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F.C.C. to Try Again on Net Neutrality
- MWil 13y agoHow can one tell if Netflix is purposely being throttled as opposed to it just being heavy traffic periods?
- twoodfin 13y agoIn my experience all recent Netflix slowness is a product of congestion at peering points between Netflix's ISPs (Cogent, Level 3) and the consumer broadband ISPs (Comcast, Verizon). There's a good article in the WSJ today on the dispute: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CC0QqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304899704579391223249896550.html&ei=MekEU4fvHoWQ1AGWyIDgBg&usg=AFQjCNHyOtOjhwqssjZ8zKDLuKKnWuwy3w&sig2=BDZmNqfIIuvTgeaa3j0ICw&bvm=bv.61535280,d.dmQ https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c... This kind of dispute is not really anything a Network Neutrality regime as currently proposed could fix.
- seanmcq 13y agoThere are a few interesting choices in your comment that make it appear to be an Astroturf: 1. You state that it is "your experience" that "all" recent Netflix slowness is a result of peering contract disputes. Unless you are a network operations engineer at one of these companies how could you have this experience? 2. You link to the WSJ, which is not a credible source when discussing big media companies. That said, you may well be a real person, in which case I would recommend changing your wording on commonly astroturfed topics.
- samelawrence 13y agoI'm not familiar with the term astroturf in this context. Explain?
- positr0n 13y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing Basically it's a play on "grass roots" movements. Powerful groups attempt to mimic grass roots, populist movements by hiring a bunch of employees to pose and regular people and write comments on forums, etc. And as you know, astroturf is fake grass.
- lukateake 13y agoOne definition: "online comment threads and forums are being hijacked by people who aren't what they seem." [1] [1] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2011/feb/23/need-to-protect-internet-from-astroturfing http://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2011/fe...
- rayiner 13y agoIt's pretty easy to cast hand-waving aspersions.
- diminoten 13y agoHow about we stick to facts, instead of bullying ad-hominems, okay?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- crb002 13y agoSome dirty ISPs are refusing to use the CDNs that Netflix makes available to them instead of straightforward packet discrimination. I blame Netflix for not shaming Verizon and such with CDN usage stats.
- twoodfin 13y agoOK, if you want to get into the nitty-gritty: My company uses Cogent as an ISP, which means we were very interested in figuring out why our VPN performance became junk starting around last October. Some traceroutes and extended pings pointed the finger at the Comcast/Cogent peering point in NYC. A little Googling confirmed that we were obviously collateral damage in Netflix's ISPs ongoing disputes with the home broadband ISPs. Since then, it's been easy to correlate poor performance on my Netflix streaming with a a 60ms+ drop across a Cogent/Comcast peering point when I ping one of my company's servers from home. There have been several articles on tech news sites discussing this dispute[1][2]. I linked to the WSJ article because it was fresh this morning and provided a good summary of the state of play. On the other hand, accusations of actual throttling of Netflix traffic on a broadband provider's own network have been frequent but I haven't seen definitive evidence that it's happening on Comcast or Verizon. Personally, I'm pretty pissed that Comcast is taking my $70/month and failing to provide within a factor of 50 of advertised rates to one of the internet's most popular services. They seem to be playing chicken with Netflix and their own customers. It would rebound badly on them if they had decent competition, but franchise agreements are what they are. I don't count "internet points" very often, but it's pretty amusing for someone with a grand total of 137 HN karma to accuse me of being a shill. [1] http://gigaom.com/2013/06/20/verizon-that-peering-flap-about-netflix-is-cogents-fault/ http://gigaom.com/2013/06/20/verizon-that-peering-flap-about... [2] http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/06/verizon-bandwidth-provider-blame-each-other-for-slow-netflix-streaming/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/06/verizo...
- crb002 13y agoSean isn't a shill. He is a tech lead at one of the major media distribution companies who has a zest for getting at hard data instead of speculating. I said it once, I will say it again it is Netflix' fault for not shaming bad ISPs. Netflix controls the source code for their media player and they control their servers. With 99% accuracy they should be able to detect which ISPs are screwing them and release this in a report to consumers.
