Cory Doctorow, co-editor of BoingBoing is trying to get the word out on the costs of gutting net neutrality.
The ISPs say they only want to get paid for the use of their service, but the problem is, they're already getting paid. You pay your internet bill every month. Netflix, Google, Yahoo, the Guardian and Boing Boing all pay their internet bills every month. The ISPs aren't seeking to get paid, they're seeking to get paid twice: once by you, and a second time because you are now their hostage and the companies you want to do business with have to get through them to get to you.
You're paying for your line. The phone company exists solely to connect people to the numbers they dial. But because there are "natural monopolies" in phone service (because there are only so many mobile frequencies and underground cable space), they can abuse their position to extort additional payments from the services you want to talk to. And the more popular a service is, the better it is, the more the ISP stands to profit from this racket.
(Score: 2) by everdred on Tuesday April 29 2014, @08:41PM
Is my ISP holding all the comments ransom?
(Score: 2) by Blackmoore on Tuesday April 29 2014, @08:45PM
yes.
(Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Tuesday April 29 2014, @08:46PM
things are slow today. the core routers had an inadvertant peering change and all the traffic was routed using 'nsa over tcp' protocol-id instead of the more common 'tcp over nsa'.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 30 2014, @12:48PM
Note from your ISP (And it even is on topic!):
(Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Tuesday April 29 2014, @08:47PM
While Doctorow is correct in his statement of the model of everybody pays for their own bandwidth, he puts forth an incomplete economic picture.
1) I pay my ISP for my bandwidth. Both for stuff I originate and stuff I consume.
2) My ISP pays its upstream providers for the bandwidth the ISP sends/receives.
3) Netflix pays its ISP for the same.
4) Netflix's ISP pays its upstream provider to handle all this traffic.
But Netflix has a different ISP than I do. None of that money flows to my ISP.
My ISP is now having to handle a boatload more traffic than they bargained for.
Why: Because MY ISP oversold their total bandwidth based on a model of internet usage that in quickly changing. In place of quick requests for web pages and email, that lends it self to sharing the same pipe, the ISPs are now seeing sustained streams, that do not lend themselves to the intermittent traffic model.
So the local ISPs have to increase their own infrastructure AND pay their Upstream providers for total bandwidth consumed. And both of these bills are coming due at the same time. They fear going back to the customers for rate increases, so they are trying to shake down the stream sources.
The problem lies directly with the ISPs promising more than they could ever deliver (for a fixed price) to everyone. They oversold the bandwidth capabilities of their physical plant, and the chickens are coming home to roost, all at the same time.
ISPs were lulled into this foolish promise of unlimited usage for a fixed price simply because the traffic usage pattern allowed it. But increasingly it no longer follows that pattern.
Underlying Issue:
I've been saying for years, that we simply do not have the bandwidth to replace broadcast TV, where one stream can serve a 3 to four TVs in zillion households all at the same time, with stream on demand, where each stream starts and stops on demand, meaning there can be no sharing.
Even if all the TV bandwidth supplied by your cable modem were converted to TCP/IP bandwidth, it would not be sufficient. Because Each TV channel can serve millions, but Each TCP/IP viewer demands a separate stream.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday April 29 2014, @09:04PM
"They fear going back to the customers for rate increases"
Where exactly is this money supposed to come from?
Luckily TV is dying, sports viewership is dying. The intersection of affordability will occur soon enough.
I never really understood the appeal of streaming for non-live events anyway. We'll take the one part of computing thats collapsed in price the most, that being bulk storage, and eliminate it. Brilliant?
Each TV channel could serve millions, but lets be realistic, most really only serve thousands at most, most of the time. If peak viewership for "Survivor" (which doesn't need a live simultaneous stream anyway...) is 10 million, you don't need 10 million times 500 cable channels which sounds like 5 billion simultaneous streams... Push enough caching downstream and its no big deal. There's no need for Comcast, say, to ever download the same episode of Survivor more than once, and that flows on down thru the hubs and nodes of the system.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday April 29 2014, @09:32PM
I suggest you look up cord cutters.
You may thing TV is dying, but the facts are its just moving onto IP space, and there you go, right back at the hub of the problem.
Oh, and buy the way, your ideas of viewership of TV channels is totally mistaken.
Here are a couple links. Comcast already selling a lot of on-demand streams. [michaelsinsight.com] Comcast live tv still climbing. [comcast.com]
Caching downstream is still infrastructure investment that somebody is going to have to pay for. I guarantee you it isn't going to be the shareholders. (And it doesn't actually solve the problem in any realistic way.).
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday April 29 2014, @09:41PM
You're operating from a position that video can only be viewed if it comes from a live stream, which makes no technical sense. Take your roku stick a zillion gig drive $30 drive on it and download most of Survivor at 2am
(Score: 1) by Snow on Tuesday April 29 2014, @09:06PM
You missed a few things...
1)Netflix will give your ISP a free local cache if they want. This means that there is virtually no additional traffic going on transit links.
