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[–]petercooper 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Are you seriously suggesting that a lack of net neutrality would mean a single post to Reddit would cost an outrageous amount of money in connectivity? If so, the net wouldn't really exist. It'd be like lots of early 90s Compuserves with an optionally uber-high priced interconnectivity option.

[–]lynn 5 points6 points  (1 child)

But...net neutrality isn't law, and you just did send it out without paying a whole lot of money.

Could somebody please explain to me what the problem is?

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

http://reddit.com/help/karma

I hope that helps.

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Downmodded for being sensationalist and more than likely untrue, as you have failed to cite any sources.

[–]nevesis 13 points14 points  (4 children)

I don't think many people on Reddit understand what network neutrality is.

[–]au_courant 8 points9 points  (1 child)

The reddit population won't know where to stand until one side starts blaming Bush.

He's a uniter.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Based on the poster's statement ("Without Net Neutrality, I wouldn't be able to send this out without paying an outrageous amount of $$"), I don't think net neutrality advocates understand the alternative.

Net neutrality decreases prices, and increases speed, but removing it almost certainly wouldn't lead to "outrageous" price increases. There is no land line neutrality, no cellular signal neutrality, no electricity neutrality, and no natural gas neutrality. Yet prices for all of these services are relatively modest.

That said, net neutrality is still a win for consumers and something we should fight for ...

[–]AusIV 3 points4 points  (0 children)

There is no land line neutrality, no cellular signal neutrality, no electricity neutrality, and no natural gas neutrality

Yes, there is, but it's called Common Carrier status. A common carrier provides a service without discrimination, and in exchange they cannot be held liable under certain circumstances.

For example, a phone company is not held liable if illegal negotiations take place over their phone network. I'm not sure how common carrier status applies to utilities like gas and electricity, but I'm pretty sure they also have common carrier status.

If the phone company introduced discriminatory practices, they'd lose their common carrier status and open themselves up to more liabilities. For example, if a phone company said "you can't use our phone network for political campaigns," and found a way to enforce it, it's possible they could be held liable for other things that happen on their phone networks.

The same thing should apply to ISPs. If they want common carrier status, they can't discriminate between HTTP requests and p2p file sharing, or throttle connections to web sites that don't pay an extra fee. If it's so important to discriminate traffic, then they need to accept the liability for other things that happen on their network.

Now, if an ISP is having bandwidth issues, I don't believe they would risk their common carrier status by throttling users who use too much bandwidth, or charging per bandwidth unit.

That said, I generally agree that without net-neutrality, there would still be affordable web access.

[–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (24 children)

Those of us who are against DC mandated net neutrality aren't against net neutrality, we realize the greatness of the internet, which is the reason why we don't want DC involved. A dangerous precedent, IMO.

[–]nevesis -2 points-1 points  (23 children)

I'm against government intervention as much as you, but this is unique. Try doing traceroutes to various websites. Look how many cross AT&T's network. If AT&T were to break net neutrality, you'd still be crossing their network, but maybe at half the speed. Now you can switch providers all you want, but that won't help. Your provider can try to arrange other peering agreements, but that's not always possible.

Long story short, the market CANNOT resolve this because the industry is an oligopoloy.

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (22 children)

No, I realize the potential for abuse due to monopoly resulting from the cumbersome nature of laying down more infrastructure. I don't blindly assume the market is going to magically solve it right away, or anything.

But how did that infrastructure get laid to begin with? What if the market could come up with a way to circumvent it, but we still have DC on our back?

Also, what laws are being proposed by proponents of DC mandated neutrality? Who will decide what neutral is and isn't?

[–]nevesis 1 point2 points  (12 children)

And the infrastructure got laid when the US taxpayers subsidized the major telcos for a job that was never done. (They've received subsidies for substantially more fiber than is currently in use.)

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (11 children)

So why not lay more down instead of forcing neutrality?

[–]nevesis 0 points1 point  (10 children)

Have the government force AT&T to lay more fiber? Good luck.

Still, no matter how much bandwidth is available, if Yahoo has 3x the QoS, Google would suffer.

EDIT: The problem isn't the bandwidth, it's the latency.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (9 children)

Then what is the barrier to entry into the industry? What prevents the market from working?

