6 ms·

But the "bits are equal" argument still doesn't work. You can easily run your own VPN and then what?

by esaym 9y ago

thefreeman 9y ago
You realize that there are two sides to every internet connection right? It doesn't matter if you are running your end through a VPN, they can slow / filter it from the content provider to you.
- EasyTiger_ 9y ago
  This doesn't make sense if the endpoint is another country, for example
  - alexeldeib 9y ago
    The traffic isn't completely circumventing your last mile ISP. Just because you tunnel over that connection doesn't mean they're not serving your traffic. Likely the outcome would be "we couldn't identify this traffic as one of our approved providers, so we used the lower of the rates we offer." e: the second bit of that was to compare to the plan offered by a peer comment, with e.g. netflix, youtube served at higher rates and the rest at lower. So you would never see the higher rates.
- TheCoelacanth 9y ago
  Presumably they are talking about a VPN service hosted somewhere outside of your ISP's network, so your ISP could only throttle traffic between you and your VPN service but not between the VPN service and the content provider. The VPN's ISP or the content provider's ISP or any transit provider in the middle could throttle between the VPN service and the content provider, but there is far, far more competition among ISP's suitable for server farms and transit providers than there is among residential ISP's so they are much less likely to be able to get away unreasonable throttling.
jbuzbee 9y ago
The can and will come at it from the other side. They will charge Netflix, Spotify, Amazon, etc. money to get access to "their" network. And of course, those charges will be passed on to you resulting in higher bills.
lowbloodsugar 9y ago
Then they charge the maximum price for the VPN. Only business persons and people trying to not pay the extra for netflix use a VPN (they will say).
- esaym 9y ago
  If a VPN is over port 443 and using TCP, there really wouldn't be any way to know whether it was HTTPS or VPN.
  - lowbloodsugar 9y ago
    "Well, sir, if you look in our terms of service, it says quite clearly that if most of your traffic goes to a set of services that we have determined are most likely VPNs because we control most of the end-traffic on the internet, well then we can disconnect you. I know, sir, machine learning is wonderful as I'm sure you've read on Hacker News that you visit regularly. What's that? You swear it isn't VPN traffic? Ok, can you provide any evidence to that effect? You can't? Ok, well, you have been disconnected sir, and if you like, you can pay a $300 fee to get reconnected and rejoin our new VPN plan at $150 per month. If you want to use our VPN plan that will be $30 per month on top of all the other services you will need to select"
    - cmurf 9y ago
      I suspect Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook soon thereafter jump into the always on VPN market in some form or another.
  - aaomidi 9y ago
    Depends on the VPN. Https handshakes are very different than say openvpn. But you can definitely hide your vpn behind the https protocol.
  - zaphar 9y ago
    They don't have to inspect the traffic for this scenario. They can do it purely based on the routing requested.
ben-schaaf 9y ago
Quite simple, they put a large premium on VPN traffic.
EasyTiger_ 9y ago
Odd you're being downvoted, this is a reasonable question to ask
omegaworks 9y ago
Of course power users will figure out ways around the restrictions. What we're fighting for is the general consumer use case and what eliminating neutrality does to the innovative potential of the Internet. Eliminating neutrality will entrench existing players in the marketplace. New internet-connected startups will not only have to compete on product, they'll also be artificially disadvantaged by the gatekeepers. These new startup's customers' packets can be deprioritized by the customers' ISPs unless the new startup pays a bribe. The bribe that existing big players (Facebook, Netflix) need to pay will be significantly less (or even zero) because of the leverage of their large customer base and brand recognition. The ISP may face blowback from its users for degrading service to those existing players. The fledgling startup doesn't have this leverage, so the ISP can extort it.
vmarsy 9y ago
That's a good question, the problem is what if your only available ISP makes you this hypothetical deal: For $59.99 a month: - Get Facebook, Google, Netflix at 100 Mbps max. - Any other traffic is limited to 5 Mbps max. Watching Hulu, or Amazon Video for instance would be limited at 5 Mbps max. But in that case your own VPN would also fall in the second category, so even if you tried to watch Hulu via VPN, you'd still get only 5 Mbps max. (And you'd be then stupid to watch Netflix through your VPN since it would also be at 5 Mbps max instead of 100 Mbps max.)
- chrischen 9y ago
  What you describe is already being done by the likes of T-Mobile and other wireless carriers such as their BingeOn program, to little fanfare. The average consumer unfortunately has little to care about net neutrality. But in the long term it will hurt the tech economy as they have all risen from net neutrality.
  - thephyber 9y ago
    T-Mobile's BingeOn is more of zero-rating than penalizing the speed/accessibility of non-approved "partners", but IMHO it's still a violation of the principle of Net Neutrality.
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
      > T-Mobile's BingeOn is more of zero-rating than penalizing the speed/accessibility of non-approved "partners", Erm ... so, if users want to access non-approved "partners", that's way more expensive ... but that does not affect accessibility? If you really think that, you simply fell for their psychological trick. It's simply irrelevant whether the accessibility is limited technically or economically, as one is always convertible into the other (if they limited access technically, you could still restore access by offering them enough money).
  - Dylan16807 9y ago
    BingeOn is kind of a problem, but it's significantly better in a couple ways. First, the free data is slower than what you get normally. Second, the program is supposedly open for anyone to join. If BingeOn was the worst impingement on net neutrality, we'd be in a pretty good place.
Retric 9y ago
Sorry, VPN's require business grade internet starting at 300$/month. Nothing stops them from throttling VPN connections, or even all encrypted traffic. Read up on The great firewall of China and how it really does stop VPN connections. Further, it's much easier for ISP's to block stuff because the first hop for every connection you make is through them.
- corndoge 9y ago
  >even all encrypted traffic Never will this happen.
  - nerpderp83 9y ago
    It is not difficult to block traffic you don't understand. Require end users to only use plaintext protocols, even go so far as install your own certs to MITM them. Make it a requirement for using the service.
  - lovich 9y ago
    Just charge any business that needs encryption several million per year, and everyone else can get fucked. Even beyond the FCC backing this sort of business now, what other part of the government would care to stop that? The only other parts in charge of anything touching on communication technologies are all law enforcement and they are already explicitly stated that they want access to all encrypted communications
- stephengillie 9y ago
  VPNs stick out in Wireshark or other packet captures like a red flag, and blocking most VPNs is as simple as closing port 500. (Port 500 is the default. Who changes default settings?) In Wireshark, normally you'll see flurries of variable-sized traffic across 53 then either 80 or 443. But for a VPN, you just see a constant flow of boring packets over 500. Why doesn't China's national firewall block port 500? Possibly because it would also block the personal VPNs of the leadership of the Chinese government. (Edits for clarity)
  - 9y ago
jagermo 9y ago
Thats because you will limited unless you use specific services. In Germany, two operators (T-Mobile and Vodafone) offer special "passes" for different services. These do not count against your monthly quota (if you use up all your data, you will be limited to about 64 kbit/s). So, yes, you can use a VPN, but this will count against your data cap. While, if you use the services they choose for you, you basically get "free" extra data.

