4 ms·

If net neutrality is not relevant anyways, why are ISPs so dead set against it?

cptskippy 3y ago
A concern from ISPs is that they will lose the ability to shape and prioritize traffic, something that is often necessary. A concern from consumers is that services will be restricted or rendered unusable by throttling selectively driving customers away from services. A concern from Service Providers is that they will have to make deals with ISPs to ensure quality of service. They're valid concerns on all sides and without Net Neutrality we've seen service restrictions, though they're advertised as benefits (e.g. free OTT messaging on flights from certain providers). We've also seen ISPs bully providers like Netflix into paying to deliver traffic their customers are paying to access (double dipping). It hasn't been the doom and gloom that was hyped but has definitely impacted services. Under net neutrality I expect we'll see a degradation of cellular services or forced consent agreements as WISPs will not be allowed to downgrade or shape traffic otherwise. It cuts both ways and I will be surprised if it makes much difference.
- dd36 3y ago
  Net neutrality is the law in California. ISPs are doing just fine.
- hedora 3y ago
  Shaping and prioritizing traffic can be done in a service-agnostic way, so the sorts of shaping they can make money off of are never "necessary." The anti-network neutrality thing is just a money grab. Here's a good-enough traffic shaping algorithm: Each user gets their traffic put into two queues. High bandwidth flows go into a the low priority queues. Low bandwidth (video conferencing, interactive) flows go into the high priority queue. You round robin between all the users' queues at the local node level. If the trunk line is saturated by a few users, then their queues will be long, causing their flows to backpressure. Everyone else's queues will have ~ 1 packet in them, leading to no backpressure and negligible latency. It's extremely difficult to do better than the solution I just sketched. It is stateless, and it is also very easy to approximate in hardware. It even handles the "I want to torrent and VOIP at the same time" problem.
lr4444lr 3y ago
Because it kept them under the FCC's thumb as common carriers, forcing them into inefficiencies to comply with regulations. There's a ton of stuff I want the govt. more involved with on the internet: data privacy, clamping down on CSAM, section 230 issues... forcing ISPs to take a total hands off approach to every traffic source on their pipes? That wasn't one of them. NN harmed ISPs' incentive to innovate. I have since gotten faster speeds at cheaper prices. What would the NN crowd say if they had gotten their way, something vague about evil corporations and their profits?
- BeFlatXIII 3y ago
  Which specific inefficiencies would they be forced into as common carriers? Would they be ones I'd notice as a customer, or merely vague "reduced incentive to innovate"?
- enragedcacti 3y ago
  > I have since gotten faster speeds at cheaper prices. What would the NN crowd say if they had gotten their way Probably nothing because you would still get faster speeds at cheaper prices just like you had for the decades prior even though the regulatory environment was more strict. Without supporting evidence you might as well be claiming that the rooster crowing causes the sun to rise.
- hedora 3y ago
  Isn't the US still dead last among developed countries at "faster speeds at cheaper prices"? Places with common carrier setups do much better on average, as do US ISP's that focus on building out networks instead of spying on users and regulating traffic content.
- op00to 3y ago
  > forcing ISPs to take a total hands off approach to every traffic source on their pipes? That wasn't one of them. Verizon FIOS back in like 2014-2018 was in a constant pissing match with Netflix over who would pay for peering. Netflix wanted to pay for their half, and have Verizon pay for their half. Verizon wanted Netflix to pay not only the real costs of both sides, but a huge fee to offset "excess traffic". When Netflix (and Google, etc) decided to not pay, multi-megabyte speeds dropped to a few kilobytes a second. Hopping on a VPN to route the traffic around Verizon got speeds back to normal. ISPs should be forced to peer with whoever wants to pay for peering.
SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
There are more complex aspects of net neutrality beyond "companies can't make consumers pay a Facebook surcharge". One that I remember in detail is interconnect fees. Some companies like Netflix operate at such a scale that they're constrained by physical reality as much as network policies. So to provide good service, it's often necessary to deploy additional physical connections between the ISP and the Netflix CDN. Separately, such connections are widespread foundations of the Internet itself. In that context they're typically settlement-free, with providers on both sides working cooperatively to get the bits where users want them. For Netflix, providers typically require a fee to interconnect, because they wouldn't otherwise want to accept the maintenance costs of this link which serves no purpose other than providing Netflix. So Netflix pays a fee that other organizations with an interconnect don't have to pay. Is that a net neutrality violation? Netflix argues yes - they say it's just a backdoor to discriminate against Netflix traffic. But you can see why ISPs would be concerned about a rule that they can't charge random CDNs for plugging in stuff to their servers.

