10 ms·

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 U

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
    - Fjolsvith 7y ago
      > This isn't animal farm, some packets are not more equal than others Some packets are more equal because they are being greased with payment to transport providers. Like Bitcoin transactions, you can pay more to have it done faster. Or the HOV lane in big cities - pay a fee or bundle the 'packets' to get downtown ahead of the rest of the traffic.
      - huffmsa 7y ago
        Or the Chicago expressway. You get the convenience of skipping local roads (and a higher likelihood of getting shot than driving through Baghdad, but that's a digression), but it costs $5-6 to use the road. That sounds like a physical fast lane to me. Pay more, get a faster, more direct route.
    - giggles_giggles 7y ago
      This sounds like you are saying that reclassifying ISPs to be regulated under the FCC instead of the FTC would ban traffic shaping. Obviously not all packets are equal. VOIP is an example of a high priority protocol. BitTorrent is low priority. Legislating traffic shaping at this level would be absurd. Have I been living in a cave? Are Net Neutrality advocates arguing that it should be illegal for network operators to perform any kind of traffic shaping, even that which would prioritize the traffic for latency sensitive applications?
      - wtallis 7y ago
        > Are Net Neutrality advocates arguing that it should be illegal for network operators to perform any kind of traffic shaping, even that which would prioritize the traffic for latency sensitive applications? At least some of us NN advocates believe it should be illegal for ISPs to perform the kinds to traffic shaping that explicitly identify and prioritize certain ports or protocols over others. Because that kind of traffic shaping is not really necessary to offer good QoS, and thus there's no reason to continue allowing it.
        7y ago
- matz1 7y ago
  Then the law may need to be changed, there are significant disadvantages of ensuring net neutrality.
joezydeco 7y ago
But one extra FedEx plane shipping priority goods doesn't knock a USPS truck off the road for a day.
- huffmsa 7y ago
  But it does means the USPS truck is less than optimally full, but still costing about the same to run, meaning tighter, if not negative, margins. These tighter margins will (if they weren't government supported) eventually mean that the USPS should reduce the number of trucks they run to better optimize their costs.
  - kuu 7y ago
    Or at the very end, USPS is not able to compete, as it has less packages and their cost is higher. And in the end FedEx keeps all the packages and once the competition is out, they can raise the prices and not improve the quality of their service, as the cost of entering to compete is too high for any other company to afford it...
    - huffmsa 7y ago
      If that were true then no one would have entered against USPS in the first place. No one would have taken on IBM
    - GarrisonPrime 7y ago
      The cost would be much less for a company to just take over the USPS infrastructure and run it in a different manner. No need to reinvent the wheel or start from scratch. And if indeed a monopoly were to develop, it’s not as if they could charge whatever they want with impunity. There are many multi-billion dollar companies that would be more than happy to expand into the logistics field if the potential profits are there. FedEx would need to keep their costs reigned in to stave off that threat. Even if a monopoly could never be assailed (untrue, but for the sake of argument) they still couldn’t do whatever they want. They raise prices, people will search for alternatives. Overnighting a contract too expensive? Companies will start to shift more towards secure verified digital signature and verification methods, and the service providers lose money. Bandwidth being too throttled to play online FPS games or stream HD shows? People will start to look towards more localized or even non-digital options, and the service providers lose money.
siffland 7y ago
One main difference is anyone can buy a truck and start a shipment company. Unless you have a ton of cash you cannot lay down infrastructure for your own ISP and must pay someone else to sue theirs. Also I am pretty sure a lot of our infrastructure for the internet was subsidized (via grants or what not) by the government for the big tel-co companies (I have been trying to find legit links to source, but in my quick limited search only found Reddit threads). If this is true, then we, the taxpayers, helped pay for the internet we use and should get at least net neutrality. Just my opinion, probably wont match everyone else.
- samatman 7y ago
  Anyone can buy a router and start an intranet. Building a shipment company which can reach everyone in a country is a substantial capital investment, which I suspect is higher than that for a nationwide private network, though which is higher is irrelevant to the argument. The roads, which the trucks require, are subsidized by the government. In other words, I don't see the differences you're claiming. Net neutrality, as an argument, applies to Internet; I've never seen a claim that it should apply to private networks, even those which use IP/TCP/UDP.
  - huffmsa 7y ago
    And FedEx had a huge initial capital investment to buy the planes and pilots they needed. $50m-ish I think in 70s-80s money before they even shipped a package. And they still barely made it off the starting line.
  - Supermancho 7y ago
    > Anyone can buy a router and start an intranet. Thats more like saying that anyone can pick up a piece of mail and become a mail carrier. There are all manner of legal and practical barriers that require an internet to work outside of your street.
    - huffmsa 7y ago
      As there are to carry packages.
deelowe 7y ago
FedEx doesn't have the ability to control the stop lights at each intersection along the way, the major peering providers do. This analogy doesn't work.
- huffmsa 7y ago
  Traffic lights are more akin to the latency of hardware switches, which affect everyone. FedEx does control which locations they stop at and make pickups/dropoffs. You can pay more to make sure they only stop with you.
wbl 7y ago
But FedEx has rates the same for everyone because they are a common carrier iiuc.
- huffmsa 7y ago
  I don't think Amazon pays the FedEx Kinko's rates for their prime shipments. And I believe a friend's law firm has a bulk deal because of how much next day mail they need to send.
  - wbl 7y ago
    Bulk discounts aren't per-customer price discrimination.