- twoodfin 13y agoI wasn't accusing Sean of being a shill. I was pointing out the absurdity of his accusation that I might not be a real person, since by the (silly, of course) way that HN keeps track of these things, I've contributed much more here than he has. His comment was condescending and dumb, and he deserved to be called out on it. Think I'm wrong? Argue with me, don't start calling names. Netflix does publish ISP numbers, and the trend over the past 6 months for Comcast and Verizon has been awful, as is shown in the "not credible" WSJ article I linked.
- tptacek 13y agoIn the entire history of HN, nobody has ever made themselves look smarter or their argument more compelling by calling another HN user a shill.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- dinkumthinkum 13y agoI think you're reading too much into it. On HN, it is extremely common for people to make very authoritative sounding posts, especially counter intuitive ones. This is the case whether the topic is net neutrality, Godel's Incompleteness Theorem or the existence of black holes or whatever. You just take it with bags of salt and move on. Also, for many, the Wall Street Journal is not only a credible source but a battle cry. It's just very common on HN, don't think it is automatically astroturfing or pure propaganda (sometimes it is).
- pwarner 13y agoFor super high bandwidth things (video today) it makes sense to serve as close to the end user as possible. This probably means putting the server in your ISP's network. This probably violates what most people think of as net neutrality. But it makes sense from a technical standpoint. I think net neutrality needs to update it's thinking to accommodate this model. Maybe what should be neutral is the pricing for putting a server inside the ISP's network? How do you treat the ISP's own video service? Force it to be a different company that pays the same as netflix to store a server there?
- digikata 13y agoThere may be a technical differences between bad network performance due to some active throttling configuration in the network hardware, and bad network performance because a company doesn't want to make changes to a network interconnect. To the end user sees both cases as "throttling" in terms of poor performance. Net Neutrality should be about how we come to terms with companies that are pure ISPs trying to deliver data their customers want vs companies that stand to increase profits and hurt competitors through active throttling or, in the peering case, simple inaction.
- nostromo 13y agoVPN into an AWS instance. If Netflix is faster, your ISP may be throttling.
- twoodfin 13y agoFirst, most Netflix content isn't served from AWS, but from their CDNs running on a variety of ISPs (lately, a lot of Cogent). Second, the VPN trick doesn't really tell you anything except that the end point of the VPN has a better path to Netflix's CDNs than the route your ISP is using. Your ISP doesn't have to act overloaded routes to the content, which they want Netflix to pay to upgrade.
- jimktrains2 13y ago1) I don't think he meant that it was being served off of AWS, just that was his VPN example. Any in the US should do. 2) VPNs add latency and are still limited by the bandwidth of your connection. Given that Netflix has a decent CDN, in theory your VPN-box shouldn't have all that much better a path to a Netflix server than you do. So, assuming that the paths to netflix are mostly equal, a fast VPN-Netflix experience vs a crappy local connection one would imply the ISP is to blame (for whatever reason malicious or not).
- diminoten 13y agoThe whole point is that Netflix's CDNs aren't "decent". That is, they're probably "decent" (quite good, I'd even imagine), but the load is so high so as to cause traffic problems anyway. The question was "how can I tell if it's Netflix or if it's my ISP?" and the answer is, "You can't."
- Dylan16807 13y agoIf they're actually overloaded, as opposed to there being peering failures to the consumer ISPs, why would there be a difference between VPN and not-VPN?
- MWil 13y agoHow can one tell if Netflix is purposely being throttled as opposed to it just being heavy traffic periods?
- dasmithii 13y agoAlthough legal action against ISP censoring and monopolization sounds beneficial, I'd prefer that government entities remove themselves from open Internet pursuits entirely. It should be by the people, for the people.
- Karunamon 13y ago"The people" don't have any power in this matter.
- drcube 13y agoThey can serve their own content while boycotting Time Warner's.
- falcolas 13y agoAs it stands, no, the people have no such right. Time Warner is currently under no obligation to server any content that they don't want to. That's the problem.
- drcube 13y agoThe point is not that they can avoid using Time Warner's infrastructure, it's that Time Warner will eventually stop offering content if nobody wants to view it. Then they will have no more incentive to throttle third party content. I'm not suggesting that this will work, I'm disputing that the people don't have any power. People almost always have some influence over their situation. That doesn't mean they have a magic bullet, but there is almost always hope.
