4 ms·

I find NN to be a tricky issue because the devil is very much in the details, and the history of "platforms" and "networks" in the abstract is a rich text (espe

I find NN to be a tricky issue because the devil is very much in the details, and the history of "platforms" and "networks" in the abstract is a rich text (especially viz. some pretty obnoxious examples of brinkmanship where multiple parties were all convinced that they were the pivotal gatekeeper to the audience/customer base, e.g. [1]) . I don't think there's necessarily a problem with having multiple service tiers where low latency/jitter or high throughput is only guaranteed on a higher tier. But if the network is rigged so that low-tier customers get a bad experience even in low-demand conditions, there's almost certainly some unethical fuckery going on. Basically, there's probably some point where "best effort" needs to be imposed as a baseline rather than a premium option. [1] https://www.latimes.com/archives/blogs/company-town-blog/story/2008-12-30/viacom-threatens-to-yank-programming-off-time-warner-cable-systems https://www.latimes.com/archives/blogs/company-town-blog/sto...

lupire 2y ago
There's nothing fundamentally wrong with charging more for a better product, even if you are capable of delivering that product to more people. McDonald's doesn't owe its fries customers free burgers just because the burgers are going stale soon. The problem is when there is no effective market for price competition. With a competitive market, prices will naturally drop to approximately efficient resource allocation
- alliao 2y ago
  just like the texas electric grid right? poster child of free market infrastructure
- convolvatron 2y ago
  assuming there is a fixed-size pipe owned by a third party which doesn't use statistical multiplexinging, with open access rules to logical providers that charge for things like QOS and transit...then sure. otherwise you're talking about a spherical cow
- orbisvicis 2y ago
  It's a bit like health insurance. Instead of grouping everyone into a big bucket and charging the average price, you start classifying people in smaller and smaller buckets: sex, age, weight, family history, genetics, parent's genetics, history of illness, occupation, zip code, building age, hobbies, partner's hobbies ... until you are basically subsidizing yourself plus a cut for the middleman. And McDonald's can charge more for people who roll through the drive-thru in expensive cars, then do a soft-pull through the payment processor, then pay a 3rd party for your current income, then get your credit score, then scan your twitter history for controversial posts, then lower prices for customers who spend equally at Burger King, then raise prices for people who are bad for the bottom line such those who vote for more govt regulation... or maybe democrats in general. I mean, the goal is to maximize profits, so there's nothing wrong with that. Everybody needs individualized probing to determine the price they can bear as individuals. That's market competition for you - efficient resource extraction.
  - doubleg72 2y ago
    Thanks for the wonderful ideas!
- xinayder 2y ago
  It's not a better product, you're just going against net neutrality and charging more to "unlock" your bandwidth.
hparadiz 2y ago
Nah. Real time gaming only transfers a minimal amount of bytes over the line so in reality your several hours of FPS fragging is only like 30 megabytes over the line. It's less than 1% of typical household internet usage. When the pipes are as thick as they are these days there's no excuse not put those gaming packets at the beginning of whatever throughput priorities there are. The bittorrent traffic doesn't care about waiting an extra 30 ms and the Netflix traffic is buffered so even a 2000 ms lag won't change the experiance in anyway. Amusingly all day of gaming (minus any updates) would be less than 10% of one episode of a show in 4K quality. Gamers have no idea what they are talking about. They will blame the ISP, the gaming company, the "servers", the "net code", or anything other than themselves. They will tie up your support lines until you just give them this little win so you're not wasting all your money listening to them complain.
- NoPicklez 2y ago
  I agree with this, it is a bit more than 30MB but we're splitting hairs at this point. For gaming traffic, it should absolutely be prioritised because reduced lag provides the best experience. Having said that, given there is such a small amount of traffic produced from gaming, why not just make it prioritised already?
  - Vvector 2y ago
    "Why give something away for free if you could charge for it?"
    - hparadiz 2y ago
      Exhibit A for why ISPs should be classified as utilities.
    - NoPicklez 2y ago
      I think as another person pointed out I don't mind so much if I can pay for improved latency, but if the standard service provided is purposefully degraded to justify it then that's when it's iffy There would also need to be some serious data to support an actual benefit compared to the standard latency
ants_everywhere 2y ago
> But if the network is rigged so that low-tier customers get a bad experience even in low-demand conditions, there's almost certainly some unethical fuckery going on. On any tiered system with enough adoption there's a strong incentive to make the lower tiers worse to upsell to the higher tiers. It's going to be like the TSA tiers.
bobdvb 2y ago
For me, as someone who works in streaming, I/we have no interest in stopping/hindering competition and that's something that certainly gets raised by people who advocate for NN. What companies want, is to be able to invest with ISPs to ensure they have optimised capacity available to ensure their service works well. Now, the issue then becomes: does the ISP use that as an excuse to neglect their own investments in public peering, or backhaul and only optimise for paying partners? In that respect, as an internet user and competitor to others, I'd definitely want all ISPs to be accountable for ensuring their networks have capacity to meet the demands of their users at a baseline level. But if someone wants to invest over and above that, then I don't believe that's a bad thing. What I also object to is ISPs holding us, as services, to ransom, saying "if you want to deliver to our customers, you have to pay for transit." this is increasingly something that ISPs are pushing for around the world. In theory they want it to be a tax on content providers that funds their networks, ultimately the customers pays, but it's the ISPs double dipping. They charge consumers for their internet connection and then want to charge the content providers for you using it.

