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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

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.
    - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
      I agree with your general point (a lack of competition is why they can get away with double-charging for traffic), though this feels like a theoretical concern as of yet. But you're conflating different ISPs with different types of anti-competitive behavior. Prioritizing non-streaming-service (e.g. throttling Netflix at prime time) packets could, for example, help a regional ISP stay competitive. That's different than the anti-competitive behavior the big ISPs engage in when they lobby governments/help pass laws which _block_ ISP competition in regions like Denver. Different issues with different effects.
      - unityByFreedom 5y ago
        > this feels like a theoretical concern as of yet. This was Ajit Pai's argument. That we should regulate nothing until there's a problem. There are two problems with it, (1) It's already a problem. There have been documented examples of ISPs throttling, favoring their own partnered content. Also they are actively expanding or seeking to expand zero rating which is anti-competitive. (2) At the point you actually have a barren landscape in which competitors cannot grow, you've already sucked in a slew of investors on the idea that these monopolies' business models are sound. If the government steps in at that point, they risk being seen as the bad guy for destroying all that investment, which can have political consequences. We can avoid all that by acknowledging the existing problems, and encouraging competition among ISPs. There should be very few people advocating for monopolies, and we outnumber them. > Prioritizing non-streaming-service (e.g. throttling Netflix at prime time) packets could, for example, help a regional ISP stay competitive. That only helps Netflix and that ISP maintain their grip. It's only competitive if by competitive you mean stomping out any new ISP or content provider that is unable to make such agreements.
        seanp2k2 5y ago
        Check out https://broadbandnow.com/report/dig-once-digital-divide/ https://broadbandnow.com/report/dig-once-digital-divide/ and read up about how PROW’s (public rights-of-ways) work. It’s why even in Silicon Valley in 2022 we’re paying Comcast and can’t get Google or even Verizon FTTH.
- unityByFreedom 5y ago
  I think the imaginations of some who would strike down net neutrality go far beyond that. They would disconnect the net at every border imaginable and charge for access along every gateway. It's an authoritarian's wet dream to have such control, and we the people should oppose it at every turn. Setting up a framework that cements existing monopolies isn't capitalist, it's anti-competitive.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ddingus 5y ago
  Seems similar to banks wanting to become investment banks. They saw all that shiny money...
- lelanthran 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? I think it's the reverse: the idea is that your server in Romania keeps getting a low-priority until you send each ISP (Comcast, AT&T, etc) a cheque every month. They don't need to send you a bill, they only need to wait for your money.
unityByFreedom 5y ago
That's double dipping on both the rate and the amount. Charge for one or the other. We already have massive media conglomerates which have consolidated even more in the last decade. In order to maintain a competitive space, a neutral internet must be maintained. Otherwise you're cementing the position of those who own the content and means to provide it.
auspex 5y ago
Why should the companies pay for it? There are agreements in place for bandwidth between the peering companies and last mile providers. They shouldn’t care how it’s consumed. The issue is not use it’s prioritization. That’s the danger. Netflix pays to prioritize their traffic over Discovery+ or your video streaming startup. Now when it’s busy and the pipe is fully consumed, Netflix is perfect and your company is dropping frames and buffering.
- SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
  That scenario will be true regardless, though, because Netflix can and does set up interconnects at dozens of peering locations to skip half the pipes. It's true that it'd be bad for Discovery+ to pay for prioritizing their traffic over yours, and I'm very sympathetic to net neutrality on those grounds, but opponents would point out (as far as I can tell correctly) that ISPs have never really tried to build such a program. Throttling and traffic fees rarely come up except at the scale where the actual components of the underlying infrastructure matter.
- seanp2k2 5y ago
  They pay to prioritize only because ISPs held their own customers hostage. Links would become saturated (because ISPs wouldn’t upgrade them) and they’d let customers suffer until people running CDNs paid ISPs to upgrade their own damn links. The same ones taxpayers already paid them to upgrade. The same taxpayers that paid the monopolistic ISPs for service. They weren’t double-dipping, they were triple-dipping. Look up “The Book of Broken Promises”. Legislators let the ISPs get away with it and it’s why we have such high prices for such trash service compared to other first-world countries.
- nijave 4y ago
  The irony here is... Paid priorization is a solution to a problem ISPs created. If they didn't oversubscribe, there would be no market for guaranteeing transit on an oversubscribed network
Karrot_Kream 5y ago
Not always. This is why ISPs refuse to peer with certain customers. If they don't see mutual benefit, they charge for network connections instead, aka IP Transit.

