Canyonero
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May 15th, 2014 at 11:17:56 AM permalink
Help me understand this as a foreigner:

Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Yahoo, Netflix are all in favor of net neutrality.

Those who oppose it might be Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-mobile

How is the second group more powerful than the first? How can they get this legislation through? Am I missing a powerful player here?
Croupier
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May 15th, 2014 at 11:26:23 AM permalink
I think its the fact that the First group provide services using the internet.

The second group control the internet infrastructure, and in theory could make the first group as well as all other internet businesses suffer if net neutrality was eroded.
[This space is intentionally left blank]
AxelWolf
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May 15th, 2014 at 11:35:54 AM permalink
Quote: Croupier

I think its the fact that the First group provide services using the internet.

The second group control the internet infrastructure, and in theory could make the first group as well as all other internet businesses suffer if net neutrality was eroded.



I have a feeling we will all suffer somehow. I bet they will cap usage or find a way to charge more.
♪♪Now you swear and kick and beg us That you're not a gamblin' man Then you find you're back in Vegas With a handle in your hand♪♪ Your black cards can make you money So you hide them when you're able In the land of casinos and money You must put them on the table♪♪ You go back Jack do it again roulette wheels turinin' 'round and 'round♪♪ You go back Jack do it again♪♪
FleaStiff
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May 15th, 2014 at 11:47:51 AM permalink
Quote: Canyonero

Help me understand this as a foreigner:

Money is NOT foreign to you.

Net Neutrality is a slogan with a variety of meanings but it basically requires ISPs to view themseleves as a common carrier.
Think of it as a delivery service , the post office doesn't read your mail it just delivers it. Fed Ex delivers packages. They deliver artwork, if they think its lousy art, they deliver it. If they think its good art, they deliver it.

So packets get treated equally. If the packets are a playboy centerfold they are treated the same way as an MRI image or a Movie.

The trouble is.. people realized that if they allow CATEGORIES of service, they can SELL the right to have continuity in your phone conversation and continuity in your movie and MRI images can be sent immediately while other traffic is slowed down.

This means extra revenue can be generated by guaranteeing a high bandwith for a price. The guy who just wants to send a playboy centerffolld doesn't want to pay extra and can't afford to, but the people who charge four dollars to see a move on the internet want to send that movie without delays and interruptions from some ISP who also has to send the playboy centerfold.

So its simple: A way of making more money by selling the capacity they already have, with customers paying extra but probably not really getting much if anything for their money since that movie probably can be sent without interruptions anyway.
AxiomOfChoice
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May 15th, 2014 at 11:52:38 AM permalink
The post office and fedex both charge more for faster delivery.

What you are talking about has nothing to do with net neutrality. The carriers would not be charging more based on whether they thought that it was good art or bad art. They would be charging to deliver it faster. Just like the post office.
Canyonero
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May 15th, 2014 at 11:57:46 AM permalink
Yay me for opening that can of worms.

Let me reiterate my question:

How are the carriers / infrastructure providers powerful enough in American politics to push this agenda despite the opposition of the billion dollar content provider / data companies?
AxelWolf
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May 15th, 2014 at 11:58:01 AM permalink
Quote: AxiomOfChoice

The post office and fedex both charge more for faster delivery.

What you are talking about has nothing to do with net neutrality. The carriers would not be charging more based on whether they thought that it was good art or bad art. They would be charging to deliver it faster. Just like the post office.

I thought that it was to target businesses like Movie sites who use the internet and make tons on cash doing it. I have a feeling some regulation may be in order, but I doubt anything good for the average Joe will happen. Internet should be faster with no limit and we should pay less. Phone internet plans suck ass.
♪♪Now you swear and kick and beg us That you're not a gamblin' man Then you find you're back in Vegas With a handle in your hand♪♪ Your black cards can make you money So you hide them when you're able In the land of casinos and money You must put them on the table♪♪ You go back Jack do it again roulette wheels turinin' 'round and 'round♪♪ You go back Jack do it again♪♪
RS
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May 15th, 2014 at 11:59:18 AM permalink
I think they should be able to charge more to send it faster....ie: they make agreement with Netflix that whenever Netflix packets are bent sent through they're routers, they get a first-class access, so the packets don't get dropped, are high priority, etc.

That, I am for.

