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But that's completely backwards, isn't it? The ISP decided to make a contract with you that they would provide you with an n Mb/s pipe. And they made a contrac

But that's completely backwards, isn't it? The ISP decided to make a contract with you that they would provide you with an n Mb/s pipe. And they made a contract with your neighbour to provide you with an m Mb/s pipe. How would it be even remotely reasonable to then give the ISP the option to not fulfill their contract with your neighbour in order to fullfill an additional contract with you that would allow you to make a reliable phone call? Or even if you don't pay extra for the privilege: Why is the fact that you think your phone call is more important than your neighbour's bittorrent in any way a sensible reason for the ISP to then throttle your neighbour? If the neighbour thinks their torrent is more important, shouldn't they rather throttle your phone call? Why do you get to make the decision whose traffic is more important? When a link is saturated, bandwidth simply should be allocated equally to all customers (or rather, proportionally to their respective link capacity, I guess), don't you think? Why should it matter that you are trying to make a phone call? If the equally divided bandwidth is sufficient to make a phone call, you can make a phone call, if it's not, well, that's not a reason to tell your neighbour that they can't do what they would prefer to do, is it? But much more importantly, shouldn't it be the responsibility of the ISP to build a network that doesn't normally get saturated? After all, they are selling both you and your neigbour a specific link capacity, so how aren't they responsible for actually providing the bandwidth that they sold you? How is it even remotely reasonable to suggest that they should be allowed to not fulfill one contract in order to fulfill another (while also still charging both of you)? The whole concept of other customers "hogging resources" is just bullshit IMO. When I order ten books and you order one book from Amazon ... am I "hogging recources"? Should amazon simply just send me only nine books, charge me for all ten, and then send the tenth book to you, and charge you for it as well? People aren't hogging anything, they are simply using a service that the ISP volunarily agreed to provide, and that they are paying for, and it's the ISP's fricking job to make sure that them using what they paid for does not prevent you from using what you paid for, nor the other way around. If your neighbour is ordering tons of stuff from the internet, are they "hogging UPS"? Is that a reason for UPS to throw away some of their packages that they deem unimportant to free some capacity to deliver yours instead? Or isn't it rather UPS's frickin job to deliver all packages that they made contracts to deliver? All in all, I don't see how any of that justifies prioritizing based on packet contents. (BTW, consider one other area that is well-known for overbooking: Airlines. Do they just leave you stranded at the airport if too many people actually turn up for the flight, and still get to keep the money ... or isn't it rather completely their own risk, and they have to pay for your hotel stay, and move you to your destination ASAP, and potentially also pay compensation for your lost time? How is it that actually turning up for a flight that you paid for is not considered "hogging the airline"?)

TallGuyShort 9y ago
Interesting use of overbooked flights as an example. If I book a flight I better get my seat. And if I don't get it because the airline over-provisioned, I don't really care about statistically even chances of getting kicked off the airline, especially when the Doctor ends up on YouTube getting his face bashed in while screaming, getting dragged off the flight because he wasn't an obedient little citizen. My bigger concern is why they're still overbooking seats. STOP OVERBOOKING SEATS. Oh there's a federal minimum reimbursement? That's great. But what if it's not enough for the inconvenience? The government just gave the airline permission to pay me that little and the right to then tell me to fuck off. And if I don't, armed government agents enforce the airline's screw up. >> The ISP decided to make a contract with you that they would provide you with an n Mb/s pipe. No, they made a contract with me that they would, on average provide me with an n Mb/s pipe and 6 pages of reasons why it's not their fault if at any point in time that doesn't happen. >> But much more importantly, shouldn't it be the responsibility of the ISP to build a network that doesn't normally get saturated? Oh I agree - that's way more important. I'd love it if they could make strong guarantees in that regard. And THAT is a problem I'd like to see the FCC spend more time on than net neutrality. But it's not trivial because it's not just "giving me a pipe". It's giving my a pipe only some of the way and interacting with other pipes (and with the FCC's net neutrality rules, what appears to me to be a poor definition of what a "lawful" destination for the pipe is). Compared to that problem, I just don't see why net neutrality is being treated as the final battlefield for a free and open Internet by everybody. If it came with provisions that guarantee lines aren't oversubscribed and cleared up the wording on lawful destinations, I'd be a lot more for it.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
