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Obama speaks for Net Neutrality Nov 10, 2014

itechy21 , Nov 24, 2014 :

All I have to say:
TL;DW the government have got an ex exuectutive as the head of a regulatory and that Comcast pay too much to loby in government

 

carlfrantz , Nov 24, 2014 :

Do you really know what net neutrality is? Do you understand how the internet backbone currently works? Net neutrality is the current mode of operation on the internet. It has nothing to do with monitoring, it is all about traffic movement. A packet of data is pushed onto the backbone by a provider and it traverses the backbone until it gets to its destination, where it is handed off to a provider and the provider sends it to its destination. All packets are treated the same. Yours, mine, the president of Russia all traveling thru the backbone, without any issue. Like traveling down a multilane highway. Ending net nuetrality doesn't eliminate monitoring. Won't change a thing in that regard. What it will do is carve up the limited backbone into sections. A small percentage, 1-2% of traffic will get shoved into reserved lanes accounting for 20-30% of available bandwidth. The majority of people, 98% or so will have to make due with what is left. So now the majority of traffic will have 20-30% less bandwidth, so during times of heavy congestion, some packets will get discarded, and will have to be retransmitted, adding the traffic load. Add to that that now the really fast switching fabric of the backbone will now have to make a lot more decisions, analyzing much more traffic, adding to the load. Since a CPU can only do so much, the analysis will slow down thruput thru those devices. The reserved space will sing, but the remainder will suffer. The backbone works because of its simplicity. A packet in, a packet out. Complicating it will not make it better, just slower and more complicated.
If it happens, its good for me, because I get paid to work on problems like that, so I get richer. It will be a bad thing for the majority of people, outside of a few guys like me who will make a lot of money from it.
But in all of the talk of net neutrality, it has nothing to do with government control or monitoring. It is about transport. Pure and simple

 

rwoods716 , Nov 24, 2014 :

Yes, I do know how it works. Do you understand that the Net Neutrality that they're trying to push through now is different than the one that wen through 20 years ago? Of course it has nothing to do with monitoring, but you are trusting the government that spies on you. Without net neutrality, cable companies have the right to prioritize traffic. With net neutrality, you're giving the government (that spies on you) the right to block whatever traffic they deem unlawful.

Do you understand what the Smith-Mundt act is? Why would you trust the government that they'll only block stuff you shouldn't see? Why would you give them the right to be the judge of what content you should be allowed to see?

 

Lunatasian , Nov 24, 2014 :

Two words:

Mitt Romney

 

TakeMyMoney , Nov 24, 2014 :

Besides your arguments against net neutrality, the funniest part was actually where you stated you trust corporations more than the government... because Government Sachs is run by banks and corporations.

Elections are stolen and politicians are bought and paid for.

 

carlfrantz , Nov 24, 2014 :

The right to prioritize traffic isn't a right that they should have. Selling higher priority across the backbone to the highest bidder leaves everyone else to fend for themselves on what's left. It causes a false scarcity that will drive cost. Bandwidth will become commodity and cost will be influenced much the same way other commodities are. I don't care what a provider does within their network. Its their business. But that is where that influence should end, at the provider edge. Do all the custom queueing you want to that point, but let the traffic go thru the backbone like it always has.
Its like getting on a city bus and expecting that you will have the same seat and never having any one sitting around you. Its public transport. If a company wants a private network, with priority built in end-to-end they can build one that way. I have worked with many corporations that do just that. But don't use the public city bus system if you are expecting a limousine ride. It just doesn't work that way, and it shouldn't. I have worked with companies whose yearly budgets for circuits are in the millions of dollars a year, so they can secure their network end to end. That is the cost of doing business. Yeah, they could do it cheaper with vpn tunnels thru the internet, but they are subject to slowdowns just like everybody else. They understand of you take the public bus, you share. You don't want to share, get yourself a limousine.

 

rwoods716 , Nov 24, 2014 :

Ok, I mean no offense. This is a great debate. Don't take this the wrong way but that was a terrible analogy lol. In fact, I hate all of these analogies. The fast lanes and slow lanes on the information superhighway. It's all really terrible analogies made by people that have no clue how the internet works or a sad attempt at trying to explain it to people that don't understand it.