But the "bits are equal" argument still doesn't work. You can easily run your own VPN and then what?

by esaym 9y ago

But the "bits are equal" argument still doesn't work. You can easily run your own VPN and then what?

You realize that there are two sides to every internet connection right? It doesn't matter if you are running your end through a VPN, they can slow / filter it from the content provider to you.

EasyTiger_ 9y ago
This doesn't make sense if the endpoint is another country, for example
- alexeldeib 9y ago
  The traffic isn't completely circumventing your last mile ISP. Just because you tunnel over that connection doesn't mean they're not serving your traffic. Likely the outcome would be "we couldn't identify this traffic as one of our approved providers, so we used the lower of the rates we offer." e: the second bit of that was to compare to the plan offered by a peer comment, with e.g. netflix, youtube served at higher rates and the rest at lower. So you would never see the higher rates.
TheCoelacanth 9y ago
Presumably they are talking about a VPN service hosted somewhere outside of your ISP's network, so your ISP could only throttle traffic between you and your VPN service but not between the VPN service and the content provider. The VPN's ISP or the content provider's ISP or any transit provider in the middle could throttle between the VPN service and the content provider, but there is far, far more competition among ISP's suitable for server farms and transit providers than there is among residential ISP's so they are much less likely to be able to get away unreasonable throttling.

jbuzbee 9y ago

The can and will come at it from the other side. They will charge Netflix, Spotify, Amazon, etc. money to get access to "their" network. And of course, those charges will be passed on to you resulting in higher bills.

lowbloodsugar 9y ago

Then they charge the maximum price for the VPN. Only business persons and people trying to not pay the extra for netflix use a VPN (they will say).

esaym 9y ago
If a VPN is over port 443 and using TCP, there really wouldn't be any way to know whether it was HTTPS or VPN.
- lowbloodsugar 9y ago
  "Well, sir, if you look in our terms of service, it says quite clearly that if most of your traffic goes to a set of services that we have determined are most likely VPNs because we control most of the end-traffic on the internet, well then we can disconnect you. I know, sir, machine learning is wonderful as I'm sure you've read on Hacker News that you visit regularly. What's that? You swear it isn't VPN traffic? Ok, can you provide any evidence to that effect? You can't? Ok, well, you have been disconnected sir, and if you like, you can pay a $300 fee to get reconnected and rejoin our new VPN plan at $150 per month. If you want to use our VPN plan that will be $30 per month on top of all the other services you will need to select"
  - cmurf 9y ago
    I suspect Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook soon thereafter jump into the always on VPN market in some form or another.
- aaomidi 9y ago
  Depends on the VPN. Https handshakes are very different than say openvpn. But you can definitely hide your vpn behind the https protocol.
- zaphar 9y ago
  They don't have to inspect the traffic for this scenario. They can do it purely based on the routing requested.

ben-schaaf 9y ago

Quite simple, they put a large premium on VPN traffic.

