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I don't support this, but I can try to steel man this position. Largely it comes with the idea that use = cost, and that infrastructure has limited capacity an

I don't support this, but I can try to steel man this position. Largely it comes with the idea that use = cost, and that infrastructure has limited capacity and is therefore zeroish sum. For example, a common idea is that we should tax trucks more than other cars because they cause a large amount of damage to our roads. Following that logic, the companies that encourage users to consume more bandwidth should be charged a price for that since they're the ones making money on it, and we don't want to raise costs on users.

smw 5y ago
But customers are already paying for 'unlimited internet' -- or for some amount of data up to a cap. You're suggesting that we should double charge the providers that the customers want to access, as well?
- zhfliz 5y ago
  Telekom already does this for a very long time, at least in Germany. see for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10645577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10645577
  - unityByFreedom 5y ago
    Have there been no attempts in Germany at introducing net neutrality? Also, does the ISP who wrote that linked article, Hetzner, still support net neutrality? I can't find anything else in English about it since the linked article from 2015 (archive [1], and new link [2]), but maybe that's because other content hasn't been translated. > Hetzner Online stands for high-performance and high capacity Internet. In the last few years, our network infrastructure has expanded little by little in order to provide our customers with optimal performance. Currently, about two-thirds of our network traffic is directly exchanged with cost-neutral peerings of various partners. Among them are privat peerings with large network operators. > For this reason, we have been increasingly concerned with DSL and cable providers who have no open peering policy themselves but are also not connected to other Tier-1 carriers with sufficient capacities. During the peak traffic period of 7 pm to 10 pm in particular, the concerned DSL and cable providers hit their capacity limits and thereby impede the fluent data stream between individual networks. This has lead to increasing complaints from the providers' customers because the customers cannot access their servers with the level of performance that they are used to having from Hetzner Online. > These customers already paid for comprehensive and quick access to the Internet with their monthly DSL and cable fees. However, providers are no longer satisfied with just this source of profit. They now also want to collect revenue by charging large content providers fees for access to their network. For this reason, interfaces are being operated at their highest capacity -- to make paid access to the DSL and cable providers' networks attractive for content providers. The end consumer is then forced to pay double for unlimited access to the Internet. We at Hetzner Online do not support such policies and declare our support for full net neutrality. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150906025055/http://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Double_Paid_Traffic/en https://web.archive.org/web/20150906025055/http://wiki.hetzn... (archive b/c the OP link is no longer accessible) [2] https://www.hetzner.com/presse-berichte/2015/01/156830 https://www.hetzner.com/presse-berichte/2015/01/156830 (article appears to have been amended)
    - mschuster91 5y ago
      > Also, does the ISP who wrote that linked article, Hetzner, still support net neutrality? They do, but had to relent on holding Telekom accountable because customers threatened to leave as their end-customers from Telekom complained that the services were not reachable or low-performant. In the end, IMO it's safe to say that Telekom abused their customers to bully Hetzner into paying. [1] https://www.hetzner.com/de/news/03-20-dtag/ https://www.hetzner.com/de/news/03-20-dtag/
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - fransje26 5y ago
    Telecommunication in Germany is a price-gouging, customer-abusing, mafia-like cartel that is taking the piss every step of the way. It's cheaper for me to have a foreign mobile provider than to take any local contract. I get more data volume, and much cheaper EU in & out calls than anything that can be found here, and I can network-hop to get semi-decent LTE coverage, as, where I live, each provider seems to be covering a different area. After years and years of appalling DSL speeds (think < 5 Mbits/s) and no alternative except Vodafone LTE @ 50 euros/month for 10 GB of data, the (local?) government came up with subsidies for the first provider bringing glass-fiber to local towns. Ha! At once, they were all rushing to lay down fibers.. But, the subsidies were only for connections up to the local relays, not for bring glass fiber to the local customers. So once the scramble to the relays was finished, nothing else was done. Two years down the line, slowly, you can start paying (1500 euros) for a connection to your door that should come in the coming months. And the breath-taking connection speed of 100 Mbits symmetric. Which, granted, is a good improvement for casual browsing, but not quite good enough for businesses.