Back to our debate, all of what you said, you've said before. None of which are a response to what I said. Given the revelations that the government is spying on the American public, how they lied to the American public about WMDs in Iraq, how Obama lied about his promises to take office, how the Smith-Mundt act was repealed, how can you say that they should have the ability to block the content that they want rather than ISPs?

We believe that the cable companies will kill the Internet if the government doesn't regulate them and for good reason; however, for all of the evil that the cable companies do, the government does worse. The stuff I mentioned above is just stuff that we know about.

Please though, if you're going to respond to this, make a counter-point rather than just accusing me of not understanding net neutrality or making some weird analogy.

 

carlfrantz , Nov 24, 2014 :

But the spying isn't going to end if the providers get their way. That is the point. What you want is the ending of government espionage of its citizens,and that won't end if the providers get their way. If you believe so, explain how it will end. Trojans are embedded in internet devices all across the internet. Some are corporate sourced, some are criminally sourced and some are government sourced. All exploit weaknesses in devices, specific to the device type. Having the providers controlling the backbone won't eliminate any of that. The traffic generated by those Trojans can be gathered and correlated on anyone, unless you live completely off grid.
The analogies used here are so that people who may not be able to figure it out, can have something to reference. If you have a better one, let's hear it.
Nothing I say, or what anyone says will change your mind, because you have made up your mind, just like I have.
Conspiracy theorists can create conspiracy from almost anything, and nothing. You will believe what you believe. Then off to the next conspiracy.

 

sjketchen , Nov 24, 2014 :

As far as trusting the cable companies or trusting the government, I don't trust either one. You say with Cable Companies in control there is at least the hope of competition. Well where I live in Upstate New York there is no competition. I am stuck with Time Warner Cable like I have been for the past 15 years. There are small pockets of Fios availability but they quit their network build out years ago. Standard Internet speeds on Time Warner Cable have remained almost the same for the past 10 years. There is little to no improvement or innovation in the industry because cable companies are already in control of 85 percent of it so they can continue to ratchet up the price while foisting their antiquated technology on a public who has no choice but to suffer with their mediocre service.
All that being said, I have seen first hand what the horrid hand of government intervention in the cable industry did when they legislated the need for customers to have the ability to buy their own cable television converters and the introduction of the Cable card. Almost nobody on the planet who has Cable TV buys their own cable box. The only company that has had any type of success with integrating the cable card technology in a consumer product is TiVo. But integrating the Cable card technology into cable boxes nearly doubled the costs of the equipment that the Cable Companies had to buy to comply with the legislation and it basically made the system twice as complex and twice as easy to break. And in the end, the consumers paid out the *** because the government has absolutely no clue how technology works.
Cable companies are already trying to control the Internet in their favor and they are already implementing "fast lanes" (i.e. Netflix and Comcast deals, Verizon and Netflix deals). But it isn't as simple as government intervention, because government is inherently incompetent and more often than not makes things far more complex and confusing, essentially making the problem that they were attempting to fix ten times worse.
I guess my point is we are all just ****** no matter what we do.

 

rwoods716 , Nov 24, 2014 :

I'm not suggesting that the spying would end without Net Neutrality. No one is saying that. I'm saying that I don't trust them. The same way that everyone believes that the cable companies will block anyone that doesn't pay them, I think the government will block any traffic they don't like. It's just that the tech media has come out and said net neutrality good cable companies bad so no one bothers to look at it from another angle. Do you understand what the Smith-Mundt act is and that it was repealed? I'd have a hard time believing that you understand that and still think that the government is the right organization to decide which content gets blocked.

 

rwoods716 , Nov 24, 2014 :

All valid points. Did you know that there are over 3,000 small ISPs in the U.S.? There's a good chance that you have another option and don't even know it. Here's the thing. One thing that everyone can agree on is that competition could solve this entire problem, yet the FCC constantly does things to crush competition. Why would we want the FCC to control what content gets blocked? This is the same government that spies on us and now can legally propagandize their own people.

 

rwoods716 , Nov 24, 2014 :

To be clear, we can all agree that the solution to all of this is competition, right? So here's the thing. There are over 3,000 small ISPs in the United States. I actually learned that fact on a Podcast. Last Sunday's (not yesterday) This Week in Tech actually had to owners of small ISPs debating whether or not Net Neutrality is a good thing. Listen to it. It's definitely worth an hour of your time. Listen to the way that the FCC screws over the small ISPs. Again, this is the same FCC that you want to decide which content gets blocked. That doesn't mean that I think an end to net neutrality would make the FCC treat small ISPs better. No need to put words in my mouth again.

