• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Internet businesses ask U.S. to keep net neutrality rules

So if I have a pipe that can handle X amount of data, if netflix use is eating up 90% of that data pipe to the point that every customer is suffering, you are saying the isp is being greedy if it wants to negotiate for transits from a company who's product is eating up the pipe?

I've never heard an allegation that Netflix traffic ever impacted other customer's traffic. Maybe you can link me up?

I don't have a problem with renegotiating a deal. I have a huge problem when they use their taxpayer subsidized monopoly as leverage to dictate arbitrary terms, and punish consumers.

You have it backwards, to my eyes. That pipe you're concerned with was bought and paid for by the taxpayers, one way or another. The ISPs are handed them, and make a fortune maintaining and commercializing it. Is it really so much that we ask that they not let their business interests interfere with consistent service to their customers (home and business?)

They've been given a golden goose, yet they want more, and they don't want to have to expand their infrastructure or improve their service to get it. That's what makes them greedy.
 
I've never heard an allegation that Netflix traffic ever impacted other customer's traffic. Maybe you can link me up?

I'm not sure where you got I was claiming it did from that.


I don't have a problem with renegotiating a deal. I have a huge problem when they use their taxpayer subsidized monopoly as leverage to dictate arbitrary terms, and punish consumers.

When did that happen? Comcast and the three transit companies negotiated a deal, those same transit companies oversold it's capacity to netflix.


You have it backwards, to my eyes. That pipe you're concerned with was bought and paid for by the taxpayers, one way or another. The ISPs are handed them, and make a fortune maintaining and commercializing it. Is it really so much that we ask that they not let their business interests interfere with consistent service to their customers (home and business?)


this is a different issue. the issue here is netflix peering. If you want to talk about the overall traffic coming in outside of any peers, you can talk to me about net neutrality, but you have to accept that traffic shaping must always be something the ISP can and must do.



They've been given a golden goose, yet they want more, and they don't want to have to expand their infrastructure or improve their service to get it. That's what makes them greedy.


So one company should be forced to add equipment so another company can connect directly to them through peers or other means at no charge to the other company? doesn't seem like a good business model to me.
 
I so wish that the White House would explain why they feel it necessary to do so. We only hear one side of the argument. Everyone telling us it’s a terrible thing. And imputing bad motives for getting rid of it. That is simply too difficult to believe in the world we live in right now.

The debate has apparently been raging for most of this century, Maggie. I have only recently started paying attention to this, reading up, thinking it through. It seems to be one of those things that wasn't broken until government "fixed it". :) It didn't make anything better, but likely does hinder new innovations and new wireless service start ups because it makes such ventures even more expensive than they already were. Net neutrality apparently didn't do anything to improve the USA's sub par internet services when compared to many in Europe, and in fact will likely hinder positive development.

Net Neutrality: Why Net Neutrality Isn'''t Worth Celebrating | Money

Most of the links here have expired/been taken down but the Mike McCury one still works and offers a really good explanation.
https://consumerist.com/2006/11/14/why-net-neutrality-is-bad/

Once Congress voted down internet regulation in 2006, the issue collected dust on the bottom shelf of national priorities until Obama went over Congress's head and ordered the FCC to implement net neutrality regulations.
 
I'm not sure where you got I was claiming it did from that.

You have said:
...if I have a pipe that can handle X amount of data, if netflix use is eating up 90% of that data pipe to the point that every customer is suffering, ...

You seem pretty keen on wanting real world citations for other people's hypotheticals.


So one company should be forced to add equipment so another company can connect directly to them through peers or other means at no charge to the other company? doesn't seem like a good business model to me.

It must take the sting out of it to know your customer base is protected by the government, and having your infrastructure subsidized.

Was all that free government funding supposed to be string-free, or should the taxpayers putting up that cash maybe get something out of the deal, apart from the right to overpay with no recourse?
 
You have said:

You seem pretty keen on wanting real world citations for other people's hypotheticals.




It must take the sting out of it to know your customer base is protected by the government, and having your infrastructure subsidized.