2) Many ISPs don't pay for peering, or pay minimal peering fees.
3) If the ISP oversold their bandwidth, that is their problem. Maybe they need to charge the customers more -or-
4)Node splitting. If ISPs can't handle the last mile traffic, then they need to split the node. This is supposedly their business. If they are neglecting to upgrade their infrastructure, then they are at fault for shotty service. If the ISP lacks the last mile capacity, shaking netflix down for additional money won't do anything to address that.
(Score: 2) by emg on Tuesday April 29 2014, @09:12PM
1. Installing a local cache in your ISP is not 'free'.
2. They don't pay for peering because they send similar amounts of data in both directions. Netflix sends vast amounts of data, but receives little, so it doesn't fit into that model.
3. So you're OK with the ISP charging customers more when they want to use Netflix?
(Score: 1) by Snow on Tuesday April 29 2014, @09:19PM
1) Sorry, you are correct, my mistake. It's not free, but it is an option for ISPs. Remember when they used to host newsgroup servers locally? Same idea. /dev/random/. Symmetrical! Free peering please!
2) I'm saying that if Netflix clients sent more data, then it *would* be sending similar amounts of data in both directions. I get 1 GB of Netflix shows, and send back 1GB of
3) I'm okay with ISP charging more for bandwidth or data transfer limits, if required. I am not okay for them charging based on who I am talking to, or what protocol I am using. I'm also not okay with them shaking down 3rd companies (hey google, want preferred treatment? That's going to be 1M/month.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 30 2014, @05:08AM
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday April 29 2014, @09:17PM
1) Netflix will only give MAJOR MAJOR carriers a cache.
2) The backbone carries laugh all the way to the bank about your number 2.
3) It may be "their" problem, but that doesn't mean SOMEBODY ELSE isn't going to pay to fix it. I already addressed the issue of asking customers for more money.
4) is just another example of infrastructure upgrades that cost money. The customer is ultimately going to have to pay for that as well.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Snow on Tuesday April 29 2014, @09:29PM
1) So for 95% of the people that are on Comcast, AT&T, ETC they will fall into the MAJOR MAJOR carriers cubbyhole. Very few people use a non-major ISP.
2) AT&T sure does laugh all the way to the bank.
3 + 4) The solution here is better competition. Unfortunately the barrier to entry is so high we have more competition in the commercial aerospace industy than ISPs.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 29 2014, @11:28PM
You many not *have* video-capable bandwidth but, if you are American, you did PAY for that--back in 1996. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [pbs.org]
You simply got screwed by your gov't and the incumbent providers in a giant cash giveaway.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 30 2014, @12:35AM
My ISP is now having to handle a boatload more traffic than they bargained for.
They have as much as they want, actually. They're the ones offering unlimited download.
To see what's really going on, all you have to do is ask why they don't solve this problem simply by switching to metered usage.
The answer is that they'll lose money. Think about how you buy your internet access. You call up your cable company, they offer some sort of promotion, you accept, and a year later the price starts creeping upwards until you can no longer afford it, at which point you call, they offer another promotion, and the cycle repeats. The cable company likes this business model because it ensures every customer pays as much as they can afford, since those with money to waste simply won't call to complain about the ever-increasing price.
If they switch to metered usage, people will watch their usage, and therefore be in control of their monthly bill. The cable companies will lose money.
This is why they voluntarily implemented the "three strikes" program against P2P users. They don't want to cut off paying customers after three strikes, they're just hoping that the first two strikes convince their high-usage customers to become low-usage customers while they continue to pay as much for internet access as they paid before.
Since Netflix is legal, they can't use the same sort of trick to discourage customers from using Netflix, so instead they'll discourage them by simply ruining their customer's connection to Netflix and claim it's because Netflix isn't paying for the bandwidth they use, so that their customers complain to Netflix rather than complain to them.
(Score: 2) by velex on Wednesday April 30 2014, @02:50AM
Wish I had mod points. While I'm not sure I understand why they couldn't work up a profitable metered usage model, there has to be some reason why they haven't already. Perhaps they won't lose money, but the current way must be more profitable.
That's probably the sound of the nail being hit on the head. I think it was a point Hairyfeet touched on [soylentnews.org] recently. The webpages we download these days have so many useless megabytes of crap, and a lot of it (not all, some is genuine bloat) is connections to this domain and that domain and this ad service and that like button and omg why is my browser connecting to 26 $#@! domains to load 1 webpage! I wonder if users would become more sensitive to such things if bandwidth were metered and if therefore user tracking networks might become a lot less profitable. I wonder... then I realize I've had to turn off lights in 3 rooms just now that nobody's been in for hours! Argh!
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday April 30 2014, @03:52AM
Thats exactly right, as I said the cable companies are afraid of their customers, and the reaction they might have to any changes in billing practices. In some places cable is a regulated utility and has to jump through hoops to change their rates.
Comcast did sneak in data caps a couple of years ago, set high enough to hurt the cable cutters, but nobody else.
