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I'll jump in and take the hate. Reddit is framing the issue like this: Net neutrality ensures that the free market—not big cable—picks the winners and losers

I'll jump in and take the hate. Reddit is framing the issue like this: Net neutrality ensures that the free market—not big cable—picks the winners and losers This seems like double-think to me. The net neutrality regulations actually prevent me from negotiating an agreement that models my priorities. It forces me to accept everything one-size-fits-all, explicitly preventing a differentiated market from developing in the commodity of bandwidth. There are a couple of examples where I think this is relevant. 1) I imagine a hospital that performs surgery via telepresence. This seems a pretty clear area where I would really want the opportunity to pay more, to ensure that the connection between the surgeon and his robot never even suffers the slightest amount of jitter. This is life-and-death, and I can't see why people would object to a right to pay more for higher-priority for this traffic. 2) A few years ago I recall reading about a cell phone provider who wanted to provide a very basic service level that would allow free use of Facebook and a couple of other apps, but going outside of that narrow box would cost much more. Providing to poor people a way that they can participate in the online community seems like a positive, even if what they get is rather hobbled. The idea that we would say to them, "no, you're not allowed to save your money by buying a lower level of service; if you can't afford the whole enchilada, you can't have anything" seems awfully unfair.

drostie 9y ago
For what it's worth, it prevents you from negotiating an agreement that you were not going to win anyways. ISPs are an oligopoly in their present state. If they weren't, then it might make sense to deregulate, but since they are, it doesn't. (1) No, this is fundamentally misunderstanding what happens when monopolistic assholes get to interact with people who are making life-or-death decisions. In those cases the monopolistic assholes always overcharge the crap out of the person who wants, more than to have more money, to be alive. You know how we keep getting news reports about why healthcare costs are higher in the US than anywhere else and it's a problem? It's invariably because there's monopolistic assholes involved -- and congrats, they just got higher due to abandoning net neutrality rules which prevent this from even being a thing. (2) That cell phone provider was probably lying their pants off to you about the marginal cost of going from "you can use a couple apps" to "you can request the whole internet, but your bandwidth will be limited." It's very likely to be negative; you'd seem to have to build out more infrastructure to limit peoples' traffic destinations than you'd do to limit their bandwidth. (Think of the fact that Facebook is all-HTTPS these days, for example, so it's not like you're sniffing those packets without MITMing the whole connection.) To address your earlier point, it's not really double-think. The point is, in the presence of the oligopoly the ISPs are basically Internet countries, with a strange but unelected oligarchic government at the top. We have somewhat more freedom than most to emigrate, but that's about the biggest difference. Net neutrality is an externally imposed free-trade deal among all of them. They are expressing that no, they would instead really like to charge taxes and inspect imports like makeshift customs officers, at their own anti-transparent discretion. They don't want the free-trade deal. It is indeed a valid response to say "well, tough, you're going to have this free-trade deal because the benefits of free trade for everyone in terms of innovation and public good outweigh the benefits those taxes on imports and exports will bring to your shareholders."
yellowapple 9y ago
"I imagine a hospital that performs surgery via telepresence. This seems a pretty clear area where I would really want the opportunity to pay more, to ensure that the connection between the surgeon and his robot never even suffers the slightest amount of jitter." This is a common objection, but it's entirely irrelevant to net neutrality (and in fact, net neutrality actually helps here). Even small hospitals (certainly ones which can afford a robosurgeon) already pay for dedicated Internet connections (often redundant across two or more different providers) to avoid this type of problem. Such connections have guaranteed minimum performance characteristics and are not subject to any kind of throttling on the ISP's part. This is true of most businesses with physical locations. Net neutrality is more about preventing the selective throttling of services as they come across non-dedicated (e.g. residential) Internet connections. This is where ISPs typically engage in such selective throttling, since they tend to sell maximum instead of minimum performance characteristics (for example: a residential plan might include "up to" 15 Mbps at any given time, while a commercial plan might instead include "at least" 5 Mbps