
2014: The year the Americans broke the internet - yiedyie
http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2014/01/18/2014-year-americans-broke-internet-good
======
wavefunction
There have always been multinets even if it seemed like one over-arching
Internet, but users and technology are just going to have to become more
sophisticated. Some good folks will be lost along the way to criminals and
"intelligence services" (but I repeat myself!) We can't give up the dream and
that remarkable goal of networked computing and communication and information
accessibility.

It took some time but the assholes got their shit together. Which is what
we're seeing now. These assholes have always been with us throughout human
history, causing problems and violence and bringing out the worst in the rest
of us.

So we need to maintain vigilance, and work early to undo their harm they cause
to us and themselves. I forgive them, because they are born with hearts of
fear and that will never change. We can't allow them to dictate our lives
though. We know what's right and what's wrong, and we simply need to make sure
they are put in the sandbox to play with their toys where they can't hurt
anyone else while we move forward together as a family.

This is why no one individual should have too much power over anyone else, and
no office or government should be similarly afforded the powers to destroy on
a whim. There will always be these folks with us, and if we offer them
opportunities to express themselves, they will to our shame and regret.

(I know, lots of "theys" and "us." I invite you to take a chance and perhaps
expand your mind.)

~~~
mullingitover
> I forgive them, because they are born with hearts of fear and that will
> never change

I think it's not 'hearts of fear' but 'laserlike focus on maximizing
shareholder value, greater good be damned.'

~~~
RickS
I think that comes from a place of fear in a lot of people. Money is power,
and protection. What does money ultimately buy us if not safety? Perhaps not
always literal physical safety, but the safety of knowing you can live life as
you see fit without restriction.

Basically, money buys contentedness, and those that remain bound to
contentedness are often there through the avoidance of the things that cause
them fear.

------
diminoten
I fail to see how this breaks even the US Internet. Comcast will never cut off
the flow to certain parts of the Internet for the sake of charging you to go
there. They'll always let you go to those places, they just won't let you go
there as quickly if you don't pay extra.

I don't think I have to tell you all how shitty this would be, but it's not a
"broken" Internet. We can sit here and concoct all kinds of worst-case
scenarios, but we could also do that with anything. Your babysitter _could_
feed your kid a bottle of aspirin - this is within the realm of physical
possibility, just as it's within the realm of physical possibility that
Comcast starts shaking down websites.

And before anyone even brings it up, Netflix and Comcast's peering agreement
has _nothing_ to do with net neutrality. Without peering, Netflix's path to
consumers was long. With peering, it's not, which leads to faster speeds.
That's it. Peering agreements have existed for many years, and will _need_ to
continue to exist for the Internet to continue to exist. It'd be _much_ worse
for the Internet to abolish all peering agreements in the name of neutrality
(wtf?) than it would be for the FCC to have no teeth in enforcing net
neutrality.

~~~
wmf
If deliberately congesting links to _encourage_ another company (who happens
to be a competitor) to negotiate peering is not a violation of net neutrality
then we need to update the definition.

~~~
diminoten
Their peering agreement lapsed, that's all.

Nothing "deliberate" about slowing Netflix down, that's just what happens when
packets have to travel further and through the greater Internet.

Put the pitchfork away.

~~~
mullingitover
Since when does an ISP negotiate peering agreements? It seems like a conflict
of interest there, when Comcast's trunk business is actively thwarting the
internet delivery service part of the business.

It's like McDonalds charging their _suppliers_ because they're 'sending a lot
of product into our kitchens.'

~~~
vidarh
> Since when does an ISP negotiate peering agreements?

Since "forever"? When I ran an ISP in '95, peering was pretty much top of the
agenda from day one given that bandwidth is such a huge cost centre. The only
reason we never tried to charge site providers for peering was that we didn't
get large enough before we sold our dial up customers.

> It's like McDonalds charging their suppliers because they're 'sending a lot
> of product into our kitchens.'

