A description of Net Neutrality

Well, there's a lot of people here that don't know what Net Neutrality is, or fall into a partisan camp supporting/opposing it. I want to try and give a description of it so that you can make up your own mind. I'm biased towards removing it, but each person should decide that for themselves. Sorry that it's a bit long.

First, in order to explain why Net Neutrality is a good thing and removing it is bad, I need to explain what Net Neutrality is. Most descriptions are either vague comments like fast/slow lanes and making people pay by use or dry technical material about packet priority and data type. Basically Net Neutrality says that data is no longer just data, instead there are multiple types of data and that depending on who that data is going to/from it can be sped up or slowed down.

The other thing that’s important to understand in this discussion is a brief history of how and why we’re in the situation we’re in now. Back in the mid 90’s the government decided we needed a fiber optic network for everyone in the US. This was estimated to cost $200 billion and the money was set aside, this was paid for through taxes over 10 years that amounted to roughly $2000 per person. As a concession to the idea that the federal government is incompetent each state was allowed to figure out the details of their own networks. All 51 plans (Washington DC too) which involved giving this money to the ISP’s to build the networks failed. The most common argument from the ISP’s was that they didn’t want to build the network because it would be obsolete by the time it was built (2006-2007). It’s worth pointing out that said network was planned to provide each home with asynchronous 45 mb connections (this means 45 up and 45 down).

After this was done there was a long series of merges which lead to our current situation. 60% of the US is serviced by only 1 telecom, an additional 36% have two choices, and only 4% have more. During these mergers the telecoms cut deals with local municipalities that they would be the only ones to offer service in an area. In exchange for this monopoly they would invest in developing the network. The ISP’s were also given permission year after year to add new fees into the product. Prior to 2006 when the deal was still somewhat in place to build the 45mb network to everyone the states set progress goals on the ISP’s, however they distorted the deals and rather than pay penalties for not meeting goals twisted it into making the states pay them. These fees supposedly went to building a network. A network that was already paid for through a federal grant, and was already paid for again through service charges. The fees were merely triple billing for something that wasn’t done in the first place.

So how does this relate to Net Neutrality? It relates because one of the primary arguments of the ISP’s is that they can’t continue to provide access to everyone due to high bandwidth activities. The truth is that the ISP’s had the opportunity to expand the network at no cost to themselves but chose to pocket the money instead. Now that data use is exploding and the system is near the breaking point (nearly a decade later than the projections) they’re caught in a situation where the network is inadequate. Rather than address this problem by expanding the network their solution is to try and discourage use.

At first the ISP’s tried to discourage use by creating bandwidth caps. There was a huge push for these a few years ago. Back in 2009 they were proposed and the generous cap they offered was 50 gigs per month. This is equal to 14 1h tv shows in 1080. For the most part the FCC didn’t allow ISP’s to use bandwidth caps, and when they were tried they failed spectacularly. Everything from people canceling service, to a MUCH higher rate of unauthorized network access using other peoples data, to crippling backlash on business as people could no longer use websites. In Canada for example in I think 2010 they allowed national bandwidth caps and internet service got so expensive that it became cheaper to buy a high end SSD hard drive, fill it with data, mail it across the country via overnight shipping, and then discard that hard drive than it was to simply transmit the same amount of data over the network. Today the only areas in the US that have bandwidth caps are those under I think Cox Cable (it’s one of them but I forget exactly which) at a cap between 100-300 gigs/month and those in sparsely populated areas using certain satellite providers (and maybe a couple others I don’t know about). Over 95% of connections don’t have caps.

When caps were a thing the main marketing point was that there was a small portion of users (the top 1%) that were using extremely large amounts of bandwidth on downloads (usually implied to be pirating) and that the caps would allow the ISP’s to charge these people properly. The problem with this logic is that internet is sold at a speed rating. Even when 1% of users are maxing out their connection there is still a lot of space on the line. If someone gets 50mb down it’s usually being provided on a line that supports 1 gigabit down. So while that person is constantly using 5% of bandwidth, the line itself still isn’t heavily taxed as the remaining 95% is being used in bursts of lower activity. These arguments were never about making those at the top pay more as was proposed but rather about implementing low caps that would discourage us from streaming video before streaming in 1080 was really a widespread thing.

