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Does anyone with a strong understanding of internetworking, peering and transit contract negotiation actually believe that "net neutrality" is possible? traffic

Does anyone with a strong understanding of internetworking, peering and transit contract negotiation actually believe that "net neutrality" is possible? traffic shaping of saturated links seems like a necessary outcome to not undermine the smaller users (i.e. low bandwidth communications) that are impacted by heavy users (i.e. video streaming) if two peering parties can't come to terms on cost sharing for link upgrades.

Karunamon 10y ago
Net neutrality refers to packet shaping by source and destination. QoS refers to packet shaping by type of content.
- wtallis 10y ago
  I don't fully agree with those definitions. ISPs need to be prohibited from preferring HTTP and TCP over other protocols. They should be permitted to perform only the kinds of QoS that will treat two traffic flows with the same data rate and packet sizes equally even if they are using different protocols and port numbers. Overt discrimination rules that specify preferences for certain endpoints or certain types of traffic (as identified by inspecting packets) is wrong, but fair QoS that only considers actual traffic patterns and only operates in the event of actual congestion is beneficial without being harmfully discriminatory.
  - Karunamon 10y ago
    ISPs need to be prohibited from preferring HTTP and TCP over other protocols If anything, it would be the reverse.. HTTP and TCP (which doesn't care if its packets arrive out of order) getting deprioritized in the face of streaming content (which does). That kind of blows your restriction away. QoS under heavy load is the difference between everybody getting to use their apps and one or two people getting to use their apps. Thing is, there's no successful ISP in the world that has enough capacity to service maximum bandwidth from all of their customers at the same time. There's always going to be a fudge factor worked in, and QoS to help out when that goes wrong.
    - wtallis 10y ago
      Out of order delivery is a complete red herring. Modern QoS systems don't cause packet re-ordering, though they do cause some re-transmits for flows that don't support ECN and thus need packet loss as a congestion signal. Video streaming like Netflix and YouTube has buffering far in excess of the RTT, so retransmissions don't hurt noticeably. But you're still missing the main point, which is that good QoS doesn't need rules that single out and privilege or deprioritize any specific classes of traffic. Discrimination rulesets are obsolete. A network with good AQM at points of potential congestion will support full bandwidth utilization with sufficiently low latency for applications like VoIP and gaming, which can coexist alongside video streaming and bulk file transfers. QoS can be both effective and neutral with respect to content type and transport and destination. Bad obsolete QoS shouldn't be used as an argument against net neutrality regulations. If it happens that net neutrality regulations both prohibit unfair business practices and require ISPs to fix broken congestion management, that's a good thing.
riskable 10y ago
Does anyone actually believe we will "run out of bandwidth" to the point where traffic shaping will become essential? Traffic shaping of saturated links sounds like a waste of time and resources when it's so much easier to just upgrade the hardware. It's cheaper too! It also happens to be the fucking purpose of the ISP (to provide adequate bandwidth for their customers). Think of how much it costs to pay people to manage an incredibly complicated traffic ruleset--not to mention the massively increased CPU overhead--versus a one-time hardware purchase. What you're talking about is either an ISP that's dying and can't afford to upgrade their shit or a greedy evil monster that simply wants to extract more profit from existing infrastructure in the most obtuse and invasive way possible.
- woah 10y ago
  Do you also argue strenuously against optimizing software CPU and memory consumption? > It's the FUCKING PURPOSE of AWS to run my code! Why don't they just buy more hardware to make it run faster?
  - ardacinar 10y ago
    Has Amazon ever delivered less than what was advertised when you paid for it? I mean, I never experienced anything like that but geniunely curious if it is a thing (Might be possible in AWS lambda etc.)
    - oculusthrift 10y ago
      no. there is a service level agreement so if they don't meet the promises there is repurcussione. it's also not an apt analogy considering one can easily switch to Azure or Google Cloud or Self hosting whereas most people are stuck with one ISP that has a monopoly in that area
- grandalf 10y ago
  > Traffic shaping of saturated links sounds like a waste of time and resources when it's so much easier to just upgrade the hardware. It's cheaper too! It also happens to be the fucking purpose of the ISP (to provide adequate bandwidth for their customers). This is a very naive comment. For anything other than a dedicated "business class" circuit with hard performance guarantees, speculation and shaping is involved in delivering the end product.
pmalynin 10y ago
AFAIK Level3 a few years back offered AT&T to pay and do the upgrade of the links on the AT&Ts side, which they refused. At this point its blatant monopolistic anti-consumerism.
- wtallis 10y ago
  I think it was Verizon, not AT&T. Some peering point in the LA area was overloaded, primarily due to Netflix traffic.
wmf 10y ago
Peering and transit links simply shouldn't ever be saturated. If the parties can't come to terms then the government should set the rate at zero (Judgment of Solomon style).
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
oldrny 10y ago
