
Defending the Open Internet - chebureki
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/11/business/defending-the-open-internet.html?hpw&rref=business&_r=0
======
rayiner
It annoys me that people invoke Chinese dissidents, MIT OpenCourseware, and
Wikipedia in the context of an issue that, to date, only involves for-profit
companies. I don't get how people can work up a moralistic fervor over a
dispute between two giant highly profitable industries. Its not that I don't
believe that the internet is a tool to deliver education to the underserved,
or give voice to the politically marginalized, its that there is no indication
that these aspects of the internet are at all threatened. Maybe I'm cynical,
but I'm skeptical when these for-profit enterprises cloak themselves in
internet utopianism to lobby for policies that have the primary or even sole
effect of giving themselves a bigger slice of consumer entertainment dollars.

And if core values are threatened, why not have laws narrowly tailored to that
danger? Why not just make it illegal for ISP's to discriminate against
websites based on politics, race, etc? Surely that'd be easier to get passed,
and people would be happy, if that's what this all was really about.

~~~
pessimizer
>an issue that, to date, only involves for-profit companies.

Because that isn't what this is. The arguments between these massive companies
are deciding the future of peer-to-peer communications on the internet.

If the ones who own the wires win, the internet will be officially divided
into two classes: servers and clients. Netflix will still be as fast as it
ever was (if not faster) if it pays, and if it doesn't, the wire-owners' new
replacements will be just as fast as Netflix was. All of the current players
will be making massive content and distribution deals with each other, and the
internet will become cable TV.

There's no technical reason that the internet has to be structured that way.
This is all just massive incumbents locking out all small fry, and
consequently all newcomers. The scale this is being played out in is so large
that Netflix is really the newcomer in the situation; this is not just a
matter of protecting an oligarchy of entertainment providers, but even a war
between content producers and content distributors that has implications that
affect how fast the traffic between you and your mother will be, and what
programs you will be allowed to use to produce and receive that traffic.

Ultimately it's a defense of a primitive accumulation. Some people own the
wires because they were first. We can either let them manipulate the market so
all of their vendors have razor-thin margins and all of their consumers have
the most constrained agreements and highest prices, or restrict the right of
the owners to shape and filter traffic for business purposes.

~~~
rayiner
Just because software views IP nodes symmetrically doesn't mean that there
aren't central and leaf nodes in the physical structure of the network. That
asymmetry is endemic to where consumer nodes sit on the physical network.

I quite agree that letting the people who own the wires do what they want will
have an effect on the margins of companies who depend on those wires to reach
customers. But doesn't that reinforce my point: there is something
disingenuous about certain companies taking up the mantle of free speech and
internet Utopianism to lobby for policy that is primarily targeted at
fattening their own profit margins?

I don't see any reason to pick sides, certainly. I am equally skeptical of
lobbying by ISP's that invoke the public interest or consumer protection to
justify regulation excluding competitors from their markets.

------
KaiserPro
Arghh.

This simply isn't how the internet works.

Everyone pays for bandwidth, You all pay an ISP for x amount of bits per
second, and y amount of transit. You pay more, for more. Unless you live in
the US and you've been fucked by the incumbent monopoly.

If you're netflix, you pay a tier 1 carrier for bandwidth. as you get bigger
you pay for an CDN. Bigger still, you make your own. (YMMV of course.)

to make it super cost effective, you negotiate your own peering agreement
directly, as its cheaper than using cogent/level3 + akami and the like. (hence
why google has so much dark fiber.)

The whole two tier internet business, has always been the case. Thats why
there is both UDP and TCP. Thats why there is a priority header. Thats why
there is QoS.