- Karrot_Kream 5y ago
  Unlimited internet is mostly a marketing term. Until you buy a DIA circuit you are just getting regular ISP access or prioritized ISP access.
  - unityByFreedom 5y ago
    Companies can be held accountable in court for words used in their marketing.
    - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
      I think you're just angry at ISPs (I don't blame you, they're usually monopolies or oligopolies which engage in dirty behavior.) But given the state of the market, I don't know a _single_ ISP or customer that would confuse DIA for regular bandwidth. Buying DIA involves getting a quote from the ISP and going back-and-forth with an operator over how to connect. And the fine print for most ISPs explains what "unlimited bandwidth" generally means.
      - Retric 5y ago
        Fine print isn’t a blanket solution for false advertising issues. Essentially advertising X while providing Y becomes a question of fraud.
        seanp2k2 5y ago
        ISPs pay enough to politicians that it’s not a problem they really have to solve. It works out through game theory. Solving it requires playing better and beating them.
        cto_of_antifa 5y ago
      - unityByFreedom 5y ago
        ISPs took tons of taxpayer dollars, often have lousy service, maintain regional monopolies, and lobby municipalities out of building their own networks with shady dealings. Who would be satisified with that? We can do better. > But given the state of the market, I don't know a _single_ ISP or customer that would confuse DIA for regular bandwidth. You brought up DIA. I didn't see anyone else comment on it.
kibwen 5y ago
There are reasonable arguments to be made for allowing infrastructure providers to limit the ability of bad actors to consume extreme amounts of resources before they tragedy-of-the-commons the whole shebang for everyone else. But any such system has to acknowledge that qualifying as infrastructure means that society relies on it to function, which means that demand for the infrastructure is, at the low end, inelastic, which means that a typical market structure would make no sense. The conscientious way to do it is to determine what qualifies as a "reasonable" amount of consumption, then provide that level of consumption at a subsidized rate to all participants, then let market forces kick in if someone consumes more than that. Then the rub is to define "reasonable", which obviously the infrastructure providers shouldn't be allowed to do. There's no denying that the internet is essential communications infrastructure. And in this era of videoconferencing and work-from-home, the network should be built out such that everyone can stream good-enough-quality video at peak hours without congestion; that seems reasonable to me. The government should also guarantee the availability of this minimum level of service to all citizens. If the network can't handle that, then the infrastructure providers need to build it out. Of course, they will drag their feet and complain, but that's because companies are self-serving sociopathic AIs.
- throw0101a 5y ago
  > There are reasonable arguments to be made for allowing infrastructure providers to limit the ability of bad actors to consume extreme amounts of resources before they tragedy-of-the-commons the whole shebang for everyone else. Except the "bad actors" are the ISP's customer. It's they who are asking for the bits to be sent. It's the ISP job to deliver the bits their customers requested. The streaming services are not dumping bits on to the network like a chemical plant polluting a river. The streaming services are sending bits that the ISP's customers requested. The streaming services are paying for their Internet connection, and ISP's customers are paying for their Internet connection, and it is the job of the ISP to connect the two. If you can't currently handle the traffic: * reduce the service that you offer, or * build a better network. The ISPs need to do their damn job.
  - d110af5ccf 5y ago
paxys 5y ago
The solution for that is already in place – charge for bandwidth. If users pay $30 for 100 Mpbs or $60 for 500 Mpbs etc., and on top of it there are caps on total data consumed, where does the idea of further segmenting and prioritizing traffic even come from?
- bberenberg 5y ago
  I think the question becomes who should be charged for bandwidth. The ISPs in this case are arguing they want to charge a small subset of above normal bandwidth consuming services rather than the ISP customers.
  - paxys 5y ago
    That's simply ISPs seeing a lucrative revenue stream and wanting in on it. Let's put company size and market cap out of the picture and think of the network architecture. I set up a server in Romania. Someone from USA makes a request to it and gets a response. Can their ISP (Comcast or AT&T or whoever else) now send me a bill at the end of the month?
    - bberenberg 5y ago