Isn't the idea of network neutrality to prevent discriminating between traffic sources, not quantities? I.e. providers can still charge an arm and a leg for heavy users, and allow 'light' users to pay significantly less (maybe based on some non-linear scale?)
- aanm1988 10y ago
  Yeah, but anti-neutrality people tend to try to create the other narrative. Popular metaphor I've seen is "net neutrality is like telling the post office they have to charge the same for a large heavy package and an envelope". Which is not true, you have to charge the same for each heavy package regardless of what is in it, but you can still charge more than an envelope.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
throwaway729 10y ago
So there's "internetworking, peering and transit contract negotiation", etc. And then there's "Comcast allowed to bundle internal video streaming platform with bandwidth in order to compete against Netflix" It's completely trivial for the FCC to allow the former and clamp down hard on the latter.
- jerkstate 10y ago
  Eisenach wrote some papers on using existing antitrust laws rather than NN laws to punish anticompetitive behavior, which I think is reasonable. Apply the laws we already have, don't make new laws that prevent reasonable behavior.
  - leereeves 10y ago
    Antitrust laws may not prevent bundling and other anti-competitive behavior. For example, Apple has so far been allowed to bundle Apple apps with phones, forbid any competing apps, and require developers to distribute apps through the App Store.
    - cbuq 10y ago
      I see the main difference here being you don't need to buy an Apple phone
      - leereeves 10y ago
        The same argument would be made in areas where you can choose between DSL and cable Internet. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if satellite and wireless Internet were offered as evidence of sufficient competition in the market.
        vertex-four 10y ago
        Indeed - a 256kbps connection provides sufficient competition with a 1gbps connection in the eyes of the courts so far.
westbywest 10y ago
There is a difference between shaping traffic to better fit the capacity available, and constricting traffic since you're incentivized to push alternate traffic from a business partner. The latter is what NN advocates are trying to discourage, and it does arguably mess with the 'level playing field' notion.
- dnautics 10y ago
  I don't think this distinction is as trivial as you think. Especially in a legal sense. Unless you want judges adjudicating in the Potter Stewart "I know it when I see it" sense, which can get scary.
  - OraclesDyn388 10y ago
    You did nothing to explain how it's more complicated, or inform us of what we're missing, and ended on a draconian fear mongery type comment. I don't really get how HN can take itself so much more serious than Reddit or Twitter.
  - belorn 10y ago
    The legal system is built on intent and purpose, so from a legal sense, such distinction is not trivial but its quite normal. What we as a society might want to avoid is ISP that calls a company and say "Would it not be terrible if you lost access to a third of the population in this country. Pay us now, or we will redirect those users to a competitor."
    - dnautics 10y ago
      That's already covered by antitrust law
  - wtallis 10y ago
    If your traffic shaping rules are different depending on protocol or port number or source or destination IP or AS, then that's discriminatory. Within the space of packet scheduling policies that treat all protocols equally, it is still possible to be somewhat discriminatory and it is still possible to do good QoS. Further and more careful regulations may be necessary, but it is certainly possible to cleanly prohibit a large category of bad behavior without having harmful side effects.
jellicle 10y ago
The net neutrality battle is over shaping traffic to maximize profits, not shaping traffic to maximize throughput/usability. In a dollar-shaped traffic paradigm, you might slow down traffic even when your link is 3/4 empty, in order to maximize profits.
pjc50 10y ago
Interesting example there, because if you apply traffic shaping against video streaming you either force it to reduce quality or ruin it completely. What everyone is worried about is that ISPs will threaten to "shape" Netflix traffic unless Netflix pay them - straightforward extortion. Or zero-rate Facebook traffic while counting use of independent non-Facebook news sources against users' quotas.
- wahern 10y ago
  That's not how it will play out, though. Even without network neutrality rules in-place, that would run afoul of anti-trust and consumer protection law. The way ISPs will extract money is by nominally creating a two -tiered network. The lower tier will be the default tier. All external traffic will be routed over it by default. Entities like NetFlix will be able to pay the ISP to have their traffic routed over higher tier. The higher tier will have better latency, will be charged against an end-users throughput meter at a discounted rate, or both. It will be a form of hidden price discrimination and thus a form of hidden tax on the market. price discrimination is usually a good thing, and even a hidden tax isn't per se bad. The reason this is bad is it will allow the ISPs to extract far more wealth from the Internet than they would ever add by improved and cheaper service. A free market requires transparency in pricing between Alice and Bob. If Mallory can insert herself between Alice and Bob, she can obscure pricing signals. That means Bob will have a more difficult time assessing the worth of services provided him by Mallory and Alice. That also implies he'll have trouble assessing the value proposition of competitors to Alice and Mallory. Comcast may try to extort money from Netflix, but alot of people assume that in the long-run Netflix would benefit from the tactic. They have