at all times). That maximum is shared between all other residential customers in a given geographic area (e.g. a neighborhood), so selective throttling is employed as a way to keep up the illusion that each residence has its own high-speed Internet. Put simply: net neutrality does not actually negatively impact businesses (and especially not hospitals), since their Internet plans are not subject to selective throttling. Ensuring that you have enough bandwidth to run your telepresence robot without jitter (beyond making sure that you've purchased a plan with the right bandwidth minimums) is the responsibility of the hospital's own network administrator or equivalent (namely: by prioritizing the robosurgeon's traffic over other less-critical traffic). Net neutrality does not prevent anyone from choosing to pay for more bandwidth. It only prevents ISPs from being the ones to decide how users allocate the bandwidth for which they pay. Thus, net neutrality would benefit the hospital in this case, since the hospital can decide for itself which traffic should be prioritized within the constraints of its available Internet bandwidth. -- "cell phone provider who wanted to provide a very basic service level that would allow free use of Facebook and a couple of other apps" The usual problem is when a provider wants to offer Facebook specifically (which is anticompetitive, since it gives Facebook an unfair advantage over, say, Twitter or reddit). The specific case of which I'm aware was when Facebook itself wanted to offer the sort of plan you're describing, with (unsurprisingly) Facebook being the free site, all under the banner of "but think of the poor people!". If that's not monopolistic, I don't know what is. The much better approach - if one really does actually care about poor people (I've yet to be convinced that any ISP attempting to justify such practices is actually honest about its motivations here) - would be to just provide slow-speed Internet connections with some high-speed exceptions for specific types of traffic (like audio/video). This is how T-Mobile's non-unlimited plans work, and while net neutrality purists usually object to it, I personally see no problem with it as long as all audio/video providers are treated freely and equally.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
cwyers 9y ago
> Net neutrality ensures that the free market—not big cable—picks the winners and losers There isn't a free market. Near-zero interest rates have flooded the Valley with VC capital in an incredibly inefficient arrangement, and it's distorted the market. The market is thus dominated by a few grotesquely large conglomerates that stifle competition. "Net neutrality" does nothing to restore that competition and provide an actually free market. If net neutrality really provided advantages to smaller Internet players, then why are all the large conglomerates backing it to the hilt? This is a fight between the big cable providers and the big Silicon Valley firms -- Facebook, Google, Netflix. A large cartel is what wins either side of this fight, not the "free market."
- throwawayjava 9y ago
  People used to say that same thing about MySpace and Yahoo! on Slashdot back in the day. Turns out reigning in mono/duopolies whose monopoly status depends on utility-like land grabs is a hell of a lot more important than reigning in much more vulnerable software companies.
nicpottier 9y ago
On 2) this happens already in some places, Facebook.0 is that and in some countries it is free for mobile users on particular carriers. There has been significant fights against it in other countries, I believe India specifically. The reasons are clear as to why if you think about it a bit. Putting aside how you feel about Facebook, how does the next Facebook happen in these countries? How are you meant to compete against free if you are trying to bring up a new service? Even if your service is better in every way you just don't stand a chance. If you believe value is created by innovation, then you need to enforce that the opportunity is the same for everyone, otherwise you are creating an environment where new things just can't bubble up. This doesn't even get into the side of things that the "internet" then becomes what Facebook wants it to..
- 794CD01 9y ago
  >How are you meant to compete against free if you are trying to bring up a new service? This is an especially ironic remark considering what site we are on.
losteric 9y ago
> This seems like double-think to me. The net neutrality regulations actually prevent me from negotiating an agreement that models my priorities. It forces me to accept everything one-size-fits-all, explicitly preventing a differentiated market from developing in the commodity of bandwidth. There are downstream effects on consumers and websites which lead to the same problem eating away at our democracy: the people with money get disproportionate representation. #2: This is a slippery slope that prevents the market from adjusting to provide a cheaper/lower-quality service. If people cannot pay $5/m for internet access, the answer isn't to give them access to a monopolized walled garden that extracts value from their mere presence - the answer is to offer a lower level of service for $1/m. #1: Same as above. The ISP and hospital are absolutely free to pay for higher qualities of service. This isn't new - 10 years ago I could buy business-level DSL with stable latency. I think you're confusing tiered access to the internet versus tiered access to specific websites. Assuming you have 10mbit internet access for $N/month: * Paying +$20/m for 100mbit internet: OK * Paying +$20/m for 100mbit access to "Top 100 websites": Not OK * Receiving 10mbit access to Youtube and 1mbit access to Vimeo: Not OK (neither is receiving 100mbit youtube/10mbit vimeo)
