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Paying for traffic to be prioritized is the exact opposite of net neutrality. No need to pay lip service to the idea then. The obvious danger here is that small

Paying for traffic to be prioritized is the exact opposite of net neutrality. No need to pay lip service to the idea then. The obvious danger here is that small indie studios may not be able to afford making enjoyable real-time multiplayer games. How about improving public internet infrastructure instead?

TulliusCicero 7y ago
Look at it from the perspective of a random game developer: which one do you actually have more control over? You're essentially asking, "why don't you ignore the thing that definitely works right now, and instead try the thing that might work out in a decade or two if you get lucky?" Why would any sane business choose that option?
- vanderZwan 7y ago
  No, the actual business question for indy developers is "why do you expect us to agree to buying a thing that we can't afford, instead of demanding at the societal level that we all improve the public good that we actually do have access to instead?" That's what GPs remark of "only big players can afford private networks" was about, and it's the opposite of what you're claiming.
reitzensteinm 7y ago
As a small indie developer I don't understand your argument. Building a network like Riot can only be done by billion dollar publishers, but I could conceivably use this network. If you don't want solutions like this, are you also against private networks? In addition to Riot, Google famously cuts the gordian knot of CAP in Spanner by declaring their network won't go down. If it's ok to do it yourself but not outsource it, "think of the little guy" holds no water.
- ArtWomb 7y ago
  Riot's investment in private cloud is in turn informing game design for an upcoming FPS codename: Project A ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iGU6PctOBg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iGU6PctOBg
- pingyong 7y ago
  Steam might be a better example here, as Valve already allows devs to use their private network for game servers. Although it should be noted that all of this effort is only worth it because greedy ISPs are unwilling to peer to certain other networks in most (all?) cases, as the private network is still running through the same cables for most of the way.
- ergothus 7y ago
  Why would Riot give this network to competitors? Only to make money. If that price gets too high. You, as s small indie developer, have just been driven out of the market. That's the logic of the above post. The answer is NEITHER "outsource it" NOR "do it yourself". Instead, if the public offering is good enough, you dont need either option. That's how the internet has worked and grown so far.
  - reitzensteinm 7y ago
    Right, so you want to outlaw networks like those of Google and Riot? Not sure I can get on board with that, but it would level the playing field.
    - ergothus 7y ago
      This isn't me, this is the whole concept of net neutrality - the internet is a utility where all access is equal access, at least in terms of priority. (obviously we have rate limiting and people generally don't have protests about that - it's priority that is a problem) Many of the complaints in the reaction to the article is that the article is using the language of net neutrality to argue for the opposite (pay for access, which includes the ability to pay more for privileged access).
gnode 7y ago
I don't see how this is any more against network neutrality than regional mirrors / CDNs. This is an optimisation which can be made by the game developer / host, where the alternative would be prioritisation by the ISP, which would go against net neutrality.
- wayoutthere 7y ago
  The ISPs charge lots of money for the CDNs and private networks that want to connect to their customer networks at the edge. This is the net neutrality argument; it's almost impossible to get good performance at scale without paying extra for it. I actually think the problem this is meant to solve is an example of why, from a purely pragmatic sense, net neutrality is effectively impossible to deliver at scale. Someone has to eat the costs somewhere, and the publishers are the ones who benefit the most financially.
  - wbl 7y ago
    A bike courier or lawyer racing to the court house benefits far more from the roads then others but doesn't pay more. Common carrier regulations were widespread in moving atoms.
    - wayoutthere 7y ago
      Then why are toll roads a thing? They explicitly allow vehicles to pay more for a faster road.
      - Braggadocious 7y ago
        not really a faster road as anyone stuck in an expresslane behind a prius will tell you, but a less congested road free of peasants. Not really sure how this analogy syncs up but just throwing in my $0.02.
        wayoutthere 7y ago
        > but a less congested road free of peasants That's exactly what paid prioritization is though? A less congested bandwidth link free of peasants?
huffmsa 7y ago
I can pay FedEx to get my shit somewhere faster than my competitors. My customers are delighted by this and in turn they spend more with me and less with my USPS shipping competitors. Data packets are just digital shipped goods. The same rules should apply.
- xzcat 7y ago
  Except that the marginal cost of each "shipped good" is only a very small handwave away from zero. Which, as I understand it, is fundamentally different from the cost model of shipping physical packages.
