What is Net Neutrality

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mortsmi7

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So basically, because the ISP's have been dragging ass on updating the infrastructure, they now want to charge extra. Double dipping everyone, while continuing the trend of dragging ass. Sounds like a solid long-term plan.
 

InvalidError

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When Netflix secures a back-end bandwidth connection as they just did, they pretty much eliminated ever having a direct competitor. What start-up could ever compete with that? That doesn't sound neutral to me.
That does not eliminate anything.

The reason Netflix got "nudged" into direct peering was because Netflix's traffic was single-handedly throwing L3's peering agreement with Comcast out of balance. There won't be many would-be Netflix competitors who will reach such a scale.

If Netflix had not signed a direct agreement with Comcast, what would have happened? Comcast would have continued waiting for L3 to cough up the cash to cover the peering imbalance before upgrading peering capacity to accommodate Netflix traffic. If L3 coughed up for the peering upgrades, they would have passed the bill back to their clients likely on a prorated basis, meaning Netflix would get most of the bill.

If Comcast was forced to upgrade peering at their own expense mostly to accommodate Netflix traffic, they would end up jacking up the prices to all their subscribers regardless of whether or not they are Netflix subscribers.

Someone always ends up paying for it and personally, I favor a scheme biased towards making people who actually use services pay for them instead of using the low-usage subscribers to offset lower margins if not losses on heavy-usage ones.
 

atavax

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The courts have already ruled that the FCC can't enforce anything on the ISPs unless they are reclassified as common carriers. Any new set of rules the FCC announces is nothing but lip service until ISPs are reclassified as common carriers.
 

atavax

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After Netflix paid comcast, speeds increased almost instantly. No infrastructure was upgraded. Comcast was plain throttling Netflix.
 

razor512

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The argument that ISP's should be able to throttle because network admins do it, is beyond retarded.

Network admins for companies do it because they purchase a fixed amount of bandwidth, and want to ensure that certain vital services are not slowed, this is because as a company, you can never have too much bandwidth.

On the other hand, for an ISP, the only traffic shaping they should be doing, is providing you with the throughput you paid for, for example, if you pay for a 1 gigabit connection, then assuming the server you connect to allows it, you should be able to send test documents, or video, or cat pictures, or anything else at 1 gigabit per second. It is not up to the ISP to decide what traffic you should be allowed to get the speed you are paying for. How would you feel if you purchased a 1 gigabit connection for your company, and the ISP felt that the only traffic that should run at above dialup speeds on your gigabit connection, is text communications through AOL instant messenger?

When you purchase an internet connection, you are purchasing based on throughput, e.g., you buy a 100 megabit connection, and you decide how you want to use that throughput. The ISP really has no right to punish you for using the throughput you pay for.

Imagine if you buy a house and the bank comes around and kicks you out because even though you purchased the entire house, they didn't expect you to use all 3 bedrooms on a daily basis?

If the ISP is unable to supply everyone with the speed they par for, then they should be forced to upgrade, or not charge for the service that they are unable to deliver.
The ISP business model will not work anywhere else. Imagine going into a pizza shop and you and 4 other people order a large pizza, but there is only 1 large pizza ready and the owner of the shop does not feel like making more pizzas, so he or she takes the money for the full price of a large pizza from each of the 4 customers, and then gives each customer 1/4th of a pizza. In that case, no one would pay or the police may get involved.

PS verizon also throttles netflix.The performance of the service is consistently horrible 24/7. if it was congestion based, then peak hours should perform worst than off peak hours, e.g., 3 AM.
 

alextheblue

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Making it illegal for ISPs to regulate their own traffic is taking it too far. During peak hours, real-time services such as gaming, voice and video chat would all suffer because they have to treat them the same as asynchronous data such as emails, streaming, and non-real-time video/picture uploads (such as uploading a video to instafacetwitter). A 500ms hiccup during a video upload (again, not real-time) is no big deal. But the same hiccup could ruin your day in an FPS.

