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> By high bandwidth users I am referring more to companies like Netflix or a bloated news site than to end users. I'm not sure I understand. Netflix pays for

> By high bandwidth users I am referring more to companies like Netflix or a bloated news site than to end users. I'm not sure I understand. Netflix pays for it's high bandwidth to deliver data to users. And you pay for your bandwidth to receive that data. You could have 10 services that are using bandwidth equally or 1 service using (and paying for) 10x the bandwidth -- what is the significant difference here? The total data is the same. Net Neutrality isn't about the "what" it's about the "who". Netflix is a big popular service so your ISP wants to extract more money from them -- not because of what they do, but who they are. 1 big service vs. 10 smaller ones.

benlorenzetti 9y ago
As a thought experiment, imagine a world where household customers were provided internet for free and ISPs earned all their money from the outbound traffic on servers. Want a particular cable channel? Pay the company operating that server. Want the news? The news company earns money from advertising so they deliver it to you. Like you point out total data is the same. The premise that the ISP payment should be born by only one side of the transaction should not be codified into law. Also I do agree we should regulate protections for the ``who''. I just think these should come from the cities under whose streets the fiber is laid, not the FCC. There is even a strong case to be made for municipal ISPs.
- wvenable 9y ago
  ISP have peering agreements with other networks -- everybody pays for their connections on both sides. Big ISP #1 pays big ISP #2 to carry their data and vice-versa but often the traffic just cancels out. If household customers were provided internet for free and ISPs earned all their money from servers the cost would be distributed through this network. ISP #1 with the customers would charge ISP #2 with the servers for the traffic and it would somewhat balance out (as ISP #2 can make no money if it can't get to customers). Netflix is, for example, already paying your ISP indirectly to deliver content to you when it pays its ISP. I think you're confused about what net neutrality means. ISPs can still charge whatever they want how they want as long as they don't discriminate on the content of the data (who it's from and what it is). The quantity of data, the physical location of the data, and whatever else is free game. In your thought experiment, the net neutrality has no impact one way or the other.
  - benlorenzetti 9y ago
    My vision for an internet renaissance would be a collection of many small interconnected ISPs, some serving end users and some backbone-y like a trans-arctic link. But should the transarctic link be able to make extra money prioritizing traffic between financial centers in NY, London, and Tokyo? I say yes. More at home, lets say the peering agreements were set up with a DNSy system allowing you to do breadth first search for the cheapest route to serve data from one domain name to another. The cost ought to vary depending on which path through the small ISPs you take, for example an ISP which had Netflix servers high in its topology could advertise cheaper rates for netflix.com requests to its neighbors. Such a market system would be required for my renaissance of the internet vision. And consequently, consumer-facing ISPs would have to be allowed to discriminate against high volumes of requests from domains which it cannot cheaply access. One way of correcting this would be charging those domains on the side, i.e. discriminating. You would also need to be able to discriminate on content type and other pricing schemes to help fund those backbone ISPs. If traders in NY, London, and Tokyo will help finance an undersea link through higher pricing for preferential service, why not let that happen? You still need regulation and democratic oversight of the local ISPs though, to prevent corruption from harming consumer access. Finally there is the concern that this would unfairly burden small content providers who have only one server. But this is silly even if it costs more to obtain data from the breadth-first search to this lone server in the middle of nowhere, its a small volume so you can ignore it and average that cost in elsewhere. Thus regulating for net neutrality directly impede the possible creation of a more distributed, more free system. In such a system all data is inherently not equal and the system could never function if we pretended it was.
    - wvenable 9y ago
      95% of this is how the system works already. Routes are chosen based on the potential delivery cost as well as performance and congestion. > If traders in NY, London, and Tokyo will help finance an undersea link through higher pricing for preferential service, why not let that happen? One can already pay more for faster service by paying for priority traffic (QoS). One could even pay for a private link. It happens all the time. In fact, my business already pays for multiple tiers of traffic for different purposes (video streaming, phones, regular Internet traffic). This not any sort of violation of net neutrality. Honestly, net neutrality is not significant impediment. I would argue that it boils down to simply treating all traffic fairly. If you can imagine a scenario where an ISP could treat your data or another service's data unfairly, it's probably a violation of net neutrality.