  - huffmsa 7y ago
    Up to a certain point, yes you pay per physical unit. You get a lot better rate if you can fill a whole intermodal container. You get an even better rate if you buy that containers capacity for an agreed upon period of time. There's a huge industry built around optimally buying space in shipping containers and transportation.
- nannal 7y ago
  There are a number of feasible things which are not permitted by law. There are significant advantages to ensuring net neutrality exists and is maintained.
  - huffmsa 7y ago
    Great, so make it law that you can only allocate a certain percentage of your network to priority traffic. Or that any unbought priority capacity is made available to neutral internet traffic. It's not a mutually exclusive situation.
    - nannal 7y ago
      I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that the best method of preserving net neutrality was by not having it. It really is a mutually exclusive situation, either all traffic is treated equally or it isn't. This isn't animal farm, some packets are not more equal than others
GhettoMaestro 7y ago
You don’t get to dictate free human behavior. It’s so frustrating to see this trend on HN. People have a right to build private internet infrastructure and sell it at a premium. Full stop. No qualifications. Your opinion is naive and short-sighted.
krageon 7y ago
> Paying for traffic to be prioritized is the exact opposite of net neutrality This is exactly what peering is a significant chunk of the time. You pay for better peering in the fees that you pay to the right server parks. If that's the exact opposite of net neutrality, it has been dead for a very long time.
- loup-vaillant 7y ago
  Last time I've heard the term "peering", it didn't describe an exchange of money. Just an exchange of bits, where the peering partners set up a link and send data to each other. Transport however is indeed traditionally paid. As for paying someone to send data destined to their network, that's weird. Unlike transport, they want that data, why would you pay to deliver it to them?
  - krageon 7y ago
    And how do you believe those peering agreements are reached? What moves people to peer with each other?
    - ojilles 7y ago
      Mutual beneficial outcomes, without exchange of significant amounts of money are totally possible. As an example, AMS-IX is completely non-profit, see: https://www.ams-ix.net/ams/about-ams-ix https://www.ams-ix.net/ams/about-ams-ix [Edit: realised I didn't actually answer your question: it is much cheaper, at scale]
    - throw0101a 7y ago
      Does there have to be an explicit agreement? Why can't both parties simply advertise via BGP and let the algorithm sort it out? If an online service can determine where the majority of its users are network-wise, then they'd set up a mirror at the closest IXP.
shadowgovt 7y ago
Improving public internet infrastructure is an excellent idea, but if you're expecting game devs to rely on that solution, you're asking them to please defer being successful at their goal until we've finished boiling the ocean. We should anticipate some will say no thank you and strike out forging their own waterways.
Braggadocious 7y ago
If you want net neutrality you should be excited by companies building private networks because it means there's a competitive market that no one ISP or government can control.
- iamaelephant 7y ago
  Ah yes, private enterprise, that thing that always leads to neutrality and openness. That must be why the ISP market is USA is so robust.
  - Braggadocious 7y ago
    If you didnt like the ISP market in the USA wouldnt you want to be able to open a portal to an alternate ISP markets?
Iv 7y ago
Net neutrality is about content-neutrality and origin/destination neutrality. It is not opposed to give packets higher priority when there is a technical reason for this. Having a protocol and routes that guarantee low ping but require low bandwidth makes sense to me. A lot of the current infrastructure is built for TCP: something that can handle losses and actually uses packet loss to maximize its bandwidth use. Having specific shortcuts to open fast lines do not threaten net neutrality. For instance, I think game devs, would love if you could "reserve" 10KB/s of the lowest ping you have, out of your 500 MB/s "bandwidth budget" and reserve it to a given port. And note that it is not just games that require it. Telepresence applications are limited also because of this problem.
- mikepurvis 7y ago
  A protocol like that would be terrific because then each hop along the path would know exactly what is going on without needing to have explicit rules built in or be making it up based on heuristics and DPI.
- fragmede 7y ago
  There are also technical reasons why Netflix (or any other company significantly affected by net-neutrality) needs to pay Comcast extra in order for their packets to get higher priority, so everyone can watch on Netflix without stuttering and drop-outs. Paying for higher-priority traffic/more bandwidth looks very, very similar to paying for traffic not be throttled. Some might argue it's the same thing. IMO the difference is that backbone packet transit is different than end-user ISP transit. Unfortunately net-neutrality gets very muddy with, eg Verizon being both the backbone and the end-user ISP. Netflix network engineers are keenly aware of transit, which is part of the reason why they run their own CDN.

