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This is the core of what was upheld: "No Blocking: broadband providers may not block access to legal content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices.

This is the core of what was upheld: "No Blocking: broadband providers may not block access to legal content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices. "No Throttling: broadband providers may not impair or degrade lawful Internet traffic on the basis of content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices. "No Paid Prioritization: broadband providers may not favor some lawful Internet traffic over other lawful traffic in exchange for consideration of any kind—in other words, no "fast lanes." This rule also bans ISPs from prioritizing content and services of their affiliates." This is a good thing. Big telcos have been trying to gut the FCC of its power ever since they issued their Open Internet Order: https://www.fcc.gov/general/open-internet https://www.fcc.gov/general/open-internet Next stop is the supreme court if they continue to push back against it.

komali2 10y ago
Does this mean netflix can stop paying Comcast?
- nikanj 10y ago
  Probably not, as Netflix has no way to prove Comcast is throttling them and the FCC is toothless
  - inanutshellus 10y ago
    Is this ruling not the FCC regaining "teeth"?
    - rkangel 10y ago
      No, this is validation that the FCCs position is legal. Nor they need a mechanism to enforce it properly. That doesn't just mean the ability to impose penalties (which is part of it) but also means the power to know what's going on so that penalties can be imposed.
      - dragonwriter 10y ago
        The FCC has existing complaint-based, investigatory, and other enforcement mechanisms, which have been around for a long time, and have been available to use (e.g., complaints have been accepted) under the Open Internet Order since it was issued (heck, they've had successful enforcement actions under the part of the old [2010] Open Internet Order -- the transparency rule -- that weren't struck down in Verizon v. FCC, such as the $100M penalty against AT&T Mobility for misrepresenting its "unlimited" plans.) What do you imagine it doesn't have that it needs with regard to the Open Internet Order in this area?
        cmdrfred 10y ago
        On paper you are correct, but I doubt the person who runs the FCC gets to golf with the president[0][1]. [0]http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/08/obama-golfs-with-comcast-ceo-170524 http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/08/obama-golfs-with... [1]http://www.nationalreview.com/article/375116/how-comcast-bought-democratic-party-matthew-continetti http://www.nationalreview.com/article/375116/how-comcast-bou...
        pdabbadabba 10y ago
        That's a pretty ironic view. This all got started when the FCC ordered Comcast to stop blocking file-sharing services like BitTorrent. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/01/AR2008080101205.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08... Comcast sued and the FCC spent the next eight years fighting.
        cmdrfred 10y ago
        I'm having trouble seeing the irony. Have you known corporations in America to suffer consequences of significant magnitude for illegal actives of late? Especially ones that own media companies and donate heavily to political campaigns[0]? It's entirely possible the FCC has no teeth, or is muzzled by some paymaster. [0]http://littlesis.org/person/2261/Brian_L_Roberts/political http://littlesis.org/person/2261/Brian_L_Roberts/political
  - athenot 10y ago
    Netflix customers can, though. Netflix set up a site, Fast.com for customers to test speed to their network. During the day now: 72 Mb/s In the evenings: 7Mb/s In the evenings, with my employer's VPN turned on: 66Mb/s (I'm on Comcast)
    - einrealist 10y ago
      Maybe you just take another route to your VPN gateway than to Netflix. So Netflix may be saturated, when your VPN is not.
      - athenot 10y ago
        Without VPN, the traceroute shows a direct connection to the destination. It's quite literally the next hop on the network. 7 hu-0-10-0-1-pe04.56marietta.ga.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.83.182) 22.233 ms 11.978 ms 10.577 ms 8 a104-72-128-31.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com (104.72.128.31) 11.783 ms 11.075 ms 18.287 ms With VPN, it's Comcast -> Corp -> ATT -> Netflix/Akamai. That's a rather longer route.
        phil21 10y ago