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
  - Fjolsvith 7y ago
    > This isn't animal farm, some packets are not more equal than others Some packets are more equal because they are being greased with payment to transport providers. Like Bitcoin transactions, you can pay more to have it done faster. Or the HOV lane in big cities - pay a fee or bundle the 'packets' to get downtown ahead of the rest of the traffic.
    - huffmsa 7y ago
      Or the Chicago expressway. You get the convenience of skipping local roads (and a higher likelihood of getting shot than driving through Baghdad, but that's a digression), but it costs $5-6 to use the road. That sounds like a physical fast lane to me. Pay more, get a faster, more direct route.
  - giggles_giggles 7y ago
    This sounds like you are saying that reclassifying ISPs to be regulated under the FCC instead of the FTC would ban traffic shaping. Obviously not all packets are equal. VOIP is an example of a high priority protocol. BitTorrent is low priority. Legislating traffic shaping at this level would be absurd. Have I been living in a cave? Are Net Neutrality advocates arguing that it should be illegal for network operators to perform any kind of traffic shaping, even that which would prioritize the traffic for latency sensitive applications?
    - wtallis 7y ago
      > Are Net Neutrality advocates arguing that it should be illegal for network operators to perform any kind of traffic shaping, even that which would prioritize the traffic for latency sensitive applications? At least some of us NN advocates believe it should be illegal for ISPs to perform the kinds to traffic shaping that explicitly identify and prioritize certain ports or protocols over others. Because that kind of traffic shaping is not really necessary to offer good QoS, and thus there's no reason to continue allowing it.
      - 7y ago
matz1 7y ago
Then the law may need to be changed, there are significant disadvantages of ensuring net neutrality.

joezydeco 7y ago

But one extra FedEx plane shipping priority goods doesn't knock a USPS truck off the road for a day.

huffmsa 7y ago
But it does means the USPS truck is less than optimally full, but still costing about the same to run, meaning tighter, if not negative, margins. These tighter margins will (if they weren't government supported) eventually mean that the USPS should reduce the number of trucks they run to better optimize their costs.
- kuu 7y ago
  Or at the very end, USPS is not able to compete, as it has less packages and their cost is higher. And in the end FedEx keeps all the packages and once the competition is out, they can raise the prices and not improve the quality of their service, as the cost of entering to compete is too high for any other company to afford it...
  - huffmsa 7y ago
    If that were true then no one would have entered against USPS in the first place. No one would have taken on IBM
  - GarrisonPrime 7y ago
    The cost would be much less for a company to just take over the USPS infrastructure and run it in a different manner. No need to reinvent the wheel or start from scratch. And if indeed a monopoly were to develop, it’s not as if they could charge whatever they want with impunity. There are many multi-billion dollar companies that would be more than happy to expand into the logistics field if the potential profits are there. FedEx would need to keep their costs reigned in to stave off that threat. Even if a monopoly could never be assailed (untrue, but for the sake of argument) they still couldn’t do whatever they want. They raise prices, people will search for alternatives. Overnighting a contract too expensive? Companies will start to shift more towards secure verified digital signature and verification methods, and the service providers lose money. Bandwidth being too throttled to play online FPS games or stream HD shows? People will start to look towards more localized or even non-digital options, and the service providers lose money.

siffland 7y ago

One main difference is anyone can buy a truck and start a shipment company. Unless you have a ton of cash you cannot lay down infrastructure for your own ISP and must pay someone else to sue theirs. Also I am pretty sure a lot of our infrastructure for the internet was subsidized (via grants or what not) by the government for the big tel-co companies (I have been trying to find legit links to source, but in my quick limited search only found Reddit threads). If this is true, then we, the taxpayers, helped pay for the internet we use and should get at least net neutrality. Just my opinion, probably wont match everyone else.

samatman 7y ago
Anyone can buy a router and start an intranet. Building a shipment company which can reach everyone in a country is a substantial capital investment, which I suspect is higher than that for a nationwide private network, though which is higher is irrelevant to the argument. The roads, which the trucks require, are subsidized by the government. In other words, I don't see the differences you're claiming. Net neutrality, as an argument, applies to Internet; I've never seen a claim that it should apply to private networks, even those which use IP/TCP/UDP.
- huffmsa 7y ago
  And FedEx had a huge initial capital investment to buy the planes and pilots they needed. $50m-ish I think in 70s-80s money before they even shipped a package. And they still barely made it off the starting line.
- Supermancho 7y ago
  > Anyone can buy a router and start an intranet. Thats more like saying that anyone can pick up a piece of mail and become a mail carrier. There are all manner of legal and practical barriers that require an internet to work outside of your street.
  - huffmsa 7y ago
    As there are to carry packages.

deelowe 7y ago

FedEx doesn't have the ability to control the stop lights at each intersection along the way, the major peering providers do. This analogy doesn't work.

huffmsa 7y ago
Traffic lights are more akin to the latency of hardware switches, which affect everyone. FedEx does control which locations they stop at and make pickups/dropoffs. You can pay more to make sure they only stop with you.

wbl 7y ago

But FedEx has rates the same for everyone because they are a common carrier iiuc.

huffmsa 7y ago
I don't think Amazon pays the FedEx Kinko's rates for their prime shipments. And I believe a friend's law firm has a bulk deal because of how much next day mail they need to send.
- wbl 7y ago
  Bulk discounts aren't per-customer price discrimination.