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Comment by epanchin | Hacker News Reader

Fast lanes benefit established players at the expense of start ups. Consequently, if there has been detrimental effects, I doubt you would notice them.

When you think to yourself, why do I put up with youtube, why isn't there an alternative... that's the 'thing happening'.

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It’s not just fast lanes as many networks care about the data their sending, but these things take a while to gain traction so it’s not yet that obvious.

For example Verizon has the lesser known FreeBee: For pay-per-click campaigns, the FreeBee Data icon (a “bee”) appears next to sponsored content to let Verizon Wireless subscribers know that, when they click on that content, they will not incur data charges. With FreeBee Data 360, businesses can sponsor some or all of their app or website.

That’s just one example, but it does demonstrate net neutrality is dead in the US.

It's somewhat unlikely that there are X ISPs times Y "established players" = a few hundred contracts at least, without any of those arrangements leaking, nor anything showing up in network analyses.

Yeah, but there wasn't an alternative two years ago either.

Where are these fast lanes? I believe you of course, but how do I know these exist like you say?

Netflix is probably the most relatable case study on what fast lanes look like, because it is Netflix that pays whatever rate the teleco thinks it can insist on in order to install their CDN in your ISPs hub, that in many cases must compete with the exact same content the telco is now serving.

(Side note: one more good reason for Netflix to be in the content creation game)

Netflix gets to pay whatever rate to get priority infrastructure at the telco, you get to pay more to Netflix, and you blame Netflix (not the telco) if the content delivery is botched / not as good as what your "cable subscription over the Internet" delivery is.

That doesn't line up perfectly with the narrative about fast lanes that we were sold, but it does show some of the power being wielded by the telco today as more than just a dumb pipe, and how they leverage their position against competitors.

That's not a scenario net neutrality regulation would affect. Larger companies will always have more resources, and with that they will have opportunities to invest in infrastructure and improve service that smaller competitors cannot match. There's a continuum from "choosing a more expensive cloud provider" to CDNs to these edge caches.

> That's not a scenario net neutrality regulation would affect.

I'm not sure that's true. Netflix must pay a premium to the ISP to get prioritized access within the ISP in order to get their edge cache in position to compete against the ISP. That's three ways in which the ISP is not acting as a dumb pipe.

The Wikipedia understanding of network neutrality is: the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) must treat all Internet communications equally, and not discriminate or charge differently based on user, content, website, platform, application, type of equipment, source address, destination address, or method of communication.

> Netflix that pays whatever rate the teleco thinks it can insist on in order to install their CDN in your ISPs hub

No, that’s not a fast lane nor would be stopped by NN. You just explained that Netflix made an investment to get CDNs where they would be effective.

So, I’m still curious to know where these priority traffic fast lanes are.

Netflix pays Comcast in order to have that fast lane. It's more than just an infrastructure investment.

Are you sure? My state is that e.g. Netflix, Google, Akamai?, etc. offer ISPs to put a (couple of) 2-4U box(es) inside their network, for free, only requiring power and cooling (and networking). The ISP wants this, because he'd otherwise get the traffic dumped into his network at the edge, i.e. an internet exchange/carrier-neutral DC.

That costs the Provider significant routing and intermediate-distance (40~100km, i.e. CWDM long-range transceivers) bandwidth. This is much more expensive then feeding the google box with power.

It is just an infrastructure investment. It's no different from Amazon building a local distribution center in your city.

An "internet fast lane" would be like the city government saying to Amazon, "and also, all traffic lights will immediately switch to green for amazon delivery vehicles."

No, they're still using the same roads as everyone else, they're just starting from a lot closer to the destination.

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