        Doesn't matter. What will be full in 99% of the cases will be the Comcast connection to $content_provider. In many cases an entire metro area will have no spare capacity between any of the major backbone providers and Comcast, so there is almost nothing you can do if you do not have the capability to route that traffic to a different region. This is why many times you will see "scenic routes" when on Comcast - it's providers routing traffic around Comcast's regional congestion in many cases. While this happens with many providers, Comcast is about the worst offender. They are quite happy to allow peering links to remain full at peak indefinitely - it's a way to put pressure on the content networks to pay for access to their routes over a private peering session. If you're a major web hosting operation, your customers will demand great performance to Comcast. They don't really care that Comcast is strong-arming paid peering agreements via those demands. It's especially awesome because Comcast generally charges more for bits to their tiny portion of the Internet, than what you pay for bits to a major backbone for the full table.
- dimino 10y ago
  There's a difference between "not throttling" and "allowing a peering agreement". This ruling doesn't mean Comcast must allow Netflix to put servers in Comcast's datacenters. Peering agreements have never really been part of a truly "neutral" Internet.
  - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
    > There's a difference between "not throttling" and "allowing a peering agreement". There basically isn't. Otherwise they just underprovision the default link so that anything using it is de facto throttled and the only alternative is peering. > This ruling doesn't mean Comcast must allow Netflix to put servers in Comcast's datacenters. Peering doesn't require putting servers in your datacenter. Peering means Netflix brings fiber to Comcast's datacenter and Comcast plugs it into one of their network ports.
    - rhino369 10y ago
      There is a big difference. Peering isn't the only way to deliver packets. There probably should be some regulation of ISP peering but it just doesn't fall under net neutrality. If anything it's sort of against net neutrality. A small startup would have pay for a CDN or a transit and netflix gets it for free? Just because they are big.
      - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
        > If anything it's sort of against net neutrality. A small startup would have pay for a CDN or a transit and netflix gets it for free? Just because they are big. They don't get anything for free that the little guy doesn't. They're just doing their own transit instead of paying somebody else to do it. Nobody is saying Netflix can peer with Comcast in California for Comcast customers in New England. They have to bring the traffic into the region, whether by paying someone for transit or by building their own transit network. Comcast just can't charge them for access to the last mile, and neither can it charge anybody else (like the transit providers who provide service to the little guy).
    - 10y ago
vermontdevil 10y ago
I doubt the Supreme Court will pick this up until the ninth seat is filled.
- rincebrain 10y ago
  I don't think they're going to put everything on hold until that seat is filled; if nothing else, the lack of movement toward confirming or denying a nominee means that they would become grossly backlogged by doing so.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    There are very few cases where Supreme Court action is mandatory; the Supreme Court choosing not to take cases won't result in them being backlogged, it will result in lower court decisions being let stand (forming only local, rather than national, authoritative precedent) because the Supreme Court choose not to hear appeals.
    - TheCoelacanth 10y ago
      Additionally, a 4-4 vote has exactly the same result as them not taking up the case at all, so it is really just a waste of time for them to take up cases that are expected to result in a 4-4 vote.
- coldpie 10y ago
  So, never?
  - vermontdevil 10y ago
    No. Not never. Just some cases will be punted a bit further down the road. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/06/02/the-supreme-court-is-taking-far-fewer-cases-than-usual-heres-why/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/06/0... Maybe I'm wrong but we'll see.
criddell 10y ago
So can broadband providers still strike zero-rating deals with companies like Spotify?
