whatever happened to being ispFollow

Hah. Well, there is something to that.



Numbers don't lie. People use numbers to lie.



Yup. The grass always looks greener where you aren't. It's also interesting that you make a big deal about numbers, but haven't actually provided any. Heck. You haven't even provided a specific anectodal example (like say "ISP X in city Y in the US sucks compared to ISP A in city B in the EU). Can you do that? Do you have any actual experience using an ISP for internet service in the EU? Do you even know someone who does?

I can't speak directly about the home usage experience, but if the business level networks are any indicator, the US fares pretty well compared to a lot of the places around the world where people seem to think things are all rosy because "they have fast internet there". Um... "fast" isn't a real measurement. I've done actual tests doing actual data transfers between various sites around the world (one of the things I do is configure and tweak automated network data syncs between sites around the world). I can say with pretty good confidence that the US is well above the average in terms of performance for cost compared to other well developed nations (not even going to talk about the nations that aren't).

And this is coming from a guy doing IT for a company with the worldwide resources to do things like plant our data centers in the best regional locations so as to maximize data rate tranfers. It's just hard for me to swallow the idea that a random consumer in a random city in a random developed nation in the world has anything remotely resembling a superior overall internet experience compared to random consumer in a random city in the US. It's a wash at best, and I really do think that the US comes out on top in most cases (to be fair for a few reasons that don't actually have much to do with network infrastucture quality, but said quality is part of the equation).



Honestly, whenever someone says this, I think they are promoting a solution in search of a problem. You're doing exactly what you just said we shouldn't do. Starting with the solution you want to implement, and then creating a problem to justify it. The solution is "put more government regulation on the internet". And folks come up with all sorts of vaguely defined "problems" that require this (network neutrality, cause I guess packets need rights or something, and the very "internet is faster everywhere else!" bit you're doing right now).

What's funny is that you've also gone full circle on this. You started out lamenting the blending of ISPs and ICPs (service versus content). But the utility aspect is and has always been connected to the base cable/tv "service". The additional service of connecting to the internet (an ISP) originally (as in your initial example) had nothing at all to do with anything remotely resembling a utility. Needing to use your phone to make emergency calls or your cable to recieve emergency information is what makes them a utility and properly requires regulation to make sure everyone has some basic coverage. No one ever considered using the phone line to dial up an ISP with your modem so you could play a round of TradeWars2000 something necessitating utility status. So your call to history totally fails in this regard.

What you're using your ISP for isn't related to the need for the base layer you're operating on to also be a utility. And IMO they properly disconnect those things. Your cable company may also be an internet content provider, but that part of the business is not connected to the part that falls under operating as a utility. It's a good thing that we keep those separated, else we find resources that should be expended maintaining emergency utility needs being used to provide streaming entertainment instead.

Dunno. Just not seeing where you're going with this. What are you proposing we do exactly? And "make things more like everywhere else" isn't a good answer. Be specific. What is the problem, and what is the solution you propose?



You can't have it both ways though. The more you push for "internet as utility" the more controlled and the less competitive the industry will become. Again, I'm not sure what you really want here. You started out complaining that ISPs were now using their physical wires to give them an advantage as content providers (at least I'm assuming that we your initial gripe), but now you're arguing we should define them as utilities. Um. They are. But their internet content business is not. Doing so would likely result in more of the problem you initially complained about, not less.



Indeed!

Edited, Nov 7th 2014 5:53pm by gbaji

I think he's advocating that the infrastructure be treated as an utility (ie, state or federal building it) and the bandwidth being leased to various ISP's so there is real competition.

I'm just spit-balling here of course. I can't read angrymnk's mind.


Edited, Nov 8th 2014 1:42am by Bijou

Gah, if I had a dollar for every time I've said, "Your aversion to the solution does not obviate the problem", I'd have... like, five bucks.

You should probably do that anyway.

Each time I see the thread title, I want to sing it to O.P.P.

Whatever happened to ISP?
Yeah, you know me...

"The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn't understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had." - Eric Schmidt

Like what? Religion and monogamy don't count as "built", I think.

There are plenty of things we've built where we don't understand how the system as a whole operates - e.g. a city, a road network. This is the only sense in which we don't understand the internet - plenty of people understand the architecture of the internet.

Wait, I want to make sure I understood correctly. You are actually agreeing that ISPs do "use their position" to **** their subscribers by delivering less and less and extorting "ICPs" and you are wondering why I want to make sure they cannot do that? Or are you just questioning the means by which I would like to ensure they cannot do that?

