Net Neutrality Lives! FCC will Classify the Internet Under Utility-Style Rules

[grenefroggie]

The issue with Netflix @kodiak799 is that they were using one Tier 1 provider for transit on their network, Cogent. Cogent is notorious for being a terrible provider because they carried so much traffic that other customers like us experienced heavy packet loss.

Also, peering agreements up until the Netflix deal with Verizon and Co. used to be free, or mutually beneficial for both parties involved in the agreement. Now ISPs like TWC and Comcast are double dipping by charging last mile customers and content providers instead of investing in upgrading their own peering points.

More on that later.

 

[cr6]

Honestly, I don't see carrier's losing billions of dollars because this didn't pass. Sure, they won't be "making" (extra) billions the way they were hoping, but they won't be losing....and there IS a difference.
They'll proceed business as usual and they'll continue to find ways of nickel & diming their customers to make up the difference. On top of the fact that nobody can truly prove when they throttle their customers, so that will continue to happen despite their denial.

Point is, I'm glad to see it didn't pass. Regardless of your stance on this issue, more rules & regulation is never the answer. Especially when it goes against EVERYTHING the internet is and was always supposed to be.

S5 tap'n

 

[Crankintopwater69]

I want too thank everybody for educating me on this subject. I will say this, nearly everything handed to the government to regulate is anti-consumer (IMO). Government got into healthcare; premiums and deductibles went up. Government got into financing higher education; tuition prices went up. IMO, this will not achieve what some believe.

 

[kodiak799]

Also, peering agreements up until the Netflix deal with Verizon and Co. used to be free

But prior to massive video consumption of bandwidth, up & down data was more balanced making the peer agreements more equal with respect to sharing the benefits and costs. When that got out of balance in the past, fee/charge arrangements WERE made.

Cogent's capacity was over-taxed. So Netflix solution was connect directly - a clearly premium service - but not want to pay for that premium service even though they would no longer be paying Cogent for that bandwidth. Basically, Netflix wanted Comcast/AT&T/etc to bear ALL the cost to solve Cogent's capacity problem (created primarily by Netflix). And people are right (for the wrong reasons) that this was wholly unfair.

 

[grenefroggie]

Honestly, I don't see carrier's losing billions of dollars because this didn't pass. Sure, they won't be "making" (extra) billions the way they were hoping, but they won't be losing....and there IS a difference.

But, because this isn't really Title II, tarrifs and rate regulations will not apply, which means they can still charge what they want for services.

But prior to massive video consumption of bandwidth, up & down data was more balanced making the peer agreements more equal with respect to sharing the benefits and costs. When that got out of balance in the past, fee/charge arrangements WERE made.

Cogent's capacity was over-taxed. So Netflix solution was connect directly - a clearly premium service - but not want to pay for that premium service even though they would no longer be paying Cogent for that bandwidth. Basically, Netflix wanted Comcast/AT&T/etc to bear ALL the cost to solve Cogent's capacity problem (created primarily by Netflix). And people are right (for the wrong reasons) that this was wholly unfair.

1. I agree with your point there. But it isn't that cut and dry. As a last mile provider, it is the companies responsibility to provide service to their customers. The big ones refused to upgrade their peering points to handle their customer demand. Their customers pay outrageous prices for service. I am sure Netflix was paying Cogent a premium being their primary provider. Upgrading multiple ports from say 1Gig to 10Gig is cheap. I only know because we just upgraded our peering point. Even if a large provider, say TWC has over 1,000 peer points, the cost for them in hardware upgrades and bandwidth upgrades would be negligible in a 5 year period. For an ROM that small for a company that large, especially one with their own existing backbone, it would be money well invested.

I terms of Cogent and Netflix, Netflix offers a caching service that would have solved every medium to large provider's peering issues. But very few of these providers seemed interested. It was almost direct competition with their own streaming services. What better way to force customers to subscribe to your video service? As a result Cogent had some issues keeping up.