      I agree that they're setting up a revenue stream. I also think that a business that charges customers on both sides isn't as crazy as you want it to be. For example, a customer of our pays SAP Ariba to be the SaaS for their procurement process. We also have to pay SAP Ariba to submit invoices to this customer. In your example I expect they wouldn't send you a bill for the request. I do expect they would send you a notice to join whatever program they run or they will stop routing to your server. Again, I don't agree with what the ISP is doing, but I can rationalize how they think it makes sense.
      - unityByFreedom 5y ago
        > I don't agree with what the ISP is doing, but I can rationalize how they think it makes sense. It only makes sense if they perceive no backlash for overreaching. We need to look closely at what they are currently doing. They're expanding zero rating on mobile, and also on broadband in some areas by claiming that their network is "proprietary technology" and not subject to such net neutrality laws. Meanwhile, municipalities are prevented from building their own networks to compete with regional broadband monopolies. It's internet-highway robbery.
LeifCarrotson 5y ago
On the roads, we have a very rough estimate of the amount of the externalities of a given vehicle. On the Internet, we can have precise information on every bit of bandwidth consumed. Why not price the network equally for everyone?
- fn-mote 5y ago
  > Why not price the network equally for everyone? It's not clear what this means. I guess in the context it means everyone pays the same unit rate per amount of data transferred? I think there's more subtlety than this. I pay more for a 100MBit connection than a 10MBit connection, and also pay more for the data transferred over those connections? Are they allowed to charge higher speed customers a lower unit rate?
  - bombcar 5y ago
    The question comes into play at the edges - when your ISPs upstream connection is filled what happens? Can they selectively drop packets or do they have to drop them randomly? And can you pay to be in a “never drop my packets” group?
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      The "American Way" for this is pretty simple to see: 1. the destination customer can pay themselves into a tier such as "never drop" 2. the source customer cannot That is, retain "money is power" for individuals but add a veneer of social respectability by denying Netflix etc. to just buy up the bandwidth.
      - seanp2k2 5y ago
        The “American Way” of finding a good enough monopoly that one can afford to pay legislators to allow it to continue so long as taxpayers can be convinced that it’s not bad enough to favor a different candidate. Or, just get every candidate to support it! Then taxpayers have no choice and you win.
    - 5y ago
wrycoder 5y ago
This fight is not so much about usage “bandwidth” as it is about ISPs who want to prioritize traffic depending on the source and whether the source is paying them an additional “priority” fee. Allowing them to do that creates an non-level playing field, which disadvantages the smaller sources that many users would be very interested to view.
- ddingus 5y ago
  "Big sources" also want this because they do not want to have to compete with, or these days be called out by new sources. Look at YT and the hiding dislikes. That was all about establishment players being very widely and publicly disliked for poor quality information, outright lies in some cases. How did people know? Thos smaller sources able to get a lot of attention. The minute ISP's get to prioritize, they get to create near infinite artificial value by making endless deals about who gets what and when. Nobody but the ISP'S and establishment support that garbage. There is no value added to anyone, except the ISP's and establishment.
imgabe 5y ago
Doesn't Netflix already pay on a usage basis for their bandwidth? If you run a small website that gets 100 users a month, you pay very little for bandwidth. If you run a video streaming site with millions of users you pay a lot. And the users also pay for the bandwidth to download. Exactly how many more times do the ISPs need to get paid?
- seanp2k2 5y ago
  Taxpayers also paid ISPs to both deploy rural broadband and to upgrade existing infrastructure, so they’re getting paid 3x if you count that. Look up “The Book of Broken Promises”.
- makomk 5y ago
  Not necessarily. Small websites have to pay for their bandwidth, but bigger companies like Netflix have been pushing ISPs into various schemes that give them that bandwidth for free, either through peering arrangements where ISPs take traffic to and from Netflix systems for free or through installing caching boxes in ISP facilities with the power, data and space paid for by the ISP.
  - imgabe 5y ago
    How? What leverage does Netflix have that would convince their ISP to give them free bandwidth? It seems like if Netflix were unable to upload the video to their customers, that would be pretty detrimental to their business.
monkeywork 5y ago