- 794CD01 9y ago
  What's the point of having more money if you can't spend it on better goods and services? We don't have car neutrality laws to prevent rich people from paying more for Ferraris.
  - vmarsy 9y ago
    I don't think your comparison is correct. > Assuming you have 10mbit internet access for $N/month: > * Paying +$20/m for 100mbit internet: OK > * Paying +$20/m for 100mbit access to "Top 100 websites": Not OK In your car comparison, it would be like : Assuming you pay for a VW Golf $10000 * Paying +$200k for a Ferrari: OK * Paying +$200k for a Lamborghini: OK * Paying +$200k for a Ferrari but +$200k for an equivalent Lamborghini but with an added +$300k of fee just because the container ship company moving the car from Italy to the U.S. asked an extra $300k simply because the container is filled with Lamborghini instead of Ferrari: Not OK Container companies would never do this because Lamborghini would simply put its containers on the container boat of a concurrent company, because there's competition. But for consumer-facing ISPs, there's plenty of documentation that shows that in many areas around the country, some ISPs have a monopoly, and so for many users, they cannot go to another ISP if they aren't satisfied with their only choice.
wordsarewind 9y ago
You're argument is absolutely sound: where possible, producers should be able to differentiate products to better suit the consumer demand. However, you overlook the unfortunate fact that there are signicant barriers to entry for ISPs, which means that it is effectively impossible for new producers with the current ones such as AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner, etc. What results is an oligopoly which has significant anti-trust issues and largely causes suboptimal results for the consumer (consider the absurdly high prices Americans pay for shitty Internet service). Open the doors to a new marketplace of service for these ISPs and all hell will break loose. Add to this the political leanings of these companies and it's hard to imagine a worse outcome.
howard941 9y ago
> 1) I imagine a hospital that performs surgery via telepresence. This seems a pretty clear area where I would really want the opportunity to pay more, to ensure that the connection between the surgeon and his robot never even suffers the slightest amount of jitter. This is life-and-death, and I can't see why people would object to a right to pay more for higher-priority for this traffic. Just how would that work across multiple ISPs? The application begs for a circuit.
- newloop 9y ago
  The example is a bit contrived. That doesn't change that there are a number of scenarios where you want to be able to have granularity. You don't necessarily want to pay 24/7 for low latency for video calls, bandwidth to stream a VR movie or software updates to run at night. The ISP game isn't exactly fair as is. The average person have to get a fast connection just so they can get decent access to the services they are already paying for or that is monetizing them.
no_wizard 9y ago
To quickly address this: For number one: net neutrality doesn't stop that from happening. You can pay more for a quality of service connection. Net neutrality doesn't regulate quality of service. It's the idea that what traffic goes over those pipes should not in any way be denied from going over those pipes, essentially. It's so that Facebook for instance can't pay ISPs to ban all Mastodan traffic or effectively filter it from showing up on say a search for social networks. It's so that the ISPs can't favor one service over another so they can extract fees from competitors. Has nothing at all to do with quality of service Of a connection. 2) I don't believe those plans were being floated in the United Statss but developing nations. How does policy in this area they would be implemented in West Africa or India have anything to do with net neutrality in the United States
AnotXOR 9y ago
I totally agree but the rub is that I don't understand the FCC's previous action or the implications of the latest foray by Congress. Most of what I read or hear has that "john oliverish" smugness and non-specificity that a previous poster mentioned and you can't really learn anything from that unless ignorance is bliss to someone. I'll be seriously disappointed though if I end up having to pay for Internet like we do for Cable channel packages today. I'll be seething with rage most likely. So if Net Neutrality keeps that at bay, and still allows ISP's to profit from the top 100 bandwidth consuming websites, I'll be happy. Like many others though, I have little actual clue as to what is going on due FUD, political natures, grandstanding, and the ignorance of the media themselves.