Maybe I am drinking too much of the water, but I highly doubt it.

 

[kodiak799]

Upgrading multiple ports from say 1Gig to 10Gig is cheap. I only know because we just upgraded our peering point. Even if a large provider, say TWC has over 1,000 peer points, the cost for them in hardware upgrades and bandwidth upgrades would be negligible in a 5 year period. For an ROM that small for a company that large, especially one with their own existing backbone, it would be money well invested.

And the cost to Netflix amounted to pennies per user a month...estimates @ $25M a year. Given Netflix bandwidth demands, there is absolutely, positively nothing about that price that should come remotely close to setting off alarms and seems a more than reasonable price for the service provided. We are talking hundredths of a penny per GB - that ain't breaking any start-up. That's how f-bomb silly this entire debate has been.

For a little perspective, I believe Netflix has paid as much as $100M for streaming rights to a SINGLE smash hit movie. $3B in total for content in 2014. This Comcast thing is a ROUNDING ERROR. One more number for comparison: Netflix spends $500M on MARKETING.

Anyway, my understanding of the issue isn't that it was upgrading the last mile, but that Cogent was flat overwhelmed. This is why Netflix wanted a direct connection instead of demanding upgrades because Cogent, not the last mile, was the bottleneck.

 

[Amagine]

As someone who is also in the industry and deals with the engineering of both long haul 10/100Gig and last mile access routes, I applaud this decision. Why? Because it's a decision and we can move on...
Netflix is a red heering. You can argue about cached peering points at Central Offices all day long. That in of itself isn't quite the point.
Currently, especially for interstate traffic, the rules major ISPs have to follow vary state to state. Hell municipality to municipality. The way I see it, this new list is a step in the right direction of getting the regulations on some sort of standard. If I know the rules, I can play by them. To about the same degree of cost and probably a bit better quality.
Regardless of the source when you get down to it, data is nothing more than electrons on a wire or photons in a tube of silica glass. Every major ISP is getting into the enterprise and consumer data center game, positioning their own services in competition to one another. That's great, until you realize that said provider also has the capability to priortize traffic at the packet level (even at the Optical level). That is were the issue starts to get shady.
For ever and a day companies have been providing cross-connection circuits to eachother in the basis of bandwidth, 56K all the way up to the hundreds of gigabytes. Until very recently, those connecting companies didn't care what traffic was on those circuits. Now, it's advantageous to do so. In the sense, Cogent and Comcast may have a bandwidth connection between locations. Netflix may purchase from Cogent a portion of bandwidth across that same route. If the ownership is Cogent's why in the hell should Comcast get a piece of the sale that Cogent made to Netflix?
Basically, the heart of the issue exists in that several bigger carriers want to be paid by content providers because a bulk of the data on their network services those content providers, regardless if the content provider has a direct connection to those carriers. Middlemen want to be paid like the first guy basically what it sums up to.

 

[Beardface]

As a consumer who regularly uses their product, if this decision pisses off the likes of Verizon and Time Warner Cable/Comcast, then its probably going to end up a net gain in the end for the consumer.

Allowing ISPs to charge both the customer to use their system and the provider to allow their content to be used at a worthwhile speed is ridiculous. Comcast was caught red handed intentionally slowing down Netflix because they wanted Netflix to pay more for the right to be accessed via Comcast systems while also charging higher rates to the consumer. That rightfully should be illegal and I applaud the ruling.

I have very little sympathy towards anyone complaining about this ruling when we've already seen the behavior in action that some are claiming doesn't exist. Price gouging and extortion are bad. Net Neutrality makes those actions illegal, and that's a good thing for us.

 

[grenefroggie]

For the most part, largely, I kind of agree. I am part of a small company. What I am really waiting to see is how this all plays out and what it means for us.

What I fear most is how the major companies will use these new rules against the customer. If there are no exceptions for small companies like mine, it could leave us wide open for lawsuits but I will explain that later, I just woke up.