I am against them being able to block out or interrupt other communications, for example, Netflix making a deal with AT&T which says whenever someone tries to access Hulu, it gets blocked and drops the Hulu packets.
AxelWolf
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May 15th, 2014 at 12:04:15 PM permalink
Quote: RS

I think they should be able to charge more to send it faster....ie: they make agreement with Netflix that whenever Netflix packets are bent sent through they're routers, they get a first-class access, so the packets don't get dropped, are high priority, etc.

That, I am for.

I am against them being able to block out or interrupt other communications, for example, Netflix making a deal with AT&T which says whenever someone tries to access Hulu, it gets blocked and drops the Hulu packets.

me to that's BS I would be willing to pay for faster internet But don't mess with slowing down certain sites or give someone priority over me because they are foolish to pay extra.
♪♪Now you swear and kick and beg us That you're not a gamblin' man Then you find you're back in Vegas With a handle in your hand♪♪ Your black cards can make you money So you hide them when you're able In the land of casinos and money You must put them on the table♪♪ You go back Jack do it again roulette wheels turinin' 'round and 'round♪♪ You go back Jack do it again♪♪
AxiomOfChoice
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May 15th, 2014 at 12:06:05 PM permalink
Quote: RS

I think they should be able to charge more to send it faster....ie: they make agreement with Netflix that whenever Netflix packets are bent sent through they're routers, they get a first-class access, so the packets don't get dropped, are high priority, etc.

That, I am for.

I am against them being able to block out or interrupt other communications, for example, Netflix making a deal with AT&T which says whenever someone tries to access Hulu, it gets blocked and drops the Hulu packets.



No one is talking about blocking certain sites. They are talking about charging more to give premium speeds to some sites. The sites that do not pay would get the normal speeds. The idea is that they could use this money to invest in faster infrastructure. The complaint is that right now, the service providers spend all the money building the infrastructure and the content providers make the most money out of it.
thecesspit
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May 15th, 2014 at 12:07:49 PM permalink
Quote: RS

I think they should be able to charge more to send it faster....ie: they make agreement with Netflix that whenever Netflix packets are bent sent through they're routers, they get a first-class access, so the packets don't get dropped, are high priority, etc.

That, I am for.

I am against them being able to block out or interrupt other communications, for example, Netflix making a deal with AT&T which says whenever someone tries to access Hulu, it gets blocked and drops the Hulu packets.



Don't need to drop them... just have them waiting around for a bit longer. The issue is less that you can pay for 'fast' service (normal service, really), more that you'll have other services take much longer.

It's the opposite of express post. Its like everything is express post, but if you don't pay the extra now, it'll end up being second class, next week delivery. When you are used to the letter from Auntie Joan coming as quick as the DVD you brought online.
"Then you can admire the real gambler, who has neither eaten, slept, thought nor lived, he has so smarted under the scourge of his martingale, so suffered on the rack of his desire for a coup at trente-et-quarante" - Honore de Balzac, 1829
steeldco
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May 15th, 2014 at 12:09:56 PM permalink
My internet provider offers 3 different plans, download speeds of 25MBPS, 50MBPS, and 75MBPS. The cost spread between them is $10.
I would say that they have a legitimate case in charging more IF it costs them more.
However, I think that someone with a technological background and an idea of the components and costs may very well be able to show that it doesn't cost more. And that, in fact, it may cost MORE to send at a SLOWER speed, i.e. slower speeds need more pipes to send on since it is moving slower. Therefore higher capital costs.
Just my worthless 2 cents......
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AxelWolf
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May 15th, 2014 at 12:10:27 PM permalink
Quote: AxiomOfChoice

No one is talking about blocking certain sites. They are talking about charging more to give premium speeds to some sites. The sites that do not pay would get the normal speeds. The idea is that they could use this money to invest in faster infrastructure. The complaint is that right now, the service providers spend all the money building the infrastructure and the content providers make the most money out of it.