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  As the article notes, zero-rating is not covered by the Open Internet order; its an area that the FCC is actively working on but has not issued any orders related to, yet.
  - criddell 10y ago
    Yikes! Don't know how I missed that. Thanks.
  - anf 10y ago
    Is zero-rating pertinent outside of metered mobile bandwidth?
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      It only makes any sense in a metered or capped plan, and its currently only an issue in metered mobile plans (although it could in principal also be used with capped fixed-location plans, as well.)
- mordocai 10y ago
  According to the article, it looks like it.
tzs 10y ago
> Next stop is the supreme court if they continue to push back against it More likely the next stop is Congress. Reversing basically everything the FCC has done with the internet and making sure the FCC does not do any such things again is a major goal of the Republicans and they currently have majorities in the House and the Senate. Their presumptive presidential nominee, Trump, is also against net neutrality, seeing it as a liberal attack on conservatives: "Obama’s attack on the internet is another top down power grab. Net neutrality is the Fairness Doctrine. Will target conservative media" [1]. [1] https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/532608358508167168?lang=en https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/53260835850816716...
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > More likely the next stop is Congress. Well, if by "next" you mean "previous, current, next, and always"; Republicans in the Congress have been pushing to explicitly prohibit FCC Open Internet action since before the 2010 Open Internet Report and Order. The only thing they've gone after more has been the Affordable Care Act. But that's a different track than the legal challenges, which have been the only place where neutrality opponents have had concrete victories in the past.
- st3v3r 10y ago
  I can understand why Republicans don't like net neutrality. I cannot fathom at all the argument made by Trump that a law requiring equal access to both liberal and conservative media, not to mention everything in between and outside, is going to "target conservative media". Is he saying that if people have equal access to all, that they will reject conservative media?
  - rashkov 10y ago
    You're mistaken if you think that trump is presenting any kind of rational argument. Instead he is appealing to his voter base, many of whom feel that the mainstream media and Silicon Valley companies are silencing conservative viewpoints. See search terms: "Google biased towards Hillary", "Facebook censoring conservative news", "conservative msm", "conservative lamestream media".
JoshTriplett 10y ago
> "No Paid Prioritization: broadband providers may not favor some lawful Internet traffic over other lawful traffic in exchange for consideration of any kind—in other words, no "fast lanes." This rule also bans ISPs from prioritizing content and services of their affiliates." In the absence of a clear definition of "favor", this could also make it difficult for ISPs to host CDNs, or caching servers provided by content providers. If you put Netflix's caching box on your network, in some sense that "favors" Netflix traffic. And yet doing so is good for Netflix, the ISP, and the customer.
- wrsh07 10y ago
  If it's good for the ISP, then Netflix shouldn't have to pay for it, which would make it okay, right?
  - JoshTriplett 10y ago
    "consideration of any kind" would likely include giving the ISP a free server. For that matter, there's nothing wrong with a CDN giving an ISP money to host a server on their network, if the balance of costs between the CDN and the ISP works out that way. An early-stage CDN or site-specific CDN might well have to do that to get started.
- snowwrestler 10y ago
  An ISP hosting edge caching servers shouldn't violate the rule so long as: a) The ISP's own systems do not discriminate for or against the traffic from that edge server (i.e. no rules on Comcast's routers to slow down netflix.com while speeding up nbc.com). b) The ISP offers the same edge server hosting deal to anyone who wants it. Big ISPs now own content companies, so even if they don't lease space to Netflix, they would still have edge caching servers on their networks--their own. The neutrality rule seeks to ensure that they don't shape their network traffic to degrade content from other providers who don't own the wires and routers.

