Only YOU Can Protect Net Neutrality

[Hobbes]

If you want to know more about why netflix speeds over comcast improved so drastically starting in January you'll have to read this article

http://www.wired.com/2014/05/fcc-proves-yet-again-that-its-out-to-kill-net-neutrality/

 

[uncle money bags]

Thanks hobbes. Its making more sense to me now.

 

[SMS]

Well, we can certainly trust the Federal Government to control internet speeds, content and fairness. Sounds like a good plan.

That's been the source of disagreement between my sister and I in regards to her organizations position on this...but the complex and secretive nature of the "throttling" is nuts.

 

[_CY_]

To some extent I think there's not been a sufficient harm yet to address with policy, but for who would be best suited to protect the consumers here, I do think the FCC would be in the best position for that. This isn't so much the FCC controlling the internet as it is protecting consumers from ISPs abusing net neutrality.



Can you source the "only America" part of that?


Is Level 3 offering to upgrade the Comcast/TWC equipment on the other end of the peer link?



Never had that issue, with 9 people in my home there's someone streaming about 16 hours a day.



Do you feel that the FCC does a good job applying the telecommunications rules?

here's the documentation from Level 3 which is a major backbone of the internet

details here:

Level 3 calls out Comcast, TWC and others for ‘deliberately harming’ their own broadband service

https://www.okshooters.com/showthrea...-own-broadband


looks like we are in for a screwing by the FCC ... they passed the first part for repealing net neutrality by allowing ISP to charge for a fast lane. http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/05/15/fcc-net-neutrality-rules/9116157/

 

[Hobbes]

Thanks hobbes. Its making more sense to me now.

No problem.



The worst part isn't that we are all going to pay more for the same internet experience we have now.

Netflix can afford to pay comcast a fee to prioritize their traffic, and then pass that cost on to their consumers.
A small startup streaming company can't.

The worst part of tiered internet speeds is that it necessarily tilts the playing field in favor of the big established companies and to the detriment of the smaller fledgling companies struggling to establish themselves.

Maybe that's the plan?

 

[LightningCrash]

here's the documentation from Level 3 which is a major backbone of the internet

details here:

Level 3 calls out Comcast, TWC and others for ‘deliberately harming’ their own broadband service

https://www.okshooters.com/showthrea...-own-broadband


looks like we are in for a screwing by the FCC ... they passed the first part for repealing net neutrality by allowing ISP to charge for a fast lane. http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/05/15/fcc-net-neutrality-rules/9116157/

I read it before I posted. It answers none of those questions.

 

[_CY_]

I read it before I posted. It answers none of those questions.

details here:

Level 3 calls out Comcast, TWC and others for ‘deliberately harming’ their own broadband service

https://www.okshooters.com/showthre...-for-deliberately-harming-their-own-broadband

you've got to read the actual article by Level 3 in post #5 .. which contains technical details. which brings up a major problem with the topic of net neutrality .. not everyone are technically savy enough to understand the real issues involved.

when topic starts talking about internet backbone, global infrastructure, peering, gigabit Ethernet connections, hops, fiber, dropping packets, saturation, etc, etc .. most folk's eyes starts to glaze over ..

https://www.okshooters.com/showthre...wn-broadband&p=2503654&viewfull=1#post2503654

 

[LightningCrash]

details here:

Level 3 calls out Comcast, TWC and others for ‘deliberately harming’ their own broadband service

https://www.okshooters.com/showthre...-for-deliberately-harming-their-own-broadband

you've got to read the actual article by Level 3 in post #5 .. which contains technical details. which brings up a major problem with the topic of net neutrality .. not everyone are technically savy enough to understand the real issues involved.

when topic starts talking about internet backbone, global infrastructure, peering, gigabit Ethernet connections, hops, fiber, dropping packets, saturation, etc, etc .. most folk's eyes starts to glaze over ..

https://www.okshooters.com/showthre...wn-broadband&p=2503654&viewfull=1#post2503654

As I said earlier, I read the article. It didn't answer the questions I asked. You editorialized, and not everybody glazes over.
Just because Level3 offers a higher bandwidth on a peer link doesn't mean that accepting it is at no cost to TWC or Comcast. There are a lot of components in the stack and if they're in a position where they're slamming their existing core and edge infrastructure, then accepting more links may not be a trivial task.
Six of them they're just putting in motion to change, why aren't they done yet if it's as simple and free as you claim?

