The Real Issue With Net Neutrality 239
An anonymous reader writes "TechDirt brings into focus one of the largest problems in the net neutrality debate, not the issues themselves, rather it's the people involved and the lies they like to sling. An example of this is certainly the number of lobbyists that are being looked to as 'experts' and getting their opinions published as such. One specific example was a recent piece published in the Baltimore Sun by Mike McCurry, a lobbyist working for AT&T who claimed that with new legislation working for net neutrality Google wouldn't have to pay a dime. In response, TechDirt has suggested that McCurry should swap telco bills with Google, somehow I doubt it will happen."
There is no "net" to be "neutral" with. (Score:5, Interesting)
We have to realize that EVERY law that goes into existence does so for two reasons:
1. To try to fix some problem that exists TODAY.
2. To try to give more power to the few who love power over the masses.
These both go hand-in-hand. Laws don't regularly leave the books, so they stick around for generations, usually preventing new creations from makig our lives better. The power passes hands from one politician to the next, and the elite few know they can use that power to make their lives better at a very small expense to each individual of the masses. What do you care if a regulation costs you US$10 a year more? When 100 million taxpayers each pay that US$10 per year for a regulation or preferential treatment, someone is taking in US$1 billion because of it. It is in their interest to keep the laws on the books.
Net neutrality doesn't matter because the Internet as it is today doesn't matter. Over time, preferred networks will have to occur in some way, and that is OK. AOL had their own network, but it failed. Compuserve had a huge "Internet" for years before IP was the preferred transport, and it failed. Google has its own network of caches and archives, but it isn't what people want to browse (I rarely use Google's cache, unless a site is down or gone). Right now people will switch from ial-up to DSL to cable based on their desire to access information quickly. You can switch over in less than 2 weeks, sometimes days.
But there are reasons some are precluded from switching easily. Usually it is because a local municipality or state has laws creating a monopoly provider. You can't blame competition for this -- you can blame government. Now some people want to give more power to the Federal government even though the Constitution says they can't have that power. It won't matter -- the politicians are producing large amounts of FUD (along with the businesses that rely on government's ability to create monopolies in markets) to scare the average consumer into believing the "Net" will fall apart if it doesn't remain neutral.
It won't happen. As long as government doesn't create monopoly powers through Internet regulations, the Net will change to what the consumers want. Right now, the municipalities that dictate which monopoly provider can give the residents access create HUGE problems for those residents. States that do the same also create a huge problem for their residents. Imagine if we pushed those problems to the national level -- we'd all lose the ability to work around monopoly-mandates created by government.
Don't do it -- don't give the Federal government ANY chance to regulate or require ANYTHING. Let competition give us what we want. Competition crushed AOL, Compuserve, and Prodigy in the U.S. Competition crushed the BBSes that hung around while ISPs gave users more information and quicker. Competition crushed the modem to be replaced by 8 different ways to connect to other computers. Competition crushed the CD, the DVD and the newspaper. Let it crush more so we get more for less.
FWIW (Score:5, Interesting)
As long as I'm posting -- is this Ted Stevens "tubes" stuff not becoming as annoying as flying spaghetti and chair throwing references? It's not like more than a handful of those smarmy dweebs could actually explain to you how IP or Ethernet really does work.
Re:Ironic that Slashdot itself in "non neutral". (Score:3, Interesting)
If you pay more and subscribe, you get more services! It's criminal! ;)
Services? What are these "services" of which you speak? Other than getting to nip a few ads, see upcoming stories so I can pre-prepare my rants, and the extra karma point, there aren't many services I enjoy as a subscriber that I can't live without. I subscribe to support Slashdot and help keep it running. Plus I write the contribution off on my taxes... oh wait...
Re:What the lobbyist really means (Score:3, Interesting)
Remember, the Telco line is that Google is making a fortune using their networks & they are getting nothing out of it. They are currently hoping people ignore/don't know that while you pay for your connection, the site you connect to is also paying - again the whole double dip thing.
The telcos got over $5B in tax credits/subsidies in order to improve the network - they promised 40Mbps. Now they say that unless they can get more money by charging for priority and bandwidth, they can't improve the network. I know that $5B only runs so much fiber ($1M/mile in urban areas), but since up to 70% of fiber is unlit (2005 data) [com.com] I don't think the problem is running more fiber.
