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Isn't this incompatible with Net Neutrality? I think Cloudflare already was against net neutrality, but people who believe in that principle might need to avoi

Isn't this incompatible with Net Neutrality? I think Cloudflare already was against net neutrality, but people who believe in that principle might need to avoid Backblaze as well if that is the case.

manigandham 6y ago
No, this has nothing to do with net neutrality. Your ISP isn't discriminating what data you consume, whether it's from cloudflare or another CDN. This is about the fact that bandwidth is usually bought by capacity between networks rather than usage and they're passing those savings on to you instead of charging expensive per-GB costs like the major clouds.
- anotheracct_ 6y ago
  I'm referring to Cloudflare as the network provider. It seems not-net-neutral to be charged different amounts depending on the relationship between the storage provider and the network provider. If the argument is a semantic one, that net neutrality is so narrowly defined that it doesn't apply to them as a CDN rather than a conventional ISP, it still stands that the situation is not-net-neutral if we generalize that to include CDNs, which it ought to, since that's what the N stands for.
  - khc 6y ago
    cloudflare is not charging different amount for different storage providers, some storage providers are waiving the fee when the upstream is cloudflare. disclaimer: ex-cloudflare
    - anotheracct_ 6y ago
      So, Backblaze is not-net-neutral.
      - atYevP 6y ago
        As far as our service is concerned everyone pays the same price for B2 Cloud Storage, $0.005/GB. We're not a network provider and in this case neither is Cloudflare. We are both service providers. The partnership between us simply allows people to move data between us freely, but you still need to pay Backblaze B2 for the storage of the data, and you need to play Cloudflare for the distribution!
      - NikolaeVarius 6y ago
        You are ignoring the responses to your original point. This is not relevant to net neutrality.
        anotheracct_ 6y ago
        I think I addressed that comment, actually!
  - toast0 6y ago
    Network neutrality is a difficult concept to apply because its core concept doesn't map well to reality. The core concept, in my mind, is that all packets should be treated equally, and should cost the customer the same amount per byte. The problem is that different packets take different network paths and have different costs to your provider. The bandwidth alliance partners are exchanging traffic via peering links, so there's only the fixed costs of equipment and any port charges/interconnection fees to the peering facility. Packets sent to other destinations may pass through a paid transit link and cost the provider. If your provider charges you the same amount for both types of packets, they're not being transparent about their network costs which is bad for you, and is also bad for them, because you may be able to adjust your traffic so more is settlement free and less is paid --- but you won't do that without an incentive. Of course, if you don't like how Backblaze manages its network, there's a bunch of other network storage vendors who you could switch to (many of which are members of the Bandwidth Alliance). Or, it's not too hard to build a storage box or two and get them into a colocation somewhere. For your residential ISP though, for most people, if you don't like the network policies, you might have another option, but they will likely have similar policies. You don't have meaningful choice in a single residence, and moving residences to get better choices isn't a meaningful option either. So, network neutrality is a policy to (attempt to) regulate residential ISP behavior, in order to provide a reasonable policy for users. It's still a problem that it doesn't match reality, and it doesn't provide user choice, but it has gotten a lot of support. I would rather see mandatory line sharing for residential ISPs, it's a lot easier to define and with proper regulation offers a path towards consumer choice, and gives people a way to take action if their provider has poor network policies --- if your provider runs an acceptable last mile service, but provides poor interconnection to the rest of the world, you could become a line sharing partner and provide better interconnection to the world without having to build out an overlay last-mile network (which is incredibly capital intensive and difficult)
