10 ms·

Protecting Net Neutrality and the Open Internet

159 points by sarreph 12y ago

dang 12y ago
Url changed from http://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2014/05/06/mozilla-proposes-third-way-on-net-neutrality/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2014/05/06/mozill.... HN prefers original sources.
- sarreph 12y ago
  Thanks for the catch on this :)
themartorana 12y ago
It's not like this is novel. Every person with any knowledge of the situation (and no financial ties to ISPs) have been calling for the telecommunications services classification for years from the FCC. As I remember it, the FCC neutrality rule strike down would have been totally avoidable if they had set the classification to begin with. Will Mozilla "officially" proposing this make any real waves? I guess as a large organization, maybe their example will at least open up the door for other companies to join Mozilla's proposal? Edit: I get the "last mile" distinction in their proposal, but if the entire idea of Internet delivery was classified under common carrier laws, that would cover last-mile.
- twoodfin 12y ago
  Edit: I get the "last mile" distinction in their proposal, but if the entire idea of Internet delivery was classified under common carrier laws, that would cover last-mile. "Common carrier" worked when we had a (true monopoly) telephone system where touchtone was considered a radical, once-in-a-decade technical advancement. What incentive does Comcast have to, say, push standard bandwidth to 100Mbit while being paid regulated, low margin rates as a dumb pipe provider? Mozilla's proposal is interesting, but I think it's probably too clever by half: Even if the FCC wanted to get into the business of setting "fair" rates for "remote delivery", I think Congress would prefer they didn't, and that matters.
  - nightpool 12y ago
    > What incentive does Comcast have to, say, push standard bandwidth to 100Mbit while being paid regulated, low margin rates as a dumb pipe provider? To be more explicit: Mozilla's proposal solves this. ISPs get to charge whatever prices they want to consumers, which covers the cost of 100mb bandwidth and technological innovation, but to companies they have to act like a dumb pipe and ensure equal access. This means Comcast has an incentive for innovation even in a monopolistic situation—They can charge users more money. I'm not sure if this would solve the problem with BitTorrent though...
_greim_ 12y ago
I doubt we'll ever get the net neutrality we want until we swallow the pill of paying for what we use—like we do for other utilities—instead of some imaginary total capacity. How do we make sure transfer amounts are monitored fairly? How do we make sure our software is accessing the network only when we want it to? Those are technical challenges we'll need to solve. But if we want ISPs to play fair, then we must absorb the simple concept: If you stream Netflix all day, you should pay more than the lady next door who checks Facebook a couple times per week, even if the bits are flowing at the same rate.
- existencebox 12y ago
  Honest question; if a very naive one (Since I haven't thought about it very hard...) But why wouldn't a very simplistic metering be acceptable by that definition? I'd be totally fine having my internet metered, if the costs were commensurate to the service provided, and the service was as regular as other metered services (e.g. water/power) I've heard why the common carrier argument isn't "the best solution", but I don't fully understand why metering hasn't been championed as a way to have the two sides (consumers and the companies) come to some common ground, or at least "call the bluff" of the companies using justifications like the above ("people use internet differently", "people will never use this amount"); so why not just see, and charge accordingly?
  - Solarsail 12y ago
    Metering is used in Canada. Many have criticized the policy as backwards, unfair, and hampering creativity compared to other countries. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/tech-news/a-metered-internet-is-a-regulatory-failure/article565228/ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/tech-news/a-metere... Tho I do agree that, at a first glance, it seems to have extremely good correlation with the cost of the service provided.
    - existencebox 12y ago
      They present a counterargument of the "heavy user", dismiss it, and don't seem to explain why it's not a fair example of why metering is useful. It seems that the main complaint of the article is simply that the overage charges are insane, as they are for cell. I agree. I also think that it's "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" to suggest an entire reversal of policy (when observing what unmetered use results in via the US) when a more iterative response would seem to be, "why don't we regulate costs to ensure that this pseudo-utility is actually accessable at a basic level (that grows with the times) to all people?" I'll have to tag another question on here, but is there any system in place for utilities to prevent, say, my water company for charging me 300$ per gallon? I'd assume there's simply some degree of regulation, why not apply that fix elsewhere; have a "hybrid utility" rather than treating it as all black and white.
joelthelion 12y ago
Could someone explain like I'm five? This is fairly technical for anyone not familiar with telecom regulations.
kokey 12y ago