  Well, I certainly did not mean to say that overbooking was necessarily a good idea, but rather point out that at the very least it is seen as the airline's fault and thus responsibility. However, I wouldn't dismiss overbooking outright: Overbooking gives you better utilization of resources, and thus has the potential to reduce prices/improve service at a given price point, if there is competition/a functional market. I don't know how big the effect is in the case of flights, but it's certainly considerable in the case of IP connectivity: Having a gigabit link available certainly is useful for large downloads, even if your average bandwidth use is far below that, but actually reserving a gigabit for everyone on the backbone and backhaul lines would be pretty expensive, so it's actually a good idea to overbook links to give you that advantage at a much lower price point. I think the problem there is more one of transparency and lack of guarantees of mimimum bandwidth. In the case of flights as in the case of IP connectivity, you should have the option to buy "non-overbooked", at whatever the price for that is, and if you buy overbooked, it should be clearly specified what the statistical properties and minimum bandwidth is, so you can actually know in advance that there will always be enough bandwidth for your phone call, if that is what you need. While most people don't really need gigabit 24/7, it is actually important to know whether you get minimum 100 Mbit/s with gigabit available 95% of the time, or minimum 32 kbit/s with gigabit available 1% of the time. > No, they made a contract with me that they would, on average provide me with an n Mb/s pipe and 6 pages of reasons why it's not their fault if at any point in time that doesn't happen. Well, yeah, that certainly should be regulated. A market cannot work if, when agreeing to a contract, you can't actually know what you'll be getting. > It's giving my a pipe only some of the way and interacting with other pipes (and with the FCC's net neutrality rules, what appears to me to be a poor definition of what a "lawful" destination for the pipe is). Compared to that problem, I just don't see why net neutrality is being treated as the final battlefield for a free and open Internet by everybody. I think all of that pretty much boils down to net neutrality when you think about it. As explained above, I don't think forbidding oversubscription would actually be a good idea, at least not in the strict sense of requiring fixed reserved bandwidth. As long as it is clear what guaranteed properties the link has, that should be perfectly fine. And I guess you shouldn't be allowed to advertise with some essentially made-up maximum bandwidth, but rather only with values that actually sensibly reflect the actual service that you would get. But apart from that, the problem is that you probably don't want to have the actual prices regulated if you can avoid it, and you also don't want to regulate what bandwidths ISPs have to provide for the most part, at least as long as there is some competition, because you kindof need the market to discover the products that people actually need and what they are worth. But especially the problem of defining what a "lawful destination of a pipe" is really is probably best suited for leaving that to the market, and that kindof is what net neutrality is all about. Net neutrality essentially just ensures there actually is a market. There really is no need to specify any particular location or distances or whatever as to where the ISP has to guarantee bandwidth, if you instead specify that the ISP can essentially specify the other end of the pipe arbitrarily, as long as other parties can connect to that other end without buying anything from the ISP. So, they could just define that the "other end" is at their local CO ... but they'd have to allow anyone who wants to to bury a fiber to their CO and to plug it into their router to do so, possibly charging their own costs of doing so, but nothing more. It's just really not sensible to regulate in detail the bandwidth from any specific point on the internet, and it's also pretty pointless, if you can make sure there are markets everywhere that ensure that monopolistic price gouging doesn't happen, and that customers are informed enough about products to actually make informed choices.

