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This kind of throttling is done to squeeze more money from anything crossing their network. All ISPs want a piece of the pie so they will charge at both ends an

This kind of throttling is done to squeeze more money from anything crossing their network. All ISPs want a piece of the pie so they will charge at both ends anything coming in and anything going out to you.

pas 8y ago
Can customers/subscribers of the ISP sue for damages? I guess the ISP has a pretty defensive ToS though. :(
- close04 8y ago
  No because the contract you have with them has no enforceable SLA and you can't really prove any damages.
- standerman 8y ago
  Almost every large business has a forced arbitration clause now.
nbhuik 8y ago
That is just how the Internet works. Everyone is selling and buying access to networks. Whether directly or in the form of agreements. And most people are of course trying to get more for less. One could certainly wish that things would be different, but it isn't like they are doing something especially nefarious.
- joncrocks 8y ago
  Imagine that you have a delivery service. You pay your local delivery company $X per month and they promise that they'll deliver you 1 package a day from their local depot. But it turns out that although you're ordering a package a day from Amazon, you're not receiving a package a day. You get your stuff, but it's delayed and backed-up somewhere. And so as an experiment you sign up for a service that will receive a package for you, re-box it in their own packaging and then send it on to you. You then start to receive a package a day again. At that point you start wondering, are they looking at the boxes, seeing they are from Amazon and then just deciding to leave them sitting around their warehouse for a while? And the answer is yes, even though you're paying for the service, they also want whoever is sending the package to pay them to ensure that they get their package on time. So while their may well be all sorts of agreements between all the different parcel companies about who will do what when, it's frustrating as an end-user that there's all these weird agreements that impact me. After all I'm paying for packages to be delivered, not 'packages that are offered by our partners'.
  - nbhuik 8y ago
    Your scenario isn't particularly outlandish. That is how a lot of economy services work. And also why you can usually get other deliveries while many other packages, e.g. from China, are waiting to be processed. Not that deliveries are much like the Internet.
  - rayiner 8y ago
    That’s just not how the Internet works and it’s never how it worked. This old article from Cisco (based on a 1999 book) explains that there can be various kind of business arrangements in an interconnected network: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/about/press/internet-protocol-journal/back-issues/table-contents-1/ipj-archive/article09186a00800c8900.html https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/about/press/internet-protocol-.... The article likens the situation to airlines, where multiple transit providers might be involved and where there may be complex fee sharing arrangements between all the providers. Note that this book predated the rise of streaming video providers by more than a decade. Back then, nobody thought that delivery of content over the Internet was this simple one-sided transaction. It’s a new view of the Internet that has arisen because it suits the interests of these very lucrative streaming businesses.
    - joncrocks 8y ago
      I was only trying to make the point that from the point of the view of the average consumer it's hard to know what it is that you're agreeing to pay for and what you're going to get. I understand the complexities involved. You're sold a "XXXMb/s connection to 'the internet'", which people take to mean "XXXMb/s of the thing that I want, whatever that is" and not "XXXMb/s connection to the edge of the network, and then you get what you get given."
    - p49k 8y ago
      It's still the responsibility of the ISP to deliver connectivity to other hosts on the internet at their promised speed, regardless what is necessary to do so or how it operates internally. That's the service that they are advertising to the consumer. If UPS decided to change the way they internally route their packages, it doesn't mean that they can just brush off promised delivery dates because "it doesn't work how you think it does." I think that's the point the OP was making.
- close04 8y ago
  Right... until you grandma can’t Skype with you because Microsoft didn’t pay the “decongestion” tax to that neighborhood IP she’s using or every ISP along the way. Or when the firefighters get throttled because their unlimited data is consumed and your house goes up in smoke.
  - Cthulhu_ 8y ago
    I really hope firefighters and other emergency services don't depend on the unreliable mobile network. Those will be some of the first things to go down in case of an actual emergency, along with the power grid.
    - admax88q 8y ago
      Most fires that require an emergency response are not at the scale that could possibly impact cellular serivce. Even a whole neighbourhood going up in smoke isn't going to take down cell towers unless that tower happens to actually be in the middle of that neighbourhood.
    - close04 8y ago
      They rely on it because there's no real good alternative for data. Europe uses TETRA [0] (the equivalent of the North American P25 but with better data support among other things) for critical communications but still needs a TETRA + 3G/LTE hybrid for large data transfers (above the hundreds of Kbps order speeds TETRA offers). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrestrial_Trunked_Radio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrestrial_Trunked_Radio
    - slyn 8y ago
      https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/08/verizon-throttled-fire-departments-unlimited-data-during-calif-wildfire/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/08/verizon-throttle...
chooseaname 8y ago
I really want the ISPs to define exactly what my monthly fees are paying for. They'll clearly tell you that faster is better: > Indulge in super speed and have a great online experience, whether you're browsing the Web, shopping, or streaming your favorite movies and shows. But I want to know what my money is actually paying for.

