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Good analogy; I think I can work within it. It is entirely appropriate to limit the speed and size of large trucks (high bandwidth users) on roadways or charge

Good analogy; I think I can work within it. It is entirely appropriate to limit the speed and size of large trucks (high bandwidth users) on roadways or charge them more. The ISPs need to be able to do this sort of economizing to help maintain everybody's min service guarantees and to a apply market force to the bloating of popular websites. With regard to the censorship argument (only allowing Honda cars), I agree that a democratic government entity needs to have power here as roadways and the fiber under them are natural monopolies (why dig up a street twice?). But it seems fairly clear that the appropriate regulating body is at the size of the city which administers the land on which the distribution network is built--NOT the Feds. No city would allow something like that (only X brand cars allowed) to stand, the FCC is overkill. I think there is a real economic and business case for ISPs discriminating based on bandwidth requirements. You have to throttle streaming and prioritize phone packets because they need stronger latency guarantees. Basically its a market, which suggest the ISPs are going to be doing this, whether its against the rules or not. If you make something so logical against the rules, it basically becomes another "look the other way" law; providing the federal government with a legal club with which to beat companies it is not pleased with, perhaps when an ISP refuses to comply with an inappropriate information request. I am concerned about censorship mostly by the Feds, less so by private utilities, and less still by city halls.

