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This article inadvertently supports why stopping Net Neutrality was a good idea. If it takes a deep investigation to discover "throttling", and there has been

This article inadvertently supports why stopping Net Neutrality was a good idea. If it takes a deep investigation to discover "throttling", and there has been no outcry from consumers, then the throttling did not cause any harm. Net Neutrality bans many sensible forms of traffic shaping. What we are seeing is network capacity being greatly increased through sensible traffic shaping, with no downside for consumers. That's why Net Neutrality is a bad idea in the first place!

jakebasile 8y ago
So, if something can be done and no one notices it can't be a bad thing? "I would've gotten away with it if it wasn't for you meddling kids!"
- resters 8y ago
  Traffic shaping does exactly that. It prioritizes traffic in a way that makes sense for each protocol. So yes, the point is that being aware of the protocols lets the shaping create more perceived bandwidth out of thin air. This is the reality as long as we have "residential quality" broadband, which is more like a finance product arbitraging bandwidth, intended to lower cost and minimize (but not reduce) the impact of congestion. If you want dedicated bandwidth the price is significantly higher. I wish I could afford a dedicated high bandwidth circuit as my residential connection. I can't, but I think that ISPs are better able to choose what QoS makes sense than regulators are.
  - jakebasile 8y ago
    The ISPs created this "arbitrage" style of overselling bandwidth, and we shouldn't let their use of loose definitions serve as an excuse to further degrade their products against their marketing claims. My residential broadband from AT&T is sold to me as Gigabit. Do you know how often I've ever gotten what they sold to me? Never. I top out at about 300Mbps, and even that is rare.
    - resters 8y ago
      There are other ways to address that such as false advertising or rules defining what kind of service can be called "gigabit" when sold. I've been trying to find the lowest latency connection possible and was excited to call AT&T and find out they had fiber available. I asked the rep multiple times if it was a 100% fiber circuit, and was told it was. Then on the day of installation, the installer called up and mentioned copper. I said, "Uh, what do you mean copper?". Turns out it was fiber to the pole and copper the rest of the way. The rep simply lied. I would like to see firms that lie to customers in that kind of way removed from the market due to competition. So in my view regulation of ISPs should focus on allowing competition and breaking up the last mile market power. Why can't the municipality own the last mile transmission line and rent it to whichever ISP wins the customer's business?
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > So, if something can be done and no one notices it can't be a bad thing? Not only that, the article clearly indicates that people do notice the impacts, they just don't know that the cause is deliberate throttling by their provider. It's like if people frequently complained about loose coins missing from their homes, but it took some legwork to find the crooks who trained cockroaches to steal the coins and deliver them—would you say that the thefts shouldn't be illegal because it wasn't immediately obvious that he losses were thefts?
  - stochastic_monk 8y ago
    And it’s just isolated people noticing against a monolithic corporation. It’s hard for any small-time person who isn’t absurdly rich to get them to do anything but waste hours of their time on the phone or internet discussing the issue.
Finch2193 8y ago
I'm confused. Do you really think this outweighs all the other downsides of losing net neutrality?
- darkerside 8y ago
  What exactly are these perceived downsides? Netflix is operational and seems to be doing just fine. And if an ISP outright stopped supporting it, the majority of people would immediately find an alternative ISP that did not.
- resters 8y ago
  The core issue Net Neutrality intends to solve is the excessive market power of last mile providers. Of all of the possible ways to address that, having lawmakers regulate QoS is silly. People act as though NN means that everyone deserves a dedicated bandwidth circuit. That's simply not what everyone gets even under NN. Regulators should be doing things like figuring out ways to get more last mile transmission lines installed so there can be real market competition. I also don't have a problem with an ISP selling a "Netflix and email only" internet package to someone for a big discount. Some people would rather settle for that and spend the savings on something else.
  - Paul-ish 8y ago
    > Regulators should be doing things like figuring out ways to get more last mile transmission lines installed so there can be real market competition. It's not clear to me why we can't or shouldn't do both. Keep NN in place until we have followed through with making the broadband market is competitive.
whamlastxmas 8y ago
You can still do traffic shaping under NN, you just have to do it with equality and not act like a mafia doing racketeering with your customers. Some nice packets you got there, would be a shame if someone... shaped them.
- resters 8y ago
  This made me chuckle. Yes, that is exactly true and I hope antitrust regulators can use shaping data to crack down on excessive market power!
sathackr 8y ago
Dictatorships are fine when the dictator is wise and benevolent and acts in the best interest of his/her people. When they start acting in their own best interest is when it becomes a problem. We're just at the beginning of the non-net neutrality era and carriers are testing the waters. The market favors commercial interests, so we will begin to see some of the more negative predicted outcomes -- ie Amazon paying Boost Mobile to not throttle their traffic(while throttling their competitors)
charleslmunger 8y ago
I'm not sure I follow your logic - it doesn't take a deep investigation to discover throttling, it takes a deep investigation to prove that poor performance is caused by throttling. It doesn't take a deep investigation to see that your cash register is short, but it might take one to prove that an employee is taking money from the drawer. And we're not seeing network capacity greatly increased through sensible traffic shaping - that's an assertion made without evidence. If that were the case, we'd expect different video providers to be shaped the same way, and we'd expect the throttling to change based on time of day and peak traffic, which the researchers did not observe.
- resters 8y ago
  There could be many causes of what appears to be differential throttling. For a small ISP there might be a much higher quality backbone link to one video provider than to another. This is probably a coincidence. Also, popular services such as Netflix result in the build out of more dedicated bandwidth that is shaped to match peak demand. Broadly, traffic shaping happens from QoS rules, ISP upstream provider choices, backbone infrastructure build-outs, etc. It's not a static system. I guess my point is that this is too complex a thing for regulators to understand or to regulate in a sensible way. I prefer simple antitrust enforcement of last mile providers, even if it entails the government "confiscating" the transmission lines installed by ISPs and any of several ISPs to use them to serve a customer based on the customer's chosen ISP.
  - charleslmunger 8y ago
    All of those are not supported by the evidence in the linked article. They observed specific fixed speeds per provider, regardless of location, time, or load. You're correct that there are emergent effects from peering, routing, etc, but that is not what the evidence suggests is the cause of the issue. And the specific regulation of "Do not throttle or shape legal traffic based on origin or contents" doesn't require large complicated regulatory intervention. A simple complaint system "we observe that traffic to origin X exhibits dramatically different performance than traffic to origin Y" and response would work basically fine. Of course it would be better if ISPs would behave reasonably without regulation, but we can see clearly that it's not the case.
Paul-ish 8y ago
It took scientific research to find that trans fats or smoking was bad. Does that mean that they aren't actually that bad, or even beneficial?