saidajigumi 9y ago
1) I imagine a hospital that performs surgery via telepresence. This seems a pretty clear area where I would really want the opportunity to pay more, to ensure that the connection between the surgeon and his robot never even suffers the slightest amount of jitter. This is life-and-death, and I can't see why people would object to a right to pay more for higher-priority for this traffic. This is false. Net neutrality doesn't prevent the provisioning and purchase of high QoS connections. More specifically, the relevant position of net neutrality is that a content provider cannot collude with an internet service provider to pay for blanket privilege of their connections over other connections. Example: If User A and User B are both paying subscribers to BIGISP, at the same service level, it's downright insane that User B's traffic should be degraded over User A's, just because User A is streaming Netflix (who has a paying deal with BIGISP). Another viewpoint: allowing this sort of collusion means that small entrants in the content provider space will have a much harder time making inroads because they simply lack the capital to make these sort of deals. Probably THE greatest innovations of the internet is that it has reduced the marginal cost of distribution of many kinds of media and services to near-zero. So now we want to throw that all away...? For what, exactly? That's the question that needs a strong, well-reasoned answer.
curun1r 9y ago
Your #1 is about QoS, not net neutrality. You want to prioritize the remote surgery protocol above all others...net neutrality allows that. If, instead of protocol, you prioritize by source/destination, how can you ensure that the remote surgery protocol isn't disrupted by the transmission of high-resolution X-ray scans between the two hospitals? We already allow (and even encourage) ISPs to prioritize real-time protocols above those that aren't. VoIP is the oft-cited example because late packets are useless packets. Remote surgery can be handled the same way. Would you really want your hospital to prioritize remote surgery from one hospital over another? When patients are choosing their remote surgery doctor, do you want them to have to worry about finding one at the top-priority hospital instead of one at a lower priority? What if the surgery is the result of an emergency and the doctor is on vacation? By using protocol as the prioritization instead of source/destination, that doctor can find a local hospital from which to perform the operation and doesn't have to worry about having a lower priority during the surgery.
- JoshTriplett 9y ago
  > You want to prioritize the remote surgery protocol above all others...net neutrality allows that. If, instead of protocol, you prioritize by source/destination Yes, I absolutely want the ability to prioritize remote-control packets between the hospital and the doctor actually performing the surgery, not any random other packets that happen to look similar. Such a priority channel could be set up on the fly, such as via software-defined networking.
Dylan16807 9y ago
> surgery via telepresence A point to point connection with guaranteed latency the entire way doesn't sound like a connection to the internet to me.
mikeash 9y ago
For (1), net neutrality laws wouldn't stop you from getting a high-quality connection, they would be what stops your ISP from saying, "You can purchase a low-latency, low-jitter connection for $300/month. Wait, you want to use it for surgery? I meant $3,000/month."
inetknght 9y ago
1) I imagine a hospital that performs surgery via telepresence Allow for businesses to apply for exemptions to the rule, specifically for one endpoint to another endpoint. If the number of exemptions gets to be unwieldy, then perhaps it would indicate it's time to revisit the law. Until then, there's been plenty of proof of, what I believe to be, abuse. 2) cell phone provider who wanted to provide a very basic service level that would allow free use of Facebook and a couple of other apps, but going outside of that narrow box would cost much more. Laudable, for the moment, but Facebook "and a couple of other apps" can easily be abused; they're for-profit companies rather than for-public services. If the company wants to provide free bandwidth, I don't think it's right or fair to limit to whatever sites they choose.
- mdpopescu 9y ago
  So we start from bad thing X, ISP monopolies; we patch that with bad thing Y, net neutrality; and then we fix THAT with bad thing Z, exemptions for businesses. And then we get the tax code :)
  - inetknght 9y ago
    I mean... you're not wrong...
imron 9y ago
> This is life-and-death, and I can't see why people would object to a right to pay more for higher-priority for this traffic. Ah yes, imagine the free-market possibilities where your ISP can now bill your insurance provider $10,000 per procedure to ensure the ultrafast, jitter-free connection while the telemedic is operating on you.