- diminoten 13y agoTwo things you're forgetting: 1) Internet isn't a luxury anymore, it's a necessity. One can't live in society today with much success without some form of Internet access. 2) The free market is not at work when it comes to the proverbial "pipe" that's been laid - the Internet backbone. Getting a fiber cable to your house, to your neighborhood, and to your city was a task that cost a lot of money, and was paid for in part by the US government and state governments. Despite this fact, companies like Time Warner do not share "their" infrastructure to 3rd party ISPs. This, in turn creates an artificial monopoly where Time Warner unfairly benefits from publicly funded infrastructure. People can't avoid Time Warner, because in many places, they have literally no other option. There is no hope for these folks.
- MBCook 13y agoI thought the ruling said they didn't have the authority to do this without classifying ISPs as common carriers. If they're not going to do that (per the end of the article) then what changed that makes it legal this time?
- gtaylor 13y agoI was wondering that myself. It's going to be very disappointing if these rules are just "suggestions".
- lallysingh 13y agoI took "The commission will not seek to immediately reclassify Internet service as a utility. Mr. Wheeler said that the commission will retain the right to do so, however, if its new rules are approved and appear not to be working adequately." to mean that they'll be using the utility-classification as a lingering threat if the ISPs don't follow along.
- rhizome 13y agoIt's odd to see utility status classified as a punishment for industry. Shouldn't it refer to the technology (water delivery, electricity, possibly internet) and its role in the customers' lives?
- rayiner 13y agoIt is in a way a punishment. What makes a company profitable? Creating things people want and need. What makes them really profitable? Creating things people really want and need. But if you build something people really need, you get classified as a utility, which limits your ability to profit from what you're building and also drives out most of the spark from the industry. Our water pipes are mostly 100+ years old, our electric grid is ancient, most of our power is provided by plants that are decades old, etc. Chicago decommissioned a 110 year old coal plant in 2012. Our utilities are not exactly places bustling with innovation, new ideas, new technologies. Regulation has effectively killed the once promising nuclear industry, for example.
- gz5 13y agoFCC can help open up local access ISP competition. Spectrum reform, permitting dynamic sharing of existing spectrum, etc. Anything else is a band-aid on top of an injury (the ISP monopolies) that actually requires surgery.
- wmf 13y agoAny form of wireless seems like a band-aid compared to wired broadband.
- jfasi 13y agoJust to be clear, this approach is awesome and completely correct. However, it's important to remember that this policy isn't stable. It's liable to change with the FCC chairman. Should the next administration choose to regulate ISPs more loosely, these gains will be reversed. The only solution is for Congress to pass these regulations and enshrine net neutrality as a fundamental principle of internet regulation.
- jwarkentin 13y agoOr we can replace the internet with a mesh net and solve the problem of regulation, centralized control and ISPs altogether :)
- samelawrence 13y agoThis sentence blows my mind, and I don't know enough to understand it. Could someone helpful point me to a relevant Wiki article or something to help me grok how this could be possible?
- jwarkentin 13y agoA mesh network is a distributed network that removes the concept of having a single point of access as we do now. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesh_networking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesh_networking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network
- lrem 13y agoThe basics: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_ad_hoc_network> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_ad_hoc_network> The instability of the network requires a bit different approach to networking in general: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay-tolerant_networking> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay-tolerant_networking> In short: you can do email, with high probability, but more often than not can forget about VoIP.
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- eck 13y agoI worry that the rules will forbid ISPs from having explicit whitelists/blacklists, but will do nothing to prevent them from having undersized and saturated transit links then demand payment for peering with content providers like Netflix. What would happen if consumer ISPs were required, for each customer, to choose a single point (at the metro level, probably) where they are required to peer openly? That allow all Netflix-like companies access to customers, but since it's a point local to the customer, would not impose any long-distance bandwidth requirement on the ISP.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- zacinbusiness 13y agoI wonder how this sort of thing will affect Google's fiber offerings. Say what you will about Google (I don't trust them, but I don't trust anyone...including YOU!) but they run one hell of a tight ship and they are aggressive when it comes to their business interests (note G+ integrations with all other GOOG services). If Google Fiber comes to an area that's controlled by TimeCast (ComWarner?) will Google enter into an aggressive pricing war? I mean there were rumors several years ago that they intended to license the dead air waves to use as free internet. And I'd let Google inject ads into my browser if it meant getting that insane bandwidth - especially if it's for free.
- giantrobothead 13y agoI don't support the merger, but I do support your coinage of the title TimeCast. Make it so!
