Net Reality of Net Neutrality

GOPUSA ^ | 6 Feb 07 | Chuck Muth

[rellimpank]

Try to think of some societal problem in which the government solution didn’t make the situation worse or more expensive. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Over the past decade, the Internet has changed our lives in ways impossible to fully list. Do you remember the “old days” when you had to actually open up a dictionary to look up the meaning of a word or crack open an encyclopedia to learn about some obscure species of animal or foreign culture? Kids today now simply “google” a subject and have their information in a nanosecond.

The Internet has grown and flourished because it’s a great idea enabled by advanced technology which is affordable to the average consumer combined with minimal government involvement. Yes, the net still has some problems with “spam” and viruses and such, but private enterprise is addressing and fixing those problems every day. Life’s not perfect on the worldwide web, but it’s pretty doggone good.

[KarlInOhio]

From everything I've seen, this article is BS.

The primary idea behind net neutrality is that your ISP can't hold up the big websites for extra money above what you've already paid for the connection.

Net neutrality, in essence, says that someone who uses a lot more of a service only has to pay the same amount as someone who uses a minimal amount. Think of an all-you-can-eat buffet where “Large Marge” loads up her plate three stories high and pays the same amount as the person who just grabs a small salad.

No, even with net neutrality my ISP could change its pricing plan to charge me per gigabyte. They just won't be able to say that "Google gigabytes are bad (because Google has cash we can extract) while AT&T gigabytes are good".

Is the current net neutrality legislation the best way of doing it? Maybe not, but once ISPs start looking at packets to see if they come from profitable sources or unprofitable sources and throttling the unprofitable ones they should lose their common carrier protection.

[viper592]

Quote "Perhaps net neutrality can best be thought of as the government telling FedEx it can only charge 39-cents to deliver a letter overnight. That way the price of delivery - whether it’s within 24 hours via an express carrier or within six weeks via the post office - the price will remain “neutrally” the same. That’s simply un-American."

This fool doesn't know what Net Neutrality is about.

We have Net Neutrality Now, and have had it since the modern Net Came about.

Right Now, I pay a price for Internet access, Google also Pays a price for internet access, based on what their telecommunications hookup wants to charge them (based on bandwidth usage etc). The companies we pay our money to, pay big $$$ to the companies that Own the trunk lines that connect everything together.

Removing Net Neutrality means, not only do i have to pay my isp, who is already paying the trunk owner(hence I am really playing the trunk owner myself)But that the trunk owner will be allowed to directly charge me, and google or whomever I am connecting two, a second time for my traffic to go through their lines.

Removing Net Neutrality is nothing more than a scam by Verizon, Sprint, and other Companies that own trunk lines to double charge me for one service.

I repeat the way it is now, I pay AT&T for my service, AT&T pays verizon/Sprint for trunk access.

Google pays whomever their provider is for the same, and their provider pays the verizon/sprint for the service.

Now why in the heck should verizon/sprint be allowed to charge a 2nd time for the service we are already paying for?

If you remove Net Neutrality, yea, AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon may make a few more bucks, but a lot of companies are going to go out of business, because they cant afford to pay double for the service we are getting now.

Net Neutality isn't about price control, it is about keeping trunk line owners from double charging(charging 2 different entities for the one in the same product/service delivered) for their service.

If they want more money, the trunk owners should charge the isp's more which will then in turn charge me more.

[D-fendr]

The net is also content-neutral and origin-neutral.

If changing that is a conservative approach to this writer, he's a buffoon.

[mc6809e]

The primary idea behind net neutrality is that your ISP can't hold up the big websites for extra money above what you've already paid for the connection.

So what? Maybe the big websites should pay more. Right now customers are being forced to pay while Google makes millions from free connectivity. Seriously, the Google boys argue over things like hammocks on their private 747. I'm not kidding. They're not hurting for money. Why should the average joe pick up all the costs?

Maybe not, but once ISPs start looking at packets to see if they come from profitable sources or unprofitable sources and throttling the unprofitable ones they should lose their common carrier protection.

Maybe profitable sources should get the bandwidth over the unprofitable ones.

Consider cable TV. The cable cable makes decisions as to what stations will or will not be broadcast. The more popular (and most profitable stations) get a channel. The unprofitable ones don't. Is that really bad?

But all that aside, all the network neutrality legislation I've seen completely broken. The Markey amendment, for example, would outlaw things like fair-queuing. That's a policy that helps guarantee each user gets his fair share of a link. Yet the legislation would make fair-queuing illegal.

That's just plain stupid.

[jjw]

Next I think we should force all cable companies to run any programs we want them to run. And they have to pay the same price for each one.

[mc6809e]

This fool doesn't know what Net Neutrality is about. We have Net Neutrality Now, and have had it since the modern Net Came about.

Then you're a bigger fool.

The Internet protocol from the start has had bits set aside in its packet headers just for the purpose of creating higher quality of services through packet prioritization. That's not neutral and it's been there from the start.

And what about the use of weighted fair queuing? That's everywhere on the Internet, but network neutrality legislation like the Markey amendment would actually make it illegal. If weighted fair queuing becomes illegal, then those with the biggest servers and fattest pipes will be able to completely saturate a link, squeezing out other flows. In the world of forced network neutrality, the bullies can take all the bandwidth they want.

The sort of explains why Google is buying up all that dark fiber and building huge building full of servers, all the while supporting network neutrality.

Google is going to control the network through brute-force.

