Putting banners on the site or small statements at the top urging users to call their representatives is helpful, but if they really wanted to get the point across, Google, Amazon, etc could intentionally slow the traffic of representatives from DC involved in this bill. Better yet, Google should push their pages to the fifth page of search results or just delist them all together. Imagine the outcry if all the sudden, the Facebook and Twitter pages for these reps got "deprioritized." Tech companies have the ability to make an impactful statement like that, but instead we'll get a little blurb at the top of the site and business as usual.
Not disagreeing with you, but something about large corporations buying government officials to enact their preferred legislation doesn't sit right with me.
Is there an actual technical definition of what Net Neutrality means with some document a Representative or Senator could put in a bill and a network engineer could look at the network setup and say if it conforms or doesn't?
I've heard some definitions that don't square with what I believe the statement means.
I'd define true net neutrality quite simply as delivering the same performance to all traffic regardless of source or content of that traffic.
That said QoS and other more complicated traffic engineering mechanisms are widely implemented and seems kind of hard to get rid of. Google for example makes use of egress peer engineering techniques to ensure certain applications of theirs will take lower latency paths to customers, while they may shed other traffic from customer VMs in Google cloud to higher latency paths. Or we might move Skype traffic onto low latency backbone paths and give it lower latency over some other traffic that we can't identify. Does this count as non-neutral? If so, that's a really-really big deal for all the cloud providers, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google who do this.
Cloud providers are carriers. Their backbones are larger and growing faster than the ISPs you refer to. And they are hosting a lot of content and services from multiple providers. If they provide preferential treatment to their own products over products they host then this situation is no different to the one you're thinking of.
No, you are completely wrong. Cloud providers are not carriers, they are service providers(PaaS, IaaS.)
"Carrier" in this context(Net Neutrality) is short for telecommunications carrier, which are regulated by the FCC in the United States[1].
The classification is a legal one. It was refined by the Telecommunications Act of 1996[2]
AWS/Azure/GCE are neither regulated by the FCC nor classified as telecommunications carriers as they do not sell broadband access.
Simply owning you own "backbone" does not make you a carrier either. There are plenty of large corporations that own their own backbones that are not carriers. Being a carrier has nothing to do with hosting content either.
In this scenario (where we are exploring the issue of Net Neutrality) they perform the same function as carriers for a lot of the services you utilize on the internet. Legal distinctions are pointless to this discussion, because this discussion is about the appropriateness of those legal distinctions and regulations in the first place.
>In this scenario (where we are exploring the issue of Net Neutrality) they perform the same function as carriers for a lot of the services you utilize on the internet. "
No, fundamentally they(cloud providers) do not perform the same service as carriers. If I had Comcast as my ISP I could not call them up and cancel my service and then call up Amazon and say I would like to buy internet access.
Honestly, it doesn't seem like you understand how the different segments of the internet fit together - Tier 1 ISPs, last mile networks, transit, peering and service providers networks.
I need to pay the ISP or else I can not get to the services I am paying a cloud provider for. This is the whole issue. I am basically a captive consumer.
The debate has never been about classifying "cloud providers" as telecommunication carriers.
>"Legal distinctions are pointless to this discussion, because this discussion is about the appropriateness of those legal distinctions and regulations in the first place."
Legal distinctions are "pointless" in a discussion about federal oversight and regulatory jurisdiction? That is completely absurd.
> legal distinctions are pointless to this discussion
Legal distinctions are absolutely material to this discussion. You can't pretend they don't exist; you need to persuade representatives and their constituents that the current legal framework is outdated and is in need of revision.
I'd define it as delivering the same performance to all traffic regardless of the source or content of that traffic, except for the content of the Differentiated Services field of the IP header.
That lets QoS work, while preventing all the scummy behavior that NN is against.
>I'd define true net neutrality quite simply as delivering the same performance to all traffic regardless of source or content of that traffic.
That requires bending the laws of physics to implement. Google fiber will always be able to deliver Youtube content faster than anyone else, the speed of light being what it is and all....or perhaps you are suggesting they should be forced to house their servers in Comcast Data Centers?
