15 ms·

Google and Facebook now run networks larger than most major ISPs -- among the largest on the planet. Demand for Youtube and FB are so high and ubiquitous that

by dsr_ 10y ago

Google and Facebook now run networks larger than most major ISPs -- among the largest on the planet. Demand for Youtube and FB are so high and ubiquitous that pretty much any ISP will immediately cave in. Comcast is the most disliked company in the USA. Guess what happens when G runs a banner under each search or Youtube video mentioning that performance is bad because Comcast is blocking things, here's Brian Roberts's phone number?

nemothekid 10y ago
>Guess what happens when G runs a banner under each search or Youtube video mentioning that performance is bad because Comcast is blocking things, here's Brian Roberts's phone number? Nothing because consumers typically have a choice of 1 or maybe 2 ISPs? You said it yourself, Comcast is already the most disliked company in the US - they'd have nothing to lose by blocking YouTube - or worse, making it so slow that Google begins to lose viewership.
- cmurf 10y ago
  Or default service that blocks VPN, tracks everything you're doing and uses it for their benefit; and if you don't like that you can pay extra to opt out. It's really clear. Democrats: This is the customer's information. Republicans: This is the ISP's equipment, and therefore anything on it is fair game for the equipment owner to use however they want, deny service to whoever they want, for any reason they want. So distilled down what you end up with is a classist system where privacy in infrastructure isn't a right, it's something you pay for: Rich people are better, they get more rights, because they can afford to buy those rights.
  - nocman 10y ago
    That's a pretty broad brush you are painting with. Do you have some hard data that says things break down so clearly along party lines? I'd particularly like to see data about non-politicians, if it is available, since the way Congress votes on such things is not necessarily driven by the way their constituents view the issue (if they are even aware of it).
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      > That's a pretty broad brush you are painting with. Do you have some hard data that says things break down so clearly along party lines? They do on the FCC, for the whole time since net neutrality and internet privacy have become an issue. Congress is a little fuzzier but mostly along the same lines. In the electorate it might be blurrier, but clearly the distribution of views of the relevant politicians shows that the people who cross lines on the above description and who prioritize the issue when it comes to voting aren't that numerous.
      - nocman 10y ago
        "They do on the FCC" Not sure what you mean by that, you mean the breakdown of Republicans vs Democrats at the FCC?
        dragonwriter 10y ago
        Yes, the FCC Republicans have been consistently against Open Internet regulation, the Democrats consistently for it. And similar shsrp partisan divisions exist on a number of other internet-related issues.
    - cmurf 10y ago
      I am referring to the statements and policies voted on and implemented by FCC regulators. Asking about non-politicians on the face of it seems pointless, my entire comment is about policy. And that is necessarily about the politics. The affiliation of plebians doesn't matter, what matters is the ideology of those with the power to enact the policy. Ajit Pai opposes any sort of regulation that prescribes or proscribes specific activity under Title II, and Republicans in Congress likewise prefer ISP regulation under the far weaker rules in Title I, rather than Title II. And he opposes subsidies favored by the Connect America Fund in reducing the disparity in broadband performance between urban and rural areas, and also the Lifeline program which makes it more affordable. Last year Lifeline was expanded, and Pai becomes chairman and blocks it as one off his first acts. These are night and day differences. It's fairly binary. It's forcing free market ponies on what is a deeply monopolistic and anti-competitive market. Anytime there's meaningful competition you see conglomeration or market exit. It's absolutely a philosophy of "if you can't afford access or performance, the free market says go F yourself, and we aren't going to regulate an alternative outcome to that".