komali2 10y ago

Does this mean netflix can stop paying Comcast?

nikanj 10y ago
Probably not, as Netflix has no way to prove Comcast is throttling them and the FCC is toothless
- inanutshellus 10y ago
  Is this ruling not the FCC regaining "teeth"?
  - rkangel 10y ago
    No, this is validation that the FCCs position is legal. Nor they need a mechanism to enforce it properly. That doesn't just mean the ability to impose penalties (which is part of it) but also means the power to know what's going on so that penalties can be imposed.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      The FCC has existing complaint-based, investigatory, and other enforcement mechanisms, which have been around for a long time, and have been available to use (e.g., complaints have been accepted) under the Open Internet Order since it was issued (heck, they've had successful enforcement actions under the part of the old [2010] Open Internet Order -- the transparency rule -- that weren't struck down in Verizon v. FCC, such as the $100M penalty against AT&T Mobility for misrepresenting its "unlimited" plans.) What do you imagine it doesn't have that it needs with regard to the Open Internet Order in this area?
      - cmdrfred 10y ago
        On paper you are correct, but I doubt the person who runs the FCC gets to golf with the president[0][1]. [0]http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/08/obama-golfs-with-comcast-ceo-170524 http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/08/obama-golfs-with... [1]http://www.nationalreview.com/article/375116/how-comcast-bought-democratic-party-matthew-continetti http://www.nationalreview.com/article/375116/how-comcast-bou...
        pdabbadabba 10y ago
        That's a pretty ironic view. This all got started when the FCC ordered Comcast to stop blocking file-sharing services like BitTorrent. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/01/AR2008080101205.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08... Comcast sued and the FCC spent the next eight years fighting.
        cmdrfred 10y ago
        I'm having trouble seeing the irony. Have you known corporations in America to suffer consequences of significant magnitude for illegal actives of late? Especially ones that own media companies and donate heavily to political campaigns[0]? It's entirely possible the FCC has no teeth, or is muzzled by some paymaster. [0]http://littlesis.org/person/2261/Brian_L_Roberts/political http://littlesis.org/person/2261/Brian_L_Roberts/political
- athenot 10y ago
  Netflix customers can, though. Netflix set up a site, Fast.com for customers to test speed to their network. During the day now: 72 Mb/s In the evenings: 7Mb/s In the evenings, with my employer's VPN turned on: 66Mb/s (I'm on Comcast)
  - einrealist 10y ago
    Maybe you just take another route to your VPN gateway than to Netflix. So Netflix may be saturated, when your VPN is not.
    - athenot 10y ago
      Without VPN, the traceroute shows a direct connection to the destination. It's quite literally the next hop on the network. 7 hu-0-10-0-1-pe04.56marietta.ga.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.83.182) 22.233 ms 11.978 ms 10.577 ms 8 a104-72-128-31.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com (104.72.128.31) 11.783 ms 11.075 ms 18.287 ms With VPN, it's Comcast -> Corp -> ATT -> Netflix/Akamai. That's a rather longer route.
      - phil21 10y ago
        Doesn't matter. What will be full in 99% of the cases will be the Comcast connection to $content_provider. In many cases an entire metro area will have no spare capacity between any of the major backbone providers and Comcast, so there is almost nothing you can do if you do not have the capability to route that traffic to a different region. This is why many times you will see "scenic routes" when on Comcast - it's providers routing traffic around Comcast's regional congestion in many cases. While this happens with many providers, Comcast is about the worst offender. They are quite happy to allow peering links to remain full at peak indefinitely - it's a way to put pressure on the content networks to pay for access to their routes over a private peering session. If you're a major web hosting operation, your customers will demand great performance to Comcast. They don't really care that Comcast is strong-arming paid peering agreements via those demands. It's especially awesome because Comcast generally charges more for bits to their tiny portion of the Internet, than what you pay for bits to a major backbone for the full table.
dimino 10y ago
There's a difference between "not throttling" and "allowing a peering agreement". This ruling doesn't mean Comcast must allow Netflix to put servers in Comcast's datacenters. Peering agreements have never really been part of a truly "neutral" Internet.
- AnthonyMouse 10y ago
  > There's a difference between "not throttling" and "allowing a peering agreement". There basically isn't. Otherwise they just underprovision the default link so that anything using it is de facto throttled and the only alternative is peering. > This ruling doesn't mean Comcast must allow Netflix to put servers in Comcast's datacenters. Peering doesn't require putting servers in your datacenter. Peering means Netflix brings fiber to Comcast's datacenter and Comcast plugs it into one of their network ports.
  - rhino369 10y ago
    There is a big difference. Peering isn't the only way to deliver packets. There probably should be some regulation of ISP peering but it just doesn't fall under net neutrality. If anything it's sort of against net neutrality. A small startup would have pay for a CDN or a transit and netflix gets it for free? Just because they are big.
    - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
      > If anything it's sort of against net neutrality. A small startup would have pay for a CDN or a transit and netflix gets it for free? Just because they are big. They don't get anything for free that the little guy doesn't. They're just doing their own transit instead of paying somebody else to do it. Nobody is saying Netflix can peer with Comcast in California for Comcast customers in New England. They have to bring the traffic into the region, whether by paying someone for transit or by building their own transit network. Comcast just can't charge them for access to the last mile, and neither can it charge anybody else (like the transit providers who provide service to the little guy).
  - 10y ago

vermontdevil 10y ago

I doubt the Supreme Court will pick this up until the ninth seat is filled.

