FCC Unveils Plan To Repeal Net Neutrality Rules

[SansVarnic]

 - Merged -

[JelleWho]

Traffic is traffic, treat it all the same. (not an US citizen)

 

 

If there isn't a rule about 'thread all traffic the same' the companies will influence us, and in a way that would let the companies be able to set up a firewall.

 

Yes in a way it's a rule that limits companies/us. But like the 'You cant kill someone' rule, which takes away our freedom (as wrong as it is to say). Removing the net neutrality rule would make the internet traffic unbalanced (in my opinion), and it would let me feel like there is a 'firewall of China'.

 

 

Again I don't live in the US so the rules wouldn't apply to me (yet). But If it where this would be my opinion.

Edited December 8, 2017 by JelleWho
Edited some grammar mistakes, sorry not native 

[MadyTehWolfie]

It's just funny how people like Ben Shapiro and Crowder hated being throttled on YouTube yet support getting rid of the one thing that is keeping ISP's from shutting them down. If they believe that the liberals own everything then why would they vote to get rid of something that protects them. They live in a tinfoil world yet don't put their tinfoil hats on for something that could actually happen to their online content.

[mr moose]

4 hours ago, MadyTehWolfie said:

It's just funny how people like Ben Shapiro and Crowder hated being throttled on YouTube yet support getting rid of the one thing that is keeping ISP's from shutting them down. If they believe that the liberals own everything then why would they vote to get rid of something that protects them. They live in a tinfoil world yet don't put their tinfoil hats on for something that could actually happen to their online content.

People who wear tin foil hats (even in situations that are plausible/not entirely unfounded), often don't possess much consistency in logic/rational thought.

[schwarzerrogen]

I think that you all also need to understand that these rules didn't affect the top-tier content delivery organizations, just the end-user facing ISPs. 

[asus killer]

now you all need to take a look at this article. sweet lord 

 

http://www.pcgamer.com/verizon-vp-jokes-at-planting-a-brainwashed-fcc-chairman-ajit-pai-says-awesome/

[Guest]

On 12/4/2017 at 4:49 PM, DutchTexan said:

I agree with repealing NN and I am very sorry this upsets someone like yourself all the way over there in Sweden 

 

Modern regulations are a result of legal entities hashing things out in ways that no one else can truly understand.

 

You are stretching too far with the legal analogies, but thank you for explaining your thoughts. I go about achieving communication the same way.

 

When I referred to taxes I was addressing that telecommunication services are taxable while flowing information is not.

 

I was not saying that the legality or wording of whatever regulatory declaration is literally 100% irrelevant. I am saying that it will always sound good. In my eyes, modern regulation very rarely produces net positive results.

 

The supreme court has decided what authority the FCC should have in this manner.

 

I interpreted all 3 things you listed. They were very basic writing that does not mean anything to me. It sounds good, but it doesn't actually have any teeth. The FCC should not have the authority to have those teeth, so to say. Therefore, whatever regulations are imposed will only be in the form of esoteric legal jockeying. AKA, no es bueno mi amigo.

 

The wording has all been used before and it does not guarantee anything. In my eyes, current NN laws only hurt and repealing it will do good. 

 

Neither of us are changing our mind, but only one of us actually lives with the result. 

 

How did the FCC have the authority to do what it did in 2015? Either Obama or a specific 2 out of 3 judge vote in Washington D.C. is what surfaced what you are defending.

 

Who should and will decide what happens with that 2 year old NN phrase? Congress not the FCC. That's is exactly what will happen in the near future. 

 

It's not odd that the FCC decided to change things all by itself 2 year ago, but then its up to my entire congress to change it back? 

 

You are defending not repealing NN as if it means something to you and that is honorable. On paper, I would not be surprised that many others across the world do as well. But in reality, I have my reasons for disagreeing with it based off real world experience. I do not care for what humans are talking about, I care about what they produce or achieved(what is observable). 

 

Surely, at some point every possible law and regulation will exist. Passing that point will only translate to an excessive restriction. 