EasyTiger_ 9y ago

Odd you're being downvoted, this is a reasonable question to ask

omegaworks 9y ago

Of course power users will figure out ways around the restrictions. What we're fighting for is the general consumer use case and what eliminating neutrality does to the innovative potential of the Internet. Eliminating neutrality will entrench existing players in the marketplace. New internet-connected startups will not only have to compete on product, they'll also be artificially disadvantaged by the gatekeepers. These new startup's customers' packets can be deprioritized by the customers' ISPs unless the new startup pays a bribe. The bribe that existing big players (Facebook, Netflix) need to pay will be significantly less (or even zero) because of the leverage of their large customer base and brand recognition. The ISP may face blowback from its users for degrading service to those existing players. The fledgling startup doesn't have this leverage, so the ISP can extort it.

vmarsy 9y ago

That's a good question, the problem is what if your only available ISP makes you this hypothetical deal: For $59.99 a month: - Get Facebook, Google, Netflix at 100 Mbps max. - Any other traffic is limited to 5 Mbps max. Watching Hulu, or Amazon Video for instance would be limited at 5 Mbps max. But in that case your own VPN would also fall in the second category, so even if you tried to watch Hulu via VPN, you'd still get only 5 Mbps max. (And you'd be then stupid to watch Netflix through your VPN since it would also be at 5 Mbps max instead of 100 Mbps max.)

chrischen 9y ago
What you describe is already being done by the likes of T-Mobile and other wireless carriers such as their BingeOn program, to little fanfare. The average consumer unfortunately has little to care about net neutrality. But in the long term it will hurt the tech economy as they have all risen from net neutrality.
- thephyber 9y ago
  T-Mobile's BingeOn is more of zero-rating than penalizing the speed/accessibility of non-approved "partners", but IMHO it's still a violation of the principle of Net Neutrality.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
    > T-Mobile's BingeOn is more of zero-rating than penalizing the speed/accessibility of non-approved "partners", Erm ... so, if users want to access non-approved "partners", that's way more expensive ... but that does not affect accessibility? If you really think that, you simply fell for their psychological trick. It's simply irrelevant whether the accessibility is limited technically or economically, as one is always convertible into the other (if they limited access technically, you could still restore access by offering them enough money).
- Dylan16807 9y ago
  BingeOn is kind of a problem, but it's significantly better in a couple ways. First, the free data is slower than what you get normally. Second, the program is supposedly open for anyone to join. If BingeOn was the worst impingement on net neutrality, we'd be in a pretty good place.

Retric 9y ago

Sorry, VPN's require business grade internet starting at 300$/month. Nothing stops them from throttling VPN connections, or even all encrypted traffic. Read up on The great firewall of China and how it really does stop VPN connections. Further, it's much easier for ISP's to block stuff because the first hop for every connection you make is through them.

corndoge 9y ago
>even all encrypted traffic Never will this happen.
- nerpderp83 9y ago
  It is not difficult to block traffic you don't understand. Require end users to only use plaintext protocols, even go so far as install your own certs to MITM them. Make it a requirement for using the service.
- lovich 9y ago
  Just charge any business that needs encryption several million per year, and everyone else can get fucked. Even beyond the FCC backing this sort of business now, what other part of the government would care to stop that? The only other parts in charge of anything touching on communication technologies are all law enforcement and they are already explicitly stated that they want access to all encrypted communications
stephengillie 9y ago
VPNs stick out in Wireshark or other packet captures like a red flag, and blocking most VPNs is as simple as closing port 500. (Port 500 is the default. Who changes default settings?) In Wireshark, normally you'll see flurries of variable-sized traffic across 53 then either 80 or 443. But for a VPN, you just see a constant flow of boring packets over 500. Why doesn't China's national firewall block port 500? Possibly because it would also block the personal VPNs of the leadership of the Chinese government. (Edits for clarity)
- 9y ago

jagermo 9y ago

Thats because you will limited unless you use specific services. In Germany, two operators (T-Mobile and Vodafone) offer special "passes" for different services. These do not count against your monthly quota (if you use up all your data, you will be limited to about 64 kbit/s). So, yes, you can use a VPN, but this will count against your data cap. While, if you use the services they choose for you, you basically get "free" extra data.