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Before anyone gets ahead of themselves, this bill only protects net neutrality and does not enforce net neutrality as defined here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

by Pilfer 9y ago

Before anyone gets ahead of themselves, this bill only protects net neutrality and does not enforce net neutrality as defined here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality . ISPs are still allowed to discriminate traffic under this bill. They are allowed to block and throttle content such as illegal streaming downloads, some torrents, spam, and other traffic that degrades network performance. For example, this bill does not prevent Comcast, At&t, Verizon et al. from blocking port 25 as they have been for the past decade. The bill also does not preclude zero-rating. This bill is a good thing yes, but let's not get ahead of ourselves and call this net neutrality.

will_hughes 9y ago
> does not prevent Comcast, At&t, Verizon et al. from blocking port 25 as they have been for the past decade Are you really that suprised they block it? It's an exceedingly effective anti-spam measure.
- Pilfer 9y ago
  I'm not surprised at all. I bring it up because it's an example of a blatant net neutrality violation that many people agree is acceptable. Same goes for IP ingress filtering.
  - will_hughes 9y ago
    Net Neutrality doesn't prevent network operators from stopping malicious activity on their network. Blocking Port 25 to specific providers unless they pay up would be a problem, but blocking port 25 globally (except, say, to their own SMTP servers) is perfectly okay.
    - derefr 9y ago
      What the parent is talking about is the more generalized "net-neutrality violation" of assuming that users on residential plans have no legitimate reason to be hosting any public-routable services. It's the ~30-years-back ISP coup of dividing the flat space of Internet "peers" into separate categories of "servers" and "home PCs", where default-deny policies are enforced on "home PCs" to prevent them from doing most of the things "servers" can do. Theoretically, true "net neutrality" (in quotes because it's not really the same thing that the law that got struck down protected) would require that ISPs not discriminate what types of traffic a customer can use their pipe for, any more than a bank is allowed to discriminate what you use your checking account for. Under this true-Scotsman net neutrality, ISPs should be required to let people host web servers, or mail servers (if they're not open relays), or whatever-else servers, on their residential Internet. If that causes uplink saturation, then price uplink bandwidth in your plans to match your costs! (Which basically would eliminate the difference between residential and business Internet plans anyway.)
    - Pilfer 9y ago
      Please direct me to a source explaining why malicious network traffic is exempt from net neutrality. Under the net neutrality definition linked above, blocking specific ports is a clear violation. Also, the port 25 ban directly affects legitimate customers. At least for Verizon, port 25 is blocked for residential customers, but it's not blocked for commercial customers. Over the past decade, many residential customers have called to enable port 25 so they can run their own mail server, and I've read Verizon refuses to unblock the port. Verizon's "solution" for them is to upgrade to their commercial package where it's not blocked.
      - will_hughes 9y ago
        > Under the net neutrality definition linked above, blocking specific ports is a clear violation. I don't see how you can read that from the linked wikipedia page. I assume you're conflating blocking ports with blocking/slowing protocols. > Please direct me to a source explaining why malicious network traffic is exempt from net neutrality. It's not an exhaustive policy document of every possible reason why network access might be terminated/restricted. eg no discussion of terminating/filtering BGP peering announcements from a misconfigured device. Few people, if any, have ever said that network management activities are would be prohibited under NN. If someone is actively disrupting the network, or is otherwise acting maliciously, then clearly as a network operator you're going to be permitted to block that traffic. > Over the past decade, many residential customers have called to enable port 25 so they can run their own mail server Sure, but even if they did permit it - the chances you will be able to run a mail relay from an IP that's clearly in the same network block as a bunch of other residential networks is near zero. Most major mail providers will outright block you for existing in that range, and most others will block you for being unable to demonstrate control over the IP (by setting Reverse-DNS).
        Pilfer 9y ago