    - fragmede 6y ago
      Is it really that difficult a concept? Comcast charging Netflix for access to Netflix's customers, when Netflix's customers are paying Comcast for Internet access, is bullshit. Reword it to be generic, and dress it up in more polite language, but that's what it is. Comcast, nor any other ISP, doesn't get to shake down Netflix or Google or Facebook nor any service providers, big or small, on the Internet. Sure, behind the scenes there are backbone providers and peering arrangements and BGP, but those are technical details. Network neutrality means as a consumer I pay an ISP and get connected to the Internet. Whereas Comcast is a cable TV company, the game between companies of consumer chicken is not theoretical, eg https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/why-you-still-cant-watch-the-avalanche-and-nuggets-on-comcast-directv-dish https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/why-you-sti... https://mynbc15.com/news/local/att-and-directv-have-removed-wpmi-and-wjtc-utv-44-from-their-systems https://mynbc15.com/news/local/att-and-directv-have-removed-... https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/cbs-blackout-on-directv-is-whats-wrong-with-the-tv-market/2019/07/22/f7ad58a6-ac9b-11e9-9411-a608f9d0c2d3_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/cbs-blackout-on-dire...
  - manigandham 6y ago
    Cloudflare doesn't charge for bandwidth, it's as neutral as it gets. The charges are from the cloud (storage) providers. And most of them charge for bandwidth usage, but they don't discriminate based on what data you send. It doesn't matter if it's source code, photos, or linux binaries so there's no net-neutrality issue here. You can potentially argue that Backblaze is discounting traffic based on the upstream network but that's not active discrimination. There are hard costs to internet transit and some companies can offer better pricing depending on where the traffic goes. For example, downloading from Australia is more expensive than downloading in America because of the infrastructure costs, and this isn't considered a net-neutrality violation.
atYevP 6y ago
Yev here -> unsure how those are related, but you certainly don't NEED to use Cloudflare if you're using B2 Cloud Storage as the data origination point, it's just an option that was brought up in the thread!
- anotheracct_ 6y ago
  It sounded like the price would be different if you used a certain network provider, which is not-net-neutral.
  - atYevP 6y ago
    I believe in this case Cloudflare and Backblaze would be considered service providers, not network providers (like Comcast or AT&T, etc...). And you'd still need to pay each service individually for the service they're providing. It's an alternative to say, Amazon S3 and their own CDN which also does not charge for egress in between the two services (since they own both). But in our case, you pay Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage of the storage, and you pay Cloudflare for their CDN capabilities, the partnership simply makes the transfer between our storage and their CDN free.
    - anotheracct_ 6y ago
      The service they provide is a network... That's some impressive hair-splitting. I don't understand you. If you don't believe in net neutrality, which is obvious through your actions, you can just say so instead of cowardly dodging it. Or if you truly somehow thought you could support net neutrality, without being neutral to networks, allow me to dispel your illusion and excuse. Helpful reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-rating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-rating
  - sp332 6y ago
    Transit does cost different amounts of money depending on who you negotiate transit with. That's not part of net neutrality.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
brainless 6y ago
Airlines have alliances, it does not stop you from taking any airline you want for your route, but costs may vary. It is just a property of networks. As an end user you still get to use all providers, but two of them may use a dedicated connection to reduce internal prices (the price benefit of which they may or may not give back to the user). Neutrality from the point of the user is not affected when it comes to service being available. Now if one airline alliance said you are not allowed to get on their flight if you hoped off from a rival alliance, then we have an issue.

