Posted on 12/14/2017 10:36:00 AM PST by ColdOne
The Federal Communications Commission voted Thursday to repeal net neutrality rules, over the objection of Democrats in Congress, Internet activists and online companies.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, Commissioner Michael O’Rielly, and Commissioner Brendan Carr, all Republicans, supported the proposed rollback of the Obama-era rules. Democratic Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel opposed the change.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
“Your Geritol is showing. Anyone 40 and under today is a “techie”.”
There are those that use WiFi at home, and consider themselves techies because they can play online games. Then there are those that know whether the wifi is 802.11n or 802.11ac.
It’s the latter I’m referring too. Just because you use a computing device doesn’t make you a techie.
We probably agree more than you think. I was mainly providing another version of how to think about it.
I do not particularly like either option, because, for example, in my area there are only two ISPs and they are both liberal.
Here I would personally probably fare better if the government regulated it like a public utility (net neutrality) because the ISPs could not do things like decide to charge extra for sites like FreeRepublic.
If we had a genuine free market where there was a good menu of ISPs and I could pick a friendly and inexpensive one, then I would rather not have government involved.
It was a little like this when back in the days of “Long Distance Plans.” Same phone system but you could pick a plan that operated through it. Less government.
I hope internet capacity to all of our doors gets high enough that it becomes a non-issue to have a government referee (like you seem to prefer now in these days when most people are still stuck with limited options).
My favorite are the ones who like to point out that the “government built the Internet” so it’s for everyone therefore Net Neutrality...and the government should enforce it.
What they don’t know - because they weren’t there - is that the Internet they know and love almost didn’t happen *because* of government. They didn’t like or want the TCP/IP stack because they considered it too cumbersome. It wasn’t until the foundation and idea was turned over to private enterprise that the TCP/IP stack flourished and grew and suddenly the *real* Internet was born - built on the backs, intellect, and *money* of private enterprise.
And at the time, the government had no use for it because they hated it and thought it worthless - so they paid no attention to it. Which allowed private enterprise to expand and grow the technology at amazing rates. All without government lifting a finger.
I’ve used this analogy before: Turning the owners of transport into common carriers would be akin to forcing Kroger to offer shelf space to Kraft and Hellman’s at cost just because Kroger sells their own brand of mayonnaise at a price point lower than the others because they own the shelf space and can take advantage of that. Kroger could - in fact - price their shelf space to the point where Kraft and Hellman’s would refuse to buy it - thus making their product the only one on the shelves. They don’t do it because there are other stores that offer their competitor’s products and if they eliminated their competition that way, their customers would begin leaving for those other stores...
Another thing the NN opponents fail to realize is that the costs for non-bandwidth-heavy content providers could actually go *down* if ISPs are no longer bound by regulation to charge everyone the same. Netflix may end up having to pay 10X the amount because they stream bandwidth-heavy media while a site like FR sees their costs reduced because they are nearly all text-based.
I went from consultant for two years to network engineer, senior engineer, and architect for twenty - now I manage a “SWAT” team of multi-discipline engineers for a major data center owner/operator.
Give me thirty minutes in a room with any millennial “techies” and I can change their mind about net neutrality.
Norms are more difficult. I got my millennial daughter to get it and she’s not a techie but she’s intelligent. Her friends are worthless however.
“Another thing the NN opponents fail to realize is that the costs for non-bandwidth-heavy content providers could actually go *down* if ISPs are no longer bound by regulation to charge everyone the same. Netflix may end up having to pay 10X the amount because they stream bandwidth-heavy media while a site like FR sees their costs reduced because they are nearly all text-based.”
Correct.
And the same applies to Youtube, Google and others who derive their revenue from those obnoxious ads that bounce all over your screen, and videos that pop up and detract from you’re trying to read.
The “free” content providers are freaking out over this. The net is no longer their own personal bitch, compelled to deliver any and every thing they serve up for free. While they extract ALL the revenue and profit from the ecosystem.
I have no problem with grocery stores having different brands of potato chips and charging appropriately for shelf space for other brands. But they shouldn’t be allowed to price shelf space based on who they want to be winners and losers.
They also shouldn’t be allowed to put their own brands in proven strategically-advantageous locations or aisle endcaps because it puts the other brands at a disadvantage.
“I do not particularly like either option, because, for example, in my area there are only two ISPs and they are both liberal.”
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For me that’s the sad irony in all this. Some seem to think this is a blow to leftists - or so they’ve been told. They don’t realize the media/IT conglomerates(e.g. NBCUniversal, Inc.), who this will benefit, despise conservatives and work against conservative values. Non-IT people can handle wordbites, but not the complexity involved in issues such as this.
Or perhaps now we can implement something more workable than this Obama nonsense.
“Or perhaps now we can implement something more workable than this Obama nonsense.”
