Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
The Knave Detector
I recently read a comment that Marx is useful to us because his philosophy allows us to easily identify fools and knaves. I’ve personally observed that the net neutrality debate is useful for much the same reason.
The FCC is currently considering a proposal that has many up in arms. Consider this, from the activist group SumOfUs:
Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon want to control what we can and cannot do online — and they’re about to get their wish.
Their lobbyists and lawyers have taken over the FCC — the agency meant to keep them in check. Now, the former lobbyist running the FCC is about to announce new rules that will kill Net Neutrality — the rule that stops Comcast, AT&T, or Verizon from deciding which sites you’re allowed to visit.
Does Guinness track the maximum number of errors that have ever appeared in writing for certain word counts? If so, the above statements are clearly in the running for the 75 word or less category. Rather than list them out in a fact-checking exercise, I’d like to ask some questions of those passing this drivel around on social media.
Why would Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon want to control what you can and cannot do online? Are all of these companies run by fascists who wish to force a specific world view on us? Are they run by puritans who are going to do away with porn? What could the aim of these for-profit companies possibly be?
What if — and I’m just spitballing here — their motivation was simply profit? What if they don’t care at all what you do online as long as they can make money providing you with internet access? What if they are having trouble adding bandwidth fast enough to keep up with demand, and are desperately looking for solutions aside from doubling the rates they charge their customers?
As you can see, internet usage is doubling approximately every two years, driven largely by an ever-increasing amount of streaming video. What the chart doesn’t show you is that the amount of bandwidth available is not doubling every two years.
Internet providers face a dilemma: how do they acquire the funds to do the R&D and infrastructure improvements required to keep up with our insatiable demand for bandwidth? One solution is for them to dramatically increase rates on all of their customers; an idea that will lead to a revolt among average Americans who just want to stream their favorite show at the end of a hard day and care little about the future calamity of a bottlenecked information superhighway. They face a similar backlash if they throttle back the bandwidth of all of their customers equally. Instead they have settled on a third option where they will charge websites extra for faster service.
The practical effect is that those sites that use the majority of the bandwidth will have to shell out the money required to add more. Naturally, Netflix, Google, and others are none too pleased with this outcome.
According to recent news reports, the Commission intends to propose rules that would enable phone and cable Internet service providers to discriminate both technically and financially against Internet companies and to impose new tolls on them. If these reports are correct, this represents a grave threat to the Internet.
This is creative usage of the word ‘discrimination’. In much the same way, car companies apparently discriminate against customers when they charge them more for a car with greater horsepower. I wonder if this represents a grave threat to travel?
The problem for the internet providers is the simplicity of the narrative. Most of us have had bad encounters with these companies and hold them in low regard. Meanwhile, we tend to see only the upside of YouTube and Google, as it’s natural to be less critical of services we seemingly get for free.
One of the more amusing aspects of this entire story is seeing mega corporations such as Google and Facebook described as “technology innovators” to avoid framing this as a dispute between massive companies about who should pay for what.
Instead of permitting individualized bargaining and discrimination, the Commission’s rules should protect users and Internet companies on both fixed and mobile platforms against blocking, discrimination, and paid prioritization, and should make the market for Internet services more transparent. The rules should provide certainty to all market participants and keep the costs of regulation low.
God forbid these businesses engage in “individualized bargaining”. Surely Google doesn’t offer superior services for an extra cost. And of course Netflix would never introduce any type of tiered pricing system that includes extra benefits to those who would pay more.
These companies would prefer the FCC pass new net neutrality rules that would prevent them from having to pay more in order to receive excellent bandwidth. I would prefer Google provide me with an unlimited amount of file and e-mail storage at no extra cost, yet somehow I suspect they would balk at the idea of users lobbying to have a regulation passed to avoid having to pay them extra for these services.
The spectacle of Google using the government to avoid having to pay more in a market arrangement while accusing the internet providers of doing the same would be funny if it weren’t so effective. One is forced to wonder what it would take for those who fear corporations above all else to realize that when they empower government to insert itself in these matters, they have really only empowered those corporations to engage in regulatory capture.
