Can someone break down Net Neutraility to me? I mean without getting political...

Westerly Wood

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I just heard either some law was passed or some law was negated. I believe this helps the big internet providers and our internet prices could go up...

true?

thanks
 

Westerly Wood

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yeah, thanks! now i get why it could be lame for consumers.
 

mavuser

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in short, the major issue is that...for example...

you want to buy a digitial download of a song from a musician. to down load a 5 minute song on Apple Music might take 20 seconds, but to download a 5 minute song on, say, BANDCAMP, could take like 2 hours, unless Bandcamp wants to pay the cable companies (or whoever they have to pay) in the same fashion that Apple Music does, in order to compete with those download speeds, which of course, Bandcamp cannnot afford...

now there may be an option for the consumer to pick up that tab, but would likely double the price of what you are downloading, or double your monthly cable fee, or both.

in a nutshell, Bandcamp losses. goes out of business
 

GAD

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Even better:

Comcast (who is also NBC and a pile of other big media companies) decides to start a streaming service. Or, you know, try to make (force) people to use the ones they have that don't sell well because of Neflix.

People don't want that, though, they wan't Netflix. So Comcast charges an outrageous fee for the privilege of Netflix streaming. Maybe they charge Netflix (who then raises their rates). Maybe they charge the end-user. Maybe both. Since Comcast Internet service is almost a monopoly in much of the country, what can the consumer do? Not much. Thus, Netflix suffers which is what companies like Comcast want since Netflix/Hulu/etc. have cause millions to cut the cord.

Maybe they're tired of people using VPN technology to bypass their enforced limitations, so they slap a huge fee for any VPN technology (yes, this is absolutely possible). Companies will rebel, but companies have deep pockets and will end up paying. Who will suffer? The people using VPN for other than business uses, and let me tell you there are a lot of them out there.

How can they get away with this? Politics that I won't get into.

As an IT guy for decades now, this has the potential to suck hard, but I anticipate a new paradigm of pirating that will emerge. Sure, they'll clamp down on torrent protocols and the like, but we Internet techie types don't take well to brute enforcement of political nonsense.
 

Westerly Wood

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.

As an IT guy for decades now, this has the potential to suck hard, but I anticipate a new paradigm of pirating that will emerge. Sure, they'll clamp down on torrent protocols and the like, but we Internet techie types don't take well to brute enforcement of political nonsense.

a return of Radio Free Europe? :)

https://youtu.be/Ac0oaXhz1u8
 

mavuser

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personally, i really do not watch any regular tv or netflix. i am not anti the establishment or anything like that, the sad truth is...it just puts me in a trans and puts me to sleep. i actually have the same problem riding in the passenger seat of a car, just cant stay awake (no issues driving, just the passenger seat). and one day it occurs to me the passnger seat is just like watching TV, you are sitting still and everything in the winshield/tv screen is moving. i dunno. just puts me right down. even NHL playoff games that i try to drink coffe and stay awake for, and look forward to- if they are west coast games and/or double-triple overtime thrillers, i have no chance. anyway, my point is, i don't really watch tv, but i surf the internet aggressively looking for guitars and other things, watch youtube alot...how does this affect me? other than loosing Bandcamp, which, btw, rules.

i basically pay more, so everyone else can watch netflix? may have to go back to combing the print classifieds. i believe we are on the other side of the peak of it all, now. we should have an LTG get together live and in the flesh, to celebrate (the beginning of the end, of the internet)!
 
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fronobulax

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There was a good analogy to TSA screening. People want to get through TSA screening. In a Net Neutral environment all people are treated as equal and the speed is determined by how many "screening stations" are available. In the New World Order there are many different lines, some faster than others and people (or some other entity, on behalf of certain people) can pay to be in a faster line. So there is a line for aircrews which is super fast because the airlines don't want to have late flights because the pilots are stuck in screening. There is TSA CLEAR which is faster for people who want to pay for faster lines. There is TSA-Pre which can be paid for by people in a hurry or given away by airlines as a perk for flyers. One can imagine a future were there was a line that cost big bucks, was available on a per use basis, and guaranteed to get you to your gate in 15 minutes.

Think of internet packets as the people and internet providers as TSA and the analogy generally works.
 

FNG

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Doesn't it cost a lot of money to build internet infrastructure? Who pays for this infrastructure?
 

Westerly Wood

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There was a good analogy to TSA screening. People want to get through TSA screening. In a Net Neutral environment all people are treated as equal and the speed is determined by how many "screening stations" are available. In the New World Order there are many different lines, some faster than others and people (or some other entity, on behalf of certain people) can pay to be in a faster line. So there is a line for aircrews which is super fast because the airlines don't want to have late flights because the pilots are stuck in screening. There is TSA CLEAR which is faster for people who want to pay for faster lines. There is TSA-Pre which can be paid for by people in a hurry or given away by airlines as a perk for flyers. One can imagine a future were there was a line that cost big bucks, was available on a per use basis, and guaranteed to get you to your gate in 15 minutes.

Think of internet packets as the people and internet providers as TSA and the analogy generally works.

well, i liked it when they loaded the plane from the back. :)
 

fronobulax

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Doesn't it cost a lot of money to build internet infrastructure? Who pays for this infrastructure?

My experience is that there are two answers. Your local ISP probably installed the "last mile" to your location. When Cox was my ISP they installed and paid for the wires running to my house. When Verizion forced my landline to be upgraded from copper to fiber they did the connection and hoped I would switch to their internet service. There was not a lot of competition in my old neighborhood but what there was paid some fee to the folks who installed and owned the wires.

