paid for PR stunt by the incumbent telecoms who intend to simply lie about end user preferences. By far the majority of users will want what they are currently focusing on to have the most bandwidth and everyone thing else to have exactly zero bandwidth, seriously WTF are they on about. By far the majority do not bother with network tweaking and ensuring certain traffic gets temporary preference on their network.
What
Re: (Score:3)
No. You can't really do that via most routers. You can only control your own router, and only packets you create can have to QoS you set. The ones coming from the internet don't have your QoS set.
Re: (Score:2)
You can only control your own router, and only packets you create can have to QoS you set. The ones coming from the internet don't have your QoS set.
Right. By the time the packet reaches your router it's already been delivered, and thus much too late to set any QoS bits. Your peers would need to set the QoS for the packets they send to you.
Re:Yes they are (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Yes they are (Score:5, Interesting)
I do network engineering at an ISP. We are small, though I have discussed these things with my peers at larger networks.
Once you scale above a very small network (like your home connection), allowing congestion isn't really okay in practice, even with QoS. When I say it's not "okay" here, I'm speaking purely technically.
It might be possible to let networks congest somewhat if you had a large amount of elastic traffic that you could reliably identify. Netflix, for example, could meet these criteria. But that's not okay politically; that's an example of why net neutrality is good!
QoS in carrier networks is only useful for priority (de-)queuing of traffic to reduce latency and jitter. For example, real-time voice or video traffic could benefit. This is where it'd be nice to actually be able to honor user traffic markings.
It's not (currently at least) practical to make the decisions on a flow-by-flow basis in the core of the network (which is what your proposal would require). This is a hardware scaling issue. To be clear, tracking flows statistically is okay at scale. ISPs do plenty with NetFlow/sFlow. But taking an incoming packet, assigning it to a flow, and marking it appropriately, for every packet, in real time is the scaling challenge.
The following approach would scale perfectly in trusted CPE (ONT/cable modem) or reasonably well in a DSLAM (for DSL). Give each user (for example) two queues. Honor the incoming DSCP markings. Put a small, but reasonable, limit on the size of the priority queue; overflowing traffic gets remarked and placed into the non-priority queue. Then, honor markings through the rest of the network.
There are a few problems with even this approach. First off, there are going to be users who legitimately create more high priority traffic than any limit that's acceptable across the board. Is it okay to charge them for a higher limit? If not, how do you avoid gaming the system? If yes, won't that incentivize ISPs to set the limit to zero and charging for all priority? Is that okay? If so, what fraction of people will request and pay for priority in that world? Will that be enough to encourage application developers to mark traffic appropriately? Or does this just degrade into our current zero-priority Internet?
Second, this only gets you one direction (upload). To handle the download direction, you'd need to honor priority bits on your upstream and peering links. But there, you can't trust the markings (unless it's a 1:1 peering link and you are guaranteed your peer implements a compatible policy at their incoming edge), at least without policing. Policing the queues there is easy, but gives you terrible results in real life. If the limit is exceeded with traffic that "should not have been" marked priority, it will destroy the prioritization of "legitimate" priority flows by forcing some fraction of their packets into the non-priority queue. If you accept all (or just a high enough fraction of) incoming traffic as priority traffic, then you have destroyed the prioritization yourself. If you try to mark flows per IP/customer, we're back to that scaling problem.
It might be possible to do something that involves tracking flows at the customer edge and using the incoming markings for the downstream direction. But this is only prioritizing in the last mile. At best, this is a lot of work for very little benefit.
Re: (Score:3)
No matter what user demand, if the network is congested, it is broken and the capacity should be increased. Just like the power company will upgrade the grid to accommodate for power needs, the network companies should upgrade the network to accommodate for data needs.
The US should quit being 3rd world when it comes to network speeds and quit layering bureaucracy on top of network upgrades. If AT&T and Ve
Re: (Score:2)
You clearly have no idea what you're talking about.