drostie 9y ago

For what it's worth, it prevents you from negotiating an agreement that you were not going to win anyways. ISPs are an oligopoly in their present state. If they weren't, then it might make sense to deregulate, but since they are, it doesn't. (1) No, this is fundamentally misunderstanding what happens when monopolistic assholes get to interact with people who are making life-or-death decisions. In those cases the monopolistic assholes always overcharge the crap out of the person who wants, more than to have more money, to be alive. You know how we keep getting news reports about why healthcare costs are higher in the US than anywhere else and it's a problem? It's invariably because there's monopolistic assholes involved -- and congrats, they just got higher due to abandoning net neutrality rules which prevent this from even being a thing. (2) That cell phone provider was probably lying their pants off to you about the marginal cost of going from "you can use a couple apps" to "you can request the whole internet, but your bandwidth will be limited." It's very likely to be negative; you'd seem to have to build out more infrastructure to limit peoples' traffic destinations than you'd do to limit their bandwidth. (Think of the fact that Facebook is all-HTTPS these days, for example, so it's not like you're sniffing those packets without MITMing the whole connection.) To address your earlier point, it's not really double-think. The point is, in the presence of the oligopoly the ISPs are basically Internet countries, with a strange but unelected oligarchic government at the top. We have somewhat more freedom than most to emigrate, but that's about the biggest difference. Net neutrality is an externally imposed free-trade deal among all of them. They are expressing that no, they would instead really like to charge taxes and inspect imports like makeshift customs officers, at their own anti-transparent discretion. They don't want the free-trade deal. It is indeed a valid response to say "well, tough, you're going to have this free-trade deal because the benefits of free trade for everyone in terms of innovation and public good outweigh the benefits those taxes on imports and exports will bring to your shareholders."

yellowapple 9y ago

"I imagine a hospital that performs surgery via telepresence. This seems a pretty clear area where I would really want the opportunity to pay more, to ensure that the connection between the surgeon and his robot never even suffers the slightest amount of jitter." This is a common objection, but it's entirely irrelevant to net neutrality (and in fact, net neutrality actually helps here). Even small hospitals (certainly ones which can afford a robosurgeon) already pay for dedicated Internet connections (often redundant across two or more different providers) to avoid this type of problem. Such connections have guaranteed minimum performance characteristics and are not subject to any kind of throttling on the ISP's part. This is true of most businesses with physical locations. Net neutrality is more about preventing the selective throttling of services as they come across non-dedicated (e.g. residential) Internet connections. This is where ISPs typically engage in such selective throttling, since they tend to sell maximum instead of minimum performance characteristics (for example: a residential plan might include "up to" 15 Mbps at any given time, while a commercial plan might instead include "at least" 5 Mbps at all times). That maximum is shared between all other residential customers in a given geographic area (e.g. a neighborhood), so selective throttling is employed as a way to keep up the illusion that each residence has its own high-speed Internet. Put simply: net neutrality does not actually negatively impact businesses (and especially not hospitals), since their Internet plans are not subject to selective throttling. Ensuring that you have enough bandwidth to run your telepresence robot without jitter (beyond making sure that you've purchased a plan with the right bandwidth minimums) is the responsibility of the hospital's own network administrator or equivalent (namely: by prioritizing the robosurgeon's traffic over other less-critical traffic). Net neutrality does not prevent anyone from choosing to pay for more bandwidth. It only prevents ISPs from being the ones to decide how users allocate the bandwidth for which they pay. Thus, net neutrality would benefit the hospital in this case, since the hospital can decide for itself which traffic should be prioritized within the constraints of its available Internet bandwidth. -- "cell phone provider who wanted to provide a very basic service level that would allow free use of Facebook and a couple of other apps" The usual problem is when a provider wants to offer Facebook specifically (which is anticompetitive, since it gives Facebook an unfair advantage over, say, Twitter or reddit). The specific case of which I'm aware was when Facebook itself wanted to offer the sort of plan you're describing, with (unsurprisingly) Facebook being the free site, all under the banner of "but think of the poor people!". If that's not monopolistic, I don't know what is. The much better approach - if one really does actually care about poor people (I've yet to be convinced that any ISP attempting to justify such practices is actually honest about its motivations here) - would be to just provide slow-speed Internet connections with some high-speed exceptions for specific types of traffic (like audio/video). This is how T-Mobile's non-unlimited plans work, and while net neutrality purists usually object to it, I personally see no problem with it as long as all audio/video providers are treated freely and equally.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

