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Comment by rhino369 | Hacker News Reader

I don't think a fast lane would necessarily fuck the internet. In fact, with proper management it might actually be beneficial. For example, I'd love it if my work VPN could be prioritized over someones pron torrent during internet rush hour.

Net neutrality wouldn't fix the Level3/ Verizon&Comcast issues. Net neutrality doesn't force free peering.

When I mean fucking the internet up, I mean significant degrading of service to extort huge payments.

The internet hasn't had net neutrality most of it's history and it's grown up just fine.

If the choice is no net neutrality or net neutrality and Title II, I'd take the former.

Title II in the wrong hands could be devastating.

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> For example, I'd love it if my work VPN could be prioritized over someones pron torrent during internet rush hour.

The person watching pron and paying the same price for internet as you doesn't think so.

Neutrality would still allow the user to pay for different speeds or qos, ie 15mbps at modem versus 100mbps at modem, or a 100% guaranteed qos vs no guaranteed qos (current residential). So, the market pricing would determine which gets to your modem faster, the pron or vpn.

> I'd love it if my work VPN could be prioritized over someones pron torrent during internet rush hour.

That would require that someone somewhere would have to actually look at the bits to make a value judgement.

And then you lose privacy and security.

Additionally, you open the door wide for moral judgement of your bits, because we're people and that's what we do, rightly or wrongly. It's probably fine because you may work on something innocuous - but what about the artist, the protestor or the troll?

Personally, I dislike trolls intensely, but in certain forums they're apparently desirable.

The transport itself should be totally neutral to content. Only the endpoints should matter.

It wouldn't require someone looking at it. I'd assume such a system would just prioritize traffic to specific IP addresses. Or they could pick a VPN port.

Any port or protocol or format that gets "prioritized" will swiftly be used to tunnel non-prioritized traffic.

>For example, I'd love it if my work VPN could be prioritized over someones pron torrent during internet rush hour.

That would be great for you of course by why should ISPs get to determine whose packets are more important especially if the entry criterion to being important is basically "pay up"? What if the reverse were true and other users' packets were prioritized over your work ones simply because Netflix, YouTube, Valve, etc. could afford it and your company decided not to?

Then I get worse service. Is that any different than Amazon offering cheap 1-day delivery and newegg doesn't? Virtually all markets have this sort of pay for premium service.

It certainly wouldn't be the end of the internet.

Moreover, this sort of price discrimination already happens at some level. Certainly that is the reason CDNs exist, to get a better, faster connection. Even Netflix puts its own servers into local ISPs for a fast connection.

The internet is far from a level playing field.

>When I mean fucking the internet up, I mean significant degrading of service to extort huge payments.

Isn't this exactly what Comcast already did to Netflix? And they ended up paying up ...

Porn pays bills, the torrent would get the shaft, but the steams wouldn't. they'd take priority over your VPN.

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