Ok that's the gist of it however, what's hidden?
♪♪Now you swear and kick and beg us That you're not a gamblin' man Then you find you're back in Vegas With a handle in your hand♪♪ Your black cards can make you money So you hide them when you're able In the land of casinos and money You must put them on the table♪♪ You go back Jack do it again roulette wheels turinin' 'round and 'round♪♪ You go back Jack do it again♪♪
Mosca
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May 15th, 2014 at 12:29:44 PM permalink
Here is the text of communications software engineer Robert Enger's comment to the FCC (In the public record):

7521125046.txt
1:32 AM 5/15/2014
comment to FCC Proceeding 14-28 "Open Internet"

High-speed last-mile operators are more-or-less defacto monopolies in the markets
that they operate in. DSL is useless. No RF-based network will support mass
adoption of non-linear unicast (VoD, OTT) viewing of video at high-fidelity HD, much
less 4k, deep-color/10-14bitRGB, high-frame-rate, 8k, etc.

The last-mile network operators are leveraging their monopoly to over-charge (and
under-serve) the consumer. AND, they are double-dipping: extorting bribes from
content-suppliers in order to obtain non-congested interconnection to the last-mile
operator's network. Last-mile operators are guilty of racketeering, in the literal
sense.

In the early Internet, interconnection "traffic-balance" requirements (and
settlement fees if unbalanced) were intended to ensure that long-haul carriers were
not disadvantaged by the effect of HOT POTATO routing. (The long-haul network
providing transit for the destination bore the burden of carrying the bulky content,
the long-haul transit network serving a content supplier only carried relatively
minute request strings and TCP acks.)

NONE of that is applicable to last-mile operators.

The last-mile physical plant (eg cable-modems and even GPON FTTH) are inherently
asymmetrical in design: providing much more capacity towards the residential
consumer and much less upstream. They will never have traffic balance. Further,
most last-mile operators prohibit the operation of servers on residential network
connections. This too reduces the traffic in the upstream direction.
It is intentional DECEPTION (fraud) for network operators to demand traffic-balance
on their last-mile networks. It is plain and simple EXTORTION for them to demand
settlement-fees.

Last-mile operators are refusing to upgrade network interconnections, allowing them
to become congested and useless. They are essentially holding a gun to the head of
the content suppliers until they agree to paid-peering/paid-private-connection.
This is plain and simple a PROTECTION RACKET. The big last-mile operators should be
prosecuted under RICO.

In today's Internet, requested content is often sourced from servers in the SAME
CITY as the consumer who issues the request. (eg CDNs and private distributed
server systems utilize variable-DNS responses and other techniques to ensure that
the server closest to the requester is the one that serves the response to him/her)
For example, a person in Los Angeles who requests a piece of content is often
retrieving that content from a server a few miles away in the LA area. The
network-provider hired by the content-supplier will thus hand the data to the
last-mile network IN THE SAME CITY as the consumer who requests the content. NO
LONG HAUL TRANSMISSION IS REQUIRED BY THE LAST-MILE OPERATOR. It is REASONABLE to
expect the last-mile operator to accept the data stream and deliver it to the
consumer at the data-rate contracted and paid-for by the consumer. The last-mile
operator is already being paid A LOT (most would agree) by their direct customers.
That is enough money to expand and maintain the last-mile network. To demand bribes
from the content supplier for delivering data from one-side of the city to another
is simple extortion.

(While we're at it, it is FRAUD to claim that a last-mile customer is getting "X"
megabit downstream service, when in fact the last-mile infrastructure is heavily
statistically over-committed, and the actual sustainable bandwidth available to the
customer during busy-hours is "tiny-fraction-of-X". Last-mile operators have been
LYING TO CUSTOMERS for years. When will the FCC, FTC or other government agency act
to demand that last-mile operators clearly state the CIR. Similarly, charging for
"total bytes sent per month" is a scam. The scarce-commodity in a last-mile network
is busy-hour bits-per-second (rate), not the area under the curve for the entire
month. Last-mile operators are charging for total-bytes in order to disadvantage
OTT video suppliers and/or impose a surcharge on the consumer. They get away with
this because there is no effective competition for very high speed Internet service
in most markets.)

A final note regarding competition.

I remember the days of two 800Mhz cellular providers. Prices were high and coverage
was terrible. NOTHING CHANGED in the cellular business until we got four or five
competitors. It took that level of competition to goad the greedy incumbents into
investing in their plant (instead of investing in corporate empire building and
executive bonuses).