lupire 2y ago

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with charging more for a better product, even if you are capable of delivering that product to more people. McDonald's doesn't owe its fries customers free burgers just because the burgers are going stale soon. The problem is when there is no effective market for price competition. With a competitive market, prices will naturally drop to approximately efficient resource allocation

alliao 2y ago
just like the texas electric grid right? poster child of free market infrastructure
convolvatron 2y ago
assuming there is a fixed-size pipe owned by a third party which doesn't use statistical multiplexinging, with open access rules to logical providers that charge for things like QOS and transit...then sure. otherwise you're talking about a spherical cow
orbisvicis 2y ago
It's a bit like health insurance. Instead of grouping everyone into a big bucket and charging the average price, you start classifying people in smaller and smaller buckets: sex, age, weight, family history, genetics, parent's genetics, history of illness, occupation, zip code, building age, hobbies, partner's hobbies ... until you are basically subsidizing yourself plus a cut for the middleman. And McDonald's can charge more for people who roll through the drive-thru in expensive cars, then do a soft-pull through the payment processor, then pay a 3rd party for your current income, then get your credit score, then scan your twitter history for controversial posts, then lower prices for customers who spend equally at Burger King, then raise prices for people who are bad for the bottom line such those who vote for more govt regulation... or maybe democrats in general. I mean, the goal is to maximize profits, so there's nothing wrong with that. Everybody needs individualized probing to determine the price they can bear as individuals. That's market competition for you - efficient resource extraction.
- doubleg72 2y ago
  Thanks for the wonderful ideas!
xinayder 2y ago
It's not a better product, you're just going against net neutrality and charging more to "unlock" your bandwidth.

hparadiz 2y ago

Nah. Real time gaming only transfers a minimal amount of bytes over the line so in reality your several hours of FPS fragging is only like 30 megabytes over the line. It's less than 1% of typical household internet usage. When the pipes are as thick as they are these days there's no excuse not put those gaming packets at the beginning of whatever throughput priorities there are. The bittorrent traffic doesn't care about waiting an extra 30 ms and the Netflix traffic is buffered so even a 2000 ms lag won't change the experiance in anyway. Amusingly all day of gaming (minus any updates) would be less than 10% of one episode of a show in 4K quality. Gamers have no idea what they are talking about. They will blame the ISP, the gaming company, the "servers", the "net code", or anything other than themselves. They will tie up your support lines until you just give them this little win so you're not wasting all your money listening to them complain.

NoPicklez 2y ago
I agree with this, it is a bit more than 30MB but we're splitting hairs at this point. For gaming traffic, it should absolutely be prioritised because reduced lag provides the best experience. Having said that, given there is such a small amount of traffic produced from gaming, why not just make it prioritised already?
- Vvector 2y ago
  "Why give something away for free if you could charge for it?"
  - hparadiz 2y ago
    Exhibit A for why ISPs should be classified as utilities.
  - NoPicklez 2y ago
    I think as another person pointed out I don't mind so much if I can pay for improved latency, but if the standard service provided is purposefully degraded to justify it then that's when it's iffy There would also need to be some serious data to support an actual benefit compared to the standard latency

ants_everywhere 2y ago

> But if the network is rigged so that low-tier customers get a bad experience even in low-demand conditions, there's almost certainly some unethical fuckery going on. On any tiered system with enough adoption there's a strong incentive to make the lower tiers worse to upsell to the higher tiers. It's going to be like the TSA tiers.

bobdvb 2y ago

For me, as someone who works in streaming, I/we have no interest in stopping/hindering competition and that's something that certainly gets raised by people who advocate for NN. What companies want, is to be able to invest with ISPs to ensure they have optimised capacity available to ensure their service works well. Now, the issue then becomes: does the ISP use that as an excuse to neglect their own investments in public peering, or backhaul and only optimise for paying partners? In that respect, as an internet user and competitor to others, I'd definitely want all ISPs to be accountable for ensuring their networks have capacity to meet the demands of their users at a baseline level. But if someone wants to invest over and above that, then I don't believe that's a bad thing. What I also object to is ISPs holding us, as services, to ransom, saying "if you want to deliver to our customers, you have to pay for transit." this is increasingly something that ISPs are pushing for around the world. In theory they want it to be a tax on content providers that funds their networks, ultimately the customers pays, but it's the ISPs double dipping. They charge consumers for their internet connection and then want to charge the content providers for you using it.