 

DutchTexan plan for the internet 

 

$60 to access any form of the internet

$9.99 to access HD content 

$9.99 for gaming and downloads with data caps of course 

$9.99 for social media that isn't sponsored by the ISP

$9.99 for porn

$9.99 for encrypted access 

Let us find more fee's for you in the future this is for your own good!!!

 

BOY oh BOY is this great for consumers!!!! 

 

Upto 100mb internet if reading only pure text with images with GIF's and JPEG compressed. 

[DutchTexan]

7 hours ago, jdwii said:

 

DutchTexan plan for the internet 

 

$60 to access any form of the internet

$9.99 to access HD content 

$9.99 for gaming and downloads with data caps of course 

$9.99 for social media that isn't sponsored by the ISP

$9.99 for porn

$9.99 for encrypted access 

Let us find more fee's for you in the future this is for your own good!!!

 

BOY oh BOY is this great for consumers!!!! 

 

Upto 100mb internet if reading only pure text with images with GIF's and JPEG compressed. 

You sound like one of those people that said Bitcoin shouldn't be worth anything near $3,000. It's going to crash!! It's a scam!!

 

What're you going to do when your internet hysteria ends up being unfounded? This is what happens with virtually all political outrage from 2017.

[mr moose]

1 hour ago, DutchTexan said:

You sound like one of those people that said Bitcoin shouldn't be worth anything near $3,000. It's going to crash!! It's a scam!!

 

What're you going to do when your internet hysteria ends up being unfounded? This is what happens with virtually all political outrage from 2017.

You mean unfounded like when a major ISP specifically and intentionally throttles a major streaming service like netflix.  yeah that's totally never going to happen and people are never going to experience trouble with that. 

 

I really don't understand how you can pretend that these things never happened.  

[DutchTexan]

44 minutes ago, mr moose said:

You mean unfounded like when a major ISP specifically and intentionally throttles a major streaming service like netflix.  yeah that's totally never going to happen and people are never going to experience trouble with that. 

 

I really don't understand how you can pretend that these things never happened.  

 

Spoiler

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-john-oliver-gets-net-neutrality-wrong-20140604-story.html

 

Netflix had been paying Cogent, a "transit provider" that delivers data online from one ISP to another, to carry at least some of its streams to broadband ISPs such as Comcast. But Cogent's connections with Comcast were becoming congested as the two companies squabbled over how much capacity Comcast would provide and at what cost. According to analyst Dan Rayburn, Comcast's deals with transit providers let them deliver a limited amount of data for free, after which point they have to pay extra. So Netflix moved to cut out the middleman and connect directly to Comcast, a move that Rayburn suggests actually saved Netflix money.

The deal, in other words, didn't put Netflix in a fast lane or give its data priority over other sites' traffic.

Details, details, details. What you think about net neutrality and the FCC's proposed rule depends in large measure on how hard you want to stick it to the cable companies, and hey, who doesn't despise them and their abysmal customer service? One sure way to get people interested in a mind-numbingly complex public-policy issue is to characterize it as a favor to the evil cable guys, so that's how Oliver played it.

He urged the public, and particularly Internet "trolls," to "focus your indiscriminate rage in a useful direction" by telling the FCC not to approve the proposed rule. And many did, letting their Caps Locked outrage loose in such comments as "YOU MUST UPHOLD NET NEUTRALITY AND NET FREEDOM!!!!!! DON'T WUSS OUT TO THOSE CORPORATE [expletive deleted]. DO THE RIGHT THING." 

Spoiler

https://www.forbes.com/sites/larrydownes/2014/11/25/how-netflix-poisoned-the-net-neutrality-debate/#4588a7f1c4d4

 

There was intentional throttling going on, Rayburn reports. But it was not being done, as Netflix claimed, by Comcast or other large ISPs, intentionally or otherwise.

The congestion, rather, resulted from a calculated choice made by Cogent, Netflix’s own Internet transit provider. Cogent, it turns out, had implemented a practice of prioritizing the traffic of its retail customers over that of its wholesale customers, including Netflix, during times of heavy network usage that strained Cogent’s capacity to deliver the traffic being pulled by end-users.