There were more fights here and there with Net Neutrality gradually being removed. Then we have the more recent moves by the FCC which have essentially repealed it. The argument of the ISP’s is that a company like Netflix uses a substantial amount of bandwidth, this forces the ISP’s to expand their networks and pass the cost on to all of the consumers because of a company abusing the in place infrastructure. In theory according to their argument they will target the highest users of bandwidth and make them pay a price. The ruling however is very open ended and being public companies, shareholders will demand these companies seek out the new revenue stream. So what will actually end up happening in a scenario where the telecoms aren’t acting maliciously is that every website will eventually be paying a fee not just to have a server and have it connected but an additional fee for the user to access that website.

In reality however the rabbit hole goes a little deeper than that. This isn’t about networks, bandwidth, speed, or anything else. It’s about television. Television is the big money maker for these companies. They get to charge for regular tv service, cable, extended cable, and premium cable. Then you can throw in things like NFL Sunday Ticket and all the rest. They make an absolute fortune in TV sales. These sales have been going down for a long time now as people have adopted cord cutting (canceling TV service and watching shows online). It has gotten so popular that services like Netflix and Hulu can now replace a TV subscription. This results in lower and lower revenue as less cable packages are purchased and ratings decline causing advertisements to sell for less money. The internet has gotten so efficient actually that the internet only portion of the typical triple play package can provide the service of your phone and tv, rendering them obsolete.

TV service is what this is all about. The goal of the ISP’s is to use the open ended nature of charging for content to charge for everything online. They want to decouple the idea of paying for internet speed from the idea of paying for internet access. Rather than paying for access to the internet at a certain speed, they will charge each website in order to load on their network. This will cost will be passed on to those websites users. So for example you no longer pay $50/month for a 20 mb down/1 mb up connection (as it is in my town) you instead pay $35/month for that speed, but you then pay the ISP $5 so that your account has access to google, $10 so that you can send email packets, $5 so that you have access to Yahoo Mail, $5 for Wikipedia, $10 for Facebook, and so on. If you do anything that involves real time interaction like play games or use Skype you will also pay a $15 “gamer tier” fine that removes a 500 ms delay from everything you do. Each of the previously named websites will also charge you $5 or $10 or whatever is necessary to pay for the fee to be connected to you. If every website you visit now cost you $10/month, how many are you going to continue to visit? What are you going to do instead? For most people they’ll go back to watching TV and paying outrageous subscription fees.

The best part of that? It doesn’t even address the problem that the ISP’s are claiming to fix. They’re still claiming that the problem is caused by the top 1% of internet users that are using all this bandwidth. The new plan will allow these people to pay appropriately for what they’re using. Under such a model however this person is paying a fee to Netflix to stream everything, they aren’t visiting 1000 different low bandwidth websites because they’re watching streaming television/movies 24/7. They are impacted the least by such a change. The person who is impacted the most is the person who casually visits say 20 low bandwidth websites and uses a little bit from each one. For example the woman who writes her son a daily email, checks out a couple of stories on Yahoo News, looks at a funny cat video on Youtube, maybe watches the latest episode of something on HBOGO, and talks to some people on Twitter and Facebook. That is the user that is most impacted by such a change, and that is the person who will pay the most. The typical user. Moving to such a model is going to absolutely destroy any concept of competitive behavior left in our tech industry. How are we going to compete when our businesses have to give potential customers an access charge to a website while those in other countries can offer up their websites at no cost?

Last, I don’t want to be partisan here but I find it absolutely hilarious that the repeal of Net Neutrality and the slandering of the 1% of internet users along with the idea that they need to pay their fair share is being pushed by the right while the defense of them is coming from the left.

a reply to: Aazadan

Thank you Aazadan, I wish I could print out your posts as there are aspects I didn't know and need to read over again.

The solution.

Each PC owner purchases a transmitter/receiver thats plugged into their PC.
Each PC becomes part of the system, kinda like the sharing networks.
Those running websites also become part of the system.