Even Bob Metcalfe said something like your knowledge is only nlogn above mine.
Nonetheless, enjoy a little https://xkcd.com/949/ [xkcd.com]
Re:Yes they are (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, and because people are people and people are assholes, everyone will set their own traffic to "maximum speed, all the time", essentially resulting in what we already have.
Prisoner's dilemma at its finest.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, and because people are people and people are assholes, everyone will set their own traffic to "maximum speed, all the time", essentially resulting in what we already have.
Prisoner's dilemma at its finest.
So basically, this is the 'Turbo' button for teh internets? Cool!
Re: (Score:2)
The basic faulty assumption is that people aren't selfish, greedy assholes.
Re: (Score:2)
But if I am running a torrent in the background, anytime in the next hour or so is good enough. It would be nice to be able to set my own preferences.
So where are these packets going to be for the next or so? In storage somewhere? Randomly bouncing around the internet? All packets should be delivered in the shortest quickest/most appropriate route from being sent. The only difference with your skype call is those packets need to arrive in the right order so generally take the same path rather than your torrent taking a whole bunch of routes of least traffic.
Re: (Score:2)
So where are these packets going to be for the next or so? In storage somewhere?
Yes, exactly. In storage in the router's buffers. You have N packets in the queue and can deliver M of them in the next X ms, so you have to decide which ones to send first and which ones must wait for the next timeslice. That's QoS in a nutshell: send the low-latency packets first, then deal with the bulk data transfers. Any packets that remain unsent for too long due to congestion get dropped. Of course, you have to police the low-latency packets to make sure they don't monopolize the line. Low-latency pa
Re: (Score:2)
Not what will happen (Score:2)
Not true. If I am audio chatting with a friend, I want packets delivered in milliseconds. But if I am running a torrent in the background, anytime in the next hour or so is good enough. It would be nice to be able to set my own preferences.
No it really wouldn't. Maybe you are technologically adept enough to make sane decisions. Most people are not. My mother doesn't even know what a torrent is much less what priority it should receive. Furthermore the moment you put a control like that in, companies with an economic interest in seeing their traffic prioritized will bend heaven and earth to get it adjusted in their favor. Don't for a moment believe that they would not.
Basically you are naively thinking this would be some innocuous control
Re: (Score:2)
Not true. If I am audio chatting with a friend, I want packets delivered in milliseconds. But if I am running a torrent in the background, anytime in the next hour or so is good enough. It would be nice to be able to set my own preferences.
You can already do QOS on your own systems. It's easy to get a consumer-grade router and set it so that VoIP packets have the highest priority and BitTorrent packets the lowest.
However, that only works up to your connection to the ISP.
The problem is that your neighbors t
Re: (Score:2)
To 99.999999999999% of users, they really, really do in fact want traffic from CNN to have priority. Especially over your LemonParty traffic, never mind your own.
No they want THEIR traffic to have priority regardless if it's coming from cnn, wiki, netflix or pornhub.
Missing the whole point (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not about the users. The whole reason ISP's want to give preferential treatment to traffic is specifically so that they can force content providers to pay them for access to their customers. They want to pick the winners, punish competitors, and make money doing it. Anyone that thinks this is about improving the end user experience isn't paying attention.
Re:Missing the whole point (Score:5, Insightful)
I emphatically agree!
I've been trying to explain to people that the reason the ISPs want control is so they can monetize every freakin' thing that has to do with the internet.
If net neutrality is lost, the ISPs will find a way to make us pay for anything. And you can bet the ISPs will give priority to advertisers. Our stuff will sink to the bottom the list.
The Legoland example (Score:5, Insightful)
In the physical world this is done by giving visitors the possibility to pay to jump queues.
It is nothing more than an attempt to monetize congestion, therefore removing any incentive to eliminate the congestion.
The dark fiber will stay dark.
Re: (Score:2)
It is nothing more than an attempt to monetize congestion, therefore removing any incentive to eliminate the congestion.