 

[cr6]

The Woz weighs in....
Woz Net neutrality decision a victory over bad behavior - CNET

S5 tap'n

 

[grenefroggie]

The Woz weighs in....
Woz Net neutrality decision a victory over bad behavior - CNET

Hopefully it will. Accountability is important, small or large.

 

[kodiak799]

The way I see it, this new list is a step in the right direction of getting the regulations on some sort of standard. If I know the rules, I can play by them. To about the same degree of cost and probably a bit better quality.

That's the first clearly objective and insightful take I've seen on the subject.

Although I would probably disagree that the fed unifying regulation across state lines is a good thing. That's trampling onto areas that have long been state prerogatives, although the internet is pretty clearly interstate commerce where the feds have jurisdiction. Thing is, "unifying standards/regulation" is an argument that can apply to every business in every industry and I wouldn't consider it a good idea to invite federal regulation on that scale.

But to what degree does the FCC and FTC already pretty heavily regulate wireless as part of the spectrum deals? Because I think in 15-20 years broadband is dead, replaced by wireless. Then this whole debate is entirely moot, at least so far as sufficient competition would render net neutrality a non-issue.

 

[SquireSCA]

Since when does having the government control or regulate anything make things better? Regulating like a utility or leveling the playing field as they say, reduces or eliminates competition which reduces or eliminates innovation and ultimately results in poorer service and increased cost. Think about your power company, water company etc...do you have any choices as far as a provider? How much innovation have you seen...None. Has your cost gone down? Not mine. It's always gone up,sometimes by a huge amount. How about banking? Have your banking costs gone down with all of the government regulation? Nope. Insurance is another perfect example. For those of you buying your own insurance, has your cost gone up or down over the past year since obamacare kicked in and basically took over the insurance industry. This doesn't count for anyone on obamacare as it is just a form of welfare subsidized by those that aren't on it. From my experience in talking with 40-50 patients a day, the costs have gone up a lot and the service they receive from the insurance company has gone down significantly.
Let the free market control things and then people have the choice to go with what ever company provides them with the best service for the lowest cost.
End of rant.

The problem with your argument is that the cable companies are already regulate in that you cannot have competing cable providers in the same zip code. You only have one to choose from, so if the one where you live sucks, or they gouge you or throttle Netflix, or charge them fees which then get passed on to you, do don't have much choice.

Forcing them to simply sell you a connection, and allowing the end user to decide when and how to use that connection, is what this is about.

The government "controls" the phone, electrical, etc... They don't tell you who you can call, how many times, for how long, etc...

 

[SquireSCA]

Also, think about how the wireless carriers have been gouging us... We used to get Unlimited data for $30. Now we pay $100 for 15GB.

Government didn't drive those prices up. Corporate greed did.

We pay a lot more now, for less. Now, typically when new tech is released it costs more up front, and as time goes on it gets cheaper to produce, more people come on board so volume and economies of scale kick in, etc...

But not cell phones and not internet. They just keep charging more and more for the same thing, and in a lot of cases, they charge you more for less.

Again, Gub'ment didn't do that, corporate greed and the desire to satiate stockholders, rather than customers, did.

I am pretty Conservative on most things. I am probably a Libertarian in reality... a Very fiscal Conservative and rabidly pro-gun and military, but more socially Liberal... I have watched this issue for years. My name is one of the 4 million signatures on the petition for Net Neutrality...

Now, does government have the ability to screw this up? Sure. Like anything else, they can certainly make it worse.

But the reality is that the internet is no longer a luxury. It is infrastructure, and critical at this point. And there are valid reasons for having at least SOME regulation.

It is regulated already, the difference is it being regulated by a board room of execs that make more in a year than we will in a lifetime, whose only goal is to maximize profits and shareholder value...

Google and Apple are all about innovation, and they are very vocally for net neutrality...

Let's just wait and see what happens...

 

[cybertec69]

best news of the year. google fiber can't come soon enough! F U cable!

In your wet dreams.