End result, a completely free internet.

Where would that leave the ISP's?

No matter what rule is made, that rule violates neutrality, by the definition of neutrality.

the quality or state of being neutral : a condition of being uninvolved in contests or controversies between others or of refraining from taking part on either side of such contest or controversy

Neutrality

No mater what the rule is, calling it neutrality is a lie.

Sometimes I wonder if we should forget about the Internet and turn FidoNet into a 21st century network.

a reply to: Aazadan

Awesome post, thanks

I never made the TV/internet connection but it's true. I know so many folks who just do their entertainment on line versus TV. I know I would if I could. I live in a rural area, internet is satellite so no streaming.

A point I cannot get by is the opportunity the telcoms had to simply improve their product. They could have charged a lot more and never spent anything on overhead.

I wonder what the possibilities are for start ups to provide service? Y'know, competition. Without the hardware in place, it sounds kind of impossible

a reply to: Semicollegiate

Kind of, you're getting into an issue of semantics. Net Neutrality is basically a rule that says data is data, you can't discriminate one type against another or prioritize one type over another. Essentially that packets are to be treated neutral.

originally posted by: ABNARTY
a reply to: Aazadan

Awesome post, thanks

I never made the TV/internet connection but it's true. I know so many folks who just do their entertainment on line versus TV. I know I would if I could. I live in a rural area, internet is satellite so no streaming.

A point I cannot get by is the opportunity the telcoms had to simply improve their product. They could have charged a lot more and never spent anything on overhead.

I wonder what the possibilities are for start ups to provide service? Y'know, competition. Without the hardware in place, it sounds kind of impossible

Correct, they were given a massive opportunity to improve their product. The idea was that by 2006 we would all have 45 mb up and 45 mb down at a cost of around $5/month per person (or whatever it would cost purely to maintain). The cost to build this was the $200 billion set aside in the National Infrastructure Initative under Clinton/Gore that we all funded with taxes (about $2000/household). At the time it called to be finished the industry changed targets against the agreement and used DSL connections over existing copper wire instead. Rather than give us all 45 mb connections over new fiber optic line run to every single home we got 200 kb down/20 kb up DSL over the existing copper wire. Then in order to meet the legal requirement of delivering broadband they changed the definition from a 20 mb connection to a 200 kb connection. Basically, they reduced the speed requirement by 99% in order to meet it. The money that should have gone into the new infrastructure was instead pocketed to the tune of about $4 billion per state. My guess is that this money is what provided the capital for all of the telecom mergers which happened in the 2000's and destroyed any concept of competition.

The age of internet startups is about to disappear in the US. The idea of an ISP startup is gone. The feds still technically own the backbone fiber and some of it is unused (my town has 3 lines, 1 is dark for example) but in exchange for the ISP's to operate in an area they have signed agreements with the various towns and cities that they get to operate as a monopoly. When Suddenlink Cable (it's a division of I think Charter) entered my town in 2006 it came with a stipulation that they can operate here with a monopoly on cable internet for 100 years. Many towns and cities have these clauses. It is legally impossible for an internet startup to exist, the only way it could happen is if they have the money for a startup, the money to deploy the network (about $25,000 per mile of wire), and then the money to fight and win a battle over monopoly status. Lately the idea of whitefi has been thrown around, it's wireless internet over the air at much greater range than is normal. This is done through the TV whitespace that was freed up when everything moved to digital. In my town for example this competing technology was given to the cable company as part of the clause in their monopoly agreement. They even get to decide if a competing technology can be deployed here.

Other internet startups will soon disappear as it becomes too difficult to pay the extortion fees for access. If Netflix is anything to go by the goal for now seems to be $2 per website per user per month. If you create a tech startup with a website that gets 2 million views per month, that's $4 million to each major ISP or $28 million total that you would have to pay every month in addition to hosting fees just so that your website is available. It's being done to basically shut down ecommerce to everyone other than the major existing players. No startup, and even most existing businesses can't afford $28 million/month to maintain a website.

originally posted by: Aazadan
a reply to: Semicollegiate

Kind of, you're getting into an issue of semantics. Net Neutrality is basically a rule that says data is data, you can't discriminate one type against another or prioritize one type over another. Essentially that packets are to be treated neutral.

