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Dissenting opinion: I dont think net neutrality is a good policy. Very light users(news) are effectively subsidizing super heavy users(netflix). NN is just popular because it was removed not because it's a good policy.

I think internet should be sold per GB, at different tiers of speed/uptime/ping. This gives an incentive to companies to give you faster speed and provide levels of speed/ping that people would be willing to pay extra for.

Something like: Browsing tier: .1c/GB 1mb/s 500ms ping guaranteed Video tier: .3c/GB 100 mb/s 100ms ping, 99.9% packet delivery Video conferencing tier: 100 mb/s 50ms ping, no packet loss

etc... Don't focus on numbers but rather the idea.

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> I dont think net neutrality is a good policy.

I don't think you have a correct definition of what net neutrality, as a policy, is. See below.

> I think internet should be sold per GB, at different tiers of speed/uptime/ping.

This is perfectly consistent with net neutrality.

What is not consistent with net neutrality is pricing the same GB/speed/uptime/ping differently, depending on which endpoint the traffic is coming from/going to. That is what net neutrality regulation prevents, and all that it prevents.

Depends on who you talk to.

The EFF seems to have changed its definition of NN and now includes throttling in it as their press release for the recent Verizon tiff when they throttled a fire department.

They are being really inconsistent in their definition, saying that the repeal of NN allowed the throttling to happen. I guess that isn't technically saying it falls under NN if you twist your head enough, but is certainly is conflating the two issues.

The EFF's press release was not referring to net neutrality as a general concept, it was specifically talking about concrete language in the 2015 Open Internet Order.

There's too much to quote here, but you can search for throttling to see what the rule would have banned: https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-releases-open-internet-orde...

> you can search for throttling to see what the rule would have banned

I did. It bans throttling based on content. It does not ban throttling based on going over the usage cap in the plan you paid for, which is what Verizon did to the Santa Clara fire department.

You're right, I thought "on the basis of Internet service" meant your ISP service, but it actually means some other service that you're using the internet to access.

On page 52: 122. Because our no-throttling rule addresses instances in which a broadband provider targets particular content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices, it does not address a practice of slowing down an end user’s connection to the Internet based on a choice made by the end user. For instance, a broadband provider may offer a data plan in which a subscriber receives a set amount of data at one speed tier and any remaining data at a lower tier. If the Commission were concerned about the particulars of a data plan, it could review it under the no-unreasonable interference/disadvantage standard. In contrast, if a broadband provider degraded the delivery of a particular application (e.g., a disfavored VoIP service) or class of application (e.g., all VoIP applications), it would violate the bright-line no-throttling rule. We note that user-selected data plans with reduced speeds must comply with our transparency rule, such that the limitations of the plan are clearly and accurately communicated to the subscriber.

Sorry.

I read the EFF's post here:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/08/verizons-throttling-fi...

I assume that's the one you are commenting on, if not, feel free to post a link as the EFF has been putting out a lot of communications lately. :-)

I agree with you that the EFF's communication here is muddled. The point I would focus on in the actual incident (the Santa Clara fire department being throttled) is this one:

"Within the documents submitted by Santa Clara, it appears to be some confusion as to what exactly was Verizon selling to the fire department. Twice the public safety officials asserted they thought they were buying an unlimited plan and twice they discovered during the emergency they did not."

In other words, to me the key issue here is not throttling, but whether customers understand what they are buying. (As the article notes, it might not be Verizon's fault if there was a misunderstanding; that would need to be investigated.) If you buy a plan that says you get throttled after a certain usage point, that's what you bought; I don't see how that is inconsistent with NN since the throttling doesn't depend on what sites you go to. But the EFF then argues this:

"The FCC, however, could have proactively addressed this problem in the future and establish a federal rule applicable in all fifty states that ISPs are not allowed to throttle public safety services during emergencies. The FCC under its Title II authority could even go so far and categorically say it is illegal to try to upsell public safety agencies, or anyone, wireless plans during official emergencies as a matter of public safety. The agency would have good arguments as to why to set these rules, and thanks to Verizon, the evidence to demonstrate that threats to health and life are at stake in the absence of such rules. But the Restoring Internet Freedom Order abandoned those powers, so right now in America, firefighters don’t have a government agency they can turn to for help."

To me this is a different issue from NN, since the whole basis of the argument is that public safety agencies should be treated differently from other customers. I don't disagree with that argument, but I don't think it falls under NN either.

Having speed tiers isn't what people typically refer to when saying throttling. Throttling is "you used 100gb so we're halving the speed you purchased"

I believe in the Verizon case at issue, one of the issues was whether the apparent confusion was a result of a failure of transparency, which was an element of both the 2015 and 2010 Open Internet (aka, “net neutrality”) orders from the FCC, though a separate issue from net neutrality as that is usually understood.

Selling per GB is an absolutely horrible idea because that’s not how networks work. ISPs have conjured this concept from nowhere solely as a way to get people to pay more money.

