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I'm sorry, I'm not sure I see the logic here or what you're trying to say. > If you have to pay extra, fine, but let's be clear that the only changes are monet

by csydas 9y ago

I'm sorry, I'm not sure I see the logic here or what you're trying to say. > If you have to pay extra, fine, but let's be clear that the only changes are monetary ones, Are you suggesting that they wouldn't throttle, they'd just block? I'm not sure how this is any better or changes the scenario; you still have to pay to use a service you currently can use just fine. Blocking, throttling, the end result is the same; you are unable to use the service because the ISP has decided they deserve to be paid for your use of this service. Whether it's a work VPN or a VPN service, there would be no distinguishing. Plus, we've already seen such muscling from ISPs as they wanted cuts of service profits with regards to the Netflix throttling. Comcast decided "we deserve some payment from Netflix", and forced a contract to be made, all the while consumers were unable to use a service because Comcast decided that "oh, we deserve a cut here." If VPN usage increased, I see no reason why the same wouldn't happen, regardless of the use. Since there's no singular entity to press on here (as was the case with Netflix), just press on the end-users by means of throttling, or cut it off all together. We have plenty of historical evidence that ISPs will do whatever they want if they can get away with it, including throttling.

Jach 9y ago
I'm saying, I currently pay for a quality of service, e.g. 30 Mbps up/down, certain monthly bandwidth, maybe 'boost' during non-peak, whatever. I also use a VPN when I work from home, I have to. One day I notice my VPN speed has dropped, the VPN is fine, but I'm not getting the level of service I'm paying for. A call to complain would fix it, either with them apologizing or them saying "oh, you have to pay $xx/mo to get on our business tier with no throttling." Note, Comcast actually does something like this already. If you get on their gigabit plan, their dumb monthly cap of 1 TB still applies, but you can pay more to remove that cap and go back to the unlimited it used to be.
- csydas 9y ago
  Okay, but I'm still not following the initial comment on "they won't throttle", when you just described a situation in which they throttle? What I'm missing is how the initial comment relates to the first, specifically they won't throttle or make any QOS changes because too many people use it. We've seen that Comcast in particular is more than happy to throttle services just because they can or want to, and in the case of Netflix, consumers didn't even have an option to pay more to make it work properly; Netflix just would be terrible for them no matter what. What I'm saying was a response to the idea that people can somehow just use a VPN to circumvent any restrictions, which makes no sense to me. Usage reports will clearly show a high level of traffic going over VPN, and the response will just be to make this part of a new tier of service as well; to recoup the value lost by people bypassing tier/package service with a VPN, the price will be adjusted accordingly. So I'm sorry, I guess I'm just being dense, but I'm not sure exactly why VPN services wouldn't be affected if VPNs became a means of circumventing the intended Tiering/Package offers.
  - Jach 9y ago
    I may have just misinterpreted your statement, "So go ahead and use a VPN, but it won't matter when you're throttled to 50 kb/s" to mean they would throttle all VPNs no matter what, which is what I was saying wouldn't happen because in the worst case you have to pay extra for unthrottled VPN use but it's still available. It's not a great outcome, nobody likes having to pay for things they used to get for free, but it's not an existential threat to the internet. If you didn't mean that, probably my fault for not reading carefully enough this late.
    - csydas 9y ago
      Ah, I see. Yes, this was more just me extrapolating that even if VPN access were to circumvent the package/tier deals initially, such behavior would eventually just result in VPN usage being added as a tier/package, which is not ideal regardless. I guess I make a logical leap with the extrapolation there, but more or less I feel that the downplaying of these changes is bad, especially with the expectation that we can easily circumvent the last mile somehow here. Even if they can't see what the traffic is, it can still be determined how much bandwidth is being used and the traffic itself can still be shaped/altered at will. Edit: Also, I'm sorry that someone is voting you down for a misunderstanding. I think that's inappropriate.
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
      What would in your eyes make something an existential threat to the internet?
      - Jach 9y ago
        Cutting the international underwater cables would be a good start. A lot of infrastructure isn't EM shielded. A ton of hobbyist and expert know-how will need to be eliminated and disincentivized. Equipment destroyed or confiscated. Hard to do these things without government approval or action of some sort, so I'd expect more government interest in being hands-on to be a convergent source of trouble. Honestly it's hard to picture an effective set of attacks that could end the internet which aren't a bigger threat to something more valuable.

by csydas 9y ago

Jach 9y ago

I'm saying, I currently pay for a quality of service, e.g. 30 Mbps up/down, certain monthly bandwidth, maybe 'boost' during non-peak, whatever. I also use a VPN when I work from home, I have to. One day I notice my VPN speed has dropped, the VPN is fine, but I'm not getting the level of service I'm paying for. A call to complain would fix it, either with them apologizing or them saying "oh, you have to pay $xx/mo to get on our business tier with no throttling." Note, Comcast actually does something like this already. If you get on their gigabit plan, their dumb monthly cap of 1 TB still applies, but you can pay more to remove that cap and go back to the unlimited it used to be.

csydas 9y ago
Okay, but I'm still not following the initial comment on "they won't throttle", when you just described a situation in which they throttle? What I'm missing is how the initial comment relates to the first, specifically they won't throttle or make any QOS changes because too many people use it. We've seen that Comcast in particular is more than happy to throttle services just because they can or want to, and in the case of Netflix, consumers didn't even have an option to pay more to make it work properly; Netflix just would be terrible for them no matter what. What I'm saying was a response to the idea that people can somehow just use a VPN to circumvent any restrictions, which makes no sense to me. Usage reports will clearly show a high level of traffic going over VPN, and the response will just be to make this part of a new tier of service as well; to recoup the value lost by people bypassing tier/package service with a VPN, the price will be adjusted accordingly. So I'm sorry, I guess I'm just being dense, but I'm not sure exactly why VPN services wouldn't be affected if VPNs became a means of circumventing the intended Tiering/Package offers.
- Jach 9y ago
  I may have just misinterpreted your statement, "So go ahead and use a VPN, but it won't matter when you're throttled to 50 kb/s" to mean they would throttle all VPNs no matter what, which is what I was saying wouldn't happen because in the worst case you have to pay extra for unthrottled VPN use but it's still available. It's not a great outcome, nobody likes having to pay for things they used to get for free, but it's not an existential threat to the internet. If you didn't mean that, probably my fault for not reading carefully enough this late.
  - csydas 9y ago
    Ah, I see. Yes, this was more just me extrapolating that even if VPN access were to circumvent the package/tier deals initially, such behavior would eventually just result in VPN usage being added as a tier/package, which is not ideal regardless. I guess I make a logical leap with the extrapolation there, but more or less I feel that the downplaying of these changes is bad, especially with the expectation that we can easily circumvent the last mile somehow here. Even if they can't see what the traffic is, it can still be determined how much bandwidth is being used and the traffic itself can still be shaped/altered at will. Edit: Also, I'm sorry that someone is voting you down for a misunderstanding. I think that's inappropriate.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
    What would in your eyes make something an existential threat to the internet?
    - Jach 9y ago
      Cutting the international underwater cables would be a good start. A lot of infrastructure isn't EM shielded. A ton of hobbyist and expert know-how will need to be eliminated and disincentivized. Equipment destroyed or confiscated. Hard to do these things without government approval or action of some sort, so I'd expect more government interest in being hands-on to be a convergent source of trouble. Honestly it's hard to picture an effective set of attacks that could end the internet which aren't a bigger threat to something more valuable.