Semantics is the reason no rule is neutral. It will always be interpreted in favor of the most powerful party.

First come first served, FCFS, is neutral.

Basically Net Neutrality says that data is no longer just data, instead there are multiple types of data and that depending on who that data is going to/from it can be sped up or slowed down.

That is the opposite of neutrality.

Whoever wants faster through put should build more infrastructure.

The government made cable TV into a monopoly.

Cable TV is a monopoly
There should be several, or at least a few, competing companies in every market. That makes the price go down through competition and innovation. More companies means more innovation and more infrastructure.

"Net Neutrality" (lie, its the opposite of neutral) removes all motivation to innovate or build better internet hardware.

originally posted by: Semicollegiate

"Net Neutrality" (lie, its the opposite of neutral) removes all motivation to innovate or build better internet hardware.

How does net Neutrality remove motivation to innovate or build better internet hardware?


Here is a good entertaining overview of the issue

a reply to: Semicollegiate

First come first serve is how things worked and how Net Neutrality dictates they work. Repealing it removes that rule. Data is data, there is no discrimination, and it is processed in the order it is received. Thanks to the FCC and a lot of lobbying (or maybe not much since the primary telecom lobbier was named head of the FCC) this rule is no longer in place. However as I said, you're arguing semantics, FCFS is itself a rule.

Speed isn't merely a function of one networks servers. There are 7 major companies in the US and many more all over the world. When you request data from a server that data can travel a very long path. If one network speeds up their service they can offer their customers a faster upload/download speed but they can't guarantee the other networks will support it.

What needs to happen is we need another federal level initiative to build a proper network and then we need to write the ISP's into a contract that we don't let them back out of. This however is never going to happen because it doesn't adhere to free market principals, and as such it has no chance of passing through congress. Worth pointing out is that all of the top nations in broadband speed both embrace Net Neutrality and passed national legislation to subsidize the building of networks. It is something that individual companies are incapable of doing.

Also, it would be far cheaper to simply build the network properly. The fraud of the ISP's is costing our economy an estimated $500 billion annually. The network would pay for itself in less than a year. It would also create a TON of jobs... something we sorely need right now.

originally posted by: interupt42

originally posted by: Semicollegiate

"Net Neutrality" (lie, its the opposite of neutral) removes all motivation to innovate or build better internet hardware.

How does net Neutrality remove motivation to innovate or build better internet hardware?


Here is a good entertaining overview of the issue

It puts the government in charge of how the internet will operate. The biggest players will lobby the government to get what they want, which is control of the internet, and the small players will have higher fixed costs to comply with the rules.

The big players will spend money on lobbying rather than hardware or research and development.

That is what happens when the government gets involved, every time.

originally posted by: Semicollegiate
The government made cable TV into a monopoly.

There should be several, or at least a few, competing companies in every market. That makes the price go down through competition and innovation. More companies means more innovation and more infrastructure.

"Net Neutrality" (lie, its the opposite of neutral) removes all motivation to innovate or build better internet hardware.

I'm glad you agree that cable TV is a monopoly. The same companies that provide cable TV service also provide internet service and often times cell phone service to an area. It's usually bundled up as a triple play package.

Cable TV faces the very real physical problem of stringing wire, this creates a super high barrier to entry. Other companies have moved in and provide satellite TV which is of comparable if not better quality at a reasonable price point. The reason satellite works for TV and not for internet is that internet requires signals that go in two directions... it is interactive. TV only has to receive a signal. This means limitations to the technology like how to upload a signal (your dish doesn't beam something into space) and the 500 ms signal speed delay aren't factors when it comes to TV service however they are significant factors to internet service.

Over the past few years as faster internet technologies have developed we have been able to download TV shows. I'm sure I'm not the only one who used a college Direct Connect network to distribute shows over internet/lan. Then we had IRC and /xdcc send filename from bots, and then eventually torrents. The products from cable TV have been able to be transmitted over the internet for a long time now, and recently it has gone mainstream. With the advent of video streaming we have even been able to stream TV shows.

