from the Hotels-on-Park-Place-and-Boardwalk dept.
The FCC today (May 15) voted 3 to 2 to proceed with a dual-tier internet, where big media providers can (must) pay big carriers to stream content faster.
The rules proposed would prevent carriers from blocking or slowing down "certain websites", and non-paid content must be provided at the same rate the subscriber paid for, or at least not arbitrarily slowed down or blocked.
After weeks of public outcry over the proposal, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said the agency would not allow for unfair, or "commercially unreasonable" business practices. He wouldn't accept, for instance, practices that leave a consumer with slower downloads of some Web sites than what the consumer paid for from their Internet service provider.
Micheal Weinberg, of Public Knowledge countered, saying "the new rules "would create a two-tier Internet where 'commercially reasonable' discrimination is allowed on any connections that exceed an unknown 'minimum level of access' defined by the FCC".
In spite of the outcry around the nation and demonstrations at FCC headquarters calls to action here on SN, the 3-2 split decision fell along party lines with the two Republicans on the five-member commission objecting to the changes on the grounds that it amounted to overregulation.
To me, the standard of "commercially (un)reasonable" seems like a loop hole large enough to allow any speed reductions the carriers want to impose, as long as they can make more money or by imposing them.
Related Stories
On Thursday, May 15, hundreds will rally outside the Federal Communications Commission's headquarters in Washington, D.C., to protest Chairman Wheeler's proposal that has the potential to stop the flow of a free and open Internet. On this same day, thousands of activists, organizations and companies will take action online to save the Internet.
The press release specifies that there are activities slated to begin prior to the FCC's May 15 meeting and following adjournment of the subsequent press conference.
(Score: 2) by Blackmoore on Thursday May 15 2014, @09:14PM
Anyone starting up a local mesh network?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by pbnjoe on Thursday May 15 2014, @09:20PM
Perhaps once I take my face from my hands and stop sighing at the state of things.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by iwoloschin on Thursday May 15 2014, @09:38PM
I think sneakernets would be more efficient, at least until more people adopt 802.11ac (or faster).
In the meantime, I really think that what's old will become new. Let's get community funded ISPs set up again. You could even have it exist as part of the municipal library system. It's a great way to draw people to live in your community, it makes current residents happy, and it ensures that everyone would be able to access internet at a reasonable price.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by gishzida on Thursday May 15 2014, @09:57PM
The corporate ISPs [i.e. Comcast] would sue you municipality for somehow breaching their contract or possibly by backing political candidates that would support the idea of "small government" and "deregulation"
I seem to recall that's part of how the deregulation of TELCO ISPs came down as well as the elimination of 3rd party DSL wholesaling. The common carriers got themselves deregulated via lawsuits / judicial activism.
We should never have deregulated any kind of communication or data service.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday May 15 2014, @09:59PM
The best way to do that is mesh networks though. You might not get 4K streaming, but you will get a huge heaping helping of Freedom.
As mesh networks can communicate over great distances it allows for a large degree of anonymity (assuming the implementation of certain protocols) and you would only need to set up an appropriate number of bridges for the mesh network to route to the Internet.
It's all up to how much we cooperate. If everybody pitched in $40-50 a month you could get large pipes to support a lot of traffic. As a bonus, it would support people in more rural areas 20-30 miles from town. No reason they can't participate either, and you get to use their connection as a relay when out in the middle of nowhere.
I believe it's entirely possible for us to forcibly take the last mile back by hook or crook. We need to get past apathy.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by frojack on Thursday May 15 2014, @11:02PM
Is there upstream distributed load sharing in Mesh network software so that one guy's cable modem doesn't get nominated to carry the whole load? Some nearest route logic or something?
I've got older wifi routers laying around and it would be fun to mess with this, but I haven't really read up on it lately.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Friday May 16 2014, @12:35AM
That's a good question. It won't be your wifi routers though. I'm thinking much stronger stuff capable of 40 miles with line of sight.
I'm going to start reading up on the white papers. Oil & Gas uses this kind of tech a lot to create IP networks supporting remote crews. I have no idea how they are implemented, but I know some people in Oil & Gas and want to make some phone calls to get up to speed on what IT is doing.
If it's going to be serious it will require many backhauls and have to be distributed. Although, without additional protocol help like multi-homed TCP, single sessions would be carried by only one route in all cases. If we use something akin to TOR on top of it, you could select a route each time while maintaining a local database to distribute sessions equally across mesh nodes. There is plenty of topology protocols already established for mesh networking. We don't need to reinvent the wheel, but simply make some modifications to existing equipment and firmware.
Largest challenge that I see with this is bandwidth. 4K streaming is out of the question. I think you can only get 150-300mb/s on a node, and that may be a couple hundred dollars a pop at the cheapest. WiMAX is seemingly the poor man's mesh radio, but it is capable of several dozen miles for range and a theoretical limit of 70mb/s. In Las Vegas when Clearwire hadn't oversold and overloaded their backhauls it was actually quite beautiful.