The world of last-mile land-line networking today is similar to the old world of two
800Mhz cellular carriers. Prices are high, service sucks, the parent corporations
are engaged in empire building and the execs are raking in big-bucks. The FCC can't
throw RF spectrum at this to solve the problem. Only construction of FTTH will
deliver the unlimited bandwidth needed to support non-linear unicast viewing of
1080, 4k, deep-color, high-frame-rate, etc. Only MULTIPLE competing FTTH providers
will ensure proper bandwidth is available at a fair price.

Thank you for reviewing this note. I and probably most of the citizens of the USA
are very angry at how we are treated by the telecom industry. I hope you find a
legal method to come down on them hard. Until such time as there is genuine
competition in high-speed land-line Internet service within each market (multiple
FTTH providers), the government should treat the last-mile operator as a monopoly
and supervise/regulate them extensively.

PS:
Watch out for industry-funded think-tank reports, PR sock-puppets and astro-turfed
citizens groups organized by the telecom industry. Remember the fight over local
loop unbundling for DSL? When big bucks are at stake, there is apparently no moral
low-ground that they won't stoop-to.
A falling knife has no handle.
AxiomOfChoice
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May 15th, 2014 at 12:30:24 PM permalink
Quote: steeldco

My internet provider offers 3 different plans, download speeds of 25MBPS, 50MBPS, and 75MBPS. The cost spread between them is $10.
I would say that they have a legitimate case in charging more IF it costs them more.
However, I think that someone with a technological background and an idea of the components and costs may very well be able to show that it doesn't cost more. And that, in fact, it may cost MORE to send at a SLOWER speed, i.e. slower speeds need more pipes to send on since it is moving slower. Therefore higher capital costs.
Just my worthless 2 cents......



It doesn't cost them more to send it at higher speeds. The equipment is the same; often, the rate limiting is done on your end, not theirs (ie, the modem will be configured to throttle data over a certain speed. If you upgrade your service they just reconfigure the modem to allow more data through).

However, they do have a limited amount of bandwidth, and more bandwidth does cost more money. They do not have enough bandwidth for everyone to use the higher speed, so they only give it to people who are willing to pay for it.

Your comment about slower speeds needing more pipes could not possibly be more wrong. I don't know if you think that the data is written down on pieces of paper that require some physical storage but that is just not how things work.
onenickelmiracle
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May 15th, 2014 at 12:31:44 PM permalink
All those times the cable internet was useless unintentionally and where was my money back for services undelivered? They want to bill and not be billed and I don't see fairness.

Next they make the services even more worthless intentionally and ask to extort an extra buck. Click yes or you don't get to see the rest of the porn. This is just about being able to create a problem and charge extra to fix it.
I am a robot.
Mosca
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May 15th, 2014 at 12:33:28 PM permalink
And everything we discuss today is just a bunch of people talking. If you want to make your voice heard, go here:

FCC Comment System

And search for proceeding 14-28. Then choose "submit a filing".

Government at work! Make your voice heard!
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Mosca
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May 15th, 2014 at 12:35:34 PM permalink
The FCC wishes the www a happy 25th birthday
A falling knife has no handle.
FleaStiff
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May 15th, 2014 at 12:38:53 PM permalink
I think the capacity is already there they simply want to be able to charge more for doing the same work and the same speed.

Its like a pipe with water flowing through it. Its the same water flowing at the same speed but they want to sell it at different prices by lableing some of it "guaranteed high speed".
AxiomOfChoice
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May 15th, 2014 at 12:43:08 PM permalink
Quote: FleaStiff

I think the capacity is already there they simply want to be able to charge more for doing the same work and the same speed.

Its like a pipe with water flowing through it. Its the same water flowing at the same speed but they want to sell it at different prices by lableing some of it "guaranteed high speed".



The internet does not work like a pipe with water flowing through it.
steeldco
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May 15th, 2014 at 12:55:40 PM permalink
Quote: AxiomOfChoice


Your comment about slower speeds needing more pipes could not possibly be more wrong. I don't know if you think that the data is written down on pieces of paper that require some physical storage but that is just not how things work.