That was directely related to net neutrality, netflix was a poor example because they use transits and peers, but also a good example because thats exactly why there are transits and peers. Do you understand? if there were no peers and this was simply "net neutrality", should an isp have the right to throttle a service if it's clogging up the bandwith headroom?

or should everyone suffer ****ty internet because one or more service overloads the capacity?


Was all that free government funding supposed to be string-free, or should the taxpayers putting up that cash maybe get something out of the deal, apart from the right to overpay with no recourse?


I'm a libertarian, there never should have been any government funding. that said, i go back to my point. if I have a certain amount of bandwith and one or two services clog it, can I as a usp shape the traffic to relieve congestion even if that means throttling the most offending services or should the network simply grind to a halt and everyone suffer equally?
 
May I present an alternative take on this?

When I started my career in IT, I was in Prague and was part of a team funded by Skoda (believe it or not) to learn about and build an IP network. Funnily enough, in those days my job was mostly helping the Czechs understand the DOS and UNIX manuals, as they were all in English at the time. We started raw, with basic educations in Computer Science, and managed to build out one of the nations first, if not the first, Wide Area Network...with a baud rate of about 9.6 KBPS if I remember correctly. Those were the days...

One interesting thing happened back then, that I have always kicked myself for not seeing clearly enough. HTTP. The GOPHER network. The Alt news groups. The potential to instantaneously...or near to in those days...disseminate information with a pleasant interface. The problem we now see with this tool, is that it can be "weaponized" by disseminating falsehoods or "fake news", and that the availability of news from around the globe as it happens, imposes upon us more things to worry about. More things to protect our kids from...when they're too young for some of the content. Increases stress. On a global scale. Ask yourself, is it "good" that a starving man in Africa, can see...live...us here gorging ourselves on Micky-D's Big Macs? Is it "good" that we can watch assassinations uncut, moments after they take place? Hell...is it "good" at all, that we can even witness assassinations?

I'm just playing devil's advocate here. I mean...IT is my career after all.
But sometimes I look at what we created and think...what the fu$& have we done?
Maybe this does need to be...policed a bit?
 
Won't do research. Noted.

at best they inactioned when they didn't give cogent additional peers outside of thier agreement.
No, at best they took deliberate action which affected traffic from one content provider in particular.

Use all the lipstick you want, it's still a pig.

Oh please, holy thor god of war, wax technical to me...how little I understand
I think this thread has done a fine job of it already. :thumbs:

You should read your SLA more carefully.
You should actually address what I say and stop trying to deflect from facts.

as far as it just being netflix/comcast you cant be more willfully ignorant:
Peer Dispute Leaves Some 'Net Users in the Dark
Doesn't address Netflix.
These two articles are working in opposition of your point.

I can't say I'm surprised you posted articles which hurt your own position.

Also, I knew Comcast wasn't the only one that had issues with Netflix, but A) I wanted you to be the one to point out multiple ISPs were treating traffic differently and B) Comcast, to the best of my knowledge, is the only ISP which all but prevented its users from using a watchable stream. In the interest of honesty, I will say I wasn't aware of AT&T's issues with Netflix.

Nothing in that link suggests Netflix growth overnight, with no forewarning. Also, that wasn't Comcast.

How can you be so bad at sourcing? No wonder you don't want to do five seconds of Googling, you're horrible at it.

so if I have and pay for physical equipment, it is your right to plug your **** into mine for free? is that really your argument?
What are you talking about? You are literally making stuff up.

Comcast offers Internet access to users for a certain cost per month. Looking at their website right now, I can sign up for up to 100 Mbps for $60/month (introductory offer). When they offer that package, it is THEIR responsibility to provide it, just as it is Amazon's responsibility to ensure the item I ordered arrives on my doorstep. There's nothing happening for free, they are getting paid to provide that Internet access. It is their responsibility to ensure the (legal) content I request is provided to me, so long as I'm paying them the $60/month (introductory offer). Nobody is saying anything for free.

