Get ready: The FCC says it will vote on net neutrality in February

We all had a feeling that this was going to come up, soon. Obama wants to control how ISP work.
www.washingtonpost.com...

And now the Lobbyists get to work.

I wonder who has the real advantage from any "regulation"?



The story did mention the FCC wants to stop the "speed fees"?

The rules are meant to keep broadband providers such as Verizon and Comcast from speeding up or slowing down some Web sites compared to others.

^^^^^^ This is the big issue I think

So...I'm gonna go out on a limb and make a request here: can somebody shoot me a u2u and explain why net neutrality is good and/or bad? I know next to nothing about this topic, nor why it's a big deal to many people.

Or point me to a thread that explains it even? I've tried researching since this thread popped up and I don't feel like I'm making any headway.

Sorry

a reply to: Shamrock6

Why go U2U?

Somebody should explain this out in the open.

net neu·tral·i·ty

the principle that Internet service providers should enable access to all content and applications regardless of the source, and without favoring or blocking particular products or websites.

Good luck, Comcast will never let that happen. Tiering "packages" for the internet is the ultimate goal just like cable TV and phone service.

Comcast is in control of it, where do you really think its going to lead?

a reply to: xuenchen

I didn't want to clog up the thread with somebody trying to explain the core issue to me.

Here works for me just as well

a reply to: Shamrock6

So…I'm gonna go out on a limb and make a request here: can somebody … explain why net neutrality is good and/or bad?

Comcast is a provider of cable TV "packages" and they want to start doing that to their internet traffic. Dividing up access into packages. the more access you want to the whole internet the more its going to cost.

This double speak called net neutrality is really about full access for the same standard price. Keeping it open and accessible for everyone. For landlubbers anyway. Wireless is a different matter.

a reply to: intrptr

Aha. So the idiot version: it would be like paying for higher speed connections on steroids, and content based?

a reply to: Shamrock6


They could also restrict content. Say two sites have the same content, one uses verizon, they can slow the transfer rate of the other site over their lines.

a reply to: Hoosierdaddy71

Who actually thinks this is a good idea?!?!?

originally posted by: Shamrock6
a reply to: Hoosierdaddy71

Who actually thinks this is a good idea?!?!?

Comcast

.

Yep.. figured it would after the frame up of lil kim for hacking sony and sanctions .. the same idiots who believe lil kim hacked sony will support the net nuetrality .. uncle scam far too predictable these days ..



Makes me glad most governments in asia encourage/support free wifi ..

a reply to: Shamrock6


Today Netflix and YouTube videos clog our pipes with enormous amounts of data. Or consider the BitTorrent crowd, which uses our lines to download insane exabytes of software, movies and music—illegally. Or how about Google and Skype? They've created services that let people make phone calls—for free—on networks that somebody spent billions to build. Why shouldn't all those services pay their share?

Kinda like you putting gas in your car every week and somebody else gets to drive it.

Here's my explanation. The way the internet is operated just now, there is a global marketplace of companies all providing specific services:

At one end of the Internet: Google, Youtube, Liveleaks, archive.org, newspapers and all the other web server sites who allow the upload, streaming and downloading of videos. They have billions of gigabytes of videos available for free download. They make money from advertising, streamed and live video.

In the middle of the Internet: Multinational and local long distance carriers providing commercial internet access through high-speed satellite and fibre-optic internet links and who have contracts with each other to transport each others traffic.

At the other end of the Internet: Local internet service providers who sign a contract with the long distance carriers. The ISP's have a business model where they buy an internet link at a specific speed (say 10 Terabits) and then resell this to private and commercial customers at lower speeds (512 Megabits each) with a lower cost. If you look at your cable TV contracts, you'll see different broadband speeds (S, M, L, XL, XXL, XXXL) - That's this process at work. So that five figure commercial Internet contract gets converted into several thousand private intenet connections at a ten pounds/dollars a month.

One way that the ISP's reduce costs is to make the assumption that not all customers are going to use their Internet connection at the same time. If most customers just read E-mail and download a few web-pages each day, send/receive a handful of Instant Messaging messages, then the ISP can use statistics to figure out how many customers they can safely get to share that lin without anyone noticing any reduction in quality of service. They might have a hundred thousand customers each with a 50 Megabit link, but at any time, only a few hundred actually use that link at any time. Even if someone is downloading a Linux installation DVD (4 Gigabytes), that's just once every month.