 

meatandy , Nov 24, 2014 :

carlfrantz , Nov 24, 2014 :

But you are assuming the government is going to control traffic. As more and more devices go online, the internet of everything, traffic will exponentially grow. Over the next 5 years there will be 10s of BILLIONS of new devices accessing the internet. Over the next 10 years that will increase 4-8 fold as everything will be embedded for network access. The government cannot control that, no government can. Sure, they can pinpoint a person and control that access, and they can data mine for keywork, keyphrase, and anomolous behavior, but blanket control is beyond their reach and anyone's reach, and even if it could happen, what would be the point? And how could it possibly be budgeted for a system that all-encompassing? But pinpoint control and data mining will happen with or without net nuetrality. Its a brave new world. Learn to adapt, or die. Privacy is a myth, and net-nuetral or not, controlling individual or group information flow will continue to happen.
If you don't trust the government, figure out how to fix that, not break something that doesn't need fixing yet.
If you're concerned about government control of your communications, you're kinda sunk. FCC approval is needed for any communications system that utilizes radio frequencies. You could build a private network, but the costs are staggering for an individual. Point-to-point dark fiber isn't cheap.

 

sjketchen , Nov 24, 2014 :

I agree that their definitely needs to be more competition, and I am not surprised that the FCC and the government constantly take steps to squash competition, because Cable companies like Comcast are some of the biggest lobbyists and campaign contributors. Also when the current head of the FCC is a former top lobbyist for the Cable and Wireless industry, you have got to wonder about conflicts of interest. Hell. It happened when former treasury secretary Henry Paulson decided to bail out Goldman Sachs (the financial company where he was former Chairman and CEO) and not to bail out Bear Stearns which was a chief competitor for Goldman Sachs. It is all a corrupt cluster **** if you ask me. I don't see any of the "big players" or "top influences" looking out for the best interests of the consumers, not in the government or the private sector.

 

carlfrantz , Nov 24, 2014 :

In rural areas all across the US, millions of people don't have a choice in provider. Where I live i have one if I want internet faster then modem speeds. A line of site wireless provider. Yeah, more populated cities have several choices usually. The smaller ones don't have the services many people wnt or need, at a price that can compete, so they struggle to survive. Many of those small providers were the only choice for a while, though, and chose not to reinvest and make things better, and then find themselves losing customer base when new players come in town. Again, its adapt or die. They made a decision that kinda screws them in the end. But there are successes as well. Small providers who chose to reinvest and modernize even when they were the only game in town. For every sad sack provider, there is one who made it work. We all make decisions for the short term that will haunt us in the long term. I feel bad for those small providers, but if you dig a little deeper, you will probably find out that many are blaming bad business decisions (not reinvesting, modernizing) on the government.

 

carlfrantz , Nov 24, 2014 :

When I design a new network, I work with providers. The big ones and the small ones. For a guy who claims to know how the internet works, I am surprised you didn't know there were thousands of small providers. Many of the long distance circuits I have provisioned utilize those providers. Some are good, some are badly managed and maintained. Just like the bigger providers. I don't use many small ones because they usually don't meet the requirements for the circuit. Again, that has more to do with decisions not to modernize and upgrade.
Ending net neutrality will likely cause consolidation of the industry, as the big providers fight for a larger slice of the pie. And as a result, many of those thousands of ISPs will lose ground at a faster pace and fall victim to the consolidation.

 

rwoods716 , Nov 25, 2014 :

Just like I'm assuming that the government will control traffic, you're assuming that the ISPs will control traffic. The flaw in your argument is that you're assuming that Title II is the same thing that we've been living with for the past two decades.

 

rwoods716 , Nov 25, 2014 :

The FCC is required to promote competition and they're breaking the law by screwing over small ISPs. This is the same FCC that you want to control what internet traffic flows and what is blocked, right?

 

carlfrantz , Nov 25, 2014 :

The difference is the the providers have a monetary incentive to control traffic. Section 706 states that. And the main focus of the discussion by the providers is about creating separate controls for prioritized traffic. Your argument counters your own arguments earlier in the thread.