(have you figured out what a peer even is?)
I understood this process long before this thread was created. The fact you're continually saying ridiculous things shows you still don't. So you can stop asking smarmy questions, as if you're the only one in this thread who understands technology and how the Internet works. It's been pretty clear to anyone who has been following you have been wrong continuously. And now you're posting sources which undermine your own position, so I suggest you quickly hop out of this thread and find something else to do.
 
I oppose net neutrality because it's a solution that wont work to a problem that in the history of the internet has never happened. but that's just it, the argument is not about the pipe, it's about peers, ie colo direct access to comcast's equipment that was netflix and comcasts's dispute which is wrongly tied to "net neutrality.


Well, not quite never - someone else is taking care of that - but it still doesn't make sense to say that even if it hadn't happened yet. It's a prophylactic. If industry isn't doing it and doesn't intend to, then it has no basis to complain about it. The regulation, in that case, would simply prevent future Comcast CEOs from ramping up throttling.

Why should we wait until that happens to regulate it?

If you're right, then it cannot be called an "onerous" regulation. It's not harming anyone. So why not just leave it in place as a prophylactic measure?




And of course, on the other side of the coin, now that we do have it, getting rid of it sends an opposite signal to ISPs: Go ahead and throttle. Work out new and exciting ways to use your monopoly power to rip off customers.

The barriers to entry in the high-speed access market are incredibly high, unlike back when everyone had dial-up modems that used telephone landlines, because the industries are treated differently under the FCC. In the vast majority of places there is one cable service provider, perhaps at most two. In fact, I've lived around the Boston area generally for 20ish years, and only once was I briefly in a place where I could get high-speed access from Comcast or RCN. Oh wait! RCN didn't connect to that particular building. There are few places where a bunch of competing high-speed access services all laid down their very expensive lines.

Competition is no bar to throttling in this market. Why signal that that is OK?




What's going on is simple. Trump's admin wants to kiss big business ass as much as possible. The admin also knows that the GOP has, with much success, duped it's base into thinking that any regulation is inherently bad. So it knows it can say "oh, net neutrality is harming business" and it's base will drool, nod, and bend over, because regulation bad.

The Trump admin also knows that its base has been conditioned to think that all things liberal or Democrat are bad. It knows that because of this, the base will automatically take whatever position lies opposite what "liberals" appear to be saying. So here, if "liberals" seem to be saying net neutrality is good and Team Trump is saying it is bad, the base will just start making up BS to defend its automatic opposition to whatever the liberals are saying.

You can even see some of that in this thread. "[Oh, why is everyone saying this is bad but the Trump admin isn't explaining its action? I know! I suspect it must be that liberals who are saying this action is bad are just greedily gobbling up all the internets to my detriment! Down with net neutrality!]"

Just....BLECH
 
Last edited:
Net Neutrality was not something the government "fixed." In order to protect net neutrality, which we had for 20 years prior, Obama and the FCC ruled the internet to be a telecommunications service so that ISPs could not use pricing models, throttle connections, etc. And no Maggie there has been NO throttling since 2015 as it is officially against the law.

Getting rid of net neutrality will mean your internet will look like this

Possible result of no NN

In order to get access to everything on the internet a person could potentially be paying well above $100 and this not including the cost for better BANDWITH (key word there). This would greatly affect lower middle class people and the poor as their access within the internet would be gated which is ridiculous.

And there is nothing in place to keep the big ISP's from throttling with out NN. For example..... Netflix and Sling tv are in competition for the flow of traffic on the internet. Think of it as a highway divided into 10 equal lanes. Net Neutrality states that both get equal shares of said traffic, 50/50. Now with the repeal of Net Neutrality, Netflix CAN pay cable services for 9/10's of that traffic, since it is a much bigger company with a much bigger profit margin. Now Sling TV cut of internet traffic is only 1/10th instead of the 5/10ths it once had and goes out of business. With NN Netflix nor any other company can pay for more bandwidth throttling other services.

