NCTA Asks For Net Neutrality Law Allowing Paid Prioritization (arstechnica.com) 84
DarkRookie2 shares a report from Ars Technica: Cable industry chief lobbyist Michael Powell today asked Congress for a net neutrality law that would ban blocking and throttling but allow Internet providers to charge for prioritization under certain circumstances. Powell -- a Republican who was FCC chairman from 2001 to 2005 and is now CEO of cable lobby group NCTA -- spoke to lawmakers today at a Communications and Technology subcommittee hearing on net neutrality. Powell said there is "common ground around the basic tenets of net neutrality rules: There should be no blocking or throttling of lawful content. There should be no paid prioritization that creates fast lanes and slow lanes, absent public benefit. And, there should be transparency to consumers over network practices."
Despite Powell's claim of "common ground," his statement on paid prioritization illustrates a divide between the broadband industry and proponents of net neutrality rules. Obama-era Federal Communications Commission rules banned paid prioritization as well as blocking and throttling, while Trump's FCC overturned the ban on all three practices. Net neutrality advocates are trying to restore those rules in full in a court case against the FCC, and any net neutrality law proposed by Democrats in Congress would likely mirror the Obama-era FCC rules. Republican lawmakers are preparing legislation that would impose weaker rules. The report notes that Powell's proposal for paid prioritization is full of caveats: "There should be no paid prioritization that creates fast lanes and slow lanes, absent public benefit." "His testimony to Congress didn't explain how ISPs can charge online services for prioritization without dividing Internet access into fast lanes and slow lanes, and his statement seems to indicate that slow lanes would be allowed as long as the paid prioritization creates some 'public benefit,'" reports Ars. "How 'public benefit' would be defined or who would determine which paid priority schemes benefit the public are not clear."
Despite Powell's claim of "common ground," his statement on paid prioritization illustrates a divide between the broadband industry and proponents of net neutrality rules. Obama-era Federal Communications Commission rules banned paid prioritization as well as blocking and throttling, while Trump's FCC overturned the ban on all three practices. Net neutrality advocates are trying to restore those rules in full in a court case against the FCC, and any net neutrality law proposed by Democrats in Congress would likely mirror the Obama-era FCC rules. Republican lawmakers are preparing legislation that would impose weaker rules. The report notes that Powell's proposal for paid prioritization is full of caveats: "There should be no paid prioritization that creates fast lanes and slow lanes, absent public benefit." "His testimony to Congress didn't explain how ISPs can charge online services for prioritization without dividing Internet access into fast lanes and slow lanes, and his statement seems to indicate that slow lanes would be allowed as long as the paid prioritization creates some 'public benefit,'" reports Ars. "How 'public benefit' would be defined or who would determine which paid priority schemes benefit the public are not clear."
If only they actually understood the internet... (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't make one thing faster without making something else slower. That's just how the internet works. So if throttling wouldn't be allowed, but prioritization would, you've just made a contradiction as they are exactly the same thing.
Re:If only they actually understood the internet.. (Score:5, Insightful)
When the link is at max capacity, iPv4 and 6 know what to do.
That's when we start routing around the slow link, or capitalize and spend money upgrading the link.
OH WAIT, I SAID SPEND $$$$$. That means less shareholder return and more capital costs! OMG DID I SAY THAT?????
Hire more cashiers??? There's a Kroger MBA who's head is exploding with your metaphor.
Re: If only they actually understood the internet. (Score:2)
Or you just keep to a financial schedule and recoup the costs, instead of spending more money chasing perpetually bandwidth hungry users in a reckless drive towards poverty.
Seriously, the protocol is designed to allow the user to use as much bandwidth is available, and only runs slower when many users are online on the same pipe simultaneously. Nobody is allotted only t
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Costs tend to trickle down from peering agreements to ISPs to subscribers.
LOL trick down. What other republican fag like to use those words like they were true?
Uhhh.. you have to be trolling, you have to know that the phrase "trickle down" is being used in an entirely different context with a totally different meaning, right? Did you just get triggered by the two words "trickle down" and couldn't think of anything else at that point?