>QoS and other more complicated traffic engineering mechanisms are widely implemented and seems kind of hard to get rid of.
Its more than just that. The entire communications infrastructure -- not just internet but nearly all form of comms -- embed within themselves the notion of over-subscription. The phone company, internet ISP, postal service all have more potential demand than they have available bandwidth. QoS must be implemented otherwise these services would simply collapse.
Moreover, If I pay for 1Gb internet and you pay for dial-up is that "neutral"? Is it legal for me to pay you extra to route my VOIP traffic with priority? Or should that be banned?
NN was a very very clever name for a political regulatory move. Unfortunately when people try to get to the task of defining it they uncover that its basically a solution in search of a problem.
>>I'd define true net neutrality quite simply as delivering the same performance to all traffic regardless of source or content of that traffic.
>That requires bending the laws of physics to implement. Google fiber will always be able to deliver Youtube content faster than anyone else, the speed of light being what it is and all....or perhaps you are suggesting they should be forced to house their servers in Comcast Data Centers?
That's clearly not what I said. You seem to have a poor understanding of how networks and the internet work to contrive this strawman.
> Its more than just that. The entire communications infrastructure -- not just internet but nearly all form of comms -- embed within themselves the notion of over-subscription. The phone company, internet ISP, postal service all have more potential demand than they have available bandwidth. QoS must be implemented otherwise these services would simply collapse.
This also doesn't make sense. Many of the backbones I am intimate with are among the largest in the world and yet have no trouble avoiding congestion through correct provisioning. Some providers like Comcast due to whatever (organizational, incompetence, business) reason do not do this. QoS doesn't really work how you think it does. NN is about ensuring that like NetFlix and JoeBlogsNewStreaming service get equal treatment on the network. They are not going to be riding in separate classes. The anti-NN tactics of the big carriers is to throttle, actively not upgrade peering connection, route over longer paths, etc.
> Moreover, If I pay for 1Gb internet and you pay for dial-up is that "neutral"?
Yes.
> Is it legal for me to pay you extra to route my VOIP traffic with priority? Or should that be banned?
That is a better question. Personally I somewhat lean towards not allowing multiple classes of service on the internet or access networks. But so long as the classes are not selectively applied to traffic by the carrier, and are selected/paid for by the consumer buying the circuit/transit then at least that is a level playing field and I am okay with it.
>"This also doesn't make sense. Many of the backbones I am intimate with are among the largest in the world and yet have no trouble avoiding congestion through correct provisioning.
Please state specifically which backbones that are among the largest in the world you are "intimate" with. And please provide a citation for its 1:1 to traffic ratio. There isn't a network in the world that isn't oversubscribed.The entire practice of "capacity management" is based on oversubscription.
>"Some providers like Comcast due to whatever (organizational, incompetence, business) reason do not do this. QoS doesn't really work how you think it does. NN is about ensuring that like NetFlix and JoeBlogsNewStreaming service get equal treatment on the network. They are not going to be riding in separate classes. The anti-NN tactics of the big carriers is to throttle, actively not upgrade peering connection, route over longer paths, etc."
The OP is correct and they seem to have a good grasp of how QoS works as they mentioned DSCP bit and the IP header. The OP is also correct in that every single segment of a network is oversubscribed from the top of rack switch, the uplinks from the ToR to the core, transit and peering, to the 10/40 Gig waves that make up backbones.
Again, nobody has a 1:1 subscription ratio anywhere in their network. It would be a colossal waste and you would be out of business. Profitability in Telecom and networks in general is predicated on oversubscription.
Take the most basic example of a top or rack switch that has 48 x 10 Gig ports = 480 Gbs and yet has an uplink capacity of 4 x 40 = 160 Gbs. This represents a 3:1 oversubscription ratio and is part of the design of the switch[1]. This port to backplane capacity oversubscription is probably the most important consideration in evaluating switches.
And ISPs most certainly use QoS to violate Net Neutrality. You might want to read up on the 2007 BitTorrent Comcast controversy. Comcast execs also admitted as much[2].
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It really seems that not only do you don't have a good understanding of how the internet works but you also don't have a good understanding of the economics of it either. It becomes more evident with each of your posts.
