4 ms·

if they throttle all videos equally, I think that it could be considered somewhat neutral... but if they prioritize some videos, it is a different story

by zeep 9y ago

mehrdadn 9y ago
> if they throttle all videos equally, I think that it could be considered somewhat neutral... but if they prioritize some videos, it is a different story The definition above was far stronger than this assertion, hence my comment.
gumby 9y ago
What right do they have to look into my traffic and decide that it's video? Their jobs is to pass me the bits I asked for, no more, no less. How would you feel if Fedex opened your packages and looked inside? If Safeway added sugar to some of your purchases to "make them taste better"?
- joshuamorton 9y ago
  There some answer is because different applications require different latencies. VoIP and video conferencing, for example, have hard latency requirements that even other high bandwidth activities like viewing YouTube or Netflix do not. As a user, I would prefer if my video calls are the highest priority, whereas I wouldn't care if my YouTube videos downloaded in batches in the background, as long as I didn't encounter buffering.
  - fermuch 9y ago
    But wouldn't that use case be best solved by your router, giving priority to some kind of traffic instead of other? (most routers come with QoS, which is exactly that) Why is it better to give all the power to the ISP? You're losing your ability to choose if what you need isn't included in a pack.
    - joshuamorton 9y ago
      As another user said, QoS on my router won't much matter when I have only one computer connected to it. Content-aware load balancing/QoS at higher stages, if done correctly/morally, leads to better service for everyone. There's a counterargument to this that you should just be able to purchase a dedicated/guaranteed 1 gb/s, and I can buy that idea, but currently, that kind of thing is really expensive (and I expect that there's a dirty little secret that the service provider will still use "your" bandwidth if you aren't).
      - wtallis 9y ago
        > Content-aware load balancing/QoS at higher stages, if done correctly/morally, leads to better service for everyone. "Content-aware" isn't really what's required. You can get decent QoS by just putting CoDel on every buffer, so that congestion doesn't lead to unreasonable latency. Your latency-sensitive traffic will still get its share of packet drops in proportion to how much bandwidth it's using, but the end result will be that your latency-sensitive traffic won't be affected by congestion as much as the high bandwidth bulk file transfers that are causing most of the congestion. If you want to go further to protect the latency-sensitive traffic from packet drops in the event of congestion, you can upgrade from codel to fq_codel. Then the traffic flows that are using most of the bandwidth will get the packet drops first, and your low-rate latency sensitive traffic will be unaffected until it's taking up your fair share of bandwidth. None of that requires being explicitly content-aware. Traffic flows on port 80 get treated with the same rules as traffic flows on port 500. UDP flows get the same rules as TCP flows (except that your UDP traffic almost certainly doesn't support ECN). Flows originating from Netflix get the same treatment as flows originating from Windows Update. And it all works well for the users, while being content-blind in every way except for deciding which packets are related to each other. Not only does it work well, but it almost always works better than any manually-crafted QoS ruleset that singles out certain ports and protocols and endpoints and applications. Those rulesets are inherently fragile and riddled with corner cases, and require expert maintenance to keep up with changing usage patterns.
        joshuamorton 9y ago
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
    Your ISP prioritizing your video call over your youtube videos on your link according to your wishes is not a violation of NN. The problem is when they prioritize your video call over your neighbour's youtube videos.
- zeep 9y ago
  I'm pretty sure that they can look into your packages, at least if you ship/receive something that crosses the border. But yeah, I agree that this is not what we want.
  - gumby 9y ago
    For international shipments the government can, but Fedex is not supposed to. (Of course for international shipments fedex do have access to what you say is in the package)

if they throttle all videos equally, I think that it could be considered somewhat neutral... but if they prioritize some videos, it is a different story

by zeep 9y ago

if they throttle all videos equally, I think that it could be considered somewhat neutral... but if they prioritize some videos, it is a different story

mehrdadn 9y ago

> if they throttle all videos equally, I think that it could be considered somewhat neutral... but if they prioritize some videos, it is a different story The definition above was far stronger than this assertion, hence my comment.

gumby 9y ago

What right do they have to look into my traffic and decide that it's video? Their jobs is to pass me the bits I asked for, no more, no less. How would you feel if Fedex opened your packages and looked inside? If Safeway added sugar to some of your purchases to "make them taste better"?

joshuamorton 9y ago
There some answer is because different applications require different latencies. VoIP and video conferencing, for example, have hard latency requirements that even other high bandwidth activities like viewing YouTube or Netflix do not. As a user, I would prefer if my video calls are the highest priority, whereas I wouldn't care if my YouTube videos downloaded in batches in the background, as long as I didn't encounter buffering.
- fermuch 9y ago
  But wouldn't that use case be best solved by your router, giving priority to some kind of traffic instead of other? (most routers come with QoS, which is exactly that) Why is it better to give all the power to the ISP? You're losing your ability to choose if what you need isn't included in a pack.
  - joshuamorton 9y ago
    As another user said, QoS on my router won't much matter when I have only one computer connected to it. Content-aware load balancing/QoS at higher stages, if done correctly/morally, leads to better service for everyone. There's a counterargument to this that you should just be able to purchase a dedicated/guaranteed 1 gb/s, and I can buy that idea, but currently, that kind of thing is really expensive (and I expect that there's a dirty little secret that the service provider will still use "your" bandwidth if you aren't).
    - wtallis 9y ago
      > Content-aware load balancing/QoS at higher stages, if done correctly/morally, leads to better service for everyone. "Content-aware" isn't really what's required. You can get decent QoS by just putting CoDel on every buffer, so that congestion doesn't lead to unreasonable latency. Your latency-sensitive traffic will still get its share of packet drops in proportion to how much bandwidth it's using, but the end result will be that your latency-sensitive traffic won't be affected by congestion as much as the high bandwidth bulk file transfers that are causing most of the congestion. If you want to go further to protect the latency-sensitive traffic from packet drops in the event of congestion, you can upgrade from codel to fq_codel. Then the traffic flows that are using most of the bandwidth will get the packet drops first, and your low-rate latency sensitive traffic will be unaffected until it's taking up your fair share of bandwidth. None of that requires being explicitly content-aware. Traffic flows on port 80 get treated with the same rules as traffic flows on port 500. UDP flows get the same rules as TCP flows (except that your UDP traffic almost certainly doesn't support ECN). Flows originating from Netflix get the same treatment as flows originating from Windows Update. And it all works well for the users, while being content-blind in every way except for deciding which packets are related to each other. Not only does it work well, but it almost always works better than any manually-crafted QoS ruleset that singles out certain ports and protocols and endpoints and applications. Those rulesets are inherently fragile and riddled with corner cases, and require expert maintenance to keep up with changing usage patterns.
      - joshuamorton 9y ago
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
  Your ISP prioritizing your video call over your youtube videos on your link according to your wishes is not a violation of NN. The problem is when they prioritize your video call over your neighbour's youtube videos.
zeep 9y ago
I'm pretty sure that they can look into your packages, at least if you ship/receive something that crosses the border. But yeah, I agree that this is not what we want.
- gumby 9y ago
  For international shipments the government can, but Fedex is not supposed to. (Of course for international shipments fedex do have access to what you say is in the package)