4 ms·

What a non-neutral 'Net looks like, UK-style

9 points by zeedotme 17y ago

petercooper 17y ago
Some truth here but mostly FUD. This is not really non-net neutrality in the typical sense. Throttling of "heavy users," even those on unlimited monthly data plans? Check. This is not inherently anti net neutrality. DSL providers have a certain amount of bandwidth and this has to be distributed out via users. There is no such thing as an "unlimited monthly data plan." They can call it that, but if everyone attempted to download a terabyte of data at once, everything would crawl to a halt. That's not a threat to net neutrality but basic bandwidth math!
- jdoliner 17y ago
  True, although in actuality if everyone just went online and tried to download a terabyte of data. TCP back off would be the reason that things came to a crawl, which is a user side thing.
cturner 17y ago
There's an easy market solution for people who want traffic that this ISP is throttling - change your damn ISP. Notice that this solution involves no posturing politicians, no complex legislation, no costly enforcement, no restrictions on business. It's simple and effective. bt will quickly get the reputation as being the ISP for n00bs and will see themselves lose business, others will have an example in the flesh to disuade them from trying it on.
- Kejistan 17y ago
  I'm not sure what its like in the UK, but where I'm at in the US there are two ISPs that service my area, and both offer very similar plans. "Change your damn ISP" only works if there is another ISP that offers something different in your area.
  - dazzawazza 17y ago
    Where I live in London I have access to close to 100 ISPs that will take my cash. Where my parents live in the sticks there are two. One is BT who have to provide them a service but it's severely restricted (in bandwidth terms) and the other is Demon who are respectable enough. It's not the open market place the governments market models predict.
    - kierank 17y ago
      In the sticks everything goes through the expensive BT Ipstream product anyway.
jdoliner 17y ago
Is the BBC considering using end to end encryption for its iPlayer service? It seems to me that they could really stop a lot of this throttling in its tracks by preventing deep packet inspection.

9 points by zeedotme 17y ago

Some truth here but mostly FUD. This is not really non-net neutrality in the typical sense. Throttling of "heavy users," even those on unlimited monthly data plans? Check. This is not inherently anti net neutrality. DSL providers have a certain amount of bandwidth and this has to be distributed out via users. There is no such thing as an "unlimited monthly data plan." They can call it that, but if everyone attempted to download a terabyte of data at once, everything would crawl to a halt. That's not a threat to net neutrality but basic bandwidth math!

jdoliner 17y ago
True, although in actuality if everyone just went online and tried to download a terabyte of data. TCP back off would be the reason that things came to a crawl, which is a user side thing.

cturner 17y ago

There's an easy market solution for people who want traffic that this ISP is throttling - change your damn ISP. Notice that this solution involves no posturing politicians, no complex legislation, no costly enforcement, no restrictions on business. It's simple and effective. bt will quickly get the reputation as being the ISP for n00bs and will see themselves lose business, others will have an example in the flesh to disuade them from trying it on.

Kejistan 17y ago
I'm not sure what its like in the UK, but where I'm at in the US there are two ISPs that service my area, and both offer very similar plans. "Change your damn ISP" only works if there is another ISP that offers something different in your area.
- dazzawazza 17y ago
  Where I live in London I have access to close to 100 ISPs that will take my cash. Where my parents live in the sticks there are two. One is BT who have to provide them a service but it's severely restricted (in bandwidth terms) and the other is Demon who are respectable enough. It's not the open market place the governments market models predict.
  - kierank 17y ago
    In the sticks everything goes through the expensive BT Ipstream product anyway.

jdoliner 17y ago

Is the BBC considering using end to end encryption for its iPlayer service? It seems to me that they could really stop a lot of this throttling in its tracks by preventing deep packet inspection.