>> "This also doesn't make sense. Many of the backbones I am intimate with are among the largest in the world and yet have no trouble avoiding congestion through correct provisioning.
> And please provide a citation for its 1:1 to traffic ratio. There isn't a network in the world that isn't oversubscribed.The entire practice of "capacity management" is based on oversubscription.
This is getting a little ridiculous. Again a straw man. Where did I say 1:1 subscription ratios were provisioned. That doesn't mean you can't provision enough capacity to carry your peak load. Any network engineer would understand what I said. (And I'm happy to report I know what a top of rack switch looks like, thanks for the link.)
This seems to be something you're very passionate about, but you only seem to want NN on ISPs and don't want to consider NN on a wider context with an understanding of where things are going. I was interested in having that conversation because I have a background with it, if you don't understand that environment then you don't need to participate.
>" Many of the backbones I am intimate with are among the largest in the world and yet have no trouble avoiding congestion through correct provisioning."
I noticed you didn't answer the question about which backbones you are intimately familiar with.
If they are among the largest in the world then they are likely public networks all of which experience congestion at various points.
Net Neutrality is really the name of the concept. The most recent relevant legislation regarding the FCC, classification and jurisdiction is the Telecommunications Act of 1996 which was intended to foster innovation and competition following the break up by the DOJ of the Ma Bell monopoly.
I specified legislation since it's distinct from the FCC rules which were most recently passed by the Obama administration:
To answer your question there is no single document that could serve as a compliance check list for a network engineer. A key criteria is that it applies to ISPs. This is probably the best Network Engineer-centric document I have seen published on the subject:
Also the Daily Dot recently posted an article reviewing some of the more well-publicized violations of Net Neutrality from the last 10 or so years. I'm including it because I think a network engineer being asked to implement these polices would have foreseen the controversy:
Maybe I'm stupid, but what's the point of internet-wide action for a national bill? I'm not represented in any US politician. I'm not entirely sure what I'm supposed to do here..
They mention the FCC as if non-US citizens are supposed to know what that is. They ask for a zip code, without asking for a country. The phone number they listed will not work anywhere but in the US. The address listed in their privacy policy does not name a country.
All this leads me to believe that the people behind this think the Internet only exists in the US, or that they are not even aware there are other countries besides the US. Don't worry, you're not the one that's stupid here.
Am I the only one who has started to feel like a useful idiot defending the big 5's riches? What we have now isn't a neutral net. We're complaining about traffic shaping by ISPs, while big 5 are shaping it already, deciding what we read, what we can download, and who we mingle with.
>If Net Neutrality goes away wouldn't it actually strengthen the position of the current dominant players?
Would it? I'm under the impression, many of the companies big enough to muster some form of competition against the Big 5 are the ISPs who would be negatively impacted by Title 2 rules.
>They are the ones who can more easily afford to pay for preferred delivery no?
I suppose the ISP could cut them off and offer their own versions of the services. It wouldn't be very much different than how Apple dictates what you can and can't do on their mobile devices.
>"I'm under the impression, many of the companies big enough to muster some form of competition against the Big 5 are the ISPs"
So you believe that those ISPs that are mostly local monopolies(maybe part of a duopoly at best)are going to provide competition? How as has that been working out so far?
The average American now pays $103.00 a month for crap cable service and crap equipment[1]. And that price is only increasing[2]. In fact cable TV price increases have outpaced inflation every year for the last 20 years[3].
Also it's not just video and music streaming bits that could be de-prioritized in the absence of Net Neutrality, its all bits.
The last time I checked none of these ISPs operated all the other things I use the internet for like reading news, shopping, checking email and making travel arrangements. Do you imagine they will offer competition there too as soon as they aren't bound by Title II?
Look at any Cable provider's on-screen interface for the channel guide or the plastic remote that hasn't changed in 20 years that you need to use to navigate it. Do these give you the impression these are innovative companies capable of building good software and competing?
Lastly there are other ISPs besides the eye ball/last mile networks(Comcast/Time Warner/Charter etc.) There are also the Tier 1 ISPs[4] that internet companies buy transit from in order to deliver their service to end users.