That's a horrible analogy. Comcast is not selling the chicken, they're selling
access to the local roads that gets you to the freeways that can get you to
the McDonalds, or any other business. Comcasts customers are not paying for a
specific level of access to McDonalds.

But since you're using that kind of analogy, many suppliers _pay_ for shelf
positions in large super market chains, for the same reasons site site
operators sometimes pay ISPs for more direct access: both sides know who is
most dependent on the improved access.

------
greenyoda
Any U.S. decision on net neutrality can only affect the part of the internet
that's within the U.S., so outside the U.S., the internet remains as it always
was. I'm surprised that the author, writing from the U.K., thinks of "the
internet" in such a U.S.-centric way. Did the Great Firewall of China also
"break the internet"?

~~~
rqebmm
for people in China? In a manner of speaking: Yes.

------
aidenn0
Note that I've seen VOIP latency increase in the wake of a cable-company
deploying a phone option. Disguising the nature of the traffic caused the
latency to drop again.

~~~
rahimnathwani
How do you disguise the nature of the traffic without also changing the route
taken by the packets?

I would be inclined to test this with/without a VPN connection, but then I
wouldn't know whether the improvement was due to avoiding throttling/whatever,
or just that my VPN server has better quality routes to the VoIP endpoint.

I guess if you VPN to the VoIP server itself, then it would be a fair test.

~~~
aidenn0
All RTP seemed to exhibit the issue, so we just setup a test with two RTP
endpoints. We wrote a very simple UDP mangler/demangler (XOR with a fixed key)
and ran it on both ends of the RTP connection.

------
rayiner
I've said this in a different argument, but it bears repeating: The "internet"
is merely a software abstraction. It doesn't exist. What actually exists is a
loosely-coordinated group of private networks, subject to the whims of the
owners of those networks. Nobody "broke" the internet, because there was
nothing to break. All that's happening is that the abstraction is becoming
less representative of the reality, for various quite predictable reasons.

~~~
gruseom
You speak only of the letter and not of the spirit of the thing. This has
nothing in common with the mentality that created the internet in the first
place, which was cosmic and adventurous and poetic.

It reminds me rather of cutting the perforations off of postage stamps. I
doubt that J.C.R. Licklider would approve.

~~~
rayiner
Undoubtedly there are lots of high-minded poetic idealists behind the
development of the internet. But the universe doesn't owe it to them to make
the physical nature of the world adapt to their ideals. Maybe many people
imagined that the internet would be this borderless space in the ether where
packets flowed unimpeded from any source to any destination. Yet, borders are
one of the most fundamental facets of earthly existence, and whoever controls
them, whether they be nations or network providers, have tremendous power. And
that is the true nature of reality.

~~~
gruseom
"True nature of reality"? Highly debatable! Maybe in legal offices. :)

Everybody sees that concept through their own filter. I suppose to a cobbler
the true nature of reality is surfaces that wear out over time.

~~~
rayiner
Try walking all over your neighbor's lawn and get back to me about whether
borders are a concept everyone sees through their own filter.

~~~
gruseom
Depends on the neighbor.

In any case, filters that happen to be shared don't thereby become the "true
nature of reality".

~~~
rayiner
Borders are not a mental concept. They are empirically verifiable things
(testable by walking across one and dodging the resulting bullets). The fact
that you don't believe in them doesn't make them go away.

~~~
gress
Bullets do not fire themselves, and the person who does so is acting on a
mental concept.

------
giantrobothead
"The Year Multinational Corporations with Powers Beyond the Scope of
Individual Actors Broke the Internet" just isn't as catchy a title, huh?

------
BlackDeath3
>The year _the Americans_ broke the internet.

Yeah... you're welcome, I guess?

I suppose I should have called my representatives, right? Well, their interns,
at least...

------
Loughla
Anytime someone says something like, " and I don't want to add to the
hyperbole already out there, but," I write them off.

That is an admittance to using hyperbole, and therefore invalidates the
argument, correct?

~~~
hrkristian
It's up there with "I'm not a racist, but..."

Doesn't affect facts, though. Just means be more sceptical...