A concern from ISPs is that they will lose the ability to shape and prioritize traffic, something that is often necessary. A concern from consumers is that services will be restricted or rendered unusable by throttling selectively driving customers away from services. A concern from Service Providers is that they will have to make deals with ISPs to ensure quality of service. They're valid concerns on all sides and without Net Neutrality we've seen service restrictions, though they're advertised as benefits (e.g. free OTT messaging on flights from certain providers). We've also seen ISPs bully providers like Netflix into paying to deliver traffic their customers are paying to access (double dipping). It hasn't been the doom and gloom that was hyped but has definitely impacted services. Under net neutrality I expect we'll see a degradation of cellular services or forced consent agreements as WISPs will not be allowed to downgrade or shape traffic otherwise. It cuts both ways and I will be surprised if it makes much difference.

dd36 3y ago
Net neutrality is the law in California. ISPs are doing just fine.
hedora 3y ago
Shaping and prioritizing traffic can be done in a service-agnostic way, so the sorts of shaping they can make money off of are never "necessary." The anti-network neutrality thing is just a money grab. Here's a good-enough traffic shaping algorithm: Each user gets their traffic put into two queues. High bandwidth flows go into a the low priority queues. Low bandwidth (video conferencing, interactive) flows go into the high priority queue. You round robin between all the users' queues at the local node level. If the trunk line is saturated by a few users, then their queues will be long, causing their flows to backpressure. Everyone else's queues will have ~ 1 packet in them, leading to no backpressure and negligible latency. It's extremely difficult to do better than the solution I just sketched. It is stateless, and it is also very easy to approximate in hardware. It even handles the "I want to torrent and VOIP at the same time" problem.

lr4444lr 3y ago

Because it kept them under the FCC's thumb as common carriers, forcing them into inefficiencies to comply with regulations. There's a ton of stuff I want the govt. more involved with on the internet: data privacy, clamping down on CSAM, section 230 issues... forcing ISPs to take a total hands off approach to every traffic source on their pipes? That wasn't one of them. NN harmed ISPs' incentive to innovate. I have since gotten faster speeds at cheaper prices. What would the NN crowd say if they had gotten their way, something vague about evil corporations and their profits?

BeFlatXIII 3y ago
Which specific inefficiencies would they be forced into as common carriers? Would they be ones I'd notice as a customer, or merely vague "reduced incentive to innovate"?
enragedcacti 3y ago
> I have since gotten faster speeds at cheaper prices. What would the NN crowd say if they had gotten their way Probably nothing because you would still get faster speeds at cheaper prices just like you had for the decades prior even though the regulatory environment was more strict. Without supporting evidence you might as well be claiming that the rooster crowing causes the sun to rise.
hedora 3y ago
Isn't the US still dead last among developed countries at "faster speeds at cheaper prices"? Places with common carrier setups do much better on average, as do US ISP's that focus on building out networks instead of spying on users and regulating traffic content.
op00to 3y ago
> forcing ISPs to take a total hands off approach to every traffic source on their pipes? That wasn't one of them. Verizon FIOS back in like 2014-2018 was in a constant pissing match with Netflix over who would pay for peering. Netflix wanted to pay for their half, and have Verizon pay for their half. Verizon wanted Netflix to pay not only the real costs of both sides, but a huge fee to offset "excess traffic". When Netflix (and Google, etc) decided to not pay, multi-megabyte speeds dropped to a few kilobytes a second. Hopping on a VPN to route the traffic around Verizon got speeds back to normal. ISPs should be forced to peer with whoever wants to pay for peering.

SpicyLemonZest 3y ago

There are more complex aspects of net neutrality beyond "companies can't make consumers pay a Facebook surcharge". One that I remember in detail is interconnect fees. Some companies like Netflix operate at such a scale that they're constrained by physical reality as much as network policies. So to provide good service, it's often necessary to deploy additional physical connections between the ISP and the Netflix CDN. Separately, such connections are widespread foundations of the Internet itself. In that context they're typically settlement-free, with providers on both sides working cooperatively to get the bits where users want them. For Netflix, providers typically require a fee to interconnect, because they wouldn't otherwise want to accept the maintenance costs of this link which serves no purpose other than providing Netflix. So Netflix pays a fee that other organizations with an interconnect don't have to pay. Is that a net neutrality violation? Netflix argues yes - they say it's just a backdoor to discriminate against Netflix traffic. But you can see why ISPs would be concerned about a rule that they can't charge random CDNs for plugging in stuff to their servers.