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What I was actually sold from my ISP and I'm currently paying for was indeed unlimited access to everything on the Internet. There is no such service. Not only

What I was actually sold from my ISP and I'm currently paying for was indeed unlimited access to everything on the Internet. There is no such service. Not only does it not exist, it cannot exist. No ISP can provide that. Any independent network on the Internet can start dropping your packets tomorrow for any reason. Including a lazy admin filtering out your entire country. Or due to a copyright agreement. Happens all the time. If they really promised "unlimited access to everything on the Internet", then you were misled but I doubt their lawyer would allow for it. If the bill can be split between me, my ISP, and Netflix then I want my bill lowered if my ISP is going to charge Netflix to deliver bits I requested Why? It may not be increased. Or it may be increased less than it otherwise would. Or it may be jacked to whatever amount they can get out of you. That's the whole point. There is no pre-ordained price for carrying bits. There is no pre-ordained split between carriers and end points. There is no pre-ordained service level. It's all just a matter of agreement between parties. So now they're negotiating. I don't understand however why some believe they have moral highground because "they already paid." Everyone already paid something.

tjgq 12y ago
> There is no such service. Not only does it not exist, it cannot exist. No ISP can provide that. Any independent network on the Internet can start dropping your packets tomorrow for any reason. Including a lazy admin filtering out your entire country. Or due to a copyright agreement. Happens all the time. The point of net neutrality is that, while ISPs should not be held liable for what other entities in the network do, they shouldn't engage in those practices themselves. In logical terms, that's a perfectly reasonable goal.
- spindritf 12y ago
  That's a nice goal but it doesn't answer the crucial question: who pays for the expansion to accommodate traffic generated by Netflix? Netflix? Comcast's subscribers? All of them or only the ones using Netflix? Level3? Comcast's investors? Tax payers? Some combination of the above? And if so, in what proportion? This is completely impervious to "I already paid and I demand..." argument because everyone listed there already paid and wants something. Preferably cheaper or paid by someone else.
  - Karunamon 12y ago
    >who pays for the expansion to accommodate traffic generated by Netflix? They are already being paid - that is the problem. They are trying to double dip. A visual aid (not the real arrangement, but good enough for discussion: Netflix <-> Level3 <-> Comcast <-> Me Netflix pays money to Level3 for an internet connection. I pay money to Comcast for an internet connection. Leve3 and Comcast have an agreement to connect to each other for the purpose of serving their respective customers. The concept of "an internet connection", this thing that we're both paying for, implies the interconnects working together to deliver, in good faith, what their respective customers have paid for - i.e. access to arbitrary services at best effort speeds. The players have already been paid everything they deserve at this point. If they feel they are not being paid enough, they should raise their prices. Comcast, they decide they want to double dip and charge Netflix for something I am already paying for. They are no longer playing in good faith, and I argue not delivering what I pay them to do. Why? Comcast's argument carries the sneaky assertion that they deserve money from Netflix since Netflix consumes such a huge portion of their capacity. Except that doesn't wash - it is their customers requesting those resources and consuming capacity. They could throttle their customers instead of Netflix, and this would even be defensible, but it would get them pilloried in the marketplace. But that assumes it's a capacity issue in the first place.. But in the end, it isn't. That is a damn lie perpetrated by the ISPs. It is a politics problem. Note how, when Netflix agreed to the demand for protection money, their capacity problem with Comcast went away literally overnight? Comcast either has an army of the best and fastest network engineers in the entire world (and I invite you to speak to a Comcast user if you think that's true), or already have the gear and configurations in place and just won't switch it on. There is no cost for expansion here. It's money grubbing, pure and simple. ISPs have always been expected to steadily grow their capacity and speeds over time, and just now Comcast decides they have an issue with it? It's BS. It's a business decision - some suit decided they could charge twice for the same thing and do no extra work.
    - spindritf 12y ago
      They're not being paid already because the explosion of streaming video traffic is a relatively new and ongoing process. They expect to be paid more for moving more bits. Now, you might expect the capacity of the network to simply increase as a matter of technological progress. But it's not that crazy of a notion to charge more for doing more. They could make their own customers pay but they're trying to shift it to Netflix, and indirectly to Netflix users. There's nothing fundamentally unfair about it. The answer that they shouldn't charge anyone more amounts to financing the expansion by their investors (in the form of lower returns). It's not a political problem, it's an economic one. All of those companies are after money, whether in additional fees or lower costs.
talmand 12y ago
I don't understand your point. If my computer hooked up to the internet can request traffic from another computer it sees on the internet then from my perspective I have that connection. You are trying to somehow say that an ISP offering unlimited access to the internet has to be held responsible for a server that refuses to be seen by my computer. I'm not making that claim. You are trying to refute a claim that isn't being made. I see "unlimited access" to the internet as being my ISP is not preventing me from accessing what can be found on the internet. You are twisting definitions around to make it mean how you wish it to be defined. It's not like I'm claiming "unlimited access" to public roads includes private driveways. If there were no public servers at all on the internet, an ISP can still offer unlimited access to the internet despite there being nothing to see. Also, there's a difference between "everyone paid something" and "everyone paid something twice". Your own argument supports the notion, it's a negotiation and our request in the negotiations is that bits are not paid for twice in the same transaction.

