Cloudflare Might Be Exploring a Way To Slow Down FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's Home Internet Speeds (twitter.com) 308
Late Wednesday night, TechCrunch reporter Josh Constine pleaded to tech billionaires to purchase local ISPs near FCC chairman Ajit Pai's home and slow down his Internet speeds. One of the responders to that tweet was Matthew Prince, co-founder and chief executive of Cloudflare, who said: I could do this in a different, but equally effective, way. Sent note to our GC to see if we can without breaking any laws. In a statement to Slashdot, Mr. Prince said: Probably the easiest thing would be to slow down requests from the FCC's IP ranges. Or put up an interstitial whenever someone from those IPs visits a site behind us. I think it's less likely we'd do it across the board ourselves, more likely we'd implement it as an option our customers could opt in to. Basically taking this a step further.
No need to break the laws (Score:5, Insightful)
Buy up all ISPs in his area and simply refuse service to him. Since it's not based on race, gender, ethnicity, sexual preference or anything it should be no problem to deny him service.
Re:No need to break the laws (Score:4, Funny)
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A disability he can immediately cure by stepping down.
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You are not helping, but actually harming the NN cause with your post. It is easy to point at your idiotic behavior and generalize.
I'm so so so so sorry if I offended your delicate sensibilities with what was obviously a bit of hyperbole.
Sinij is going to be *really* torqued off when he reads A Modest Proposal [wikipedia.org].
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I understand that a joke isnt helping but how is this harming Net Neutrality exactly?
It gives the opponents another example they can point to when claiming that NN proponents are crackpots and potentially dangerous.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:No need to break the laws (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry, but the phone company is still a utility and can't deny service.
They don't have to deny service. Just QoS him down to 300 baud. They can say that his circuit is overloaded, but they won't fix it. By Pai's own rules, that is perfectly fair. And since he won't have a choice of ISP's (which, by his own words, is thriving competition), he's stuck at a permanent 300 baud.
Re:No need to break the laws (Score:5, Funny)
Let's just agree on "A speed slow enough to do the TCP handshake with actual hands".
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Let's just agree on "A speed slow enough to do the TCP handshake with actual hands".
I don't have enough hands for a three-way handshake.
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It's possible for 300 baud to push more than 300 bps, but in practice, it didn't happen.
In practice, some modems became slower than 300 baud, but used multiple carrier frequencies. The Telebit Trailblazer is a good example; the PEP protocol operated at 6 baud, but 512 channels, giving a maximum 18432 bps transfer rate, and great resistance to line noise, as only some of the channels would be affected, causing a small speed drop instead of outages.
There's also audio frequency key shifting, like the 1200/75 modems used for videotex, minitel and remote terminals, and the Bell 202 modems. While
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remember those???, it would take a full minute for a website like slashdot to load 15 years ago, today the new version would probably take 5 minutes on a 56k
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The Slowloris protection would probably kick you off first.
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I just did a .webarchive of the site right now, and the file is 3209323 bytes.
A quick search told me a 56kbps modem downloaded at about 6800 bytes per second.
That means Slashdot would take ~472 seconds to load (7 minutes and 52 seconds).
If something like Slashdot takes 3.2MB of data, imagine the size of the websites Ajit Pai is visiting (ex: New York Times, CNN, whatever).
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Of course, because left-wingers, like all these Hollywood directors and actors being accused of sexual harassment, are all paragons of virtue.
</sarcasm>
For crying out loud, how much evidence do you need before you finally figure out that it's not right or left wing that's the problem. It's the powerful and elite that like to screw over everybody, regardless of political leanings. Don't give the powerful more power. If you don't regret it right away, you're setting a precedent that you will regret e
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His house is in Arlington, VA [washingtonexaminer.com] which has numerous ISPs [yelp.com] including Cox and Verizon. So, crowdfunding, then?
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Maybe buying him would be cheaper.
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Too late, he's already been bought. Wait and see which telecom he is hired by after he leaves office...services rendered ought to get him a very nice salary and perks.
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Not strictly necessary. All you have to do is to ensure nobody wants to do the job anymore.
Excelent (Score:5, Insightful)
Just wait until he makes this legal, and then do it.