The inventive is that many people confronted with long wait times will choose to leave rather than pay extra to jump to the front of the queue. The provider could instead choose to raise the up-front entry price, thus reducing the total number of attendees and eliminating congestion that way. The "pay to skip the line" approach makes the park look more crowded, which is good for its reputation as a popular attraction, and gives visitors the ability to pay the difference with their time rather than their mon
I'm marking all my packets "free" & "do not dr (Score:4, Insightful)
Which will obviously give me an advantage over everyone else because they sure won't do so.
Net Neutrality (Score:5, Informative)
Way back when, the definition of net neutrality was not "the proposition that internet providers should allow equal access to all content rather than give certain applications favored status or block others."
When I first heard the term in the 1990s, net neutrality meant that the main trunks all processed data the same for every provider and end user. They could certainly make the decision to route some data packets before others, such as video before text. The problem is that the ISPs are now also providers, and have decided that their video is more important than another provider's video. So Comcast is fucking with Netflix, claiming Netflix pushes out too much data. But if I am Comcast's customer, I don't want them disrupting my video feed just because they want more money than they already gouge from their customers.
Re: (Score:2)
I recall a similar thing in Canada and it's interesting to see pricing mechanism evolve.
In Canada back in the day, unlimited usage was a common practice. Then people started seeing the ISPs throttling traffic. Normally Bit Torrent.. There was some outrage and Net Neutrality came to kind of mean you are not allowed to throttle anything.
Then pretty much all the unlimited plans disappeared and you got per-Gig pricing when you go over your limit. Unlimited plans are coming back again.
I worked in the networking
Oh Boy! (Score:2)
Well, you know, the new rules and regulations we added ended up having all kinds of unintended consequences (that people warned about repeatedly, my goodness, who would have thought), so let's add yet another system on top of the existing pile of crap. Soon it will be just like a Microsoft product! Can't wait! Nothing says "Freedom" like more interference!
Comment removed (Score:3)
I just want to prioritize... (Score:2)
...whatever data request i'm sending right now.
That'll do, ISP, that'll do.
What really guides the Network Cookies? (Score:2)
Hardware is sold with a best Network Cookie speed always on setting? That would set every user on that network at top speed just for buying a new router.
i.e. the user-directed preferences was to buy a new router that sets the Network Cookie to max for every packet.
So will the providers then be allowed do deep packet inspection and be allowed to guess that email, an open source game, p2p will not be g
We used to have that (Score:3)
Wait, didn't something similar exist in the past, call Type of Service field?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Of course its been deprecated, for obvious reasons.
What "deadlock"? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
What is the point to this? (Score:2)
This basically sounds like QoS, where if there is network congestion, certain traffic can be prioritized over other traffic. If there isn't congestion, I honestly don't see what the point is to this besides to get funding to develop this "ground breaking" technology from investors. The entire reason why ISPs want to break net neutrality is to get additional revenue streams from content providers to make their services more enticing over competition to the eyeballs served by the ISP. The description of th
Good Luck With That (Score:2)
Network Cookies allow users to choose which home or mobile traffic should get favored delivery, while putting network operators and content providers on a level playing field in catering to such user-signaled preferences.
This is not what network operators and content providers want. They want control over what users can do and see. Also, they don't want a level playing field. That's why we're seeing all this dancing on the line of 'net neutrality', folks are testing what they can get away with. It's a novel idea, but I personally doubt it'll ever leave the 'drawing board.'
Read the paper, it truly isnt about net neutrality (Score:2)
I just read the paper. They have some ideas about implementing QOS (quality of service), but as others have said, nothing they've presented actually has anything to do with the real issues around net neutrality.
One well-known offering related to network neutrality went like this:
If the user allows videos to play at a lower resolution (which is much lower bandwidth), the service provider would make that bandwidth free, it would be exempt from mobile data caps.
