IT is like having a toll road that leads to an amusing park. You pay to use the toll road, but they are trying to charge the amusement park for you using the toll road as well.

The sad part is that they usually get away with it in a tangential fashion. The amusement park ticket-buyer ends-up eating the cost of some local authority's wish-list. As long as the ticket-buyer buys, there is no reason for corruption to stop, and as long as the corruption can be accommodated, there is no reason for the amusement park to object to the corruption.

I really don't want to expand the discussion to real world cases of exactly what you are talking about, but they exist.

Oligarchy anyone?

The proposal before the FCC is bad news.

I think one of the issues is that ISPs have painted themselves into a corner. Offering higher and higher bandwidth to users for the same or at a lower cost.

Over 10 years ago I started with 1.5Mb/384Kb for $50/mo. Now I get 25Mb/2Mb for the same cost. Which they did to compete with other ISPs. Now that people are actually using all of this bandwidth they said they could have & the government is enforcing that ISPs actually provide what they say. They have to spend the money to provide it. Instead of increasing the cost of the service which users wouldn't like. They are trying to stick it on the other end. Which is wrong.

IT is like having a toll road that leads to an amusing park. You pay to use the toll road, but they are trying to charge the amusement park for you using the toll road as well.

The freaking infrastructure is mostly already in place. It is not costing ATT as much as you might think just to turn the damn switches on. And a pair of copper wires, such as my service comes over, has been quietly oxidizing as long as I have been breathing.
And running new fibre?? Much of that would happen anyway, just due to scheduled upgrade and offering new service.
They are surely not doing it because the kittyman wants to watch more streaming cat videos.

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

Just because you pay to get "X" and someone else pays to get "Y" doesn't mean that the infrastructure exists at all points between X and Y to get you the same access to "X" as you might have to "Z."

That's not a problem as long as all packets on all points are treated with the same priority. That's net neutrality. Net neutrality has nothing to do with unlimited resources. What voids the net neutrality is when some packets are artificially slowed down while others are not.

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Re: Netflix v. Comcast/Verizon

Netflix could easily just decide "fine, you want to extort us..we'll just block requests coming from your network. When your customers start flooding your complaints box and crippling your tech support lines, you'll realize what you did wrong."

If Comcast decides to sue Netflix for doing that, Netflix can counter with "how is that any different than you extorting us for providing a service that your customers use? It should be the customer that you extort, not the service."

And then the customers will sue for being extorted and in the end, it goes back to how it should be.


That's how I see it. This goes back into what Eric said in the first place whereby there are "peering agreements" and as long as everyone plays nice, then it is fine. Comcast doesn't own Netflix, so they can't control them, nor tell them what they are or are not allowed to do. Sure, Netflix might take a small hit with their client base and revenue for a short period until Comcast sees the error of their way, but even without net neutrality, if Netflix is suddenly unavailable to Comcast customers.. millions of customers are going to revolt and in the end, it seems to be a self-policing sort of deal anyway.



(btw.. I'm a Comcast customer since 2000, but it was Excite@Home back then. I've never had any issues or complaints about what they do or how things work because I've not yet been affected by anything.)

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And then the customers will sue for being extorted and in the end, it goes back to how it should be.


That's how I see it. This goes back into what Eric said in the first place whereby there are "peering agreements" and as long as everyone plays nice, then it is fine. Comcast doesn't own Netflix, so they can't control them, nor tell them what they are or are not allowed to do. Sure, Netflix might take a small hit with their client base and revenue for a short period until Comcast sees the error of their way, but even without net neutrality, if Netflix is suddenly unavailable to Comcast customers.. millions of customers are going to revolt and in the end, it seems to be a self-policing sort of deal anyway.

You very succinctly summarized what I couldn't get said in many lines. Thank you.

"It would be a self-limiting problem unless someone decides to limit it in one or the other party's favor."

Re: Netflix v. Comcast/Verizon

Netflix could easily just decide "fine, you want to extort us..we'll just block requests coming from your network. When your customers start flooding your complaints box and crippling your tech support lines, you'll realize what you did wrong."

If Comcast decides to sue Netflix for doing that, Netflix can counter with "how is that any different than you extorting us for providing a service that your customers use? It should be the customer that you extort, not the service."

And then the customers will sue for being extorted and in the end, it goes back to how it should be.

That's how I see it. This goes back into what Eric said in the first place whereby there are "peering agreements" and as long as everyone plays nice, then it is fine. Comcast doesn't own Netflix, so they can't control them, nor tell them what they are or are not allowed to do. Sure, Netflix might take a small hit with their client base and revenue for a short period until Comcast sees the error of their way, but even without net neutrality, if Netflix is suddenly unavailable to Comcast customers.. millions of customers are going to revolt and in the end, it seems to be a self-policing sort of deal anyway.

(btw.. I'm a Comcast customer since 2000, but it was Excite@Home back then. I've never had any issues or complaints about what they do or how things work because I've not yet been affected by anything.)

Perhaps you noticed how the ISPs threw a fit when Netflix started using the message “*Insert ISP name here* Network is crowded right now. Adjusting video for smoother playback.”

This also reminds of of the DirectTV/AMC conflict.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

Perhaps you noticed how the ISPs threw a fit when Netflix started using the message “*Insert ISP name here* Network is crowded right now. Adjusting video for smoother playback.”

This also reminds of of the DirectTV/AMC conflict.

I haven't noticed that, because I don't stream Netflix. I get DVDs and Blurays in the mail. I can stream if I wanted to, but physical discs just seem better and more convenient. Besides.. a 2-hour 1080p bluray is 30-100GB of information on that physical disc.. streaming the same movie would be probably somewhere near 10-15GB, and now that there are 300GB/mo caps... it kind of restricts things a little bit.