cwyers 9y ago

> Net neutrality ensures that the free market—not big cable—picks the winners and losers There isn't a free market. Near-zero interest rates have flooded the Valley with VC capital in an incredibly inefficient arrangement, and it's distorted the market. The market is thus dominated by a few grotesquely large conglomerates that stifle competition. "Net neutrality" does nothing to restore that competition and provide an actually free market. If net neutrality really provided advantages to smaller Internet players, then why are all the large conglomerates backing it to the hilt? This is a fight between the big cable providers and the big Silicon Valley firms -- Facebook, Google, Netflix. A large cartel is what wins either side of this fight, not the "free market."

throwawayjava 9y ago
People used to say that same thing about MySpace and Yahoo! on Slashdot back in the day. Turns out reigning in mono/duopolies whose monopoly status depends on utility-like land grabs is a hell of a lot more important than reigning in much more vulnerable software companies.

nicpottier 9y ago

On 2) this happens already in some places, Facebook.0 is that and in some countries it is free for mobile users on particular carriers. There has been significant fights against it in other countries, I believe India specifically. The reasons are clear as to why if you think about it a bit. Putting aside how you feel about Facebook, how does the next Facebook happen in these countries? How are you meant to compete against free if you are trying to bring up a new service? Even if your service is better in every way you just don't stand a chance. If you believe value is created by innovation, then you need to enforce that the opportunity is the same for everyone, otherwise you are creating an environment where new things just can't bubble up. This doesn't even get into the side of things that the "internet" then becomes what Facebook wants it to..

794CD01 9y ago
>How are you meant to compete against free if you are trying to bring up a new service? This is an especially ironic remark considering what site we are on.

losteric 9y ago

> This seems like double-think to me. The net neutrality regulations actually prevent me from negotiating an agreement that models my priorities. It forces me to accept everything one-size-fits-all, explicitly preventing a differentiated market from developing in the commodity of bandwidth. There are downstream effects on consumers and websites which lead to the same problem eating away at our democracy: the people with money get disproportionate representation. #2: This is a slippery slope that prevents the market from adjusting to provide a cheaper/lower-quality service. If people cannot pay $5/m for internet access, the answer isn't to give them access to a monopolized walled garden that extracts value from their mere presence - the answer is to offer a lower level of service for $1/m. #1: Same as above. The ISP and hospital are absolutely free to pay for higher qualities of service. This isn't new - 10 years ago I could buy business-level DSL with stable latency. I think you're confusing tiered access to the internet versus tiered access to specific websites. Assuming you have 10mbit internet access for $N/month: * Paying +$20/m for 100mbit internet: OK * Paying +$20/m for 100mbit access to "Top 100 websites": Not OK * Receiving 10mbit access to Youtube and 1mbit access to Vimeo: Not OK (neither is receiving 100mbit youtube/10mbit vimeo)

