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Consider an ISP at node 0 receiving data from the domain naway.com through the cheapest path isp1, isp2,...isp n. But of all the members in the chain, isp0 only

Consider an ISP at node 0 receiving data from the domain naway.com through the cheapest path isp1, isp2,...isp n. But of all the members in the chain, isp0 only has a business relationship with isp1, so the price that isp1 advertises to isp0 has to be the cumulative sum of distribution costs charged by isp's 1-n. Because naway.com's server is so far away, it could cost isp0 more than average to serve this data. If there is a lot of traffic from naway.com, the ISP could compensate by raising prices on all end consumers, throttling the speed to reduce demand, or negotiating with naway.com for extra $$. Note that isp0 would only bother to do this with domains of sufficient size. If you had regional ISPs answerable democratically to the city entity that owned the roads, your ISP would be fighting for your lower prices and it would still be important to the ISP to provide access to these in demand sites. Net Neutrality seems to try to correct a symptom of a federally created, legal monopoly's concentration of power with more federal regulation. In the same way that the FCC allocates airwaves for the entire US, we need to acknowledge that the natural size for a ISP monopoly is the size of the government entity that owns the streets. Open protocols and market forces could be used for the rest of the network.

wvenable 9y ago
This has been a great discussion and has really helped me to come to a good mental model about explaining net neutrality. > Because naway.com's server is so far away, it could cost isp0 more than average to serve this data. The distance makes no difference to the Internet. I'm not sure how much better to explain how the Internet works but you do keep inventing new ideas to support the idea of an ISP charging a specific domain but it has no basis in reality of how the Internet works. > If there is a lot of traffic from naway.com, the ISP could compensate by raising prices on all end consumers, throttling the speed to reduce demand, or negotiating with naway.com for extra $$. There is absolutely no traffic from naway.com coming to ISP0. All the traffic comes from ISP1. And that traffic is an aggregate of all the traffic requested by ISP0 customers. This is arguing about charging more for different tap water based on the source reservoir; at some point it's all just water. Every router reads a bunch of fiber lines, copies that data, and aggregates that output to another line. Both sides agree on how much data they are willing to accept and the router drops anything over that amount. It's really not feasible for an ISP to have a business relationship with every possible end point. > Note that isp0 would only bother to do this with domains of sufficient size. That is the problem. In effect, only large domains would either suffer or get the benefits of these business relationships. Would Facebook ever be possible in a world where Myspace had exclusive relationships with all the major ISPs? Your ISP is effectively picking the winners and losers on the Internet by whom it chooses to do business with. > Net Neutrality seems to try to correct a symptom of a federally created, legal monopoly's concentration of power with more federal regulation. One could argue that monopoly concentration in providing Internet is a natural physical consequence of the world. There is only so much right of way, so much wireless spectrum, etc. In a situation where it's physically impossible to start a new ISP, competition is going to be very limited. Perfect is the enemy of good; you want perfection but net neutrality is a good solution to today's problems. No one is attempting to create a new concept here; net neutrality simply attempts to codify into law what has been convention for most of the existence of the Internet. It's what allowed the Internet to thrive when so many closed networks failed. Arguing against legislation for legislation sake begs the question that all legislation is bad by default. But that's an entirely different argument. The argument here is whether or not net neutrality is bad policy and I would say that it's entirely not. You have not found an argument, based on the physical reality of how the Internet works, where net neutrality has any real negative consequences. It absolutely doesn't have any for consumers or Internet businesses. And ISPs have been doing brisk business for the last 20 years without issue. > we need to acknowledge that the natural size for a ISP monopoly is the size of the government entity that owns the streets. The only solution to this problem of monopoly ISPs is more federal regulation. But as you are against federal regulation in one form you should also be against it here as well.
- benlorenzetti 9y ago
  > Arguing against legislation for legislation sake begs the question that all legislation is bad by default. > The distance makes no difference to the Internet. I'm not sure how much better to explain how the Internet works but you do keep inventing new ideas to support the idea of an ISP charging a specific domain but it has no basis in how the internet works. I feel you are attacking me personally. It is true I am libertarian and opposed to many federal laws, but not all. There are many that are appropriate. I know how ethernet and tcp/ip works. I have read RFCs on domain names, DNS, etc. From physics, it is not true that distance doesn't matter. I am not arguing about how the internet business models are structured today, but about they should be structured. I am ``inventing'' reasons that are logical, to refute them and convince me, please read my model (isp0...isp n) again and say which part is illogical without reaching for how the current ISP monopolies work. The idea that all data is equal is false. It depends on where its coming from and by what path. You may say that this would not be NN discrimination, but the mere fact that we are talking past each on this example suggests it would be super complicated if not impossible to enforce NN correctly. It will become yet another part of the legal framework which helps keep monopoly ISPs in control. > One could argue that monopoly concentration in providing the Internet is a natural physical consequence of the world. There is only so much right of way, so much wireless spectrum, etc. I support federal level, FCC auctioning of spectrum. And you further make my case, the ``natural'' physical monopoly size for wired ISPs is the city or regional government entity. Thus regulation should be at that level. This is a big power grab for the feds to regulate our communications at what should be a local level.
  - wvenable 9y ago
    The most frightening to me, is your assertion above: "And ISPs should have the right to use their position to get payment agreements". What I take this to mean is use their monopoly position to extort data from larger Internet companies. This appears to be what you are arguing for and I don't understand why any Internet consumer, such as yourself, would support such a position. > The idea that all data is equal is false. It depends on where its coming from and by what path. There is some truth to this but an ISP's only concern is it's immediate connections. It has connections to other peers (and it's own clients) and it has a certain capacity to each of those connections. That's it. Imagine you have two scenarios, one is content is generated in ISP1. So the data travels from ISP1 to ISP0. The second scenario is that the content is generated 10 routers away. The data is copied from ISP10 to ISP9 to ISP8 and so on till it gets to ISP1. It's then copied from ISP1 to ISP0. There is no difference between this data and the data generated by ISP1 in the first scenario as far as ISP0 is concerned. If the data packets did not have addresses there would actually be no way of telling the difference. To put another way, if you request content from something 3 hops away or 15 hops way -- it doesn't cost your ISP any more money to deliver it. The cost of the Internet as a whole is born by the entire network. Why does ISP0 need to charge by domain? Where does that fit in anywhere in this system? ISP0 and domain1 could come to an agreement to move servers into ISP0's network to improve latency and decrease traffic and that is perfectly reasonable. But charging domains for simply putting data on the Internet somewhere else makes no sense -- it's pure abuse of monopoly. > It will become yet another part of the legal framework which helps keep monopoly ISPs in control. It's meant to keep monopoly ISPs from abusing their monopoly position. It even helps smaller ISPs as a neutral network allows anyone to provide service and receive service fairly without having to have financial agreements with larger services. I'd like to hear the opposing argument to this, if you have one. I don't want to attack you personally but you make the above statement as if it were fact without any argument. Simply that it's regulation so it must be bad. If net neutrality helped large monopoly ISPs they wouldn't be fighting so hard to get rid of it. As for regulating this on the federal level, the Internet is a global system. The idea that regional governments should be enacting rules that will affect large and small companies around the world seems a bit crazy. You already have individual states imposing streaming media taxes. So yes, in some states you can be taxed for Netflix but not taxed for an online game. Giving ISPs their own power to enact these taxes seems like madness to me.