Of course, I don't use youtube to listen to music, either, because that's what MP3s are for, but I do know people who consume 8-15GB/day just with listening to music on youtube (and they're not even watching the video..it's in another tab as they are facebooking). All the music they listen to can be consolidated down to about 300MB of MP3s that don't have to be downloaded every single time you want to listen to it.

But I know.. streaming is all the rage these days and I'm old-fashioned because I like physical copies of things. I like being able to actually touch and hold something that I paid money for.

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Off topic but I say how sad, MP3s sound so bad, how low we have set our standards for audio sound quality.

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I did do satellite once. Still have the dish.
If ATT gets too uppity with me....I can still go rogue.
The one and only thing that ties me to ATT is the land line which I have had for 34 years. That's it.

If it comes down to a peeing contest, I don't care what path my bits take to and from Seti.

And I think I know a ham operator or two that might just relish the challenge of doing it by relay.
It might make things difficult, but not impossible.

Heck, I could start to send a few CDs back and forth to Eric via snail mail....that would be a hoot.

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

Off topic but I say how sad, MP3s sound so bad, how low we have set our standards for audio sound quality.

As my hearing is basically crappy in my right ear and I dont hear above 18,000 hertz in the other, My colection of 530 Cd's that I converted to mp3's sound just fine.
Plus As Im old school also, I still have all of those CD's.
Time warner dosent have a cap yet, But Comcast wants to buy them out. So there will be a cap if they do buy TW.

Fiber optics is the way out of this mudpit.

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Old James

if Netflix is suddenly unavailable to Comcast customers.. millions of customers are going to revolt...

If they have other options.

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Grant
Darwin NT

Off topic but I say how sad, MP3s sound so bad, how low we have set our standards for audio sound quality.

As my hearing is basically crappy in my right ear and I dont hear above 18,000 hertz in the other, My colection of 530 Cd's that I converted to mp3's sound just fine.

MP3s aren't bad if you do the encoder settings right. I can't tell the difference at all on my home theater system, even cranked up. I can just barely tell the difference only on some songs between MP3 and FLAC/WAV with my Sony DJ headphones (MDR-V700).

But that's enough off-topic.

if Netflix is suddenly unavailable to Comcast customers.. millions of customers are going to revolt...

If they have other options.

Most areas here in the US don't have multiple choices. The choice in large parts of the US is Comcast, Time Warner, or Cox for cable providers, and AT&T just about everywhere. For the cable providers, about 95% of the US is covered in areas that only have one of those three for a choice. Very very few places have an overlap where there are two to choose from. DSL isn't all that great when you consider it has higher ping times, the farther away from the switching station you are, the slower it gets, and then the throughput/price ratio isn't all that great compared to cable. It is technically an option..but not a great one.

And I think Verizon leases a lot of infrastructure from AT&T, as well has having some infrastructure of their own. (Also, btw, for those of you outside the US, Vodafone owns 45% of Verizon and was a major factor in its start-up in ~2000, just to let you know who we're dealing with on this one).

I wish the whole US was like some of those cities Google installed a complete fiber-to-the-home infrastructure in and allowed many ISPs to come in and compete with each other.

Actually, a friend of mine was telling me the other day that in the early 90s, the Clinton Administration passed the "National Infrastructure Initiative" to wire ALL of the US with fiber optic wiring, replacing all of the copper wire. It was supposed to complete in 2006. 86 Million households should have been wired with fiber (and coax), capable of at least 45mbit in both directions and could handle 500+ channels. Every state had commitments of when the wiring was supposed to be completed. The networks were to be open to ALL competitors, not a closed network or deployed only where the phone company wanted.

Each company claimed they would do it: Verizon, AT&T, SBC and Qwest. They received massive profits, tax breaks and other perks that they are still abusing to this day. This wasn't DSL or Verizon's FiOS or SBC's fiber optics (which are slow and can't handle 500 channels), are locked down and aren't being deployed in all areas. Pretty much the country paid $5 Trillion for it and it never happened. And you will never hear anyone bring this up in the newspaper or on a news channel because the media companies that own or have ties to all the ISPs..own the news, too.

It is also ironic that when there are massive outages in any of these major networks that it takes them many many hours or even days to fix it and bring it back up. If they had upgraded the lines when and how they were supposed to over a decade ago, it wouldn't be a problem, because the perk of fiber optics is that when you run a fiber cable..you run it with redundancy. If for whatever reason one link goes down, the other still works and then you can repair the damaged one without an interruption to service. Same for the hardware at either end of the links.


I have not researched any of that to find the accuracy of it, but it seems pretty legitimate to me.

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Pretty much the country paid $5 Trillion for it

This is the kind of ludicrous exaggeration that gives the 'Net its reputation for uninformed and/or stupid argumentation. Shame on you. Please think for a minute about what you said. I'm sure a lot of $$$$ were wasted, but this is at least 100x too high, I would think/guess.

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Pretty much the country paid $5 Trillion for it

This is the kind of ludicrous exaggeration that gives the 'Net its reputation for uninformed and/or stupid argumentation. Shame on you. Please think for a minute about what you said. I'm sure a lot of $$$$ were wasted, but this is at least 100x too high, I would think/guess.

I agree. $5T sounds like waaaay too much, and I did say at the end of my post that I didn't go look any of the info up to verify it. That's not to say that my friend made it up..maybe he was misinformed as well.

But I do agree that a LOT of money was allocated and used (definitely in the billions, but I would think at least 100, but not more than 3-400) and what the money was for..never happened. That is evident because.. well, we don't have FTTH nation-wide like there should be. There's actually not much fiber outside of the Internet backbones.

But.. I don't like talking politics, so I'll stop now. I just wanted to toss-in my little bit if info that I've heard.

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