  - E6300 10y ago
    It can be argued that the ISP's equipment is useless unless it runs data lines through state-owned land, therefore no, it doesn't get to do absolutely anything it wants with it.
    - hueving 10y ago
      The equipment that would be modifying the traffic would be in privately-owned exchanges or the ISP's datacenters. None of it would happen on the fiber crossing over (or running under) state owned land.
      - E6300 10y ago
        By that same logic, there should be no laws governing radio broadcasting, since the equipment that emits the photons is located in a private building, not in the public airspace through which the photons travel. Yet the FCC still exists.
        hueving 10y ago
        The reason the FCC needs to regulate public airspace is because transmissions interfere with each other. If there was a magical way to have no possible way to hijack or interfere with entities' assigned frequencies, the FCC would not need to exist.[1] By your logic, the FCC should regulate a conversation two people were having in person just by virtue of them being on public land. Yet the FCC does not. The FCC also does not regulate the signs on the sides of buildings, even though light is reflected from them to public airspace. 1. They also have been given the power to provide censorship of public spectrums as well because some idiots deemed swear words to be scary.
        E6300 10y ago
        > The reason the FCC needs to regulate public airspace is because transmissions interfere with each other. It's the exact same situation with net neutrality. If an ISP decides to give traffic from some hosts higher priority than my traffic, then that other traffic is interfering with my communications in the exact same way as an antenna that transmits a 50 GW signal on nearly all frequencies. > By your logic, the FCC should regulate a conversation two people were having in person just by virtue of them being on public land. Yet the FCC does not. The FCC also does not regulate the signs on the sides of buildings, even though light is reflected from them to public airspace. It's not that the government must regulate everything that happens in the public sphere. The government should regulate things if it's for the good of everyone (or most everyone), and if those things happen in the public sphere, then it has legitimacy to do it. So, to address your examples, the FCC should regulate that conversation if those people are so loud that no one else in the city can speak, and it should regulate a sign on the side of a building if it emits such intense light that things in its path catch fire.
josh2600 10y ago
This is foolish. Google doesn't own the last mile into your house. They are beholden to ATT + Verizon, and, to a lesser extent, Comcast. Due to the regulatory moat that the Carriers have built up over the years (including spectrum rights) it's at least a 10 year battle to loosen their stranglehold at all, and that becomes a fascinating war if indeed content can be prioritized. Such a battle would be not unlike battles of the past, but at a larger scale. Do you remember what it was like to load apps onto phones before the iPhone broke the carrier app lock?
cmurf 10y ago
Just like with health care insurance, ISPs are an anti-competitive market. Both ISPs in my area have hard caps, crap service, and are widely disliked. Even within the city, there's a surprising lack of overlap where entire neighborhoods are only serviced by one of those companies.
rsync 10y ago
"Google and Facebook now run networks larger than most major ISPs -- among the largest on the planet." The size of those transit and/or internal networks is really not at issue here. In discussions about vertical integration and monopoly power, what matters is the last mile - of which they have almost zero.
mmanfrin 10y ago
Demand for Youtube and FB are so high and ubiquitous that pretty much any ISP will immediately cave in. Yep, Comcast better be careful lest I leave them for the 6mbps competitors I have as options in the backwater community I live in called Berkeley, CA. I utterly fucking loathe Comcast, and yet they get thousands of my dollars because of an unspoken of oligopoly among ISPs that has grown out of the tacit agreement to not enter in to each others fiefs.
