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I can't believe people are so caught up in the net-neutrality propaganda. Most people could care less about net neutrality b/c they use their internet connecti

I can't believe people are so caught up in the net-neutrality propaganda. Most people could care less about net neutrality b/c they use their internet connection for some web surfing, file transfers, and generally fit within the usage pattern that made their ISP (acting as a bandwidth reseller/speculator) determine that the price should be around $60/month. If you're one of the small percentage of users who wishes to use p2p software and soak up 100% of available bandwidth at all times, then you are not compatible with the bandwidth estimates that your ISP used to determine the price of your service. The ISP has two choices, it can either make its basic plan very restrictive (for example, forcing everyone to use http through a proxy server and blocking everything else), or it can use more subtle -- LESS INVASIVE -- measures such as blocking p2p traffic or imposing a cap on the 1-2% of users who use 99% of the bandwidth. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. It's like moving into an apartment where the landlord offers "free" water service and filling up a tanker truck each day with the "free" water. You would be violating the spirit of the agreement, and it would be reasonable for the landlord to be upset, or to change the policy. Google wants net neutrality b/c it envisions a world in which http traffic could be modified (by non-neutral ISPs) to harm its ad network. This is Google's big, scary, what-if that motivates its current stance. Google also owns miles of dark fiber which could be used to do any of the non-neutral objectives Google may have, including offering all kinds of proprietary services over "the googlenet".