Faced with irrefutable evidence reported by Rayburn and others, Cogent quickly admitted to intentionally slowing the traffic of all its wholesale customers, a practice that may still be in place.

Cogent explained in a blog post that “retail customers were favored because they tend to use applications…that are most sensitive to congestion” and that in response they implanted a “structure” that “impacts interconnections during the time they are congested.”

According to Rayburn, Cogent never publicly disclosed that it was intentionally prioritizing outgoing traffic of its retail customers, in violation of industry practice (and possible contractual responsibilities with its wholesale customers).

And its own policy: Cogent’s website proudly proclaims “Cogent practices net neutrality. We do not prioritize packet transmissions on the basis of the content of the packet, the customer or network that is the source of the packet, or the customer or network that is the recipient of the packet.”

The failure to disclose the practice even as the FCC proceeding spun out of control because of it was particularly damaging. As Rayburn notes, “What Cogent did is considered a form of network management and was done without them disclosing it, even though it was the direct cause of many of the earlier published congestion charts and all the current debates.”

It was Cogent’s undisclosed actions, in other words, that resulted in a widely-reported slowdown of Netflix’s outgoing Internet traffic.

Spoiler

https://www.streamingmediablog.com/2014/06/netflix-isp-newdata.html

 

Netflix’s accusation is that ISPs have purposely congested their peering points in order to specifically degrade the Netflix service. What Netflix has failed to be transparent about is that Netflix has always paid to deliver their traffic. CDNs like Akamai, Limelight and Level 3 successfully managed the majority of all of Netflix’s video and were responsible for Netflix customer performance. Each of these companies successfully delivered Netflix via all the same transit paths and business relationships equally available to Netflix today. When Netflix took over the routing controls for their video traffic with their own CDN Open Connect, customer performance began to suffer as highlighted in Netflix’s own data that they shared with the Washington Post. I added a red circle to the chart to show when the Netflix changes took place and the impact to customer performance by ISPs.

 

. . . 

 

It was Netflix that specifically chose transit paths to those ISPs who refused to give it free peering that it knew (and measured) were not capable of handling an increase in load. In some cases I was told by ISPs that traffic levels increased by 500% in only a few months where normal Internet growth with these same peers was less than 20-30% across an entire year. These ISPs’ customers did not request traffic to be served from poorly performing paths. Netflix chose to create, and use, paths that they knew were congested, simply because they were cheaper than using paths that were less congested. While some may not like that decision, Netflix is running a business and like all businesses, cost is a factor in a lot of decisions. I’m fine with Netflix having to make tradeoffs between quality and cost, but it’s not true that 100% of every path going into Comcast was “congested”.

Some of the many other transit providers I have spoken with confirm this, saying that they could have handled incremental Netflix traffic into Comcast, but that it would have been more expensive than Cogent, which was Netflix’s primary transit provider at the time. Even Cogent would not deny they were the cheapest transit provider of all the ones Netflix was using, but as we’ve all learned, cheap does not guarantee quality. During this same time, Netflix was still using other third-party CDNs for some of their video delivery. These CDNs were delivering the same Netflix service at the same time, to the same locations and with good quality. That is why some customers said their Netflix video was working great, while others said it was buffering and it is also why if some customers used VPNs, their performance improved. Netflix had control over who to give good service to and who to degrade, as shown in this chart below, from a major U.S. broadband 

Spoiler

https://www.streamingmediablog.com/2014/02/media-botching-coverage-netflix-comcast-deal-getting-basics-wrong.html

 

Even worse, some want to imply that today’s announcement has to do with Net Neutrality and Tech Crunch went as far to say that the deal “may be legally outside of the traditional net neutrality rules.” May be? Are they serious? Commercial interconnect relationships, also referred to as paid peering agreements, have been around since the Internet started, and it’s how the Internet works. Commercial interconnect deals have NOTHING TO DO WITH NET NEUTRALITY. Implying otherwise shows a complete lack of regard in understanding how traffic is and has been exchanged across networks for the past twenty years. The media as a whole should stop trying to insinuate or imply that everything that happens between two networks comes down to Net Neutrality. It doesn’t. [See: Netflix’s Streaming Quality Is Based On Business Decisions by Netflix & ISPs, Not Net Neutrality]