I suppose they’d have to first know what regulatory capture is. Hardly time to bother with that when they could be streaming Breaking Bad on Netflix.
Published in General
This is a completely separate issue from Net Neutrality. The fact that people are confusing the issue of how much data people use with Net Neutrality shows how incorrectly it has been described.
As Arjay said, Net Neutrality just means all packets are treated with the same priority in delivery across the Internet. It says *nothing* about how ISPs have to charge or meter their services to the end-user.
An ISP can easily say, you get 50G for $15, 100G for $25. Net Neutrality does not prevent this. Net Neutrality just says that the ISP and/or the Internet backbones shouldn’t favor one type of traffic over another, say, traffic to Bing vs. traffic to Google vs. traffic to some upstart search engine that will be invented tomorrow; or, say, VoIP traffic over other types (one of the only compelling cases for prioritizing certain packets, although a weak one because there are other technical solutions).
And some of us have been at pains to point out how this is not as simple as it seems, has never actually been the case, and would be technically disasterous.
Go back and read comment 50 by Tuco. QoS, packet shaping, and prioritization of traffic have been features of all networks since the dark days of token rings and Netware.
Frank knows exactly what he’s talking about here at the technical level.
No, that’s not really true either. Most services do not need a ton of bandwidth, but streaming does, file sharing does, and data backup services do. Everything else is chump change in the bandwidth debate.
Not strictly true. There certainly is a conflation of understanding of what bandwidth measurement you’re talking about: total usage over a period of time, vs. instantaneous usage.
But they both come down to issues of capacity. Downloading 2tb in a trickle over days is a far cry from streaming 1tb in 2 hours, and it is the latter problem that plagues the ISPs.
If a significant number of people on a given loop are all streaming movies at once, that will affect the remaining instantaneous capacity available for non-streaming users. Why should an ISP be prevented from choking that streaming traffic so as to leave some capacity unused for light users?
Under the principles of Net Neutrality, the ISP would not be allowed to do that because it would reducing the priority of the streaming packets in favor of other traffic.
skipsul, so the solution is to make some traffic faster at the expense of other traffic? I think not. That makes the Internet slower for protocols/companies/sites that don’t pay extra for the “fast lane”.
No, the simple solution is to upgrade the switches and increase the bandwidth so that all traffic is faster.
The question of who is to pay for the faster bandwidth and switches is solved the same way as it is today: whoever pays for Internet access will pay for it.
If Google, for example, can afford big, fat, fast pipes to the Internet (as they do) that’s great. Once their packets get out of their network, they get treated the same as the packets from upstart uNgoOgle which may not yet have the $$$ that Google does.
As I said before, the problem can be simply solved by growing the network capacity. Preferring one type of traffic over another exacerbates the problem instead of solving it.
A second simple solution is for ISPs to charge more to their heavy users. There’s nothing in Net Neutrality that prevents that, as I mentioned before– it’s only by convention that they have charged a flat rate so far. This is confusing the issue.
skipsul, so the solution is to make some traffic faster at the expense of other traffic? I think not. That makes the Internet slower for protocols/companies/sites that don’t pay extra for the “fast lane”.
Uh, yeah. That’s the point. You get what you pay for, just like everything else in life.
Yeah, so who’s going to pay for it? This is like demanding that your city make all your roads wider without raising the gas taxes, making some roads toll roads, or raising taxes elsewhere.
Upgrades cost tons of money, it is better and cheaper to shape traffic in software before spending billions to replace switches all the time.
Traffic prioritization works just fine for cars. We have freeways, railways, side roads, turnpikes, dirt paths. The internet is already the same.
Case in point – Netflix, to improve service to key markets, already IS paying for traffic priority, AND adding infrastructure. They have massive queueing servers in New Jersey and Maryland just to reduce their bandwidth signatures to the North East.