I can't help but think this is one potential super cluster of potential unintended consequences, if it ever happens. Net neutrality implementation, or enforcement, has been in limbo for a very long time, and exploitation as a result of the lack of such action has been mostly theoretical. Then there are all these proposals that doesn't consider many things, like this one from Mozilla which excludes interconnects and peering, how would we deal with discrimination exercised through simply not peering or interconnecting? Or, if that gets to be 'made neutral', what's the point of a CDN apart from reducing latency? Then, if I run a video service from Seattle will an ISP in Miami be forced to make sure they have an adequately sized interconnects with me, or a provider one tier above them have to? Also, it's not like there is discrimination right now, how many domestic access providers allow outbound access on port 25, or multicast, or BGP? What about all the research with game theoretical models about this? What about other countries that has no neutrality legislation on the horizon? What about the fact that commercial internet started less neutral (before PPP/SLIP) with limited access to limited protocols and ended up more neutral over time without intervention apart from customer demand? What if the last mile is wireless and certain services would become viable only if it's restricted? What if I want to provide $1/month access to only Wikipedia? To me, personally, it sounds like the problem net neutrality is supposed to deal with is badly defined, or a symptom of another set of problems, and the solutions are defined even worse and has the potential to create even more problems.
- AnthonyMouse 12y ago
  > how would we deal with discrimination exercised through simply not peering or interconnecting? The simple solution is to require last mile ISPs to do settlement-free peering with anyone who brings traffic for their customers into their facilities. > Or, if that gets to be 'made neutral', what's the point of a CDN apart from reducing latency? The point of a CDN is that it's more efficient. By having facilities closer to the end users, a CDN has lower costs and could charge customers less to deliver the same amount of content than you would have to pay e.g. Level 3 for that amount of transit. > Then, if I run a video service from Seattle will an ISP in Miami be forced to make sure they have an adequately sized interconnects with me, or a provider one tier above them have to? If you run a video service from Seattle then you still have to somehow bring your traffic to Miami before you could peer with an ISP in Miami. If you do that by paying a transit provider then obviously the transit provider will have to supply the amount of capacity you're paying them to get and they'll charge you accordingly. > Also, it's not like there is discrimination right now, how many domestic access providers allow outbound access on port 25, or multicast, or BGP? Blocking port 25 by default is an anti-spam measure. In general if you call your ISP and ask them to unblock it, they will. They're not blocking it because they don't want you use it, they're blocking it because you want them to. BGP is pretty much the same deal. And requiring last mile ISPs to support multicast would probably be a good thing. > What about all the research with game theoretical models about this? Such as? > What about other countries that has no neutrality legislation on the horizon? If we had to do what everybody else is doing then we would have to have government-operated ISPs or local loop unbundling. > What about the fact that commercial internet started less neutral (before PPP/SLIP) with limited access to limited protocols and ended up more neutral over time without intervention apart from customer demand? That happened in the dial up days when there was more competition between ISPs because the "last mile" was literally the phone network. It was a result of de facto local loop unbundling. > What if the last mile is wireless and certain services would become viable only if it's restricted? What services would those be? > What if I want to provide $1/month access to only Wikipedia? An enterprise that builds a last mile ISP solely to provide access to Wikipedia for $1/month is not a thing in any danger of occurring.
zackmorris 12y ago
I think the far distant future internet will distinguish between cached and uncached data, especially for international and interplanetary communication. So any kind of data that can be easily hashed and disseminated over ad hoc networks will be basically free and unstoppable (BitTorrent and Netflix will be the same thing). But data that has to be sent from scratch instead of referencing a hash will have to pay some kind of toll, albeit a small one. It's simple to see the endgame of this: there will be an economic incentive to favor storage formats that reference existing data whenever possible. What’s really remarkable to me is that ISPs don’t seem to understand this, and by killing net neutrality they are hastening the demise of their own business model. It’s going to be a little rough for 5-10 years, but when everyone’s cell phone has p2p gigabit wifi, I find it a little hard to imagine that ISPs will even exist as a business, outside of the government or things like banking where a hard line/low latency is desirable. So writing this out now, I see that latency is everything, so a few decades from now, what low latency industries are they hoping to capitalize on? Maybe gaming, surgery, telepresence, high frequency trading.. Netflix is just a cover story.
marincounty 12y ago
1. Someone needs to expain ths topic better. 2. There's too much confusion right now, and I think it's an important topic. 3. Right now--I don't trust Comcast in any senerio.
- guelo 12y ago
  Plus, there's paid shills here on HN attempting to confuse the issue.
guelo 12y ago
We need a revolt to protect the internet. Washington is overrun by money but if people raise enough of a ruckus they do somewhat listen, c.f SOPA. If net neutrality is too big of a leap for the so-called "libertarian", anti regulation crowd than we need to break up Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, etc. so we can have some actual last-mile competition.
Istof 12y ago
With this "fast lane", could I theoretically get "for free" 1gbps while paying for 1mbps?
EGreg 12y ago
Not to be tok contrarian here, but isn't there a massive moral hazard (eg one that Netflix takes advantage of) in enforcing Net Neutrality?