TulliusCicero 7y ago

Look at it from the perspective of a random game developer: which one do you actually have more control over? You're essentially asking, "why don't you ignore the thing that definitely works right now, and instead try the thing that might work out in a decade or two if you get lucky?" Why would any sane business choose that option?

vanderZwan 7y ago
No, the actual business question for indy developers is "why do you expect us to agree to buying a thing that we can't afford, instead of demanding at the societal level that we all improve the public good that we actually do have access to instead?" That's what GPs remark of "only big players can afford private networks" was about, and it's the opposite of what you're claiming.

reitzensteinm 7y ago

As a small indie developer I don't understand your argument. Building a network like Riot can only be done by billion dollar publishers, but I could conceivably use this network. If you don't want solutions like this, are you also against private networks? In addition to Riot, Google famously cuts the gordian knot of CAP in Spanner by declaring their network won't go down. If it's ok to do it yourself but not outsource it, "think of the little guy" holds no water.

ArtWomb 7y ago
Riot's investment in private cloud is in turn informing game design for an upcoming FPS codename: Project A ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iGU6PctOBg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iGU6PctOBg
pingyong 7y ago
Steam might be a better example here, as Valve already allows devs to use their private network for game servers. Although it should be noted that all of this effort is only worth it because greedy ISPs are unwilling to peer to certain other networks in most (all?) cases, as the private network is still running through the same cables for most of the way.
ergothus 7y ago
Why would Riot give this network to competitors? Only to make money. If that price gets too high. You, as s small indie developer, have just been driven out of the market. That's the logic of the above post. The answer is NEITHER "outsource it" NOR "do it yourself". Instead, if the public offering is good enough, you dont need either option. That's how the internet has worked and grown so far.
- reitzensteinm 7y ago
  Right, so you want to outlaw networks like those of Google and Riot? Not sure I can get on board with that, but it would level the playing field.
  - ergothus 7y ago
    This isn't me, this is the whole concept of net neutrality - the internet is a utility where all access is equal access, at least in terms of priority. (obviously we have rate limiting and people generally don't have protests about that - it's priority that is a problem) Many of the complaints in the reaction to the article is that the article is using the language of net neutrality to argue for the opposite (pay for access, which includes the ability to pay more for privileged access).

gnode 7y ago

I don't see how this is any more against network neutrality than regional mirrors / CDNs. This is an optimisation which can be made by the game developer / host, where the alternative would be prioritisation by the ISP, which would go against net neutrality.

wayoutthere 7y ago
The ISPs charge lots of money for the CDNs and private networks that want to connect to their customer networks at the edge. This is the net neutrality argument; it's almost impossible to get good performance at scale without paying extra for it. I actually think the problem this is meant to solve is an example of why, from a purely pragmatic sense, net neutrality is effectively impossible to deliver at scale. Someone has to eat the costs somewhere, and the publishers are the ones who benefit the most financially.
- wbl 7y ago
  A bike courier or lawyer racing to the court house benefits far more from the roads then others but doesn't pay more. Common carrier regulations were widespread in moving atoms.
  - wayoutthere 7y ago
    Then why are toll roads a thing? They explicitly allow vehicles to pay more for a faster road.
    - Braggadocious 7y ago
      not really a faster road as anyone stuck in an expresslane behind a prius will tell you, but a less congested road free of peasants. Not really sure how this analogy syncs up but just throwing in my $0.02.
      - wayoutthere 7y ago
        > but a less congested road free of peasants That's exactly what paid prioritization is though? A less congested bandwidth link free of peasants?

huffmsa 7y ago

I can pay FedEx to get my shit somewhere faster than my competitors. My customers are delighted by this and in turn they spend more with me and less with my USPS shipping competitors. Data packets are just digital shipped goods. The same rules should apply.