- jff 10y ago
  Does Sonic.net not provide service in Berkeley? Back when I lived in the Bay Area, I switched from Comcast purely because Sonic.net isn't an utterly loathsome company. Turns out with Sonic I didn't have to reboot my modem every other week either.
  - kbar13 10y ago
    sonic speeds in many parts of the bay area (even in SF) is not competitive with comcast. they are rolling out fiber in select neighborhoods and can't wait until they come to my part of town.
    - mbreese 10y ago
      I had to switch from Sonic (to Comcast) for just that reason. I had a bonded DSL connection from Sonic that could just barely get 10Mbps. And the bonding really wasn't even worth it because one line was at 8 and the other at 2. And it was all due to the unmaintained copper coming from AT&T. I agree with their new strategy though - the only way to have any control over their service quality was to own their own fiber. Now, I'm in Cincinnati and have excellent fiber service from Cincinnati Bell, so it's possible to have good quality from the incumbent carrier.
    - thaumasiotes 10y ago
      Perhaps if comcast were deliberately strangling youtube, sonic's speeds would be competitive with comcast's.
  - deleted 10y ago
dragonwriter 10y ago
> Guess what happens when G runs a banner under each search or Youtube video mentioning that performance is bad because Comcast is blocking things, here's Brian Roberts's phone number? The ISP filters the banner before it reaches the customer, and replaces it with their own message (or just advertising from someone who has paid the ISP.)
- aianus 10y ago
  This is not possible on an https connection and HSTS preloading prevents ISPs from downgrading secure connections.
  - gergles 10y ago
    In the near future: "To provide optimum security and privacy for your internet browsing, you must now install our Comcastic™ Special Magic Certificate®. Failure to install our certificate will result in browsing being restricted. If you don't like it, go to a competitor."
    - nickpsecurity 10y ago
      That's very possible. It's probably better you dont even say it publicly to avoid given them the idea. Only a few companies have to implement it for it to become a national problem.
      - logfromblammo 10y ago
        That cat is already out of the bag. Companies already sell MitM services to companies that want to monitor and filter the web traffic of their employees. I suspect there are already niche ISPs out there that cater to the content-blocking impulses of certain customers by doing deep-packet inspection and firewalling at the gateway.
- aurelianito 10y ago
  I don't think they can break SSL in order to do that.
kbar13 10y ago
yet comcast has a virtual monopoly on last mile. which is the only part that matters. many towns only have comcast (or like dialup or something crazy slow). let's take an extreme example where comcast uses a blackout to get a better deal with youtube. customers don't have the option to switch to a different provider. even if they did have the choice, it's not as simple as just calling up a new provider to switch services, you have to wait to get activated, at the worst case a matter of days before someone can come out to install hardware.
tracker1 10y ago
I'd add Amazon in there by nature of Netflix as much as anything else.
Animats 10y ago
Yet Google tried being a retail ISP, with Google Fiber, and gave up. They've also tried some WiFi things, and toyed with being a wireless telco. But Google backed away from being a carrier. The margins aren't that good and you actually have to service customers.
bo1024 10y ago
> Demand for Youtube and FB are so high and ubiquitous that pretty much any ISP will immediately cave in. Unfortunately I don't think this is totally true, e.g. in many places in the USA (even large cities and tech hubs), consumers only have one ISP option fast enough to stream YouTube.
yulaow 10y ago
If only ISP didn't work that hard to create artificial monopolies in the most part of their net.
ballenf 10y ago
Comcast should instead slowdown ads served by those websites, not the websites themselves. Then their customers don't complain but hits the opponents in the pocket book.