It's far easier to throttle Netflix than reach into the customer's pockets.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Tuesday April 29 2014, @08:51PM
Many of the ISPs are trying to coax Comcast into paying for peering because of the asymmetrical data usage of netflix (more downstream data than upstream). Netflix said, "Well what if we changed the protocol to upload more?". Then they would have symmetrical datausage and could get free peering.
Upstream is a limited and expensive resource for ISPs. Netflix could force clients to send huge amounts of upstream data and saturate the upstream bandwidth. Or even better, have the clients send so much data that the usage is asymmetical in the other direction (more upstream than downstream) and charge Comcast for the peering!
(Score: 2) by iwoloschin on Tuesday April 29 2014, @09:03PM
Except this doesn't work well for a number of reasons.
1) Most TOS prohibit acting like a server on a home connection (yeah yeah, it wont' stop an individual, but it might be enough of a legal reason to halt Netflix).
2) Most home ISPs have terrible upstream bandwidth, it'd literally take all day to upload enough to offset the "cost" of watching one episode of Orange is the New Black.
3) Consumers don't want their computers doing needless things, if I'm watching on a laptop I don't want to run the battery down serving someone else's traffic! Doubly bad if I'm capped on how much data I can send, I don't want to pay for someone else's data.
In fact, if Netflix tried to go with a P2P model I'd probably request a drop in fees, since they're not requiring as much infrastructure (or more likely a CDN's infrastructure). If they didn't want to cut my rates I'd probably drop them, as I don't subscribe to the charity-for-big-businesses model.
(Score: 1) by Snow on Tuesday April 29 2014, @09:13PM
1) It's not a server. The client can still initate the connection. IT would remain a 1-1 connection between the client and Netflix.
2) The uploaded data is garbage. It can be tossed. It's just a 'fuck you' tactic to the ISPs. If they don't want to offer free peering to Netflix because of the asymmetrical nature of Netflix... Well then make it more symmetrical. Just upload junk data until upstream == downstream. Tada! Symmetrical peering agreement.
3) Agreed, but if it is stiking it to the man in the name of net-neutrality, then I, personally, would sacrifice the resources.
(Score: 2) by emg on Tuesday April 29 2014, @09:17PM
So, basically, you want users to be unable to do anything else while they watch Netflix, because their upload bandwidth is maxed out, and their download bandwidth limited to their upload bandwidth?
I'm guessing the ISPs would be fine with that, given how low most people's upload bandwidth is.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Snow on Tuesday April 29 2014, @09:45PM
As long as it averages to an equal amount, then it's okay. 1MB down for an hour equals 128K up for 8 hours. It's more of an argument to show the absuridy of requiring similar directional flow to peer.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday April 30 2014, @02:08AM
Speak for yourself man. They can throw a solid 20 megabits upstream at my connection all day long and I probably wouldn't even notice. Would be happy to help if it was for something like this -- assuming I actually used Netflix of course...
Hell, if they wanted to resist the carriers like this, THAT might get me to sign up! ;)
(Score: 1) by dbot on Wednesday April 30 2014, @11:04AM
Some good points discussed. The crux of the issue (in my opinion) is that right, wrong, or somewhere in-between - consumers cannot signal their interests in any meaningful way. With one or two carriers in many/most markets, it's like the choice between a giant douche, or a turd sandwich (I know, that's for something else, but you get the point).
Even if they aren't a cartel, the only thing they are legally obligated to do, is to maximize shareholder value. This will quickly have them looking a lot like a cartel, as they basically screw everyone who wants to play - even if there is no conspiracy. In this market, price pressure is to go up (and not down, like a functioning market). If one carrier decides to tack on a $5 fee for whatever they want, they pay in churn - but now the others can do the same thing without fear, because, what are their customers options? Suddenly, everyone is $5 more (or throttles, fucks with DNS, injects ads, sells usage data, "internet channel" bundles, charges more for vpn 'capability', you name it) - and there's not a damn thing that can be done.
If something is really evil, but not profitable this quarter, the equation may change next quarter. Say carrier X adds $5, and their churn is up 10%, well now carrier Y can change a different variable, say sell your usage data, and that makes their churn go up 10%. In the end - they end up with the same number of accounts they started with, and next month they can each do what the other did, make a $5 increase, and sell your usage data. Everyone wins - no collusion.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by SuggestiveLanguage on Wednesday April 30 2014, @12:48PM
At this juncture, it is increasingly apparent that both political and economic special interests are working aggressively to distort, abridge and minimize the collective value of an open Internet. The the mechanism to make this possible lies in the mutually-supporting efforts of politicians (legislature and executive) and various special-interest groups (corporate, political, ethnic, religious).
What I humbly propose is the foundation of a absolutist, single-issue, advocacy/political group with ability and willingness to derail, disrupt and destroy the cabal of politicians and special-interest groups who are actively destroying the public internet. The National Rifle Association has proved the success of this model in the U.S. so there is a precedent for an organization to gain potency and credibility.
If us geeks see the internet as a human right, then we damn better fight like it is a human right.