xzcat 7y ago
Except that the marginal cost of each "shipped good" is only a very small handwave away from zero. Which, as I understand it, is fundamentally different from the cost model of shipping physical packages.
- huffmsa 7y ago
  Up to a certain point, yes you pay per physical unit. You get a lot better rate if you can fill a whole intermodal container. You get an even better rate if you buy that containers capacity for an agreed upon period of time. There's a huge industry built around optimally buying space in shipping containers and transportation.
nannal 7y ago
There are a number of feasible things which are not permitted by law. There are significant advantages to ensuring net neutrality exists and is maintained.
- huffmsa 7y ago
  Great, so make it law that you can only allocate a certain percentage of your network to priority traffic. Or that any unbought priority capacity is made available to neutral internet traffic. It's not a mutually exclusive situation.
  - nannal 7y ago
    I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that the best method of preserving net neutrality was by not having it. It really is a mutually exclusive situation, either all traffic is treated equally or it isn't. This isn't animal farm, some packets are not more equal than others

GhettoMaestro 7y ago

You don’t get to dictate free human behavior. It’s so frustrating to see this trend on HN. People have a right to build private internet infrastructure and sell it at a premium. Full stop. No qualifications. Your opinion is naive and short-sighted.

krageon 7y ago

> Paying for traffic to be prioritized is the exact opposite of net neutrality This is exactly what peering is a significant chunk of the time. You pay for better peering in the fees that you pay to the right server parks. If that's the exact opposite of net neutrality, it has been dead for a very long time.

loup-vaillant 7y ago
Last time I've heard the term "peering", it didn't describe an exchange of money. Just an exchange of bits, where the peering partners set up a link and send data to each other. Transport however is indeed traditionally paid. As for paying someone to send data destined to their network, that's weird. Unlike transport, they want that data, why would you pay to deliver it to them?
- krageon 7y ago
  And how do you believe those peering agreements are reached? What moves people to peer with each other?
  - ojilles 7y ago
    Mutual beneficial outcomes, without exchange of significant amounts of money are totally possible. As an example, AMS-IX is completely non-profit, see: https://www.ams-ix.net/ams/about-ams-ix https://www.ams-ix.net/ams/about-ams-ix [Edit: realised I didn't actually answer your question: it is much cheaper, at scale]
  - throw0101a 7y ago
    Does there have to be an explicit agreement? Why can't both parties simply advertise via BGP and let the algorithm sort it out? If an online service can determine where the majority of its users are network-wise, then they'd set up a mirror at the closest IXP.

shadowgovt 7y ago

Improving public internet infrastructure is an excellent idea, but if you're expecting game devs to rely on that solution, you're asking them to please defer being successful at their goal until we've finished boiling the ocean. We should anticipate some will say no thank you and strike out forging their own waterways.

Braggadocious 7y ago

If you want net neutrality you should be excited by companies building private networks because it means there's a competitive market that no one ISP or government can control.

iamaelephant 7y ago
Ah yes, private enterprise, that thing that always leads to neutrality and openness. That must be why the ISP market is USA is so robust.
- Braggadocious 7y ago
  If you didnt like the ISP market in the USA wouldnt you want to be able to open a portal to an alternate ISP markets?

Iv 7y ago

Net neutrality is about content-neutrality and origin/destination neutrality. It is not opposed to give packets higher priority when there is a technical reason for this. Having a protocol and routes that guarantee low ping but require low bandwidth makes sense to me. A lot of the current infrastructure is built for TCP: something that can handle losses and actually uses packet loss to maximize its bandwidth use. Having specific shortcuts to open fast lines do not threaten net neutrality. For instance, I think game devs, would love if you could "reserve" 10KB/s of the lowest ping you have, out of your 500 MB/s "bandwidth budget" and reserve it to a given port. And note that it is not just games that require it. Telepresence applications are limited also because of this problem.

mikepurvis 7y ago
A protocol like that would be terrific because then each hop along the path would know exactly what is going on without needing to have explicit rules built in or be making it up based on heuristics and DPI.
fragmede 7y ago
There are also technical reasons why Netflix (or any other company significantly affected by net-neutrality) needs to pay Comcast extra in order for their packets to get higher priority, so everyone can watch on Netflix without stuttering and drop-outs. Paying for higher-priority traffic/more bandwidth looks very, very similar to paying for traffic not be throttled. Some might argue it's the same thing. IMO the difference is that backbone packet transit is different than end-user ISP transit. Unfortunately net-neutrality gets very muddy with, eg Verizon being both the backbone and the end-user ISP. Netflix network engineers are keenly aware of transit, which is part of the reason why they run their own CDN.