That was how the residential internet worked up until P2P services and video hosting came along. Suddenly the ISP's business model no longer works. Home users are constantly using their internet connection non-stop day and night - perpetually downloading Gigabytes of video overnight through bit-torrents, watching Youtube videos, streaming Netflix film videos, all the while Google, Netflix and all these companies are raking in billions in advertising fees. Bit-Torrents and other P2P services run in the background on the home users PC non-stop, downloading chunks of data from dozens of other PC's over several hours, completely breaking any attempts at performed traffic analysis to optimize cost overheads and profits.

For the ISP's, this is infuriating. While they are in a cut-throat market, and/or restricted by government legislation, they see Google and Netflix raking it in. At the same time, some customers complain that their E-mail becomes slow or that their gaming latency is high. So they bring in traffic shaping where certain services like Email are given priority over all other traffic. For cable companies, they see these new services cutting into their profit margins. So they want some control over how they can profit from streamed video such as video-on-demand and movie premieres.

The fear of the consumers and net-neutrality advocates is that we will end up having to pay extra each month to access certain websites (eg. paying extra to go above a daily quota of Skype calls, Youtube videos or Netflix films, or to have to pay to get access to particular "bundles" of internet sites (newspapers, streamed movies, forums, blogs) in the same way that cable companies bundle channels.

Here's a bit of interesting info...


the FCC itself that originally classified us Internet providers as an “information service,” which isn't susceptible to much regulation, instead of a “telecommunications service,” which is. It's the FCC's fault.

The FCC chair who voted for that initial misclassification is now the chief lobbyist for the telecom companies. It was a fox-in-the-henhouse situation—one that the current chair, if he has any backbone, will quickly reverse, despite his own background lobbying for big telecoms.

originally posted by: Hoosierdaddy71
a reply to: Shamrock6


Today Netflix and YouTube videos clog our pipes with enormous amounts of data. Or consider the BitTorrent crowd, which uses our lines to download insane exabytes of software, movies and music—illegally. Or how about Google and Skype? They've created services that let people make phone calls—for free—on networks that somebody spent billions to build. Why shouldn't all those services pay their share?

Kinda like you putting gas in your car every week and somebody else gets to drive it.

That's what I need: dumbed down tech answers. That makes sense.

I just want to be able to watch funny pet videos and play Xbox. Is that so wrong?

Un-elected govt workers passing laws is nowhere to be found in the Constitution. An agency or a panel in an agency is not the legislative branch where ONLY congress has the power to make law.

originally posted by: Hoosierdaddy71
a reply to: Shamrock6


Today Netflix and YouTube videos clog our pipes with enormous amounts of data. Or consider the BitTorrent crowd, which uses our lines to download insane exabytes of software, movies and music—illegally. Or how about Google and Skype? They've created services that let people make phone calls—for free—on networks that somebody spent billions to build. Why shouldn't all those services pay their share?

Kinda like you putting gas in your car every week and somebody else gets to drive it.

I already pay for these services with my monthly access fee. I shouldn't have to pay extra fees for this, that or the other site.

The biggest problem I have is why does the internet access provider get to determine if I get to use Netflix or Hulu plus? I should decide what service I want to use, and I shouldn't have to pay more for one service's bandwidth than the other. Bandwidth is bandwidth. I get so much metered to me and you shouldn't get to tell me what I use it for. Once again service providers are trying to "rent" their service instead of "selling" it.

a reply to: Montana

Tell that to the electric company, the more you use the more you pay.

originally posted by: Hoosierdaddy71
a reply to: Montana

Tell that to the electric company, the more you use the more you pay.

That is true, and no one is saying that isn't the way it should be. Net access is sold the same way. I pay x amount for x MB/sec sometimes with a monthly cap. What the money suckers are trying to do would be equal to the power company saying I have to pay one fee for the electricity to run my heater, but a higher rate to run my TV. And if I want unlimited time to have my radio playing I have to pay an extra fee for the continuous electricity supply.

This is what we are really talking about, not the amount of bandwidth used but WHAT it is being used for. In my opinion, that is none of the ISP's business. It would be tantamount to giving UPS the authority to tell me what books I am able to order from Amazon.