The biggest Problem with this facet of our infrastructure is how much power the current ISP's have. Most people only have two options for an ISP some with only one. People make the argument that getting rid of Net Neutrality will create more competition which it would not, nor will it somehow spark big corps like FB, Yahoo, Netflix to create their own ISPs...I mean look at Google; they tried entering the market with Google Fiber and they were met with constant law suits over existing infrastructure cornered by the current ISPs. There are issues with this facet of our infrastructure, however net neutrality is not one of them and having it is a good thing.
 
That’s my point as well. ISPs should be entitle to charge those sites which fill the pipe and cause ISPs to build more and or bigger pipes. I have a suspicion that those who vehemently oppose doing away with net neutrality are the ones who stream and download like wildfire. Looking after their own interests at the expense of those of us who DON’T do that.

That "suspicion" doesn't come anywhere close to making sense.

If they sell me a 50 megabyte per second download speed, I should get that speed regardless of whether I only use the internet one minute per day or twelve hours a day; I should get the advertised speed no matter what I'm doing, excepting of course that if the site I'm downloading something from has bad servers it won't be uploading fast enough and I might not actually get 50mbs - but that's not because of anything my ISP is doing to me.

If an ISP sells more 50 mbs connections than it can actually keep up with, that's its fault and it needs to add more capacity. That's not the fault of individual users using a service they've paid for as it was advertised.
 
Why should we wait until that happens to regulate it?



We shouldn't enact laws on something that's never happened. in fact the couple times it's been tried (vonage), it got smacked down by the FCC including fines, without the need for a net neutrality law. but you got to remember, "Net Neutrality" was more about obama overeaching his legislative power to give the FCC control of the internet like it was a railroad. (the idea is that once regulated as a utility, they can tax it).


Almost every example, people bring up, was not affected by the Net Neutrality rules and was more of a congestion issue. As you can see here, the concept of this issue is an ocean, and most people don't know how to swim, but strut like they do.


And of course, on the other side of the coin, now that we do have it, getting rid of it sends an opposite signal to ISPs: Go ahead and throttle. Work out new and exciting ways to use your monopoly power to rip off customers.


hypothetical, it's never really happened, other than a couple times that were smacked down by the FCC even without official "net neutrality rules".


Look at every attempt to do what "Net Neutrality" (obama's fake order that was really "make the isp's a utility rules), claims it would do, yet, it was done prior to the Net Neutrality rules.
https://www.freepress.net/blog/2017/04/25/net-neutrality-violations-brief-history

The barriers to entry in the high-speed access market are incredibly high, unlike back when everyone had dial-up modems that used telephone landlines, because the industries are treated differently under the FCC. In the vast majority of places there is one cable service provider, perhaps at most two. In fact, I've lived around the Boston area generally for 20ish years, and only once was I briefly in a place where I could get high-speed access from Comcast or RCN. Oh wait! RCN didn't connect to that particular building. There are few places where a bunch of competing high-speed access services all laid down their very expensive lines.


What does this have to do with net neutrality or even Net Neutrality? if a monopolized ISP in an area decided to affect traffic to profit itself unjustly, and they are a subsidized entity, sure, as have had happened in the past the FCC shut it down.





Competition is no bar to throttling in this market. Why signal that that is OK?

Obama's overeach of his executive power for one.

What's going on is simple. Trump's admin wants to kiss big business ass as much as possible. The admin also knows that the GOP has, with much success, duped it's base into thinking that any regulation is inherently bad. So it knows it can say "oh, net neutrality is harming business" and it's base will drool, nod, and bend over, because regulation bad.


But it was harming business, it created all sorts of red tape, beurocracy, and hoops to jump through, Net Neutrality, had little to do with actual "net neutrality". ISPS, can, do and should traffic shape and prioritize traffic based on overall performance.

What did obama's net neutrality do?

from the horses mouth:
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/node/323681

"A user creates a petition on the White House's We the People platform, petitioning the Obama administration to "Restore Net Neutrality By Directing the FCC to Classify Internet Providers as 'Common Carriers'." The petition went on to be signed by 105,572 users."

https://www.cnet.com/news/13-things-you-need-to-know-about-the-fccs-net-neutrality-regulation/

this is basically what obama's Net Neutrality was supposed to do. you note for something that never happened, that when attempted to happen, got shut down, the only thing new here, is the FCC's tangling web of beurocracy was added.