- massysett 13y agoNegatively. A heavy regulatory burden will raise Google's costs to enter into this business. In particular, any last-mile network that Google would build would be much less valuable to Google if the government requires Google to be "net neutral." Of course Google wants to discriminate in favor of its traffic--and why shouldn't it? It built the network! Government enforcement of "net neutrality" is a great idea if we want to cement the role of the incumbent operators.
- wmf 13y agoDiscrimination does nothing in a network with no congestion. I hope Google isn't planning to operate a congested network.
- joe_the_user 13y agoYour post seems confused. There's nothing in a net neutrality demand that would change Google's costs as such. One might argue that neutrality might impact Google's potential profits - but since Google already has such a large portion of the net's traffic, it's main business model has involved a neutral net and they have been a strong advocate. Since they profit from a large portion of Internet traffic, their aim has been to increase this traffic to thus increase their profits (IE, the ability to shake-down Netflix is not worth anywhere as much as the other ways Google makes money - see: "world's largest advertising company"). On the other hand, some of their motive for entering the ISP business has been make sure the current operators respect net neutrality and don't engaging in sleazy that exploit their monopoly (throttling, ad-substitution, etc). If net neutrality were guaranteed, Google might feel less urgency in entering this business. On the other hand, they aren't doing this at a loss so they may well continue. Also, Google has a vast internal network that carries it's internal traffic. This network isn't part of the Internet at all and won't be affected ever by net neutrality issues.
- etler 13y agoIf the FCC classifies a carrier as a common carrier, does that apply just to the service, or also to the infrastructure itself? If cable companies were made into a common carrier would cable television also have the same regulations applied to it?
- brownbat 13y agoI feel like I could sort of wrap my head around Net Neutrality in a world with just content providers and ISPs. Once people start talking about CDNs and peering agreements, and all those massive middleman infrastructures most consumers don't even know exist, this issue gets orders of magnitude more complex. It seems unregulatable. What is Netflix supposed to do if Verizon just passes data around its network to keep it "full" all the time and refuses to open up good datalines to Netflix CDNs? What is the network supposed to do if a major data provider ends up choking the lines just to move from one endpoint to the other, not even stopping at customers? I doubt any rules would work here except for actual enforcement of anti-monopoly regulations on a locality by locality basis. Maybe Netflix needs to start rolling out fiber and competing directly with ISPs (most of them are already competing by providing content anyway).
- x0054 13y agoThey need to regulate ISPs as common carriers. Anything short of that will result in ISPs constantly lobbing to get more say, until they get what they want. We can NOT rely on the free market to sort the ISPs out because there is 0 competition in that market.
- craftkiller 13y agoWhile I agree that right now there is zero competition in that market, the reason is because we didn't let the free market decide. We gave government approved monopolies to them and now we're seeing the consequences.
- superuser 13y agoCorrect
- x0054 13y agoWhat does a market with competition looks like? 20 cables from 20 different ISPs hanging outside my window? ISP is a utility, like water, electricity, and gas. Maybe once we have good wireless technology it would be different.
- lutusp 13y ago> Maybe once we have good wireless technology it would be different. Or a bunch of satellites in low orbits, which is something Google wants to do. A number of companies have tried this idea, so far without economic success, but as time passes it's becoming more practical, and eventually it will probably become feasible. Once it does, many companies will do it, and you will be able to choose which company you want to get satellite Internet service from. Finally there will be competition.
- x0054 13y agoThe problem with low orbit satellites is the backbone connection speed. The way I understand it, the individual connections to each subscriber isn't really a problem. But say you have a satellite serving 10k clients at one time. If you have a service with any scale, that's realistic. To provide a good quality service to those users you need to get at least a 200 gigabit connection to an Internet backbone. Getting that over fiber isn't difficult, but over air, not sure if the technology is there yet. I am so looking foreword to satellite Internet, mainly because my new home is off the grid, and I have no Internet at all there. The best option I found so far gives me 25 gigs per month for $70. I would gladly pay $140 for 50+ gb but that's not even an option. Unlimited, fast, and ubiquitous Internet would be amazing, but in my research I have yet to see any company that's even close to offering that. If any one can recommend a satellite Internet company with high or now bandwidth caps, I am all ears. My budget is something under $200/m for unlimited or 200+gb/m.