4 ms·

I think you slightly misunderstood the hypothetical (well, I stated it poorly). In this case, the network is congested and we need to drop packets from a low ti

I think you slightly misunderstood the hypothetical (well, I stated it poorly). In this case, the network is congested and we need to drop packets from a low tier. In the low tier, 90% of the packets are (hypothetically) video streaming. It doesn't need to drop 90% of the packets, I'm just characterizing the traffic in that tier. This is also fairly representative of evening traffic in the US from a residential ISP. The ISP cannot fully rely on all parties behaving well, unfortunately. The question is: Can the ISP drop packets from this low priced tier that it knows are likely video streaming, even well behaved video streaming, over other packets? Is that acceptable, or "legalized extortion"? Obviously it would selectively drop DOS traffic first, as you mentioned, but we are past that point.

wtallis 10y ago
> The question is: Can the ISP drop packets from this low priced tier that it knows are likely video streaming, even well behaved video streaming, over other packets? Such a policy is not necessary for the ISP to deliver good quality of service. Content-neutral traffic management is good enough, and often better than poorly-designed discriminatory traffic management policies. There's no real upside to permitting ISPs to engage in this kind of discrimination.
- argigg 10y ago
  Are you claiming that, for any fraction x of traffic that must be dropped, overall subscriber utility is completely independent of what type of traffic is dropped?