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this post was submitted on 09 May 2024
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Yay, spam email servers now have full speed. Spam away! You do realize prioritizing traffic is kind of the network norm right? NN was one of those, let's fix a problem that doesn't actually exist. You know that right?!?
Network neutrality became policy after Comcast, Verizon, and ATT were all caught throttling Netflix while their own competing services were lagging behind in market share. It was a response to a real problem that was harming competitors and consumers.
I literally had this happen to me; it's why I don't use Verizon anymore. Youtube, too. There's a technical breakdown somewhere of precisely how they did it (roughly speaking, "accidentally" underprovisioning the exact exits from their network that would lead to Netflix's servers for no possible reason except to fuck with Netflix and degrade that service and only that service, which it accomplished very effectively.)
That's a real problem for sure, but I'm not a fan of the solution.
They should have been found guilty of anticompetitive behaviour and split up into multiple companies.
Here in Australia we've gone down that path though there was no actual lawsuit. We just saw problems starting to creep in and dealt with it proactively. The vast majority of network infrastructure is now owned by a company called "NBN Co" (National Broadband Network) which is required to provide the best available network technology to every single household/business in the country. All pre-existing network operators were forced to sell their infrastructure to NBN Co and any business can provide services to anyone for a reasonable fee paid to NBN Co. Mostly it's broadband internet, but literally anything can go over the pipes. The fee varies depending on the bandwidth and QoS level.
They are also investing in network upgrades, including state of the art DSL routers that can run at decent speeds for most people (I get about 80Mbps) and all new connections are Fibre as well as existing connections are gradually moving to Fibre (on those, you can usually get 10Gbps). Each building can have multiple connections, at least four but large buildings obviously get more. If you live in the middle of the desert with no wired networking at all, then you get a wireless one. Satellite if necessary, though usually it will be "fixed wireless" which is basically cellular with large/high quality a rooftop antenna.
NBN Co is tax payer funded, but mostly only to accelerate fibre installations. Aside from that upfront capital expenditure it is profitable and some of those profits are paying off the tax payer's uprfront investment.
Net neutrality is just Common Carrier rules as applied to the Internet. It's frankly a no-brainer.
Your proposal should definitely also have been done -- allowing telecoms to also produce content at all is a massive conflict of interest and should never have been allowed in the first place -- but it doesn't obviate the need to also regulate the pure telecoms even after the breakup.
The thing is there are no pure telecoms anymore. There's a company that maintains underground infrastructure and gets paid when that infrastructure is used, and is incentivised to upgrade the infrastructure because they make more money if it's used more.
And there are thousand of companies that benefit from the infrastructure, and they can charge customers pretty much whatever they want... though it better not be an excessively high price because every ISP, even a tiny one with a single employee, can provide service nationwide at the same raw cost as a telco with tens of millions of customers.
The difference between what we have done, and net neutrality, is our system provides an open book profit motive to upgrade the network. Net Neutrality doesn't do that.
Fundamentally there is a natural monopoly in that once every street in a suburb is connected, then why would anyone invest in digging up the footpath and gardens to run a second wired connection to every house? The original provider would have to provide awful service to justify that, and they can simply respond to a threat of a new network by improving service just enough (maybe only temporarily), for that new investor to run for the hills.
Net Neutrality stops blatant abuse. But it doesn't encourage good behaviour. Our NBN does both.
That's just not true.
Net Neutrality has nothing to do with network upgrades, it only relates to how traffic can be treated on the network. That's it. If the network is insufficient, it needs to be upgraded, not reprioritized so preferred traffic is fast while everything else is slow.
I don't know anything about NBN Co, so I'm going largely based on this Wikipedia article.
Financials:
So they're subsidizing by ~$1B/year, or ~20%.
So let's look at prices, since surely they should be low if there's a "price war". Here are prices for the top ISP, Telstra (speeds in download/upload in mbps):
Here's my local ISP which isn't government owned, and all prices include all taxes:
And we're installing a municipal fiber network because we think that's too high, and the new network will provide 10gbps. Larger cities near us have gigabit symmetrical for $70-ish. The only reason it's relatively inexpensive is because the big cable companies actually have competition here. We have: DSL, cable, fiber backed Ethernet, and radio, and we'll be installing a new fiber-to-the-home network.
So not only is NMN government subsidized, it's also more expensive than our local service. And I'm not in some urban area, we have tens of thousands of residents, hardly a big city, and in one of the smallest states by population density in the country.
So no, I don't think your model is working properly. I'll take national Net Neutrality and push for local muni fiber.
The type of traffic shaping you are thinking off can still be done under net nutrailty and was never an issue.
The things NN is trying to "solve" was never an issue either
Net neutrality is the status quo, it's not trying to "solve" anything
If it was the status quo then why have rules?
To. Protect. It.
You really have no idea what you're talking about, do you?
Because companies like to make money by breaking the status quo when there aren't any rules.
It's the thing they like to do most honestly, and why we need to make rules when we see open loopholes
Then it shouldn't be an issue to implement it then right?
But there's never been an issue... Should Netflix pay more for their increased traffic... Yes, it's not equal to my browsing.
This is totally missing the point. What happened is the equivalent of the bus company calling the supermarket and saying "hey, I've noticed a lot of people going to your store. If you want to keep that, you've got to pay extra so I don't drop half the busses from your route"
They do.
Do you think Netflix connects to the internet for free?
I'm enjoying watching you dig this massive pit for yourself. Lol
pats your head It's okay, I know reading comprehension is difficult for some people.
I know Lemmy is the wrong place for this, it's just another hive mind like reddit. Actual reading is what got me to this point. So maybe it's you that should do some unbiased reading.
Ah, the classic "hive mind" excuse. It's always brought up when someone has nothing else to stand on (that someone is you, if it wasn't clear).
Lemmy is a fine place for it, saying it’s a hive mind may have some truth, but it’s also a copout. Just back up controversial opinions with some sources.
You said you read things that “got you to this point.” What was it you read? I’d be interested in reading it.
Yeah. Must be something wrong with the place and not you. It's called projection.
Bless your heart
Bless your heart