A mechanism for the user to choose which traffi
Re: (Score:2)
That famous offer you were referring to could be taken advantage of by any company that used the auto-throttle video protocols that the provider supported. As it happens, these are pretty common protocols most of the big boys (YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Video) were already using, but you could have filled out the form promising the various guarantees of the video and gotten "raymoms's awesome videos" zero-rated too.
That's why it didn't violate net neutrality. While I would have loved to have an auto-d
Why would Newflix pay for me to watch Youtube? (Score:2)
>> Newflix, a new company wanting to compete with Netflix, might say "rather than our customers paying for a higher priced plan in order watch our service all night, we would like to pay the extra cost and subscribers with even the el-cheapo internet plan can use our service, because we'll pay the extra cost direct to Verizon."
> nothing in a net neutral world that stops Newflix from doing what you're suggesting. What the net neutral world is stopping is Newflix paying for that different tier to app
Re: (Score:2)
Ideally, because of net neutrality laws or regulations. Less ideally, consumer net neutrality pressure. I mean, India shut down Facebook's "free Facebook internet access" because of the obviously bad longterm results.
I'm not saying that's Newflix's optimal play (they would want to subsidize the cost of using their service only). The point is that that violates net neutrality.
I would like to sign people up for my service without t
A solution in search of a problem (Score:2)
The whole net-neutrality issue is moot; near as I can tell, there is more than enough bandwidth bandwidth to go around, when normal packet prioritization is utilized.
The real issue is the con-artist ISPs trying to double-sell the same service, charging a premium to both sides.
Does this really mean prioritze (Score:2)
This could be really cool if I could flag ads as a low or zero priority while retaining the other content as high or desired priority. On the other hand what if I don't want to flag any content as lower priority but 'want it all' delivered at the highest rate or the advertised rate. It seems that this could be interpreted as what stuff can we slow down, not what do we prioritize.
Do want jitter, latency, or stuttering bandwidth? (Score:2)
> On the other hand what if I don't want to flag any content as lower priority but 'want it all' delivered at the highest rate or the advertised rate.
There are three different measures of connection quality, each important to different applications. For torrent, you want max bandwidth, you want to transfer as much as possible every ten minutes. For voip, you only need 64Kbps, but the main thing is that the latency be consistent. That's called jitter. You don't want 5ms latency on one packet and 25ms on a
Re: (Score:2)
None of the above ? I'd like a steady stream with low latency at the bandwidth I was advertised, instead of the bait and switch the low down dirty scoundrels generally offer. During mid day and primetime TWC(Spectrum) fails to even resolve addresses reliably. Their DNS is configured on sequential IP's on the same subnet, forcing me to configure alternate DNS solutions e.g. Opendns, and Google DNS. My Amazon delivers a nice throughput but DirecTV on demand is jittery and pauses often.
Isn't that the opposite? (Score:2)
I mean, you are literally saying that some traffic will be given precedence by request. That's literally the opposite of treating all traffic equally.
This is not network neutrality (Score:2)
Oh GODS, here we go again! Neither this nor any bundle of rules and laws can legitimately be called network neutrality. How has the discourse about about this crucial topic been so completely co-opted and misdirected?
Network neutrality is what happens when citizens collectively own the network infrastructure, not the various builders of bits and pieces of it. It's shared infrastructure, just like roads and highways: do we allow the builders and maintainers of those to retain ownership? No, they are cont
Here's a way (Score:3)
QoS Anyone? & state-sponsored dumb-down (Score:2)
Something I don't get is why would anyone want another tool to "configure their own traffic", this time ISP-side, when clearly there are already equivalent QoS control tools, which don't even require leaving the network boundary of your residence for their use. Implementations of software or hardware-based QoS might not all be straightforward, but that goes to show just how useful most people find "individual traffic rating". It's very niche. Let's face it: most people that pay for a connection want it full
A swing and a miss (Score:2)
It seems that these researchers have a fundamental misunderstanding of the underlying causes of this debate. ISP's want to sit in the middle between businesses and users and charge both sides as much as possible to talk to each other. They don't care what we want prioritized, they only care who will pay them to be prioritized.