AnthonyMouse 9y ago
> I am concerned about censorship mostly by the Feds, less so by private utilities, and less still by city halls. It sounds like what you object to is not network neutrality but rather having it imposed at the federal rather than the state level. But there are two major problems with that. The first is that interconnection is inherently interstate. Netflix might have no physical presence in Tennessee at all and reach all customers there through an interconnect in Atlanta. Is Tennessee supposed to regulate commerce in Georgia? If Tennessee and Georgia have conflicting rules, which ones control? This sort of thing is why the interstate commerce clause exists. It's not some fraud where the feds get to regulate intra-state non-commerce because reasons, it's actually black -letter interstate commerce. Which leads to the second problem, which is that there is a thing called preemption. What it means is that the states aren't allowed to regulate something once the feds have already put their bootprints on it. You can argue that the feds should stay out of it entirely -- repeal the Communications Act -- but that isn't what the Republicans are actually doing. > providing the federal government with a legal club with which to beat companies it is not pleased with, perhaps when an ISP refuses to comply with an inappropriate information request. This is not something major ISPs actually do regardless, because they know where their bread is buttered. See also Qwest Communications for what happens if they try to stand up. This is why everyone is focused on end-to-end encryption -- trusting your ISP is foolish. > I think there is a real economic and business case for ISPs discriminating based on bandwidth requirements. The problem with the free market argument is that it's not a free market. Comcast has millions of customers that cannot be reached without going through Comcast. You can't go to Verizon and negotiate better access to Comcast subscribers, and you can't pay for access to Verizon subscribers instead of Comcast subscribers because you need both. Consumer-level ISPs have market power. You either regulate them or they abuse their local monopolies. > I think there is a real economic and business case for ISPs discriminating based on bandwidth requirements. You have to throttle streaming and prioritize phone packets because they need stronger latency guarantees. Endpoints marking packets for QoS has nothing to do with network neutrality. Moreover, in practice most if not all residential ISPs ignore the QoS bits and everything still works anyway, because contention in the core of the network only happens in poorly designed networks that are too oversubscribed.
- benlorenzetti 9y ago
  Thank you for calling my attention to the Communications Act. And you condense my thoughts well; one of my two arguments is that communication is too abstract a thing to be regulated or abridged by the interstate commerce clause. I.e. for interstate communication the federal government shouldn't be able to touch it due to the 1st amendment. I'm not necessarily as opposed to foreign communication being under commerce. But repealing net neutrality is still a step towards this, and in my FCC comment I even acknowledge that I don't support repeal for the official, republican stated reason. I agree with you about end-to-end encryption but the Qwest Communications thing I think helps make my first point. We shouldn't want the federal government having such economic and legal leverage in this space. My second reason for opposing net neutrality deals with > the problem with the free market argument. ISPs are a monopoly and should be regulated or government owned. Just at municipal and regional levels. To do this you have to allow money transactions higher up in the network topology. To make the market work this way with regional ISPs you have to be able to charge where the content is coming from as well as charging for consumption at the edges. FCC's net neutrality would codify into law a system that makes that legally difficult. I.e. we shouldn't pass a rule today that makes a more ideal system in the future more difficult to develop. > Endpoint marking packets of QoS has nothing to do with network neutrality. Moreover, in practice most if not all residential ISPs ignore the QoS bits... But not their own QoS bits for telephone and cable services. Likewise why not let Vonage or Netflix pay for this special treatment?
  - AnthonyMouse 9y ago
    > one of my two arguments is that communication is too abstract a thing to be regulated or abridged by the interstate commerce clause. You have to separate the speech from the infrastructure. It's no argument to say that a law requiring UPS and FedEx to deliver packages to all households (instead of only white households) is a free speech violation, just because packages contain documents and other media. The law isn't proscribing any particular content, it's only requiring common carriers to be common carriers. > I agree with you about end-to-end encryption but the Qwest Communications thing I think helps make my first point. We shouldn't want the federal government having such economic and legal leverage in this space. The source of the leverage isn't legislation, it's jurisdiction. ISPs have huge physical infrastructure investments that they can't just pick up and move to another country if the US government is leaning on them, so they fold. > To do this you have to allow money transactions higher up in the network topology. This I think is the root of the misunderstanding. It makes no sense to have Joe pay Comcast directly and have Joe pay Comcast by way of Netflix. All that does is create unneeded transaction costs for no reason, compared with having Joe pay the total amount going to Comcast directly to Comcast. It's only a subterfuge calculated to disguise the fact that the Comcast aims to leverage their ISP monopoly to damage competitors in video content. Netflix has to pay Comcast actual money, but Comcast-video nominally paying Comcast-ISP is just moving money between two pockets in the same pants. They want to give their own video service an unfair advantage. There is no reason to engage in that inefficient money laundering triangle unless there is something dubious going on that requires artificial complexity to obfuscate. > But not their own QoS bits for telephone and cable services. Likewise why not let Vonage or Netflix pay for this special treatment? Because it allows the monopoly abuse subterfuge, as opposed to having the ISP sell the feature directly to the end users. Which apparently nobody wants enough for it to even be offered.
argv_empty 9y ago
It is entirely appropriate to limit the speed and size of large trucks (high bandwidth users) on roadways or charge them more. This has nothing to do with net neutrality. ISPs already get to sell their users as much or as little bandwidth as they choose to. If the ISP's users are sending a lot of traffic to one web site, that's only possible because the ISP's users are sending a lot of traffic. They can't stream movies unless they're already paying for a connection fast enough to stream movies. Which web site streams those movies doesn't matter.
- benlorenzetti 9y ago
  By high bandwidth users I am referring more to companies like Netflix or a bloated news site than to end users. It would be easier for everyone if ISP and Netflix negotiated ``oversize'' rates than having individual consumer throttling. It doesn't have to be discriminatory, oversize rates could be triggered when traffic from a corporate entity exceeded some threshold rate.
  - argv_empty 9y ago
    Those are not the ISP's users, and the ISP has already been paid for the traffic going there.
    - benlorenzetti 9y ago
      Actually this is a good thread of thought that I need to think about more. My first inclination is that an ISP is like the taxman. If and end user transacts with netflix, then a tax is collected by the entity that provided the facilitating infrastructure. The tax is on the economic transaction, not one party xor the other. Just as government funds roads by a variety of taxes on different entities, individuals and companies.
  - FireBeyond 9y ago
    Eh. As an ISP you can't give your customers (the very vast majority, I realize that a small minority have symmetric connections) vastly asymmetric pipes (usually in the order of 10:1, if not 20:1), and then "complain" about how your inbound upstream traffic is asymmetric and thus "unfair" to the peering arrangements. It is as it was designed. Give users symmetric pipes and they'll use them differently. Far more uptake of offsite backup, other services from users with a lot of outbound bandwidth. Will ISPs scream about how unfair it is if Dropbox, Crashplan, BackBlaze, Carbonite and the like start charging THEM more because "oh gosh, look, your users are sending far more data to us than we are to them, so you're abusing our peering relationship"? It's a bunch of willfully ignorant BS. Design a traffic model and then complain that the usage pattern dictated by the traffic model is unfair to you, and therefore you need to double dip your billing.
afpx 9y ago
Why are you concerned with censorship by the Feds? I may be completely off base, but I've seen corruption and abuse of power be much more common at the local level. In fact, I often see the Fed stepping in to help alleviate those problems. Maybe my data is skewed.
- benlorenzetti 9y ago
  I would actually agree with you on that. Many examples could probably be had in the area of policing. In my own area Cincinnati has some sort of evil monopoly deal with Cincinnati Bell. But its about the possible scale of abuse. If the federal government abuses its power what you get is the early USSR. If a city abuses its power what you get is a city you can leave.
yahna 9y ago
> charge them more. You are free to do so. That you aren't is a conservative myth to discredit net neutrality.