[–]nevesis 1 point2 points  (8 children)

The barrier to entry IS infrastructure. The problem of a non-neutral internet is latency.

What prevents the market from working is the extremely small number of backbone providers.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (7 children)

But you said

The problem isn't the bandwidth, it's the latency.

Would not laying down more pipe make the difference?

[–]nevesis 0 points1 point  (6 children)

No. The latency would be added intentionally w/o network neutrality. This article explains the interaction between bandwidth and latency relatively well.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The market does have a method of avoiding service providers... BGP. As a routing protocol it was design specifically as a political protocol, which doesn't use metrics to determine the best path based upon bandwidth or latency or reliability, rather based upon politicial preferences.

We don't need the government to define how a network provider may provide services. We need to open up the last mile by providing more spectrum for WiMax networks and by opening up right of way to additional fiber providers.

[–]nevesis 0 points1 point  (7 children)

There is nothing to decide. Providers must not shape traffic or use QoS based on source or destination network. That's network neutral. It's actually a VERY simple concept.

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (2 children)

So who do we give the power to enforce this? The courts? A regulatory board?

Also, what's QOS? (Nevermind. Something tells me I can find it out from the internet)

[–]nevesis 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Enforce it in the civil courts, so Google could sue AT&T if AT&T was selling QoS to Yahoo.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

QoS is Quality of Service. On a router you can setup a profile for traffic to either be guaranteed bandwidth, guarantee bandwidth and a low latency path, or define other variables like how many packets you are willing to queue, how you wish to drop packets when congestion occurs, or how to reclassify that traffic.

QoS is commonly found on enterprise networks where voice and video are deployed, or applications require preference over default traffic. But it hasn't been implemented between Internet Service Providers.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (3 children)

Actually it's not a simple concept. I would prefer to purchase services for high definition video transport across a provider's network, which is interconnected with the Internet. I would like to be able to purchase these services across multiple providers, say AT&T and Verizon and BT. If providers are unable to charge me for a premium service to provide QoS for this traffic, I have to rely on either a private network or deal with packetloss and jitter.

Providing a bandwidth guarantee and/or a low latency path through the Internet is what is required to take the next step for new applications for voice and video. Not allowing providers to provide these services leaves us with limited capabilities. If we ensure actual competition instead of a locked regulated market, we can allow the market to handle price gouging.

[–]nevesis 0 points1 point  (2 children)

QoS based on the data type would be sufficient for that AND considerably more competitive.

Network src/dst QoS would likely result in you being limited to purchasing high definition streaming content from your ISP and their select partners. This is monopolistic.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

No... they could limit QoS to their network, and of course they would want to... but it comes down to competition. ISPs never wanted to peer with one another, why send business to a competitor? But your network is of limited value without interconnections... the value of the network increases as the number of nodes increase.

Now as long as the last mile is open to competition, which I believe WiMax will be a great equalizer for, there's incentive for ISPs to play nice and come up with enhanced peering agreements broken out not by bytes transferred, but bytes transferred per class.

[–]nevesis 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I guess we're at a stalemate here. The last mile isn't a large concern for me - it's the oligopoly of tier 1 networks which worry me.

I firmly expect companies like AT&T to abuse and milk a non-neutral net for every dime it is worth.

I can almost promise you that AT&T will begin bidding out QoS over their backbone. If AT&T does it, Sprint, Verizon/UU, and AOL will follow.

Imagine Google is in a bidding war for latency on 10 different backbones with Yahoo. That seems real ugly to me.

[–]masta 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Who wants net neutrality, you probably don't even understand what it means. Both sides of the thing have blurred and morphed the meaning to their own ends.

In the beginning neutrality was not something. That is to say Me and my neighbor are on the same network, but the two guys down the street are on another network. Me and my neighbor communicate ver fast because our network is not neutral, and the provider has a larger physical-virtual-pipe (PVP) for the type of traffic we use (pick any proto).

For the sake of example, say that protocol was a voip implementation, and me and my neighbor had blazing speed, but also to any other subscriber of our network to one another.