Exactly, this is what small edge networks are worried about. They serve niche communities and if they also have higher bandwidth needs then tiered pricing puts them out of business (or buffered into oblivion). The real problem to me is stagnation. This is like Amish talk to me. They’re basically saying this level of technology/innovation/websites is what’s allowed now. If youtube had to start after the rumored rules change then it probably wouldn’t happen (same thing for skypes-as for Skype look at Canada-Rogers ISP in Canada actively breaks Skype forcing people to use their proprietary Voip service).
The whole “just add more equipment” argument is rather a self-centered one.
Let me make an analogy here:
I run a manufacturing company. I have a certain capacity with my equipment. If I’m not busy, my lead times are maybe a few days for most orders. But when I get busy those times stretch out, sometimes to weeks.
I have 2 responses for my customers:
1. Prioritize orders, making some customers wait longer for orders, while others get theirs quickly. Sure, the customers are unhappy at waiting, but some will pay extra to expedite.
2. Add capacity. I can either add shifts, or add equipment. Both are very costly. The customers are happier, but I can’t charge them directly for the equipment. If I have to spend $500,000 on a new line, I can’t divide that up among all the customers. I have to spread that cost over a long time. That changes the rewards for adding that line.
Now look at the ISPs. Demand is growing rapidly everywhere. They cannot afford to keep adding equipment, they must also conserve existing resources.
You don’t know that. It just might have started running commercials much sooner, or actually created some business plan besides “get lots of users, then find a dupe, er, buyer to make us all rich.”
Congressman Louis Gomhert says that Comcast is blocking, for political reasons, an attempt by the conservative network The Blaze to purchase one of its channels.
“I’m wondering how strong the feeling within Comcast of their fiduciary duty to stockholders is for monetary gain as opposed to political achievements of keeping conservatives off the air? …But what we’re talking about here is a very serious issue if we’re at the point where there is so much power within Comcast that they can say, “We’re not going to accept the $20 million that will help Comcast because we don’t want Republicans having conservatives talking on the air between now and then.”
If anything, this would actually be a separate argument for an Antitrust case.
There could be (and this is where we need the lawyers) an argument that content providers like Comcast (who owns NBC) and ISPs need to be separated.
But The Blaze could also make itself available on the Roku network, iTunes, satelite providers, etc.
Exactly. (This will be the extent of my input for the rest of the comments. Agreeing with Skipsul)
I boil everything down to this:
Comcast has a local-government-granted monopoly in many markets. This creates predictable problems.
The net-neut crowds responds with, “let’s oppose the problems created by local government with equal and opposite federal regulation; if we do it just right, everything will be great”. In other words, respond to government distortion with more government.
I respond with, “let’s revoke the monopoly at the local level.” That is, respond to government distortion by undoing the government distortion.
I view the internet as a vital piece of commercial infrastructure like roads or more appropriately railroads. UPS makes a killing on these roads the same way the Google does in your scenario, but I don’t begrudge either of these company’s profits, because an open marketplace is vital to keeping prices low and innovation high.
And UPS pays a ton of taxes on fuel, income, and sales taxes to pay for the roads they use. What is the model for making Google pay for its “road” use?
How did government regulation of railroads work out for everyone?
For those unfamiliar with the history, here’s how it worked out.
Skipsul and Frank Soto, if you can’t tell the difference between what someone pays for their access to the Internet (the right to place packets on the network and receive them from the network) vs. the prioritization of packets of type A over those of type B once they have been placed on the network, then I rest my case that neither of you are qualified to participate in this discussion.
I hear the same “Who’s going to pay for it” red herring every time.
You don’t need to create a “fast lane” of packets in order to afford to pay for infrastructure. Those two issues are COMPLETELY ORTHOGONAL to each other. As an ISP, if you can’t make the upgrades to infrastructure, you simply charge more for access to the internet, period.