AnthonyMouse 9y ago

> I am concerned about censorship mostly by the Feds, less so by private utilities, and less still by city halls. It sounds like what you object to is not network neutrality but rather having it imposed at the federal rather than the state level. But there are two major problems with that. The first is that interconnection is inherently interstate. Netflix might have no physical presence in Tennessee at all and reach all customers there through an interconnect in Atlanta. Is Tennessee supposed to regulate commerce in Georgia? If Tennessee and Georgia have conflicting rules, which ones control? This sort of thing is why the interstate commerce clause exists. It's not some fraud where the feds get to regulate intra-state non-commerce because reasons, it's actually black -letter interstate commerce. Which leads to the second problem, which is that there is a thing called preemption. What it means is that the states aren't allowed to regulate something once the feds have already put their bootprints on it. You can argue that the feds should stay out of it entirely -- repeal the Communications Act -- but that isn't what the Republicans are actually doing. > providing the federal government with a legal club with which to beat companies it is not pleased with, perhaps when an ISP refuses to comply with an inappropriate information request. This is not something major ISPs actually do regardless, because they know where their bread is buttered. See also Qwest Communications for what happens if they try to stand up. This is why everyone is focused on end-to-end encryption -- trusting your ISP is foolish. > I think there is a real economic and business case for ISPs discriminating based on bandwidth requirements. The problem with the free market argument is that it's not a free market. Comcast has millions of customers that cannot be reached without going through Comcast. You can't go to Verizon and negotiate better access to Comcast subscribers, and you can't pay for access to Verizon subscribers instead of Comcast subscribers because you need both. Consumer-level ISPs have market power. You either regulate them or they abuse their local monopolies. > I think there is a real economic and business case for ISPs discriminating based on bandwidth requirements. You have to throttle streaming and prioritize phone packets because they need stronger latency guarantees. Endpoints marking packets for QoS has nothing to do with network neutrality. Moreover, in practice most if not all residential ISPs ignore the QoS bits and everything still works anyway, because contention in the core of the network only happens in poorly designed networks that are too oversubscribed.

benlorenzetti 9y ago
Thank you for calling my attention to the Communications Act. And you condense my thoughts well; one of my two arguments is that communication is too abstract a thing to be regulated or abridged by the interstate commerce clause. I.e. for interstate communication the federal government shouldn't be able to touch it due to the 1st amendment. I'm not necessarily as opposed to foreign communication being under commerce. But repealing net neutrality is still a step towards this, and in my FCC comment I even acknowledge that I don't support repeal for the official, republican stated reason. I agree with you about end-to-end encryption but the Qwest Communications thing I think helps make my first point. We shouldn't want the federal government having such economic and legal leverage in this space. My second reason for opposing net neutrality deals with > the problem with the free market argument. ISPs are a monopoly and should be regulated or government owned. Just at municipal and regional levels. To do this you have to allow money transactions higher up in the network topology. To make the market work this way with regional ISPs you have to be able to charge where the content is coming from as well as charging for consumption at the edges. FCC's net neutrality would codify into law a system that makes that legally difficult. I.e. we shouldn't pass a rule today that makes a more ideal system in the future more difficult to develop. > Endpoint marking packets of QoS has nothing to do with network neutrality. Moreover, in practice most if not all residential ISPs ignore the QoS bits... But not their own QoS bits for telephone and cable services. Likewise why not let Vonage or Netflix pay for this special treatment?
- AnthonyMouse 9y ago
  > one of my two arguments is that communication is too abstract a thing to be regulated or abridged by the interstate commerce clause. You have to separate the speech from the infrastructure. It's no argument to say that a law requiring UPS and FedEx to deliver packages to all households (instead of only white households) is a free speech violation, just because packages contain documents and other media. The law isn't proscribing any particular content, it's only requiring common carriers to be common carriers. > I agree with you about end-to-end encryption but the Qwest Communications thing I think helps make my first point. We shouldn't want the federal government having such economic and legal leverage in this space. The source of the leverage isn't legislation, it's jurisdiction. ISPs have huge physical infrastructure investments that they can't just pick up and move to another country if the US government is leaning on them, so they fold. > To do this you have to allow money transactions higher up in the network topology. This I think is the root of the misunderstanding. It makes no sense to have Joe pay Comcast directly and have Joe pay Comcast by way of Netflix. All that does is create unneeded transaction costs for no reason, compared with having Joe pay the total amount going to Comcast directly to Comcast. It's only a subterfuge calculated to disguise the fact that the Comcast aims to leverage their ISP monopoly to damage competitors in video content. Netflix has to pay Comcast actual money, but Comcast-video nominally paying Comcast-ISP is just moving money between two pockets in the same pants. They want to give their own video service an unfair advantage. There is no reason to engage in that inefficient money laundering triangle unless there is something dubious going on that requires artificial complexity to obfuscate. > But not their own QoS bits for telephone and cable services. Likewise why not let Vonage or Netflix pay for this special treatment? Because it allows the monopoly abuse subterfuge, as opposed to having the ISP sell the feature directly to the end users. Which apparently nobody wants enough for it to even be offered.