jakebasile 8y ago

So, if something can be done and no one notices it can't be a bad thing? "I would've gotten away with it if it wasn't for you meddling kids!"

resters 8y ago
Traffic shaping does exactly that. It prioritizes traffic in a way that makes sense for each protocol. So yes, the point is that being aware of the protocols lets the shaping create more perceived bandwidth out of thin air. This is the reality as long as we have "residential quality" broadband, which is more like a finance product arbitraging bandwidth, intended to lower cost and minimize (but not reduce) the impact of congestion. If you want dedicated bandwidth the price is significantly higher. I wish I could afford a dedicated high bandwidth circuit as my residential connection. I can't, but I think that ISPs are better able to choose what QoS makes sense than regulators are.
- jakebasile 8y ago
  The ISPs created this "arbitrage" style of overselling bandwidth, and we shouldn't let their use of loose definitions serve as an excuse to further degrade their products against their marketing claims. My residential broadband from AT&T is sold to me as Gigabit. Do you know how often I've ever gotten what they sold to me? Never. I top out at about 300Mbps, and even that is rare.
  - resters 8y ago
    There are other ways to address that such as false advertising or rules defining what kind of service can be called "gigabit" when sold. I've been trying to find the lowest latency connection possible and was excited to call AT&T and find out they had fiber available. I asked the rep multiple times if it was a 100% fiber circuit, and was told it was. Then on the day of installation, the installer called up and mentioned copper. I said, "Uh, what do you mean copper?". Turns out it was fiber to the pole and copper the rest of the way. The rep simply lied. I would like to see firms that lie to customers in that kind of way removed from the market due to competition. So in my view regulation of ISPs should focus on allowing competition and breaking up the last mile market power. Why can't the municipality own the last mile transmission line and rent it to whichever ISP wins the customer's business?
dragonwriter 8y ago
> So, if something can be done and no one notices it can't be a bad thing? Not only that, the article clearly indicates that people do notice the impacts, they just don't know that the cause is deliberate throttling by their provider. It's like if people frequently complained about loose coins missing from their homes, but it took some legwork to find the crooks who trained cockroaches to steal the coins and deliver them—would you say that the thefts shouldn't be illegal because it wasn't immediately obvious that he losses were thefts?
- stochastic_monk 8y ago
  And it’s just isolated people noticing against a monolithic corporation. It’s hard for any small-time person who isn’t absurdly rich to get them to do anything but waste hours of their time on the phone or internet discussing the issue.