TallGuyShort 9y ago

Interesting use of overbooked flights as an example. If I book a flight I better get my seat. And if I don't get it because the airline over-provisioned, I don't really care about statistically even chances of getting kicked off the airline, especially when the Doctor ends up on YouTube getting his face bashed in while screaming, getting dragged off the flight because he wasn't an obedient little citizen. My bigger concern is why they're still overbooking seats. STOP OVERBOOKING SEATS. Oh there's a federal minimum reimbursement? That's great. But what if it's not enough for the inconvenience? The government just gave the airline permission to pay me that little and the right to then tell me to fuck off. And if I don't, armed government agents enforce the airline's screw up. >> The ISP decided to make a contract with you that they would provide you with an n Mb/s pipe. No, they made a contract with me that they would, on average provide me with an n Mb/s pipe and 6 pages of reasons why it's not their fault if at any point in time that doesn't happen. >> But much more importantly, shouldn't it be the responsibility of the ISP to build a network that doesn't normally get saturated? Oh I agree - that's way more important. I'd love it if they could make strong guarantees in that regard. And THAT is a problem I'd like to see the FCC spend more time on than net neutrality. But it's not trivial because it's not just "giving me a pipe". It's giving my a pipe only some of the way and interacting with other pipes (and with the FCC's net neutrality rules, what appears to me to be a poor definition of what a "lawful" destination for the pipe is). Compared to that problem, I just don't see why net neutrality is being treated as the final battlefield for a free and open Internet by everybody. If it came with provisions that guarantee lines aren't oversubscribed and cleared up the wording on lawful destinations, I'd be a lot more for it.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
Well, I certainly did not mean to say that overbooking was necessarily a good idea, but rather point out that at the very least it is seen as the airline's fault and thus responsibility. However, I wouldn't dismiss overbooking outright: Overbooking gives you better utilization of resources, and thus has the potential to reduce prices/improve service at a given price point, if there is competition/a functional market. I don't know how big the effect is in the case of flights, but it's certainly considerable in the case of IP connectivity: Having a gigabit link available certainly is useful for large downloads, even if your average bandwidth use is far below that, but actually reserving a gigabit for everyone on the backbone and backhaul lines would be pretty expensive, so it's actually a good idea to overbook links to give you that advantage at a much lower price point. I think the problem there is more one of transparency and lack of guarantees of mimimum bandwidth. In the case of flights as in the case of IP connectivity, you should have the option to buy "non-overbooked", at whatever the price for that is, and if you buy overbooked, it should be clearly specified what the statistical properties and minimum bandwidth is, so you can actually know in advance that there will always be enough bandwidth for your phone call, if that is what you need. While most people don't really need gigabit 24/7, it is actually important to know whether you get minimum 100 Mbit/s with gigabit available 95% of the time, or minimum 32 kbit/s with gigabit available 1% of the time. > No, they made a contract with me that they would, on average provide me with an n Mb/s pipe and 6 pages of reasons why it's not their fault if at any point in time that doesn't happen. Well, yeah, that certainly should be regulated. A market cannot work if, when agreeing to a contract, you can't actually know what you'll be getting. > It's giving my a pipe only some of the way and interacting with other pipes (and with the FCC's net neutrality rules, what appears to me to be a poor definition of what a "lawful" destination for the pipe is). Compared to that problem, I just don't see why net neutrality is being treated as the final battlefield for a free and open Internet by everybody. I think all of that pretty much boils down to net neutrality when you think about it. As explained above, I don't think forbidding oversubscription would actually be a good idea, at least not in the strict sense of requiring fixed reserved bandwidth. As long as it is clear what guaranteed properties the link has, that should be perfectly fine. And I guess you shouldn't be allowed to advertise with some essentially made-up maximum bandwidth, but rather only with values that actually sensibly reflect the actual service that you would get. But apart from that, the problem is that you probably don't want to have the actual prices regulated if you can avoid it, and you also don't want to regulate what bandwidths ISPs have to provide for the most part, at least as long as there is some competition, because you kindof need the market to discover the products that people actually need and what they are worth. But especially the problem of defining what a "lawful destination of a pipe" is really is probably best suited for leaving that to the market, and that kindof is what net neutrality is all about. Net neutrality essentially just ensures there actually is a market. There really is no need to specify any particular location or distances or whatever as to where the ISP has to guarantee bandwidth, if you instead specify that the ISP can essentially specify the other end of the pipe arbitrarily, as long as other parties can connect to that other end without buying anything from the ISP. So, they could just define that the "other end" is at their local CO ... but they'd have to allow anyone who wants to to bury a fiber to their CO and to plug it into their router to do so, possibly charging their own costs of doing so, but nothing more. It's just really not sensible to regulate in detail the bandwidth from any specific point on the internet, and it's also pretty pointless, if you can make sure there are markets everywhere that ensure that monopolistic price gouging doesn't happen, and that customers are informed enough about products to actually make informed choices.