argv_empty 9y ago

It is entirely appropriate to limit the speed and size of large trucks (high bandwidth users) on roadways or charge them more. This has nothing to do with net neutrality. ISPs already get to sell their users as much or as little bandwidth as they choose to. If the ISP's users are sending a lot of traffic to one web site, that's only possible because the ISP's users are sending a lot of traffic. They can't stream movies unless they're already paying for a connection fast enough to stream movies. Which web site streams those movies doesn't matter.

benlorenzetti 9y ago
By high bandwidth users I am referring more to companies like Netflix or a bloated news site than to end users. It would be easier for everyone if ISP and Netflix negotiated ``oversize'' rates than having individual consumer throttling. It doesn't have to be discriminatory, oversize rates could be triggered when traffic from a corporate entity exceeded some threshold rate.
- argv_empty 9y ago
  Those are not the ISP's users, and the ISP has already been paid for the traffic going there.
  - benlorenzetti 9y ago
    Actually this is a good thread of thought that I need to think about more. My first inclination is that an ISP is like the taxman. If and end user transacts with netflix, then a tax is collected by the entity that provided the facilitating infrastructure. The tax is on the economic transaction, not one party xor the other. Just as government funds roads by a variety of taxes on different entities, individuals and companies.
- FireBeyond 9y ago
  Eh. As an ISP you can't give your customers (the very vast majority, I realize that a small minority have symmetric connections) vastly asymmetric pipes (usually in the order of 10:1, if not 20:1), and then "complain" about how your inbound upstream traffic is asymmetric and thus "unfair" to the peering arrangements. It is as it was designed. Give users symmetric pipes and they'll use them differently. Far more uptake of offsite backup, other services from users with a lot of outbound bandwidth. Will ISPs scream about how unfair it is if Dropbox, Crashplan, BackBlaze, Carbonite and the like start charging THEM more because "oh gosh, look, your users are sending far more data to us than we are to them, so you're abusing our peering relationship"? It's a bunch of willfully ignorant BS. Design a traffic model and then complain that the usage pattern dictated by the traffic model is unfair to you, and therefore you need to double dip your billing.

afpx 9y ago

Why are you concerned with censorship by the Feds? I may be completely off base, but I've seen corruption and abuse of power be much more common at the local level. In fact, I often see the Fed stepping in to help alleviate those problems. Maybe my data is skewed.

benlorenzetti 9y ago
I would actually agree with you on that. Many examples could probably be had in the area of policing. In my own area Cincinnati has some sort of evil monopoly deal with Cincinnati Bell. But its about the possible scale of abuse. If the federal government abuses its power what you get is the early USSR. If a city abuses its power what you get is a city you can leave.

yahna 9y ago

> charge them more. You are free to do so. That you aren't is a conservative myth to discredit net neutrality.