Finch2193 8y ago

I'm confused. Do you really think this outweighs all the other downsides of losing net neutrality?

darkerside 8y ago
What exactly are these perceived downsides? Netflix is operational and seems to be doing just fine. And if an ISP outright stopped supporting it, the majority of people would immediately find an alternative ISP that did not.
resters 8y ago
The core issue Net Neutrality intends to solve is the excessive market power of last mile providers. Of all of the possible ways to address that, having lawmakers regulate QoS is silly. People act as though NN means that everyone deserves a dedicated bandwidth circuit. That's simply not what everyone gets even under NN. Regulators should be doing things like figuring out ways to get more last mile transmission lines installed so there can be real market competition. I also don't have a problem with an ISP selling a "Netflix and email only" internet package to someone for a big discount. Some people would rather settle for that and spend the savings on something else.
- Paul-ish 8y ago
  > Regulators should be doing things like figuring out ways to get more last mile transmission lines installed so there can be real market competition. It's not clear to me why we can't or shouldn't do both. Keep NN in place until we have followed through with making the broadband market is competitive.

whamlastxmas 8y ago

You can still do traffic shaping under NN, you just have to do it with equality and not act like a mafia doing racketeering with your customers. Some nice packets you got there, would be a shame if someone... shaped them.

resters 8y ago
This made me chuckle. Yes, that is exactly true and I hope antitrust regulators can use shaping data to crack down on excessive market power!

sathackr 8y ago

Dictatorships are fine when the dictator is wise and benevolent and acts in the best interest of his/her people. When they start acting in their own best interest is when it becomes a problem. We're just at the beginning of the non-net neutrality era and carriers are testing the waters. The market favors commercial interests, so we will begin to see some of the more negative predicted outcomes -- ie Amazon paying Boost Mobile to not throttle their traffic(while throttling their competitors)

charleslmunger 8y ago

I'm not sure I follow your logic - it doesn't take a deep investigation to discover throttling, it takes a deep investigation to prove that poor performance is caused by throttling. It doesn't take a deep investigation to see that your cash register is short, but it might take one to prove that an employee is taking money from the drawer. And we're not seeing network capacity greatly increased through sensible traffic shaping - that's an assertion made without evidence. If that were the case, we'd expect different video providers to be shaped the same way, and we'd expect the throttling to change based on time of day and peak traffic, which the researchers did not observe.

resters 8y ago
There could be many causes of what appears to be differential throttling. For a small ISP there might be a much higher quality backbone link to one video provider than to another. This is probably a coincidence. Also, popular services such as Netflix result in the build out of more dedicated bandwidth that is shaped to match peak demand. Broadly, traffic shaping happens from QoS rules, ISP upstream provider choices, backbone infrastructure build-outs, etc. It's not a static system. I guess my point is that this is too complex a thing for regulators to understand or to regulate in a sensible way. I prefer simple antitrust enforcement of last mile providers, even if it entails the government "confiscating" the transmission lines installed by ISPs and any of several ISPs to use them to serve a customer based on the customer's chosen ISP.
- charleslmunger 8y ago
  All of those are not supported by the evidence in the linked article. They observed specific fixed speeds per provider, regardless of location, time, or load. You're correct that there are emergent effects from peering, routing, etc, but that is not what the evidence suggests is the cause of the issue. And the specific regulation of "Do not throttle or shape legal traffic based on origin or contents" doesn't require large complicated regulatory intervention. A simple complaint system "we observe that traffic to origin X exhibits dramatically different performance than traffic to origin Y" and response would work basically fine. Of course it would be better if ISPs would behave reasonably without regulation, but we can see clearly that it's not the case.

Paul-ish 8y ago

It took scientific research to find that trans fats or smoking was bad. Does that mean that they aren't actually that bad, or even beneficial?