OT: net neutrality vote today.

Submitted by Dayday on
I haven't seen this thread anywhere; so my apologies if this has already been discussed. I hear a lot of people freaking out about today's vote and to be honest I haven't read enough to fully understand the ramifications or benefits. Those who really knew what's going on; I would like to know you think about it? Is it good? Is it bad? Should we celebrate or should we run for the hills?
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Hail Harbo

December 14th, 2017 at 3:51 PM ^

Gasoline taxes, actually fuel taxes, are supposed to be road use taxes.  The 18.5 cents per gallon the fed charges on each gallon of gasoline is supposed to go to the department of transportation to be doled back out to the several states for road repair and construction.  And then there are the electric vehicles which use no gasoline or diesel, and thus aren't taxed on their road use.  And that, my friend, is the essence of net neutrality.  Some people want something for nothing and have other people paying for it.

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TIMMMAAY

December 14th, 2017 at 5:22 PM ^

Your fundamental understanding is deeply flawed. I'm not going to go point by point, because you made it this far into this thread, and posted what you did. Your analogy is bad, not at all applicable in any way whatsoever. You seem to me to be eating up whatever line you're hearing/reading, wherever you're hearing/reading it from. Not hard to guess the source in this case, as there is really only a handful that hold this narrow (and frankly, dumb at best) view. 

 

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GVSUGoBlue

December 14th, 2017 at 7:22 AM ^

I️t eliminates total freedom for anyone with an internet connection. The providers can charge fees for visiting certain sites if they want. The real big issue is the fact that we could be censored for what we want to see on the internet

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JamieH

December 14th, 2017 at 4:35 PM ^

Lots of bad stuff wasn't done for a long time until it was.

Just because the internet wasn't abused before the regulations were put into place doesn't mean it won't be now.   The regulations were put into place because people saw what the Telecoms were PLANNING on doing, which they will NOW do. 

 

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reshp1

December 14th, 2017 at 5:43 PM ^

Net Neutrality *enforcement* only existed for 2 years because prior to that ISPs abided by NN and it wasn't needed. Then, the ISPs started throttling and prioritizing and therefore the enforcement was now needed and created to stop them. Implying we don't need NN enforcement because we got by without it before, as if the ISPs will magically go back to the good ol' days of keeping data neutral is completely disingenuous.

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WayOfTheRoad

December 14th, 2017 at 7:22 AM ^

Not a "run for the hills" scenario but bad. In my opinion, I think I'M SORRY, USER "WayOfTheRoad" has used his alloted Social Media/Blog/E-Zine data for the day. The rest of his post can be read in 24 hours and/or upon the user purchasing the Social Media/Blog/E-Zine package (ON SALE FROM COMCAST FOR $7.99 A MONTH!)

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MGoGrendel

December 14th, 2017 at 8:44 AM ^

Your Internet provider may put an overall cap on your monthly transport (mine has 1 TB per month).  But the type of traffic and destination is not limited (if it's legal).  Sending packets to Facebook, Amazon, yomamma.com, etc is all the same.  It's just 1's and 0's that hit a router and head to a destination.

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reshp1

December 14th, 2017 at 9:24 AM ^

"But the type of traffic and destination is not limited (if it's legal)." Without NN there's nothing to stop them from doing this. Portuguese ISPs sell internet packages based on sites you're allowed to access, since they don't have NN there. "Sending packets to Facebook, Amazon, yomamma.com, etc is all the same. It's just 1's and 0's that hit a router and head to a destination." Which is exactly why all these anti-NN arguments are bullshit.

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ats

December 14th, 2017 at 10:43 AM ^

Yes, there are plenty of examples from a wide variety of ISPs.  And NN has been a thing well before 2015.  Most of the history of the internet is under NN or similar regulations.  Hell, the 2015 OIO was merely restoring what had existed just a little bit prior. 

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reshp1

December 14th, 2017 at 12:50 PM ^

(The beginning)-NN by default->(2004ish)-ISPs begin challenging NN principles and are sued and/or regulated and fined by the FCC->(2014)-ISPs win case challenging FCC jurisdiction, no NN->(2015)-FCC reclassifies ISPs as common carriers to regain jurisdiction, NN enforced->(2017)-FCC revokes NN. So, we're not returning to the way it always was. We're returning to a brief period between 2014 and 2015. All the time before that we as consumers enjoyed NN by default even though it began being contested in some cases.

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theyellowdart

December 14th, 2017 at 2:29 PM ^

Here is the most known example.  Comcast dropping the speeds of netflix for all of their users until netflix paid them more money.  There are plenty of other examples of similar behavor of other ISPs.    As has been pointed out numerous times in this topic, capitalism is not setup to handle this issue, since many people don't have choices when it comes to their ISP.   We also have plenty of capitalism examples of companies doing whatever they can to make more of a profit.

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theyellowdart

December 15th, 2017 at 1:46 PM ^


You are correct that Comcast increased the rate because people using Netflix was eating up a lot of the bandwidth that Comcast actually sold to their customers.   ISPs have played the game of greatly overselling their bandwidth to customers for years.   It made a lot of business sense, the majority of their users didn't come close to using up the bandwidth they purchased, so they can oversell it and only during peak times is it an issue.   


Netflix then came along, and now there was a reason for the majority of ISPs customers to start using up the bandwidth that they purchased from their ISP.    