wvenable 9y ago

This has been a great discussion and has really helped me to come to a good mental model about explaining net neutrality. > Because naway.com's server is so far away, it could cost isp0 more than average to serve this data. The distance makes no difference to the Internet. I'm not sure how much better to explain how the Internet works but you do keep inventing new ideas to support the idea of an ISP charging a specific domain but it has no basis in reality of how the Internet works. > If there is a lot of traffic from naway.com, the ISP could compensate by raising prices on all end consumers, throttling the speed to reduce demand, or negotiating with naway.com for extra $$. There is absolutely no traffic from naway.com coming to ISP0. All the traffic comes from ISP1. And that traffic is an aggregate of all the traffic requested by ISP0 customers. This is arguing about charging more for different tap water based on the source reservoir; at some point it's all just water. Every router reads a bunch of fiber lines, copies that data, and aggregates that output to another line. Both sides agree on how much data they are willing to accept and the router drops anything over that amount. It's really not feasible for an ISP to have a business relationship with every possible end point. > Note that isp0 would only bother to do this with domains of sufficient size. That is the problem. In effect, only large domains would either suffer or get the benefits of these business relationships. Would Facebook ever be possible in a world where Myspace had exclusive relationships with all the major ISPs? Your ISP is effectively picking the winners and losers on the Internet by whom it chooses to do business with. > Net Neutrality seems to try to correct a symptom of a federally created, legal monopoly's concentration of power with more federal regulation. One could argue that monopoly concentration in providing Internet is a natural physical consequence of the world. There is only so much right of way, so much wireless spectrum, etc. In a situation where it's physically impossible to start a new ISP, competition is going to be very limited. Perfect is the enemy of good; you want perfection but net neutrality is a good solution to today's problems. No one is attempting to create a new concept here; net neutrality simply attempts to codify into law what has been convention for most of the existence of the Internet. It's what allowed the Internet to thrive when so many closed networks failed. Arguing against legislation for legislation sake begs the question that all legislation is bad by default. But that's an entirely different argument. The argument here is whether or not net neutrality is bad policy and I would say that it's entirely not. You have not found an argument, based on the physical reality of how the Internet works, where net neutrality has any real negative consequences. It absolutely doesn't have any for consumers or Internet businesses. And ISPs have been doing brisk business for the last 20 years without issue. > we need to acknowledge that the natural size for a ISP monopoly is the size of the government entity that owns the streets. The only solution to this problem of monopoly ISPs is more federal regulation. But as you are against federal regulation in one form you should also be against it here as well.