Personnally, I think that the next time some telco asshat says they don't make any money from Google, Google should have a press conference with a printed hardcopy of it's entire montly bandwidth bill. I figure opening the backdrop curtain to reviel a dumptruck of paper being poured onto the stage should get the idea across.
Re:Net Neutrality and Quality of Service (Score:1, Interesting)
Type of Service: 8 bits (2nd 8-bit octet in every internet packet)
The Type of Service provides an indication of the abstract parameters of the quality of service desired. These parameters are to be used to guide the selection of the actual service parameters when transmitting a datagram through a particular network. Several networks offer service precedence, which somehow treats high precedence traffic as more important than other traffic (generally by accepting only traffic above a certain precedence at time of high load). The major choice is a three way tradeoff between low-delay, high-reliability, and high-throughput.
Bits 0-2: Precedence.
Bit 3: 0 = Normal Delay, 1 = Low Delay.
Bit 4: 0 = Normal Throughput, 1 = High Throughput.
Bit 5: 0 = Normal Relibility, 1 = High Relibility.
Bit 6-7: Reserved for Future Use.
Precedence
111 - Network Control 011 - Flash
110 - Internetwork Control 010 - Immediate
101 - CRITIC/ECP 001 - Priority
100 - Flash Override 000 - Routine
The use of the Delay, Throughput, and Reliability indications may increase the cost (in some sense) of the service. In many networks better performance for one of these parameters is coupled with worse performance on another. Except for very unusual cases at most two of these three indications should be set.
The type of service is used to specify the treatment of the datagram during its transmission through the internet system. Example mappings of the internet type of service to the actual service provided on networks such as AUTODIN II, ARPANET, SATNET, and PRNET is given in "Service Mappings" [8].
The Network Control precedence designation is intended to be used within a network only. The actual use and control of that designation is up to each network. The Internetwork Control designation is intended for use by gateway control originators only. If the actual use of these precedence designations is of concern to a particular network, it is the responsibility of that network to control the access to, and use of, those precedence designations.
Real Issue (Score:2, Interesting)
Can someone explain? (Score:2, Interesting)
How all of this net neutrality shite will function on ISP's outside of the US? Or ISP's in the rest of the planet have to enter all of the telco's pipes to reach a site? I haven't really read elsewhere about this.
Are ISP's outside of the US watching from the fences? Imposing QOS policies in US based routers is relatively easy, are the telcos going to extort foreign ISP's as well?
Government Monopolies blocking progress (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not just the land-line telco monopoly that blocked development of radio-based telephony to rural areas - it was also the radio monopolies. (Roosevelt got lots of credit for trust-busting, but in reality he locked up quasi-monopoly control over huge parts of US industry in ways that have plagued us ever since. And the telco and radio-licensing monopolies got along quite well, thank you, because it let them avoid having to compete with each other.) It's not clear when effective radio telephony would have been developed - it was obviously easier after we got computer technology, but there are things that could have been built back in vacuum-tube days that never occurred to anybody because there wasn't an application for them, and the limited ham-radio market wasn't enough to bring costs down.
You might have ended up with rural communities on the equivalent of huge party lines or CB radio with phone patches, which would have been socially _different_ from telco service - but that could have been ok.
Re:you are getting ahead of yourself.... (Score:3, Interesting)
You're thinking in very 2004 terms, technologically. The main impediment is competition at the moment -- we're still waiting for competitive systems to keep pushing the envelope. My home network is currently getting about 600Kbit/s without a cap (likely more, I get 600K downloads in utorrent every day). I can provision a 1Mbit/s line for just a little more. I've already used a 2Mbit/s line in a neighboring town (Deerfield, Illinois) that should be to the residences later this year. Just 2 years ago I was happy to get 50Kbit/s. 2 years before that I was happy to get 10Kbit/s. 2 years before that I was happy to get 4Kbit/s, and 2 years before that 2Kbit/s was my speed. Times have changed, and competitive technologies are what changed it.