I was at a local event in Las Vegas where a company was demonstrating some serious wireless tech that they think could disrupt services like Clearwire provides and is supposedly WiMax on super steroids. The radio has a ton of antennas that can be steered to vastly improve performance.
Pros:
- Strong radio based pseudo-anonymity that requires localized SIGINT to compromise. Mass surveillance via remote means is impossible unless the backhauls were directly compromised. That's a lot to compromise over the entire US.
- No last mile issues with the incumbents, since we aren't playing with coax and fiber in the streets requiring easements from municipalities.
- Any practical attempts will be community based and enjoy collective bargaining powers granting business level treatment and not residential treatment for selected backhaul locations.
- Much greater distances than a single mile. Mesh networking radios can be capable of moderate bandwidth and long distance. We could easily deliver low grade service to rural areas and allow them to act as relay nodes. You could be 70 miles from town in the middle of nowhere and get service this way.
Cons:
- Low bandwidth and possibly higher latencies. Should perform much better than satellite, but worse than wired or a local WLAN.
- Overcoming end user apathy
- Requires community investment in new equipment
- Requires community to exist with cooperative people (much harder than it sounds to be sure)
- Requires a FOSS community to develop and maintain our own protocols that provide a performant network along with privacy and anonymity features
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Friday May 16 2014, @01:14AM
Let me throw a couple of links at you:
http://emergentbydesign.com/2011/02/11/16-projects -initiatives-building-ad-hoc-wireless-mesh-network s/ [emergentbydesign.com]
http://commotionwireless.net/ [commotionwireless.net]
And, finally:
http://daviddarts.com/piratebox/ [daviddarts.com]
(Score: 2) by BradTheGeek on Friday May 16 2014, @12:06PM
And what happens when the FCC steps in and states that you cannot use this equipment/these frequencies without appropriate licensing. Oh and TWC/Comcast/AT&T already have the licenses?
(Score: 2) by edIII on Friday May 16 2014, @04:34PM
Huh?
All of the mesh networking routers on the market are FCC approved. I'm not proposing anything like Anonymous where we start using unlicensed frequencies and mess around with established spectrums. These are products currently for sale and used by industry.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 16 2014, @05:18PM
These guys are and perhaps the rest of us should as well https://thefnf.org/ [thefnf.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by keplr on Thursday May 15 2014, @09:59PM
When you start from the assumption that any rule the government makes is bad, then it's easy to see all regulation is stifling and harmful. The open Internet is what's valuable here. It's the Internet that's at stake. The Republicans can't seem to grasp that domains of life are not synonymous with the corporations that are involved in those domains. ISPs are NOT the Internet. If you value freedom, low barriers to entry, a free market where anyone can play, then you need to regulate *ISPs* so that the *INTERNET* remains unregulated.
If the government shirks its responsibility to level the playing field, business will fill that regulatory void and happily install their own self-serving rules; which, ironically, will be very anti-business unless you happen to already own a megacorp involved with the Internet.
The Republicans get their money from those handful of big companies that already have established themselves. The big ISPs are bribing lawmakers to look the other way while they kick the ladder away so no one else can climb up and compete with them. If the GOP actually believed in competition, they'd be doing the opposite. They aren't capitalists, they're crony-capitalists with an army of useful idiots, single-issue voters, who they have duped into voting against their own economic self-interest.
I don't respond to ACs.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Leebert on Thursday May 15 2014, @10:34PM
In case you missed it, the FCC voted down party lines: All three Democrats voted FOR the rule, the Republicans AGAINST.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by keplr on Friday May 16 2014, @01:21AM
We wanted them to vote in favor of allowing the FCC to regulate ISPs. We then wanted GOOD regulations. The Republicans want to say the FCC doesn't get to set ANY rules, so the ISPs are free to do as they wish. What they wish is anti-Net neutrality, so they can launch all sorts of new money making schemes to the detriment of consumers.
I don't respond to ACs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 17 2014, @01:13AM
Voting for this was voting for Net Neutrality. Like always, the Democrats vote in favor of the public, while Republicans vote in favor of syphoning more money to the rich.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Thursday May 15 2014, @10:34PM
The Republicans aren't the only political party benefiting from this. Just because their reason for supporting this change are obvious, it does not mean the other party automatically disagrees. Watch how they vote and why (funding)--you'll see they both cater to big business interests. They only oppose each other in public debate and election years.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 15 2014, @11:15PM
The republicans were the only two who voted against it. Get your facts straight.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 15 2014, @10:12PM
Emphasized part is hilarious. You actually think anyone in the FCC actually cares what people on this website say? Self-important much?
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday May 15 2014, @11:06PM
Clearly not, which Is why I said "In spite of".
I had in mind the root meaning of spite when I phrased it that way.
More like, we see you bitches protesting outside our headquarters, so here, take THIS!.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 15 2014, @11:27PM
I think you missed my point. The protests were actually visible to them. On the other hand, no one in the FCC cares that someone called to action the people of some niche website that they would've never heard of. Acting like anyone in the FCC cares what Soylent News thinks was what I was calling out as self-important.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday May 15 2014, @10:49PM
That's the problem Net Neutrality solved in the first place. I'm starting to wonder of Tom Wheeler recently came into possession of a luxury car.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 16 2014, @05:22PM
Q: What is the value of the internet?
