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That is objectively false. Degrading the "slow" lanes is only one way to produce a fast lane. Direct peering arrangements and co-location of services are two

That is objectively false. Degrading the "slow" lanes is only one way to produce a fast lane. Direct peering arrangements and co-location of services are two ways to create "fast" lanes without having to degrade anything. They are also not free, so it makes sense that business-to-business deals would be made to establish them (aka paid fast lanes). The effective bandwidth of the internet looks like an hour glass. As things fan out to individual users you may have capacity for 100+mbps but no way to consume it because upstream there is a bottleneck. In many cases that bottleneck exists at the edge of an ISP or farther upstream of it. Direct peering increases the capacity of the ISP's "edge" but only for the services available on the peer. Co-location puts those services on the internal side of the bottleneck, again increasing effective capacity, but only for the services that are co-located in the ISPs datacenters. Almost all major providers (google, akamai, netflix, facebook) offer some form of co-locatable server however, those cost money to deploy and maintain.

dahart 9y ago
You've missed the point. The very existence of fast lanes means that whatever's left is a degradation. This has been the point NN proponents have been making all along. Proposing to ban slow lanes but allow fast lanes effectively does nothing for NN proponents. It doesn't have to be "actively" slowing down traffic to be degraded. If ISPs can go faster, and they choose not to unless you pay more, that is a form of degradation. One of many forms the degradation could come in is ISPs failing to build out faster networks until people are paying higher prices. Service can be allowed to degrade over time by simply not doing anything unless you pay more money.
- notyourday 9y ago
  It is not. If Netflix did not have PNIs to Comcast, Comcast internet would have been unusable for everyone. [Edit: Post more downvotes] Guess what happens to the Netflix traffic when the best route to Netflix is over Comcast transit?
  - wtallis 9y ago
    > If Netflix did not have PNIs to Comcast, Comcast internet would have been unusable for everyone. Only under the assumption that Comcast makes no attempt to do their job properly and uphold their contractual obligations by implementing reasonable QoS measures and upgrading their capacity. You can't point to Comcast's extortionist refusal to upgrade their links to the outside world and say that it's Netflix's fault; that was just their abusive tactic to force Netflix to deal with Comcast directly on Comcast's terms. Verizon did the same thing.
    - notyourday 9y ago
      QoS does not stand for Quality of Service. It stands for Quantity of Service. It also seems that you believe that QoS works by magic and not by dropping packets on the floor that meet certain criteria. Those criterias are gasp protocol and destination. It is no different from you putting a rate limits your API based on the token used to authenticate a client or a route used. But hey, yes, NN is telling me I should at best use RED to do QoS as everything else requires lookng at protocol and destination > You can't point to Comcast's extortionist refusal to upgrade their links to the outside world and say that it's Netflix's fault; that was just their abusive tactic to force Netflix to deal with Comcast directly on Comcast's terms. Verizon did the same thing. I live in a real world. In the real world if I am to take 10Mbit/sec that Comcast objectively delivers to the edge and multiply it by the number of edges that comcast has I arrive at the number of megabit/sec that does not exist in all interconnect points combined. Comcast has no way of upgrading it to that point. It is simply not possible. There's not a single network that can provide this kind of capacity even at 10Mbit/sec, not to mention at 50Mbit/sec or 150Mbit/sec or Gigabit/sec. The only way to deal with this is PNIs between those that originate massive amounts of traffic and the networks that consume massive amounts of traffic. Your JoeSchmoe.com does not get to have a PNI until it can afford to pay for it because it has enough traffic.
      - wtallis 9y ago
        > QoS does not stand for Quality of Service. It stands for Quantity of Service. Fuck you. You aren't even trying to have a reasonable conversation, are you? You're welcome to attempt to argue that there's an unavoidable equivalence between QoS as everybody defines it and the other concept you're trying to equate it to, but you have to actually make that argument, not just declare the definition of QoS to have changed because you don't like what it means. QoS still stands for Quality of Service. > But hey, yes, NN is telling me I should at best use RED to do QoS as everything else requires lookng at protocol and destination You can use CoDel without violating any principles of net neutrality. You can even use FQ-CoDel without violating the principles of net neutrality, because it only looks at port numbers to determine which packets are related to each other; each port is subjected to the same set of rules and no port is preferred over another. Net neutrality doesn't require you to ignore the past 20+ years of research into QoS. It may help your political cause to regard QoS as being strictly a zero-sum game, but that doesn't make it true. > There's not a single network that can provide this kind of capacity even at 10Mbit/sec, not to mention at 50Mbit/sec or 150Mbit/sec or Gigabit/sec. > The only way to deal with this is PNIs between those that originate massive amounts of traffic and the networks that consume massive amounts of traffic. The technical requirements of having large, reasonably direct links between big producers and big consumers does not say anything about whether Netflix has to negotiate with Comcast and Verizon directly, or whether they can outsource those concerns to Level 3. That's purely in the domain of business shenanigans.