a huge first-mover advantage. Comcast would never be able to provide a service like Netflix as well as Netflix does. The result will be that while Comcast may extract profits from Netflix, Netflix and other incumbents will have less competition and in the long-term might even benefit relative to net neutrality. Comcast will effectively provide a moat for Netflix and other incumbents in the form of higher barrier to market entrance for startups, as the incumbents will pay an effectively cheaper per-byte rate (much cheaper than in a net neutrality world) given their huge volume. Furthermore, incumbents will be a cash-cow to the ISPs, creating significant incentive to be hostile to competitors. The losers will be consumers, prospective competitors, and overall technological and market vibrancy. But all of this will, again, be largely hidden. The solution is simple, obvious, fair, well-understood, but stark, especially in the context of a conservative narrative about regulation. It also has tons of precedent going back hundreds of years in terms of the legal and economic study of common carriers. The end-to-end principle of networks is conceptually related, too. The malady will be an obscure low-grade fever that saps value and weakens competitiveness, but will largely go ignored over time, after which people will wonder why the pace of innovation slowed down so much.
grandalf 10y ago
> actually believe that "net neutrality" is possible? I don't think very many of the net-neutrality zealots have much technical understanding of internetworking or how ISP business models work. Anything other than a dedicated, business class circuit has a lot of shaping and speculation baked in. This is why "residential" bandwidth is so much cheaper than dedicated. One commenter last time this came up mentioned that the best practice for residential bandwidth providers is to have 50% headroom. As QoS algorithms get better, and traffic patterns are better understood, the amount of headroom ISPs need to buy will decrease, or it will get cheaper (as upstream providers arbitrage into a peak / off-peak (expected vs unexpected) model. The thing we need to preserve about ISP incentives is that there should always be an incentive to improve network quality. However for networks, quality is in the eye of the beholder. If your customers want to download 4K movies, maybe 1000ms of latency is not a big deal. But if they want to do remote screen sharing or gaming (where even small latency is noticeable) then 1000ms latency would cause the ISP to go out of business. The technical aspect of this that many people miss is that the same piece of cable can support very different traffic patterns (often but not always) AT THE EXPENSE OF other ones. Net neutrality seemingly advocates having lawyers and politicians come up with the "correct" shaping for all traffic, with no knowledge of what an ISP's customers want to use the circuit for, and no knowledge of what protocols might become popular next year. Net Neutrality advocates want politicians and lawyers to effectively force ISPs to support a QoS that is closer to some unspecified ideal which those pols and lawyers have no idea about. They are simply being pressured/hired to do something they are clueless about, which helps some businesses and hurts others. Google wants net neutrality because all service providers prefer that others bear the cost of delivering their content to end users. All content providers would generally agree. But last mile providers would disagree, because they are faced with spikes in demand and growing/shrinking user-bases and are fighting not just against the price of bandwidth but the technological limits imposed by cable modems, LTE, etc. They would rather not have added constraints placed upon them (which will add costs). While someday it may be necessary to prevent predatory QoS schemes from being imposed, there is not an adequate level of sophistication in regulators to trust them to create wise regulation in this area.
- wtallis 10y ago
  > The technical aspect of this that many people miss is that the same piece of cable can support very different traffic patterns AT THE EXPENSE OF other ones. QoS isn't always a zero-sum game. Even non-interactive HTTP downloads benefit from reduced queuing latency, because TCP congestion control is more accurate when it gets timely feedback. On the flip side, explicit rules to never drop packets matching a certain signature often produces a negative sum game, and one that is easily abused.
__jal 10y ago
Does anyone with a strong understanding of internetworking, peering and transit not see the difference between QOS for technical reasons and things like zero rating? It seems a lot of people are invested in muddying the difference.
OraclesDyn388 10y ago
The idea as I define is: Yes congestion management is a necessity. But congestion management should be done at as high a level as possible, that is, if we see a lot of bits, we add more hardware or shift those bits over to a similar path of similar performance and capacity and fill it, then add more. We don't care about who sent them or received them, we just keep congestion low overall. Usually the anti-neutrality crowd pedals an agenda of metered paying and those who can't get shittier service. It's more regressive rules intended to raise costs/profits by focusing on squeezing more money from those that have it, and ignoring everyone else. The former is merely a technical solution to a technical problem. The latter is the ruling financialist class forcing their "sound economics" on humanity without providing anything truly valuable in return
michaelmrose 10y ago
If you aren't shaping based on which endpoints paid a bribe we don't have much of an issue do we. Google network neutrality then come back.
continuational 10y ago
Can't you just share the available bandwidth fairly between users in that case?

