Confused about Net Neutrality

[hypeMarked]

We (the people) wants Net Neutrality right? So pro-net-neutrality is against ISP from having tiered services right? or is it the other way around?

They way they word things is so weird. So then what does this mean:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/05/fcc-to-re-regulate-internet-in-order-to-enforce-net-neutrality/

Thanks,

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

Being pro-net neutrality means that you don't want the ISPs being able to have tiered services. Basically you don't want them giving certain packets preferential treatment.

 

[drebo]

As long as the internet is a government-enforced anticompetitive market, ISPs should not be allowed to restrict services. Until true competition exists, any action that restricts a customer's ability to access a competitor's services should be ruled as monopolistic behavior and those ISPs should be banned.

I have strong suspicions that is precisely the reason we haven't seen teired networks yet. ISPs would open themselves to antitrust lawsuits.

 

[spidey07]

It's mainly about quality of service. Net Neutrality prevents quality voice, video and data from being delivered. Net Neutrality wants all traffic to be treated as best effort, you don't want that. It's completely bogus. Any anti-competitive behavior has been smacked down and fined out the wazoo from the FCC - there is total non-issue and harms the Internet more than helps it.

 

[theevilsharpie]

Net Neutrality is about preventing ISP's from giving preferential treatment to bandwidth originating from business partners (or anyone that has paid the ISP's preferential "toll") at the expense of other traffic. I don't know of anyone that is opposed to QoS implemented in a neutral fashion.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Net neutrality is like a road, in which the speed limit is posted and applicable to all.

Non-net-neutrality, is like a toll road, which strikes exclusive deals with certain car mfgs, to allow drivers of those cars the right to exceed the speed limit.

Imagine if your local highway had a 55 speed limit, except for BMW drivers, which were legally allowed to go 90.

Well, a better analogy would be if the highway lowered the speed limit to 30MPH for all other cars, except for their "preferred automakers", which would be allowed to go 65.

 

[Fayd]

It's mainly about quality of service. Net Neutrality prevents quality voice, video and data from being delivered. Net Neutrality wants all traffic to be treated as best effort, you don't want that. It's completely bogus. Any anti-competitive behavior has been smacked down and fined out the wazoo from the FCC - there is total non-issue and harms the Internet more than helps it.

no, it isnt about quality of service. it's about service providers charging consumers more to access what they can access now.

 

[drebo]

no, it isnt about quality of service. it's about service providers charging consumers more to access what they can access now.

Actually, the ISP doesn't charge the consumer any more than they do now. The ISP charges the content provider (NetFlix, Youtube, Hulu, Vonage, etc) a fee for top-tiered access to their customers (required for good quality of service). Which, of course, in turn causes those content providers to charge their customers more to make up for the difference.

The current model of telecommunications in this country (that service providers are guaranteed a geographic monopoly) was designed around the idea that service providers and content providers were one in the same and could not be separate. Obviously, as technology has changed, this is no longer the case. A fundamental re-engineering of the Telco Act of 1996 is required before any sort of tiered networks will be legal (do not confuse this with being "approved" of by the FCC). Currently, a telco charging a content provider for access to customers would (and should) be considered anticompetitive.

It won't be until we have true competition at the service provider level that such behavior would not be anticompetitive. This is the direction the industry needs to go to evolve. The last mile needs to be bought from the ILECs and run by municipalities. COs should also be run by municipalities, with reasonable rates on rack space and crossconnect fees. This would generate revenue for local governments and allow virtually anyone to come in and offer any kind of service to anyone. Win for the local governments, win for the consumers, win for content providers, and win for the industry as a whole.

It will never happen, though. Local government administrators have trouble seeing the big picture a lot of times, and the hands of the policy makers are too far in the pockets of the telcos.

 

[hypeMarked]

Ah cool...Thanks for the explanation. Sometimes official paperwork seems to confuse me a lot.

 

[spidey07]

no, it isnt about quality of service. it's about service providers charging consumers more to access what they can access now.

Nope. You've fallen for the fear mongering and people that have no clue how the internet works.

 

[emgeiger1991]

maybe its that big word of neutrality so in small words it's net neutral and drebo that makes no sense it's not the content provider charging you it's the ISP and what your paying them for is access to go through their system to get to the internet and because your going through their system, then that means that they would be able to control what you can view, just like how a school works, you go through their system so they control what you can see, and that is what the net neutrality bill prevent.

 

[theevilsharpie]

Nope. You've fallen for the fear mongering and people that have no clue how the internet works.

Fear mongering? One needs look no further than the American cell phone carriers to see what happens when business interests dictate the type of data that can flow over their network.

 

[Modelworks]

Without neutrality the ISP has the ability to control the bandwidth on their networks based on the content of the data.

In some ways it is necessary for an ISP to monitor content. Things like voip need a higher priority than someone downloading a website. The fear is that without controls companies like comcast could make content like netflix lower priority not because they have to but because they are providing their own service and put their service first.

The whole debate would go away if they would simply allow anyone to provide service over the last mile to the home. That way if I want a different provider I can choose one that fits my needs.

The FCC is planning a supposedly major announcement today.