- wanderingbort 9y ago
  > If ISPs can go faster, and they choose not to unless you pay more, that is a form of degradation. You've missed my point. There are some ways an ISP can go faster that are not neutral AND not malicious/extortive. If google puts a GGC on your ISPs network, youtube now has an advantage over hulu. There is no equivalent internal-deployment that can give a truly neutral increase in capacity. To conflate this with active degradation (throttling or blocking) means that you would have an ISP be unable to host any service until they can guarantee _all services_ equivalent access (presumably at the ISPs expense otherwise they would price out everyone but the big players). Before you immediately chose "neutral hosting" realize that it is untenable for every random small website to be able to legally demand any ISPs host their services for free in order to guarantee a level playing field with Google and Netflix. The only tenable solution is to make it illegal to collocate services which will be a far worse hit to the experience you have on the web than any throttling or blocking has ever been. This is not as simple as you would like it to be. > If ISPs can go faster, and they choose not to unless you pay more, that is a form of degradation This is assuming intent and over-simplifying. Is a small regional ISP without the capital or credit necessary to expand now anti-NN by default? Are they extorting their customers by default? Not all ISPs are Comcast and Verizon. If you cannot escape your circumstance and see the bigger picture of how and what the internet is and who "ISPs" are then you are just being selfish.
  - wtallis 9y ago
    > There are some ways an ISP can go faster that are not neutral AND not malicious/extortive. If google puts a GGC on your ISPs network, youtube now has an advantage over hulu. There is no equivalent internal-deployment that can give a truly neutral increase in capacity. We need laws or regulations to address the fact that ISPs are actually forcing content providers to deploy in-network CDN nodes with the ISPs through extortive refusal to upgrade the links between the residential ISPs and the ISPs serving Netflix et al. Some deployment of local CDN nodes makes sense on its own and benefits both parties, but it's not like video streaming is actually latency-sensitive or anything.
AnthonyMouse 9y ago
> Direct peering increases the capacity of the ISP's "edge" but only for the services available on the peer. Co-location puts those services on the internal side of the bottleneck, again increasing effective capacity, but only for the services that are co-located in the ISPs datacenters. Almost all major providers (google, akamai, netflix, facebook) offer some form of co-locatable server however, those cost money to deploy and maintain. This is a textbook lobbyist argument -- something which is technically true without doing the math. A 10Gbps port on a switch is maybe $100. Say it can service a hundred customers, so $1/customer, and has a lifetime of two years. So $0.04/customer/month. These are very conservative numbers. In reality it doesn't even cost that much. The fact that the ports go to different places is irrelevant in the aggregate, because there is no need to add a port when the existing links to that peer aren't at capacity. And it's not as though the fact that Netflix and Google have separate ports would allow a 100Mbps customer to get 100Mbps from each of them at the same time. Colocation is independent of this. If anyone with traffic could get peering at cost (i.e. ~free), they might still do it or might not, but then the ISP would have to charge market rates for space and power instead of monopoly prices because they're really charging for gatekeeper access to customers.
- wanderingbort 9y ago
  you are over-simplifying. If we want to be pedantic, and assume that the two edge routers are just switches and we would use a consumer level 10gbps port and that the switchers are already in the same rack in the same facility and that that rack in that facility has direct access to our distribution PoP and that there are no firewall rules that need to be in place on that port (they can be in the DMZ sure) and that we don't need to monitor that connection and that we don't need that connection to be redundant at all and that we aren't going to use a routing protocol like BGP on that port (we will just hard code routes) and that we don't want any guarantee that you and I will operate that link at any SLA and that we don't want to guarantee that both parties will give notice in a timely manner before termination and... and... and... So, which textbook are you copying from? You put out something that is technically true without considering any of the practical realities. (edited for readability)
  - 9y ago

