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Ted Cruz Hits Back At Al Franken On Net Neutrality

Maybe this is a dumb question but if an ISP decides to screw with their customers as described then don't you think that those customers would switch ISP's so that they are no longer screwed with?

And if both the isps in your area are doing the same thing?
 
That ain't going to happen. So many Congress members like Cruz are bought and paid for by the telecoms that they will never, ever, ever vote for this. It's easier to get the GOP to remove nuclear and oil subsidies than it will be for them to vote to cut off the high revenue tier structure from their donors.

Ted Cruz's plan is to make NN sound bad as a tool to hammer Obama on during the GOP primaries. The amount of damage he can do purely by associating it with the ACA and Obama will cause plenty of Republicans to vote against it purely out of their own primary concerns.

That law would be nice, but it's not even remotely realistic given telecom contributions and what Ted Cruz is doing in terms of association.


You can also review post 136 if you so desire.

http://www.debatepolitics.com/break...-franken-net-neutrality-4.html#post1063993988


And to suggest the telecoms support the republicans exclusively isn't accurate at all.

https://www.google.com/webhp?source...&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=telecoms support democrats
 
Okay, how about you offer a reason why ISPs won't throttle?

Please aside from magic, what is stopping monopolies from engaging in behavior to literally charge you extra for every packet of data you want delivered or received within a reasonable period of time?

Are you COMPLETELY UNAWARE that ISPs have throttled Netflixks?



No, they did not "throttle" netflix, that's not accurate.

​Comcast vs. Netflix: Is this really about Net neutrality? - CNET

please read this and get up to speed on this. not all is as it seems.
 
Actually, your article says different and notes that this WAS NOT a "net neutrality" issue.


added emphasis is mine.



I was using laymans terms, you are correct, the there is a CDN delivery issue, given that netflix is 30% of all internet traffic and is trying to hook up firehoses to garden hoses, the issue comes with opening additional peers vs creating better connections to specific ISP's.

In reality, netflix wasn't trying to get it's fair share, but more than it's share if you wanted to look at it objectively.
 
No, they did not "throttle" netflix, that's not accurate.

​Comcast vs. Netflix: Is this really about Net neutrality? - CNET

please read this and get up to speed on this. not all is as it seems.

Definitely an interesting read. Though still leaves some questions in the air as to why the speeds for Netflix on Comcast immedietely increased as soon as a financial deal was done. Using the analogies in your article, the "firehose connection" wouldn't have been created and finished as soon as a deal was done...it would've taken time for money to change hands and the work to be done. So there's a legitimate question to be had as to whether or not the slow down was simply a natural issue, or if it was a result of artificial hinderance on the part of comcast on top of any natural issue that would've been present.
 
Definitely an interesting read. Though still leaves some questions in the air as to why the speeds for Netflix on Comcast immedietely increased as soon as a financial deal was done. Using the analogies in your article, the "firehose connection" wouldn't have been created and finished as soon as a deal was done...it would've taken time for money to change hands and the work to be done. So there's a legitimate question to be had as to whether or not the slow down was simply a natural issue, or if it was a result of artificial hinderance on the part of comcast on top of any natural issue that would've been present.



That's easy, once they had a deal, they connected directly. What comcast was doing before was opening more peers. Netflix now hits comcast direct, they hooked up a firehose to comcast, before it came in through third party peers such as convergent, etc, now if something is taking up 30% of your bandwith through x number of peers, is net neutrality applicable here?


if downstream "peering points" became congested it was common for isp's to temporarily open up additional ports to maintain traffic speed. This was done as a courtesy and not any sort of business arrangement. Netflix has no upstream traffic, so the argument that comcast made was it was being taken advantaged of.


This in particular (in contrast to what I originally said about all this), reallt has nothing to do with net neutrality, though it's being used as an argument for it.
 
So what taxes are y'all talking about?

It is part of the telecommunication bill past years ago.
all telecommunication companies must pay into the General Service Fund to the FCC.
internet companies are not under this umbrella as they are not regulated by the FCC.

if Obama gets his way and the FCC is forced to regulate internet companies under the telecommunications act then internet companies will be forced
to pay into the fund as well.

This is equivalent to a tax on the internet for every person that uses it.
 
Notice what i'm saying. I'm suggesting it's far fetched to suggest it's going to occur in the next 2 to 6 years, which was the time period I spoke about being willing to hold off on taking such an extreme action as classifying it as a utility and pushing for a law. To go from where we are now, which is still...relatively speaking...extremely based in neutrality principles to such an extreme end as pay per page view is not going to be something that occurs in half a decade in my mind. That's like running a marathon in an hour. I just don't see that being realistic.

Fair enough. But I can see a pay per page view system totally plausible within a decade if we do nothing as Excon wants. The capital costs alone to offer competition to Time Warner/Comcast are so high that they, without regulation, can do whatever they want.

It does, and I acknowledged earlier in the thread it would require an enforcement mechanism. But there's a large difference in giving the government a SPECIFIC set of rules that it can enforce, and giving the government the carte blanche options for enforcement and new regulation that comes with declaring it a utility.