159 points by sarreph 12y ago

dang 12y ago

Url changed from http://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2014/05/06/mozilla-proposes-third-way-on-net-neutrality/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2014/05/06/mozill.... HN prefers original sources.

sarreph 12y ago
Thanks for the catch on this :)

themartorana 12y ago

It's not like this is novel. Every person with any knowledge of the situation (and no financial ties to ISPs) have been calling for the telecommunications services classification for years from the FCC. As I remember it, the FCC neutrality rule strike down would have been totally avoidable if they had set the classification to begin with. Will Mozilla "officially" proposing this make any real waves? I guess as a large organization, maybe their example will at least open up the door for other companies to join Mozilla's proposal? Edit: I get the "last mile" distinction in their proposal, but if the entire idea of Internet delivery was classified under common carrier laws, that would cover last-mile.

twoodfin 12y ago
Edit: I get the "last mile" distinction in their proposal, but if the entire idea of Internet delivery was classified under common carrier laws, that would cover last-mile. "Common carrier" worked when we had a (true monopoly) telephone system where touchtone was considered a radical, once-in-a-decade technical advancement. What incentive does Comcast have to, say, push standard bandwidth to 100Mbit while being paid regulated, low margin rates as a dumb pipe provider? Mozilla's proposal is interesting, but I think it's probably too clever by half: Even if the FCC wanted to get into the business of setting "fair" rates for "remote delivery", I think Congress would prefer they didn't, and that matters.
- nightpool 12y ago
  > What incentive does Comcast have to, say, push standard bandwidth to 100Mbit while being paid regulated, low margin rates as a dumb pipe provider? To be more explicit: Mozilla's proposal solves this. ISPs get to charge whatever prices they want to consumers, which covers the cost of 100mb bandwidth and technological innovation, but to companies they have to act like a dumb pipe and ensure equal access. This means Comcast has an incentive for innovation even in a monopolistic situation—They can charge users more money. I'm not sure if this would solve the problem with BitTorrent though...

_greim_ 12y ago

I doubt we'll ever get the net neutrality we want until we swallow the pill of paying for what we use—like we do for other utilities—instead of some imaginary total capacity. How do we make sure transfer amounts are monitored fairly? How do we make sure our software is accessing the network only when we want it to? Those are technical challenges we'll need to solve. But if we want ISPs to play fair, then we must absorb the simple concept: If you stream Netflix all day, you should pay more than the lady next door who checks Facebook a couple times per week, even if the bits are flowing at the same rate.

existencebox 12y ago
Honest question; if a very naive one (Since I haven't thought about it very hard...) But why wouldn't a very simplistic metering be acceptable by that definition? I'd be totally fine having my internet metered, if the costs were commensurate to the service provided, and the service was as regular as other metered services (e.g. water/power) I've heard why the common carrier argument isn't "the best solution", but I don't fully understand why metering hasn't been championed as a way to have the two sides (consumers and the companies) come to some common ground, or at least "call the bluff" of the companies using justifications like the above ("people use internet differently", "people will never use this amount"); so why not just see, and charge accordingly?
- Solarsail 12y ago
  Metering is used in Canada. Many have criticized the policy as backwards, unfair, and hampering creativity compared to other countries. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/tech-news/a-metered-internet-is-a-regulatory-failure/article565228/ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/tech-news/a-metere... Tho I do agree that, at a first glance, it seems to have extremely good correlation with the cost of the service provided.
  - existencebox 12y ago
    They present a counterargument of the "heavy user", dismiss it, and don't seem to explain why it's not a fair example of why metering is useful. It seems that the main complaint of the article is simply that the overage charges are insane, as they are for cell. I agree. I also think that it's "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" to suggest an entire reversal of policy (when observing what unmetered use results in via the US) when a more iterative response would seem to be, "why don't we regulate costs to ensure that this pseudo-utility is actually accessable at a basic level (that grows with the times) to all people?" I'll have to tag another question on here, but is there any system in place for utilities to prevent, say, my water company for charging me 300$ per gallon? I'd assume there's simply some degree of regulation, why not apply that fix elsewhere; have a "hybrid utility" rather than treating it as all black and white.

joelthelion 12y ago

Could someone explain like I'm five? This is fairly technical for anyone not familiar with telecom regulations.