witten 18y ago
The dichotomy between average users and power users isn't as clear-cut as you think. I see power users (those who are actually using P2P now) as nothing more than early adopters of internet video and other online media. "Average" users have already begun to take advantage of higher-bandwidth services such as hulu.com, Netflix's streaming video rentals, VoIP, etc. It's only a matter of time before the average users catch up with the power users in terms of bandwidth usage. So once you recognize this situation as an increasing demand for bandwidth among the general populace, then it's simply not acceptable to expect that your users continue to use their internet connections exclusively for email, occasional web surfing, and nothing else. The nature of people's bandwidth usage is changing, and the only reason that many U.S. internet providers think that they can get away with ignoring this fact is because they've got monopoly or duopoly pricing power.
- gunderson 18y ago
  P2P uses a significantly greater amount of bandwidth than online video does. Take, for example, iTunes. It takes about 5-10 minutes on my connection to download a movie. A typical movie lasts 1-2 hours. So assume there are 5 people in a "household" using an internet connection, each of whom spends the entire day watching movies. That's 15 movies per day per person, which is 75 movies. Assume 10 minutes per download and you have 750 minutes of 100% bandwidth usage, which comes out to 12 hours, or half the day. This means that under this extreme scenario for internet video usage, the connection is only utilized at 50% of downstream bandwidth in a 24 hour period. With p2p software, it's typical for 100% of the upstream and downstream bandwidth to be used all of the time. Typical usage (which is what the cable companies look at to determine how much to charge) is much less, which is why the price is around $60/month for 16 megabits/second of download speed. A 100% usage 16 megabit broadband connection costs significantly more than this. Even a T1 which offers far less bandwidth costs at least $250 in most markets. My point is that there is not an issue here of excessive market power, it's simply that residential broadband is priced based on a workable usage pattern, and people who leave their p2p software running 24/7 make the model that works for everyone else stop working. I'm not opposed to p2p, but I think it is reasonable for ISPs to charge extra to to those who need more than what the $60/month connection is intended for. It's not monopoly pricing power, the service simply can't be offered profitably if someone is using 100% of the bandwidth. I've paid about the same for bandwidth since I first got broadband in 2000. I went from having 256K to having 16 megabits. The service is getting exponentially cheaper and better in quality every day.
  - witten 18y ago
    I agree that today's current "power" users use way more bandwidth with their P2P traffic, as compared to people just viewing streaming videos. However, P2P is only becoming more and more mainstream. (One could argue that it already is mainstream when it comes to MP3 audio.) And with dedicated media devices becoming more prevalent, downloading video around-the-clock isn't going to be so rare. So my point still stands that users are only becoming greater consumers of bandwidth over time, and it's simply not sufficient for the major internet providers to pretend that all anyone will ever want to do with their net connections is check email.
Zev 18y ago
1-2% using 99% bandwidth? Seems like an exaggeration. I've mostly heard the top 5-10% is using 50% bandwidth. Though i cant find any hard sources for that claim right now. Dont suppose you have any yourself? Not that that's the main point here. ISP's were overselling their network as "unlimited" meaning, no caps or anything similar. Yet ISP's still continue to sell their networks as unlimited for the most part. They still continue to bump up advertised speeds to a level that the network cant support if people decide to use their internet connection for something other then email. Then when people decided to use their connection; on Youtube or Netflix or to play games, ISP's went and started blocking specific content. How they did it varied per ISP. But they blocked specific content nonetheless. Then there's ISP's that keep track of your browsing and if you type in a bad URL, they redirect you to a search page thats filled with ads. google.co for example goes to http://wwwz.websearch.verizon.net/search?qo=www.google.co&rn=hLKE-Yi_AGOcZR4 http://wwwz.websearch.verizon.net/search?qo=www.google.co&#3... for me with Verizon FIOS. And from what i hear, this is common with other ISP's. Earthlink ( http://blogs.earthlink.net/2006/08/handling_dead_domains_1.php http://blogs.earthlink.net/2006/08/handling_dead_domains_1.p... )and Time Warner ( http://ww23.rr.com/faq.php http://ww23.rr.com/faq.php ) do this as well at the very least. Net Neutrality goes beyond allowing people to use P2P services (not all of which are illegitimate by the way). It's privacy while browsing the web. After all, if an ISP can redirect bad dns searches to their own page, what's to stop them from directing a hit to http://insertYourStartup.com http://insertYourStartup.com to "http://isp.com/tiers/highlyPricedPackage.php http://isp.com/tiers/highlyPricedPackage.php"? And just to reply to one of your points directly. ISP's have a third choice as well. They can rebuild their network. They can upgrade it to fiber. Or DOCSIS3.0. Or whatever other technology out there that I'm not well enough informed about. The only problem with this is that it costs $ to do. At one point, FIOS cost $9000 per customer for Verizon ( http://tech.propeller.com/story/2006/09/29/verizon-fios-cost-per-customer-is-9000-dollars/ http://tech.propeller.com/story/2006/09/29/verizon-fios-cost... ) however the more they lay it out, the cheaper it becomes. Only when it's cheaper then implementing filtering technologies will ISP's move over to this. Verizon did DSL and Telephony before, so their point came earlier then most other ISP's who have cable lines laid out.
- gunderson 18y ago
  Consider any bandwidth user who doesn't use p2p software: Suppose they download 3 movies per night from iTunes. On my connection movies take about 10 minutes each to download. That's 30 minutes of 100% capacity out of each 24 hour day. Add in a fraction more for email, IM, web surfing, etc. Now compare this to a P2P user who utilizes 100% of upstram and 100% of downstream bandwidth capacity 24/7. It is a massive, massive difference. You can organize the "typical" vs "p2p" users a variety of ways, but even the most intense consumer of internet video barely scratches the surface. ISPs are simply in the business of repackaging bandwidth. They buy bandwidth in bulk (which is typically symmetric for upstream and downstream, and they repackage it as residential bandwidth having much more downstream bandwith and just enough upstream to not inhibit downstream traffic. They also buy bandwidth that requires super-expensive dedicated hardware and repackage it so that a $50 cable modem can provide a "reliable enough" connection in a consumer's home. The reason bandwidth costs about $60/month for a 16 megabit connection (the price I pay currently) is because there are a lot of assumptions made about what constitutes 'typical' residential use. Part of the profit model of an ISP comes from bandwidth speculation. Just as a commodity speculator may buy pork belly futures from a farmer in expectation of future actual hogs, ISPs buy large amounts of bandwidth from major backbone providers with the expectation of being able to resell it as residential bandwith. The assumption on which all of this is based is a typical residential user's actual usage pattern. ISPs have found that residential users prefer high peak download speed over anything else, so they package and price accordingly. All that would happen if P2P use increases is that ISPs would be forced to increase bandwidth prices on everyone in order to remain profitable. So in effect, net neutrality will force everyone who doesn't use their residential connection in an atypical way to subsidize those who do. You are correct that an ISP could redirect all DNS bounces or worse, but it is unlikely that such things would get out of control due to competition from other firms. If there is insufficient competition, that is an antitrust issue, it has nothing to do with "net neutrality". Net neutrality is simply one interest group trying to get the government to meddle with the pricing scheme that has been voluntarily created by one firm and is preferred and accepted by the vast majority of consumers.

