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Because in order to sell you onto these bullshit packages they will end up making your regular connection hellish. So you have an issue connecting to netflix..

by c12 8y ago

Because in order to sell you onto these bullshit packages they will end up making your regular connection hellish. So you have an issue connecting to netflix... oh sir for just $14.99/mo you can get our Netflix QoS package added on to your connection and have no further troubles. A few weeks later... oh sir your having issues connecting to youtube, well we have our youtube QoS package for just $9.99/mo extra... It's content discrimination under disguise.

ihsw2 8y ago
I wouldn't mind latency being thrown into the typical Mbps marketing jargon, at least it will get some attention (which has sorely been lacking). If we can open up these rules while radically increasing enforcement of quality of service then this might be a good thing. It might be good to replace "up to 75Mbps" with "guaranteed 50-75Mbps and 5-15ms ping to nearest public internet junction, 95% of the time during peak hours." I'm sure some folks might even sign onto world-beating five-nines performance guarantees too. But this is probably just a dream and we'll see the ugly product differentiation you're describing.
- dkersten 8y ago
  > It might be good to replace "up to 75Mbps" with "guaranteed 50-75Mbps and 5-15ms ping to nearest public internet junction, 95% of the time during peak hours. Hell yeah. I would happily pay extra for a decent service that advertised it’s minimum speeds instead of its maximum because in reality, the theoretical maximum speed of my connection is really not a useful metric unless I’m hitting it 99% of the time. I have a fast connection but I still typically get a good 50 Mb/s less than advertised (which luckily still leaves me with 200 Mb/s or so) making the advertised amount completely inconsequential and useless. Telling me the lowest I should expect, on the other hand, is actually helpful and allows me to do some rudimentary capacity planning to see if it’s suitable for me or not.
  - tekknik 8y ago
    note that this isn’t a problem with dsl lines. AT&T charges me for 50mbps down and 10mbps up. 100% of the time for the 5+ years they have exceeded these speeds (i have a traffic monitor running constantly to verify speeds)
sambull 8y ago
My favorite is business upgrade. Start dropping VPN every 5 min or so, force you to buy business class service for remote work etc.
- chx 8y ago
  This is very near impossible to implement, isn't it?
  - aerotwelve 8y ago
    Not at all, they are your ISP! I absolutely expect VPNs to be the first to go; it's hard to do application-level throttling if everyone has access to a VPN. This is a goldmine for ISPs. Over the last five-ish years they decided to think of themselves as "advertising" companies. FCC repealed the internet privacy rule last April, and what are they doing now? They're functioning as data brokers. We should expect this trend to continue and assume that ISPs will take advantage of Pai's NN repeal as soon as possible.
    - _jal 8y ago
      This is the next shoe to drop. Comcast currently extracts almost $100 a month from me, in addition to the ~$10 I pay for a VPN exit node to hide traffic from their surveillance machine. Why wouldn't they want another $10 or so to "allow" VPNs, given regulators who are loudly, publicly giddy about screwing consumers?
  - jjoonathan 8y ago
    No, it is not very near impossible to implement.
    - dzek69 8y ago
      Sorry, but you are wrong. It's a 15 minutes task for good admin to start dropping VPN connections (not to block, but to interrupt every 5 minutes, but blocking is even easier). One important info: - ISP can't see your VPN traffic. But they can see that you are connecting to specific IP (VPN service's IP) at specific port. Once you're connected to VPN you probably pass ALL the connection through it. So ISP can see only single connection to single point. That is more than enough. So how can they block VPNs: 1) Most VPNs uses standard VPN ports. Just dropping connections to that port is a good start. 2) Dropping connections to a servers when this is your (almost) only, long standing connection. This is a good moment to store that IP as VPN service IP. 3) Reverse DNS on IPs you're connecting to. A lot of services will reveal that they belongs to VPN services. 4) Public list of VPN IPs. Some provides them. Some are already noted somewhere on the internet. ISPs can even share their databases with each other to be better at VPN dropping. This is very easy thing to do. It would be REALLY hard to hide your connection to a VPN service. One thing that came to my mind, to hide your VPN servers you would have to: - use VPN services at random ports - change VPN IP every few minutes at random factor, so dropped connections will occur anyway - in the background you should keep direct (un-VPNed) connections to random servers at random ports, passing random data around (it will look encrypted just like VPN connection) This would require huge infrastructure though. Really huge. But still - if ISP notice behavior like that - it means you're probably trying to do something shady, like walk around their VPN dropping rules - so they could just throttle your connections even more, just in case :) So in general - you're fu^Hat very bad situation. I'm from Europe. I'm "safe" now, but we are also going to have bad law for net neutrality soon.
sonnyblarney 8y ago
"Because in order to sell you onto these bullshit packages they will end up making your regular connection hellish. So you have an issue connecting to netflix... oh sir for just $14.99/mo you can get our Netflix QoS package" No. A 'Netflix QoS package' is not a QoS package. That's against Net Neutrality. A 'Video Streaming' package that offers high quality video streaming with low latency, but doesn't care about things like picking up dropped packets - and doesn't discriminate between content sources - this would be 'net neutral'. "Because in order to sell you onto these bullshit packages they will end up making your regular connection hellish" This is a completely separate issue and has nothing to do with NN really. They can (and probably do) this already today with their regular package offers. Let's not confuse general ISP stupidity with actual NN.
- throwaway5752 8y ago
  "That's against Net Neutrality" Net Neutrality doesn't exist any more. Did you not read the article? This isn't hypothetical, it was allowed to expire as of today. It's no longer the law, ISPs can legally do whatever they want now, including a "Netflix QoS package". I am admittedly not a lawyer, but I'm reasonably well informed on the topic and completely open to being corrected if you know better.
  - sonnyblarney 8y ago
    Network Neutrality is a concept, not a law. Yes, the US law requiring a certain kind of Network Neutrality did expire. The point is: service providers charging for differentiated QoS (such as different packages for latency) is well within the concept of Network Neutrality. What is 'out of bounds' for NN is charing for customers based on the content of those packages. So: > A low latency service (designed for gaming in mind), is NN > A low-latency service 'for games only' - is not NN > If the ISP charges you money to access 'Steam' games, but not for others - that is not NN.