In your example I'd say you have the following entities: * ISP = Government * Client = Driver * Netflix = Ford * Shows = Truck * Bandwidth = Roads The Government (ISP) taxes the Driver (Client) when they buy a Truck (watch shows) because that act puts stress on the Roads (Bandwidth). They do not put a special tax on Ford (Netflix) for simply offering a Truck (show) for sale. So if the ISP wants to get extra revenue from this they need to charge the client more as they use more bandwidth.
manquer 5y ago
This incentivizes creation of artificial scarcity to squeeze more money. The entire industry is built on free peering unless traffic is very asymmetric for the most part. This is analogous to converting existing lanes to express lanes on highways, people are not going to pay if there is no congestion. The city makes more money removing a lane from regular use and also not investing further on road expansion / alternative routes.
lwkl 5y ago
The road-tax is neutral, it doesn't matter what goods you transport. Imagine charging the producers of the most transported goods to pay a fee in addition to the road-tax and otherwise blocking their goods being transported for the rest of the month. Net neutrality asks the internet to work how road taxes work. You pay for a certain bandwidth (a truck) and you can transport whatever goods you want with that. It doesn't matter if you go to walmart 5 times a week or split your trips to costco, walmart and target. Or maybe whole foods has a deal with the state that makes the people driving trucks to them exempt from the additional fee.
- bcgraham 5y ago
  Note that roads are not neutral in the “net neutrality” sense, since emergency vehicles are prioritized. There’s a cogent argument against net neutrality on similar grounds: i.e., prioritizing traffic with prioritized purpose, especially in the face of congestion.
  - jeroenhd 5y ago
    Networks aren't neutral either, even under net neutrality rules: you might lose your data uplink of the tower is at capacity and someone dials 911. I'm a proponent of weakening net neutrality for when lives are at stake, but that's hardly ever the case on the internet. The problem is that most non-neutral treatment is the result of business interests rather than the greater good.
  - zmgsabst 5y ago
    In what way is “emergency vehicles need special access” similar to “we need to charge Netflix more because ISPs oversold their networks while failing to upgrade”?
    - ThunderSizzle 5y ago
      Toll roads charge more for larger vehicles. Vehicle registration may be more expensive for heavier vehicles or vehicles with more wheels. Meanwhile, toll roads may have just as much traffic issues and no guarantee of average velocity. How is that not similar to ISPs throttling? Not that I care much either way. I care more about localities and states encouraging or enforcing monopolies.
parkingrift 5y ago
Bandwidth is already charged by consumption. What you’re suggesting here is to the idea that vehicles should be charged based on what they’re transporting. Sorry but that is preposterous. Weight is weight and should be considered as such. No cost preference for shipment of products that some private company likes.
RHSeeger 5y ago
If I pay you to bring me a package from <somewhere else>, all is well. If 10 other people pay you to bring them packages from <somewhere else>, all is well. If 100 want to pay you to bring them packages from <somewhere else> and you suddenly don't have enough manpower to deliver those packages... do you suddenly start charging <somewhere else> because they have too many people that want packages? No, because that would be ridiculous.
- shukantpal 5y ago
  No it wouldn’t be ridiculous because both the sender and receiver are customers here
imtringued 5y ago
Your argument makes zero sense and is completely divorced from what you preach. I hate this direct form of hypocrisy. People pretend to be "righteous" and then act dishonest. Cloud providers already bill network traffic at extremely high prices. The cheap ones oversubscribe their connections, according to the motto "you get what you pay for". The current system is "use = cost". >For example, a common idea is that we should tax trucks more than other cars because they cause a large amount of damage to our roads. And this is exactly why we should have net neutrality. If there is net neutrality on roads then we can just tax by axle weight. If there is no net neutrality then road companies would come up with a weird classification system that is completely independent of axle weight. For example. S-Pedelecs in Germany are just unthrottled electric bicycles that go faster than 25km/h. They are basically classified as a moped even though they are much lighter. Road companies would then charge S-Pedelecs more because of what they are classified as instead of how much they weigh. Truck companies will then try to develop trucks that aren't classified as trucks to avoid those higher fees (VPNs). > Following that logic, the companies that encourage users to consume more bandwidth should be charged a price for that since they're the ones making money on it, and we don't want to raise costs on users. That makes no sense. Just charge all commercial internet connections by traffic or capacity (oversubscribing does not count). You are so far away from "use = cost" that it's not even funny. The amount of brain twisting that is going on here is insane.