Bandwidth is data transfer over time, and there is no “bucket of data” that gets depleted when you transfer data. It’s not gas or water or something that you drain out the more you use.

Time is divided into time slots and that time is going to pass whether you put something in the packet or not. If that time slot was empty, it is wasted and you can never get it back. So you really want to be able to use all time slots as much as you can.

But ISPs want to be able to advertise fast speeds that make them look impressive, though they don’t want to you actually be able to use it because then they have to upgrade their pipes. So they play these tricks where they can claim you have fast speeds but then this magical bucket of data gets depleted every time you use it.

While I'm sure ISP execs are all mustache-twirling villains, what they're doing is not absurd, it's essentially the same as selling a burstable connection with a certain average bandwidth (the cap divided by one month gives a data transfer over time).

And the reality is that, as a customer who loads a 5MB site and then spends 2-3m reading it, I much prefer this model than if they sold me a smaller fixed data transfer over time.

That networks don't work like this is rather irrelevant, because it's a shared pipe. If they sold be a data transfer over time (say, guaranteed 256kps), that would be wasteful, because I couldn't take advantage of the higher speeds when other customers weren't using it too. A well-managed burstable connection is a much more efficient use of the resource.

> that’s not how networks work

Correct. I agree with most of your post.

> If that time slot was empty, it is wasted and you can never get it back. So you really want to be able to use all time slots as much as you can.

Yes. And you don't get that by having everybody with their foot down on the download pedal all the time.

Speed oversubscription is a thing, because a lot of the time people are using a trickle down of data, in some other periods they're using more.

NN is important and a byte from Netflix shouldn't be treated differently from a byte from some other site.

But I think having people differentiated by the amount of data they use per month (or at least having a big tier limit) could be something ""ok"".

Uh... what? Net Neutrality doesn't prevent ISPs from charging different rates for different speeds. They did that during the existence of the rule.

It prevents ISPs from charging you based on which sites you can access. Without NN an ISP can charge you $5/month extra if you want to access Hacker News, $10/month to access Netflix, and an extra $20/month to access Netflix at speeds that aren't effectively crippled. It can flat out refuse to serve you a website.

> Dissenting opinion: I dont think net neutrality is a good policy. Very light users(news) are effectively subsidizing super heavy users(netflix).

Net neutrality does not prohibit charging by volume of usage, if anything, the inability to do backdoor (and possibly third-party) charges based on kind of usage and remote edge provider interacted with encourages direct usage-based charges.

> I think internet should be sold per GB, at different tiers of speed/uptime/ping.

Well, at least on the first two axes that is both possible and consistent with net neutrality. Charging by ping is problematic: ping to what endpoint?

I think everyone can agree with you on the "per GB front". NN does nothing to prohibit data plans which cap at some GB limit. The issue is, the carrier shouldn't get to decide the weight of different GBs. It's about all bytes over the network being equal. If you use the internet mostly for news, you can always opt for a smaller data plan. I don't see how you get forced to pay for someone whose content is of different nature.

Yup. And (especially) since government is gatekeeping who gets to be an ISP, it has a responsibility to ensure providers focus on providing a useful service rather than using the junction as strategic chokepoint.

I don't agree with him on that front at all.

Netflix is not a user. The end customer is. Flipping this on its head, so that it sounds like the "super heavy users" are the businesses, is an anti-net-neutrality talking point. Don't fall for it.

Businesses such as Netflix enter peering arrangements to build out network infrastructure and server farms close to where the customer demand is. It's customers who are driving this, because the ISPs would lose them otherwise.

No.

This predicates meaningful access to the internet on your socioeconomic status, further entrenching extant divisions. Educational material is increasingly being delivered in video form. What happens, e.g., to poor families have to choose between paying the electric bill, or buying food, or buying enough download capacity that their kid can learn?

But that's not even the real issue. The big problem with a non-neutral internet is the barrier to entry imposed on non-incumbent players. Netflix has the money (and customer base) to absorb any "pay to play" costs imposed by the end-user's ISP.

Whiz-Bang Startup Streaming Service doesn't, unless they take more funding, meaning the people who created the thing own less of it, and all of that additional money goes to the incumbent ISPs.

I submit that this is an intentional outcome of the policy.

I've always wondered if it would be more fair to only pay for UPLOAD. Download all you want, but pay for everything you upload.

It always seemed to me the best of both worlds. Those torrenting and serving large amounts of data (Netflix, etc) would be paying, and they're also responsible for the amounts of traffic as well.

Sites like YouTube or Wikipedia would have never happened then. And it would completely doom the idea of P2P internet.

Netflix already pays for their Internet connection. I already pay for mine. Why should Comcast et al be allowed to seek yet more rent between two parties who are already paying customers?

You're describing my nightmare scenario but sure it's a wet dream for ISPs.

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