
What lies ahead: Net Neutrality - sant0sk1
http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/12/2011-mobile.html
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loup-vaillant
I am very disturbed by the idea that prioritizing classes of application is an
okay thing to do.

First, it's impossible in the long run: if for instance you slow down
everything but the web and e-mail, you'll see more and more application using
HTTP as a transport layer. This can quickly degenerate into an arms race.
Second, it requires the ISP to effectively wiretap their users.

Really, if there's not enough bandwidth, just limit the bandwidth. Users will
prioritize their traffic themselves.

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shasta
> First, it's impossible in the long run

You assume that the carriers won't track usage of different bandwidth classes
and bill / cap them differently. Offering different
reliability/latency/throughput guarantees for different classes of data seems
like a very reasonable idea to me. If you want to download bulk data using the
most expensive transport layer, knock yourself out.

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loup-vaillant
First, I'm assuming that they _can't_ track usage. Now they can, but if
everyone encrypts everything, it will no longer be possible. And filtering or
slowing down TLS is not really feasible, because of e-commerce. I'm not
_certain_ of this point, but I'm reasonably sure.

Second, why the hell should one bit cost me more than another? Or come slower
than another? Because it's part of bittorent transaction instead of a video
stream?

Third, why the freaking hell should it be okay for my ISP to _spy on me_?
(Just in case it's not clear: spying is requiered for prioritization)

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shasta
Ideally, packet class identification would be at the network or transport
layer. I don't like the idea of an ISP doing payload inspection ("spying"),
either. But your argument about all bits being the same is naive. Do you think
it's fair that you should have to pay more for overnight mail or certified
mail?

~~~
loup-vaillant
I think some of your assumptions are technically wrong. The only role of an
ISP is to let you send (& receive) IP datagrams to (& from) any machine with a
public IP. Now, one packet could cost more than another, depending on its
destination, its provenance, and its size. But not its content. Not a chance.
For instance, the TCP port number of an ISP shouldn't influence the cost of an
IP datagram: they're not even part of the Internet Protocol.

Now, if I want to send packet faster than another, I would just use a private
network that is not the internet. And if I want to send "certified" packet,
I'd just use an SSH tunnel, which will naturally consume more bandwidth
anyway. But if my _internet_ provider do those choices for me, I tend to
complain.

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nitrogen
In my ideal world ISPs should honor customer-provided QoS flags, while
limiting total bandwidth as necessary. They can also limit high priority
traffic to a certain percentage of a user's total available bandwidth (i.e.
50mbit/s connection, only 8mbit/s may be high priority when the network is
heavily loaded). Anything beyond that is abusive, and will reduce the amount
of bandwidth-intensive innovation coming from startups that can't afford to
pay off the ISPs.

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SkyMarshal
Money Quote:

 _"I see the idea of "absolute" net neutrality going away at some point. Eric
Schmidt made an important point at Web 2.0 Summit: There are two concepts of
net neutrality. One is you can’t discriminate against any particular company
or any particular application. But on the other hand you can discriminate
against classes of applications._ "

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TrevorJ
The real complicating factor is wireless, since from an infrastructure
standpoint it isn't actually the same network - cell companies have to invest
in their own infrastructure to provide internet access wirelessly.

