4 ms·

I don't think saying "nuh uh, it's a slow lane" is going to be a real winning argument. Simply accusing the other side of doing the complete opposite of what t

I don't think saying "nuh uh, it's a slow lane" is going to be a real winning argument. Simply accusing the other side of doing the complete opposite of what they claim to do needs a lot more political savvy. Maybe try pointing out how manufacturers sell the same printer to homes and businesses at different price points, except that the home version is deliberately slowed down instead of the business version being any more advanced. I think that's the (legitimate) fear you are trying to express.

api_or_ipa 13y ago
can you source a reference to the printer reference? I'm interested in reading more about such phenomena.
- akiselev 13y ago
  I can't speak to the printer case but silicon manufacturers do this to an absurd degree with their SKUs. See the GTX 690 to Quadro conversion hack [1]. [1] http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Nvidia-GTX-690-Quadro-K5000,21656.html http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Nvidia-GTX-690-Quadro-K5000...
  - TTPrograms 13y ago
    There are a few cases of this, but mostly this is done as a way to deal with variations in manufacturing as explained above. Furthermore, from that article: > We do know if the system sees the card as a Quadro K5000 card, but we cannot be sure about whether it actually performs like one or if it is entirely bug-free. You change the Device ID and the OS thinks it's something else, sure, but you could do that with anything with comparable specification.
- danielweber 13y ago
  Honestly, I'm remembering a Joel On Software article that doesn't precisely quote its source. Your question needs a solid answer if someone tries to use it to argue for net neutrality.
gizmo686 13y ago
Isn't this what CPU manufacturers do already. Instead of making different chips (which increases cost because of increased complexity in the manufacturing process), they make a single chip and enable/disable parts of it based on how it is sold. Also, I think the closer analogy would be slowing down the printer based on where the document you are printing comes from (still not a perfect analogy). You analogy seems more like ISPs offering faster service to end-users who pay a higher price.
- nsrango 13y ago
  With respect to CPUs this is not entirely true. Processors with different clock frequencies roll off of the same assembly line but small variations in manufacturing change the quality of the yield quite a bit. This includes the side of the wafer a chip is on or how far the chip was from the center of the wafer. As a result, processor manufacturers test their ICs and sell them based on how each one performs
  - vxNsr 13y ago
    This, what sometimes happens as a result is intel or nvidia sells a chip that "technically" is quad core, but they sell it as a dual because the tolerance is not there, and what some modders figured out was a way to turn those two cores back on, essentially getting a slightly less reliable quad core CPU for really cheap.
  - chinpokomon 13y ago
    It's called binning. Sometimes though, when the yield for a line is really good, too many processors come off the line that can clock higher, but to match demand, better chips are binned to slower clock rates. The manufacturer knows that they won't be able to sell all the chips at premium prices, so they purposefully under clock their full potential. Similarly, device manufactures produce one line of a product, like a graphics card or a raid controller card, and through a combination of 0-ohm resisters, firmware, and/or drivers, produce a budget line product that doesn't have all the same features as the premium product or brand. Software vendors do the same. Windows NT 4 was notable in that you could change from the Workstation to a Server SKU by changing a couple of registry settings. There was a watchdog process that would actively monitor those settings and was to prevent that sort of modification, but it could be defeated. The IIS that shipped as the Option Pack for NT 4 would either give you a full IIS install or if installed on Windows 95/98, it would give you Personal Web Server. The proposed FCC rules and what the likes of Comcast would like are different, but I can see why they might think it is a similar practice. Comcast is an ISP. Upstream providers send traffic to their customers and if the customer has paid for the bandwidth, they receive the content at their subscriber rates. Level 3 is one of these backbone providers. Back in 2010, Netflix negotiated with Level 3 to put their servers on the backbone so that subscribers could get the content they were streaming. Instead of sending the traffic through, Comcast throttled the traffic and demanded that Netflix paid them as well to deliver the traffic. Essentially, Comcast wants to earn money on both sides of the data transaction and is essentially holding the network traffic for ransom. This was a significant change in how the Internet works and how providers are compensated. As a subscriber, there is nothing you can do. Netflix has reluctantly contracted with Comcast and magically overnight bandwidth improved. This is one way you know that it wasn't a technical problem and is instead extortion. The FCC proposed rules are setting up a Government sanctioned extortion ring. There are several significant problems with this type of throttling. For one, customers aren't receiving the full bandwidth they have paid for. Despite having the capacity to transmit data to the consumer they restrict the throughput. If the Comcast/Time-Warner merger goes through, they will own the majority of US subscribers. This would make it impossible for smaller ISPs to compete and negotiate similar terms, but CTW will have even more leverage. Furthermore, any other Internet service company that might want to compete with Netflix will be unable to pay the ransom and won't be able to deliver similar traffic. This locks out most startups and only the wealthiest companies with the greatest capital costs will be able to enter the market. In essence it stifles innovation. All the while, any NBCUniversal (a Comcast company) service likely won't see these same restrictions. Comcast is in a very dangerous position in that they may be able to directly monitor most of the US Internet traffic, they will be able to control the services subscribers can access, and they will have a significant advantage over any competition. The question we should all be asking if either the merger succeeds or if these new rules are passed and implemented, is what does the US Government stand to gain?
dpe82 13y ago
The SOPA fight was so successful because the rallying call was super clear: Don't Censor The Internet! Was SOPA strictly censorship? Well, not precisely - but that would have been basically the result. You could go on for an hour about all the details of the bill's mechanisms and how it breaks this thing called DNS which is a really important system that assigns names to numbers and that's bad because DNSSEC is important and we really need to get internet security right... and by the end nobody is listening anymore. Calling it censorship was close enough, and it triggered an immediate and negative reaction strong enough to get people to listen and act. Likewise with the FCC proposal. You could go on for an hour talking about how IP routing works through internet backbone providers and how when an ISP doesn't upgrade their interconnects you get congestion which causes dropped packets which increases TCP latency and that's bad for new websites that depend on backbone providers because that's how the internet is structured and it's super important and.... now nobody is listening. "Slow Lane" achieves something similar to "censorship" - an immediate and negative reaction, hopefully strong enough to get people to act. Plus a visual demonstration for users already frustrated with the broadband they pay too much for really drives it home. Is the FCC explicitly creating a "slow lane"? Well, not precisely. But it's the result. So let's call it that.

