3 ms·

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

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.
  - d110af5ccf 5y ago
    > Can they selectively drop packets Absolutely not. That practice should literally be illegal. > or do they have to drop them randomly? Yes. This is the only reasonable approach. > And can you pay to be in a “never drop my packets” group? No. That should be illegal to offer. If the ISP's network is incapable of meeting their customer's demands during peak hours and they oversubscribed themselves so badly that they're contemplating such tactics then they ran their business dishonestly. They fraudulently made promises that they were incapable of delivering on and got caught. They need to fix their network or go out of business. And possibly should face legal consequences for their behavior.
    - amadvance 5y ago
      > > Can they selectively drop packets > Absolutely not. That practice should literally be illegal. Why not ? From an engineering point of view, with a scarce resource, dropping only the biggest user (Netflix) looks reasonable. Obviously, it should be illegal to ask money to do not have them dropped.
      - wtallis 5y ago
        > From an engineering point of view, with a scarce resource, dropping only the biggest user (Netflix) looks reasonable. The decision of who is the biggest user needs to be made in realtime at the point of congestion, not identified on a quarterly basis by the accounting department and pushed out as policy across the whole network.
    - a1369209993 5y ago
      > > Can they selectively drop packets > Absolutely not. That practice should literally be illegal. This is correct for selection based on the remote endpoint. OTOH, it's very reasonable to drop packets selectively based on the local endpoint, so that packet loss affects customers who are actually using 90-100% of advertised bandwidth (eg for streaming), but not those using <10% for stuff like checking their email. (Arguably, local-selection should be required, to prevent the ISP from making anti-net-neutrality FUD along the lines of "my neighbor's Netflix is making my email not work" actually true.)
- seanp2k2 5y ago
  > Why not price the network equally for everyone? Because settlement-free peering was a foundational piece of the internet until ISPs decided to ruin it: https://www.inap.com/blog/despite-comcast-netflix-deal-settlement-free-peering-alive-well/ https://www.inap.com/blog/despite-comcast-netflix-deal-settl...
Karrot_Kream 5y ago
In spirit I agree with you. The reality gets more complicated. The canonical example here is Netflix. Netflix's traffic is _mostly_ outbound and because it's video streaming, there's lots of it. If an ISP has a 10G circuit, then Netflix may end up taking up 50% of that circuit during prime after-work time. Because the circuit is limited in throughput, if Netflix takes up 50%, then remaining internet services need to fit in the other 50%, which can lead to a bad time for everyone (dropped packets from Netflix, dropped packets while trying to fetch your email, it's whatever the router decides to prioritize.) Now of course the ISP can add another circuit or upgrade their current circuit, but that costs them money. Or, the ISP could choose to drop Netflix packets first, which may degrade Netflix quality but not make it completely unusable the way dropping email packets might. The latter is an opposing perspective to net neutrality (the ISP is specifically choosing to drop Netflix packets at a higher rate than other packets.) I'm not against net neutrality myself, just trying to add a bit of background behind why certain folks may oppose it.
- bombcar 5y ago
  This is exactly why it started because Netflix switched to a lower tier provider (Level3 iirc) and the big ISPs wanted money pay for the transit which Level3 and Netflix didn’t want to pay. It all went away when Netflix started installing CDN caches.
  - seanp2k2 5y ago
    It wasn’t just through installing caches, it was through paying ISPs: https://techcrunch.com/2014/07/29/netflix-and-att-sign-peering-agreement/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/07/29/netflix-and-att-sign-peeri... And it wasn’t just level3, it was L3, Akamai, and Limelight: https://www.businessinsider.com/akamai-to-lose-netflix-as-a-customer-level-3-and-limelight-pick-up-the-business-2010-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/akamai-to-lose-netflix-as-a-...
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  >Now of course the ISP can add another circuit or upgrade their current circuit, but that costs them money. generally when businesses have a cost they charge extra to cover that. Or theoretically they may be making enough money that they could have less profit for a year to improve service. >the ISP is specifically choosing to drop Netflix packets at a higher rate than other packets. yeah, and then they are saying we would like to be able to offer a service where we don't drop packets of particular customers if they pay us money. So the 'nice packets you got there, shame if anything were to happen to them' business model.