The Trump admin also knows that its base has been conditioned to think that all things liberal are bad. It knows that because of this, y take whatever position lies opsite what "liberals" appear to be saying. So here, if "liberals" seem to be saying Trump is saying it is bad, the base will just start making up BS to defend its automatic opposition to whatever the liberals are saying.


when you start saying "the trump base" and "have been conditioned", why cant the same be said about all these people in this thread who don't understand the issue, barking on and on like they do? the Net Neutrality rules are bad. they were a solution that wouldn't work for a problem that doesnt exist.


You can even see some of that in this thread. "[Oh, why is everyone saying this is bad but the Trump admin isn't explaining its action? I know! I suspect it must be that liberals who are saying this action is bad are just greedily gobbling up all the internets to my detriment! Down with net neutrality!]"

Just....BLECH

who said that?
 
Won't do research. Noted.

No, at best they took deliberate action which affected traffic from one content provider in particular.

Use all the lipstick you want, it's still a pig.

I think this thread has done a fine job of it already. :thumbs:

You should actually address what I say and stop trying to deflect from facts.

Doesn't address Netflix.
These two articles are working in opposition of your point.

I can't say I'm surprised you posted articles which hurt your own position.

Also, I knew Comcast wasn't the only one that had issues with Netflix, but A) I wanted you to be the one to point out multiple ISPs were treating traffic differently and B) Comcast, to the best of my knowledge, is the only ISP which all but prevented its users from using a watchable stream. In the interest of honesty, I will say I wasn't aware of AT&T's issues with Netflix.

Nothing in that link suggests Netflix growth overnight, with no forewarning. Also, that wasn't Comcast.

How can you be so bad at sourcing? No wonder you don't want to do five seconds of Googling, you're horrible at it.

What are you talking about? You are literally making stuff up.

Comcast offers Internet access to users for a certain cost per month. Looking at their website right now, I can sign up for up to 100 Mbps for $60/month (introductory offer). When they offer that package, it is THEIR responsibility to provide it, just as it is Amazon's responsibility to ensure the item I ordered arrives on my doorstep. There's nothing happening for free, they are getting paid to provide that Internet access. It is their responsibility to ensure the (legal) content I request is provided to me, so long as I'm paying them the $60/month (introductory offer). Nobody is saying anything for free.

I understood this process long before this thread was created. The fact you're continually saying ridiculous things shows you still don't. So you can stop asking smarmy questions, as if you're the only one in this thread who understands technology and how the Internet works. It's been pretty clear to anyone who has been following you have been wrong continuously. And now you're posting sources which undermine your own position, so I suggest you quickly hop out of this thread and find something else to do.





You are literally too ignorant of the topic to even be talking about it. you don't understand the technology, you can't speak intellectually on it, and thus are a colossal waste of my time. the only thing you have is arrogance and pride in your wonton ignorance, your posts sir are shining jewels of colossal ignorance. If I need advice on something like connect 4, I'll reach out to you. since you seem incapable of understanding the subject matter, don't bother coming to me on technology, peers, transits, colo, traffic shaping and other key concepts your are clearly unable to grasp.


Have a wonderful day.
 
That "suspicion" doesn't come anywhere close to making sense.

If they sell me a 50 megabyte per second download speed, I should get that speed regardless of whether I only use the internet one minute per day or twelve hours a day; I should get the advertised speed no matter what I'm doing, excepting of course that if the site I'm downloading something from has bad servers it won't be uploading fast enough and I might not actually get 50mbs - but that's not because of anything my ISP is doing to me.

If an ISP sells more 50 mbs connections than it can actually keep up with, that's its fault and it needs to add more capacity. That's not the fault of individual users using a service they've paid for as it was advertised.





