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One of the primary consumer arguments in favor of net neutrality was that ISPs advertised bandwidth at certain speeds, and therefore were obligated to provide t

One of the primary consumer arguments in favor of net neutrality was that ISPs advertised bandwidth at certain speeds, and therefore were obligated to provide that speed to any point on the Internet. Using that same argument, Google should be obligated to provide maximum interface speed from any of their compute instances to any point on the internet, and should not be allowed to sell a tier that gets closer to that ideal.

jvreeland 9y ago
How are advertised speeds and maximum speeds equivalent? Google is advertising speeds to their consumers and their consumers are selecting a speed. Googles obligation is to provide that service at that speed. Similar to how ISPs should provide service at the selected speed. This isn't the ISP choosing to throttle certain services. This is a service choosing to run at a certain speed.
abiox 9y ago
> One of the primary consumer arguments in favor of net neutrality was that ISPs advertised bandwidth at certain speeds, and therefore were obligated to provide that speed to any point on the Internet. really? even a good ten years ago when i was looking for apartments with good DSL speeds, it was always well explained that bandwidth listing was an ideal number that didn't apply to things outside the ISP's direct control.
no_wizard 9y ago
Nope. The core tenets of net neutrality have always been around access and priority of the content going between networks. The only factor where net neutrality would regulate the physical pipe like this is based on edge providers and backbone service access. E.g. A fair price would have to be consistent with what all where being charged. You couldn't say charge Netflix 100 million dollars to have access to inter-network backbones then simulataneously only charge Disney 1 million dollars for the same thing. This is because most large scale network providers are also content companies in the USA. To quote a nice layman summary from the EFF/Save The Internet: Net Neutrality is the internet’s guiding principle: It preserves our right to communicate freely online. Net Neutrality means an internet that enables and protects free speech. It means that ISPs should provide us with open networks — and shouldn’t block or discriminate against any applications or content that ride over those networks. Just as your phone company shouldn’t decide who you call and what you say on that call, your ISP shouldn’t interfere with the content you view or post online. Without Net Neutrality, cable and phone companies could carve the internet into fast and slow lanes. An ISP could slow down its competitors’ content or block political opinions it disagreed with. ISPs could charge extra fees to the few content companies that could afford to pay for preferential treatment — relegating everyone else to a slower tier of service. This would destroy the open internet. No real mention of advertised speeds being ahered to. Speed in the context of which you were using it also would not be correct. Speed in the context of Net Neutrality means no prioritized slow downs or speed ups in exchange for cash, essentially. Again, I think that had more to do with access and not actual pet megabit speeds https://www.savetheinternet.com/net-neutrality-what-you-need-know-now https://www.savetheinternet.com/net-neutrality-what-you-need...

jvreeland 9y ago

How are advertised speeds and maximum speeds equivalent? Google is advertising speeds to their consumers and their consumers are selecting a speed. Googles obligation is to provide that service at that speed. Similar to how ISPs should provide service at the selected speed. This isn't the ISP choosing to throttle certain services. This is a service choosing to run at a certain speed.

abiox 9y ago

> One of the primary consumer arguments in favor of net neutrality was that ISPs advertised bandwidth at certain speeds, and therefore were obligated to provide that speed to any point on the Internet. really? even a good ten years ago when i was looking for apartments with good DSL speeds, it was always well explained that bandwidth listing was an ideal number that didn't apply to things outside the ISP's direct control.

no_wizard 9y ago

Nope. The core tenets of net neutrality have always been around access and priority of the content going between networks. The only factor where net neutrality would regulate the physical pipe like this is based on edge providers and backbone service access. E.g. A fair price would have to be consistent with what all where being charged. You couldn't say charge Netflix 100 million dollars to have access to inter-network backbones then simulataneously only charge Disney 1 million dollars for the same thing. This is because most large scale network providers are also content companies in the USA. To quote a nice layman summary from the EFF/Save The Internet: Net Neutrality is the internet’s guiding principle: It preserves our right to communicate freely online. Net Neutrality means an internet that enables and protects free speech. It means that ISPs should provide us with open networks — and shouldn’t block or discriminate against any applications or content that ride over those networks. Just as your phone company shouldn’t decide who you call and what you say on that call, your ISP shouldn’t interfere with the content you view or post online. Without Net Neutrality, cable and phone companies could carve the internet into fast and slow lanes. An ISP could slow down its competitors’ content or block political opinions it disagreed with. ISPs could charge extra fees to the few content companies that could afford to pay for preferential treatment — relegating everyone else to a slower tier of service. This would destroy the open internet. No real mention of advertised speeds being ahered to. Speed in the context of which you were using it also would not be correct. Speed in the context of Net Neutrality means no prioritized slow downs or speed ups in exchange for cash, essentially. Again, I think that had more to do with access and not actual pet megabit speeds https://www.savetheinternet.com/net-neutrality-what-you-need-know-now https://www.savetheinternet.com/net-neutrality-what-you-need...