[GLLUG] Re:Network Neutrality

[Richard Houser]

Brendan Bartlett wrote:
> The thing that's always confused me about the "big bandwidth hogs should 
> pay more" argument is this:  Aren't the "big bandwidth hogs" already 
> paying for their bandwidth?  What other business in the world charges 
> more for using their product in quantity?  "Sir, although you pay the 
> toll on this toll road for every vehicle the same as everyone else you 
> use it far more than most people so we are going to charge you more 
> because we are money grubbing bastards."
> 
> Plus it's not like Google et al is broadcasting their data to the 
> network at large, people request the data from them.  Aren't the people 
> requesting the data also paying for the bandwidth?
> 
> So by my casual figuring isn't the bandwidth used by the "big bandwidth 
> hogs" already paid for twice?  Once by the "hog" and once by the requester?
> 
> Didn't the "fortune" that was spent building the networks come from the 
> revenue streams generated by the fees end-users and "big bandwidth hogs" 
> pay?  Plus, AT&T and Verizon Communications *own* the network.  We pay 
> strictly for the time we get to use the network but they get to keep the 
> cash cow and suck money off of it forever.
> 
> Where is the error in my logic?

The only error I see is that the telco's didn't pay to develop the 
network.  Taxpayers paid all those fees, so the telcos are being allowed 
to keep a publicly funded infrastructure to boot.

You are right, it's nothing more than false advertising, extortion, and 
attempting to double dip.  They sell the bandwidth to a consumer, then 
interfere with interstate communication over the bandwidth provided 
unless the threatened party on the other end ponies up the cash.  The 
catch is, the service was already paid for, and the carrier cannot 
degrade the service arbitrarily and still honor any contracts with its 
customers.

Basically, carriers want to vastly oversubscribe customers on unlimited 
data plans at a provided speed and have no intention of maintaining the 
infrastructure needed to support those speeds.  Carriers would much 
rather sell you a 10Mb/s unlimited plan and only give you about 512kbps 
of that unless each of the parties you connect to has paid them off to 
maintain the speeds that were advertised.

Remember the logic behind cable TV subscriptions?  The subscription was 
supposed to take the place of advertising.  Didn't work out that way, 
did it?

Large ISPs/backbones providers pay for any imbalance between sent and 
received traffic at their exchanges.  Received traffic costs them in the 
peering agreements and sent data gets them a refund.  It is actually 
more cost effective for Comcast to encourage users to upload more 
content (up to the point where the local cable segments max out) than it 
is to cap those artificially low.  The catch is that ISPs have also been 
allowed to compete with their own services (and unfairly).  Now, for 
example, ISPs such as Comcast have incentives to make competing traffic 
like Vonage unreliable and give their own offerings priority service.

This situation is just another form of the whole neutrality issue. 
Internet Service Providers should be (but currently aren't) prohibited 
by law from doing any traffic shaping that favors any content from one 
user on the same service over another user's content.  Traffic shaping 
fairly at these levels is NOT hard (bandwith allowed per user = 
bandwidth of all users / number of current users).  Within those user 
classes, ISPs could offer other traffic shaping options to improve 
select protocol behavior ... lots of other fair QOS schemes exist too). 
  Basically nobody but some of the bigger ISPs have a problem with 
multiple levels of service at multiple price points.


Frankly, the only reason many portions of the country don't already have 
fiber connections to the home is that it's more profitable for the 
government granted monopolies to keep sucking fees out of an antiquated 
architecture.  For example, the entire Comcast network EXCEPT for the 
portion from the cable box to the customer is already running IPv6, but 
that is not made available for customers due to opportunities to extort 
more profit with additional IP rental ($7/month).

The US broadband availability, cost, and speeds are among the worst in 
the developed worlds.  All this, despite having dark fiber strung all 
over the country from the dot-com era and practically serving as the 
main Internet hub.