[viper592]

Quote "So what? Maybe the big websites should pay more. Right now customers are being forced to pay while Google makes millions from free connectivity. Seriously, the Google boys argue over things like hammocks on their private 747. I'm not kidding. They're not hurting for money. Why should the average joe pick up all the costs?"

I got news for you bub, Google isn't getting free connectivity, and neither is any other website. They all pay for bandwidth to their respective ISP, who in turn pays a telco for trunk line access, who in turn pays the trunk owner for the bandwidth over the trunk, and trunk owners pay each other for connecting to each other.

NO one is getting free connectivity. That IDEA is a load of BULL.

The removal of net neutrality is about nothing more than trunk line owners being allowed to not only charge the telcos for their access, but to charge the isps and you and I as well as the website for our bits over and above what we are already paying them to sent our bits and bytes about.

A simple example for the simple minded.

Lets say I buy a razor blade at wal-mart. Right Now I just pay wal-mart for the razor blade and its mine. Thats net neutrality.

If you remove net neutrality, I pay wal-mart $5 for the razor blade, and I get a bill for $10 from Schick in the mail for the razor blade. Mean while UPS also gets a bill from Schick for delivering the Blade to wal-mart, and Wal-mart also gets a bill for the blade.

Now I ask you, is the removal of Net Neutrality really American? No, it flat out isn't.

[mc6809e]

The net is also content-neutral and origin-neutral.

Not it isn't and it should be, either.

If changing that is a conservative approach to this writer, he's a buffoon. The conservative approach is to let the price system and the market work things out instead of having the government step in and dictate how things will be done.

Network neutrality leglislation is a form of government control of networks and how they're paid for.

If AT&T can get more money from Google, I say more power to them. Google has had the biggest free-ride in history.

[viper592]

Quote"If AT&T can get more money from Google, I say more power to them. Google has had the biggest free-ride in history."

Bud, if AT&T is not Google's Internet Connectivity Provider, then they have no business, or Right to charge Google a Dime.

Google pays their Connectivity Provider, who pays a telco (which ever one that is) for access to a trunk, and the truck owners pay to connect their trunk to other trunks so that the thing is actually worth something.

Google isn't getting a free ride, saying so makes you sound like a democrat.

[mc6809e]

Bud, if AT&T is not Google's Internet Connectivity Provider, then they have no business, or Right to charge Google a Dime.

I disagree. All ISPs to some extent helped build Google. Google, more than any other company on the internet should pay all those providers that make its existance possible, not just the single provider lucky enough to be chosen by Google.

Google pays their Connectivity Provider, who pays a telco (which ever one that is) for access to a trunk, and the truck owners pay to connect their trunk to other trunks so that the thing is actually worth something.

Not exactly true. The major providers actually exchange traffic for free at peering points. A lot of Google's traffic goes just a few hops before being dumped on someone else's network at a peering point. Of course their users expect to be able to connect to anything else on the network, so companies have an incentive to allow this.

But consider what Google and other providers are doing to get faster access right now: they're putting their servers on multiple networks. Google traffic doesn't even leave my ISP's network. They have a local server.

Now that's great for Google. They get fast, local access. You'd think that with a neutral net, they could put their servers anywhere. But the fact is, network neutrality doesn't mean network fairness. Distance makes a difference. The closer your server is to a client, the greater the amount of bandwidth you can grab. It's the nature of protocols like TCP. The longer the distance, the longer it takes TCP to ramp up it's packet sending rate, often due to full queues in intermediate routers. TCP also throttles back when it encounters packet loss. The more routers your packet goes through, the greater the chance for a dropped packet and poor performance.

Now with QoS and packet prioritization, a provider could sell part of it's bandwidth to a company it doesn't serve directly and they'd get a level of performance similar to that of a local server.

Now it should be obvious why Google supports network neutrality. Because is specifically prohibits such an arrangement. That forced competitors to build server farms on every network. That's a huge amount of money.

[D-fendr]

Not it isn't [content-neutral and origin-neutral] and it should be, either.

Does your ISP charge you differently for youtube and differently by URL?

Google has had the biggest free-ride in history.

So you can easily take over their bandwidth bill, right?

[viper592]

If Google is, as you say, Putting a Server on "every Network" Then they are paying that network for its Bandwidth and connectivity.

It still isn't a free ride for Google.

If the Net is changed from the way it is now, Universities, and Not for Profits, will cease to be of any consequence on the web. Because companies like Microsoft, EA Games, Blizzard, etc will be able to buy out all the bandwidth and control the content of the internet.

Oh and Btw, The Geography of a server only makes a difference now in so far as, geography determines the local time zone. The Time of Day where the Server's is located has a lot to do with its speed. (Because if it is during its day, the local isp it is on, will be maxing its bandwidth usage) This Is why during the evening here in the US, its better to download from Europe than the US.

[steve-b]

Try to think of some societal problem in which the government solution didn't make the situation worse or more expensive.

Paying to have a military is not worse or more expensive than living under Naziism/Communism/Sharia/etc.

What do I win?

[steve-b]

This fool doesn't know what Net Neutrality is about.

While I'm sure you are well-intentioned, we all know better. He knows, but has chosen to lie.

[steve-b]

All ISPs to some extent helped build Google. Google, more than any other company on the internet should pay all those providers

Er, the socialism website is over here....

[voltaires_zit]

Now that's chutzpah!

Not only slamming net neutrality, but whining about somebody slowing down the consolidation of telecoms into a monopolistic nightmare that can abuse the net in the same article.