benlorenzetti 9y ago

As a thought experiment, imagine a world where household customers were provided internet for free and ISPs earned all their money from the outbound traffic on servers. Want a particular cable channel? Pay the company operating that server. Want the news? The news company earns money from advertising so they deliver it to you. Like you point out total data is the same. The premise that the ISP payment should be born by only one side of the transaction should not be codified into law. Also I do agree we should regulate protections for the ``who''. I just think these should come from the cities under whose streets the fiber is laid, not the FCC. There is even a strong case to be made for municipal ISPs.

wvenable 9y ago
ISP have peering agreements with other networks -- everybody pays for their connections on both sides. Big ISP #1 pays big ISP #2 to carry their data and vice-versa but often the traffic just cancels out. If household customers were provided internet for free and ISPs earned all their money from servers the cost would be distributed through this network. ISP #1 with the customers would charge ISP #2 with the servers for the traffic and it would somewhat balance out (as ISP #2 can make no money if it can't get to customers). Netflix is, for example, already paying your ISP indirectly to deliver content to you when it pays its ISP. I think you're confused about what net neutrality means. ISPs can still charge whatever they want how they want as long as they don't discriminate on the content of the data (who it's from and what it is). The quantity of data, the physical location of the data, and whatever else is free game. In your thought experiment, the net neutrality has no impact one way or the other.
- benlorenzetti 9y ago
  My vision for an internet renaissance would be a collection of many small interconnected ISPs, some serving end users and some backbone-y like a trans-arctic link. But should the transarctic link be able to make extra money prioritizing traffic between financial centers in NY, London, and Tokyo? I say yes. More at home, lets say the peering agreements were set up with a DNSy system allowing you to do breadth first search for the cheapest route to serve data from one domain name to another. The cost ought to vary depending on which path through the small ISPs you take, for example an ISP which had Netflix servers high in its topology could advertise cheaper rates for netflix.com requests to its neighbors. Such a market system would be required for my renaissance of the internet vision. And consequently, consumer-facing ISPs would have to be allowed to discriminate against high volumes of requests from domains which it cannot cheaply access. One way of correcting this would be charging those domains on the side, i.e. discriminating. You would also need to be able to discriminate on content type and other pricing schemes to help fund those backbone ISPs. If traders in NY, London, and Tokyo will help finance an undersea link through higher pricing for preferential service, why not let that happen? You still need regulation and democratic oversight of the local ISPs though, to prevent corruption from harming consumer access. Finally there is the concern that this would unfairly burden small content providers who have only one server. But this is silly even if it costs more to obtain data from the breadth-first search to this lone server in the middle of nowhere, its a small volume so you can ignore it and average that cost in elsewhere. Thus regulating for net neutrality directly impede the possible creation of a more distributed, more free system. In such a system all data is inherently not equal and the system could never function if we pretended it was.
  - wvenable 9y ago
    95% of this is how the system works already. Routes are chosen based on the potential delivery cost as well as performance and congestion. > If traders in NY, London, and Tokyo will help finance an undersea link through higher pricing for preferential service, why not let that happen? One can already pay more for faster service by paying for priority traffic (QoS). One could even pay for a private link. It happens all the time. In fact, my business already pays for multiple tiers of traffic for different purposes (video streaming, phones, regular Internet traffic). This not any sort of violation of net neutrality. Honestly, net neutrality is not significant impediment. I would argue that it boils down to simply treating all traffic fairly. If you can imagine a scenario where an ISP could treat your data or another service's data unfairly, it's probably a violation of net neutrality.