As for “shaping” traffic, that is also not necessary. I’ve already pointed out that ISPs can and SHOULD charge more to their customers who use more bandwidth. That will take care of paying for whatever infrastructure needs to be upgraded. You use more, you pay more– in that sense, I agree with you.
Okay, so now you go to personal insults? That’s low.
It also shows you didn’t read what we wrote. Go back and read comment 50 by Tuco on QoS. Networks prioritize packets all the time. This is a point I and others here have made repeatedly. Networks have been prioritizing packets since the early days of the ethernet.
As I said before, I don’t disagree with paying more for using a greater volume of data. That’s fine.
I disagree with a system that will now demand you pay more to put your packets ahead of everyone else’s on the same infrastructure, thus slowing their data down.
Analogies break down when we try to discuss the Internet. But to use a road analogy, a “fast lane” on the Internet that puts certain packets above others, is like taking road lanes away from everyone else to give to those who pay more. Not only does it feel unfair to those whose lanes are being taken away, it’s not necessary for funding wider roads overall. I’m fine with “raising taxes” or charging tolls to pay for wider roads, to follow this imperfect analogy. Or even, (again the analogy fails), companies making their own roads on their own dime.
For the original personal insult, look at the title and the OP. Can dish it out but not take it.
In fact, my observation was quite a bit more restrained. I simply point out that if one continues to conflate and confuse two completely separate issues, it shows one doesn’t understand, which naturally means one is not qualified to discuss it yet. The OP says anyone who disagrees is a knave. Low?
I read Tuco’s post, and although I admitted already that VoIP is one of the few semi-compelling arguments for prioritization of packets, I still disagreed. Try reading what I wrote, yourself. A faster Internet overall will solve this problem. Pushing some traffic to the back while others who can afford to pay get to cut to the front of the line, exacerbates the quality of service problem for everyone else.
Then it shows that you don’t actually understand how networks function.
Saying “adding more bandwidth solves the problem” also shows a misunderstanding. You add more bandwidth, people find more reasons to use it. Instantaneous bandwidth is always finite. Adding more still leaves it finite. Furthermore, it is also always regionally finite – that is to say there are, and always will be, choke points. Networks already prioritize and route traffic to keep it moving. To say that “all packets must be equal” is to demand that routers cease what they are already doing.
While the SumOfUs activists (I have no clue who they are) have clearly engaged in hyperbole, it is quite a real danger that if large companies have preferential access to customers because they can pay more, it gives them an additional barrier to entry to competitors. The big guys will LOVE this.
Let’s put it this way. Did you like it when the news was in the stranglehold of a handful of companies who could buy up the airwaves, invest to have the infrastructure to broadcast, and hire all the best journalists and lobbyists (for that matter)? Are you glad upstarts like Matt Drudge came along and challenged their oligopoly? The Internet leveled the playing field and allowed people like Drudge to compete.
Take away Net Neutrality, and you tilt the field back a little bit in the favor of the big guys by sheer weight of their size, not necessarily because they offer a better product or compete better. This could lead to a ghettoization of the Internet to some degree. In a time where people expect sites and services to launch in under 2 seconds, every incremental delay puts smaller players at a disadvantage.
*Sigh*. You’re STILL not getting my point. You’re STILL confusing and conflating separate issues.
Charge the high-bandwidth users more for their use! They will throttle their use in response. The higher cost for using more data will pay for upgrades. Problem solved.
To be explicit as I can, there are two issues.
The first is the fact that currently, most users pay a flat fee for an “all you can eat” access to the Internet, limited only by how wide their mouth is. This model isn’t ideal. People should pay for the volume of data they use.
The second is how Internet packets should be routed relative to each other.
These issues are completely orthogonal to each other. Please stop conflating and confusing them.
No, Netflix and Youtube are not going to throttle their use, as their entire business models rely on any member being able to stream any video they want at any time of day.
Giving them the priority they need to survive at a premium is completely reasonable. Absolutely every industry has priority services that cost extra and give those with the money preferential treatment. There is no crisis here.