3 ms·

Net Neutrality Rules published.

29 points by BIackSwan 15y ago

flip12 15y ago
I think the solution to networks throttling certain traffic isn't regulation, but competition. Rather than have a lot of rules governing what kind of traffic ISP's can and can't throttle, make federal regulations that require the last mile of cable be public property, lease-able to everybody. If the barrier to entry to becoming an ISP goes down, then the problem should solve itself.
- MichaelSalib 15y ago
  The last time the government tried that, we got the Telecom Deformation Act of 1996. Given the spectacular success that was, what exactly makes you think that trying to do the exact same thing now would lead to a better outcome? Is the idea that Comcast and Verizon will, out of the goodness of their hearts, abandon all lobbying efforts and fire all their lawyers instead of lobbying and suing like crazy? Do you think that large corporations LOVE competition?
drdaeman 15y ago
> discriminate in transmitting So, QoS is now banned in US? There's another side to this. Consider an ISP, which policies traffic in 3 queues: realtime (VoIP, games), normal (ordinary browsing) and bulk (file sharing, big downloads). No per-queue packet shaping or dropping, just putting packets in different queues, with different priorities - but some still could consider this "discriminating", even though such policing is done to improve the experience, not worsen it. Gaming traffic is relatively low, compared to file sharing. Obviously, if there are enough file sharers on the network, the latency will rise and gamers may experience "lags". On the other hand, BitTorrent users do not care about latency, but only about steady downloads (and uploads), so they won't lose anything if their packets would be put somehow further in the output queues. Sure, users themselves could put wanted policy in DSCP field of the packet, but sometimes they're too incompetent (rude, but true) to put the proper value (and wrong values will screw the idea, making it worse, not better, than not having any traffic priorities). Sorry to say, but things won't work this way. Obviously, if there's not just a latency increase, but packet loss - it's a sign that hardware upgrades are required. On the other side, even when hardware is operating normally, and uplink channels are not saturated, latency still matters.

29 points by BIackSwan 15y ago

I think the solution to networks throttling certain traffic isn't regulation, but competition. Rather than have a lot of rules governing what kind of traffic ISP's can and can't throttle, make federal regulations that require the last mile of cable be public property, lease-able to everybody. If the barrier to entry to becoming an ISP goes down, then the problem should solve itself.

MichaelSalib 15y ago
The last time the government tried that, we got the Telecom Deformation Act of 1996. Given the spectacular success that was, what exactly makes you think that trying to do the exact same thing now would lead to a better outcome? Is the idea that Comcast and Verizon will, out of the goodness of their hearts, abandon all lobbying efforts and fire all their lawyers instead of lobbying and suing like crazy? Do you think that large corporations LOVE competition?

drdaeman 15y ago

> discriminate in transmitting So, QoS is now banned in US? There's another side to this. Consider an ISP, which policies traffic in 3 queues: realtime (VoIP, games), normal (ordinary browsing) and bulk (file sharing, big downloads). No per-queue packet shaping or dropping, just putting packets in different queues, with different priorities - but some still could consider this "discriminating", even though such policing is done to improve the experience, not worsen it. Gaming traffic is relatively low, compared to file sharing. Obviously, if there are enough file sharers on the network, the latency will rise and gamers may experience "lags". On the other hand, BitTorrent users do not care about latency, but only about steady downloads (and uploads), so they won't lose anything if their packets would be put somehow further in the output queues. Sure, users themselves could put wanted policy in DSCP field of the packet, but sometimes they're too incompetent (rude, but true) to put the proper value (and wrong values will screw the idea, making it worse, not better, than not having any traffic priorities). Sorry to say, but things won't work this way. Obviously, if there's not just a latency increase, but packet loss - it's a sign that hardware upgrades are required. On the other side, even when hardware is operating normally, and uplink channels are not saturated, latency still matters.