witten 18y ago

The dichotomy between average users and power users isn't as clear-cut as you think. I see power users (those who are actually using P2P now) as nothing more than early adopters of internet video and other online media. "Average" users have already begun to take advantage of higher-bandwidth services such as hulu.com, Netflix's streaming video rentals, VoIP, etc. It's only a matter of time before the average users catch up with the power users in terms of bandwidth usage. So once you recognize this situation as an increasing demand for bandwidth among the general populace, then it's simply not acceptable to expect that your users continue to use their internet connections exclusively for email, occasional web surfing, and nothing else. The nature of people's bandwidth usage is changing, and the only reason that many U.S. internet providers think that they can get away with ignoring this fact is because they've got monopoly or duopoly pricing power.

gunderson 18y ago
P2P uses a significantly greater amount of bandwidth than online video does. Take, for example, iTunes. It takes about 5-10 minutes on my connection to download a movie. A typical movie lasts 1-2 hours. So assume there are 5 people in a "household" using an internet connection, each of whom spends the entire day watching movies. That's 15 movies per day per person, which is 75 movies. Assume 10 minutes per download and you have 750 minutes of 100% bandwidth usage, which comes out to 12 hours, or half the day. This means that under this extreme scenario for internet video usage, the connection is only utilized at 50% of downstream bandwidth in a 24 hour period. With p2p software, it's typical for 100% of the upstream and downstream bandwidth to be used all of the time. Typical usage (which is what the cable companies look at to determine how much to charge) is much less, which is why the price is around $60/month for 16 megabits/second of download speed. A 100% usage 16 megabit broadband connection costs significantly more than this. Even a T1 which offers far less bandwidth costs at least $250 in most markets. My point is that there is not an issue here of excessive market power, it's simply that residential broadband is priced based on a workable usage pattern, and people who leave their p2p software running 24/7 make the model that works for everyone else stop working. I'm not opposed to p2p, but I think it is reasonable for ISPs to charge extra to to those who need more than what the $60/month connection is intended for. It's not monopoly pricing power, the service simply can't be offered profitably if someone is using 100% of the bandwidth. I've paid about the same for bandwidth since I first got broadband in 2000. I went from having 256K to having 16 megabits. The service is getting exponentially cheaper and better in quality every day.
- witten 18y ago
  I agree that today's current "power" users use way more bandwidth with their P2P traffic, as compared to people just viewing streaming videos. However, P2P is only becoming more and more mainstream. (One could argue that it already is mainstream when it comes to MP3 audio.) And with dedicated media devices becoming more prevalent, downloading video around-the-clock isn't going to be so rare. So my point still stands that users are only becoming greater consumers of bandwidth over time, and it's simply not sufficient for the major internet providers to pretend that all anyone will ever want to do with their net connections is check email.