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.
- d110af5ccf 5y ago
  > Can they selectively drop packets Absolutely not. That practice should literally be illegal. > or do they have to drop them randomly? Yes. This is the only reasonable approach. > And can you pay to be in a “never drop my packets” group? No. That should be illegal to offer. If the ISP's network is incapable of meeting their customer's demands during peak hours and they oversubscribed themselves so badly that they're contemplating such tactics then they ran their business dishonestly. They fraudulently made promises that they were incapable of delivering on and got caught. They need to fix their network or go out of business. And possibly should face legal consequences for their behavior.
  - amadvance 5y ago
    > > Can they selectively drop packets > Absolutely not. That practice should literally be illegal. Why not ? From an engineering point of view, with a scarce resource, dropping only the biggest user (Netflix) looks reasonable. Obviously, it should be illegal to ask money to do not have them dropped.
    - wtallis 5y ago
      > From an engineering point of view, with a scarce resource, dropping only the biggest user (Netflix) looks reasonable. The decision of who is the biggest user needs to be made in realtime at the point of congestion, not identified on a quarterly basis by the accounting department and pushed out as policy across the whole network.
  - a1369209993 5y ago
    > > Can they selectively drop packets > Absolutely not. That practice should literally be illegal. This is correct for selection based on the remote endpoint. OTOH, it's very reasonable to drop packets selectively based on the local endpoint, so that packet loss affects customers who are actually using 90-100% of advertised bandwidth (eg for streaming), but not those using <10% for stuff like checking their email. (Arguably, local-selection should be required, to prevent the ISP from making anti-net-neutrality FUD along the lines of "my neighbor's Netflix is making my email not work" actually true.)
seanp2k2 5y ago
> Why not price the network equally for everyone? Because settlement-free peering was a foundational piece of the internet until ISPs decided to ruin it: https://www.inap.com/blog/despite-comcast-netflix-deal-settlement-free-peering-alive-well/ https://www.inap.com/blog/despite-comcast-netflix-deal-settl...

Karrot_Kream 5y ago

In spirit I agree with you. The reality gets more complicated. The canonical example here is Netflix. Netflix's traffic is _mostly_ outbound and because it's video streaming, there's lots of it. If an ISP has a 10G circuit, then Netflix may end up taking up 50% of that circuit during prime after-work time. Because the circuit is limited in throughput, if Netflix takes up 50%, then remaining internet services need to fit in the other 50%, which can lead to a bad time for everyone (dropped packets from Netflix, dropped packets while trying to fetch your email, it's whatever the router decides to prioritize.) Now of course the ISP can add another circuit or upgrade their current circuit, but that costs them money. Or, the ISP could choose to drop Netflix packets first, which may degrade Netflix quality but not make it completely unusable the way dropping email packets might. The latter is an opposing perspective to net neutrality (the ISP is specifically choosing to drop Netflix packets at a higher rate than other packets.) I'm not against net neutrality myself, just trying to add a bit of background behind why certain folks may oppose it.

bombcar 5y ago
This is exactly why it started because Netflix switched to a lower tier provider (Level3 iirc) and the big ISPs wanted money pay for the transit which Level3 and Netflix didn’t want to pay. It all went away when Netflix started installing CDN caches.
- seanp2k2 5y ago
  It wasn’t just through installing caches, it was through paying ISPs: https://techcrunch.com/2014/07/29/netflix-and-att-sign-peering-agreement/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/07/29/netflix-and-att-sign-peeri... And it wasn’t just level3, it was L3, Akamai, and Limelight: https://www.businessinsider.com/akamai-to-lose-netflix-as-a-customer-level-3-and-limelight-pick-up-the-business-2010-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/akamai-to-lose-netflix-as-a-...
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
>Now of course the ISP can add another circuit or upgrade their current circuit, but that costs them money. generally when businesses have a cost they charge extra to cover that. Or theoretically they may be making enough money that they could have less profit for a year to improve service. >the ISP is specifically choosing to drop Netflix packets at a higher rate than other packets. yeah, and then they are saying we would like to be able to offer a service where we don't drop packets of particular customers if they pay us money. So the 'nice packets you got there, shame if anything were to happen to them' business model.