The TV providers do not like this. Their own internet network is being used to distribute their television programming more efficiently than they can distribute it themselves over the cable TV wires. In addition to that the internet version is a superior product with features like on demand, a lower price, and fewer commercials.

Net Neutrality offers the ability for someone to compete with an existing technology. By repealing it the telecoms can shut down all packets carrying data on TV shows and force people to instead go back to the old way of getting the TV show from them.

To use an analogy here on a smaller scale. Lets say someone builds their home and hooks it up to the electric grid and the going rate for electricity is $0.05/kwh . Then lets say that person invests in some on site electric production like a windmill and some solar panels. Because they're hooked up to the grid excess electricity goes back to it. Lets say this person is generating electricity at $0.02/kwh. The electric company then charges this person a redistribution fee of $0.04/kwh because they don't want him to add electricity back to the grid at a lower price as it competes with them. This is essentially what the telecoms are doing to competing technology. Oddly enough in the electricity case such a thing actually happened and the fee was ruled illegal.

Net Neutrality provides incentive to innovate and create better hardware. If I have a great idea I can take it to the internet and challenge established players. MySpace did this to take Friendster out of the market. Facebook did this to take Myspace out of the market. If we didn't have Net Neutrality at the time this could not have happened. Instead MySpace could have paid an additional fee to make their website load while Facebook would be faced with never loading, thus never getting users, thus never generating revenue.

When it comes to hardware the telecoms have proven they aren't up to the task of expanding or updating the network and creating something that meets our needs. We tried to give the telecoms a network, they took the money but refused to build it. Now they are saying the current network is insufficient and again rather than improve it they are instead seeking to discourage use. Had the network been built as originally planned none of this would be an issue but telecoms aren't trustworthy.

a reply to: Aazadan

Thanks to the FCC and a lot of lobbying (or maybe not much since the primary telecom lobbier was named head of the FCC) this rule is no longer in place.

That sound awful. Could you tell me what the rule is?

I know its bad and should not exist, even though I don't know what it is.

If one network speeds up their service they can offer their customers a faster upload/download speed but they can't guarantee the other networks will support it.

That is a fact of life. But that problem gets solved one way or another, either that network will speed up or it will get bypassed.

Monopolies make it harder to bypass, and rules like Net Neutrality are fertilizer for monopolies.

What needs to happen is we need another federal level initiative to build a proper network and then we need to write the ISP's into a contract that we don't let them back out of.

There is no way to compete with lobbyists.

Using the government is always a bad idea.

originally posted by: Semicollegiate
It puts the government in charge of how the internet will operate. The biggest players will lobby the government to get what they want, which is control of the internet, and the small players will have higher fixed costs to comply with the rules.

The big players will spend money on lobbying rather than hardware or research and development.

That is what happens when the government gets involved, every time.

Except this has no basis in reality.

Right now the biggest players are lobbying for control, what they lobbied for and what they got was control of the internet by repealing Net Neutrality. At any point now Verizon can come to ATS and say they want $2 million per year in order for the site to remain accessible to Verizon users. If ATS pays the other telecoms will come in and each demand $2 million as well. Total of $14 million. Do you think this website can pay that? The small players like this website and many others are going to have higher fixed costs precisely because Net Neutrality is now gone. When it was there this couldn't be done.

And contrary to your assessment had the government built the fiber network on their own as was originally planned we would all have minimum 45 mb up/down connections right now and they would be free or virtually free. Maybe they would only have hit half the target and they would be 25 mb. That would still have put us in a very good spot compared to the rest of the world, to have that type of speed at 100% penetration. Instead we left it up to the corporations (but gave them all the financing) and their response was to pocket the money and do nothing.

originally posted by: Semicollegiate
a reply to: Aazadan

Thanks to the FCC and a lot of lobbying (or maybe not much since the primary telecom lobbier was named head of the FCC) this rule is no longer in place.

That sound awful. Could you tell me what the rule is?

I know its bad and should not exist, even though I don't know what it is.

That rule is the rule of Net Neutrality which was repealed.