They might as well have made an app that tells Donald Trump when people want him to shutup. He doesn't care, neither do the ISP's
The streaming media business model is bogus (Score:2)
The entire business model converts disk space into repeated bandwidth usage. The whole reason we have these discussions is because media companies haven't figured out a way to stop people stealing the stuff they stole from other people.
This argument is all BS (Score:2)
The real issue is not being talked about.
The issue is service providers wanting to separately monetize something that is currently part of a package. This is just a strategy to increase profits from something they already provide.
I am not paying for partial access to the internet.
I thought is was bad enough when service providers quit hosting newsgroup servers.
Service providers expected profits to go through the roof with the expected increased volume of subscribers, the short sighted bean counters predicti
This paper is meaningless nonsense. (Score:2)
The paper presents a technical solution to a problem, but doesn't state what the problem is. It pays lip service to network neutrality, but demonstrates no understanding of the actual problem. If you allow users to choose what sites to prioritize, a logical user will choose "whatever site I am visiting now." If you ask them which sites should not count toward their data caps, they will answer "whatever site I am visiting now."
This is like having a special ticket that you hand to a cashier that tells them
I disagree (Score:2)
There should be the "internet" and then there should be private networks on the side for prioritization. They should physically be different networks. Implemented kind of like how local and long distance were 10 years ago.
Problem there is getting everyone to cooperate on the "private" network since it will be free game and everyone will want their cut.
Re: (Score:2)
There should be the "internet" and then there should be private networks on the side for prioritization. They should physically be different networks. Implemented kind of like how local and long distance were 10 years ago.
You mean, implemented like AOL, Prodigy, and CompUServe networks. There are reasons why those aren't around anymore.
I want the other way (Score:2)
I am on skype with (significant other/GF/BF...) and they are asking hard questions, can I get a button to slow down my connection speed to a crawl ?
Fails to address the unwritten requirements (Score:2)
How will this technology enable ISP's to blackmail content providers and double-charge customers?
This is easy. (Score:2)
Sounds great in theory, (Score:2)
but in practice, providers will price the various levels and speeds of data transport the same way they price cellular and cable plans. That is to say, the pricing models will be utterly arcane, difficult to understand, obfuscated to the nth degree, and designed so as to make comparisons almost impossible. And then there will also inevitably be the same kinds of 'inconsistencies', (to give the providers the probably-undeserved benefit of the doubt), between the usage recorded by the user, and that recorded
Doesn't solve the problem (Score:2)
While this is a great technology, this doesn't solve the actual problem.
The whole reason Net Neutrality is even an issue, is because of corporate greed. ISPs (at least the big ones) want to be able to double-dip by charging both their customers AND content providers for using their network. They can't deny traffic outright to entities that don't pay, cause that would be universally considered to be a Bad Move(tm), but they feel that they can get away with the whole, "That's some good data you have there.
Why is a 4K movie as important as medical data? (Score:2)
Anyone care to explain why people wanting to stream the 4K version of Plan 9 from Outer Space should be given the same priority as real-time medical imaging data?
Re: (Score:2)
Because the 4K movie viewers and the hospital are paying for exactly the same Internet service plan and thus deserve equal treatment? It isn't the ISP's place to say which customer's traffic is more important. If the hospital wants priority treatment for its medical data it should pay a bit extra for the dedicated bandwidth.
Re: (Score:2)
But Net Neutrality as it currently exists precludes a customer from being able to buy a high-priority pipe. I'm not talking about capacity. I'm talking about prioritizing non-commercial/public-safety traffic in the same way that you get the hell off the road when an ambulance is passing by.
My e911 message your porn torrent (Score:2)
there are a few examples of where preferential routing should be considered, but mostly the telcos will use it as leverage to earn more money for high-speed lanes.