"Tomorrow, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski will announce a path forward for the Commission to address serious legal issues raised by the Comcast v. FCC case," says a senior FCC official. "The Chairman will seek to restore the status quo as it existed prior to the court decision in order to fulfill the previously stated agenda of extending broadband to all Americans, protecting consumers, ensuring fair competition, and preserving a free and open Internet."

"The Chairman will outline a ‘third way’ approach between a weak Title I and a needlessly burdensome Title II approach," says the statement. "It would 1) apply to broadband transmission service only the small handful of Title II provisions that, prior to the Comcast decision, were widely believed to be within the Commission’s purview, and 2) would have broad up-front forbearance and meaningful boundaries to guard against regulatory overreach."

 

[drebo]

maybe its that big word of neutrality so in small words it's net neutral and drebo that makes no sense it's not the content provider charging you it's the ISP and what your paying them for is access to go through their system to get to the internet and because your going through their system, then that means that they would be able to control what you can view, just like how a school works, you go through their system so they control what you can see, and that is what the net neutrality bill prevent.

No, you don't understand the driving reason why ISPs are looking in to tiered service levels.

It has nothing to do with censorship or the ISPs trying to charge the consumers more. It has to do with offering a better quality of service to content providers based on how much the content providers are willing to pay the ISP. For example, if you have a broadband connection to Comcast, Comcast isn't going to charge you more because you visit Netflix. Comcast is going to charge NetFlix a fee to allow NetFlix to have priority access to Comcast customers. Otherwise, the traffic would be "best-effort".

You need to realize that your 20 megabit connection to Comcast is just the beginning. Comcast then has to move that data to other providers in order to give you access to websites and services. It's not the 20 megabits to you that Comcast is concerned about. It's the interconnections to other ISPs. That is the most expensive part about operating an ISP, and that is where ISPs are trying to make extra revenue through things like tiered networks. The more data that Comcast has to download from other ISPs, the more money they pay. If you stream a 50gb HD movie from NetFlix, Comcast has to receive to pass 50gb over one of these interconnects.

This is precisely why our telecom system in the US needs to become more decentralized. If every CO in the country were an IXP, interconnect costs would be much, MUCH lower and tiered networks would likely not be necessary. This won't happen until lawmakers wake up and realize that the ideas that made the Telco Act of 1996 a good idea in 1996 are no longer valid 15 years later.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Net Neutrality wants all traffic to be treated as best effort, you don't want that.

Yes I do

 

[emgeiger1991]

I'm IT, I work with servers and workstations. I've created a "website" before, I mean it was nothing fancy, my father creates websites too. He buys a domain uses their service to create the website which then is probably just doing the same thing i did which it's creating files on their servers which assigned to that special name. Which mine I created a file write some stuff in it make it a certain type of file and then put it in a special folder. Okay, so now you knowing what i know (sort of) Comcast isn't downloading anything, they are basically like a firewall allowing stuff in and out through their system and that is where they would be able to control what you can see by blocking certain ports and programs for what ever IP's they want and that is where the bill comes in to stop them from charging you to unblock that stuff for you.

 

[drebo]

I'm IT, I work with servers and workstations. I've created a "website" before, I mean it was nothing fancy, my father creates websites too. He buys a domain uses their service to create the website which then is probably just doing the same thing i did which it's creating files on their servers which assigned to that special name. Which mine I created a file write some stuff in it make it a certain type of file and then put it in a special folder. Okay, so now you knowing what i know (sort of) Comcast isn't downloading anything, they are basically like a firewall allowing stuff in and out through their system and that is where they would be able to control what you can see by blocking certain ports and programs for what ever IP's they want and that is where the bill comes in to stop them from charging you to unblock that stuff for you.

You have absolutely no clue.

Tiered networks (which is what net neutrality is against) have absolutely nothing to do with censorship or "blocking ports".

You don't understand how the internet works.

 

[emgeiger1991]

Without neutrality the ISP has the ability to control the bandwidth on their networks based on the content of the data.

In some ways it is necessary for an ISP to monitor content. Things like voip need a higher priority than someone downloading a website. The fear is that without controls companies like comcast could make content like netflix lower priority not because they have to but because they are providing their own service and put their service first.

The whole debate would go away if they would simply allow anyone to provide service over the last mile to the home. That way if I want a different provider I can choose one that fits my needs.

The FCC is planning a supposedly major announcement today.

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1329709&seqNum=2

Data Rate Versus Throughput
When talking about wireless transmissions, it is important to distinguish between throughput and data rate. From time to time these terms are used interchangeably, but technically speaking, they are different. As shown later in this chapter, each wireless standard has an associated speed. For instance, 802.11g lists a speed of up to 54Mbps. This represents the speed at which devices using this standard can send and receive data. However, in network data transmissions, many factors prevent the actual speeds from reaching this end-to-end theoretical maximum. For instance, data packets include overhead such as routing information, checksums, and error recovery data. Although this might all be necessary, it can impact overall speed.