From the wiki page the definition of Net Neutrality is
Net neutrality (also network neutrality or Internet neutrality) is the principle that Internet service providers and governments should treat all data on the Internet equally, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, and modes of communication.

In every day practice this means that data is data. A packet containing streaming video information is the same as a packet sending an email, which is the same as a packet containing browser data, which is the same as a packet containing network information in a video game. They are all treated the same, there is no priority for certain types of data or sending other types of data to the back of the line. A company can't say Hulu traffic will be processed first while Netflix data will be processed last. Or it can't say that emails will be super fast and processed first while a high bandwidth activity like a packet from a torrent program will only be processed when there is nothing else to do. Instead it is all treated equally and processed in the order it reaches the server.

You see data discrimination all has to do with the manipulation of when in the que something is processed. When things are neutral it is all first come first serve. Once you get away from this principal you can do things like say packets from World of Warcraft will be processed at a minimum 700 ms after they enter the que, unless they belong to a person who purchased our "gamer tier" internet service. In which case they will be processed normally. Or you could do things like say Netflix uses too much of our bandwidth, therefore we are going to constantly send all Netflix packets to the back of the que (this essentially means it doesn't ever get processed unless no other data is going through the server).

Another way it could be used is in business class internet. There's a concept in web development that deals with page load times, essentially it studies how long someone will wait for a page to load before they look for another alternative. These days a website needs to load within 250 ms of a competitor before people look for another option. Without Net Neutrality all html packets can be delayed on a server by 100 ms but then a new tier can be created for business class which removes that 100 ms delay if you're willing to pay extra.

You see, if everyone pays for the so called fast lane, we're back to the old situation of first come first serve. So a faster lane has to be created which is essentially just once again slowing everyone down in the que other than those who want to jump ahead in line.

originally posted by: Semicollegiate
Monopolies make it harder to bypass, and rules like Net Neutrality are fertilizer for monopolies.

No. Net Neutrality creates a level playing field so that anyone can compete. Why do you think the giant telecoms (which are all monopolies) have been pushing more and more continually to repeal this idea? It's because it protects their monopoly. It stops anyone from coming in to compete. The big companies get a massive competitive advantage without Net Neutrality and it ensures the small startups can never compete.

Hardware is a bit different. Again the current big telecoms pushed to let mergers go through. The FCC basically greenlit the current situation, we used to have many ISP's, I remember as a kid having an option of 15 different ISP's in my 100,000 person down. Today there's one. The telecom mergers should have never been allowed and they need to be broken up like what happened to the bells. That however is another fight for another day.

a reply to: Aazadan

I'm glad you agree that cable TV is a monopoly.

The government is the reason cable TV is a monopoly.

The government is at the root of the problem.

More government to fix anything is a shoddy repair.

The TV providers do not like this. Their own internet network is being used to distribute their television programming more efficiently than they can distribute it themselves over the cable TV wires.

That would explain which movies are DVD only at Netflix.

Net Neutrality offers the ability for someone to compete with an existing technology.

It is taking ownership away. It is a violation of property rights. Ownership means absolute control over what is owned.

Losing ownership anywhere is one step closer to losing ownership of your own body.

They already own your labor. (income tax)

By repealing it the telecoms can shut down all packets carrying data on TV shows and force people to instead go back to the old way of getting the TV show from them.

I understand that. Its the price we pay for letting the local governments make a monopoly in the first place.

We need to remove laws already on the books, never make new laws.

Net Neutrality provides incentive to innovate and create better hardware.

No. Only the profit motive is an incentive.

From your OP

...and when they were tried [data caps] they failed spectacularly. Everything from people canceling service, to a MUCH higher rate of unauthorized network access using other peoples data, to crippling backlash on business as people could no longer use websites

The free market works.

Repeal every regulation you can.

a reply to: Aazadan

I thought net neutrality was legislation of some kind. I see from Wikipedia that it is a concept.

We need more internet infrastructure apparently. Net Neutrality, the governmental coercion, would discourage that.

Either the laws would get changed, eventually to the opposite;

or Big Business would start to make private networks and the internet we use would get less and less capital assigned to it.