You do get that speed. to thier NOC. you have no bandwith guarantees beyond the first hop.

read your SLA
 
You are literally too ignorant of the topic to even be talking about it. you don't understand the technology, you can't speak intellectually on it, and thus are a colossal waste of my time. the only thing you have is arrogance and pride in your wonton ignorance, your posts sir are shining jewels of colossal ignorance. If I need advice on something like connect 4, I'll reach out to you. since you seem incapable of understanding the subject matter, don't bother coming to me on technology, peers, transits, colo, traffic shaping and other key concepts your are clearly unable to grasp.


Have a wonderful day.
I accept your white flag. Have a great day.
 
I did a little Googling and see that net neutrality was just begun in 2015. Nice innocuous name it has. The White House believes that the effect of net neutrality was to stifle expansion of internet services, most especially in rural communities.

So I ask those opposed to answer this: The Internet has grown in efficiency, speed, access and content ever since its inception. It’s been absolutely remarkable technology that has done nothing but give more people access, greater speeds than could ever have been imagined, incredible information availability, etc., etc. it has become almost an essential tool for most people.

What was broken that had to be fixed in 2015?

Please be specific.

The rules known as "net neutrality" simply formalized pre-existing telecommunications technological standards that were developed for more than a hundred years.

I am an electrical engineer with years of experience in this industry.

The internet as we know it would not exist without the guidelines formalized in net neutrality. Your ISP is currently only allowed to make very specific policy and priority decisions based on the content of the traffic. This would open the floodgates for ISPs to cripple small businesses and gouge consumers for literally no gain. It is beyond unethical.

The reason you only hear "one side of the argument" is that there is literally no reason whatsoever to roll back these rules except to gouge consumers. None. Literally none. It is indefensible.
 
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...e-of-each-others-cloud-services-idUSKBN1DS0TO

The whole basis of Ashit Pi's argument for killing your internet is built on the false premise that repealing Net Neutrality protections would allow businesses to thrive. If that were the case, why are so Businesses that have innovated and thrived over the Internet like AirBnB, Netflix, Amazon, Etsy, and Reddit oppose the repeal of Net Neutrality?



The repeal of Net Neutrality is Anti-consumer, Anti-American garbage that only seeks to benefit the already in power ISPs that can throttle and effectively destroy startup Internet businesses that are unable to pay the ransom that bigger businesses like Netflix and Amazon can pay for. If you truly care for not just Freedom of speech, but for freedom of business, then you should be for protecting the Internet from the big telecom companies.

smaller sites like this one will also be relegated to the slow lane. this might end up mattering in our case and might not be as noticeable. however, larger services that use more bandwidth will definitely have to pay the premium.
 
Question: Is the US Internet infrastructure as bad as you people make it sound? I have fiber to a local hub, and copper from the end of the street to the house. I find Bell's fiber backbone much more responsive then is the Cable access solution. And with a wifi router at the end of the house cable, the entire home is loaded for bear. My wife is streaming Czech TV as I type this...no problem...usually. It will hang my email temporarily once in a while. But that's a signal for me to go get a beer...

As for this Netflix thing. I see no problem with the owner of the backbone, charging more for streaming services. I also see no problem in them having tiered billing depending on access speeds and the volume of data transmitted. Capacity is not infinite, and it cost allot o' dough-rae-mee dollars to put all that infrastructure in. IMO hard cabled general access needs to be replaced by a majorly massive wifi infrastructure. A planetary IP blanket, if you will. But that's just an old tech dreaming...
 
The debate has apparently been raging for most of this century, Maggie. I have only recently started paying attention to this, reading up, thinking it through. It seems to be one of those things that wasn't broken until government "fixed it". :) It didn't make anything better, but likely does hinder new innovations and new wireless service start ups because it makes such ventures even more expensive than they already were. Net neutrality apparently didn't do anything to improve the USA's sub par internet services when compared to many in Europe, and in fact will likely hinder positive development.

Net Neutrality: Why Net Neutrality Isn'''t Worth Celebrating | Money

Most of the links here have expired/been taken down but the Mike McCury one still works and offers a really good explanation.
https://consumerist.com/2006/11/14/why-net-neutrality-is-bad/

Once Congress voted down internet regulation in 2006, the issue collected dust on the bottom shelf of national priorities until Obama went over Congress's head and ordered the FCC to implement net neutrality regulations.