Karunamon 10y ago

Net neutrality refers to packet shaping by source and destination. QoS refers to packet shaping by type of content.

wtallis 10y ago
I don't fully agree with those definitions. ISPs need to be prohibited from preferring HTTP and TCP over other protocols. They should be permitted to perform only the kinds of QoS that will treat two traffic flows with the same data rate and packet sizes equally even if they are using different protocols and port numbers. Overt discrimination rules that specify preferences for certain endpoints or certain types of traffic (as identified by inspecting packets) is wrong, but fair QoS that only considers actual traffic patterns and only operates in the event of actual congestion is beneficial without being harmfully discriminatory.
- Karunamon 10y ago
  ISPs need to be prohibited from preferring HTTP and TCP over other protocols If anything, it would be the reverse.. HTTP and TCP (which doesn't care if its packets arrive out of order) getting deprioritized in the face of streaming content (which does). That kind of blows your restriction away. QoS under heavy load is the difference between everybody getting to use their apps and one or two people getting to use their apps. Thing is, there's no successful ISP in the world that has enough capacity to service maximum bandwidth from all of their customers at the same time. There's always going to be a fudge factor worked in, and QoS to help out when that goes wrong.
  - wtallis 10y ago
    Out of order delivery is a complete red herring. Modern QoS systems don't cause packet re-ordering, though they do cause some re-transmits for flows that don't support ECN and thus need packet loss as a congestion signal. Video streaming like Netflix and YouTube has buffering far in excess of the RTT, so retransmissions don't hurt noticeably. But you're still missing the main point, which is that good QoS doesn't need rules that single out and privilege or deprioritize any specific classes of traffic. Discrimination rulesets are obsolete. A network with good AQM at points of potential congestion will support full bandwidth utilization with sufficiently low latency for applications like VoIP and gaming, which can coexist alongside video streaming and bulk file transfers. QoS can be both effective and neutral with respect to content type and transport and destination. Bad obsolete QoS shouldn't be used as an argument against net neutrality regulations. If it happens that net neutrality regulations both prohibit unfair business practices and require ISPs to fix broken congestion management, that's a good thing.