pas 8y ago

Can customers/subscribers of the ISP sue for damages? I guess the ISP has a pretty defensive ToS though. :(

close04 8y ago
No because the contract you have with them has no enforceable SLA and you can't really prove any damages.
standerman 8y ago
Almost every large business has a forced arbitration clause now.

nbhuik 8y ago

That is just how the Internet works. Everyone is selling and buying access to networks. Whether directly or in the form of agreements. And most people are of course trying to get more for less. One could certainly wish that things would be different, but it isn't like they are doing something especially nefarious.

joncrocks 8y ago
Imagine that you have a delivery service. You pay your local delivery company $X per month and they promise that they'll deliver you 1 package a day from their local depot. But it turns out that although you're ordering a package a day from Amazon, you're not receiving a package a day. You get your stuff, but it's delayed and backed-up somewhere. And so as an experiment you sign up for a service that will receive a package for you, re-box it in their own packaging and then send it on to you. You then start to receive a package a day again. At that point you start wondering, are they looking at the boxes, seeing they are from Amazon and then just deciding to leave them sitting around their warehouse for a while? And the answer is yes, even though you're paying for the service, they also want whoever is sending the package to pay them to ensure that they get their package on time. So while their may well be all sorts of agreements between all the different parcel companies about who will do what when, it's frustrating as an end-user that there's all these weird agreements that impact me. After all I'm paying for packages to be delivered, not 'packages that are offered by our partners'.
- nbhuik 8y ago
  Your scenario isn't particularly outlandish. That is how a lot of economy services work. And also why you can usually get other deliveries while many other packages, e.g. from China, are waiting to be processed. Not that deliveries are much like the Internet.
- rayiner 8y ago
  That’s just not how the Internet works and it’s never how it worked. This old article from Cisco (based on a 1999 book) explains that there can be various kind of business arrangements in an interconnected network: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/about/press/internet-protocol-journal/back-issues/table-contents-1/ipj-archive/article09186a00800c8900.html https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/about/press/internet-protocol-.... The article likens the situation to airlines, where multiple transit providers might be involved and where there may be complex fee sharing arrangements between all the providers. Note that this book predated the rise of streaming video providers by more than a decade. Back then, nobody thought that delivery of content over the Internet was this simple one-sided transaction. It’s a new view of the Internet that has arisen because it suits the interests of these very lucrative streaming businesses.
  - joncrocks 8y ago
    I was only trying to make the point that from the point of the view of the average consumer it's hard to know what it is that you're agreeing to pay for and what you're going to get. I understand the complexities involved. You're sold a "XXXMb/s connection to 'the internet'", which people take to mean "XXXMb/s of the thing that I want, whatever that is" and not "XXXMb/s connection to the edge of the network, and then you get what you get given."
  - p49k 8y ago
    It's still the responsibility of the ISP to deliver connectivity to other hosts on the internet at their promised speed, regardless what is necessary to do so or how it operates internally. That's the service that they are advertising to the consumer. If UPS decided to change the way they internally route their packages, it doesn't mean that they can just brush off promised delivery dates because "it doesn't work how you think it does." I think that's the point the OP was making.
close04 8y ago
Right... until you grandma can’t Skype with you because Microsoft didn’t pay the “decongestion” tax to that neighborhood IP she’s using or every ISP along the way. Or when the firefighters get throttled because their unlimited data is consumed and your house goes up in smoke.
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  I really hope firefighters and other emergency services don't depend on the unreliable mobile network. Those will be some of the first things to go down in case of an actual emergency, along with the power grid.
  - admax88q 8y ago
    Most fires that require an emergency response are not at the scale that could possibly impact cellular serivce. Even a whole neighbourhood going up in smoke isn't going to take down cell towers unless that tower happens to actually be in the middle of that neighbourhood.
  - close04 8y ago
    They rely on it because there's no real good alternative for data. Europe uses TETRA [0] (the equivalent of the North American P25 but with better data support among other things) for critical communications but still needs a TETRA + 3G/LTE hybrid for large data transfers (above the hundreds of Kbps order speeds TETRA offers). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrestrial_Trunked_Radio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrestrial_Trunked_Radio
  - slyn 8y ago
    https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/08/verizon-throttled-fire-departments-unlimited-data-during-calif-wildfire/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/08/verizon-throttle...

chooseaname 8y ago

I really want the ISPs to define exactly what my monthly fees are paying for. They'll clearly tell you that faster is better: > Indulge in super speed and have a great online experience, whether you're browsing the Web, shopping, or streaming your favorite movies and shows. But I want to know what my money is actually paying for.