Internet Neutrality

[Rodéric]

Virgin is about to choose what it's clients can access fast or at all...
http://torrentfreak.com/virgin-media-ceo-says-net-neutrality-is-a-load-of-bollocks-080413/

Virign plans to basically sell bandwidth to websites, so that those are faster than others, to make Virgin's clients use those sites rather than others...

So much for freedom of the Internet...

Anyone know of any ISP doing so already ?

I wonder what's the best option against that kind of things, boycott, or having a law to guarantee that all websites are "equaly" available...


Could you imagine B3D having to pay to get premium speed, otherwise the site would just be slllllooowww and you would have to read some big website, such as tom's hardware which can afford the price ?

 

[Valzic]

I been reading and listening to various discussions regarding net neutrality. His comments bring forth the question - "What is net neutrality? is it freedom of access? Is it equal speed for all? Its seems to me a lot of people are equating speed and access as net neutrality.

We all seem to accept that its ok for us to 'pay' for privileged access. We all decide whether or not to pay for that 8.0mb access versus the 512kbps access. Its OK for for us have faster access than our next door neighbour.

I pay an arm and a leg for mediocre access due to where I live and my choices and am the fastest access on my wireless access point by a factor of 5 because I pay for it. My supplier is forced to ration others to 512kbps per second due to the technogy and bandwitch available in my bandwidth, so there is 2 people on my access point and I take 80% of the bandwidth. Still way slower than if I was in city.

In some ways I was surprised that what Virgin is saying was not implemented before based on what the ISPs see on the consumer side. We paid for our speed for a long time. It seems to me that what they are talking about seems to be where we may head whether or not we want it. Its going to take clarification on waht is net neutrality and maybe legislation to stop that.

Eventually someone will have to pay for expansion of the backbone, I just hope it is not us consumers directly.

 

[Rodéric]

Well in that case it seems it's not about people choosing what amount of bandwidth they need and so choosing their subscription accordingly, but rather your ISP making deal with say tomshardware, warner, or whomever, to make sure that you (as this ISP customer) will get more speed accessing those specific website, and such pushing you to reading/using (could be for VoD...) those instead of others that aren't paying your ISP to get the same privilege.

It could become that if you're an AOL customer you may get full-speed access to all Time Warner websites, but be capped on competing websites...
That's really about reducing your freedom, sure you would still be able to connect to other websites, but for some reason the bandwidth might become such an issue as to somewhat force you into using whatever websites your provider made a deal with...

To continue on the B3D example, imagine that you can load Tom's Hardware page instantly but it takes you 2 or 3 seconds to load any B3D page... How long before you decide not to read B3D anymore ?
And it can be even worse with website providing services requiring High-Bandwidth. (youtube, VoD, somewhat MP3...)

 

[Sxotty]

Well hopefully the net neutrality stuff passes. This seems like ethics of technology though eh

 

[nutball]

My take on this is that it's a whole load of sabre-rattling by the ISPs who are beginning to find that their old, comfortable business model is starting to come under threat.

It seems to me that ISPs have the "bus driver" attitude to customers. Bus drivers are at their happiest when they're driving buses around town but don't have to stop to pick up or set down passengers. God forbid that anyone might want to pay to use the bus to get from A to B. That's just annoying and unnecessary, and not really the point of buses.

ISPs are at their happiest when they have a whole bunch of customers who pay for broadband speeds but never actually use more than a few 100kbit/sec, and that only for an hour or so each night. Their problem is that they've managed to persuade themselves that this is the "normal" sort of customer, and anybody who does anything different is a freak who needs to be traffic shaped into oblivion.

God forbid that the "normal" customers might actually start using broadband speeds they're paying for in large numbers, eg. to watch re-runs of EastEnders on BBC iPlayer. That might mean they have to spend money to upgrade their networks. Or to change their "up to 8MB" packages to the "up to 512kb" packages that they're banking on normal customers actually using on average. Much better to blame the customers and fire off salvoes threatening "pay to peer" aimed at the big traffic drivers.

Virgin are in a particularly sticky spot as they're still encumbered with large debts incurred in the rapid expansion of their network some years ago. They're not really in a position where they can afford to do the upgrades necessary, which is probably why their CEO is trotting out all the inflamed rhetoric.

In the end I suspect that net neutrality might become something of a selling point for ISPs who are smart enough and have the network capacity to cope. Also that in a few years there'll be quite a few less ISPs around.