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Even if that didn't happen, paid prioritization would still be inherently anti-consumer, because it means that companies with more money get prioritization over companies with less money, which fundamentally distorts the free flow of information that has made it possible for so many Internet companies to get off the ground.
That, in turn, means that fewer new services will sta
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Exactly. This matches my opinion as well. But to that, I would add that QoS only works to prevent failures in the presence of inconsistent traffic levels.
Certain types of traffic inherently must be prioritized to prevent them from failing (VoIP, video chat, gaming). This works as long as the pipes are only occasionally completely full, because sending those packets earlier by a matter of milliseconds matters to those types of traffic, but doesn't make any difference over the long run to bulk traffic like
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The not-so-hidden goal of these companies, of course, is to shift the burden for Internet service onto companies like Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, etc. so that those companies have to raise their fees and the ISPs can keep their fees lower
I figured that was one goal, but the bigger goal was to compete directly with those services by offering their own. Degrade the Netflix experience so that customers will come to you for VOD and not Netflix. Set up a competing service, then use your ISP power make yours better.
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Hence the next paragraph. :-) I think it's more competing against their actual cable offerings than their VoD offerings, which tend to not have that much overlap with Netflix (e.g. the cable companies' VoD services tend to offer recent movie releases, where Netflix tends to favor TV shows). But either way, yes, exactly.
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You can't make one thing faster without making something else slower. That's just how the internet works.
Uhhh, what?
If I upgrade from a 100Mbps service to a gigabit, does that mean your 100Mbps service slows down? No.
But "prioritization" is not a case of faster or slower. It's a case of whose packets get routed first. If the network has enough capacity then it doesn't matter if my packets get priority over yours, they're both getting through without delay.
Or, in other words, QoS has been part of the Internet forever.
So if throttling wouldn't be allowed, but prioritization would, you've just made a contradiction as they are exactly the same thing.
Uhhh, no. Throttling is applying an artificial limitation on bandwidth. You can get 100Mbps
Re: If only they actually understood the internet. (Score:2)
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If you upgrade to 1gbps and we run the same routes to the same content, then yes, my 100mpbs slows down.
Not necessarily. It might, if the network is not sufficient to handle 1Gbps. That problem will also slow you down if there are 11 people just like you all trying to get to the same source over the limited route.
It won't slow you down if the route that is traversed has enough for both.
Since the slowdown has nothing to do with prioritization, it is not a NN issue.
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Pay extra and thats the users direct and protected ISP network too.
Don't pay and its what peering telco deals can do that hour, day.
The packets got down to TX, out to Florida for a while and finally return to CA.
Never slowed but it was the most low cost network deal at that time.
The ping will reflect that round trip and packet holiday all over the USA.
Pay extra and its the ISP direct pipe for ISP network users only to CA.
Low ping and
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You can't make one thing faster without making something else slower. That's just how the internet works. So if throttling wouldn't be allowed, but prioritization would, you've just made a contradiction as they are exactly the same thing.
Only in the "one is faster one is slower" sense are they the same. NN never defined things so broadly however, and we really don't want them to be either.
You have to look at the "pattern matching" side, not the "action" side.
Throttling adjust speeds after a preset limit, such as bytes transferred or a time period.
Prioritization adjust speeds based on the source/destination, and also implies one of those two paying an additional amount to be such a source or destination.
In that sense they are unrelated to e
Re: If only they actually understood the internet. (Score:2)
There is a cash grab, greedy mindset that wants to use it that way. A regulatory body, similar to the FCC should be in charge of determining what gets priority. Barring ISPs bribing this regulatory body, it should accomplish the job.
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I don't have an issue with paid prioritization, as long as it's bandwidth added to the promised service level, or perhaps no more than 10% in the case of "unlimited."
Re: If only they actually understood the internet. (Score:2)
If your VoIP causes noticeably slower web browsing, then your connection isn't fast enough to begin with.
But any web browsing can cause noticeable hiccups in VoIP without prioritization, because it is a real-time protocol.
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I don't have an issue with paid prioritization, as long as it's bandwidth added to the promised service level, or perhaps no more than 10% in the case of "unlimited."
That isn't really prioritization though.
