"Net Neutrality" is Obamacare for the Internet

Take a look at your paycheck stub if you want to see swindling.

Easy to manipulate?

It's clear that people who have no clue how the internals of the internet work shouldn't be driving policy for "sound good/feel good" reasons.

Akamai delivers static content (images, movies, etc.) from servers located in all these countries. It's their business model to measure the bandwidth and actual packet round trip speeds (not the same thing). Nobody's manipulating anything. It's as scientific a measurement as you can get.

 

That's just plain silly.

When the government was all there was in the Internet, there were a handful of 45 mbit lines between govt. agencies and some of the universities with big grant money.

Comcast has built and paid for untold number of miles of cable plus fiber optic in municipalities and between municipalities. They deserve to be able to exploit their infrastructure for the most profit they can. That's what investing capital is all about. Not just Comcast, but Level 3 and lots of other companies that interconnect networks to give us the greater Internet.

What is fucked up is that municipalities only allow one ISP to build infrastructure. That's government creating a monopoly, not capitalism in action. And you want to give even more power to the government? What they should do is forbid laws against competition.

 

I've ordered thousands of circuits and negotiated dozens of peering agreements and about the same number of transit ones.

Apparently you don't understand Akamai. Read their patents. They're measuring QOS and latency across thousands of European locations.

If the QOS in Europe is worse than here, then the claim our unregulated Internet produces slower connections is an outright lie.

The law is akin to outlawing bars because a bartender might sell a customer a trip to the moon. It is that unrealistic a thing to try to legislate against.

 

All this begs a bigger question. The thing is about favoring some really big companies (Google, Netflix, Amazon) over others (Comcast, et al).

Why do you choose to favor those companies over the others? I favor none, and that's my point.

Comcast and CLECs are in the business of selling circuits. They TRADE peering where the deal is fair - roughly equal amounts of traffic going in both directions. Otherwise they sell circuits to consumers and businesses. They even buy and sell circuits among one another where it makes sense. Just Youtube (Google) and Netflix alone represent 2/3 of all the data on the internet. They're not paying for 2/3 of the internet infrastructure - please tell me why they shouldn't.

Google and the rest are getting a relatively cheap ride across peering points with massive amounts of unfair (not equal in both directions) traffic. Comcast and the others are paying for it and it's costing them $$$ of capital to make their networks bigger/badder/faster to support ever better streaming quality. If they can't make the content providers pay (which is 100% the right way it should be done), they're going to make US (consumers) pay.

 

If the government wants to subsidize building internet to the sticks, let 'em. That's not the same proposition as taking over all the infrastructure through regulation.

 

The ISPs never have done any of these things.

Paid prioritization would be hosting Akamai servers on the ISPs WAN somewhere, no?

So they should no longer allow Akamai?

Google's home page should not be near 100% reachable anymore? They've paid big money to distribute their site across the world so it's reachable.

This should be outlawed?

http://business.comcast.com/internet/business-internet/web-hosting

It's a fast lane that you can buy if you can afford it. Why is it a fast lane? Because it doesn't go across peering points. It goes across the municipal WAN and Comcast's private nationwide backbone.

Do tell how anyone with a clue about how this stuff works can support the government takeover?

 

If I pay $50 for 50mbit and you pay $25 for 25mbit, they are throttling us both, you more than me.

I really don't get how anyone can favor the government takeover.

 

A good read.

http://blog.streamingmedia.com/2015/02/open-internet-fcc.html

(I'm trying to find any instance of paid prioritization, where an ISP charges some site money to give specifically their packets higher priority at the router level. Can't find one, just claims the ISPs might some day).

BINGO!

 

The internet is evil and should be banned.

 

It doesn't say what you think. It's not paid priority. Comcast sold Netflix connections just like they sell connections to you and me. This is exactly the right solution. Netflix is paying for the bandwidth and infrastructure it's using, and WE win.

I cannot believe all the blithering idiots making bullshit claims and how laymen eat it up. I'm talking about the WaPost idiot.

 

No. We have seen what happens with the government hands off. Huge corporations paying outstanding wages arose around the unfettered internet. Bandwidth got cheaper (in bits/sec and in inflation adjusted dollars). Things improved to the point we can binge watch entire TV series and the next wave, UHD/4K is a product of no government intervention.

I think things are well and orderly run, except where government IS involved. Like keeping competing ISPs to Comcast from building infrastructure and competing.

The reason your article doesn't say what you claim is that Comcast was treating Netflix' and everyone else's packets EXACTLY the same. Equally. Netflix requires better treatment or customer experience is degraded.

Also, ironic that Netflix is hosted at Amazon (like S2 is now ) and Netflix competes directly with Amazon's own Prime streaming service. The companies aren't acting like they will harm one another. They just want to do business with one another. Let 'em.