Victims of Net Neutrality

The "we're going to make other companies faster" argument always bothered me because it sounds like "x will be the standard speed for everyone else." That works fine in a world where technology is static. Unfortunately, in 5 years there's a potential for our bandwidth requirements to increase exponentially. It's at that point that a standard speed essentially becomes throttling.

After Netflix pays Comcast, speeds improve 65%

Netflix to name one site/company that's being hit by the fast lane thing from ISPs.

I think I went to Sparkfun earlier and there was a popup that said "if there were fast lanes and you didn't have it you'd still be loading" or some shit.

I'm 100% for net neutrality, however I'm not sure I buy into the whole Netflix story from a technical standpoint of 'they just flipped a switch'. I have to imagine it would be very easy to find a pattern if they were packet shaping or throttling packets arbitrarily just based on a set of source IPs. On the flip side, it stands to reason that if you did something like install huge G/MPLS pipes for service distribution to specific geographical areas to ease routing overhead, you could gain a significant amount of performance especially with streaming media. Those aren't 'free' either, if you want to run VOIP, for instance, with enterprise level SLAs it's not going to be coming with your 150 Mbps Comcast business line.

Was there ever any more technical research done into that situation as part of the net neutrality push or is everyone just flinging poo at this point. 'BUT GUYZZZ IT FEEELSSS BAD IDEA!!!!' is unfortunately not working.

It's too bad the blood bank (FCC) is being run by vampires (Tom Wheeler n' friends).

ISPs need to be treated and regulated as utilities, because that is what they are.

It's all bullshit. If the ISP can't charge (example) Netflix extra, then they will charge me more. If Netflix pays, I'll pay more via a higher Netflix bill.

However, I still support the concept and if it takes regulation to treat all data equally, then so be it.

Chanur_sl said:

I got the impression the Netflix throttling was a well known fact from the article I read a while back.

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Yea except I saw nothing about it from any reputable source, just the claim that it was faster after spending all this money.

Well, no duh. Part of the problem is people conflating net neutrality (which is very simple: handle all packets identically) and 'pay to play' access as if somehow net neutrality means anything practical to a guy who's already on a 5 Mbit capped shitbox connection. You can't 'fight the good fight' by arguing points supported with existing business models to oppose changes to something completely unrelated, which is what a lot of these articles appear to be doing. That Clickhole article, though satire, is still a good example of mischaracterization of the problem. The problem is that it is invisible to the consumer.

There's 0% chance the cable companies don't get away with this, in one form or another. Hell, they already do with tiered pricing. Same wire and modem, what's the 'cost' to allowing everyone equal access to bandwidth until it caps and then QoS the higher tier customers instead of capping based on price tier?

Did you Google it? Because plenty of legitimate news sites have stories on Netflix getting slow, they were losing customers, and they paid Comcast to speed it up.Slow Comcast speeds were costing Netflix customers - Aug. 29, 2014is just one, it even has graphs.

One problem at a time? I mean, every place that is getting Google fiber, the cable is suddenly faster. I live in a place that now has fiber (not Google) and cable upped the speeds and lowered the prices when it happened. We're way behind other countries in the quality and pricing of our internet and we have bullshit like ISPs blocking towns from installing their own fiber and being their own ISP, basically treating is like a utility, but preserving net neutrality is all a part of the SAME war, this is just one fight.

I was listening to a podcast earlier and they were talking about this and saying that some of the supposed examples of ISPs doing dirt were just uninformed customers making an assumptions. For instance, the recent Verizon/Netflix stuff supposedly had more to do with the peering between L3 being saturated than anything Verizon was doing. But customers used a VPN and suddenly their connection to Netflix was greatly improved, because they are no longer using that peering connection between L3 and Verizon, but people immediately go "AHA TRAFFIC SHAPING!"

Regulation like that is a lost cause, it will never happen. I've read some stuff saying that it actually isn't even what we want, but those people work for the industry so who knows if that is true. Title 2 is super complicated, I think some people think it is as simple as oh we get them regulated under Title 2 them go throw a party because the internet is free again.

It was Comcast, not Verizon, and the problem stopped immediately when Netflix paid them. How can that possibly be anything else?

Yeah, the Comcast thing I don't know. Netflix has that program where they pay ISPs to put Netflix servers inside their network to cache content, but they already had those agreements with Comcast I thought.

The Netflix/Verizon thing has been ongoing for years at this point. The point of contention witht hem is they apparently refuse to participate in the Netflix caching program and whatever the deal is between L3 and them probably consists of L3 not wanting to pay them more money.

How the fuck does this keep coming up if it was slapped down before? Are we going to be hearing about net neutrality until a republican gets back in office and fucks us all in the ass with another corporate dildo?

Different stages of the fight. But really, I think this is something we're doing to be dealing with until the telecoms run out of money or get their way so... yeah.

Jovec_sl said:

It's all bullshit. If the ISP can't charge (example) Netflix extra, then they will charge me more. If Netflix pays, I'll pay more via a higher Netflix bill.

However, I still support the concept and if it takes regulation to treat all data equally, then so be it.

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Why? You're already paying them with your monthly service.

Think of broadband and internet access as a street or a highway; every year you pay your car registration which is based on make/model. The DMV doesn't charge you 'extra' because you drove more than others. In this example, with 'net neutrality' dead, The DMV could charge Toyota (netflix) because they put out more cars than any other car maker in the market; and also, they could charge Toyota drivers more than Nissan because they feel like it, it's stupid and ridiculous.

Jovec_sl said:

It's all bullshit. If the ISP can't charge (example) Netflix extra, then they will charge me more. If Netflix pays, I'll pay more via a higher Netflix bill.

However, I still support the concept and if it takes regulation to treat all data equally, then so be it.

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Assuming everyone who has internet acess uses netflix.

Obtenor_sl said:

Why? You're already paying them with your monthly service.

Think of broadband and internet access as a street or a highway; every year you pay your car registration which is based on make/model. The DMV doesn't charge you 'extra' because you drove more than others. In this example, with 'net neutrality' dead, The DMV could charge Toyota (netflix) because they put out more cars than any other car maker in the market; and also, they could charge Toyota drivers more than Nissan because they feel like it, it's stupid and ridiculous.

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You realise that's exactly what CA is trying to do, they are pushing GPS units and tracking to track how far you drive instead of paying a mileage tax thru gasoline and instead based on how many miles you actually drive.

Too many fuel effecient cars in CA apparently.