Net Neutrality - Obama shows support

[Grey Fox]

Something totally different.

As a customer, different speed are available to you to buy some offer faster access some offer slower access for a lower price(sometimes). That's the size of the pipe you use to connect to the web. Like plumbing a 12inch pipe allows more water then a 2inch pipe.

Net neutrality refers to how ISP/Backbone providers/exchangers/Other treat each packet* of data. Net neutrality means they must treat them all equally & not offer prefered treatment to packets from a particular origin.

*The internet is a collection of billions & billions of small packet travelling the pipes. That's the water.

[CountDeMoney]

The very future of ISP shareholder value is at stake.

[Tamas]

Something totally different.

As a customer, different speed are available to you to buy some offer faster access some offer slower access for a lower price(sometimes). That's the size of the pipe you use to connect to the web. Like plumbing a 12inch pipe allows more water then a 2inch pipe.

Net neutrality refers to how ISP/Backbone providers/exchangers/Other treat each packet* of data. Net neutrality means they must treat them all equally & not offer prefered treatment to packets from a particular origin.

*The internet is a collection of billions & billions of small packet travelling the pipes. That's the water.

Ah, right. I do know how network traffic works though, thankyouverymuch.

[Admiral Yi]

Thanks Frenchy, very helpful.

[The Brain]

Surely porn packets should get right-of-way.

[Eddie Teach]

Surely porn packets should get right-of-way.

TREKKIE! 

[Zanza]

Could someone summarize the risks of net nonneutrality to me?

It means that your ISP (i.e. Comcast) not just gets money from you for your connection to them but also from the content providers (i.e. Netflix) for actually letting you use that connection at the speed you bought for that particular service. They would throttle certain content, either because it is their direct competition (when they offer content themselves) or because they need leverage to ask these content providers for fees. Obviously they would only target big, easily identifiable content providers (Netflix, Spotify, Youtube, maybe MMO games, maybe big porn sites).

The pro argument for non-neutrality is that it allows the infrastructure providers to recoup their investments in better infrastructure by being able to get fees from content providers as some content providers disproportionately benefit from these investments without own commercial risk taking.
The contra argument is of course that these content providers are the avantgarde of the internet that actually creates new attractive service and that the speed of innovation would go down if they could use the infrastructure that the ISP's direct customers already paid for anyway.

[Admiral Yi]

Thanks Fritz, very helpful. 

[mongers]

I'm glad we've got some bright sparks on the forum; I've on occasion wondered what the issue was about, but not being techy and lazy couldn't be arsed to read up on it.

Now thanks to you guys, I have a modicum of understanding.

[frunk]

Obviously they would only target big, easily identifiable content providers (Netflix, Spotify, Youtube, maybe MMO games, maybe big porn sites).

It's questionable on whether they would only target the big content providers.  They could just as easily throttle all content except for those that pay to get priority, and the pricing could be dependent on volume (or buy X GB of throughput at the faster rate, if you exceed then you'll be kicked to the slower speed).

[bogh]

The costs around serving broadband are mostly driven by traffic volumes. Giving you a higher speed generally only costs more in so far as you use more traffic (this all depends on regulatory regimes and the market setup, but it's the underlying mechanism). As first p2p and later streaming took off, traffic levels exploded. This drives a massive cost for ISPs that have to expand significantly to meet rising demands. Shaping, traffic management etc are all tools that can be employed to mitigate the flood.

It's pretty common to give a lower priority to e.g. P2P traffic in times of congestion, e.g. prime time or while a build out is ongoing. With P2P a very small minority of users (say 1%) will often account for massive amounts of traffic (say 20%), with everyone else essentially subsidising it.

The big fear is streaming traffic being put under a non neutral regime. Because of the way interconnections and CDNs work, there's currently a lot of variation in how services are treated on different networks. The overt "charge us or else" threat is hard to really employ - anyone big enough to make a difference will obviously have wide adoption with your customers - so it's a hard sell.

Not sure where I sit on this one - but it's mostly about who pays for what among big corporations, not really freedom of expression etc. Someone has to pay for the increasing build out, prices are going down for consumers and ISPs are struggling to keep up. Having the Internet grind to a halt by overload isn't a great prospect either.

[Jacob]

bogh!!!!!

How's it going?

... and it sounds like you know what you're talking about on this too.

[bogh]

It's all good. Have a kid now etc. In New Zealand doing streaming video product management.

I've worked in either ISPs or online streaming all my working life more or less.

[derspiess]

I still fall on the pro-net neutrality side, but I've seen some silly stuff coming from pro-NN activists over the years.  There was a widely-circulated video (I think there were similar chain-type emails that circulated before that) a few years ago that told us that we were headed for ISPs only allowing us to access 10-15 websites and that we'd have to pay extra to access additional sites.

[CountDeMoney]

There was a widely-circulated video (I think there were similar chain-type emails that circulated before that) a few years ago that told us that we were headed for ISPs only allowing us to access 10-15 websites and that we'd have to pay extra to access additional sites.

And don't think they wouldn't try if they could.