OK. Please explain why that would be. To my way of thinking, you have a limited amount of data that you can send at any one point in time. Depending on the speed that it is sent. Yes? Therefore if you send data at a slower speed, then the total amount of data sent may require additional routing because the slow speed has you at capacity quicker. I hope I'm explaining my opinion properly, if I had made myself clear then what am I missing?
DO NOT blindly accept what has been spoken. DO NOT blindly accept what has been written. Think. Assess. Lead. DO NOT blindly follow.
TerribleTom
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May 15th, 2014 at 12:58:36 PM permalink
Quote: AxiomOfChoice

No one is talking about blocking certain sites. They are talking about charging more to give premium speeds to some sites. The sites that do not pay would get the normal speeds. The idea is that they could use this money to invest in faster infrastructure. The complaint is that right now, the service providers spend all the money building the infrastructure and the content providers make the most money out of it.



If the ISPs think they're not getting a fair share of the money, they can raise their rates.

As incestuous as the content provider & delivery industries are right now - a trend that seems to be growing - I am not confident that ISPs will be as even handed with traffic from other content providers as you are.

Cable companies are losing TV customers - lots of them - to Netflix, Hulu, etc. Some content providers already require a cable subscription to access their online content - HBOGO and ESPN3, for example. Sans some kind of net neutrality I would not be surprised at all if cable companies would retaliate against HBO by throttling their traffic if HBO decided to offer their online streaming content a la carte without the cable subscription.

What's to stop Google Fiber (an ISP owned by a content provider) from blocking Bing searches entirely? Or throttling the traffic of any other competitor - like Apple or Yahoo!?

If some ISP like Comcast buys Netflix, what's to stop another ISP from throttling that traffic?

I understand where you're coming from - you think that it's OK for ISPs to charge a premium for QoS (that's Quality of Service for the uninitiated) guarantees for content providers - and maybe it is. But on the flip side there needs to be some sort of universal access guarantee for all content providers.

Let's say you want to launch a new competitor to Netflix but all of the major ISPs have QoS deals with Netflix worth millions of dollars and they don't want to lose that revenue - so they won't give you the same kind of deal for fear of offending their existing customers.

A lack of genuine net neutrality will stifle competition and innovation.

I expect companies to always do what makes them the most money and not what's best for anyone else.
AxiomOfChoice
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May 15th, 2014 at 1:02:10 PM permalink
Quote: steeldco

OK. Please explain why that would be. To my way of thinking, you have a limited amount of data that you can send at any one point in time. Depending on the speed that it is sent. Yes? Therefore if you send data at a slower speed, then the total amount of data sent may require additional routing because the slow speed has you at capacity quicker. I hope I'm explaining my opinion properly, if I had made myself clear then what am I missing?



I'm not sure why you think that the slow speed would have you at capacity quicker. Slower speed means that less data is being sent so you are further away from your capacity. The capacity is the amount of data that it can handle per unit of time. If you send less data per unit of time then you are using less of their capacity.

Also, the total amount of data sent is not the same at different speeds. If you are trying to watch something on Netflix, that is done by streaming the video in real-time with only a few seconds of buffering. If you have a slow internet connection, it will send you a lower-quality (ie, smaller) video stream. So, the total amount of data sent will be less.
AxiomOfChoice
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May 15th, 2014 at 1:06:58 PM permalink
Quote: TerribleTom

If the ISPs think they're not getting a fair share of the money, they can raise their rates.



Exactly. The question is, who should pay? The consumer or the content provider?

Quote:

What's to stop Google Fiber (an ISP owned by a content provider) from blocking Bing searches entirely? Or throttling the traffic of any other competitor - like Apple or Yahoo!?



The current proposal does not allow for that. That is simply FUD.

Quote:

Let's say you want to launch a new competitor to Netflix but all of the major ISPs have QoS deals with Netflix worth millions of dollars and they don't want to lose that revenue - so they won't give you the same kind of deal for fear of offending their existing customers.

A lack of genuine net neutrality will stifle competition and innovation.



Right, that must be why Netflix is against this. It's because they are worried that the startups that want to compete with them and take their business won't be able to manage. How nice of Netflix!

I'm sure it's not because they don't want to pay for the bandwidth that they are using to make money. No! They are concerned for the little guy!

I can't believe that people are falling for this nonsense.
TerribleTom
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May 15th, 2014 at 1:19:38 PM permalink
How does Netflix get all of this free bandwidth?

Netflix pays their ISP just like everybody else.

