
Breaking the net neutrality deadlock - sinak
http://news.stanford.edu/2016/09/13/breaking-net-neutrality-deadlock/
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orthecreedence
I get how this _could_ benefit end-users if all goes to plan, but how does
this benefit ISPs like Comcast? The entire reason they want to break net
neutrality is to push their own agenda on users. This doesn't allow them to do
that at all. I suppose it opens users up to coercion.

That said, I think the net neutrality deadlock is a good thing. It's where
it's supposed to be at right now. We have a free and open internet and a
public branch of the government protecting that.

There will be a constant onslaught of corporate interests trying to limit free
speech via marketing and bribery for many years to come, and I don't see
Network Cookies solving that issue...in fact, I think it gives leeway more to
the ISPs than the users. Now Comcast can sell you a modem with "recommended
settings" and unless you know what 192.168.0.1 is you're going to just go
along with it.

Let's keep net neutrality simple: access means full access.

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jkingsbery
More simple yet: you build it, you get to decide what to do with it.

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vog
Just curious, what do you mean with "you built it"?

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KMag
> Just curious, what do you mean with "you built it"?

You know, paid taxes that funded government projects that largely developed
the underlying technology. Got your friends in local and state governments to
allow you to use a combination of public land and imminent domain to force
people to let you build your network (nominally partially as a public good),
etc., etc. Once your network was in place, you used regulations to prevent
competitors from the same sorts of government manipulations. You built a telco
that manipulated governments in the proper way, and now you get to engage in
rent-seeking on those imminent-domain'd pipes all you like.

At least in NYC, the local telephone company is required to lease phone lines
to competitors essentially at-cost, as a condition of their monopoly status
and use of imminent domain (according to my DSL installation guy when I moved
to NYC a decade ago, when he explained that my landlord had cut all of the
phone lines during renovation and Verizon would take their sweet time
providing the legally required 12 inches of working phone line into the
domicile). I don't think similar competitive measures apply to cable and fiber
lines that also use public land and imminent domain.

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pjc50
Isn't this just QoS revisited?

Also, think about it for a second: the user wants _all_ their traffic to be
high-priority zero-rated. Except maybe ads and DDoS traffic.

The anti-net-neutrality cases come from reversing the customer relationship.
Zero-rated traffic obviously doesn't exist, what they mean is "traffic paid
for by someone else". Either voluntarily as part of a market-cornering
promotion (Facebook basics), or as part of a shakedown (throttling of Netflix
in an attempt to get them to pay).

The lack of an integrated billing system is a great historical strength of the
internet. We already had a global telecoms network where the billing had
primacy, it's the telephone network. In which the lack of market competition
meant that every little thing got charged for.

The one case that _might_ work would be the possibility of specifying a "not
important" flag on your own traffic in exchange for exemption from any kind of
caps. In the event of actual congestion the ISP could drop "not important"
traffic first.

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ramblenode
I'm not really sure why consumers or ISPs have a reason to be excited about
this. I'm beginning with the assumption that the custom shaping rules will
only take effect once a bandwidth cap is reached (otherwise, why would someone
self-limit?). If a consumer reaches their bandwidth cap it means some service
will suffer. Letting them choose which one suffers the most doesn't seem like
a killer feature. For ISPs, it doesn't matter how the bandwidth is distributed
once the cap is reached.

Maybe there is some use case for metered connections or data caps?

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0xcde4c3db
> Maybe there is some use case for metered connections or data caps?

The main legitimate use case I can imagine would be to spread out peaky
utilization to minimize congestion and make the most efficient use of links.
This might be achieved through differential metering or caps, where off-peak
usage is unmetered or costs less. Giving everyone a 300GB limit doesn't do
much good for the infrastructure if they're all blowing their 300GB watching
Netflix during "prime time".

Of course, that would require an ISP that had genuine concerns about
congestion and efficiency rather than blowing smoke about how "fairness"
somehow demands that they squeeze more revenue out of any party within reach
[1].

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/3rnfnm/leak_of_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/3rnfnm/leak_of_comcast_documents_detailing_the_coming/)

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gruez
If I can zero rate whatever traffic I want, what's stopping me from zero
rating torents and download terabytes of content on lte with impunity?

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chrischen
Your data cap?

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taysix
Zero-rating means it doesn't count towards your cap. Blackberry messenger is
an example of a service/traffic that was zero-rated.

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pmontra
This opens "interesting" commercial opportunities for ISPs. "If you (the
customer) voluntarily zero rate or fast lane services X and Y you get a
discount." And those services pay the ISP more than that to get an advantage
over competitors. The money flow is similar to having X and Y pay the ISP not
to be throttled down on the ISP network, which is what some ISPs wanted to do.

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awqrre
There is no reason for data caps (duapolies ISPs are being greedy)... if you
sell a specific speed/bandwidth (which are usually sold as bits per second?),
I should be able to use it all the time.

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euyyn
For most customers, average usage and instant usage are very different though.
A data cap is a way to be able and sell higher peak bandwidth than would
otherwise be possible, by oversubscribing in a controlled way.

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vog
_> sell higher peak bandwidth than would otherwise be possible_

What about increasing the total capacity, by investing into the
infrastructure? Better transportation technology, putting more fibers in the
ground, putting up more LTE/5G/6G/7G whatever towers.

Violation of network neutrality gives a competitive advantage to those who
trick their customers over those who actually invest in their infrastructure.

Network neutrality is a way to restore the ISPs' incentives to invest in the
infrastructure, and to protect those ISPs who already do that from their shady
competitors.

(The only other way would be to educate the population so they votes against
network neutrality with their money. That may or may not be harder to achieve
than passing a law.)

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euyyn
Net neutrality and investing in infrastructure are completely orthogonal to
data caps, so I'm not sure what you're trying to argue.

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camiller
There is a simple algorithm that would suffice.... Whatever I'm using right
now is what I want to have preferential delivery. Really it is that simple.

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amelius
Why are they using the term "cookies"? It has such a negative connotation.

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guelo
Same as other commenters I'm struggling to see how this is useful in the zero
rating debates. But if it could somehow be used as an easier more dynamic way
of doing user-controlled QoS then that would be fantastic.

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tempodox
Just give preferential treatment and zero rate to ALL content. Then we're
actually neutral, and everyone is happy.

~~~
amelius
But what if you send 1 packet, and your neighbor sends 10 packets, disguised
to be from 10 different IP addresses. Then your neighbor effectively gets 10x
your speed.

