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- F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules
- FCC votes to repeal net neutrality rules
- "Net neutrality is the secret sauce that has made the internet awesome"
- FCC overturns net neutrality rules, but supporters pledge to continue fight
WASHINGTON — The Federal Communications Commission voted on Thursday to dismantle rules regulating the businesses that connect consumers to the internet, granting broadband companies the power to potentially reshape Americans' online experiences.
The agency scrapped the so-called net neutrality regulations that prohibited broadband providers from blocking websites or charging for higher-quality service or certain content. The federal government will also no longer regulate high-speed internet delivery as if it were a utility, like phone service.
The action reversed the agency's 2015 decision, during the Obama administration, to have stronger oversight over broadband providers as Americans have migrated to the internet for most communications. It reflected the view of the Trump administration and the new F.C.C. chairman that unregulated business will eventually yield innovation and help the economy.
It will take weeks for the repeal to go into effect, so consumers will not see any of the potential changes right away. But the political and legal fight started immediately. Numerous Democrats on Capitol Hill called for a bill that would reestablish the rules, and several Democratic state attorneys general, including Eric T. Schneiderman of New York, said they would file a suit to stop the change.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Friday December 15 2017, @09:52AM (6 children)
In the whole discussion, I get confused, as people do not seem to have any definition of net neutrality to begin with. When I contract an ISP, I get some bandwidth promises/guarantees. What do those mean? If they are defined as to be valid up to the internet exchange point of the ISP, I have not bought any internet access at all as upwards, my bandwidth might be 0. Any contract with an ISP can therefore be only be meaningful when uplink bandwidth sharing rules are explicitly stated in the contract. No mentioning would, as far as I can see, default to a fair share policy, AKA net neutrality (in my book). Implicitly, this argument traverses all the further exchange point too, implying that if all the consequences are not explicitly detailed in the contract, I can expect a fair share policy (I want to communicate with host A, if it is not on a fair share basis, what guarantee would I have?). I therefore cannot see how the FCC decision could have any legal standing as a general rule.
If however, ISPs decide to partition their bandwidth and sell it separately, that would be possible under current "net neutrality" rules already, it would just influence the peering/settlement rules between ISPs. Just pulling the rug from under your peering partner by meddling with their traffic would probably always be seen as unacceptable between the contractual partners new FCC rules or not. As a conclusion I do not see why these new rules are needed (to achieve "higher-quality" service) on the one hand or how they could be implemented, legally, on the other hand
(Score: 5, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Friday December 15 2017, @10:45AM (5 children)
My definition:
Seems easy enough to me.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Friday December 15 2017, @11:07AM
Yes, that is a definition, but one that has never been applicable. For example, point three is always violated whenever peering gets involved.
(Score: 3, Informative) by jimtheowl on Friday December 15 2017, @11:24AM (3 children)
My ISP, which is also a content distributor, should not get to slow down Netflix just because they are a competitor. As well, duckduckgo does not get slowed down to a crawl because they cannot buy the same access as google given that they do not track and sell your information.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday December 15 2017, @05:19PM (2 children)
You cannot slow down a connection without dropping packets. If there is a certain number of packets per second arriving, then either you pass all of them, or you drop some of them. Prioritizing packets means changing the probability that a packet is dropped, and thus is covered by that point.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @06:13PM
Consider the blackouts in California caused by Enron and friends. Electrical power would be routed in "stupid" ways to purposely fill the capacity of various connections. This forced some areas to buy more expensive power, since the connection to cheap power was already at capacity. Profit!
So in this case, suppose Hulu wants to take down Netflix. That is easy enough. Send every packet 100 times. Packets get dropped based on your criteria. Hulu service does fine, since usually at least one copy of each packet will get through. Netflix customers don't get their packets... until Netflix joins the arms race with each packet duplicated 10000 times. So then Hulu responds...
(Score: 2) by jimtheowl on Saturday December 16 2017, @01:03PM
Window size for one can limit throughput, even without packet loss. The "Window size" section under the following article is a good read, but I'm sure you can find plenty more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP_tuning [wikipedia.org]