Great analysis. And just another case of gvmt solving a problem that really doesn’t exist in a way that makes the situation worse. Why are we not surprised?
 
That "suspicion" doesn't come anywhere close to making sense.

If they sell me a 50 megabyte per second download speed, I should get that speed regardless of whether I only use the internet one minute per day or twelve hours a day; I should get the advertised speed no matter what I'm doing, excepting of course that if the site I'm downloading something from has bad servers it won't be uploading fast enough and I might not actually get 50mbs - but that's not because of anything my ISP is doing to me.

If an ISP sells more 50 mbs connections than it can actually keep up with, that's its fault and it needs to add more capacity. That's not the fault of individual users using a service they've paid for as it was advertised.

Net neutrality regs have nothing to do with that. That’s a problem between you and your provider. Isn’t it? That really is a question.
 
The rules known as "net neutrality" simply formalized pre-existing telecommunications technological standards that were developed for more than a hundred years.

I am an electrical engineer with years of experience in this industry.

The internet as we know it would not exist without the guidelines formalized in net neutrality. Your ISP is currently only allowed to make very specific policy and priority decisions based on the content of the traffic. This would open the floodgates for ISPs to cripple small businesses and gouge consumers for literally no gain. It is beyond unethical.

The reason you only hear "one side of the argument" is that there is literally no reason whatsoever to roll back these rules except to gouge consumers. None. Literally none. It is indefensible.

Tell me how the Internet was failing in 2014.
 
That’s my point as well. ISPs should be entitle to charge those sites which fill the pipe and cause ISPs to build more and or bigger pipes. I have a suspicion that those who vehemently oppose doing away with net neutrality are the ones who stream and download like wildfire. Looking after their own interests at the expense of those of us who DON’T do that.

That "suspicion" doesn't come anywhere close to making sense.

If they sell me a 50 megabyte per second download speed, I should get that speed regardless of whether I only use the internet one minute per day or twelve hours a day; I should get the advertised speed no matter what I'm doing, excepting of course that if the site I'm downloading something from has bad servers it won't be uploading fast enough and I might not actually get 50mbs - but that's not because of anything my ISP is doing to me.

If an ISP sells more 50 mbs connections than it can actually keep up with, that's its fault and it needs to add more capacity. That's not the fault of individual users using a service they've paid for as it was advertised.

Net neutrality regs have nothing to do with that. That’s a problem between you and your provider. Isn’t it? That really is a question.


Which "that"? There were multiple things in the post.


If you meant "excepting of course that if the site I'm downloading something from has bad servers it won't be uploading fast enough and I might not actually get 50mbs - but that's not because of anything my ISP is doing to me", then no, it is not between me and the ISP. It's a problem with the server and there's nothing I can do about it other than just not go to that site.

The ISP gives the bandwidth - the maximum download speed. You're not going to actually get that speed all the time (if ever), but that can be due to many things. Where the server with the data I am downloading is, whether some relevant part of infrastructure or the company's server is getting bombarded with DDOS attacks, the quality of the server, etc. None of those are the ISP's fault.





I "vehemently oppose" doing away with net neutrality, but it is not because of your "suspicion" that I oppose it just because I'm a greedy bugger who is eating up bandwidth at your personal expense like some kind of selfish jerk. And in addition to all the other reasons I've previously stated, I added in this exchange that I think that if an ISP sells you a connection of a certain speed, then it should not do anything to slow that speed down when you try to visit other sites. That's just a simple fundamental principle of truth in advertising. Don't tell me you're selling me one thing, then give me something else.

I added for clarity that there are a number of things that can affect your upload/download speed that is out of your ISP's hands.




I have a suspicion that those who vehemently oppose doing away with net neutrality are the ones who stream and download like wildfire. Looking after their own interests at the expense of those of us who DON’T do that.

That is a nasty and dishonest charge to aim at a whole group of people who have been explaining quite clearly the real reason they oppose doing away with net neutrality.
 