riskable 10y ago

Does anyone actually believe we will "run out of bandwidth" to the point where traffic shaping will become essential? Traffic shaping of saturated links sounds like a waste of time and resources when it's so much easier to just upgrade the hardware. It's cheaper too! It also happens to be the fucking purpose of the ISP (to provide adequate bandwidth for their customers). Think of how much it costs to pay people to manage an incredibly complicated traffic ruleset--not to mention the massively increased CPU overhead--versus a one-time hardware purchase. What you're talking about is either an ISP that's dying and can't afford to upgrade their shit or a greedy evil monster that simply wants to extract more profit from existing infrastructure in the most obtuse and invasive way possible.

woah 10y ago
Do you also argue strenuously against optimizing software CPU and memory consumption? > It's the FUCKING PURPOSE of AWS to run my code! Why don't they just buy more hardware to make it run faster?
- ardacinar 10y ago
  Has Amazon ever delivered less than what was advertised when you paid for it? I mean, I never experienced anything like that but geniunely curious if it is a thing (Might be possible in AWS lambda etc.)
  - oculusthrift 10y ago
    no. there is a service level agreement so if they don't meet the promises there is repurcussione. it's also not an apt analogy considering one can easily switch to Azure or Google Cloud or Self hosting whereas most people are stuck with one ISP that has a monopoly in that area
grandalf 10y ago
> Traffic shaping of saturated links sounds like a waste of time and resources when it's so much easier to just upgrade the hardware. It's cheaper too! It also happens to be the fucking purpose of the ISP (to provide adequate bandwidth for their customers). This is a very naive comment. For anything other than a dedicated "business class" circuit with hard performance guarantees, speculation and shaping is involved in delivering the end product.

pmalynin 10y ago

AFAIK Level3 a few years back offered AT&T to pay and do the upgrade of the links on the AT&Ts side, which they refused. At this point its blatant monopolistic anti-consumerism.

wtallis 10y ago
I think it was Verizon, not AT&T. Some peering point in the LA area was overloaded, primarily due to Netflix traffic.

wmf 10y ago

Peering and transit links simply shouldn't ever be saturated. If the parties can't come to terms then the government should set the rate at zero (Judgment of Solomon style).

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

oldrny 10y ago

Isn't the idea of network neutrality to prevent discriminating between traffic sources, not quantities? I.e. providers can still charge an arm and a leg for heavy users, and allow 'light' users to pay significantly less (maybe based on some non-linear scale?)

aanm1988 10y ago
Yeah, but anti-neutrality people tend to try to create the other narrative. Popular metaphor I've seen is "net neutrality is like telling the post office they have to charge the same for a large heavy package and an envelope". Which is not true, you have to charge the same for each heavy package regardless of what is in it, but you can still charge more than an envelope.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

throwaway729 10y ago

So there's "internetworking, peering and transit contract negotiation", etc. And then there's "Comcast allowed to bundle internal video streaming platform with bandwidth in order to compete against Netflix" It's completely trivial for the FCC to allow the former and clamp down hard on the latter.

jerkstate 10y ago
Eisenach wrote some papers on using existing antitrust laws rather than NN laws to punish anticompetitive behavior, which I think is reasonable. Apply the laws we already have, don't make new laws that prevent reasonable behavior.
- leereeves 10y ago
  Antitrust laws may not prevent bundling and other anti-competitive behavior. For example, Apple has so far been allowed to bundle Apple apps with phones, forbid any competing apps, and require developers to distribute apps through the App Store.
  - cbuq 10y ago
    I see the main difference here being you don't need to buy an Apple phone
    - leereeves 10y ago
      The same argument would be made in areas where you can choose between DSL and cable Internet. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if satellite and wireless Internet were offered as evidence of sufficient competition in the market.
      - vertex-four 10y ago
        Indeed - a 256kbps connection provides sufficient competition with a 1gbps connection in the eyes of the courts so far.