In the hopes of trying to educate the market, let’s clear up a lot of the confusion many in the media have created. The first one is that consumers need more “speed” from Comcast or Verizon to get better quality video streaming from Netflix. This is not the case. Netflix’s videos are encoded at a certain level of quality, which requires the consumer to have a specific level of throughput, to get that quality. It has nothing to do with “speed”. If you want to stream a 2Mbps video or a 4Mbps video from Netflix, you don’t need more “speed”, you need more throughput. Speed is the rate at which packets get from one location to another. Throughput is the average rate of successful message delivery over a communication channel. SPEED AND THROUGHPUT ARE NOT THE SAME THING. Next up are articles where it says that transit allows two networks to exchange “bandwidth”, which is not accurate. Transit allows providers to exchange traffic, but bandwidth and traffic are not the same things. Bandwidth is simply the data rate measured in bits per second. Traffic is data in a network encapsulated in network packets.

Another statement I have seen people write about is saying that the deal focuses on the “two company’s pipes”. Netflix is not a network operator, they don’t have any “pipes”, they buy capacity from other network providers who have the pipes. So while this deal is about the interconnection between Comcast and Netflix, Comcast is the only one who actually owns the pipes. Netflix is simply leasing capacity from other network providers. In addition, Netflix does not own an “Open Connect Network”. Open Connect is a program, it’s not a network that Netflix “owns” as the servers caching and delivering Netflix’s content are sitting inside the ISP networks, which isn’t owned or operated by Netflix. Open Connect is just another CDN. It is most similar to Akamai, except Open Connect doesn’t have SLAs with their customers.

Lately, many have been writing about transit with no real idea of just how many types of transit one can buy or how transit deals work. You can buy full transit, partial transit, select routes, on-net routes, etc. and ISPs will create a service and price around the customer request. Transit deals vary greatly, in size, type, price and host of other factors and are not a one-size-fits-all model. So when people write about “transit” without any definition, they are being too generic in its description. Many transit deals are alike, but transit relationships also vary greatly based on the region of the world you are buying transit in. CDNs like Netflix typically connect with many transit suppliers. This helps them route around problems and helps them avoid becoming a traffic problem by overloading any one path.

Spoiler

http://techknowledge.center/blog/2014/09/netflix-secretly-holds-subscribers-hostage-to-gain-favorable-fcc-internet-regulations/

 

The Level 3 Gambit

The origins of Netflix’s hostage strategy go back to 2010, when Netflix decided to switch a significant portion of its streaming video traffic from Akamai’s content delivery network (CDN) to Level 3.

In a press release touting the switch, Netflix expressed confidence in Level 3’s “ability to quickly scale to meet demand,” and Level 3 claimed it could “better control the performance of [its] CDN” as compared to its competitors. Such puffery isn’t unusual in a press statement. But, the notion that Level 3 could somehow “better control” the performance of its CDN than Akamai is particularly notable in this context. CDNs like Akamai exercise control over the performance of their services through transit agreements with ISPs, which places CDNs and ISPs in a customer-supplier relationship. As a transit customer, a CDN can request that an ISP provision an additional port whenever the CDN requires additional capacity, and the ISP has every incentive, as well as a contractual duty, to fulfill the request.

If the Netflix/Level 3 deal had been motivated solely by the performance of Level 3’s CDN services, the deal would have passed into obscurity. Unlike Akamai, however, Level 3 is also an Internet backbone provider that has settlement-free peering agreements with many major ISPs. Level 3’s status as an Internet peer offered Netflix something that Akamai could not — an opportunity to create the conditions for a successful regulatory challenge to industry norms governing the delivery of CDN traffic. That opportunity explains why Level 3 proposed to send its newly acquired Netflix traffic to Comcast under their settlement-free peering agreement immediately after the Netflix/Level 3 deal was announced.