~~~
jff
For a while, the Something Awful forums apparently word-filtered "I'm not
racist, but" to appear as "I'm extremely racist, and"

------
dillon
I heavily disagree that the internet is now forever broken as this writer is
mentioning. One year the U.S. can take one stance, but on the next year they
can take another. The whole notion of being broken "For good" implies
'forever' and forever is a lot longer than the writer may realize.

People will know and figure out if ISPs are in fact abusing their powers. Yes,
I agree that all ISPs are evil in their own way and there is nothing we can do
about that. Although, I think that the ISPs know that they are making more
money off of their users than they would throttling other sites thus retaining
those users is of the utmost importance.

~~~
dragonwriter
> One year the U.S. can take one stance, but on the next year they can take
> another.

Or even the same year; the FCC is already moving to restore (and perhaps
expand by voiding barriers to municipal broadband) the substance of the ruels
in its Open Internet Order, under different legal authority, based on the
decision in the _Verizon_ case. [1]

[1] [http://www.fcc.gov/document/statement-fcc-chairman-tom-
wheel...](http://www.fcc.gov/document/statement-fcc-chairman-tom-wheeler-fccs-
open-internet-rules)

------
allochthon
> It is much more than that. As the LA Times said in the aftermath of the US
> Appeals court decision that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
> could not establish rules promoting net neutrality: bow down to your new
> internet overlords, Comcast and Verizon.

I'm hoping Google will lead the way and provide a genuine alternative for
retail Internet access, given the extent of their parallel network. Comcast
and Verizon will then have an opportunity to learn that customers are people
to be served and not cows to be milked.

~~~
gress
Why would Google's alternative be neutral when there is no rule saying it has
to be?

~~~
allochthon
That's a good point. In terms of an ideal solution, the answer would
definitely be "no." In terms of the behavior of the companies involved, I
trust Google slightly more than I do Verizon or Comcast to keep the interests
of consumers in mind. But trusting a for-profit corporation with something
like this is not an ideal long-term arrangement.

------
xFFEE
Not 2014. It was 2001.

When Americans broke theirselves, because of being unable to make anything but
guns. And war.

They (You?) broke their own freedom, because of guns, and making money in
wars.

Try something else, something new.

------
rqebmm
as much of a pessimist as I am, I highly doubt much of the doomsday scenario
will come to pass. Comcast and Verizon will likely spend a lot of time and
energy staying JUST on this side of the FCC's ire, because the FCC will always
have the "nuclear option" of reclassifying the ISPs as common carriers.

Besides, ISPs degrade/prioritize traffic all the time through management of
peering relationships. All they have to do is fail to adequately upgrade the
servers that communicate with Netflix to cause congestion while at the same
time spending lots of resources making sure their peering relationship with
Hulu is top-notch. This would create much faster Hulu traffic relative to
Netflix traffic on provider's network, but all of the traffic is still
reaching the end-user in the same manner, i.e. it's still "net-neutral".

The only real solution here is the common carrier reclassification because the
only real problem is the last-mile-monopoly. Everything else is just business.

------
lettergram
I'd just like to point out, this also gives an opportunity (or at least
incentive) for different forms of internet transport (i.e. googles loon).

~~~
throwwit
I'd surmise that forcing the FCC's hand on a common carrier ruling might be
preemptive to loon or another mesh-networking based co. gaining ground in a
regulatorally permissive space. Especially given longer range wifi tech is on
the horizon.

------
huhalu
More like US Appeals Court broke internet

------
badman_ting
Hey, it was ours to break.

~~~
emocakes
lol, yeah, everything is american, i forgot...

~~~
rayiner
Stuff created by our defense department in conjunction with our universities
certainly is American. To this day, ICANN operates under authority delegated
from the U.S. Department of Commerce.

~~~
tjgq
By that same logic, all websites are European (Swiss? French? German?) because
HTTP was invented by Tim Berners-Lee while at CERN.

~~~
retr0h
Just keep those websites off my lawn