smw 5y ago

But customers are already paying for 'unlimited internet' -- or for some amount of data up to a cap. You're suggesting that we should double charge the providers that the customers want to access, as well?

zhfliz 5y ago
Telekom already does this for a very long time, at least in Germany. see for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10645577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10645577
- unityByFreedom 5y ago
  Have there been no attempts in Germany at introducing net neutrality? Also, does the ISP who wrote that linked article, Hetzner, still support net neutrality? I can't find anything else in English about it since the linked article from 2015 (archive [1], and new link [2]), but maybe that's because other content hasn't been translated. > Hetzner Online stands for high-performance and high capacity Internet. In the last few years, our network infrastructure has expanded little by little in order to provide our customers with optimal performance. Currently, about two-thirds of our network traffic is directly exchanged with cost-neutral peerings of various partners. Among them are privat peerings with large network operators. > For this reason, we have been increasingly concerned with DSL and cable providers who have no open peering policy themselves but are also not connected to other Tier-1 carriers with sufficient capacities. During the peak traffic period of 7 pm to 10 pm in particular, the concerned DSL and cable providers hit their capacity limits and thereby impede the fluent data stream between individual networks. This has lead to increasing complaints from the providers' customers because the customers cannot access their servers with the level of performance that they are used to having from Hetzner Online. > These customers already paid for comprehensive and quick access to the Internet with their monthly DSL and cable fees. However, providers are no longer satisfied with just this source of profit. They now also want to collect revenue by charging large content providers fees for access to their network. For this reason, interfaces are being operated at their highest capacity -- to make paid access to the DSL and cable providers' networks attractive for content providers. The end consumer is then forced to pay double for unlimited access to the Internet. We at Hetzner Online do not support such policies and declare our support for full net neutrality. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150906025055/http://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Double_Paid_Traffic/en https://web.archive.org/web/20150906025055/http://wiki.hetzn... (archive b/c the OP link is no longer accessible) [2] https://www.hetzner.com/presse-berichte/2015/01/156830 https://www.hetzner.com/presse-berichte/2015/01/156830 (article appears to have been amended)
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    > Also, does the ISP who wrote that linked article, Hetzner, still support net neutrality? They do, but had to relent on holding Telekom accountable because customers threatened to leave as their end-customers from Telekom complained that the services were not reachable or low-performant. In the end, IMO it's safe to say that Telekom abused their customers to bully Hetzner into paying. [1] https://www.hetzner.com/de/news/03-20-dtag/ https://www.hetzner.com/de/news/03-20-dtag/
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- fransje26 5y ago
  Telecommunication in Germany is a price-gouging, customer-abusing, mafia-like cartel that is taking the piss every step of the way. It's cheaper for me to have a foreign mobile provider than to take any local contract. I get more data volume, and much cheaper EU in & out calls than anything that can be found here, and I can network-hop to get semi-decent LTE coverage, as, where I live, each provider seems to be covering a different area. After years and years of appalling DSL speeds (think < 5 Mbits/s) and no alternative except Vodafone LTE @ 50 euros/month for 10 GB of data, the (local?) government came up with subsidies for the first provider bringing glass-fiber to local towns. Ha! At once, they were all rushing to lay down fibers.. But, the subsidies were only for connections up to the local relays, not for bring glass fiber to the local customers. So once the scramble to the relays was finished, nothing else was done. Two years down the line, slowly, you can start paying (1500 euros) for a connection to your door that should come in the coming months. And the breath-taking connection speed of 100 Mbits symmetric. Which, granted, is a good improvement for casual browsing, but not quite good enough for businesses.
Karrot_Kream 5y ago
Unlimited internet is mostly a marketing term. Until you buy a DIA circuit you are just getting regular ISP access or prioritized ISP access.
- unityByFreedom 5y ago
  Companies can be held accountable in court for words used in their marketing.
  - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
    I think you're just angry at ISPs (I don't blame you, they're usually monopolies or oligopolies which engage in dirty behavior.) But given the state of the market, I don't know a _single_ ISP or customer that would confuse DIA for regular bandwidth. Buying DIA involves getting a quote from the ISP and going back-and-forth with an operator over how to connect. And the fine print for most ISPs explains what "unlimited bandwidth" generally means.
    - Retric 5y ago
      Fine print isn’t a blanket solution for false advertising issues. Essentially advertising X while providing Y becomes a question of fraud.
      - seanp2k2 5y ago
        ISPs pay enough to politicians that it’s not a problem they really have to solve. It works out through game theory. Solving it requires playing better and beating them.
        cto_of_antifa 5y ago
    - unityByFreedom 5y ago
      ISPs took tons of taxpayer dollars, often have lousy service, maintain regional monopolies, and lobby municipalities out of building their own networks with shady dealings. Who would be satisified with that? We can do better. > But given the state of the market, I don't know a _single_ ISP or customer that would confuse DIA for regular bandwidth. You brought up DIA. I didn't see anyone else comment on it.

