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But that's completely besides the point. Nothing regarding net neutrality should prevent your ISP from prioritizing specific traffic on your link if you wish th

But that's completely besides the point. Nothing regarding net neutrality should prevent your ISP from prioritizing specific traffic on your link if you wish that they do so. And there should not even be a problem with charging you for the additional service. The only thing they can not do is to prioritize your aggregate traffic over a different customer's aggregate traffic on their backbone, or to force prioritization on your link, or to charge differently for different traffic on your link, every bit transmitted has the same price. If you think that being able to buy prioritization on the backbone would be a good idea, think again: If they sell you a gigabit pipe, and they sell your neighbour a gigabit pipe ... how could the solution to possible saturation of the aggregate uplink be anything but that they need to increase the uplink capacity in order to fulfill their contracts? It's obviously unacceptable to charge you more in order to reduce the quality of the service of your neighbour even more, isn't it? Or to let you decide that your work is more important than their entertainment? Either they have to invest in their infrastructure so they can actually deliver the service that they sold you, or they have to cancel the contracts/decrease the bandwidth of the links (and charge less accordingly).

TallGuyShort 9y ago
No that's exactly how every popular attempt at explaining net neutrality I've seen explains it: net neutrality prevents your ISP from making one service artificially appear slower than another. If I pay Comcast for a certain speed I already expect that speed. I've never seen anyone discuss net neutrality the way you're describing it. I would consider your definition just part of tort law.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
  Well, then you are misinformed? Yes, net neutrality prevents your ISP from making one service artificially appear slower than another ... but "artificially" simply means "based on their own interests". They are not allowed to consider what traffic they prefer when prioritizing packets or when setting prices, that's it. Just as the postal service cannot refuse to deliver letters from a specific sender, say, but that doesn't mean they aren't allowed to reject letters to you on your explicit request.
  - TallGuyShort 9y ago
    So I'm reading through FCC 15-24 A-16, and I don't see language that supports what you're saying. Their definition of throttling is effectively banning any kind of prioritization. The fact that blocking P2P file sharing is the biggest of the few examples of violating this principle that seem to be out there is not doing much to assuage my concern about deprioritizing traffic that has a tendency to hog resources. P.S. I've also confirmed that my contract with my ISP is loaded with caveats about things that may limit my uplink speed, and it sounds to me like my whole neighborhood going to town on P2P file sharing can interfere with that and I can't hold them to it.
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
      Now, are we talking about deprioritizing traffic on the backbone or on a specific customer's link?
      - TallGuyShort 9y ago
        Anywhere. I doubt the backbone is going to get saturated, and we can ignore what happens on my specific link because that's my business (although given how someone can get fined for not being licensed to do a certain job even if I explicitly accept the risks of them not being licensed, I'm not hopeful Net Neutrality will never get used to prevent ISPs from offering me more individualized service). But let's say the links from my local infrastructure to larger backbones is getting saturated by everyone in my town using P2P software (most likely for illegal purposes). I'd like my VoIP system to keep functioning reasonably well. And it seems like the P2P users are propped up as the victims in this discussion. All-traffic created equally sounds great, but all traffic is not equal. And I don't like the idea of my ISP making that call, and I don't have a lot of options of ISP, but I don't feel like the government saying the ISP is never allowed to make that call is really solving any of my problems, and I'm not convinced it's not going to cause other issues. I kinda support it but I just can't see why everyone is so solid about it when there are tons of other caveats in the situation not addressed by the FCC. Will likely be going to bed before HN lets me reply again...

TallGuyShort 9y ago

No that's exactly how every popular attempt at explaining net neutrality I've seen explains it: net neutrality prevents your ISP from making one service artificially appear slower than another. If I pay Comcast for a certain speed I already expect that speed. I've never seen anyone discuss net neutrality the way you're describing it. I would consider your definition just part of tort law.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
Well, then you are misinformed? Yes, net neutrality prevents your ISP from making one service artificially appear slower than another ... but "artificially" simply means "based on their own interests". They are not allowed to consider what traffic they prefer when prioritizing packets or when setting prices, that's it. Just as the postal service cannot refuse to deliver letters from a specific sender, say, but that doesn't mean they aren't allowed to reject letters to you on your explicit request.
- TallGuyShort 9y ago
  So I'm reading through FCC 15-24 A-16, and I don't see language that supports what you're saying. Their definition of throttling is effectively banning any kind of prioritization. The fact that blocking P2P file sharing is the biggest of the few examples of violating this principle that seem to be out there is not doing much to assuage my concern about deprioritizing traffic that has a tendency to hog resources. P.S. I've also confirmed that my contract with my ISP is loaded with caveats about things that may limit my uplink speed, and it sounds to me like my whole neighborhood going to town on P2P file sharing can interfere with that and I can't hold them to it.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
    Now, are we talking about deprioritizing traffic on the backbone or on a specific customer's link?
    - TallGuyShort 9y ago
      Anywhere. I doubt the backbone is going to get saturated, and we can ignore what happens on my specific link because that's my business (although given how someone can get fined for not being licensed to do a certain job even if I explicitly accept the risks of them not being licensed, I'm not hopeful Net Neutrality will never get used to prevent ISPs from offering me more individualized service). But let's say the links from my local infrastructure to larger backbones is getting saturated by everyone in my town using P2P software (most likely for illegal purposes). I'd like my VoIP system to keep functioning reasonably well. And it seems like the P2P users are propped up as the victims in this discussion. All-traffic created equally sounds great, but all traffic is not equal. And I don't like the idea of my ISP making that call, and I don't have a lot of options of ISP, but I don't feel like the government saying the ISP is never allowed to make that call is really solving any of my problems, and I'm not convinced it's not going to cause other issues. I kinda support it but I just can't see why everyone is so solid about it when there are tons of other caveats in the situation not addressed by the FCC. Will likely be going to bed before HN lets me reply again...