Yes people say that peering is free. They are simply wrong. To peer you need
bandwith, which requires cables in the ground. Places like LONAP and LINX
exist for _mutual_ benefit. However at LINX private interchange traffic has
been much larger than "public" interchange for _years_

~~~
bdamm
I agree with your general message; this freedom for all is confusing to me
because it's not at all natural for the operating companies.

Your statement about UDP is wrong though. TCP vs UDP is not a two-tier
mechanism for quality. UDP delivers more effective throughput in most cases,
as long as the application doesn't need the features that TCP provides.
Consider that most TCP connections start with a UDP exchange for the DNS
resolution. Even in conditions where you own all the bandwidth you may wish to
use UDP.

------
pessimizer
We need a chairman of the FCC that is old enough that they'll retire
afterwards. Nobody wants to be the one who pulls the trigger on common carrier
because they all plan to work at telecom, cable companies, and radio networks
after they step down.

Of course, there's still speaking fees.

~~~
rayiner
Tom Wheeler is 66. Before becoming FCC chairman, he was managing director at a
VC fund that funded early stage companies. He has also founded several
companies. He was also on the board of directors of EarthLink, which is a
competitive ISP with interests adverse to the entrenched cable companies.
Aside from a stint at NCTA in the 80's, long before they were in the IsP
business, his business background is far more skewed in favor of Internet
companies.

------
innoying
Somewhat related, but I made a small site to help the average internet "user"
understand what net neutrality is and why it's important: [http://net-
neutrality.io/](http://net-neutrality.io/)

I'm not quite sure where to advertise it, does HN have any suggestions?

~~~
_red
Forget the average user, can you explain in detail how you envision this to
work and be administrated at a network level?

So I'm a packet, leaving my computer...what happens now and what laws govern
me?

So for the NN supporters have been very high on rhetoric and appalling low on
details, which is always a prescription for legislative disaster.

~~~
bandushrew
I love the implication that it is somehow incumbent on NN supporters to
educate you about how the internet works.....and the additional implication
that there is a single set of laws that govern it.

If you actually understand neither the technical details, or the legal
aspects, maybe you should take responsibility for educating yourself?

or, at the very least, avoid making deprecating comments about those who know
more than yourself?

------
vfclists
The usual and expected hatchet job from a main stream media stalwart.

Neglecting the fact the fact digging up the ground to place cable, which is
what the customer is actually paying for is entirely different from wiring up
interconnects at core exchanges, which costs virtually nothing in comparison.

The customer pays the last mile provider to _go fetch_ with the understanding
that what they pay covers everything the provider is supposed to _go fetch_
with some profit added on. Then the provider goes to _stiff_ the content
provider for a share of their income, or else throttles the content provider
which is essentially robbing the customer of a service they've already paid
for.

Why can't the NY Times put it this plainly and simply?

~~~
majormajor
Does net neutrality fix this issue?

If Comcast wants the extra money they're trying to get from Netflix/Level
3/etc, but is politically prohibited from doing so, then can't they still just
raise end-user's prices? That would look worse from a Comcast PR perspective,
but with no competition—which lets them get away with letting the quality of
service degrade—does that really matter?

This (especially in terms of Netflix vs Comcast) seems like a massive
distraction from the underlying competition issue. A distraction Comcast is
probably happy to have.

~~~
_red
No, NN won't fix the issue.

Even more, most NN supporters cannot actually state what they envision such
laws to even do. If you ask, they will give you handwavy answers like "provide
equal access"...then they will be unable / unwilling to answer any of the
obvious questions that follow on from that (ie. what if I pay for faster
access, what does that mean for others who don't? Is all QoS illegal now? How
will NN be monitored, government installed monitoring stations in ISP? etc etc
etc)

This is a political wet-dream though, lots of people clamoring for "more
regulation" without any real knowledge of the details or effects. It was the
same sort of lazy, unfocused clamor that brought us the Patriot Act, so be
prepared.

~~~
pedrocr
Here's my proposal:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7644339](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7644339)

It would fix the issues of neutrality at the interconnect point. Additional
rules may be needed to prevent an ISP from throttling a specific
port/protocol/service inside it's own network, but this would fix the current
hot issue (blocking Youtube, Netflix, etc).

------
cLeEOGPw
Honest question: has bandwidth providing costs actually grown very much, or
are ISPs just profit hungry and try to rip off everything they can? Because if
it's the first one, something should actually be changed for them to
compensate.