by dsr_ 10y ago

nemothekid 10y ago

>Guess what happens when G runs a banner under each search or Youtube video mentioning that performance is bad because Comcast is blocking things, here's Brian Roberts's phone number? Nothing because consumers typically have a choice of 1 or maybe 2 ISPs? You said it yourself, Comcast is already the most disliked company in the US - they'd have nothing to lose by blocking YouTube - or worse, making it so slow that Google begins to lose viewership.

cmurf 10y ago
Or default service that blocks VPN, tracks everything you're doing and uses it for their benefit; and if you don't like that you can pay extra to opt out. It's really clear. Democrats: This is the customer's information. Republicans: This is the ISP's equipment, and therefore anything on it is fair game for the equipment owner to use however they want, deny service to whoever they want, for any reason they want. So distilled down what you end up with is a classist system where privacy in infrastructure isn't a right, it's something you pay for: Rich people are better, they get more rights, because they can afford to buy those rights.
- nocman 10y ago
  That's a pretty broad brush you are painting with. Do you have some hard data that says things break down so clearly along party lines? I'd particularly like to see data about non-politicians, if it is available, since the way Congress votes on such things is not necessarily driven by the way their constituents view the issue (if they are even aware of it).
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > That's a pretty broad brush you are painting with. Do you have some hard data that says things break down so clearly along party lines? They do on the FCC, for the whole time since net neutrality and internet privacy have become an issue. Congress is a little fuzzier but mostly along the same lines. In the electorate it might be blurrier, but clearly the distribution of views of the relevant politicians shows that the people who cross lines on the above description and who prioritize the issue when it comes to voting aren't that numerous.
    - nocman 10y ago
      "They do on the FCC" Not sure what you mean by that, you mean the breakdown of Republicans vs Democrats at the FCC?
      - dragonwriter 10y ago
        Yes, the FCC Republicans have been consistently against Open Internet regulation, the Democrats consistently for it. And similar shsrp partisan divisions exist on a number of other internet-related issues.
  - cmurf 10y ago
    I am referring to the statements and policies voted on and implemented by FCC regulators. Asking about non-politicians on the face of it seems pointless, my entire comment is about policy. And that is necessarily about the politics. The affiliation of plebians doesn't matter, what matters is the ideology of those with the power to enact the policy. Ajit Pai opposes any sort of regulation that prescribes or proscribes specific activity under Title II, and Republicans in Congress likewise prefer ISP regulation under the far weaker rules in Title I, rather than Title II. And he opposes subsidies favored by the Connect America Fund in reducing the disparity in broadband performance between urban and rural areas, and also the Lifeline program which makes it more affordable. Last year Lifeline was expanded, and Pai becomes chairman and blocks it as one off his first acts. These are night and day differences. It's fairly binary. It's forcing free market ponies on what is a deeply monopolistic and anti-competitive market. Anytime there's meaningful competition you see conglomeration or market exit. It's absolutely a philosophy of "if you can't afford access or performance, the free market says go F yourself, and we aren't going to regulate an alternative outcome to that".
- E6300 10y ago
  It can be argued that the ISP's equipment is useless unless it runs data lines through state-owned land, therefore no, it doesn't get to do absolutely anything it wants with it.
  - hueving 10y ago
    The equipment that would be modifying the traffic would be in privately-owned exchanges or the ISP's datacenters. None of it would happen on the fiber crossing over (or running under) state owned land.
    - E6300 10y ago
      By that same logic, there should be no laws governing radio broadcasting, since the equipment that emits the photons is located in a private building, not in the public airspace through which the photons travel. Yet the FCC still exists.
      - hueving 10y ago
        The reason the FCC needs to regulate public airspace is because transmissions interfere with each other. If there was a magical way to have no possible way to hijack or interfere with entities' assigned frequencies, the FCC would not need to exist.[1] By your logic, the FCC should regulate a conversation two people were having in person just by virtue of them being on public land. Yet the FCC does not. The FCC also does not regulate the signs on the sides of buildings, even though light is reflected from them to public airspace. 1. They also have been given the power to provide censorship of public spectrums as well because some idiots deemed swear words to be scary.
        E6300 10y ago
        > The reason the FCC needs to regulate public airspace is because transmissions interfere with each other. It's the exact same situation with net neutrality. If an ISP decides to give traffic from some hosts higher priority than my traffic, then that other traffic is interfering with my communications in the exact same way as an antenna that transmits a 50 GW signal on nearly all frequencies. > By your logic, the FCC should regulate a conversation two people were having in person just by virtue of them being on public land. Yet the FCC does not. The FCC also does not regulate the signs on the sides of buildings, even though light is reflected from them to public airspace. It's not that the government must regulate everything that happens in the public sphere. The government should regulate things if it's for the good of everyone (or most everyone), and if those things happen in the public sphere, then it has legitimacy to do it. So, to address your examples, the FCC should regulate that conversation if those people are so loud that no one else in the city can speak, and it should regulate a sign on the side of a building if it emits such intense light that things in its path catch fire.

josh2600 10y ago

This is foolish. Google doesn't own the last mile into your house. They are beholden to ATT + Verizon, and, to a lesser extent, Comcast. Due to the regulatory moat that the Carriers have built up over the years (including spectrum rights) it's at least a 10 year battle to loosen their stranglehold at all, and that becomes a fascinating war if indeed content can be prioritized. Such a battle would be not unlike battles of the past, but at a larger scale. Do you remember what it was like to load apps onto phones before the iPhone broke the carrier app lock?

cmurf 10y ago

Just like with health care insurance, ISPs are an anti-competitive market. Both ISPs in my area have hard caps, crap service, and are widely disliked. Even within the city, there's a surprising lack of overlap where entire neighborhoods are only serviced by one of those companies.