api_or_ipa 13y ago

can you source a reference to the printer reference? I'm interested in reading more about such phenomena.

akiselev 13y ago
I can't speak to the printer case but silicon manufacturers do this to an absurd degree with their SKUs. See the GTX 690 to Quadro conversion hack [1]. [1] http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Nvidia-GTX-690-Quadro-K5000,21656.html http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Nvidia-GTX-690-Quadro-K5000...
- TTPrograms 13y ago
  There are a few cases of this, but mostly this is done as a way to deal with variations in manufacturing as explained above. Furthermore, from that article: > We do know if the system sees the card as a Quadro K5000 card, but we cannot be sure about whether it actually performs like one or if it is entirely bug-free. You change the Device ID and the OS thinks it's something else, sure, but you could do that with anything with comparable specification.
danielweber 13y ago
Honestly, I'm remembering a Joel On Software article that doesn't precisely quote its source. Your question needs a solid answer if someone tries to use it to argue for net neutrality.

gizmo686 13y ago

Isn't this what CPU manufacturers do already. Instead of making different chips (which increases cost because of increased complexity in the manufacturing process), they make a single chip and enable/disable parts of it based on how it is sold. Also, I think the closer analogy would be slowing down the printer based on where the document you are printing comes from (still not a perfect analogy). You analogy seems more like ISPs offering faster service to end-users who pay a higher price.