westbywest 10y ago

There is a difference between shaping traffic to better fit the capacity available, and constricting traffic since you're incentivized to push alternate traffic from a business partner. The latter is what NN advocates are trying to discourage, and it does arguably mess with the 'level playing field' notion.

dnautics 10y ago
I don't think this distinction is as trivial as you think. Especially in a legal sense. Unless you want judges adjudicating in the Potter Stewart "I know it when I see it" sense, which can get scary.
- OraclesDyn388 10y ago
  You did nothing to explain how it's more complicated, or inform us of what we're missing, and ended on a draconian fear mongery type comment. I don't really get how HN can take itself so much more serious than Reddit or Twitter.
- belorn 10y ago
  The legal system is built on intent and purpose, so from a legal sense, such distinction is not trivial but its quite normal. What we as a society might want to avoid is ISP that calls a company and say "Would it not be terrible if you lost access to a third of the population in this country. Pay us now, or we will redirect those users to a competitor."
  - dnautics 10y ago
    That's already covered by antitrust law
- wtallis 10y ago
  If your traffic shaping rules are different depending on protocol or port number or source or destination IP or AS, then that's discriminatory. Within the space of packet scheduling policies that treat all protocols equally, it is still possible to be somewhat discriminatory and it is still possible to do good QoS. Further and more careful regulations may be necessary, but it is certainly possible to cleanly prohibit a large category of bad behavior without having harmful side effects.

jellicle 10y ago

The net neutrality battle is over shaping traffic to maximize profits, not shaping traffic to maximize throughput/usability. In a dollar-shaped traffic paradigm, you might slow down traffic even when your link is 3/4 empty, in order to maximize profits.

pjc50 10y ago

Interesting example there, because if you apply traffic shaping against video streaming you either force it to reduce quality or ruin it completely. What everyone is worried about is that ISPs will threaten to "shape" Netflix traffic unless Netflix pay them - straightforward extortion. Or zero-rate Facebook traffic while counting use of independent non-Facebook news sources against users' quotas.

wahern 10y ago
That's not how it will play out, though. Even without network neutrality rules in-place, that would run afoul of anti-trust and consumer protection law. The way ISPs will extract money is by nominally creating a two -tiered network. The lower tier will be the default tier. All external traffic will be routed over it by default. Entities like NetFlix will be able to pay the ISP to have their traffic routed over higher tier. The higher tier will have better latency, will be charged against an end-users throughput meter at a discounted rate, or both. It will be a form of hidden price discrimination and thus a form of hidden tax on the market. price discrimination is usually a good thing, and even a hidden tax isn't per se bad. The reason this is bad is it will allow the ISPs to extract far more wealth from the Internet than they would ever add by improved and cheaper service. A free market requires transparency in pricing between Alice and Bob. If Mallory can insert herself between Alice and Bob, she can obscure pricing signals. That means Bob will have a more difficult time assessing the worth of services provided him by Mallory and Alice. That also implies he'll have trouble assessing the value proposition of competitors to Alice and Mallory. Comcast may try to extort money from Netflix, but alot of people assume that in the long-run Netflix would benefit from the tactic. They have a huge first-mover advantage. Comcast would never be able to provide a service like Netflix as well as Netflix does. The result will be that while Comcast may extract profits from Netflix, Netflix and other incumbents will have less competition and in the long-term might even benefit relative to net neutrality. Comcast will effectively provide a moat for Netflix and other incumbents in the form of higher barrier to market entrance for startups, as the incumbents will pay an effectively cheaper per-byte rate (much cheaper than in a net neutrality world) given their huge volume. Furthermore, incumbents will be a cash-cow to the ISPs, creating significant incentive to be hostile to competitors. The losers will be consumers, prospective competitors, and overall technological and market vibrancy. But all of this will, again, be largely hidden. The solution is simple, obvious, fair, well-understood, but stark, especially in the context of a conservative narrative about regulation. It also has tons of precedent going back hundreds of years in terms of the legal and economic study of common carriers. The end-to-end principle of networks is conceptually related, too. The malady will be an obscure low-grade fever that saps value and weakens competitiveness, but will largely go ignored over time, after which people will wonder why the pace of innovation slowed down so much.