Let's say Customer A pays for 100 Mbps, and Customer B pays for 100 Mbps. Their ISP has 500 Mbps available, so there's no problem. If Customer A decides they need more bandwidth and wants to pay more for 250 Mbps, there's still no problem.
Now, if both Customer A and Customer B decide they need 500 Mbps, there may be some issues. If they're both trying to use all of their bandwidth at the same time, which customer gets priority? In a neutral network, the decision
Re: If only they actually understood the internet. (Score:2)
Prioritization (QoS) is ensuring that the critical tasks that need the bandwidth or attention get it first. It matches the principles behind Steven Covey's 4 quadrant system for being effective. Very important when you have insufficient resources. When the bandwidth isn't there, and nobody wants to pay billions for better infrastructure.
In a
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The problem with fast lanes / paid prioritization is not that the extra speed must come at someone else's expense. It can come at someone else's expense. Or it can come from improving the infrastructure. The problem with fast lanes / paid prioritization is that the customer can't tell which case is happening. This creates an in
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Not quite.
Paid prioritization is supposed to screw everyone else over equally.
Throttling by contrast is a direct and specifically targeted act of sabotage.
Reminds me of Toll Roads (Score:5, Informative)
A freeway full of gridlocked traffic and their " fix " isn't to improve the freeway but rather build a Toll Road which allows you to bypass all that gridlock.
For a price of course.
Once the Toll Road becomes saturated with traffic as well, the fix is to simply build another Toll Road :|
-facepalm-
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You must have never lived or been to SoCal and LA. Plenty of freeways, all of them huge, and all crowded. You can build and expand all you want and the traffic will fill it up to capacity.
It doesn't have to be SoCal; induced demand [wired.com] works anywhere -- you add more road capacity, you will get more drivers to fill it. An expansion to the I-405 in Los Angeles, for example, resulted in traffic moving slightly slower [vox.com] than before the expansion.
Separate but Equal (Score:2)
reminds me of segregation and integration. You may recall the Southern states arguing that separate but equal access to facilities would work really well and provided equivalence to all races.
Net Neutrality with paid prioritization is (mostly) an oxymoron, and the same vein as separate but equal. Separate virtually gaurentees not equal. And paid priority isn't neutral.
I'm okay with content classes that have priorty over others. e.g. low latency channels for tele-medicine, medium latency for video, and h
Public Benefit (Score:2)
If Netflix can pay for faster internet, the Public gets faster Netflix, which is a Benefit. Duh
All depends how narrowly they define "Benefit" - it can mean anything they want it to mean. You can bet they don't define it as "the greatest overall good for consumers and providers".
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You can bet they don't define it as "the greatest overall good for consumers and providers".
Of course they will. It's just that your idea of what you think is "the greatest good" may not be the best, right, or even a good definition.
Here's an example. Have you heard of FirstNet? It's a modified LTE network (which is supposed to be implemented in a new RF band -- 14 -- but AT&T is layering on existing systems) that allows access control before the LTE sign-on. That means that a heavily congested system will not even let your phone connect. You don't even consume the normal connection handshaki
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You are comparing internet packets with emergency services.
No, I am not. I am comparing internet with internet. The PURPOSE of the prioritization is to provide INTERNET to emergency service providers -- which is still prioritization. It's pointing out that the statement about the greatest good to the consumer and provider is very very subjective, and your concept of what should be allowed can be very different from what others believe.
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Yes, I get that the definition is subjective, that's my point.
So who decides on the definition? Traditionally it's our elected representatives, subject to refinement by the judicial branch as necessary. But if ISPs write the laws [techdirt.com] through their lobbyist proxies, you can bet any decisions will be more in their interests than consumers or content providers (or the general public).
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Telecoms make more money, public pension funds that invest in telecoms make more money, therefore the public benefits!
(Wow, that was too easy, I didn't realize I had the evil in me.)
I've said it before on slashdot (Score:4, Insightful)
IPv4 packets have had mechanisms for prioritization since 1984. Ethernet has had mechanisms for prioritization since 1998.