rsync 10y ago

"Google and Facebook now run networks larger than most major ISPs -- among the largest on the planet." The size of those transit and/or internal networks is really not at issue here. In discussions about vertical integration and monopoly power, what matters is the last mile - of which they have almost zero.

mmanfrin 10y ago

Demand for Youtube and FB are so high and ubiquitous that pretty much any ISP will immediately cave in. Yep, Comcast better be careful lest I leave them for the 6mbps competitors I have as options in the backwater community I live in called Berkeley, CA. I utterly fucking loathe Comcast, and yet they get thousands of my dollars because of an unspoken of oligopoly among ISPs that has grown out of the tacit agreement to not enter in to each others fiefs.

jff 10y ago
Does Sonic.net not provide service in Berkeley? Back when I lived in the Bay Area, I switched from Comcast purely because Sonic.net isn't an utterly loathsome company. Turns out with Sonic I didn't have to reboot my modem every other week either.
- kbar13 10y ago
  sonic speeds in many parts of the bay area (even in SF) is not competitive with comcast. they are rolling out fiber in select neighborhoods and can't wait until they come to my part of town.
  - mbreese 10y ago
    I had to switch from Sonic (to Comcast) for just that reason. I had a bonded DSL connection from Sonic that could just barely get 10Mbps. And the bonding really wasn't even worth it because one line was at 8 and the other at 2. And it was all due to the unmaintained copper coming from AT&T. I agree with their new strategy though - the only way to have any control over their service quality was to own their own fiber. Now, I'm in Cincinnati and have excellent fiber service from Cincinnati Bell, so it's possible to have good quality from the incumbent carrier.
  - thaumasiotes 10y ago
    Perhaps if comcast were deliberately strangling youtube, sonic's speeds would be competitive with comcast's.
- deleted 10y ago

dragonwriter 10y ago

> Guess what happens when G runs a banner under each search or Youtube video mentioning that performance is bad because Comcast is blocking things, here's Brian Roberts's phone number? The ISP filters the banner before it reaches the customer, and replaces it with their own message (or just advertising from someone who has paid the ISP.)

aianus 10y ago
This is not possible on an https connection and HSTS preloading prevents ISPs from downgrading secure connections.
- gergles 10y ago
  In the near future: "To provide optimum security and privacy for your internet browsing, you must now install our Comcastic™ Special Magic Certificate®. Failure to install our certificate will result in browsing being restricted. If you don't like it, go to a competitor."
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    That's very possible. It's probably better you dont even say it publicly to avoid given them the idea. Only a few companies have to implement it for it to become a national problem.
    - logfromblammo 10y ago
      That cat is already out of the bag. Companies already sell MitM services to companies that want to monitor and filter the web traffic of their employees. I suspect there are already niche ISPs out there that cater to the content-blocking impulses of certain customers by doing deep-packet inspection and firewalling at the gateway.
aurelianito 10y ago
I don't think they can break SSL in order to do that.

kbar13 10y ago

yet comcast has a virtual monopoly on last mile. which is the only part that matters. many towns only have comcast (or like dialup or something crazy slow). let's take an extreme example where comcast uses a blackout to get a better deal with youtube. customers don't have the option to switch to a different provider. even if they did have the choice, it's not as simple as just calling up a new provider to switch services, you have to wait to get activated, at the worst case a matter of days before someone can come out to install hardware.

tracker1 10y ago

I'd add Amazon in there by nature of Netflix as much as anything else.

Animats 10y ago

Yet Google tried being a retail ISP, with Google Fiber, and gave up. They've also tried some WiFi things, and toyed with being a wireless telco. But Google backed away from being a carrier. The margins aren't that good and you actually have to service customers.

bo1024 10y ago

> Demand for Youtube and FB are so high and ubiquitous that pretty much any ISP will immediately cave in. Unfortunately I don't think this is totally true, e.g. in many places in the USA (even large cities and tech hubs), consumers only have one ISP option fast enough to stream YouTube.

yulaow 10y ago

If only ISP didn't work that hard to create artificial monopolies in the most part of their net.

ballenf 10y ago

Comcast should instead slowdown ads served by those websites, not the websites themselves. Then their customers don't complain but hits the opponents in the pocket book.