grandalf 10y ago

> actually believe that "net neutrality" is possible? I don't think very many of the net-neutrality zealots have much technical understanding of internetworking or how ISP business models work. Anything other than a dedicated, business class circuit has a lot of shaping and speculation baked in. This is why "residential" bandwidth is so much cheaper than dedicated. One commenter last time this came up mentioned that the best practice for residential bandwidth providers is to have 50% headroom. As QoS algorithms get better, and traffic patterns are better understood, the amount of headroom ISPs need to buy will decrease, or it will get cheaper (as upstream providers arbitrage into a peak / off-peak (expected vs unexpected) model. The thing we need to preserve about ISP incentives is that there should always be an incentive to improve network quality. However for networks, quality is in the eye of the beholder. If your customers want to download 4K movies, maybe 1000ms of latency is not a big deal. But if they want to do remote screen sharing or gaming (where even small latency is noticeable) then 1000ms latency would cause the ISP to go out of business. The technical aspect of this that many people miss is that the same piece of cable can support very different traffic patterns (often but not always) AT THE EXPENSE OF other ones. Net neutrality seemingly advocates having lawyers and politicians come up with the "correct" shaping for all traffic, with no knowledge of what an ISP's customers want to use the circuit for, and no knowledge of what protocols might become popular next year. Net Neutrality advocates want politicians and lawyers to effectively force ISPs to support a QoS that is closer to some unspecified ideal which those pols and lawyers have no idea about. They are simply being pressured/hired to do something they are clueless about, which helps some businesses and hurts others. Google wants net neutrality because all service providers prefer that others bear the cost of delivering their content to end users. All content providers would generally agree. But last mile providers would disagree, because they are faced with spikes in demand and growing/shrinking user-bases and are fighting not just against the price of bandwidth but the technological limits imposed by cable modems, LTE, etc. They would rather not have added constraints placed upon them (which will add costs). While someday it may be necessary to prevent predatory QoS schemes from being imposed, there is not an adequate level of sophistication in regulators to trust them to create wise regulation in this area.

wtallis 10y ago
> The technical aspect of this that many people miss is that the same piece of cable can support very different traffic patterns AT THE EXPENSE OF other ones. QoS isn't always a zero-sum game. Even non-interactive HTTP downloads benefit from reduced queuing latency, because TCP congestion control is more accurate when it gets timely feedback. On the flip side, explicit rules to never drop packets matching a certain signature often produces a negative sum game, and one that is easily abused.

__jal 10y ago

Does anyone with a strong understanding of internetworking, peering and transit not see the difference between QOS for technical reasons and things like zero rating? It seems a lot of people are invested in muddying the difference.

OraclesDyn388 10y ago

The idea as I define is: Yes congestion management is a necessity. But congestion management should be done at as high a level as possible, that is, if we see a lot of bits, we add more hardware or shift those bits over to a similar path of similar performance and capacity and fill it, then add more. We don't care about who sent them or received them, we just keep congestion low overall. Usually the anti-neutrality crowd pedals an agenda of metered paying and those who can't get shittier service. It's more regressive rules intended to raise costs/profits by focusing on squeezing more money from those that have it, and ignoring everyone else. The former is merely a technical solution to a technical problem. The latter is the ruling financialist class forcing their "sound economics" on humanity without providing anything truly valuable in return

michaelmrose 10y ago

If you aren't shaping based on which endpoints paid a bribe we don't have much of an issue do we. Google network neutrality then come back.

continuational 10y ago

Can't you just share the available bandwidth fairly between users in that case?