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.
  - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
    I agree with your general point (a lack of competition is why they can get away with double-charging for traffic), though this feels like a theoretical concern as of yet. But you're conflating different ISPs with different types of anti-competitive behavior. Prioritizing non-streaming-service (e.g. throttling Netflix at prime time) packets could, for example, help a regional ISP stay competitive. That's different than the anti-competitive behavior the big ISPs engage in when they lobby governments/help pass laws which _block_ ISP competition in regions like Denver. Different issues with different effects.
    - unityByFreedom 5y ago
      > this feels like a theoretical concern as of yet. This was Ajit Pai's argument. That we should regulate nothing until there's a problem. There are two problems with it, (1) It's already a problem. There have been documented examples of ISPs throttling, favoring their own partnered content. Also they are actively expanding or seeking to expand zero rating which is anti-competitive. (2) At the point you actually have a barren landscape in which competitors cannot grow, you've already sucked in a slew of investors on the idea that these monopolies' business models are sound. If the government steps in at that point, they risk being seen as the bad guy for destroying all that investment, which can have political consequences. We can avoid all that by acknowledging the existing problems, and encouraging competition among ISPs. There should be very few people advocating for monopolies, and we outnumber them. > Prioritizing non-streaming-service (e.g. throttling Netflix at prime time) packets could, for example, help a regional ISP stay competitive. That only helps Netflix and that ISP maintain their grip. It's only competitive if by competitive you mean stomping out any new ISP or content provider that is unable to make such agreements.
      - seanp2k2 5y ago
        Check out https://broadbandnow.com/report/dig-once-digital-divide/ https://broadbandnow.com/report/dig-once-digital-divide/ and read up about how PROW’s (public rights-of-ways) work. It’s why even in Silicon Valley in 2022 we’re paying Comcast and can’t get Google or even Verizon FTTH.
unityByFreedom 5y ago
I think the imaginations of some who would strike down net neutrality go far beyond that. They would disconnect the net at every border imaginable and charge for access along every gateway. It's an authoritarian's wet dream to have such control, and we the people should oppose it at every turn. Setting up a framework that cements existing monopolies isn't capitalist, it's anti-competitive.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ddingus 5y ago
Seems similar to banks wanting to become investment banks. They saw all that shiny money...
lelanthran 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? I think it's the reverse: the idea is that your server in Romania keeps getting a low-priority until you send each ISP (Comcast, AT&T, etc) a cheque every month. They don't need to send you a bill, they only need to wait for your money.

unityByFreedom 5y ago

That's double dipping on both the rate and the amount. Charge for one or the other. We already have massive media conglomerates which have consolidated even more in the last decade. In order to maintain a competitive space, a neutral internet must be maintained. Otherwise you're cementing the position of those who own the content and means to provide it.

auspex 5y ago

Why should the companies pay for it? There are agreements in place for bandwidth between the peering companies and last mile providers. They shouldn’t care how it’s consumed. The issue is not use it’s prioritization. That’s the danger. Netflix pays to prioritize their traffic over Discovery+ or your video streaming startup. Now when it’s busy and the pipe is fully consumed, Netflix is perfect and your company is dropping frames and buffering.

SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
That scenario will be true regardless, though, because Netflix can and does set up interconnects at dozens of peering locations to skip half the pipes. It's true that it'd be bad for Discovery+ to pay for prioritizing their traffic over yours, and I'm very sympathetic to net neutrality on those grounds, but opponents would point out (as far as I can tell correctly) that ISPs have never really tried to build such a program. Throttling and traffic fees rarely come up except at the scale where the actual components of the underlying infrastructure matter.
seanp2k2 5y ago
They pay to prioritize only because ISPs held their own customers hostage. Links would become saturated (because ISPs wouldn’t upgrade them) and they’d let customers suffer until people running CDNs paid ISPs to upgrade their own damn links. The same ones taxpayers already paid them to upgrade. The same taxpayers that paid the monopolistic ISPs for service. They weren’t double-dipping, they were triple-dipping. Look up “The Book of Broken Promises”. Legislators let the ISPs get away with it and it’s why we have such high prices for such trash service compared to other first-world countries.
nijave 4y ago
The irony here is... Paid priorization is a solution to a problem ISPs created. If they didn't oversubscribe, there would be no market for guaranteeing transit on an oversubscribed network

Karrot_Kream 5y ago

Not always. This is why ISPs refuse to peer with certain customers. If they don't see mutual benefit, they charge for network connections instead, aka IP Transit.