In a smaller comparison, if our upstream provider were suddenly to offer free 10Gbps to the Internet to us, it wouldn't do us a whole lot of good for a while as our edge ASAs max out at less than half of 1Gbps. We'd have to get new firewalls, transceivers obviously, rework the L2 and L3 parts of the edge, etc. It's not just flipping a switch, and if TWC/Comcast are already at 90% capacity then it's not simply swapping transceivers for them.
Do you work in networking? We're rolling out over 1000 MPLS links in the next 12 months. It's been a fun project to transition away from frame relay. We should talk shop sometime.

I do think TWC and Comcast should increase capacity at the peer links if they're really at 90%, but the article didn't name and shame, and six of them are in-progress on their 90% situation. Level 3 says they've refused, but what do we really know about the situation? What if the first six that are increasing their peering with L3 have peer congestion with other Tier 1 providers, and the other six are working on their other providers while waiting to get around to L3?

 

[_CY_]

As I said earlier, I read the article. It didn't answer the questions I asked. You editorialized, and not everybody glazes over.
Just because Level3 offers a higher bandwidth on a peer link doesn't mean that accepting it is at no cost to TWC or Comcast. There are a lot of components in the stack and if they're in a position where they're slamming their existing core and edge infrastructure, then accepting more links may not be a trivial task.
Six of them they're just putting in motion to change, why aren't they done yet if it's as simple and free as you claim?

In a smaller comparison, if our upstream provider were suddenly to offer free 10Gbps to the Internet to us, it wouldn't do us a whole lot of good for a while as our edge ASAs max out at less than half of 1Gbps. We'd have to get new firewalls, transceivers obviously, rework the L2 and L3 parts of the edge, etc. It's not just flipping a switch, and if TWC/Comcast are already at 90% capacity then it's not simply swapping transceivers for them.
Do you work in networking? We're rolling out over 1000 MPLS links in the next 12 months. It's been a fun project to transition away from frame relay. We should talk shop sometime.

I do think TWC and Comcast should increase capacity at the peer links if they're really at 90%, but the article didn't name and shame, and six of them are in-progress on their 90% situation. Level 3 says they've refused, but what do we really know about the situation? What if the first six that are increasing their peering with L3 have peer congestion with other Tier 1 providers, and the other six are working on their other providers while waiting to get around to L3?

no one is claiming everything is free .. there are costs involved in supporting any network which very much includes the final mile. again .. subscribers who are paying their ISP for broadband access is directly paying for those support costs. as subscriber base expands costs to support those extra folks also goes up accordingly.

Level 3 are offering to pay to upgrade connection points that's part of bottleneck. which has nothing to do with downstream network controlled by folks like Comcast and TWC. again .. those networks are already paid by subscription .. we should be able to access all of the bandwidth that we are paying for. Not just when content providers agrees to pay to toll to reach their paying customers.

tech background .. Oracle DBA and System Architect .. networking was but one component of what I used to keep track of. but that was a few years ago .. technology changes so fast one is quickly left behind once you stop.

here's the other article by Level 3 "Chicken"
http://blog.level3.com/global-connectivity/chicken-game-played-child-isps-internet/

UPDATE: On Friday, March 21, 2014, Level 3 made our most recent filing with the FCC regarding this net neutrality issue. Read the full brief.

“Chicken” | A Game Played as a Child and by some ISPs with the Internet
Michael Mooney / March 18, 2014

In the wake of the DC Circuit’s net neutrality ruling, there has been quite a bit of media attention around congestion on the Internet and its effects on consumers, including alleged impacts on the quality of Netflix video streams and the ability to use Amazon Web Services. There is further speculation that this congestion could force large content distributors into cutting deals directly with Internet Service Providers (ISP) to avoid congestion the ISPs themselves are perpetuating. While this is news du jour, it is a problem that has really been around for several years. The problem is the game of “chicken” some last mile ISPs are playing with the Internet.