Zev 18y ago

1-2% using 99% bandwidth? Seems like an exaggeration. I've mostly heard the top 5-10% is using 50% bandwidth. Though i cant find any hard sources for that claim right now. Dont suppose you have any yourself? Not that that's the main point here. ISP's were overselling their network as "unlimited" meaning, no caps or anything similar. Yet ISP's still continue to sell their networks as unlimited for the most part. They still continue to bump up advertised speeds to a level that the network cant support if people decide to use their internet connection for something other then email. Then when people decided to use their connection; on Youtube or Netflix or to play games, ISP's went and started blocking specific content. How they did it varied per ISP. But they blocked specific content nonetheless. Then there's ISP's that keep track of your browsing and if you type in a bad URL, they redirect you to a search page thats filled with ads. google.co for example goes to http://wwwz.websearch.verizon.net/search?qo=www.google.co&rn=hLKE-Yi_AGOcZR4 http://wwwz.websearch.verizon.net/search?qo=www.google.co&#3... for me with Verizon FIOS. And from what i hear, this is common with other ISP's. Earthlink ( http://blogs.earthlink.net/2006/08/handling_dead_domains_1.php http://blogs.earthlink.net/2006/08/handling_dead_domains_1.p... )and Time Warner ( http://ww23.rr.com/faq.php http://ww23.rr.com/faq.php ) do this as well at the very least. Net Neutrality goes beyond allowing people to use P2P services (not all of which are illegitimate by the way). It's privacy while browsing the web. After all, if an ISP can redirect bad dns searches to their own page, what's to stop them from directing a hit to http://insertYourStartup.com http://insertYourStartup.com to "http://isp.com/tiers/highlyPricedPackage.php http://isp.com/tiers/highlyPricedPackage.php"? And just to reply to one of your points directly. ISP's have a third choice as well. They can rebuild their network. They can upgrade it to fiber. Or DOCSIS3.0. Or whatever other technology out there that I'm not well enough informed about. The only problem with this is that it costs $ to do. At one point, FIOS cost $9000 per customer for Verizon ( http://tech.propeller.com/story/2006/09/29/verizon-fios-cost-per-customer-is-9000-dollars/ http://tech.propeller.com/story/2006/09/29/verizon-fios-cost... ) however the more they lay it out, the cheaper it becomes. Only when it's cheaper then implementing filtering technologies will ISP's move over to this. Verizon did DSL and Telephony before, so their point came earlier then most other ISP's who have cable lines laid out.

gunderson 18y ago
Consider any bandwidth user who doesn't use p2p software: Suppose they download 3 movies per night from iTunes. On my connection movies take about 10 minutes each to download. That's 30 minutes of 100% capacity out of each 24 hour day. Add in a fraction more for email, IM, web surfing, etc. Now compare this to a P2P user who utilizes 100% of upstram and 100% of downstream bandwidth capacity 24/7. It is a massive, massive difference. You can organize the "typical" vs "p2p" users a variety of ways, but even the most intense consumer of internet video barely scratches the surface. ISPs are simply in the business of repackaging bandwidth. They buy bandwidth in bulk (which is typically symmetric for upstream and downstream, and they repackage it as residential bandwidth having much more downstream bandwith and just enough upstream to not inhibit downstream traffic. They also buy bandwidth that requires super-expensive dedicated hardware and repackage it so that a $50 cable modem can provide a "reliable enough" connection in a consumer's home. The reason bandwidth costs about $60/month for a 16 megabit connection (the price I pay currently) is because there are a lot of assumptions made about what constitutes 'typical' residential use. Part of the profit model of an ISP comes from bandwidth speculation. Just as a commodity speculator may buy pork belly futures from a farmer in expectation of future actual hogs, ISPs buy large amounts of bandwidth from major backbone providers with the expectation of being able to resell it as residential bandwith. The assumption on which all of this is based is a typical residential user's actual usage pattern. ISPs have found that residential users prefer high peak download speed over anything else, so they package and price accordingly. All that would happen if P2P use increases is that ISPs would be forced to increase bandwidth prices on everyone in order to remain profitable. So in effect, net neutrality will force everyone who doesn't use their residential connection in an atypical way to subsidize those who do. You are correct that an ISP could redirect all DNS bounces or worse, but it is unlikely that such things would get out of control due to competition from other firms. If there is insufficient competition, that is an antitrust issue, it has nothing to do with "net neutrality". Net neutrality is simply one interest group trying to get the government to meddle with the pricing scheme that has been voluntarily created by one firm and is preferred and accepted by the vast majority of consumers.