But the *only* major provider even close to rolling out fiber *to the home* is Verizon, and they're using G.983 -- 622mbps down, 155mbps up. Even then, they're using most of that bandwidth to provide IPTV services, not to give you raw Internet throughput -- I'm not aware of any plans for them to push broadband tiers over 45mbps.
The main impediment here is the idea of broadcasting rather than narrowcasting. I think the growing popularity of BitTorrent shows that narrowcasting is the future -- most of the major distributors are still focusing on broadcasting and this is why broadband tiers max out at 45Mbit (or realistically much lower). When broadcasting is replaced by narrowcasting (and it will be, very quickly in fact), we'll see things switch very quickly. The analog market is already dying (radio and TV) and Tivo and Torrent are both helping to kill off broadcasting entirely. The distribution companies will move to a narrowcast on-demand format, which will need more IP traffic space than digital video space. We also see that a XViD movie looks darn good, and it occupies significantly less space than the same VoD or broadband video does.
This is also where net neutrality could be an impediment to transitioning from broad to narrow-casting: companies that already have broadvideo will want to prioritize their narrowvideo transmissions over the IP portion of the line, but they might be restricted from doing so if their narrowvideo distribution company is considered a seperate company. Ever consider that problem with net neutrality as a law?
Now, you might be saying, hey, I was close, 622mbps is still a lot more than 1.5mbps, and it's going to your home. Guess what? That coaxial cable carrying digital cable and HD channels into your home is pushing 2gbps. But the cable companies are using only a fraction of that space for Internet connectivity, putting the rest into action for video-on-demand, HD cable, and extended tiers of service -- just like the phone companies intend to.
Telephone connectivity won't need more than 10KBit/s, though. That still leaves a huge amount of space when narrowcasting VoD takes off, as it already is starting to. Of course, much of that 2Gbit/s speed is shared since it is broadcast (the backbone is the limit in this case), but there are already cheaper provisions for sending significantly more than 40Gbit/s through the backbone and those costs are coming down. It might be costly for the current media providers but new providers would have a huge leg up if they got into that market (or if they could).
And if you think fiber to the home is held up on municipal right-of-way, and not the astronomical cost to implement, well, that's your own opinion.
I disagree, but I unfortunately don't have my ammunition handy. There is still a large problem with FCC regulations that convolute other regulations that the FCC has worked to rearrange (I won't say remove). There is still a huge problem in the municipal a
Re:can a wired net be old hat? (Score:3, Interesting)
I can see this happening in some areas, but certainly not ALL of them.
Who in Oklahoma is going to pay to build the huge towers needed for carrying the signal across the state? In other areas, you may be able to get a sliver of property on the tops of mountains, and have reasonably short distances between dense population centers to connect, but in most of the US, I don't see this happening in a non-profit way. Forget about intercontinental links.
Then there's jamming... Since 802.11 uses unlicensed spectrum, anyone interested in severing your connection can park a van with a 2.4GHz transmitter wherever they want, for as long as they want, and you can't do anything to stop them (other than a concerted effort by everyone to use highly-directional antennas).
How about routing? Who's going to pay for the (entrusted) routers to manage this mess of every-node-is-a-hop massive routing table? The only alternative would be every individual computer keeping the FULL routing table of every node in the world, keeping track of every node that goes offline or comes online, and hoping none of that changes once you've sent your packet on it's way.
How about latency? Even assuming ideal routing, you can just forget about gaming and VoIP calls if you've got 500 hops between the endpoints. It would practically require a return to the BBS days, and eliminate many benefits of the current internet.
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I think a far more practical solution is to get a bunch of people together, and start-up your own (modest) telco.
Mesh networks (Score:3, Interesting)
That's why we need wireless hardware that has a built-in 1TB hard disk and talks freely to nearby unrelated wireless hardware. Instead of fetching http://slashdot.org/ [slashdot.org] from the central server each time, you can get it from one of your neighbors. Routers that hash, cache, and share chunks of data independently and anonymously are essential for decentralized Internet progress.
Anyone who is trying to predict what the Internet will really look like ten years from now is insane.
whitehouse.gov and net neutrality (Score:3, Interesting)
How would the whitehouse and all the government sites feel if they have to pay their extortion fee to be as reachable as they where before through the Internet?