kibwen 5y ago

There are reasonable arguments to be made for allowing infrastructure providers to limit the ability of bad actors to consume extreme amounts of resources before they tragedy-of-the-commons the whole shebang for everyone else. But any such system has to acknowledge that qualifying as infrastructure means that society relies on it to function, which means that demand for the infrastructure is, at the low end, inelastic, which means that a typical market structure would make no sense. The conscientious way to do it is to determine what qualifies as a "reasonable" amount of consumption, then provide that level of consumption at a subsidized rate to all participants, then let market forces kick in if someone consumes more than that. Then the rub is to define "reasonable", which obviously the infrastructure providers shouldn't be allowed to do. There's no denying that the internet is essential communications infrastructure. And in this era of videoconferencing and work-from-home, the network should be built out such that everyone can stream good-enough-quality video at peak hours without congestion; that seems reasonable to me. The government should also guarantee the availability of this minimum level of service to all citizens. If the network can't handle that, then the infrastructure providers need to build it out. Of course, they will drag their feet and complain, but that's because companies are self-serving sociopathic AIs.

throw0101a 5y ago
> There are reasonable arguments to be made for allowing infrastructure providers to limit the ability of bad actors to consume extreme amounts of resources before they tragedy-of-the-commons the whole shebang for everyone else. Except the "bad actors" are the ISP's customer. It's they who are asking for the bits to be sent. It's the ISP job to deliver the bits their customers requested. The streaming services are not dumping bits on to the network like a chemical plant polluting a river. The streaming services are sending bits that the ISP's customers requested. The streaming services are paying for their Internet connection, and ISP's customers are paying for their Internet connection, and it is the job of the ISP to connect the two. If you can't currently handle the traffic: * reduce the service that you offer, or * build a better network. The ISPs need to do their damn job.
- d110af5ccf 5y ago

paxys 5y ago

The solution for that is already in place – charge for bandwidth. If users pay $30 for 100 Mpbs or $60 for 500 Mpbs etc., and on top of it there are caps on total data consumed, where does the idea of further segmenting and prioritizing traffic even come from?

bberenberg 5y ago
I think the question becomes who should be charged for bandwidth. The ISPs in this case are arguing they want to charge a small subset of above normal bandwidth consuming services rather than the ISP customers.
- paxys 5y ago
  That's simply ISPs seeing a lucrative revenue stream and wanting in on it. Let's put company size and market cap out of the picture and think of the network architecture. I set up a server in Romania. Someone from USA makes a request to it and gets a response. Can their ISP (Comcast or AT&T or whoever else) now send me a bill at the end of the month?
  - bberenberg 5y ago
    I agree that they're setting up a revenue stream. I also think that a business that charges customers on both sides isn't as crazy as you want it to be. For example, a customer of our pays SAP Ariba to be the SaaS for their procurement process. We also have to pay SAP Ariba to submit invoices to this customer. In your example I expect they wouldn't send you a bill for the request. I do expect they would send you a notice to join whatever program they run or they will stop routing to your server. Again, I don't agree with what the ISP is doing, but I can rationalize how they think it makes sense.
    - unityByFreedom 5y ago
      > I don't agree with what the ISP is doing, but I can rationalize how they think it makes sense. It only makes sense if they perceive no backlash for overreaching. We need to look closely at what they are currently doing. They're expanding zero rating on mobile, and also on broadband in some areas by claiming that their network is "proprietary technology" and not subject to such net neutrality laws. Meanwhile, municipalities are prevented from building their own networks to compete with regional broadband monopolies. It's internet-highway robbery.

