Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Net Neutrality - Netflix already paying up
Rusque
Member RarePosts: 2,785
Okay so obviously, a few days ago Netflix agreed to pay comcast for direct connections to deliver its content to customers.
Well now Verizon is dropping packets on Netflix to get the same payday.
This is going to be the beginning of a horrid downward spiral of greed, price gouging and of course . . . we the consumers getting screwed.
What's getting my spidey-sense tingling is if this hits the gaming industry, what will it mean for smaller companies/indies and their ability to release multiplayer games? Or for services like Steam?
I'm not entirely certain why this double dipping is allowed, "pay us for internet", "okay, now pay us more for it not to suck."
It wouldn't be as much of a problem if we (consumers) had choices, but most people are stuck with one ISP in their area (two if they're lucky) and they're usually one of the big ones.
On top of the cable companies charging content providers for using their traffic (while already charging them to use it in the first place), there's nothing to stop them from simply saying, "Now we are offering the "media package" in which Netflix/Amazon/Hulu/youtube/etc actually work on your connection instead of playing at dial-up speeds".
Anyone else a bit nervous about this?
Comments
It's my understanding that Comcast is legally required to embrace net neutrality due to the terms of their last big merger, regardless of what the actual law is, so if Netflix is paying them for a better connection, it's because they want better service than the standard Comcast gives to everyone, not to maintain the same level of service.
Which isn't to say you are necessarily wrong about Verizon doing something shady with dropped packets, but I'm a Comcast customer, so I don't care about that.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
It could also be an opportunity to take down the internet monopolies currently in place.
Netflix will most likely raise their prices to pay the ISP tolls, which will then encourage us to scrutinize our ISP.
I suspect this will be only a short term win for the ISPs.
No one likes being blackmailed.
-WL
Werewolf Online(R) - Lead Developer
They don't openly "enforce it", but behind the scenes they throttle you down by the end of the month if you've been data hungry.
I don't know about you and where you live, but Comcast happens to be the only option for me if I want anything close to these speeds and I don't like not having choices.
The thing against net neutrality is competition. ISP providers typically lease communication conduits/poles from the city and place in their own lines. They then connect these lines to a main national network. An ISP provider can only throttle connections through these neighborhoods, as the national lines are owned by the FCC or companies who primarily manage national networks like Cogent. Some companies pay to use a private companies national lines so they can get fewer jumps, and these like the FCC lines are throttled to the fastest they can provide.
So issues against net neutrality is something you will only see at the local level where competition becomes an issue. I have Cox and like many Cable Providers in the early 2000's they throttled packets on port 80 because it was flooding their network. This was quickly changed once they started losing customers to DSL. Of course now Cox offers consistently fast speeds and had that recent boost in the speed they provide. Right now I am getting 40mb/s which is 15mb/s more than it was last year at the same price level.
Now the main issue against this practice is as partially explained through the issue above. The only way for an ISP to increase the speed of Netflix is make packets in a particular port faster. If they filtered packets it would be drearily slow to the point its not worth it. Now if you make one port faster you make any packet in that port faster. It does not take long to understand what ports Netflix uses and baby back your packet on that port. This is actually already in practice even without ISPs asking for money. In particular Youtube and BitTorrent ports are speed up by many ISPs because they know they are major draws for existing customers.
Update, today AT&T is asking for their payout too.
As far as online games not using much bandwidth. Never, ever, ever underestimate greed. If they could charge you for sending a single email they would.
Most folks out there running servers for websites and games won't pay the protection money.
Even if your ISP isn't one of the one's asking for payouts, most of the backbone is owned by folks like AT&T and Verizon, they own the wires, so they'll slow the site/games/videos down anyway.
Soon we'll have the same internet speed as Canada, where every ISP uses Bell's wires and Bell slows everything down, except for the select few sites that pay up.
At the end of the day, the customer has to pay though the nose for what they want most, (Ex: Netflix, WOW, EVE), be pestered with even more adds (YouTube, Hulu, Facebook?), and then have everything else load very, very, s-l-o-w-l-y.
Technically most of the internet is controlled by Internet Exchange Points. If you are with a good ISP like Cox, the only time you will communicate with ATT or Comcast is when your packet has reached the internet exchange point and going to someone who is an ATT or Comcast customer.
Internet Exchange Points are carrier neutral for the reason people will not want to do business with them otherwise, or they are a government controlled entity.
Using "Bell Wires" is rather dumb for the internet. For signal travels slowly compared to Fiber Optic Lines. Most Bell Wires were laid out in Copper, and the communication infrastructure changed in the late 1980's to Fiber Optic after Bell was disintegrated.
I was talking about Bell in Canada, where it's still alive and has a monopoly.
"Neutrality" is the point the whole argument hinges on, a good number of the IXPs are owned or part-owned by companies that were lobbying to get rid of the FCC's "Neutrality" rules.
Also the wires connecting the IXPs are mostly owned by the companies that laid them down, only a 3rd are owned by the government.
That's a big problem in most of the US. Most customers don't have a choice of ISP's unless they're willing to settle for dial up speed. Broadband providers aren't that concerned with their quality of service knowing full well they're the only game in town.
Local governments don't make the problem any better. Building the infrastructure for broadband internet is fairly significant. Local governments impose all kinds of restrictions and requirements that force broadband providers to service areas that will not be profitable if they want access to areas that will be highly profitable.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
Nothing is stopping another company from stepping in and creating another IXP in a profitable city. The reason companies use certain IXPs is because its profitable to do so. If the IXP for instance forces everyone to payout unfairly to one of the companies connected, than it just means most of the IXPs customers will disconnect and either use the slower IP pathing or go with a competing IXP. This is why IXPs typically have rules against one of their customers charging extra to take on packets since they will lose the rest of their customers.
Second there are no net-neutrality rules in the US at all. For the better part of 2 decades, any company could pay to have their connections take priority, but for some reason no company ever has. This is because its a relatively stupid idea to pull off. Even when it was logical to do something like this in the era of 12K modems no company found it cost effective to gain more priority in networks. Now with speeds going to 100 mb/s and companies not able to tap into the full 1.5 mb/s, there really is no point.
Third, who do you think runs the fiber lines from city to city. That would be an enormous cost for any private company, and an absolute bureaucratic nightmare negotiating with each township, city, and federal land to dig a trench several hundred miles long. I'm sure there are companies who would do that and sell access to these lines, but the main reason for this connectivity is through the government's investments in linking towns. These lines are controlled by the FCC who makes their own rules to use their lines like a private company would. One of those is often the connecting company has to offer access for data transmission along their networks at no or reasonable costs.