A specific law would be a form of regulation, but one created by the legislation rather than a regulatory agency. That means whatever body charged with enforcing it (I basically said it'd likely still be the FCC) is bound by the criteria's and limits of said law. Meaning it's very difficult for it to expand beyond that law without additional legislation, putting a bit of a potential stop gap on the government expanding beyond simple neutrality standards.

By making it a utility, you're giving the regulatory agency a FAR wider field in which it can create new and additional regulation that it wants to enforce, as the laws regarding utilities are already on the books and are far more widely acted upon than a simple net neutrality bill would allow.

I don't disagree with you that making it a utility would be bad. But I cannot agree with Excon's views that we should simply do nothing.

Ultimately, I don't think a law to force equal packet treatment is the answer either. Japan proved that competition will eliminate the throttling problem. We don't need a law to force equal treatment when it would be market suicide to not do that when your competition won't follow you. We need to break the monopolies up like we did to Ma Bell. That is the ultimate long term solution here. The law, like the utility option is just a stop gap. Laws can be changed, but when there are several viable competitors offering internet who are in actual competition, the market works for consumers.
 
No, they did not "throttle" netflix, that's not accurate.

​Comcast vs. Netflix: Is this really about Net neutrality? - CNET

please read this and get up to speed on this. not all is as it seems.

I see your point, but it is related in that ISPS can charge different networks different rates dependent on what the data is and therefore treat the packets of data differently. Technically, it is still throttling in that they reduced the amount of data that they would allow Netflix's networks to send over their own lines due to the interconnection fee dust up. The bigger issue of interconnection fees obviously is huge. I get that Comcast's data lines aren't that big, but that's partially their fault for not investing. That article makes this more nuanced, but I don't feel that it has substantially changed the issue.
 
Health insurance could have been fixed without the government taking control as it did.

How did the government take control the health insurance by setting up private health insurance exchanges where private health insurance was purchased from private providers?

If the government had gone all TRICARE on it, then yes, you would be accurate. But the ACA is largely just a give away to private insurance. Claiming the government took control of something that's still largely privately run is insane.

Net Nuetrality could be fixed without the government taking control.

Ok. Explain how. Right now Excon just runs away from that as he has no solutions ever. Also, your notion of "control" needs to be modified.

You believe the government taking control is the only answer...as I stated earlier.

Redefining words to suit your needs makes you look weak.
 
Ted Cruz doesn't give a flying monkey's butt about whether or not he's right.

Cruz is entirely doing this to out flank every Republican Presidential candidate in 2015-2016 by attacking everything Obama wants and does. Cruz knows full well that anyone who is even remotely tech informed knows he's completely full of crap. But most of us won't vote for him anyways. The crazy radicals within the GOP primaries, most of whom are old, white and tech illiterate will eat Cruz's statements up. Cruz knows he has to win the primaries and playing to the extremists is how he plans on doing just that.

I fully suspect that Cruz knows he's wrong. But he doesn't care he's wrong because being wrong is just a means to an end. In a sense Cruz is farming the idiots for their votes. Expect Cruz to be nearly 100% "Whatever Obama Wants, I Hate" for the next two years. Doesn't matter what, Cruz's plan of attack is to be the anti-Obama. Whether or not that ticket will get him into the White House remains to be seen.

lmao. I agree with everything you said, but "white"? Seriously: lmfao, what is even the point of saying that?
 
Almost every post in this thread is moronic. NN is nothing more than an excuse for government expansion. If you don't like how your ISP operates then go with another. It's the beauty of the free market and competition. If NN becomes the law of the land you'll be stuck with whatever ****ty service you have, like the DMV or your water or electric. Socialism is always geared toward the lowest common denominator.
 
I see your point, but it is related in that ISPS can charge different networks different rates dependent on what the data is and therefore treat the packets of data differently. Technically, it is still throttling in that they reduced the amount of data that they would allow Netflix's networks to send over their own lines due to the interconnection fee dust up. The bigger issue of interconnection fees obviously is huge. I get that Comcast's data lines aren't that big, but that's partially their fault for not investing. That article makes this more nuanced, but I don't feel that it has substantially changed the issue.




If I have 10 peers, would letting netflix take up 7 of them organically be "neutral" to the people trying stream from porndig? (I use 10 as an example)...


point being, that if one service is eating up all the capacity of an isp, is that neutrality if other sites and services are squeezed out?
 
If I have 10 peers, would letting netflix take up 7 of them organically be "neutral" to the people trying stream from porndig? (I use 10 as an example)...


point being, that if one service is eating up all the capacity of an isp, is that neutrality if other sites and services are squeezed out?

That's not the way the internet works. Content providers already have to pay for the bandwidth they're using. They're either paying for an ISP to connect them to the Tier 1 internet backbone or they're directly paying for infrastructure in the tier 1 network. All traffic on the Tier 1 network is done through settlement-free interconnection. That means everyone routes everyone else’s traffic and no one charges per packet fees. If a company like netflix grows and starts to increase their footprint then they have to pay to for either more bandwidth or more Tier 1 infrastructure.