LeifCarrotson 5y ago

On the roads, we have a very rough estimate of the amount of the externalities of a given vehicle. On the Internet, we can have precise information on every bit of bandwidth consumed. Why not price the network equally for everyone?

fn-mote 5y ago
> Why not price the network equally for everyone? It's not clear what this means. I guess in the context it means everyone pays the same unit rate per amount of data transferred? I think there's more subtlety than this. I pay more for a 100MBit connection than a 10MBit connection, and also pay more for the data transferred over those connections? Are they allowed to charge higher speed customers a lower unit rate?
- bombcar 5y ago
  The question comes into play at the edges - when your ISPs upstream connection is filled what happens? Can they selectively drop packets or do they have to drop them randomly? And can you pay to be in a “never drop my packets” group?
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    The "American Way" for this is pretty simple to see: 1. the destination customer can pay themselves into a tier such as "never drop" 2. the source customer cannot That is, retain "money is power" for individuals but add a veneer of social respectability by denying Netflix etc. to just buy up the bandwidth.
    - seanp2k2 5y ago
      The “American Way” of finding a good enough monopoly that one can afford to pay legislators to allow it to continue so long as taxpayers can be convinced that it’s not bad enough to favor a different candidate. Or, just get every candidate to support it! Then taxpayers have no choice and you win.
  - 5y ago

wrycoder 5y ago

This fight is not so much about usage “bandwidth” as it is about ISPs who want to prioritize traffic depending on the source and whether the source is paying them an additional “priority” fee. Allowing them to do that creates an non-level playing field, which disadvantages the smaller sources that many users would be very interested to view.

ddingus 5y ago
"Big sources" also want this because they do not want to have to compete with, or these days be called out by new sources. Look at YT and the hiding dislikes. That was all about establishment players being very widely and publicly disliked for poor quality information, outright lies in some cases. How did people know? Thos smaller sources able to get a lot of attention. The minute ISP's get to prioritize, they get to create near infinite artificial value by making endless deals about who gets what and when. Nobody but the ISP'S and establishment support that garbage. There is no value added to anyone, except the ISP's and establishment.

imgabe 5y ago

Doesn't Netflix already pay on a usage basis for their bandwidth? If you run a small website that gets 100 users a month, you pay very little for bandwidth. If you run a video streaming site with millions of users you pay a lot. And the users also pay for the bandwidth to download. Exactly how many more times do the ISPs need to get paid?

seanp2k2 5y ago
Taxpayers also paid ISPs to both deploy rural broadband and to upgrade existing infrastructure, so they’re getting paid 3x if you count that. Look up “The Book of Broken Promises”.
makomk 5y ago
Not necessarily. Small websites have to pay for their bandwidth, but bigger companies like Netflix have been pushing ISPs into various schemes that give them that bandwidth for free, either through peering arrangements where ISPs take traffic to and from Netflix systems for free or through installing caching boxes in ISP facilities with the power, data and space paid for by the ISP.
- imgabe 5y ago
  How? What leverage does Netflix have that would convince their ISP to give them free bandwidth? It seems like if Netflix were unable to upload the video to their customers, that would be pretty detrimental to their business.

monkeywork 5y ago

In your example I'd say you have the following entities: * ISP = Government * Client = Driver * Netflix = Ford * Shows = Truck * Bandwidth = Roads The Government (ISP) taxes the Driver (Client) when they buy a Truck (watch shows) because that act puts stress on the Roads (Bandwidth). They do not put a special tax on Ford (Netflix) for simply offering a Truck (show) for sale. So if the ISP wants to get extra revenue from this they need to charge the client more as they use more bandwidth.