rincebrain 10y ago
I don't think they're going to put everything on hold until that seat is filled; if nothing else, the lack of movement toward confirming or denying a nominee means that they would become grossly backlogged by doing so.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  There are very few cases where Supreme Court action is mandatory; the Supreme Court choosing not to take cases won't result in them being backlogged, it will result in lower court decisions being let stand (forming only local, rather than national, authoritative precedent) because the Supreme Court choose not to hear appeals.
  - TheCoelacanth 10y ago
    Additionally, a 4-4 vote has exactly the same result as them not taking up the case at all, so it is really just a waste of time for them to take up cases that are expected to result in a 4-4 vote.
coldpie 10y ago
So, never?
- vermontdevil 10y ago
  No. Not never. Just some cases will be punted a bit further down the road. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/06/02/the-supreme-court-is-taking-far-fewer-cases-than-usual-heres-why/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/06/0... Maybe I'm wrong but we'll see.

criddell 10y ago

So can broadband providers still strike zero-rating deals with companies like Spotify?

dragonwriter 10y ago
As the article notes, zero-rating is not covered by the Open Internet order; its an area that the FCC is actively working on but has not issued any orders related to, yet.
- criddell 10y ago
  Yikes! Don't know how I missed that. Thanks.
- anf 10y ago
  Is zero-rating pertinent outside of metered mobile bandwidth?
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    It only makes any sense in a metered or capped plan, and its currently only an issue in metered mobile plans (although it could in principal also be used with capped fixed-location plans, as well.)
mordocai 10y ago
According to the article, it looks like it.

tzs 10y ago

> Next stop is the supreme court if they continue to push back against it More likely the next stop is Congress. Reversing basically everything the FCC has done with the internet and making sure the FCC does not do any such things again is a major goal of the Republicans and they currently have majorities in the House and the Senate. Their presumptive presidential nominee, Trump, is also against net neutrality, seeing it as a liberal attack on conservatives: "Obama’s attack on the internet is another top down power grab. Net neutrality is the Fairness Doctrine. Will target conservative media" [1]. [1] https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/532608358508167168?lang=en https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/53260835850816716...

dragonwriter 10y ago
> More likely the next stop is Congress. Well, if by "next" you mean "previous, current, next, and always"; Republicans in the Congress have been pushing to explicitly prohibit FCC Open Internet action since before the 2010 Open Internet Report and Order. The only thing they've gone after more has been the Affordable Care Act. But that's a different track than the legal challenges, which have been the only place where neutrality opponents have had concrete victories in the past.
st3v3r 10y ago
I can understand why Republicans don't like net neutrality. I cannot fathom at all the argument made by Trump that a law requiring equal access to both liberal and conservative media, not to mention everything in between and outside, is going to "target conservative media". Is he saying that if people have equal access to all, that they will reject conservative media?
- rashkov 10y ago
  You're mistaken if you think that trump is presenting any kind of rational argument. Instead he is appealing to his voter base, many of whom feel that the mainstream media and Silicon Valley companies are silencing conservative viewpoints. See search terms: "Google biased towards Hillary", "Facebook censoring conservative news", "conservative msm", "conservative lamestream media".

JoshTriplett 10y ago

> "No Paid Prioritization: broadband providers may not favor some lawful Internet traffic over other lawful traffic in exchange for consideration of any kind—in other words, no "fast lanes." This rule also bans ISPs from prioritizing content and services of their affiliates." In the absence of a clear definition of "favor", this could also make it difficult for ISPs to host CDNs, or caching servers provided by content providers. If you put Netflix's caching box on your network, in some sense that "favors" Netflix traffic. And yet doing so is good for Netflix, the ISP, and the customer.

wrsh07 10y ago
If it's good for the ISP, then Netflix shouldn't have to pay for it, which would make it okay, right?
- JoshTriplett 10y ago
  "consideration of any kind" would likely include giving the ISP a free server. For that matter, there's nothing wrong with a CDN giving an ISP money to host a server on their network, if the balance of costs between the CDN and the ISP works out that way. An early-stage CDN or site-specific CDN might well have to do that to get started.
snowwrestler 10y ago
An ISP hosting edge caching servers shouldn't violate the rule so long as: a) The ISP's own systems do not discriminate for or against the traffic from that edge server (i.e. no rules on Comcast's routers to slow down netflix.com while speeding up nbc.com). b) The ISP offers the same edge server hosting deal to anyone who wants it. Big ISPs now own content companies, so even if they don't lease space to Netflix, they would still have edge caching servers on their networks--their own. The neutrality rule seeks to ensure that they don't shape their network traffic to degrade content from other providers who don't own the wires and routers.