A1: Any good, commidoty, or service is worth that for which it is sold. Therefore:
A2: What did Tom Wheeler get paid to sell it?
Similar logic puts the value of the US economy at somewhere around $20 million, paid out over twenty years or so. (about a million a year for however much longer the former senator who crashed Glass-Stegal is alive).
(Score: 1) by Leebert on Thursday May 15 2014, @11:12PM
I like what Wheeler said when defending the proposed rule:
All well and good in theory, except that in my case I bought "up to 12 Mbps". So it'll be interesting to see how they enforce THAT.
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Friday May 16 2014, @07:25PM
"If a network operator slowed the speed of service below that which the consumer bought, it would be commercially unreasonable and therefore prohibited."
I have YET to get the speed I pay for. I can stream, up and down, reasonable pings, quick page loads, BUT, the tested speed is rarely more than 1/2 of what I pay for. The hitch, of course, is UP TO 25 Mbps. Their excuse: "You live in an area not yet directly tied into the local fiber optic system, therefore your speed is reduced to to infrastructure not supporting the higher speeds available in other parts of the service area."
True? I have no idea. But I suspect it's Bullshit.
Of course, it doesn't reduce my price. And there are no plans in place to bring fiber to this part of town....EVER.
So every six months I call and threaten to go to Century Link (they make Comcast look real good speed wise....yes, someone sucks worse than Comcast. I did switch, for 10 days, ONCE, arrrgh!) and they give me yet another special priced starter bundle. PITA, but it saves me nearly 30% on average. Bill goes up, I call, bill goes down.
Fuck all the ISP's.
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 1) by tnt118 on Friday May 16 2014, @12:18AM
I can't shake the feeling that this was their plan from the start... put forward something so outrageous that their "backtracking" wouldn't look so bad in comparison when it's pretty much what they wanted from the get-go.
I think I like it here.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by SlackStone on Friday May 16 2014, @12:44AM
Has the actual proposal been posted yet?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 16 2014, @03:33AM
"non-paid content must be provided at the same rate the subscriber paid for"
So now ISP's will offer much slower subscription options to subscribers (and/or they will stop upgrading their subscription options) and only paid content will be given those higher speeds. IOW, this is just a mere formality to simply give ISP's what they want with the 'solution' or 'compromise' merely being how they market and advertise it to consumers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by dry on Friday May 16 2014, @04:01AM
Since they don't want to be common carriers perhaps they should be held responsible for all content that they transport. I'm willing to bet that there is some child porn in their pipes and if I accidentally downloaded child porn, I'd likely end up with my life ruined. Why should they not suffer the consequences of transporting illegal stuff?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 16 2014, @08:08AM
not sure the post office is responsible for the content of letters sent or recieved.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 16 2014, @10:18AM
That's because the post office is a common carrier.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 16 2014, @02:43PM
tcp/ip is just one protocol. it happens to run the internet.
for physical networks there are many different technologies.
some lend themselves better to unicast (point-2-point) and some to broadcast (point-2-mutlipoint).
television is a cash-cow and needs relatively little material. you can string one .. maybe tune in to another frequency/channel. imagine one loooong antenna with branchings.
coax-cable and tap this "backbone" to many users. it is not really meant to carry signals back.
sit back and watch
this existed profitable pre-internet already.
then the internet happened which was coming thru extensive telephone copper-cabling (dial-up). :) and REAL switches .. not hogging hubs .. more yeah : ))
the LAN guys pretty much ditched COAX-LAN when ethernet became available.
no more broadcast collisions, yeah
the internet worked great and the physical improvements were made FOR TCP/IP.
The coax-cable-tv guys wanted a piece of this and instead of ditching the looong antenna paradigm
and starting from scratch the shoe-horned a way to make TCP/IP "work". DOC's-sick for sure.
porking the tcp/ip protocol onto a coax cable is more difficult then enabling MULTICAST
on a packet-switched network which will do the same as a loooong antenna without straining the physical media.
long story short ... cablecom et al. still firmly believe (fanatically) they are a content
distributor (cable tv) NOT a network-transport provider.
they are prolly angry for being nice and providing the possibility of tcp/ip on their "not-made-for-it" looong antenna and now getting shafted by customers that don't want their content (billion+ crap tv channels) but want to run their ferraris on their flat-bed looong train-wagon (duh).
driving a car on a train sounds silly right? that's internet on a cable-tv network.
Anyways I don't feel sorry for people supporting the wrong network type and making greedy millionars
in the process. thought you where smart getting that cable-tv and "fast" internet eh? l0s3r.
there's two ways going forward: ...there.
1) live with it. the internet being just another channel on the cable-tv network, albeit a fairly interactive one.
2) find a real internet service provider and put your money
hint: PON is same as coax. or also called "wifi confined into a glass-tunnel". beware.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicast [wikipedia.org]