794CD01 9y ago
What's the point of having more money if you can't spend it on better goods and services? We don't have car neutrality laws to prevent rich people from paying more for Ferraris.
- vmarsy 9y ago
  I don't think your comparison is correct. > Assuming you have 10mbit internet access for $N/month: > * Paying +$20/m for 100mbit internet: OK > * Paying +$20/m for 100mbit access to "Top 100 websites": Not OK In your car comparison, it would be like : Assuming you pay for a VW Golf $10000 * Paying +$200k for a Ferrari: OK * Paying +$200k for a Lamborghini: OK * Paying +$200k for a Ferrari but +$200k for an equivalent Lamborghini but with an added +$300k of fee just because the container ship company moving the car from Italy to the U.S. asked an extra $300k simply because the container is filled with Lamborghini instead of Ferrari: Not OK Container companies would never do this because Lamborghini would simply put its containers on the container boat of a concurrent company, because there's competition. But for consumer-facing ISPs, there's plenty of documentation that shows that in many areas around the country, some ISPs have a monopoly, and so for many users, they cannot go to another ISP if they aren't satisfied with their only choice.

wordsarewind 9y ago

You're argument is absolutely sound: where possible, producers should be able to differentiate products to better suit the consumer demand. However, you overlook the unfortunate fact that there are signicant barriers to entry for ISPs, which means that it is effectively impossible for new producers with the current ones such as AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner, etc. What results is an oligopoly which has significant anti-trust issues and largely causes suboptimal results for the consumer (consider the absurdly high prices Americans pay for shitty Internet service). Open the doors to a new marketplace of service for these ISPs and all hell will break loose. Add to this the political leanings of these companies and it's hard to imagine a worse outcome.

howard941 9y ago

> 1) I imagine a hospital that performs surgery via telepresence. This seems a pretty clear area where I would really want the opportunity to pay more, to ensure that the connection between the surgeon and his robot never even suffers the slightest amount of jitter. This is life-and-death, and I can't see why people would object to a right to pay more for higher-priority for this traffic. Just how would that work across multiple ISPs? The application begs for a circuit.

newloop 9y ago
The example is a bit contrived. That doesn't change that there are a number of scenarios where you want to be able to have granularity. You don't necessarily want to pay 24/7 for low latency for video calls, bandwidth to stream a VR movie or software updates to run at night. The ISP game isn't exactly fair as is. The average person have to get a fast connection just so they can get decent access to the services they are already paying for or that is monetizing them.

no_wizard 9y ago

To quickly address this: For number one: net neutrality doesn't stop that from happening. You can pay more for a quality of service connection. Net neutrality doesn't regulate quality of service. It's the idea that what traffic goes over those pipes should not in any way be denied from going over those pipes, essentially. It's so that Facebook for instance can't pay ISPs to ban all Mastodan traffic or effectively filter it from showing up on say a search for social networks. It's so that the ISPs can't favor one service over another so they can extract fees from competitors. Has nothing at all to do with quality of service Of a connection. 2) I don't believe those plans were being floated in the United Statss but developing nations. How does policy in this area they would be implemented in West Africa or India have anything to do with net neutrality in the United States

AnotXOR 9y ago

I totally agree but the rub is that I don't understand the FCC's previous action or the implications of the latest foray by Congress. Most of what I read or hear has that "john oliverish" smugness and non-specificity that a previous poster mentioned and you can't really learn anything from that unless ignorance is bliss to someone. I'll be seriously disappointed though if I end up having to pay for Internet like we do for Cable channel packages today. I'll be seething with rage most likely. So if Net Neutrality keeps that at bay, and still allows ISP's to profit from the top 100 bandwidth consuming websites, I'll be happy. Like many others though, I have little actual clue as to what is going on due FUD, political natures, grandstanding, and the ignorance of the media themselves.