The so called backbone was generally built by communication companies. A lot of the backbone was originally built by the telephone companies some of whom are still building "hubs" and connecting them.

There are scattered municipalities that are building infrastructure with tax dollars, but those are generally WiFi nodes and not wires.

The analogy to other infrastructure such as power, gas and water often holds, at least in terms of figuring out who built it.

My power company once explored being an ISP by using the powerlines (which they owned and had already installed) to carry internet traffic but that couldn't compete with fiber optics in terms of performance so that ended up in the It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time bin.

If GAD responds and has a slightly different answer then go with his. I may have used the internet when it was a DoD research project and not available to the masses, but his knowledge of networking far exceeds mine.
 

GAD

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well, i liked it when they loaded the plane from the back. :)

They still do. Actually, they load it from the back/outside first. The problem that leads to you thinking that they don't is that they let people like me board first. :emmersed:

Here's how the boarding process generally works on United:

Global Services - the absolute top tier of frequent flyers - invitation only. Crazy perks.
People with special needs (wheelchair, just slow, old, whatever)
People with kids under 2
Military "in uniform"
Group 1 - 1st class, Business class (sometimes me), Platinum 1K (me), Platinum, and Gold status.
Group 2 - Silver or above status and every damn jerk with a United credit card (this is the problem, honestly)
Group 3 - Window seats
Group 4 - Middle seats
Group 5 - Aisle seats

In theory, the group 3-5 boarding process makes the loading process more efficient, and it would if it weren't for all the frequent flyer a-holes like me that get to board first so that we can take up all the overhead space.

Why do they do this? Because the person sitting in steerage in group 5 might fly once or twice a year and looks for the cheapest fare possible. People like me fly 50 times a year and my seats are often last-minute (read expensive) and so keeping a-holes like me happy means I'll keep flying on that airline. Actually I keep flying that airline because my closest airport is a United hub and I can get most places via direct flight.

Next time you're boarding a big flight via United, watch the lines. Group 1 is generally small because it's 1st class and the upper frequent flyers. If it's trans-atlantic or trans-pacific the group will be larger because business class is larger, but on a continental flight this group is usually pretty small. Group two will have 50% of the plane in it because they're all yahoos with United credit cards. The rest gets divvied up as already described. Get rid of the credit card perk and boarding gets better for everyone, IMO.
 

adorshki

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Group two will have 50% of the plane in it because they're all yahoos with United credit cards. The rest gets divvied up as already described. Get rid of the credit card perk and boarding gets better for everyone, IMO.
Once in flight, how do they prioritize access to the head?
 

GAD

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Back to Net Neutrality, Frono's description of it being like TSA is sort of right, though I'd argue that that's more like QoS (Quality of Service) which is similar in principle and close enough that it's not worth arguing about.

The Internet is also pretty close to how Frono described it. In the early days it was a few major hubs called MAEs (Metropolitan Area Exchanges) NAPs (Network Access Points) but today the interconnects are far more distrubuted using something called IXes (Internet Exchanges).

That's all hardware stuff, though. The magic happens due to routing protocols like BGP. If you read about Apple's traffic getting redirected to Russia recently, that's BGP black magic at work. Back when I worked at an ISP (late 1990s) I was the BGP guy and that made me a freaking god on the Internet because I could manipulate global routing tables at will. That's not easily done today for a variety of reasons, but as proven by the recent event, it's still possible.

The cool thing about all of this stuff is that the major telecom providers and ISPs (Comcast, Verizon, ATT, etc.) *need* to work together because if they don't, then they don't have connectivity to some of the Internet and then the Internet stops being the Internet. That interconnecting handoff is what the NAPs, MAEs, and IXes are all about, and it's awesome.

The problem today is simple greed. They all want more, and they all want us (the consumers) to use *their* services and not just use them as a transit to get to someone else's service. It's a terribly slippery slope, though, as the provider should not be deciding what you can and cannot see or at what quality/speed/efficiency you can see it.

BTW all of this was typed while sitting in a huge IX/Colo while working on racks of very expensive networking gear that has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand. :tongue-new:
 

GAD

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Once in flight, how do they prioritize access to the head?

The rope off the business/first class bathrooms to keep the commoners out. I kid you not. The steerage head is in the wiggly back part of the plane.
 

GAD

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Where I sat all day:

GAD-Colo2.png
 

JohnW63

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Places like that are noisier than the picture looks, with fancy flashing lights , Cat 6 cables, and the rest. All of that has fans running at a good clip.

Back on the Net Neutrality thing... has anyone read their ISP Terms of Service. Verizon ( Service now handled by a sub contractor Frontier, in my area. ) Basically says they make zero guarantees on speed and you give up all rights to take them to court about anything. If they make changes and you miss the notice and don't tell them to stop your service, you therefore agree to anything they do. Every two years, I have to pay more, but they always say the package I have is no longer offered, and I need to upgrade to the next speed, for another 5 bucks. What once was $34.95 a month is now $50. Yes, it's faster, but I didn't need it any faster. 50 up / 50 down is nice, but I never go that fast in anything I do online. But, I have no choice to keep letting them push be up the bill rate, because the other choices around here, like cable, are in the 30 down / 5 up range, and I do need better than 5 up. ( Online racing league I run ) .

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that congress will stop the repeal, but I fear too many have had their hands out and the wheels have been greased.
 

JohnW63

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I just read the link, posted on page one of this. Let me pose this question:

If all the ISPs say , " Don't worry. Nothing will change. The internet will be just like it was. " Why did they lobby to change it back and pay so much money to make sure it did. To keep everything the same ? Yeah. I have swap land in Florida you might be interested in.
 
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