kokey 12y ago

I can't help but think this is one potential super cluster of potential unintended consequences, if it ever happens. Net neutrality implementation, or enforcement, has been in limbo for a very long time, and exploitation as a result of the lack of such action has been mostly theoretical. Then there are all these proposals that doesn't consider many things, like this one from Mozilla which excludes interconnects and peering, how would we deal with discrimination exercised through simply not peering or interconnecting? Or, if that gets to be 'made neutral', what's the point of a CDN apart from reducing latency? Then, if I run a video service from Seattle will an ISP in Miami be forced to make sure they have an adequately sized interconnects with me, or a provider one tier above them have to? Also, it's not like there is discrimination right now, how many domestic access providers allow outbound access on port 25, or multicast, or BGP? What about all the research with game theoretical models about this? What about other countries that has no neutrality legislation on the horizon? What about the fact that commercial internet started less neutral (before PPP/SLIP) with limited access to limited protocols and ended up more neutral over time without intervention apart from customer demand? What if the last mile is wireless and certain services would become viable only if it's restricted? What if I want to provide $1/month access to only Wikipedia? To me, personally, it sounds like the problem net neutrality is supposed to deal with is badly defined, or a symptom of another set of problems, and the solutions are defined even worse and has the potential to create even more problems.

AnthonyMouse 12y ago
> how would we deal with discrimination exercised through simply not peering or interconnecting? The simple solution is to require last mile ISPs to do settlement-free peering with anyone who brings traffic for their customers into their facilities. > Or, if that gets to be 'made neutral', what's the point of a CDN apart from reducing latency? The point of a CDN is that it's more efficient. By having facilities closer to the end users, a CDN has lower costs and could charge customers less to deliver the same amount of content than you would have to pay e.g. Level 3 for that amount of transit. > Then, if I run a video service from Seattle will an ISP in Miami be forced to make sure they have an adequately sized interconnects with me, or a provider one tier above them have to? If you run a video service from Seattle then you still have to somehow bring your traffic to Miami before you could peer with an ISP in Miami. If you do that by paying a transit provider then obviously the transit provider will have to supply the amount of capacity you're paying them to get and they'll charge you accordingly. > Also, it's not like there is discrimination right now, how many domestic access providers allow outbound access on port 25, or multicast, or BGP? Blocking port 25 by default is an anti-spam measure. In general if you call your ISP and ask them to unblock it, they will. They're not blocking it because they don't want you use it, they're blocking it because you want them to. BGP is pretty much the same deal. And requiring last mile ISPs to support multicast would probably be a good thing. > What about all the research with game theoretical models about this? Such as? > What about other countries that has no neutrality legislation on the horizon? If we had to do what everybody else is doing then we would have to have government-operated ISPs or local loop unbundling. > What about the fact that commercial internet started less neutral (before PPP/SLIP) with limited access to limited protocols and ended up more neutral over time without intervention apart from customer demand? That happened in the dial up days when there was more competition between ISPs because the "last mile" was literally the phone network. It was a result of de facto local loop unbundling. > What if the last mile is wireless and certain services would become viable only if it's restricted? What services would those be? > What if I want to provide $1/month access to only Wikipedia? An enterprise that builds a last mile ISP solely to provide access to Wikipedia for $1/month is not a thing in any danger of occurring.

zackmorris 12y ago

I think the far distant future internet will distinguish between cached and uncached data, especially for international and interplanetary communication. So any kind of data that can be easily hashed and disseminated over ad hoc networks will be basically free and unstoppable (BitTorrent and Netflix will be the same thing). But data that has to be sent from scratch instead of referencing a hash will have to pay some kind of toll, albeit a small one. It's simple to see the endgame of this: there will be an economic incentive to favor storage formats that reference existing data whenever possible. What’s really remarkable to me is that ISPs don’t seem to understand this, and by killing net neutrality they are hastening the demise of their own business model. It’s going to be a little rough for 5-10 years, but when everyone’s cell phone has p2p gigabit wifi, I find it a little hard to imagine that ISPs will even exist as a business, outside of the government or things like banking where a hard line/low latency is desirable. So writing this out now, I see that latency is everything, so a few decades from now, what low latency industries are they hoping to capitalize on? Maybe gaming, surgery, telepresence, high frequency trading.. Netflix is just a cover story.

marincounty 12y ago

1. Someone needs to expain ths topic better. 2. There's too much confusion right now, and I think it's an important topic. 3. Right now--I don't trust Comcast in any senerio.

guelo 12y ago
Plus, there's paid shills here on HN attempting to confuse the issue.

guelo 12y ago

We need a revolt to protect the internet. Washington is overrun by money but if people raise enough of a ruckus they do somewhat listen, c.f SOPA. If net neutrality is too big of a leap for the so-called "libertarian", anti regulation crowd than we need to break up Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, etc. so we can have some actual last-mile competition.

Istof 12y ago

With this "fast lane", could I theoretically get "for free" 1gbps while paying for 1mbps?

EGreg 12y ago

Not to be tok contrarian here, but isn't there a massive moral hazard (eg one that Netflix takes advantage of) in enforcing Net Neutrality?