dahart 9y ago

You've missed the point. The very existence of fast lanes means that whatever's left is a degradation. This has been the point NN proponents have been making all along. Proposing to ban slow lanes but allow fast lanes effectively does nothing for NN proponents. It doesn't have to be "actively" slowing down traffic to be degraded. If ISPs can go faster, and they choose not to unless you pay more, that is a form of degradation. One of many forms the degradation could come in is ISPs failing to build out faster networks until people are paying higher prices. Service can be allowed to degrade over time by simply not doing anything unless you pay more money.

notyourday 9y ago
It is not. If Netflix did not have PNIs to Comcast, Comcast internet would have been unusable for everyone. [Edit: Post more downvotes] Guess what happens to the Netflix traffic when the best route to Netflix is over Comcast transit?
- wtallis 9y ago
  > If Netflix did not have PNIs to Comcast, Comcast internet would have been unusable for everyone. Only under the assumption that Comcast makes no attempt to do their job properly and uphold their contractual obligations by implementing reasonable QoS measures and upgrading their capacity. You can't point to Comcast's extortionist refusal to upgrade their links to the outside world and say that it's Netflix's fault; that was just their abusive tactic to force Netflix to deal with Comcast directly on Comcast's terms. Verizon did the same thing.
  - notyourday 9y ago
    QoS does not stand for Quality of Service. It stands for Quantity of Service. It also seems that you believe that QoS works by magic and not by dropping packets on the floor that meet certain criteria. Those criterias are gasp protocol and destination. It is no different from you putting a rate limits your API based on the token used to authenticate a client or a route used. But hey, yes, NN is telling me I should at best use RED to do QoS as everything else requires lookng at protocol and destination > You can't point to Comcast's extortionist refusal to upgrade their links to the outside world and say that it's Netflix's fault; that was just their abusive tactic to force Netflix to deal with Comcast directly on Comcast's terms. Verizon did the same thing. I live in a real world. In the real world if I am to take 10Mbit/sec that Comcast objectively delivers to the edge and multiply it by the number of edges that comcast has I arrive at the number of megabit/sec that does not exist in all interconnect points combined. Comcast has no way of upgrading it to that point. It is simply not possible. There's not a single network that can provide this kind of capacity even at 10Mbit/sec, not to mention at 50Mbit/sec or 150Mbit/sec or Gigabit/sec. The only way to deal with this is PNIs between those that originate massive amounts of traffic and the networks that consume massive amounts of traffic. Your JoeSchmoe.com does not get to have a PNI until it can afford to pay for it because it has enough traffic.
    - wtallis 9y ago
      > QoS does not stand for Quality of Service. It stands for Quantity of Service. Fuck you. You aren't even trying to have a reasonable conversation, are you? You're welcome to attempt to argue that there's an unavoidable equivalence between QoS as everybody defines it and the other concept you're trying to equate it to, but you have to actually make that argument, not just declare the definition of QoS to have changed because you don't like what it means. QoS still stands for Quality of Service. > But hey, yes, NN is telling me I should at best use RED to do QoS as everything else requires lookng at protocol and destination You can use CoDel without violating any principles of net neutrality. You can even use FQ-CoDel without violating the principles of net neutrality, because it only looks at port numbers to determine which packets are related to each other; each port is subjected to the same set of rules and no port is preferred over another. Net neutrality doesn't require you to ignore the past 20+ years of research into QoS. It may help your political cause to regard QoS as being strictly a zero-sum game, but that doesn't make it true. > There's not a single network that can provide this kind of capacity even at 10Mbit/sec, not to mention at 50Mbit/sec or 150Mbit/sec or Gigabit/sec. > The only way to deal with this is PNIs between those that originate massive amounts of traffic and the networks that consume massive amounts of traffic. The technical requirements of having large, reasonably direct links between big producers and big consumers does not say anything about whether Netflix has to negotiate with Comcast and Verizon directly, or whether they can outsource those concerns to Level 3. That's purely in the domain of business shenanigans.
wanderingbort 9y ago
> If ISPs can go faster, and they choose not to unless you pay more, that is a form of degradation. You've missed my point. There are some ways an ISP can go faster that are not neutral AND not malicious/extortive. If google puts a GGC on your ISPs network, youtube now has an advantage over hulu. There is no equivalent internal-deployment that can give a truly neutral increase in capacity. To conflate this with active degradation (throttling or blocking) means that you would have an ISP be unable to host any service until they can guarantee _all services_ equivalent access (presumably at the ISPs expense otherwise they would price out everyone but the big players). Before you immediately chose "neutral hosting" realize that it is untenable for every random small website to be able to legally demand any ISPs host their services for free in order to guarantee a level playing field with Google and Netflix. The only tenable solution is to make it illegal to collocate services which will be a far worse hit to the experience you have on the web than any throttling or blocking has ever been. This is not as simple as you would like it to be. > If ISPs can go faster, and they choose not to unless you pay more, that is a form of degradation This is assuming intent and over-simplifying. Is a small regional ISP without the capital or credit necessary to expand now anti-NN by default? Are they extorting their customers by default? Not all ISPs are Comcast and Verizon. If you cannot escape your circumstance and see the bigger picture of how and what the internet is and who "ISPs" are then you are just being selfish.
- wtallis 9y ago
  > There are some ways an ISP can go faster that are not neutral AND not malicious/extortive. If google puts a GGC on your ISPs network, youtube now has an advantage over hulu. There is no equivalent internal-deployment that can give a truly neutral increase in capacity. We need laws or regulations to address the fact that ISPs are actually forcing content providers to deploy in-network CDN nodes with the ISPs through extortive refusal to upgrade the links between the residential ISPs and the ISPs serving Netflix et al. Some deployment of local CDN nodes makes sense on its own and benefits both parties, but it's not like video streaming is actually latency-sensitive or anything.