Giving Thanks (Score:2, Funny)
On this wonderful Thanksgiving day, I just want to give a shout out to APK and his HOSTS file generator!
Net neutrality does not scare me as I know this tool will just tunnel a way to my internet destinations using only fast lanes, since it runs in kernel mode on the IP stack.
APK for AG! Who is with me?
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You'll know what direction we're headed, for sure, when Netflix starts buying ISPs.
Plan "B" (Score:5, Funny)
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A 1972 Volkswagen Beetle covertable in mint condition?
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Well, sure. But where you gonna find one of those nowadays?
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No, you burn an effigy of him in front of his house, with an angry mob cheering.
It's a perfectly legal use of your right to speech guaranteed in the first amendment.
Protecting Net Neutrality (Score:5, Interesting)
Key idea is as follows:
One problem at a time (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think this particular problem is only going to get worse.
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This has nothing to do with net neutrality. If anything, eliminating net neutrality would cast their dominant position in concrete, with google et al being able to afford "priority lanes" for their content while emerging new contenders and other sources for information would be struggling against slower and worse service.
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Key idea is stupid. Not having net neutrality makes that problem worse, not better.
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You are confusing the ISPs (the connection, which is at risk if NN is overturned) and the content providers (which have nothing to do with NN as far as I understand it).
I can only conclude that your are a troll paid by Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, etc.
Isn't that just targetted harassement ? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Of course we know this is just a bunch of kids throwing a tantrum. Nevermind the fact that they are of adult age.
And hopefully, having no usable Internet access will cause them to grow up and reinstate Net Neutrality.
Re:Isn't that just targetted harassement ? (Score:5, Funny)
I for one will enjoy the civil suit that follows. Of course we know this is just a bunch of kids throwing a tantrum. Nevermind the fact that they are of adult age.
I prefer to think of it as an experiment in demonstrating access in a post-net-neutrality world to a fixed sample sized demographic in order to obtain sociological impact data to the proposed rule changes.
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They're just shaping traffic...
This is actually the reverse of what a lot of companies do - politicians and other officials are often (even if they aren't aware) have their accounts filtered out of normal channels and preferentially treated with kid gloves.
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"I for one will enjoy the civil suit that follows."
Over what? Pai doesn't have a fucking contract for anything with CloudFlare, they're under ZERO obligation to send anything to him for any fucking reason. It's their CDN, and he has no contract so they can freely refuse him access.
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No, it's legally protected speech. They have grievances with a public official.
Target the FCC (Score:2)
Throttle the net for all FCC offices. This will be much easier to do, much harder to avoid and much more effective.
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Throttle all his neighbors as well. Lets see how popular he is after that.
And throttle traffic to all IP addresses used by the FCC and its contractors too.
For a boycott to be successful, it has to be felt, by more than the target. It's those who suffer from collateral damage that will raise their voice and effectuate change.
Or how about a "Your bandwidth is restricted today, because Ajit Pai wants this to be possible" that hits everyone at random days?
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All is fair in internet and war.
Funny Thought (Score:3)
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I like that, actually. Internet banishment (or at least from the major services we now think of as critical to the Internet) as a punishment for inflicting damage on the Internet.
Google would certainly have the ability to identify his connections and block Google Docs, GMail, and search. Netflix requires an account. You'd still have to get Microsoft online before you'd be able to hurt him significantly.
On the other hand, I suspect those corporations don't want to be seen taking personalized retaliatory a
Re:Funny Thought (Score:5, Insightful)
a punishment for inflicting damage on the Internet.
The Net interprets Ajit Pai as damage and routes around him.
[Apologies to John Gilmore.]
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Facebook could get interesting. Considering that more and more companies use Facebook as a convenient way to sign in to save themselves the hassle to verify who they're dealing with and offload it to FB, that would make it quite a bit tricky to use a lot of webpages.
And even if it doesn't mean shutout, it at least means creating a new account.
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However, such "weapon" should never be used or it will get used again
This, exactly.
Absent some sort of regulations prohibiting such use of course. We could write these regulations. And call them something like ...
.... net neutrality.
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You aren't Google's Customer!!!! (Score:2)
Cloudfare Error 502 (Score:2)
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All people are historically well-known for what is essentially child pornography and slavery and rape. Now what point were you trying to make again that doesn't implicate you via your ancestors?