by c12 8y ago

ihsw2 8y ago

I wouldn't mind latency being thrown into the typical Mbps marketing jargon, at least it will get some attention (which has sorely been lacking). If we can open up these rules while radically increasing enforcement of quality of service then this might be a good thing. It might be good to replace "up to 75Mbps" with "guaranteed 50-75Mbps and 5-15ms ping to nearest public internet junction, 95% of the time during peak hours." I'm sure some folks might even sign onto world-beating five-nines performance guarantees too. But this is probably just a dream and we'll see the ugly product differentiation you're describing.

dkersten 8y ago
> It might be good to replace "up to 75Mbps" with "guaranteed 50-75Mbps and 5-15ms ping to nearest public internet junction, 95% of the time during peak hours. Hell yeah. I would happily pay extra for a decent service that advertised it’s minimum speeds instead of its maximum because in reality, the theoretical maximum speed of my connection is really not a useful metric unless I’m hitting it 99% of the time. I have a fast connection but I still typically get a good 50 Mb/s less than advertised (which luckily still leaves me with 200 Mb/s or so) making the advertised amount completely inconsequential and useless. Telling me the lowest I should expect, on the other hand, is actually helpful and allows me to do some rudimentary capacity planning to see if it’s suitable for me or not.
- tekknik 8y ago
  note that this isn’t a problem with dsl lines. AT&T charges me for 50mbps down and 10mbps up. 100% of the time for the 5+ years they have exceeded these speeds (i have a traffic monitor running constantly to verify speeds)

sambull 8y ago

My favorite is business upgrade. Start dropping VPN every 5 min or so, force you to buy business class service for remote work etc.