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Which part of it (NN) doesn’t make sense to you? Not being a smartazz, just curious.
NN was trying to solve a problem that didn’t exist and cannot exist with a normal market economy.
If a company tried any of the shenanigans the NN fear-mongers proposed, they would very quickly find themselves out of business.
Are you contending that the throttling occurs due to ISP objections to ideology, or because of ISP objections to sites that for example are providers of streaming HD video, or both?
Can you track your contention?
“NN was trying to solve a problem that didn’t exist and cannot exist”
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You ran into a major problem in logic right there.
I assume we both agree the sky is not filled with pink polka dots and unicorns -
Now, if NYC passed a law making it illegal for the sky to be filled with pink polka dots and unicorn, it doesn’t have any real impact on the sky. It doesn’t matter to anybody or anything in reality.
So it wouldn’t make any sense to be upset or against a such a law.
Mathematically, what you’re arguing could be expressed as zero minus zero. 0 - 0 = zero, nothing. So it machts nicht if there is NN or if there isn’t NN.
“they would very quickly find themselves out of business.”
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Think:Monopoly.
I just checked... Mignon Clyburn is the daughter of Black Caucus idiot Jim Clyburn. Great.
Mignon???? What a name.
In a micro view, I use a similar approach for a VMware rack of server blades. The bursty network traffic with users editing files and reading e-mail is segregated from the network attached to the NAS with all the file storage. The NAS network is often saturated with file copying and compiler activity. A 3rd network carries privileged administrative traffic to configure and control the server racks. There is no incentive to build that quality of traffic separation with NN in place. Everyone is forced to swim in the toilet together. The jackass streaming the movie doesn't care if you lose your train of thought writing a document with 15 seconds of delay between entering a keystroke and seeing it echo back to the screen.
ISPs are not censoring us (so far). The problem is google, facebook, twitter etc.
Right, and nn is an attempt to apply this principle to the internet via regulation.
The ISP that is built to support 40 users of bursty network use should not be forced to service streaming users that saturate the bandwidth to the detriment of all other paying customers.
Agreed, and they aren't. ISPs are free to charge their customers for every byte of bandwidth that they consume. If I download 10 times as much data as my neighbor no regulation prevents my ISP from charging me 10 times more.
A business should have the ability to say no to customers whose patronage harms the business. The big content streamers like NN because it forces the ISP to carry content even if it harms the other paying customers.
It appears that you're viewing Netflix as the customer.
Netflix has to pay for the bandwidth to get their movies from their servers onto the backbone network - and they do. I'm sure they have massive contracts with one or more fiber providers. But Netflix isn't a customer of the ISPs we're talking about here (Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, etc.).
The ISPs' customers are you, me and all of the other end users. When we request that a movie be streamed we should also expect to pay for the bandwidth that movie consumes.
Netflix is paying their network provider to get the movie into 'the internet' and we're paying our ISP to get it from the net into our home.
People that want to stream should pay for the capacity.
Again, there's nothing in nn that prevents the ISPs from charging their customers more if they stream more data into their homes.
There is no incentive to build that quality of traffic separation with NN in place. Everyone is forced to swim in the toilet together.
Actually, no. Even with nn rules in place ISPs are allowed to treat different types of traffic differently for purposes of performance and network tuning - and they do it today.
All nn says is they can't treat the exact same type of traffic differently depending on who sent it.
In other words, they can send streaming data over a different path with a different priority than email or normal web traffic, they just can't charge me more for streaming a movie from Netflix than for streaming that same movie from Amazon Prime (assuming they use the same bandwidth).
I think it's best for the ISPs and not bad for the large content providers. I think smaller content providers and end users are the losers.
The ISPs get access to the content providers' revenue streams. They can charge Netflix for carrying their content while still charging the end user for the bandwidth that content consumes - pretty sweet.
The large content providers will have to pay some protection money to make sure the ISPs don't mess with their product, but Netflix et al. can afford it.
All of the big content providers will probably negotiate national agreements with the ISPs to ensure adequate priority for their content. The problem will be with the small or startup providers who can't afford to pay for prioritization.
Realistically I don't see things changing much for someone who uses the internet for shopping or to hang out on FR, but I think the whole entertainment/news aspect of the internet will become a game for the bigs.
I think it's worst for the end consumers. I'll admit that my view is jaundiced by decades of observing the cable companies' business practices but I fear the cable model is exactly where the ISPs want to take the internet.
What may save us is good wireless broadband technology that can break the de facto monopolies on broadband the ISPs have in many, many markets.
NN wouldn't be necessary and would have never gotten traction if there was real competition in provision of broadband to the home.
Note that after repeal the big ISPs were quick to come out and say that nothing would change, but also note that they spent hundreds of millions lobbying for the repeal of nn. Their shareholders expect a return on that investment and odds are good that they'll get it.
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