
Protecting Net Neutrality and the Open Internet - sarreph
https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2014/05/05/protecting-net-neutrality-and-the-open-internet/
======
kokey
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
> 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.

~~~
belorn
CDN also do traffic spikes. If a MMO pushes a >100MB update to a several
millions subscribers at the same time, no single network connection could
handle it. CDN make it possible to push massive amount of information fast and
it limits the risk of service disruptions.

The benefits of CDN's are thus mostly unaffected by Net Neutrality.

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

~~~
sarreph
Thanks for the catch on this :)

------
_greim_
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
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?

~~~
Zigurd
It's called the Insurance Effect. People are willing to pay more for flat
rate, which includes "carrying" high volume users, to insure against bill
shock if their usage patterns change. Humans are bad at estimating bandwidth
use, and pricing that removes that requirement has real value.

~~~
saurik
"Insurance" is a form of risk mitigation. The reality of bandwidth is that we
_know_ someone who likes using FaceTime, or who has a Netflix subscription, is
going to use more bandwidth than someone else. Sure: it makes sense if you
aren't certain how large a web page will be to buy insurance on it, but you
don't want to be in the same insurance bracket as a true "heavy user": I am
happy to take part in a pool where everyone subsidizes the risk of accidental
trauma, but I _know_ someone who insists on smoking is going to increase their
health costs, and they should be forced to take on that increased burden. This
is especially evident when the playing field changes: the cost of insurance
for all users goes up dramatically when something like FaceTime or Netflix is
released, because the people using it are using dramatically more bandwidth
than the people who aren't. If the bandwidth companies said "ok, thanks to
Apple's FaceTime service, everyone's connection is now twice as expensive
_even if you don 't own Apple hardware_", people would be pissed. This is why
insurance charges people differently for their inherent risk, and why you
can't use insurance as a metaphor here (well, unless you want to make the
opposite argument ;P).

------
themartorana
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
_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
> 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...

------
marincounty
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
Plus, there's paid shills here on HN attempting to confuse the issue.

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zackmorris
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.

------
guelo
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.

------
EGreg
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?

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

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