chx 8y ago
This is very near impossible to implement, isn't it?
- aerotwelve 8y ago
  Not at all, they are your ISP! I absolutely expect VPNs to be the first to go; it's hard to do application-level throttling if everyone has access to a VPN. This is a goldmine for ISPs. Over the last five-ish years they decided to think of themselves as "advertising" companies. FCC repealed the internet privacy rule last April, and what are they doing now? They're functioning as data brokers. We should expect this trend to continue and assume that ISPs will take advantage of Pai's NN repeal as soon as possible.
  - _jal 8y ago
    This is the next shoe to drop. Comcast currently extracts almost $100 a month from me, in addition to the ~$10 I pay for a VPN exit node to hide traffic from their surveillance machine. Why wouldn't they want another $10 or so to "allow" VPNs, given regulators who are loudly, publicly giddy about screwing consumers?
- jjoonathan 8y ago
  No, it is not very near impossible to implement.
  - dzek69 8y ago
    Sorry, but you are wrong. It's a 15 minutes task for good admin to start dropping VPN connections (not to block, but to interrupt every 5 minutes, but blocking is even easier). One important info: - ISP can't see your VPN traffic. But they can see that you are connecting to specific IP (VPN service's IP) at specific port. Once you're connected to VPN you probably pass ALL the connection through it. So ISP can see only single connection to single point. That is more than enough. So how can they block VPNs: 1) Most VPNs uses standard VPN ports. Just dropping connections to that port is a good start. 2) Dropping connections to a servers when this is your (almost) only, long standing connection. This is a good moment to store that IP as VPN service IP. 3) Reverse DNS on IPs you're connecting to. A lot of services will reveal that they belongs to VPN services. 4) Public list of VPN IPs. Some provides them. Some are already noted somewhere on the internet. ISPs can even share their databases with each other to be better at VPN dropping. This is very easy thing to do. It would be REALLY hard to hide your connection to a VPN service. One thing that came to my mind, to hide your VPN servers you would have to: - use VPN services at random ports - change VPN IP every few minutes at random factor, so dropped connections will occur anyway - in the background you should keep direct (un-VPNed) connections to random servers at random ports, passing random data around (it will look encrypted just like VPN connection) This would require huge infrastructure though. Really huge. But still - if ISP notice behavior like that - it means you're probably trying to do something shady, like walk around their VPN dropping rules - so they could just throttle your connections even more, just in case :) So in general - you're fu^Hat very bad situation. I'm from Europe. I'm "safe" now, but we are also going to have bad law for net neutrality soon.

sonnyblarney 8y ago

"Because in order to sell you onto these bullshit packages they will end up making your regular connection hellish. So you have an issue connecting to netflix... oh sir for just $14.99/mo you can get our Netflix QoS package" No. A 'Netflix QoS package' is not a QoS package. That's against Net Neutrality. A 'Video Streaming' package that offers high quality video streaming with low latency, but doesn't care about things like picking up dropped packets - and doesn't discriminate between content sources - this would be 'net neutral'. "Because in order to sell you onto these bullshit packages they will end up making your regular connection hellish" This is a completely separate issue and has nothing to do with NN really. They can (and probably do) this already today with their regular package offers. Let's not confuse general ISP stupidity with actual NN.

throwaway5752 8y ago
"That's against Net Neutrality" Net Neutrality doesn't exist any more. Did you not read the article? This isn't hypothetical, it was allowed to expire as of today. It's no longer the law, ISPs can legally do whatever they want now, including a "Netflix QoS package". I am admittedly not a lawyer, but I'm reasonably well informed on the topic and completely open to being corrected if you know better.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  Network Neutrality is a concept, not a law. Yes, the US law requiring a certain kind of Network Neutrality did expire. The point is: service providers charging for differentiated QoS (such as different packages for latency) is well within the concept of Network Neutrality. What is 'out of bounds' for NN is charing for customers based on the content of those packages. So: > A low latency service (designed for gaming in mind), is NN > A low-latency service 'for games only' - is not NN > If the ISP charges you money to access 'Steam' games, but not for others - that is not NN.