AnthonyMouse 9y ago

> Direct peering increases the capacity of the ISP's "edge" but only for the services available on the peer. Co-location puts those services on the internal side of the bottleneck, again increasing effective capacity, but only for the services that are co-located in the ISPs datacenters. Almost all major providers (google, akamai, netflix, facebook) offer some form of co-locatable server however, those cost money to deploy and maintain. This is a textbook lobbyist argument -- something which is technically true without doing the math. A 10Gbps port on a switch is maybe $100. Say it can service a hundred customers, so $1/customer, and has a lifetime of two years. So $0.04/customer/month. These are very conservative numbers. In reality it doesn't even cost that much. The fact that the ports go to different places is irrelevant in the aggregate, because there is no need to add a port when the existing links to that peer aren't at capacity. And it's not as though the fact that Netflix and Google have separate ports would allow a 100Mbps customer to get 100Mbps from each of them at the same time. Colocation is independent of this. If anyone with traffic could get peering at cost (i.e. ~free), they might still do it or might not, but then the ISP would have to charge market rates for space and power instead of monopoly prices because they're really charging for gatekeeper access to customers.

wanderingbort 9y ago
you are over-simplifying. If we want to be pedantic, and assume that the two edge routers are just switches and we would use a consumer level 10gbps port and that the switchers are already in the same rack in the same facility and that that rack in that facility has direct access to our distribution PoP and that there are no firewall rules that need to be in place on that port (they can be in the DMZ sure) and that we don't need to monitor that connection and that we don't need that connection to be redundant at all and that we aren't going to use a routing protocol like BGP on that port (we will just hard code routes) and that we don't want any guarantee that you and I will operate that link at any SLA and that we don't want to guarantee that both parties will give notice in a timely manner before termination and... and... and... So, which textbook are you copying from? You put out something that is technically true without considering any of the practical realities. (edited for readability)
- 9y ago