A few questions to set the table:

Is your broadband connection really slow sometimes? Do movies or videos download poorly, not at all or become pixilated? Do you get messages like this one below?

[Broken External Image]

netneutralityDo you assume, “Jeez, lots of people must be using the Internet right now”?

You might be wrong.

The Internet is a series of fiber and wireless networks owned by carriers around the world that connect consumers to content and applications available on the Internet. No single provider – no matter how big – connects to all of the subscribers on the Internet or to all of the content on the Internet. To connect it all together (to give all subscribers access to all content), providers must spend money and connect their networks together. This “network of networks” is the Internet.

Residential broadband ISPs promise their subscribers access to all of the content on the Internet, not just some of it. They also know full well that, in the Internet as it exists today, much more data will be downloaded by consumers (think of watching an HD Netflix movie) than uploaded (think of clicking your mouse to ask Netflix to send you that movie). As such, all ISPs offer download speeds that are faster than upload speeds.

To honor the promises they make consumers, these ISPs must then connect their networks to the other networks that can supply any Internet content the ISPs cannot provide themselves (which is most of it). It also means that as overall Internet content gets bigger (think of HD movies versus e-mails), all providers must “augment” their networks – making them bigger to accommodate the exponential growth due to the Internet’s success.

Some ISPs, however, have refused to augment their networks UNLESS the content providers they connect to agree to pay them to do so. Viewed in the light most favorable to these ISPs, they want content suppliers to pay not only for their own increased costs of supplying more robust Internet content, but also for any increased network costs of the ISPs too. This is not only unreasonable on its face, but it is entirely inconsistent with published reports indicating that returns on invested capital for ISPs are excellent, and are expected to improve even further, driving considerable additional growth in economic profits. More cynically, these ISPs simply view these arbitrary tolls as new sources of revenue for their last mile bottleneck monopolies or as a way to unfairly discriminate against content that competes with the content the ISPs themselves supply.

So what if content providers refuse to pay? Some ISPs agree to augment capacity on reasonable terms. But other ISPs try to strong arm the content providers into paying by playing a game of “chicken” with the Internet. These ISPs break the Internet by refusing to increase the size of their networks unless their tolls are paid. These ISPs are placing a bet that because content providers have no other way to get their content to the ISPs subscribers, that they will cave in and start paying them.

And none of this is new. These last mile ISPs know full well the consequences of what they are doing. We wrote AT&T about it in February 2011. We have written to other ISPs about it since then. In each of these cases, we offered to sit with the ISP to hammer out a fair, equitable, scalable and resilient network architecture, but to no avail. We have also advised the FCC of the issue on more than one occasion, beginning in 2013 and as recently as three weeks ago.

And while this game of chicken plays out, and it is playing out right now, many ISP networks remain too congested to handle all of the Internet traffic their subscribers paid them to deliver, and here is some of what can happen:

VoIP telephone calls may not be connected, may be disconnected if connected initially or, while connected, may have poor quality or be unintelligible. This includes 911 calls.
Access to online video applications (like Netflix, Sony, Apple, Google, Amazon and others) or online streaming services (Major League Baseball, for example) can be impacted, resulting in an inability of subscribers to use those services. These problems are particularly bad at peak usage times.
Interactive web browsing can be adversely affected. Subscribers and businesses using the Internet to complete banking transactions, access medical records, cast a vote, visit social networking sites or access employer data and systems while working from home (or telecommuting) will find that their applications are running slowly, and in cases of extreme congestion, browsing sessions may fail completely. Users may also get error messages, causing them to wonder whether whatever transaction they were trying to complete – such as online purchases or banking – were even concluded.

So if you think that your Internet connection is slow just because lots of people are online at the moment, you could be wrong. You could be a victim of your ISP’s game of chicken.

Some say network neutrality is a solution looking for a problem. We disagree.

 

[AKguy1985]

Freedom!!!!!!!!!