This is why you see absolutely idiotic and ignorant takes from Telcom employees - like we've seen in this topic - that Netflix somehow owes them money because they aren't able to continue the same jig of greatly overselling bandwidth as people are actually using it now.  So it cuts into their profits, and causes them to spend a lot more money upgrading their equipment to handle faster speeds.    100% of this is the ISPs fault for overselling their bandwidth.   

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wolverine1987

December 14th, 2017 at 8:14 AM ^

Apparently people don't realize this. Net Neut was put in place in 2015--prior to that there was no rule in place. Did anyone notice any difference in the internet in 2016/2017 vs. 2014 and all the years before? That's right, there is none. Therefore predictions of doom are hyperbolic at best. 

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huntmich

December 14th, 2017 at 8:19 AM ^

Do you really not remember this: https://consumerist.com/2014/02/23/netflix-agrees-to-pay-comcast-to-end… It was a big deal. It was almost impossible to stream Netflix on comcast. This is going to result in more power and money in the hands of comcast, Verizon, and att. What's your relationship with them like? Mine has never been good.

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BJNavarre

December 14th, 2017 at 8:33 AM ^

According to the Consumerist article the Comcast/Verizon "throttling" or about Net Neutrality. It was about Comcast & Verizon not clearing a bottleneck for Netflix. So were Comcast & Verizon violating Net Neutrality when they were clearing the bottleneck free of charge, thus giving Netflix preferential treatment?

So, when someone asks me whether I'm for or against Net Neutrality I have pretty much no idea what they mean. And I'm pretty sure even most tech savvy folks don't know what they're talking about when it comes to Net Neutrality (and nor do I). Basically, I'm highly skeptical of the firebreathing Net Neutrality advocates who insist the world will end if Net Neutrality ends, though I do think the internet should be regulated "in the spirit" of Net Neutrality, which is maybe where we were at pre-2015...though I'm not sure if the current FCC has something more sinister in mind.

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MGoGrendel

December 14th, 2017 at 9:04 AM ^

may have been a small network to network interface (NNI).  These are connections the carriers pay for.  I am sure the NNI's now have greater bandwidth to carry the capacity.  Maybe, if you think about it, the NNI was quickly saturated by the explosion of Netflix users.  They may not have planned for that fast of growth.

As far as Comcast, they now have the ability for their customers to log into Netflix, Pandora, and others - right from the TV.  It's part of the Xfinity platform that is powered by a software defined network (SDN).  This is the network of the furture that the big telecom companies are moving towards.  The result of network improvements is the ability to stream 4K movies.  This is not the government making things happen - this is business understanding that there is competition and they need to make things better for their customers.

A little history - streaming movies over the Internet was a dream of Phil Anschuts when he bought Qwest and starting running fiber under his rail road lines. 

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JBDaddy

December 14th, 2017 at 9:35 AM ^

I'm not arguing against you in particular, yours is just the most relevant place I see to reply.  I want to clarify a thing:

Comcast blackmailed Netflix plain and simple, and won.

I say this based on my own tests during "the bottleneck" event.

As a comcast subscriber, (SE Michigan) I could not watch Netflix - the buffering was unbearable.  Other net video sources were ok.  I was using a DVD Player with Netflix, hard-wired to my router, which went to a cable modem from Comcast.  It had worked fine all along, and then horrible buffering.

As a test then, I turned on a VPN to PrivateInternetAccess (Chicago) on my router, and specified that all my network traffic go through it.  Amazingly, the buffering to Netflix ended immediately and it worked fine again.

Turn off the VPN, buffering was back.  "Bottleneck" my ass.  Comcast was deliberately throttling Netflix-specific traffic (they may have been routing Netflix traffic through a specific limited gateway vs actual traffic shaping, but same effect) and demanding a billion dollars to stop.  And they got it.  When they couldn't tell that the network traffic was going to Netflix because it was routed through a VPN and encrypted, they couldn't identify it to throttle it.

I hate hearing how they were somehow justified... they invented that bottleneck intentionally.

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Solecismic

December 14th, 2017 at 12:57 PM ^

I appreciate that you ran that test then. We heard about stuff like that, but no one I knew had tried something that cut-and-dried. Seems like a fairly good argument against allowing ISPs to charge more for certain sites (or charge the sites, in which case that cost gets passed along to the customer). Many of us, myself included, have one option for ISP. Spectrum owns the connection to my house. Unless I want to put a dish up (I tried one about 20 years ago and vowed never to do it again), everything travels through that cable. Inevitably, though, it seems that cable should be regulated like any utility. But that would mean we pay for what we use in 1s and 0s, just like we pay for the electricity we use to see those 1s and 0s on our computer screens or television sets.

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Chalky White

December 14th, 2017 at 3:19 PM ^

It used to be I could use the internet from my work laptop without our work VPN. They changed it. I ran a speed test on the laptop. It gave me a hardwired 12 mbps. My cellphone got 79mbps on Wi-Fi right next to the laptop. When I built this house in 2015, I ran Ethernet through the walls. Speed wasn't an issue for anything until this Fall. Now everything is buffering. The help desk at work says Comcast is detecting the VPN and slowing down the speed. I wonder how this is going to affect people who use Kodi without a VPN. Is using a VPN going to make a difference. I have been considering subscribing to the IP Vanish VPN.

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