manquer 5y ago

This incentivizes creation of artificial scarcity to squeeze more money. The entire industry is built on free peering unless traffic is very asymmetric for the most part. This is analogous to converting existing lanes to express lanes on highways, people are not going to pay if there is no congestion. The city makes more money removing a lane from regular use and also not investing further on road expansion / alternative routes.

lwkl 5y ago

The road-tax is neutral, it doesn't matter what goods you transport. Imagine charging the producers of the most transported goods to pay a fee in addition to the road-tax and otherwise blocking their goods being transported for the rest of the month. Net neutrality asks the internet to work how road taxes work. You pay for a certain bandwidth (a truck) and you can transport whatever goods you want with that. It doesn't matter if you go to walmart 5 times a week or split your trips to costco, walmart and target. Or maybe whole foods has a deal with the state that makes the people driving trucks to them exempt from the additional fee.

bcgraham 5y ago
Note that roads are not neutral in the “net neutrality” sense, since emergency vehicles are prioritized. There’s a cogent argument against net neutrality on similar grounds: i.e., prioritizing traffic with prioritized purpose, especially in the face of congestion.
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  Networks aren't neutral either, even under net neutrality rules: you might lose your data uplink of the tower is at capacity and someone dials 911. I'm a proponent of weakening net neutrality for when lives are at stake, but that's hardly ever the case on the internet. The problem is that most non-neutral treatment is the result of business interests rather than the greater good.
- zmgsabst 5y ago
  In what way is “emergency vehicles need special access” similar to “we need to charge Netflix more because ISPs oversold their networks while failing to upgrade”?
  - ThunderSizzle 5y ago
    Toll roads charge more for larger vehicles. Vehicle registration may be more expensive for heavier vehicles or vehicles with more wheels. Meanwhile, toll roads may have just as much traffic issues and no guarantee of average velocity. How is that not similar to ISPs throttling? Not that I care much either way. I care more about localities and states encouraging or enforcing monopolies.

parkingrift 5y ago

Bandwidth is already charged by consumption. What you’re suggesting here is to the idea that vehicles should be charged based on what they’re transporting. Sorry but that is preposterous. Weight is weight and should be considered as such. No cost preference for shipment of products that some private company likes.

RHSeeger 5y ago

If I pay you to bring me a package from <somewhere else>, all is well. If 10 other people pay you to bring them packages from <somewhere else>, all is well. If 100 want to pay you to bring them packages from <somewhere else> and you suddenly don't have enough manpower to deliver those packages... do you suddenly start charging <somewhere else> because they have too many people that want packages? No, because that would be ridiculous.

shukantpal 5y ago
No it wouldn’t be ridiculous because both the sender and receiver are customers here

imtringued 5y ago

Your argument makes zero sense and is completely divorced from what you preach. I hate this direct form of hypocrisy. People pretend to be "righteous" and then act dishonest. Cloud providers already bill network traffic at extremely high prices. The cheap ones oversubscribe their connections, according to the motto "you get what you pay for". The current system is "use = cost". >For example, a common idea is that we should tax trucks more than other cars because they cause a large amount of damage to our roads. And this is exactly why we should have net neutrality. If there is net neutrality on roads then we can just tax by axle weight. If there is no net neutrality then road companies would come up with a weird classification system that is completely independent of axle weight. For example. S-Pedelecs in Germany are just unthrottled electric bicycles that go faster than 25km/h. They are basically classified as a moped even though they are much lighter. Road companies would then charge S-Pedelecs more because of what they are classified as instead of how much they weigh. Truck companies will then try to develop trucks that aren't classified as trucks to avoid those higher fees (VPNs). > Following that logic, the companies that encourage users to consume more bandwidth should be charged a price for that since they're the ones making money on it, and we don't want to raise costs on users. That makes no sense. Just charge all commercial internet connections by traffic or capacity (oversubscribing does not count). You are so far away from "use = cost" that it's not even funny. The amount of brain twisting that is going on here is insane.