So us, Network Engineers realize prioritization is important, usefull and beneficial.
having said that. Is perfectly logical to want videoconferencing have more priority than tv streaming, which in turn will have more priority than text chat, which in turn will have more priority than web browsing, which in turn will have more priority than email, which in turn will have more priority than conventional file download, which in turn will have more priority than torrenting/p2p
nothing wrong with that.
the problems begin when we try to make movie streaming from, say, hulu, faster than movie streaming from netflix.
if the change comes about because hulu pays my ISP, that's a big no-no. If the change comes because my ISP just felt like it, that's also a big no-no.
But if the change comes because I explicitly told my ISP that I like it that way, and I am willing to pay for said change, welcome indeed.
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If Class of Service and Diffserv have been around for 20 some odd years, and are solved problems, why did Centurylink drop the ball in the northeast for 911 service? Seems kinda stupid right? I mean, how can we be so incompetent?
This doesn't appear to be a long haul issue; Netflix can co-locate like everyone else chooses to for performance and cost, so surely this is not a long-haul wire issue. Why are we having such issues differentiating services?
AT&T merged with Time Warner, A Media Company and on
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And you have the right and ability to do that throttling at YOUR end of the connection on YOUR network. The problem with your way of thinking is that your ISP will not be able to make Netflix faster for you while at the same time make Hulu faster for some other customer (like your neighbor) just because you want to pay for it. You call yourself a network engineer but you cant see that the only way to do such a feat would be at your modem? When has it ever been a good idea to give any ISP that much control
Lawful Content (Score:2)
The Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
common ground around the basic tenets of net neutrality rules: There should be no blocking or throttling of lawful content.
THERE SHOULD BE NO THROTTLING OR BLOCKING AT ALL. 'Cause the only way to know if there is unlawful content is to LOOK AT THE CONTENT. This is implicitly allowing ISPs to sniff all traffic. No thank you.
I Want This! (Score:2, Insightful)
I think it's time for the internet to grow up and allow guaranteed transmission or "End to End QOS". Guaranteed bandwidth. I think it's reasonable for telecommunication applications (which include games which need low latency). I can see people wanting remote pilot drones over the internet as well. Surgeons that have consultants watching and talking to them as they perform surgeries.
The problem is that it's technical and not easy to understand. Too easy for the big telecoms subvert to extort big streaming c
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The problem I see with NN is that Spectrum, my ISP, doesn't own the whole network.
I've purchased 150Mbps. I should be able to use that any way I want. I decide that I'm going to allocate it to a 150Mbps stream to Amazon Prime.
My neighbor, having purchased the same plan, wants a 150Mbps stream to Pornhub (and who could blame him?).
Both of these service sit outside of Spectrum's network (because....reasons), and Spectrum only has a 200Mbps channel that connects to the network holding those two services.
This
arms race (Score:2)
Wrong Language (Score:2, Interesting)
I worry this whole debate has gotten mired down in the wrong language/descriptions.
Everyone believes that some kinds of internet traffic need to be sent faster, more reliably and with less lag. Absolutely no one wants a legal regime in which you can't torrent files while streaming a movie because your ISP isn't allowed to prioritize the streaming packets over your torrents. Fundamentally, different levels of QoS are a good thing
This fact doesn't change just because one has to pay for QoS. As long as the
Isn't there already paid prioritization? (Score:2)
No (Score:2)
general (Score:2)
Letting others pay for higher priority? Yes, that's ok.
Making someone slower on purpose? No, that's not ok. Whether it's by the ISP's own choice or because someone bribed them to screw over a competitor.
Letting prioritization be bought on equal terms by everyone? That's ok.
Giving sweetheart deals to partners and jacking up prioritization prices for competitors or someone else the ISP doesn't like? No, tha'ts not ok.
Basically, as long as the ISP doesn't cheat, it should be allowed to offer paid prioriti
"Public Benefit" (Score:1)
"How 'public benefit' would be defined or who would determine which paid priority schemes benefit the public are not clear."
So, is anyone expecting folks who work around 100 days a year for 6 figure salaries to actually even COMPREHEND what we're going through? They don't understand us anymore than we actually understand what a filthy rich person's life is like. It's utterly detached, and therefore pretty easy to simply say "well it wouldn't bother ME, so it must be okay for them." Besides, I think this lin