tjgq 12y ago

> There is no such service. Not only does it not exist, it cannot exist. No ISP can provide that. Any independent network on the Internet can start dropping your packets tomorrow for any reason. Including a lazy admin filtering out your entire country. Or due to a copyright agreement. Happens all the time. The point of net neutrality is that, while ISPs should not be held liable for what other entities in the network do, they shouldn't engage in those practices themselves. In logical terms, that's a perfectly reasonable goal.

spindritf 12y ago
That's a nice goal but it doesn't answer the crucial question: who pays for the expansion to accommodate traffic generated by Netflix? Netflix? Comcast's subscribers? All of them or only the ones using Netflix? Level3? Comcast's investors? Tax payers? Some combination of the above? And if so, in what proportion? This is completely impervious to "I already paid and I demand..." argument because everyone listed there already paid and wants something. Preferably cheaper or paid by someone else.
- Karunamon 12y ago
  >who pays for the expansion to accommodate traffic generated by Netflix? They are already being paid - that is the problem. They are trying to double dip. A visual aid (not the real arrangement, but good enough for discussion: Netflix <-> Level3 <-> Comcast <-> Me Netflix pays money to Level3 for an internet connection. I pay money to Comcast for an internet connection. Leve3 and Comcast have an agreement to connect to each other for the purpose of serving their respective customers. The concept of "an internet connection", this thing that we're both paying for, implies the interconnects working together to deliver, in good faith, what their respective customers have paid for - i.e. access to arbitrary services at best effort speeds. The players have already been paid everything they deserve at this point. If they feel they are not being paid enough, they should raise their prices. Comcast, they decide they want to double dip and charge Netflix for something I am already paying for. They are no longer playing in good faith, and I argue not delivering what I pay them to do. Why? Comcast's argument carries the sneaky assertion that they deserve money from Netflix since Netflix consumes such a huge portion of their capacity. Except that doesn't wash - it is their customers requesting those resources and consuming capacity. They could throttle their customers instead of Netflix, and this would even be defensible, but it would get them pilloried in the marketplace. But that assumes it's a capacity issue in the first place.. But in the end, it isn't. That is a damn lie perpetrated by the ISPs. It is a politics problem. Note how, when Netflix agreed to the demand for protection money, their capacity problem with Comcast went away literally overnight? Comcast either has an army of the best and fastest network engineers in the entire world (and I invite you to speak to a Comcast user if you think that's true), or already have the gear and configurations in place and just won't switch it on. There is no cost for expansion here. It's money grubbing, pure and simple. ISPs have always been expected to steadily grow their capacity and speeds over time, and just now Comcast decides they have an issue with it? It's BS. It's a business decision - some suit decided they could charge twice for the same thing and do no extra work.
  - spindritf 12y ago
    They're not being paid already because the explosion of streaming video traffic is a relatively new and ongoing process. They expect to be paid more for moving more bits. Now, you might expect the capacity of the network to simply increase as a matter of technological progress. But it's not that crazy of a notion to charge more for doing more. They could make their own customers pay but they're trying to shift it to Netflix, and indirectly to Netflix users. There's nothing fundamentally unfair about it. The answer that they shouldn't charge anyone more amounts to financing the expansion by their investors (in the form of lower returns). It's not a political problem, it's an economic one. All of those companies are after money, whether in additional fees or lower costs.

talmand 12y ago

I don't understand your point. If my computer hooked up to the internet can request traffic from another computer it sees on the internet then from my perspective I have that connection. You are trying to somehow say that an ISP offering unlimited access to the internet has to be held responsible for a server that refuses to be seen by my computer. I'm not making that claim. You are trying to refute a claim that isn't being made. I see "unlimited access" to the internet as being my ISP is not preventing me from accessing what can be found on the internet. You are twisting definitions around to make it mean how you wish it to be defined. It's not like I'm claiming "unlimited access" to public roads includes private driveways. If there were no public servers at all on the internet, an ISP can still offer unlimited access to the internet despite there being nothing to see. Also, there's a difference between "everyone paid something" and "everyone paid something twice". Your own argument supports the notion, it's a negotiation and our request in the negotiations is that bits are not paid for twice in the same transaction.