I subscribe to Netflix. I pay my ISP for X amount of bandwidth. Netflix pays their ISP for X amount of bandwidth. How are the ISPs not getting paid? Everybody is paying their ISP for the bandwidth they consume.
AxiomOfChoice
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May 15th, 2014 at 1:21:59 PM permalink
Quote: TerribleTom

How does Netflix get all of this free bandwidth?

Netflix pays their ISP just like everybody else.

I subscribe to Netflix. I pay my ISP for X amount of bandwidth. Netflix pays their ISP for X amount of bandwidth. How are the ISPs not getting paid? Everybody is paying their ISP for the bandwidth they consume.



Huh? Netflix does not have an ISP (at least not in the sense that you have an ISP). It's not like their servers are in someone's garage hooked up to a comcast residential class service.
GWAE
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May 15th, 2014 at 1:26:25 PM permalink
Quote: AxiomOfChoice

Huh? Netflix does not have an ISP (at least not in the sense that you have an ISP). It's not like their servers are in someone's garage hooked up to a comcast residential class service.



I am completely lost on this subject. Can someone explain this in laymans terms. I read wiki and now I am even more confused.

Is this just basically someone trying to charge for the internet?
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beachbumbabs
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May 15th, 2014 at 1:36:35 PM permalink
Quote: Mosca

Here is the text of communications software engineer Robert Enger's comment to the FCC (In the public record):

7521125046.txt
1:32 AM 5/15/2014
comment to FCC Proceeding 14-28 "Open Internet"

...



Wow. Just wow, Mosca; thanks for posting that. What a fresh blast of honesty. It cleared up a lot of things for me, reading that carefully. Add me to the "mad as hell" consumer list.
If the House lost every hand, they wouldn't deal the game.
AxelWolf
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May 15th, 2014 at 1:40:53 PM permalink
GO GO Google Fiber ??????
♪♪Now you swear and kick and beg us That you're not a gamblin' man Then you find you're back in Vegas With a handle in your hand♪♪ Your black cards can make you money So you hide them when you're able In the land of casinos and money You must put them on the table♪♪ You go back Jack do it again roulette wheels turinin' 'round and 'round♪♪ You go back Jack do it again♪♪
TerribleTom
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May 15th, 2014 at 1:53:47 PM permalink
Quote: AxiomOfChoice

Huh? Netflix does not have an ISP (at least not in the sense that you have an ISP). It's not like their servers are in someone's garage hooked up to a comcast residential class service.



Of course Netflix has an ISP. They probably have several ISPs with server farms both in-house and co-located.

No, it's not residential service - it's commercial service, most likely with much more upload bandwidth than download bandwidth - but they most definitely do have an ISP that they pay for their bandwidth just like any other content provider. They certainly aren't pushing out all of those video streams for free.
beachbumbabs
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May 15th, 2014 at 2:15:08 PM permalink
I'm gonna give it a rough try; as I understand it.

You have content-providers. They have movies, old tv shows, photos, graphics, this forum, RPG's, ie Netflix online, HBO online, GameHouse, whoever. They are free, or charge subscribers to access their content, especially streaming, or sell files like digital movies outright for download. Many of the biggest providers have servers in most large metropolitan areas with duplicated content and/or proprietary linkage to their own servers, in order to provide the fastest possible service (the farther the server is from your location, the longer the lag of your content, and sometimes the lesser the quality).

You have transportation systems. They go in between the servers (large banks of hard drives, switching boards, digital storage) owned or rented by the content-providers, and deliver the product you have ordered, kind of like the railroads deliver large quantities to metro areas. These are commercial networks of optical wires, wireless, hard-wired systems, which bring the content from content servers to your ISP (internet service provider), which I'm going to call "portals". Some of them overlap company-name-wise with your "local" service, some of them only do the transportation from server to hub. A lot of them have regional networks and agreements among themselves about how to pay each other for moving content across the other's lines.

Your ISP is a "local" hub (the people you pay monthly to have internet service, whether it's a cable company, a phone provider like ATT, a satellite provider like Direct TV). They take the commercial traffic and route it "the last mile" from their hub or node or satellite, direct and retail to you. Your cable feed is on a node somewhere in your neighborhood; my last one, for my block, was in my back yard. About 20 houses went off that node, which had an overall "bandwidth" or capacity in bits per second (Gigabits or Terabits at that level per second). Cell systems have nodes, or cell capacity, which can slow or even stop the system ("All circuits are busy; please try your call again later"). Satellites, not sure how bandwidth is allocated; never had internet service beyond its infancy, and it was slo-o-o-o-w. Uploads at 19K modem speeds. Almost 20 years ago, so useless for this discussion.