The right to protest. (Score:2)
As a protest, the minute this law is passed, all content providers should choose an ISP and reduce/delay/congest access from said provider for a given week. Then roll to the next ISP the following week until the law is repealed or Pai gets fired. This would be the perfect example as to the consequences of this law and if I am not mistaken, the right to protest is a form of speech so it would be perfectly legal.
I would think if there is enough noise the politicians will remember how the got into power. Rammi
Better yet (Score:2)
Better yet, have the speeds vary widely over time...
7:02pm, 5Mb download speed ...and so on. Drive his corrupt ass crazy, and make sure you fuck with his phone.
7:04pm, 0.2Mb download speed
7:45pm, 8Mb download speed
7:47pm, 0.003Mb download speed
And better than that would be to make him a walking dead zone, so that the minute he walks into a Starbucks, everybody's speed drops to a crawl. He leaves, the speed goes back up.
Make him like Typhoid Mary for bandwidth- a mobile dead zone that no one wants to be near
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I like this... Especially your second suggestion. But is there a way to do it that's legal, but only without net neutrality?
Not to worry- I think the mega-corps are working on it. That way they can flip a switch and make anyone they don't like an instant pariah. It'll take implanting locator chips into every living human being, but I'm sure they're working on that too.
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waste of money (Score:2)
Another would be to invest into Googles Fiber, and continue stringing that. At that point, whenever an ISP introduces differential, simply announce that you will start building in those areas starting with their most profitable locations. They will QUICKLY stop it.
not over yet (Score:2)
This is not over yet! Sadly, we need to keep saying the same thing to the same people, who want to ignore the overwhelming, bipartisan public support for net neutrality [mozilla.org]. Weigh in directly with the FCC with this form [fcc.gov], type 17-108 in the "Proceeding(s)" box, then fill in the rest of the required information.
This is a battle between the interests of consumers (citizens) and the interests of large ISPs (corporations). It is also crucial to us as citizens to have the free speech protections provided by strong
Easy (Score:5, Insightful)
A simple, guaranteed fix to turn this around would be to shut the internet down for 24 hours. I recommend Thanksgiving evening to Black Friday evening.
Re:Unconvincing Tantrum (Score:5, Insightful)
Those of us who have looked into the issue have pointed out a long history of abuse by multiple cable companies (prioritizing their own in-house services to the detriment of competitors, etc.) that was stopped dead in its tracks by these regulations, and that would become legal again if these regulations are removed. We pointed out example after example of this.
So at this point, focusing on the people seems like the only sane approach. Their ideas can and have be proven objectively wrong. Repeatedly. The ideas aren't the problem. The people spouting absolute nonsense are.
Re:Unconvincing Tantrum (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know. It seems like if CloudFlare can legally slow down traffic of any arbitrary individual they don't like, legally, we've already lost the battle. They just haven't figured out how to properly monetize that ability yet.
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As soon as the FCC makes it legal, the battle is lost.
Personally, I think that the instant the FCC votes to kill net neutrality, every Internet service should just geoblock Pai's home zip code. Don't just slow it down or put up a protest interstitial; just silently drop every packet.
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Firstly, I don't think you know what "objective" means; it means you can measure it, empirically.
Counting examples is measuring a set, or at least providing a lower bound on its cardinality (which is measuring it, too, although more in the engineering sense and less in the mathematical sense).
Re:Unconvincing Tantrum (Score:5, Insightful)
"Firstly, I don't think you know what "objective" means; it means you can measure it, empirically."
You sure as fuck didn't bother to read or comprehend what you were replying to, did you?
Those of us who have looked into the issue have pointed out a long history of abuse by multiple cable companies (prioritizing their own in-house services to the detriment of competitors, etc.)
That clearly shows an empirical measurement, one you can look up though the court systems.
"If you agree to an action when it's done by $FOO but disagree with the same action when it is done by $BAR, you aren't anywhere close to holding the moral high-ground."
I disagree with Catholics and Christians being anywhere near children because of their tendency to be rapey. I agree with animals being around children, they tend to not rape children.