Comcast’s rejection of Level 3’s proposal would not have been a surprise to Level 3. The proposal would have resulted in a significantly asymmetric traffic exchange ratio between Level 3 and Comcast, respectively. Based on established industry norms for settlement-free peering relationships and the fact that Level 3 itself had objected to similarly unbalanced relationships in the past, Level 3 would have expected Comcast to respond with a request for paid peering or a transit arrangement.

It is telling that Level 3 capitulated only three days after the ‘dispute’ began (immediately after Comcast described its request for transit as a “take it or leave it” offer). Though Level 3 ostensibly accepted Comcast’s terms in order “to ensure customers did not experience any disruptions,” it doesn’t appear that service disruptions were imminent. Netflix had retained its relationship with Akamai, and the transfer of Netflix’s traffic to Level 3’s network was intended to occur over time. In these circumstances, it would have been passing strange for Level 3 to concede a commercial dispute so easily — unless it had already achieved its real purpose. Three days was all Level 3 needed to lure Comcast into “stat[ing] a position” that would support a regulatory complaint.

A subsequent statement by Level 3’s legal counsel removed any doubt that the ‘dispute’ was merely a pretext for seeking to extend net neutrality regulations to the Internet backbone market: “It’s not about the money that we’re now being forced to pay Comcast. It’s about the precedent.”

The FCC did not fall for Level 3’s gambit. The agency’s previous Chairman determined that the FCC’s net neutrality rules did not apply to the Internet backbone market, and he showed no inclination to propose additional regulations.

 

[mr moose]

1 hour ago, DutchTexan said:

snip quotes

 

https://consumerist.com/2014/02/23/netflix-agrees-to-pay-comcast-to-end-slowdown/

 

Quote

Rather, the ISPs were allowing for Netflix traffic to bottleneck at what’s known as “peering ports,” the connection between Netflix’s bandwidth provider and the ISPs.

You can spin it anyway you want, but if a consumer pays for access then it's the ISP's job to provide access, not sit back and let the ports clog up when they can simply open more ports. 

 

So I don't care what you call it, it's still intentional action by Comcast that throttled end user bandwidth. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest]

5 hours ago, DutchTexan said:

You sound like one of those people that said Bitcoin shouldn't be worth anything near $3,000. It's going to crash!! It's a scam!!

 

What're you going to do when your internet hysteria ends up being unfounded? This is what happens with virtually all political outrage from 2017.

Yeah the very last thing i would say is bitcoin is going to crash the difference between my example and yours is you actually called the internet of today a utopia that should go away for consumers who actually use their internet they pay for. 

 

 

 

 

[Guest]

4 hours ago, mr moose said:

You mean unfounded like when a major ISP specifically and intentionally throttles a major streaming service like netflix.  yeah that's totally never going to happen and people are never going to experience trouble with that. 

 

I really don't understand how you can pretend that these things never happened.  

i doubt ISP's will rush to do all this in 6 months but they will start to slowly do it more and more until once again the government has to step in and stop it or we just except paying for the internet like we do on cellular service or cable TV. Least if that happens AT&T and Comcast can continue using the same old wires in the USA since the 80's when we they basically stole 400 billion from Americans we should of had fiber in 2005 and broadband speeds at 45mb(in 2005) now the head of the FCC wants to lower what we classify as broadband but we should just act like its all OK

 

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-kushnick/you-have-been-charged-tho_b_6306360.html

[LAwLz]

3 hours ago, DutchTexan said:

-snip-

First of all, I would like to point out to everyone reading this that it may seem like our Texan friend posted multiple sources and multiple instances of Netflix throttling their data, but all of the links are actually about the same thing, and they all references a single source. So while it may seem like a lot of evidence and instances, it's actually just a single one.

 

Secondly, think those articles will be misleading (maybe this is your intention?) to those who don't read them carefully or understand how these types of things work.