Welcome to capitalism. (Score:2)
Take a ticket, and get some popcorn.
The mobile Internet market is busy defining 'unlimited data' as something else. More specifically;
- Throttling speeds after some arbitrary amount of data used. It really doesn't matter what the amount is, so long as they disclose it.
- Reducing video quality to reduce bandwidth demands. Which is a 'nice' way of saying your love of good quality video costs them too much, and they cannot afford to expand network capacity to satisfy your appetite for beauty.
- Working with vid
I honestly tried to RTFA (Score:2)
Opened the paper and kept reading and reading expecting at any moment for it to reveal what how it is supposed to work and finally just gave up. It was so loaded with this accomplishes x, y and z... while not being like a, b and c... that I gave up. In fact I did skim thru the rest but was unable to locate where that text was hidden if it exists at all.
Simple truth is there is as a political matter no possible workable QOS strategy across administrative domain on the scale of the Internet the same as ther
So it's a managed end-run around NN. (Score:2)
I don't think the folks at Stanford thought this through too much, or had the end-goal of killing Net Neutrality.
Re: (Score:3)
I actually agree with what this solution does. No one will care that their netflix packets are prioritized lower than their voice packets, since netflix streams and voice needs to be near real-time. Same thing for SSH sessions, page loads, or IM applications. They need faster response times than your Carbonite subscription or drop-box sy
Fails on so many levels (Score:4, Insightful)
Whats is wrong with "A" technology? It is a technology if it solves a problem.
This appears to be a technological solution to a social problem and those rarely work well. Net neutrality is only a problem because certain companies feel their economic self interest should be more important than the good of the overall system or the needs/wants of the end user.
I actually agree with what this solution does. No one will care that their netflix packets are prioritized lower than their voice packets, since netflix streams and voice needs to be near real-time. Same thing for SSH sessions, page loads, or IM applications. They need faster response times than your Carbonite subscription or drop-box sync.
They will care when AT&T or Comcast starts a massive campaign to convince people to prioritize the services they favor over the ones that the user might otherwise choose. What, you think they'll sit idly on the sidelines over something that could make them huge amounts of money?
Doing it this way (but making it adjustable to the home user by doing something like... right-click on the application and set its "priority" on a scale or something) could be really useful, especially in bandwidth-limited deployments when your backup starts and kills your phone conversation.
This will fail the "mom test" horribly. I can see the family tech support calls coming in now. Shudder...
Re: (Score:2)
Spectrum limits not related to net neutrality (Score:2)
Despite the greed of predatory capitalism at its ugliest shown by ISPs, there is a real bandwidth problem with mobile.
Which has nothing to do with net neutrality. That is not a valid argument for Comcast to be allowed to prioritize their NBC data over data from Google.
A fair, metered, user-controlled, pay for what you use, is the answer
Already have that on wireless. Basically everyone pays for some amount of data per month. How this data is prioritized should not be up to the wireless carrier. If I use more then I pay more. On wired it is a non-issue. There is no spectrum limitation there.
Re: (Score:3)
Why isn't it a valid argument to allow Comcast to decide how to manage its own network?
The problem with Net Neutrality isn't technological, it is one of lack of choice at the last mile. The monopoly caused by franchise agreements is the actual problem, not what Comcast chooses to do with its network.
IF we break that problem up (I've made a comprehensive proposal before) by pushing the last mile as municipal infrastructure (similar to "streets/roads") all the problems with "net neutrality" that everyone is u
Re: (Score:2)
That is not a valid argument for Comcast to be allowed to prioritize their NBC data over data from Google.
Do you have evidence that they are doing this?
And yes, it is an argument for allowing "streaming video data" priority over "a text-based web page" in general, which might happen to be "NBC vs. Google" when talking about a specific case.
Basically everyone pays for some amount of data per month. How this data is prioritized should not be up to the wireless carrier.