Isn't this incompatible with Net Neutrality? I think Cloudflare already was against net neutrality, but people who believe in that principle might need to avoid Backblaze as well if that is the case.

manigandham 6y ago

No, this has nothing to do with net neutrality. Your ISP isn't discriminating what data you consume, whether it's from cloudflare or another CDN. This is about the fact that bandwidth is usually bought by capacity between networks rather than usage and they're passing those savings on to you instead of charging expensive per-GB costs like the major clouds.

anotheracct_ 6y ago
I'm referring to Cloudflare as the network provider. It seems not-net-neutral to be charged different amounts depending on the relationship between the storage provider and the network provider. If the argument is a semantic one, that net neutrality is so narrowly defined that it doesn't apply to them as a CDN rather than a conventional ISP, it still stands that the situation is not-net-neutral if we generalize that to include CDNs, which it ought to, since that's what the N stands for.
- khc 6y ago
  cloudflare is not charging different amount for different storage providers, some storage providers are waiving the fee when the upstream is cloudflare. disclaimer: ex-cloudflare
  - anotheracct_ 6y ago
    So, Backblaze is not-net-neutral.
    - atYevP 6y ago
      As far as our service is concerned everyone pays the same price for B2 Cloud Storage, $0.005/GB. We're not a network provider and in this case neither is Cloudflare. We are both service providers. The partnership between us simply allows people to move data between us freely, but you still need to pay Backblaze B2 for the storage of the data, and you need to play Cloudflare for the distribution!
    - NikolaeVarius 6y ago
      You are ignoring the responses to your original point. This is not relevant to net neutrality.
      - anotheracct_ 6y ago
        I think I addressed that comment, actually!
- toast0 6y ago
  Network neutrality is a difficult concept to apply because its core concept doesn't map well to reality. The core concept, in my mind, is that all packets should be treated equally, and should cost the customer the same amount per byte. The problem is that different packets take different network paths and have different costs to your provider. The bandwidth alliance partners are exchanging traffic via peering links, so there's only the fixed costs of equipment and any port charges/interconnection fees to the peering facility. Packets sent to other destinations may pass through a paid transit link and cost the provider. If your provider charges you the same amount for both types of packets, they're not being transparent about their network costs which is bad for you, and is also bad for them, because you may be able to adjust your traffic so more is settlement free and less is paid --- but you won't do that without an incentive. Of course, if you don't like how Backblaze manages its network, there's a bunch of other network storage vendors who you could switch to (many of which are members of the Bandwidth Alliance). Or, it's not too hard to build a storage box or two and get them into a colocation somewhere. For your residential ISP though, for most people, if you don't like the network policies, you might have another option, but they will likely have similar policies. You don't have meaningful choice in a single residence, and moving residences to get better choices isn't a meaningful option either. So, network neutrality is a policy to (attempt to) regulate residential ISP behavior, in order to provide a reasonable policy for users. It's still a problem that it doesn't match reality, and it doesn't provide user choice, but it has gotten a lot of support. I would rather see mandatory line sharing for residential ISPs, it's a lot easier to define and with proper regulation offers a path towards consumer choice, and gives people a way to take action if their provider has poor network policies --- if your provider runs an acceptable last mile service, but provides poor interconnection to the rest of the world, you could become a line sharing partner and provide better interconnection to the world without having to build out an overlay last-mile network (which is incredibly capital intensive and difficult)
  - fragmede 6y ago
    Is it really that difficult a concept? Comcast charging Netflix for access to Netflix's customers, when Netflix's customers are paying Comcast for Internet access, is bullshit. Reword it to be generic, and dress it up in more polite language, but that's what it is. Comcast, nor any other ISP, doesn't get to shake down Netflix or Google or Facebook nor any service providers, big or small, on the Internet. Sure, behind the scenes there are backbone providers and peering arrangements and BGP, but those are technical details. Network neutrality means as a consumer I pay an ISP and get connected to the Internet. Whereas Comcast is a cable TV company, the game between companies of consumer chicken is not theoretical, eg https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/why-you-still-cant-watch-the-avalanche-and-nuggets-on-comcast-directv-dish https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/why-you-sti... https://mynbc15.com/news/local/att-and-directv-have-removed-wpmi-and-wjtc-utv-44-from-their-systems https://mynbc15.com/news/local/att-and-directv-have-removed-... https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/cbs-blackout-on-directv-is-whats-wrong-with-the-tv-market/2019/07/22/f7ad58a6-ac9b-11e9-9411-a608f9d0c2d3_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/cbs-blackout-on-dire...
- manigandham 6y ago
  Cloudflare doesn't charge for bandwidth, it's as neutral as it gets. The charges are from the cloud (storage) providers. And most of them charge for bandwidth usage, but they don't discriminate based on what data you send. It doesn't matter if it's source code, photos, or linux binaries so there's no net-neutrality issue here. You can potentially argue that Backblaze is discounting traffic based on the upstream network but that's not active discrimination. There are hard costs to internet transit and some companies can offer better pricing depending on where the traffic goes. For example, downloading from Australia is more expensive than downloading in America because of the infrastructure costs, and this isn't considered a net-neutrality violation.

atYevP 6y ago

Yev here -> unsure how those are related, but you certainly don't NEED to use Cloudflare if you're using B2 Cloud Storage as the data origination point, it's just an option that was brought up in the thread!

anotheracct_ 6y ago
It sounded like the price would be different if you used a certain network provider, which is not-net-neutral.
- atYevP 6y ago
  I believe in this case Cloudflare and Backblaze would be considered service providers, not network providers (like Comcast or AT&T, etc...). And you'd still need to pay each service individually for the service they're providing. It's an alternative to say, Amazon S3 and their own CDN which also does not charge for egress in between the two services (since they own both). But in our case, you pay Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage of the storage, and you pay Cloudflare for their CDN capabilities, the partnership simply makes the transfer between our storage and their CDN free.
  - anotheracct_ 6y ago
    The service they provide is a network... That's some impressive hair-splitting. I don't understand you. If you don't believe in net neutrality, which is obvious through your actions, you can just say so instead of cowardly dodging it. Or if you truly somehow thought you could support net neutrality, without being neutral to networks, allow me to dispel your illusion and excuse. Helpful reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-rating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-rating
- sp332 6y ago
  Transit does cost different amounts of money depending on who you negotiate transit with. That's not part of net neutrality.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

brainless 6y ago

Airlines have alliances, it does not stop you from taking any airline you want for your route, but costs may vary. It is just a property of networks. As an end user you still get to use all providers, but two of them may use a dedicated connection to reduce internal prices (the price benefit of which they may or may not give back to the user). Neutrality from the point of the user is not affected when it comes to service being available. Now if one airline alliance said you are not allowed to get on their flight if you hoped off from a rival alliance, then we have an issue.