benlorenzetti 9y ago
> Arguing against legislation for legislation sake begs the question that all legislation is bad by default. > The distance makes no difference to the Internet. I'm not sure how much better to explain how the Internet works but you do keep inventing new ideas to support the idea of an ISP charging a specific domain but it has no basis in how the internet works. I feel you are attacking me personally. It is true I am libertarian and opposed to many federal laws, but not all. There are many that are appropriate. I know how ethernet and tcp/ip works. I have read RFCs on domain names, DNS, etc. From physics, it is not true that distance doesn't matter. I am not arguing about how the internet business models are structured today, but about they should be structured. I am ``inventing'' reasons that are logical, to refute them and convince me, please read my model (isp0...isp n) again and say which part is illogical without reaching for how the current ISP monopolies work. The idea that all data is equal is false. It depends on where its coming from and by what path. You may say that this would not be NN discrimination, but the mere fact that we are talking past each on this example suggests it would be super complicated if not impossible to enforce NN correctly. It will become yet another part of the legal framework which helps keep monopoly ISPs in control. > One could argue that monopoly concentration in providing the Internet is a natural physical consequence of the world. There is only so much right of way, so much wireless spectrum, etc. I support federal level, FCC auctioning of spectrum. And you further make my case, the ``natural'' physical monopoly size for wired ISPs is the city or regional government entity. Thus regulation should be at that level. This is a big power grab for the feds to regulate our communications at what should be a local level.
- wvenable 9y ago
  The most frightening to me, is your assertion above: "And ISPs should have the right to use their position to get payment agreements". What I take this to mean is use their monopoly position to extort data from larger Internet companies. This appears to be what you are arguing for and I don't understand why any Internet consumer, such as yourself, would support such a position. > The idea that all data is equal is false. It depends on where its coming from and by what path. There is some truth to this but an ISP's only concern is it's immediate connections. It has connections to other peers (and it's own clients) and it has a certain capacity to each of those connections. That's it. Imagine you have two scenarios, one is content is generated in ISP1. So the data travels from ISP1 to ISP0. The second scenario is that the content is generated 10 routers away. The data is copied from ISP10 to ISP9 to ISP8 and so on till it gets to ISP1. It's then copied from ISP1 to ISP0. There is no difference between this data and the data generated by ISP1 in the first scenario as far as ISP0 is concerned. If the data packets did not have addresses there would actually be no way of telling the difference. To put another way, if you request content from something 3 hops away or 15 hops way -- it doesn't cost your ISP any more money to deliver it. The cost of the Internet as a whole is born by the entire network. Why does ISP0 need to charge by domain? Where does that fit in anywhere in this system? ISP0 and domain1 could come to an agreement to move servers into ISP0's network to improve latency and decrease traffic and that is perfectly reasonable. But charging domains for simply putting data on the Internet somewhere else makes no sense -- it's pure abuse of monopoly. > It will become yet another part of the legal framework which helps keep monopoly ISPs in control. It's meant to keep monopoly ISPs from abusing their monopoly position. It even helps smaller ISPs as a neutral network allows anyone to provide service and receive service fairly without having to have financial agreements with larger services. I'd like to hear the opposing argument to this, if you have one. I don't want to attack you personally but you make the above statement as if it were fact without any argument. Simply that it's regulation so it must be bad. If net neutrality helped large monopoly ISPs they wouldn't be fighting so hard to get rid of it. As for regulating this on the federal level, the Internet is a global system. The idea that regional governments should be enacting rules that will affect large and small companies around the world seems a bit crazy. You already have individual states imposing streaming media taxes. So yes, in some states you can be taxed for Netflix but not taxed for an online game. Giving ISPs their own power to enact these taxes seems like madness to me.