Oops, there went your bullshit morality argument, you ignorant emotionally-driven fucktard.
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If you agree to an action when it's done by $FOO but disagree with the same action when it is done by $BAR, you aren't anywhere close to holding the moral high-ground. You are, in fact, one of those people spouting absolute nonsense.
The pathetic irony of your comment is that you are the one who is spouting nonsense by making an absolute statement here. I can agree with Antifa making a human wall to protect people and disagree with Nazis making a human wall to keep people out of an abortion clinic. I can disagree with someone who punches someone because they want to, and I can agree with the person who punches them right in the fucking face in self-defense.
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If that gets the problem solved...
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Re: Unconvincing Tantrum (Score:5, Insightful)
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For definitions of 'people' equalling 'scripts stuffing comment boxes'.
Internet polls mean fuckall.
Re: Unconvincing Tantrum (Score:3)
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"If you cannot beat him in the realm of ideas, no amount of protests, slogans, and stunts will help."
You're a historically-ignorant person if you think change cannot be effected.
We simply target Pai and his family. Pure and simple French Revolution style.
That gives all the other people reason to step the fuck back, 'lest they find themselves the next target.
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Restudy history. The French revolution turned out _very_badly_ for all involved. It's a lesson on how not to do it.
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Where I live, busses can use an extra lane to get faster into the city, similarly emergency services get priority.
the bus passes the jam relatively well without significantly delaying the rest of the cars, taking as much space as 2-3 cars while transporting more than 50 people.
...while requiring the reservation of a lane that would otherwise have carried many hundreds of cars an hour and is now used by a few buses an hour, which are typically only full during peak hours. It increases traffic time for everyone to save a bit of time for the small fraction of people in that road who are in one of the buses.
the question is wether anything that will come from a repeal of NN will make similar sense.
If you think repealing net neutrality has anything to do with effective use of capacity, you are, to put it nicely, overly optimistic and confident in people's intentions in this
Re:Unconvincing Tantrum (Score:4, Insightful)
The bus-only lane is not about bandwidth, it's about ping times.
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You cannot kill ideas. Yes. But you can kill those that implement them, until nobody is willing to do it anymore.
You can't, though, not realistically. Enough you's can, but not just one you. The system loves it when one person freaks out and shoots cops because they just get ten more cops signing up because they've been brainwashed by their cop sucking family, and then they go into the academy and get brainwashed some more by a system that tells them that there is a war on cops when this is about the safest time in history to be a cop in America. Meanwhile, they are killing us in record numbers in this country. Kill t
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This ain't a cop, this is basically the same as a politician. Cops still have this air of usefulness to people, where they actually do something good, the whole "serve and protect" thing.
Politicians on the other hand... I doubt anyone would as much as raise his head if you neutralize one.
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This ain't a cop, this is basically the same as a politician.
Yes, but let's not try to be obtuse here. The other politicians will throw cops at you as fast as they can so that they don't become the next casualty.
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Cops tend to be highly motivated if you hit other cops. For obvious reasons.
Less so when it's about politicians. Twice if they don't really agree with their agenda.
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Ajit legalized this form abuse, let him experience it personally.
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they don't stay neutral
I think that's the whole point.
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But what if everything is good as it is, and changing something would be the evil thing to do?
Re: Good job guys (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well, if your public servants fail to do their job, it's an unfortunate necessity to remind them who they're working for.
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"now the company is stating it will take puntative action against a citizen"
Once you become a government member, you actually LOSE some rights, dipshit, as you are no longer fully a citizen, you are now in a heavily-restricted world.
Go shill for the FCC elsewhere, jerk.
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The solution is obvious: he should incorporate himself!
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What did you expect after all we gotten out of this dog-and-pony Show?
They asked for comments, then decided to simply ignore them because all the astroturfing, the propaganda and all the other shit they tried failed to convince anyone that it's a good idea to hand the ISPs that already go out of their way to gouge their customers blind the ability to determine what their customers should or should not see, of course with the intent to promote their own (failing) TV business over the emerging and obviously m
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Whenever somebody suggests they get back even a little of what they're dishing out, conservatives turn into such whiny little bitches!
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Latency problems can make any internet access painful, regardless of how much bandwidth is being sought.
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