The number of clients on the network can also impact the data rate; the more clients, the more collisions. Depending on the network layout, collisions can have a significant impact on end-to-end transmission speeds. Wireless network signals degrade as they pass through obstructions such as walls or doors; the signal speed deteriorates with each obstruction.

All these factors leave us with the actual throughput of wireless data transmissions. Throughput represents the actual speed to expect from wireless transmissions. In practical application, wireless transmissions are approximately one-half or less of the data rate. This means that you could hope for about 20 to 25Mbps for 802.11g. Depending on the wireless setup, the transmission rate could be much less.

Exam Alert: Data rate or throughput

Data rate refers to the theoretical maximum of a wireless standard, such as 54Mbps. Throughput refers to the actual speeds achieved after all implementation and interference factors.

And, Drebo, Whatever.

 

[drebo]

No, there is no "whatever".

Misinformation and fear-mongering like you are doing is harmful to the industry. It causes the FCC to go in the wrong direction because people complain and petition with false assumptions.

You don't understand how the Internet as a whole works, thus your complaints about a lack of "net neutrality" are based upon erroneous assumptions and don't hold any water. Yet, people tend to listen to people who spew bullshit (Obama, anyone?).

The worst of it, though, is your willful ignorance. Rather than attempt to understand what's going on, you just sit back and spew your bullshit louder and faster. People like you should be banned from the Internet.

 

[emgeiger1991]

I'm not trying to "fear-monger" and I work with the internet and the things that make it work, everyday. I'm just trying to put the truth out there and my last post came from a study guide about networking which I took and passed and it's not misinformation. If i was banned from the internet then that would mean that their would be less people to fix it (at least the way to access it and not actually it itself) when it goes down and then it would be harder to find someone so you wouldn't be able to get on either. I corrected myself since your saying that I don't know how the internet works to show you that i know that you can't actually take the internet down because it's a giant WAN (Wide Area Network)mesh made up of a whole bunch of LAN's (Local Area Network) so that if a computer actually does go down then that doesn't actually mean the internet goes down, just the access to it by that computer. It's like each WAN is made up of a star topology (star topology meaning central point of failure, the ISP) of LAN's, so if the ISP goes down then everybody connected to it goes down, so same thing for something like oh let's if they were to control it, then what they would do would affect everyone connected to them so that if all ISP's had the same ability then everyone would be affected. So don't tell me i don't know how the initernet works, I may not know exactly but I can take a pretty good gues cause it don't take too much imagination if you know what you talking about which, I do, know what i'm talking about.

 

[jlazzaro]

I'm not trying to "fear-monger" and I work with the internet and the things that make it work, everyday. I'm just trying to put the truth out there and my last post came from a study guide about networking which I took and passed and it's not misinformation. If i was banned from the internet then that would mean that their would be less people to fix it (at least the way to access it and not actually it itself) when it goes down and then it would be harder to find someone so you wouldn't be able to get on either. I corrected myself since your saying that I don't know how the internet works to show you that i know that you can't actually take the internet down because it's a giant WAN (Wide Area Network)mesh made up of a whole bunch of LAN's (Local Area Network) so that if a computer actually does go down then that doesn't actually mean the internet goes down, just the access to it by that computer. It's like each WAN is made up of a star topology (star topology meaning central point of failure, the ISP) of LAN's, so if the ISP goes down then everybody connected to it goes down, so same thing for something like oh let's if they were to control it, then what they would do would affect everyone connected to them so that if all ISP's had the same ability then everyone would be affected. So don't tell me i don't know how the initernet works, I may not know exactly but I can take a pretty good gues cause it don't take too much imagination if you know what you talking about which, I do, know what i'm talking about.

thanks for proving debro's point...you don't (and never will) know shit. a down syndrome 5-year old with lead poisoning could have described the Internet better than you just did.

 

[xSauronx]

cue the oh snap flowchart...

 

[James Bond]

emgeiger1991: you have ZERO clue what you are talking about. Stop posting now.

As someone above mentioned, it is people like you that are doing the most damage because you act like you know what you're talking about.

Spidey is correct. NetNeutrality essentially kills Quality of Service and treats all traffic the same. This may sound good to most, but it is a terrible solution. The internet relies on certain types of traffic having higher priority. VoIP and similar services cannot function unless they get special treatment.

That being said, something will need to be done to prevent carriers from charging companies like NetFlix for special treatment.

I don't have the answer.

 

[jimhsu]

Ok, really the entire point of this debate is whether you use applications that will benefit from net neutrality regulation.

The simple no-brainer answer:

1. If you use traffic that is "low-priority" more frequently (p2p, bulk file downloading, etc), you should be FOR net neutrality.

2. If you use traffic that is "high-priority" more frequently (VoIP, interactive video/audio, etc), you should be AGAINST net neutrality.

If you are a company:

1. If you are a cheap-ass, you should be FOR net neutrality.

2. If you want to pay and muscle your competition out of the business, you should be AGAINST net neutrality.

In the simplest terms, that is what the debate is about. Unfortunately I do not have an opinion either way on this particular issue (lack of sufficient information, and the fact that I belong in both camps, not because of apathy).

 

[n0cmonkey]

I want to pay by the byte and have crap voip quality.