The ISP acts in a similar way. They either pay to connect to the tier 1 backbone or they provide tier 1 infrastructure. They pay for this by selling you a piece of that bandwidth. So you're paying for what you use, and content providers are paying for what they use.. seems pretty fair to me.

But now cable companies are trying to get more money. You're already paying for the bandwidth you use. You're also paying paying content providers so that they can buy the bandwidth they use. Now cable companies want content providers to pay a third time without providing anything for it. Where do you think that money will come from? You. Do you really want to pay more for exactly what you're getting now?

We have pretty much the worst internet in the industrialized world. We pay more than anyone else, and get less for it.
BBC News - Why is broadband more expensive in the US?
 
That's not the way the internet works. Content providers already have to pay for the bandwidth they're using. They're either paying for an ISP to connect them to the Tier 1 internet backbone or they're directly paying for infrastructure in the tier 1 network. All traffic on the Tier 1 network is done through settlement-free interconnection. That means everyone routes everyone else’s traffic and no one charges per packet fees. If a company like netflix grows and starts to increase their footprint then they have to pay to for either more bandwidth or more Tier 1 infrastructure.


uhm, prior to the deal, netflix came to comcast via convergent and others. now they have a direct connection.


The ISP acts in a similar way. They either pay to connect to the tier 1 backbone or they provide tier 1 infrastructure. They pay for this by selling you a piece of that bandwidth. So you're paying for what you use, and content providers are paying for what they use.. seems pretty fair to me.

But now cable companies are trying to get more money. You're already paying for the bandwidth you use. You're also paying paying content providers so that they can buy the bandwidth they use. Now cable companies want content providers to pay a third time without providing anything for it. Where do you think that money will come from? You. Do you really want to pay more for exactly what you're getting now?


My netflix is the same price. ;)



Did you see any of my other links? it explains it all.


We have pretty much the worst internet in the industrialized world. We pay more than anyone else, and get less for it.
BBC News - Why is broadband more expensive in the US?


This is due to corporatist cronie capitalist government approved monopolies.
 
lmao. I agree with everything you said, but "white"? Seriously: lmfao, what is even the point of saying that?

Racism is on his mind, as in how can he insert it for political gain.
 
uhm, prior to the deal, netflix came to comcast via convergent and others. now they have a direct connection.





My netflix is the same price. ;)



Did you see any of my other links? it explains it all.

We have pretty much the worst internet in the industrialized world. We pay more than anyone else, and get less for it.
BBC News - Why is broadband more expensive in the US?
[/QUOTE]
Content providers are more than welcome to peer with ISPs to provide better service for their customers. If you backtrace to google.com you're likely to see many fewer hops than to other sites on the internet.

But Netflix didn't make a deal with your ISP because of free market forces. They made a deal because ISPs deliberately sabotaged content from netflix unless netflix agreed to pay for direct peering. That means that Netflix now has less money to pay for developers and content. Sure the price might be the same, but the product isn't as good as it otherwise would have been.

When you signed your terms of service, did you agree to x bandwidth unless it's to a site which is directly competing with other products produced by your ISP?
 
Content providers are more than welcome to peer with ISPs to provide better service for their customers. If you backtrace to google.com you're likely to see many fewer hops than to other sites on the internet.

That's what they did, they negotioated with comcast to do that.



But Netflix didn't make a deal with your ISP because of free market forces. They made a deal because ISPs deliberately sabotaged content from netflix unless netflix agreed to pay for direct peering. That means that Netflix now has less money to pay for developers and content. Sure the price might be the same, but the product isn't as good as it otherwise would have been.


Incorrect, they used to open up additional peers for bandwith demands based on courtesy, not a business agreement. This is nothing to do with NN


When you signed your terms of service, did you agree to x bandwidth unless it's to a site which is directly competing with other products produced by your ISP?


If netflix is slowing down ones porndig, does one have a right to argue the opposite?
 
That's what they did, they negotioated with comcast to do that.






Incorrect, they used to open up additional peers for bandwith demands based on courtesy, not a business agreement. This is nothing to do with NN





If netflix is slowing down ones porndig, does one have a right to argue the opposite?
Seriously? Comcast et al "allowed" Netflix to pay for peered connections as a courtesy? I suppose the mob allowed businesses to buy protection as a "courtesy" as well.

Netflix isn't slowing anyone down. Both Netflix and Porndig have both bought and paid for the amount of bandwidth they're consuming. Neither of which has anything to do with an ISP's network.

An ISP's network slows down when the people who purchase bandwidth from an ISP exceed that ISPs capacity. What they're using it for doesn't matter.

This would be like your electric company coming to the conclusion that lots of electricity is going towards air conditioners during the summer. Therefore the electric company sets a much higher rate, but only for air conditioners. Of course, air conditioner conditioner manufacturers can make this go away if they pay the electric company a yearly fee... as a courtesy of course. Oh, and the electric company is also now making it's own air conditioner. It barely works, but all of it's electricity is free.

----------

Edit: as a side note, has anyone else noticed that the anti-Net Neutrality folks have suddenly switched en-masse to calling it NN? As far as I can tell they're the only ones doing it, and it's just weird.
 
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