The issue is even worse for heavily burdened cable networks during peak netflixtube hours. Oh and Netflix is paying for the right to put their content directly on Comcast et al's networks, bypassing Cogent. Who, by the way, was the biggest culprit in the "throttling" claims Netflix made against Comcast.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrydownes/2014/11/25/how-netflix-poisoned-the-net-neutrality-debate/?partner=yahootix

Read that, Mr. Captain, Mr. Berg.
 

rick_h

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I pay for my Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon prime. I pay dearly for my high speed internet. Unlike the freeloading college drop-out that thinks they are entitled to free high speed uninterrupted internet at Starbuck when they pay @$1.00 for their cup of cheap tea and suck the bandwidth while watching some stupid video, because they have no internet service. You pay to play. No one rides for free.
 

seancaptain

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seancaptain

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Really good points. I've seen logical arguments for prioritization based purely on quality of service grounds, and that is allowed in the draft legislation. Opponents argue that it's a slippery slope in terms of how liberally the ISPs interpret "subject to reasonable network management." Frankly, I'm not sure that anyone knows what would happen.
 

alextheblue

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"They would also like to prioritize traffic based on how sensitive packets are to delay. Slowing down an email by a few milliseconds, for example, wouldn't be noticeable, but it would be for data packets in a videoconference."

Loss of QoS is the biggest reason to avoid Net Neutrality in it's current form. If all packets are treated the same, my game packets are given the same priority as all the numerous HD video streams. The problem is that gaming is real-time (sensitive to latency), and video streaming is not (it can be cached and thus isn't latency-sensitive). It probably won't hurt me too much since I'm on FiOS. But my buddies on cable already cry about their connections when everyone on their cable network is streaming during primetime... it's only going to get worse.
 

computertech82

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the scary part is republicans still trying to cancel net neutrality just so companies can charge ppl more for using netflix, youtube, etc, etc or even BLOCK internet sites that refuses to pay them for more bandwidth.
 

CarlosVe

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I take great exception to the writer's claim:
"No prominent companies, organizations or politicians have said that they are against net neutrality."

Please see just a few:
Ron Paul and SENATOR Rand Paul against Net Neutrality
http://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/the-pauls-new-crusade-internet-freedom#.pjrZV7qw

Libertarian Party against Net Neutrality
http://www.lp.org/blogs/michelle/fcc-should-remain-neutral-on-net-neutrality

Lew Rockwell against Net Neutrality
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/01/robert-wenzel/net-neutrality/

The Mises Economic Institute against Net Neutrality
http://mises.org/daily/4432

Not to mention more ISPs than you can shake a stick at.

Everyone has the Right to Life, the Right to Liberty and the Right to Own Oneself and One's property, under God and noone should be allowed to violate your rights unless you try to violate theirs.

Regulations that violate your freedom, violate anyone's property rights (including yours and companies rights), instead of protecting them ARE SLAVERY. Government is out of control trying to ENSLAVE people and forcing their will instead of protecting our rights.

I thought the Gov. was supposed to be representative of the people, subject to natural rights? The Gov. FCC's will is in flagrant violation of such:

"lawmakers are pursuing to block regulations they argue will curb innovation and investment in the fast-growing Internet sector, and that were enacted against the will of a majority of Congress and in the face of a court order that ruled against the FCC's authority over broadband providers." http://www.datamation.com

Some wonder how things could be worse than now. Oh, live in Venezuela or any other country this has been tried: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Venezuela. And that link doesn't do it justice, net speeds easily below 80KB and ping tests that constantly fail, few data packages make it, video streaming of Youtube impossible. Go government control and that soon coming your way. Enjoy!
 

ashburner

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It is all about government control. At first, you'll see an announcement that the government is hiring 10,000 employees to track and monitor the internet. You'll get a new $4-5 tax on your monthly bill. Best case scenario, these will be the only negative effects. Worse case scenario is that the government now has the means to regulate traffic. They will start banning things they don't agree with. You know, free speech that criticizes certain administrations. Gun store websites, Porn sites, news they don't want you to know about. See China's internet for more details.
 

Cliff13A

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Just look at how long phone innovation was held up by these regs...somthing like 50 years till they deregulated "Ma Bell" right ???
 
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