        > I don't see how you can read that from the linked wikipedia page. Here's how net neutrality is defined. "Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers must treat all data on the Internet the same, and not discriminate or charge differently by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or method of communication." Blocking all TCP/IP packets with first two bytes set to 25, and not blocking TCP/IP packets with the first two bytes set to 24, is a clear violation of the Net Neutrality principle of no discrimination based on application. If I send a TCP/IP packet with source port 24, my ISP does not block it. However, if I change just one bit in that packet, my ISP refuses to send it. An ISP blocking an entire class of applications from the internet (in this case, SMTP servers) is most certainly a net neutrality violation. > If someone is actively disrupting the network, or is otherwise acting maliciously, then clearly as a network operator you're going to be permitted to block that traffic. Where specifically in the definition of net neutrality does it permit ISPs to block such traffic? Blocking such traffic is a violation of the net neutrality principle that "Internet service providers must treat all data on the Internet the same". > Most major mail providers will outright block you for existing in [a residential IP block] ISPs have blocked residential customers from using SMTP for over a decade now, therefore it's no surprise mail providers have little incentive to support residential SMTP servers. They've been forced out of the market.
tzs 9y ago
I don't see any real point in including zero rating under net neutrality, for several reasons. 1. The usual argument is that if an ISP can zero rate service X, that makes it harder for competitors of X to compete, and so we need to ban zero rating to encourage competition. This argument fails because a last mile ISP like Comcast can easily side step any internet neutrality rules in offering X by making a deal with the X provider to serve the service from Comcast's own servers. Then it is not being provided over internet and so is out of scope for net neutrality. They could even go farther, and not even use IP at all to deliver it from Comcast to the home. They run IP on top of lower level protocols, and they could use one of those lower level protocols to deliver to an app running on the set top box, which could then serve on the LAN using normal IP protocols (which would be out of scope for net neutrality because they are just running on a LAN in this case). If we want to stop this for competition reasons, we'll need to use antitrust, not net neutrality. Antitrust cannot be evaded by simply changing the protocols. 2. We accept zero rating in every other or nearly every other common carrier service. In telecommunications. for example, I've never seen any objections to zero rated telephone service, whether paid for by the phone company (such as free calls to government offices), or paid for by the company called (commercial toll free numbers). In transportation, we don't get our feathers ruffled when a bus or cab company offers free rides (possibly paid for by a sponsor). What is different about internet? Generalizing this, in general we allow nearly every provider of goods and services to give you MORE than you have paid for. As long as they deliver the service that you paid for, if they want to give you a gift of more service to promote a particular offering of their own, or to promote (possibly for pay) some sponsor, we allow it. Regulation is concerned with making sure they don't under deliver, not preventing over delivery. It is hard to make a case to the typical consumer that there is something fundamentally different between, say, Safeway giving a discount on Pepsi, and an ISP giving a discount on bandwidth used for Spotify. 3. Suppose I'm a company selling something that uses a lot of bandwidth, such as a game that requires a large download. I'd like to pay major ISPs to zero rate it. If I cannot directly do that, but the ISP sells prepaid bandwidth cards that you use by entering a code from the card, I could simply buy prepaid bandwidth this way, and when someone buys my game I could give them a bandwidth code for their ISP to cover the costs of the download. Are we going to ban prepaid bandwidth to stop this? If we want to get net neutrality back, and have it STAY back instead of just flipping every time we change which party is in control we need to keep it to just involving things ON the network. That's basically throttling, blocking, and paid prioritization. Billing is OFF the network. I think it should be reasonably possible to get bipartisan support for those.
wdr1 9y ago
> The bill also does not preclude zero-rating I know I'm in the minority, but I've never seen zero rating as part of NN. What I worry about is people playing games where services are slowed or blocked.
rrauenza 9y ago
Comcast of course blocks incoming port 25 as well. I pay to have easydns deliver over SMTP to an alternate port. This means I can't really do effective spam filtering / denying at the connection level as the connecting server is always easydns. (Although denying spam that then bounces often is misidentified as originating spam... so...) What best practices do others do when still hosting SMTP at home?