Last edited:
Which "that"? There were multiple things in the post.


If you meant "excepting of course that if the site I'm downloading something from has bad servers it won't be uploading fast enough and I might not actually get 50mbs - but that's not because of anything my ISP is doing to me", then no, it is not between me and the ISP. It's a problem with the server and there's nothing I can do about it other than just not go to that site.

The ISP gives the bandwidth - the maximum download speed. You're not going to actually get that speed all the time (if ever), but that can be due to many things. Where the server with the data I am downloading is, whether some relevant part of infrastructure or the company's server is getting bombarded with DDOS attacks, the quality of the server, etc. None of those are the ISP's fault.





I "vehemently oppose" doing away with net neutrality, but it is not because of your "suspicion" that I oppose it just because I'm a greedy bugger who is eating up bandwidth at your personal expense like some kind of selfish jerk. And in addition to all the other reasons I've previously stated, I added in this exchange that I think that if an ISP sells you a connection of a certain speed, then it should not do anything to slow that speed down when you try to visit other sites. That's just a simple fundamental principle of truth in advertising. Don't tell me you're selling me one thing, then give me something else.

I added for clarity that there are a number of things that can affect your upload/download speed that is out of your ISP's hands.






That is a nasty and dishonest charge to aim at a whole group of people who have been explaining quite clearly the real reason they oppose doing away with net neutrality.

I appreciate your responses trying to educate me. It may just be beyond my comprehension. But I do wish people would tell me how the ISPs were “broken” before this legislation was passed.
 
I appreciate your responses trying to educate me. It may just be beyond my comprehension. But I do wish people would tell me how the ISPs were “broken” before this legislation was passed.

Who said "the ISPs were “broken” before this legislation was passed"?

What authority meant that their being broken was a necessary requirement for the NN regulations?

You kind of just injected that as a requirement into the debate, but I don't see that it's a necessary requirement by any measure.




This isn't a "don't fix it if it ain't broken" situation. It's a situation where there were already some shenanigans and it seemed prudent to take action now to prevent bad things in the future. If a bad thing is potentially looming on the horizon and the preventative measure aimed at it is not harmful, why on Earth wouldn't you prevent the bad thing?

It's like identifying a defect in a type of car that could cause serious problems in the future, but then not fixing it because X number of people hadn't been injured as a result of the defect.

Or, hey, the FDA inspecting a meatpacking plant, find that there's a rat infestation, but then not doing anything because the rat turds hadn't yet actually harmed a bunch of people.
 
I did a little Googling and see that net neutrality was just begun in 2015. Nice innocuous name it has. The White House believes that the effect of net neutrality was to stifle expansion of internet services, most especially in rural communities.

So I ask those opposed to answer this: The Internet has grown in efficiency, speed, access and content ever since its inception. It’s been absolutely remarkable technology that has done nothing but give more people access, greater speeds than could ever have been imagined, incredible information availability, etc., etc. it has become almost an essential tool for most people.

What was broken that had to be fixed in 2015?

Please be specific.

There was competition issues, where major ISP's would throttle the speed of smaller business because they were competing in the same area.
 
Who said "the ISPs were “broken” before this legislation was passed"?

What authority meant that their being broken was a necessary requirement for the NN regulations?

You kind of just injected that as a requirement into the debate, but I don't see that it's a necessary requirement by any measure.




This isn't a "don't fix it if it ain't broken" situation. It's a situation where there were already some shenanigans and it seemed prudent to take action now to prevent bad things in the future. If a bad thing is potentially looming on the horizon and the preventative measure aimed at it is not harmful, why on Earth wouldn't you prevent the bad thing?

It's like identifying a defect in a type of car that could cause serious problems in the future, but then not fixing it because X number of people hadn't been injured as a result of the defect. Why wait?

“Wait!! Look what they might do!! Hurry!! Let’s pass a law!! Shrug. I just don’t understand that reasoning, I guess. No offense. And my opinion means nothing in the scheme of things.

Peace.
 
Back
Top Bottom