saidajigumi 9y ago

1) I imagine a hospital that performs surgery via telepresence. This seems a pretty clear area where I would really want the opportunity to pay more, to ensure that the connection between the surgeon and his robot never even suffers the slightest amount of jitter. This is life-and-death, and I can't see why people would object to a right to pay more for higher-priority for this traffic. This is false. Net neutrality doesn't prevent the provisioning and purchase of high QoS connections. More specifically, the relevant position of net neutrality is that a content provider cannot collude with an internet service provider to pay for blanket privilege of their connections over other connections. Example: If User A and User B are both paying subscribers to BIGISP, at the same service level, it's downright insane that User B's traffic should be degraded over User A's, just because User A is streaming Netflix (who has a paying deal with BIGISP). Another viewpoint: allowing this sort of collusion means that small entrants in the content provider space will have a much harder time making inroads because they simply lack the capital to make these sort of deals. Probably THE greatest innovations of the internet is that it has reduced the marginal cost of distribution of many kinds of media and services to near-zero. So now we want to throw that all away...? For what, exactly? That's the question that needs a strong, well-reasoned answer.

curun1r 9y ago

Your #1 is about QoS, not net neutrality. You want to prioritize the remote surgery protocol above all others...net neutrality allows that. If, instead of protocol, you prioritize by source/destination, how can you ensure that the remote surgery protocol isn't disrupted by the transmission of high-resolution X-ray scans between the two hospitals? We already allow (and even encourage) ISPs to prioritize real-time protocols above those that aren't. VoIP is the oft-cited example because late packets are useless packets. Remote surgery can be handled the same way. Would you really want your hospital to prioritize remote surgery from one hospital over another? When patients are choosing their remote surgery doctor, do you want them to have to worry about finding one at the top-priority hospital instead of one at a lower priority? What if the surgery is the result of an emergency and the doctor is on vacation? By using protocol as the prioritization instead of source/destination, that doctor can find a local hospital from which to perform the operation and doesn't have to worry about having a lower priority during the surgery.

JoshTriplett 9y ago
> You want to prioritize the remote surgery protocol above all others...net neutrality allows that. If, instead of protocol, you prioritize by source/destination Yes, I absolutely want the ability to prioritize remote-control packets between the hospital and the doctor actually performing the surgery, not any random other packets that happen to look similar. Such a priority channel could be set up on the fly, such as via software-defined networking.

Dylan16807 9y ago

> surgery via telepresence A point to point connection with guaranteed latency the entire way doesn't sound like a connection to the internet to me.

mikeash 9y ago

For (1), net neutrality laws wouldn't stop you from getting a high-quality connection, they would be what stops your ISP from saying, "You can purchase a low-latency, low-jitter connection for $300/month. Wait, you want to use it for surgery? I meant $3,000/month."

inetknght 9y ago

1) I imagine a hospital that performs surgery via telepresence Allow for businesses to apply for exemptions to the rule, specifically for one endpoint to another endpoint. If the number of exemptions gets to be unwieldy, then perhaps it would indicate it's time to revisit the law. Until then, there's been plenty of proof of, what I believe to be, abuse. 2) cell phone provider who wanted to provide a very basic service level that would allow free use of Facebook and a couple of other apps, but going outside of that narrow box would cost much more. Laudable, for the moment, but Facebook "and a couple of other apps" can easily be abused; they're for-profit companies rather than for-public services. If the company wants to provide free bandwidth, I don't think it's right or fair to limit to whatever sites they choose.

mdpopescu 9y ago
So we start from bad thing X, ISP monopolies; we patch that with bad thing Y, net neutrality; and then we fix THAT with bad thing Z, exemptions for businesses. And then we get the tax code :)
- inetknght 9y ago
  I mean... you're not wrong...

imron 9y ago

> This is life-and-death, and I can't see why people would object to a right to pay more for higher-priority for this traffic. Ah yes, imagine the free-market possibilities where your ISP can now bill your insurance provider $10,000 per procedure to ensure the ultrafast, jitter-free connection while the telemedic is operating on you.