by Pilfer 9y ago

will_hughes 9y ago

> does not prevent Comcast, At&t, Verizon et al. from blocking port 25 as they have been for the past decade Are you really that suprised they block it? It's an exceedingly effective anti-spam measure.

Pilfer 9y ago
I'm not surprised at all. I bring it up because it's an example of a blatant net neutrality violation that many people agree is acceptable. Same goes for IP ingress filtering.
- will_hughes 9y ago
  Net Neutrality doesn't prevent network operators from stopping malicious activity on their network. Blocking Port 25 to specific providers unless they pay up would be a problem, but blocking port 25 globally (except, say, to their own SMTP servers) is perfectly okay.
  - derefr 9y ago
    What the parent is talking about is the more generalized "net-neutrality violation" of assuming that users on residential plans have no legitimate reason to be hosting any public-routable services. It's the ~30-years-back ISP coup of dividing the flat space of Internet "peers" into separate categories of "servers" and "home PCs", where default-deny policies are enforced on "home PCs" to prevent them from doing most of the things "servers" can do. Theoretically, true "net neutrality" (in quotes because it's not really the same thing that the law that got struck down protected) would require that ISPs not discriminate what types of traffic a customer can use their pipe for, any more than a bank is allowed to discriminate what you use your checking account for. Under this true-Scotsman net neutrality, ISPs should be required to let people host web servers, or mail servers (if they're not open relays), or whatever-else servers, on their residential Internet. If that causes uplink saturation, then price uplink bandwidth in your plans to match your costs! (Which basically would eliminate the difference between residential and business Internet plans anyway.)
  - Pilfer 9y ago
    Please direct me to a source explaining why malicious network traffic is exempt from net neutrality. Under the net neutrality definition linked above, blocking specific ports is a clear violation. Also, the port 25 ban directly affects legitimate customers. At least for Verizon, port 25 is blocked for residential customers, but it's not blocked for commercial customers. Over the past decade, many residential customers have called to enable port 25 so they can run their own mail server, and I've read Verizon refuses to unblock the port. Verizon's "solution" for them is to upgrade to their commercial package where it's not blocked.
    - will_hughes 9y ago
      > Under the net neutrality definition linked above, blocking specific ports is a clear violation. I don't see how you can read that from the linked wikipedia page. I assume you're conflating blocking ports with blocking/slowing protocols. > Please direct me to a source explaining why malicious network traffic is exempt from net neutrality. It's not an exhaustive policy document of every possible reason why network access might be terminated/restricted. eg no discussion of terminating/filtering BGP peering announcements from a misconfigured device. Few people, if any, have ever said that network management activities are would be prohibited under NN. If someone is actively disrupting the network, or is otherwise acting maliciously, then clearly as a network operator you're going to be permitted to block that traffic. > Over the past decade, many residential customers have called to enable port 25 so they can run their own mail server Sure, but even if they did permit it - the chances you will be able to run a mail relay from an IP that's clearly in the same network block as a bunch of other residential networks is near zero. Most major mail providers will outright block you for existing in that range, and most others will block you for being unable to demonstrate control over the IP (by setting Reverse-DNS).
      - Pilfer 9y ago
        > I don't see how you can read that from the linked wikipedia page. Here's how net neutrality is defined. "Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers must treat all data on the Internet the same, and not discriminate or charge differently by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or method of communication." Blocking all TCP/IP packets with first two bytes set to 25, and not blocking TCP/IP packets with the first two bytes set to 24, is a clear violation of the Net Neutrality principle of no discrimination based on application. If I send a TCP/IP packet with source port 24, my ISP does not block it. However, if I change just one bit in that packet, my ISP refuses to send it. An ISP blocking an entire class of applications from the internet (in this case, SMTP servers) is most certainly a net neutrality violation. > If someone is actively disrupting the network, or is otherwise acting maliciously, then clearly as a network operator you're going to be permitted to block that traffic. Where specifically in the definition of net neutrality does it permit ISPs to block such traffic? Blocking such traffic is a violation of the net neutrality principle that "Internet service providers must treat all data on the Internet the same". > Most major mail providers will outright block you for existing in [a residential IP block] ISPs have blocked residential customers from using SMTP for over a decade now, therefore it's no surprise mail providers have little incentive to support residential SMTP servers. They've been forced out of the market.

tzs 9y ago

I don't see any real point in including zero rating under net neutrality, for several reasons. 1. The usual argument is that if an ISP can zero rate service X, that makes it harder for competitors of X to compete, and so we need to ban zero rating to encourage competition. This argument fails because a last mile ISP like Comcast can easily side step any internet neutrality rules in offering X by making a deal with the X provider to serve the service from Comcast's own servers. Then it is not being provided over internet and so is out of scope for net neutrality. They could even go farther, and not even use IP at all to deliver it from Comcast to the home. They run IP on top of lower level protocols, and they could use one of those lower level protocols to deliver to an app running on the set top box, which could then serve on the LAN using normal IP protocols (which would be out of scope for net neutrality because they are just running on a LAN in this case). If we want to stop this for competition reasons, we'll need to use antitrust, not net neutrality. Antitrust cannot be evaded by simply changing the protocols. 2. We accept zero rating in every other or nearly every other common carrier service. In telecommunications. for example, I've never seen any objections to zero rated telephone service, whether paid for by the phone company (such as free calls to government offices), or paid for by the company called (commercial toll free numbers). In transportation, we don't get our feathers ruffled when a bus or cab company offers free rides (possibly paid for by a sponsor). What is different about internet? Generalizing this, in general we allow nearly every provider of goods and services to give you MORE than you have paid for. As long as they deliver the service that you paid for, if they want to give you a gift of more service to promote a particular offering of their own, or to promote (possibly for pay) some sponsor, we allow it. Regulation is concerned with making sure they don't under deliver, not preventing over delivery. It is hard to make a case to the typical consumer that there is something fundamentally different between, say, Safeway giving a discount on Pepsi, and an ISP giving a discount on bandwidth used for Spotify. 3. Suppose I'm a company selling something that uses a lot of bandwidth, such as a game that requires a large download. I'd like to pay major ISPs to zero rate it. If I cannot directly do that, but the ISP sells prepaid bandwidth cards that you use by entering a code from the card, I could simply buy prepaid bandwidth this way, and when someone buys my game I could give them a bandwidth code for their ISP to cover the costs of the download. Are we going to ban prepaid bandwidth to stop this? If we want to get net neutrality back, and have it STAY back instead of just flipping every time we change which party is in control we need to keep it to just involving things ON the network. That's basically throttling, blocking, and paid prioritization. Billing is OFF the network. I think it should be reasonably possible to get bipartisan support for those.

wdr1 9y ago

> The bill also does not preclude zero-rating I know I'm in the minority, but I've never seen zero rating as part of NN. What I worry about is people playing games where services are slowed or blocked.

rrauenza 9y ago

Comcast of course blocks incoming port 25 as well. I pay to have easydns deliver over SMTP to an alternate port. This means I can't really do effective spam filtering / denying at the connection level as the connecting server is always easydns. (Although denying spam that then bounces often is misidentified as originating spam... so...) What best practices do others do when still hosting SMTP at home?