Users (you and I) are being charged for bandwidth/month on the retail level. Most areas, until very recently, do not have a choice of providers beyond Satellite or Cable. There is one Cable provider with a virtual monopoly in most geographical areas. So they charge crazy rates for delivering content you're paying for at a bandwidth that works for you and your family; a sliding scale based on usage, which streaming videos eat like (insert guzzling metaphor here).

ATT Uverse is an example of someone coming into the cable market and trying to steal customers from cable (and also satellite and other phone companies, but mainly cable) internet providers, one house at a time. There are others. A lot of municipalities have signed exclusivity agreements with cable companies, though, which guarantee their virtual monopoly, which the areas signed onto decades ago; it was expensive to install the infrastructure to provide cable, get all the easements, etc. So breaking the monopoly goes slowly.

Now the cable companies, satellites, and other signal providers are trying to make more money from the content providers as well, by charging the content providers a premium to give them first priority on the transportation networks, especially the "last mile" providers. It's somewhat analogous to how people can pay for their placement on a Google search result for particular keywords.

The signal providers are assuming the content providers will simply charge you a little more to pass on their extra cost, and promise in return that you will get a better signal because it will be given transmission priority over those who don't pay the extra fee. (To me, that sounds like extortion, but that's my opinion). It's a question of system/node/delivery bottlenecks, when demand exceeds bandwidth. The content providers are pushing back, because they don't want to raise their fees OR pay more (or at all) for their content to be distributed, and explaining to the consumer via Congress (and directly) how the transporation providers are trying to screw them.

I could be wrong, and welcome corrections. But this is my best shot at plain-language.
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AcesAndEights
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May 15th, 2014 at 2:22:23 PM permalink
Quote: AxiomOfChoice

The internet does not work like a pipe with water flowing through it.


But but but...I thought the internet was a series of tubes? I mean it's not like a big dump truck, is it?
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steeldco
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May 15th, 2014 at 2:46:47 PM permalink
Quote: AxiomOfChoice

I'm not sure why you think that the slow speed would have you at capacity quicker. Slower speed means that less data is being sent so you are further away from your capacity. The capacity is the amount of data that it can handle per unit of time. If you send less data per unit of time then you are using less of their capacity.



I use the following analogy. If you have a length of water pipe between 2 locations, there is a maximum amount of water that can be in the pipe at any one point in time. Let's call it 10 gallons. Let's also say that the normal flow would allow it to drain in 2 minutes. So you get an average of 5 gallons per minute thru the pipe at its' capacity. However, if you are able to increase the speed of the flow, say double it, then you are able to push thru 20 gallons per 2 minutes, or 10 gallons per minute. In each case the size of the pipe is the same, but with increase speed you can push thru more data. Does that make sense? Sorry. Not an expert on this.
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endermike
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May 15th, 2014 at 6:06:44 PM permalink
I can't verify the veracity of this video's take on it, but I can tell you this guy's (CGP Grey) videos are well researched and informative.

He has an excellent youtube channel, check it out some time.
AxiomOfChoice
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May 16th, 2014 at 12:23:32 AM permalink
Quote: steeldco

I use the following analogy. If you have a length of water pipe between 2 locations, there is a maximum amount of water that can be in the pipe at any one point in time. Let's call it 10 gallons. Let's also say that the normal flow would allow it to drain in 2 minutes. So you get an average of 5 gallons per minute thru the pipe at its' capacity. However, if you are able to increase the speed of the flow, say double it, then you are able to push thru 20 gallons per 2 minutes, or 10 gallons per minute. In each case the size of the pipe is the same, but with increase speed you can push thru more data. Does that make sense? Sorry. Not an expert on this.



It makes sense for pipes of water but not for the internet.

Actually, I'm not sure that it makes sense for pipes of water either. If you install a low-flow faucet in your shower it doesn't have an adverse affect on the amount of water everyone else can receive.
onenickelmiracle
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May 16th, 2014 at 12:42:56 AM permalink
Lets call it the malevolent prince of a benevolent king.
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