If Net Neutrality goes away those Tier 1 ISPs that own national backbones and are upstream from all the eye ball/last mile networks are free to "play games" with delivering bits as well.
> We're complaining about traffic shaping by ISPs, while big 5 are shaping it already, deciding what we read, what we can download, and who we mingle with.
What companies are you including in your "big 5"? I don't think any of the typical big tech companies have monopolies in the same way that I only have 1 and only 1 ISP from which to chose.
>What companies are you including in your "big 5"?
Google/Amazon/Facebook/Microsoft/Apple.
>I don't think any of the typical big tech companies have monopolies in the same way
If you buy a Google Home, you're basically fighting an uphill battle to use something other than Google Play music, right? If you have Comcast, then they make using Netflix a battle vs Comcast's own on demand video, how is that different?
>I only have 1 and only 1 ISP from which to chose.
You don't consider AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint an ISP? Those four are pretty universally available in the US, and for a lot of people, mobile carriers are their primary ISP.
> If you buy a Google Home, you're basically fighting an uphill battle to use something other than Google Play music, right? If you have Comcast, then they make using Netflix a battle vs Comcast's own on demand video, how is that different?
It's different both because I can easily live without a Google Home in modern society, but not without the internet, and because there is actual competition in the Home assistant/automation market, where there is none in the ISP market in much of the US.
The necessity of the underlying service being controlled is significantly different, to the point many see the Internet as a utility, and the actual ability of a consumer to make a decision is wildly different.
>there is actual competition in the Home assistant/automation market, where there is none in the ISP market in much of the US.
What is your definition of an ISP? A cable company?
Dish is an ISP, the four major mobile operators are ISPs, Verizon even has fiber service in some areas. In most of the US, you have about as many choices in ISPs as you have in Google Home/Alexa/iWhatevers.
>We're complaining about traffic shaping by ISPs, while big 5 are shaping it already, deciding what we read, what we can download, and who we mingle with.
What? I'm not sure I understand your position, but removing all FCC rules on Net Neutrality are not going to make any of that stuff better.
The monopolist ISPs that are regularly voted by far the most hated companies in the country are making plenty of money and doing just fine.
If you want to talk about antitrust action against the big 5, I'm absolutely with you -- they are monopolists and they need to be broken up. But your solution is to redistribute ultimate power back to the most hated monopolists in the country? Who have a physical monopoly, often enforced by law and physical reality, not because people of mindshare and some unpleasant anti competitive bundling?
The gilded age was worse than the 90s. Then 90s was not great, but we punished Microsoft and moved on to something better. The solution is NOT to return to the gilded age with ISPs as modern monopolist robber barons which is what removing NN does.
At this point, I'm glad the big 5 are ultra powerful -- they are the only entities with the power to support consumers (the government won't) if they choose to do so. And sometimes, they do. Amazon is, for example.
Not enacting Title 2 does nothing. It doesn't give Comcast, AT&T, or any other company any power they don't already have. Net Neutrality is currently an argument against status quo as I understand it.
Why did you lose interest? Both SOPA and Docket 17-108 fundamentally address freedom of speech on the Internet.
The outcome of the SOPA fight was the 2015 Open Internet Order (which ostensibly treats the Internet as a public utility and protects against both government and corporate attempts at censorship). Docket 17-108 (what this is about) reverses the 2015 outcome and gives ISPs discretion to regulate the web and slow down or block companies with competing services, which is what they did in 2011 and a reason why the Open Internet Order was crafted[1].
Neither issue is directly related to freedom of speech. Net Neutrality is indirectly (extremely indirectly) due to throttling based upon bandwidth and content factors that could influence the types of content a user prefers to receive.
SOPA had absolutely no bearing on freedom of speech. SOPA would have made internet publishers liable for the content they publish via user submission. The result is that a content owner could then sue the publisher, who currently hides behind DMCA, instead of needing to perform the more extensive discovery to sue to violating user who submitted the work. Internet publishers are still liable, even without SOPA, if they fail to respond and take necessary action against a violating user in response to a DCMA take down notice.
By equating net neutrality, an almost absolute good, with SOPA this looks much more like an excuse to protest something instead of actual substance.