What happened was that Netflix and some ISPs (such as Comcast) could not agree to the terms for peering directly with each other. My guess is that it was the ISPs that refused it but since the negotiations are not public I can't say for sure and will adhere to "innocent until proven guilty".

So instead of peering directly with each other Netflix had to hire connections to ISPs through providers like Cogent (Cogent was not the only one I might add). Shortly after it became apparent that Cogent could not handle the traffic load (the whole system was sub-optimal for this amount of traffic to begin with, and to me seemed like a band-aid fix because of the disagreements about direct peering) an agreement for direct interconnects was reached.

 

I have no idea where this conspiracy theory that Netflix did it on purpose to aid their case for NN comes from.

 

Thirdly, just because this happened once does not mean Netflix have been lying about being throttled, and that ISPs like Verizon are saints. Another one of the ISPs Netflix hired to be the middle man while direct peering agreements were negotiated was Level 3 Communications. Level 3 Communications was a tier 1 ISP and not at all a "cheap alternative that could not handle the loads" or whatever those articles you linked tries to say.

Something interesting about Level 3 Communications was that they were also running into bottlenecks for Netflix traffic. Why? Because Verizon deliberately created bottlenecks at the AS borders. In fact, Verizon refused to fix the issues even when Level 3 Communications offered to fix it for free. Verizon wanted the bottlenecks to exist, presumably to force Netflix into agreeing to some of the demands in the interconnect agreements.

 

So in short, I don't think your links proves anything. They only tell half the story.

[mr moose]

4 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Verizon wanted the bottlenecks to exist, presumably to force Netflix into agreeing to some of the demands in the interconnect agreements.

 

 

Just like Comcast refusing to deal with the demand for Netflix traffic from it's customers.  

 

Imagine if taxis did this,  charge to take you to the airport then only take you half way and blame the fuel company because they don't want to pay for all the fuel required to complete the journey.  

[Eduard the weeb]

it has been like 2 weeks know and everything the FCC people against NN hoped for like this to just blow over like other things have in the past has not happened and I am happy about that.

[Eduard the weeb]

is it bad that the thing I am most worried about  ( other then lose and slowing down of my favorite websites DUUH ) is if At&t recommend packages my family gonna get a porn package and it gonna be clear who caused that ( me  ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)   )

[leadeater]

6 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Something interesting about Level 3 Communications was that they were also running into bottlenecks for Netflix traffic. Why? Because Verizon deliberately created bottlenecks at the AS borders. In fact, Verizon refused to fix the issues even when Level 3 Communications offered to fix it for free. Verizon wanted the bottlenecks to exist, presumably to force Netflix into agreeing to some of the demands in the interconnect agreements.

Glad you brought that up because I was about to. It really doesn't matter how traffic is throttled or bottle-necked on purpose it's the fact it's happening that is a real issue. Denying a peering agreement with Netflix for no good reason should not be allowed, this comes under discrimination. You provide a service and someone comes along to use it then you take their money and be done with it, you get to set the price and terms so if you don't like them your problem not Netflix's.

 

All these providers are very happy to make peer agreements with everyone else but not with video streaming services, hmm I wonder why that is?

 

Level 3 only deals with data transit services so it's no surprise they don't care who they connect with so long as the money is paid and the terms are adhered to, they don't have to worry about their client's offering services that compete with their own unlike Verizon.

 

Edit:

Also I'll point out something extremely important about this topic that many have missed. More ISP's will not solve the above issues, you know why? Because if you are a Verizon customer for example then Netflix data needs to pass through Verizon's network to get to you, so if Verizon is causing a problem more ISP's are not going to help you.

 

This will always hold true, no matter how many ISP's there are the problem will always exist. You could switch ISP but what if you can't, can be many reasons for why, and what if your other choices are all doing the same thing? Netflix will always be at the mercy of the ISP that connects it's viewers, that last mile holds all the power.

 

More options and competition can't always fix all problems.

[leadeater]

@Eduard the weeb @ARikozuM

Yea I think we took that slightly too far, moving on lol. It can be our inside joke that no one else is going to get