nsrango 13y ago
With respect to CPUs this is not entirely true. Processors with different clock frequencies roll off of the same assembly line but small variations in manufacturing change the quality of the yield quite a bit. This includes the side of the wafer a chip is on or how far the chip was from the center of the wafer. As a result, processor manufacturers test their ICs and sell them based on how each one performs
- vxNsr 13y ago
  This, what sometimes happens as a result is intel or nvidia sells a chip that "technically" is quad core, but they sell it as a dual because the tolerance is not there, and what some modders figured out was a way to turn those two cores back on, essentially getting a slightly less reliable quad core CPU for really cheap.
- chinpokomon 13y ago
  It's called binning. Sometimes though, when the yield for a line is really good, too many processors come off the line that can clock higher, but to match demand, better chips are binned to slower clock rates. The manufacturer knows that they won't be able to sell all the chips at premium prices, so they purposefully under clock their full potential. Similarly, device manufactures produce one line of a product, like a graphics card or a raid controller card, and through a combination of 0-ohm resisters, firmware, and/or drivers, produce a budget line product that doesn't have all the same features as the premium product or brand. Software vendors do the same. Windows NT 4 was notable in that you could change from the Workstation to a Server SKU by changing a couple of registry settings. There was a watchdog process that would actively monitor those settings and was to prevent that sort of modification, but it could be defeated. The IIS that shipped as the Option Pack for NT 4 would either give you a full IIS install or if installed on Windows 95/98, it would give you Personal Web Server. The proposed FCC rules and what the likes of Comcast would like are different, but I can see why they might think it is a similar practice. Comcast is an ISP. Upstream providers send traffic to their customers and if the customer has paid for the bandwidth, they receive the content at their subscriber rates. Level 3 is one of these backbone providers. Back in 2010, Netflix negotiated with Level 3 to put their servers on the backbone so that subscribers could get the content they were streaming. Instead of sending the traffic through, Comcast throttled the traffic and demanded that Netflix paid them as well to deliver the traffic. Essentially, Comcast wants to earn money on both sides of the data transaction and is essentially holding the network traffic for ransom. This was a significant change in how the Internet works and how providers are compensated. As a subscriber, there is nothing you can do. Netflix has reluctantly contracted with Comcast and magically overnight bandwidth improved. This is one way you know that it wasn't a technical problem and is instead extortion. The FCC proposed rules are setting up a Government sanctioned extortion ring. There are several significant problems with this type of throttling. For one, customers aren't receiving the full bandwidth they have paid for. Despite having the capacity to transmit data to the consumer they restrict the throughput. If the Comcast/Time-Warner merger goes through, they will own the majority of US subscribers. This would make it impossible for smaller ISPs to compete and negotiate similar terms, but CTW will have even more leverage. Furthermore, any other Internet service company that might want to compete with Netflix will be unable to pay the ransom and won't be able to deliver similar traffic. This locks out most startups and only the wealthiest companies with the greatest capital costs will be able to enter the market. In essence it stifles innovation. All the while, any NBCUniversal (a Comcast company) service likely won't see these same restrictions. Comcast is in a very dangerous position in that they may be able to directly monitor most of the US Internet traffic, they will be able to control the services subscribers can access, and they will have a significant advantage over any competition. The question we should all be asking if either the merger succeeds or if these new rules are passed and implemented, is what does the US Government stand to gain?

dpe82 13y ago

The SOPA fight was so successful because the rallying call was super clear: Don't Censor The Internet! Was SOPA strictly censorship? Well, not precisely - but that would have been basically the result. You could go on for an hour about all the details of the bill's mechanisms and how it breaks this thing called DNS which is a really important system that assigns names to numbers and that's bad because DNSSEC is important and we really need to get internet security right... and by the end nobody is listening anymore. Calling it censorship was close enough, and it triggered an immediate and negative reaction strong enough to get people to listen and act. Likewise with the FCC proposal. You could go on for an hour talking about how IP routing works through internet backbone providers and how when an ISP doesn't upgrade their interconnects you get congestion which causes dropped packets which increases TCP latency and that's bad for new websites that depend on backbone providers because that's how the internet is structured and it's super important and.... now nobody is listening. "Slow Lane" achieves something similar to "censorship" - an immediate and negative reaction, hopefully strong enough to get people to act. Plus a visual demonstration for users already frustrated with the broadband they pay too much for really drives it home. Is the FCC explicitly creating a "slow lane"? Well, not precisely. But it's the result. So let's call it that.