So if one service becomes unusable to someone else because you demand full priority access to a file download, that's ok.
On wired it is a non-issue. There is no spectrum limitation there.
I'm sorry, what? When did "unlimited" truly become applicable to a wire? I know they're getting faster, but "no limitation" is hardly true.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, that's exactly what I'd want. If the ISP can't provide the bandwidth for all of their demand, then they can't. They have no business deciding that my demand is less important than some other user's demand.
The fact that high-bandwidth, low-latency applications have been shoehorned into TCP/IP is a technological achievement, but there are better ways of providing those services, if
Re: (Score:3)
The obvious solution is for them to stop overselling their network capacity, or expand their capacity. But of course that would cut into their profits so they don't.
Re: (Score:3)
Small communities who roll out their own faster internet access for a fraction of Comcast's costs make a bad liar out you.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Propose 'A' Technology? (Score:4, Insightful)
The path from a neutral Internet to the one Comcast execs dream of at night is a slippery slope. Even embracing partial steps towards that end will lead to yet more, as the specific cases are generalized down to something so vague and weak that any ISP can use it to assign whatever priorities they want to whatever traffic. It will go from "user controlled fast lanes" to "dynamic fast lanes" to "ISP curated fast lanes" to "ISP controlled fast lanes for the sake of general network health".
No one will care that their netflix packets are prioritized lower than their voice packets, since netflix streams and voice needs to be near real-time.
Latency and throughput are very different things. NetFlix does not need to be "real-time" -- it only requires enough throughput to build up a buffer big enough to smoothly play content and handle network variations. Voice calls are very different. They require very low latency and cannot be buffered.
No application bandwidth limiting, just prioritization.
I agree, but we already have that and you even named it. Quality of Service and Class of Service have already largely solved this problem. The only people saying that this kind of prioritization is the same thing as provider or application level throttling (fast and slow lanes), or that QoS will be illegal under Net Neutrality laws are the big telecos and their paid shills.
Once you open the door to "fast lanes" even a little bit, that's it. The level of neutrality will fall over time until it's another fondly distant Internet memory -- kind of like anonymity and the Fourth Amendment.
Re: (Score:3)
They have some B Technology ready to propose just in case we don't like their first proposal.
Re: (Score:2)
Because TWAIN was already taken.
Re:net fairness (Score:5, Insightful)
Better solution: forbid the same company to be a connectivity provider and a content seller.
Re: (Score:2)
Better solution: forbid the same company to be a connectivity provider and a content seller.
This is what really needs to happen. When ISP's are regulated into a neutral position, unable to financially gain from non-neutral policies, the internet will be better for it.
Forbid ISP's from diversifying entirely. You're an ISP and only an ISP, or you're not an ISP.
As annoying as regulation can be, it's definitely needed here. Give these jokers an inch, and they'll run it a mile.
Re: (Score:3)
It will allow ISPs to provide financial incentive to users, and that would be the end of internet as we know it. Instead of access to the entire internet you might see specialty packages that are cheaper and only offer access to specific services (facebook, youtube, and some messenger service maybe) while everything else is deprioritized to the point where it might as well not exist. Instead of everyone being his own voice on the net, all of a sudden the internet has become like television, with the provide
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I hear the anger in your voice, I can only imagine at what drives that, but I think an understanding of how a business works is missing from your stance here.
"without bias" I think everyone can agree to, excepting the ISPs
"without throttles, and without caps" is a fever dream. The cost of providing service to meet such a bar would cause a rate shift that would drive us all off the net. You think a $19 per month user should expect petabit throughput and unlimited usage no matter what?
"if, you, a provider
Re: (Score:2)
Violating net neutrality and having any bandwidth caps are all accounting measures and have no basis in real networking technology.
Re: (Score:2)
I wouldn't trust any Harvard/Stanford research until it has been thoroughly confirmed, a lot of their "research" has historically been funded and the institution coopted by industry interests. How else do you get multi-billion dollar endowments.