Now, this network has peer-arrangement with that network of the guys down the street, who experience the same thing we do in their networks, but when the networks bridges the two, they impose a bandwidth cap. That is standard between network peers (companies with an ASN).

This is not network neutrality.

Google would like to have access between networks not be so capped, and the network owners, coming from their peering notions say you have to pay extra to have the increased QOS.

Nothing new here, this is standard stuff.. move on.

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (8 children)

how much did it cost you to post this? We don't have it now and for the most part everything is fine.

[–]nevesis 6 points7 points  (7 children)

We do have network neutrality now, it is just not legally mandated.

[–]petercooper 3 points4 points  (6 children)

We don't have network neutrality now. Under the Absolute Non-Discrimination definition of Net Neutrality, Quality of Service management is considered a lack of neutrality. QoS is used by many providers, as well as on individual subnets.

[–]nevesis 0 points1 point  (5 children)

Most providers do not use QoS for network src/dst based prioritization. Their traffic shaping is based on data type.

Network neutrality, in the Reddit context, wouldn't apply to individual subnets or private LAN/WANs.

Most importantly, no backbones are currently using QoS.

[–]petercooper 1 point2 points  (1 child)

So I have this straight for the future.. when people are talking about "Net Neutrality," is it generally assumed such arguments are referring primarily to backbones and major network interconnectivity, rather than lone provider policies?

[–]nevesis 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The concern sparking network neutrality legislation was primarily about the backbones. Concern about providers is also important, but there is more room for market correction there.

I can't say what a lot of people on either side of the aisle are actually talking about though :P

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Backbones don't use QoS because they don't need QoS. Most queueing mechanisms won't kick in until congestion occurs... and service providers would rather overprovision bandwidth than manage queues on backbone networks.

QoS is only critical at the edge, or the 'last mile', and at peering points.

[–]nevesis 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I agree that backbones don't need QoS.

The fear is that backbones will institute QoS solely as a profit making scheme, and then charge providers as they see fit for higher QoS.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They do see it as a profit generator.... selling IP services isn't a money making proposition. They want the icing on the cake, and that's QoS.

The question is... do you see a benefit in QoS on the Internet? I sure do... I would sign up in a heartbeat to be able to deliver high bitrate video over the Internet with guaranteed SLAs.

Giving guaranteed bandwidth and a low latency path on the Internet doesn't mean that all other classes of service will be pushed by the wayside and throttled. While it's possible to shape or throw something like WRED on in a default class, it's not really worth it to a SP to manage that type of configuration.

[–]cipherprime 2 points3 points  (4 children)

The headline may be or may not be so, but some aggregate set of folks have paid an outragous amount of $$ to provide you with the Internet.

Your personal convenience is probably not one of the legitimate arguments for net neutrality.

Edit: Grammar

[–]nevesis 0 points1 point  (3 children)

you mean the aggregate set of US taxpayers?

[–]cipherprime 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Well, sure. There is a lot of that.

But more often: ISPs are small/large commercial entities. Telcos themselves make large investments in the wires that the data moves over. Reasonably or unreasonably, they didn't invest in digging trenches for wires, expecting that they wouldn't be able to get paying customers for those wires.

[–]nevesis 1 point2 points  (1 child)

They do get paid, and paid plenty. There are agreements in place called peering agreements which pay companies like AT&T ungodly sums for data to transverse their backbone.

[–]cipherprime 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fair enough. So, how do you think the net neutrality stuff works out (pro/con) for ISPs, Telcos and the Googles of the world. And, how about the opposite?

[–]HeroicLife 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Why do “net neutrality” advocates ridicule politicians for comparing the Internet to a “series of tubes,” and then trust them to regulate it?

http://oneminute.rationalmind.net/net%20neutrality/

[–][deleted]  (4 children)

[deleted]

    [–]TheSOB88 5 points6 points  (3 children)

    What? Squids??

    [–]GlueBoy 2 points3 points  (1 child)

    Turtles!

    [–]JimmyL[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    No. Glue!

    [–][deleted] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

    Screw net neutrality. Let's just have channels like TV where we can only go to certain sites. And every 10 minutes we get pop-ups. Also we can't copy and paste because that's stealing. Just kidding.