Problems: throttling, not delivering speeds advertised, double-dipping ( and related extorting icps for a "fast lane" access )

Solution: regulate ISPs to ensure they treat all traffic the same way ( in this case, treat them just like water service )

So I am not sure how it makes zero sense. It is a simple cause and effect. You **** with subscribers. Subscribers are gonna **** with you. Hell, I am not happy with a monopoly, but if we are gonna have one, we might as well regulate the **** out of it.

I am honestly not sure why you are so opposed to it. Because VZ says they should be able to **** subscribers any way they want?

Edit:

For bonus points, what are the top 10 nations for internet speed and do they have internet providers classified as an utility? Is there a ******* overlap?

For extra bonus points, what did the ISPs claim when mppa was going after them? Did they claim common carrier status then?

Edited, Nov 10th 2014 7:56pm by angrymnk

Complex question. Let's break it down:

1. ISPs leverage their control of the entry point to the internet to give their own content a competitive advantage. Yes. In precisely the same way that Every other business that controls product access does. It's why you wont see Kindle's being sold in Barns and Nobels. Yes. ISPs are not precisely the same as a storefront (even a virtual storefront like say Amazon), but I'm just pointing out that the basic concept isn't some unique thing.

2. Do they deliver "less and less". No. They don't. The services, content, and performance of your internet connect has pretty steadily improved over the last 20+ years. It may be less than you want, but that's a different argument.

3. Extorting ICPs? I'm not sure at what point it becomes extortion to charge people to use your network to distribute goods to your customers. I'm reasonably certain that the Kroger's brand products always manage to be just a bit more cost effective than the other brands when I'm in a Kroger's chain store. Shocking how that works.

Point being that you are mixing some legitimate gripes (should a company with a license for semi-exclusive physical access to your home be allowed to use normal competitive practices) with some exaggerated rhetoric, forcing me to either agree with the rhetoric or reject the legitimate gripes (or spend the kind of time and effort separating them as I just did). There are some legitimate issues with how ISPs operate. And there are some practices I do find problematic. But I'd rather we stick to the facts instead of flying off on emotional rants.



Another fallacy (false dilemma). I don't agree with every point you raise as a "problem" (but not all of them). I *also* have issues with your proposed solution. How you phrased your response makes it such that I must either agree with your entire list of problems or reject the problems and argue against the solution. I'm just pointing out how your posting method basically boxes me in when responding (and forces me to make a huge amount of caveats when answering, or accept the various fallaciously connected statements you've made).




Sigh. Again. Let's break this down

1. Throttling. Assuming you mean "throttling competing content", this is already a violation of their agreement. They're not allowed to do this. Every time a company has even considered doing this, they've been slapped down for it. This really is a non-issue. And I don't mean a non-issue as in "don't worry about it", I mean that there already exists sufficient means to prevent this from happening.

2. Not delivering speeds advertised. This is a tricky one because it usually involves people not understanding what speed was actually advertised. Yeah. Marketing games are involved, but when the box says "speeds up to X", you can't actually do anything if you don't always get X. However, in the vein of "does a solution already exist", we already have a host of laws regulating consumer rights and allowing you to sue if a company fails to meet their promises. I'll also point out that these laws don't need to be specific to ISPs. If the box on your cereal says it has X grams of fat and it actually has twice as many, you have the same problem and solution. This isn't about ISPs.

3. I'm not sure what you mean by "double dipping". And as to charging people for high speed access? There's nothing at all wrong with that. As a guy who works for a company that pays (through the freaking nose) for high speed dedicated links, this is a normal business practice and arguably is very beneficial to the "little guys" who really do get a massive amount of (potential) bandwidth for very nearly free.



What do you mean? So my companies packets get the same routes and same priorities as your download to your home computer? Do you get that there would be no reason for my company to spend (seriously millions of dollars) paying for better/faster connections, right? What do you think will happen? It wont be good for the little guy, trust me.

I just think that the solution you're proposing is naive at best, and disastrous at worse. What's funny is that usually when I get into an argument about this, the person on the other side gets to the point of saying "treat all packets the same', but really has no clue what that actually means, or how it would (or could) be implemented. It's a buzz position. Nothing more. There is no such thing as treating all packets the same. What you're really arguing for is a position that you don't have the technical skills to understand, but which you've been convinced is "good" via basically sound bites, but which would actually make changes to the internet that you have no idea about.

It's foolish. And it absolutely has nothing at all to do with regulating ISPs. ISPs are just the part of the internet that the most people interact with and may have problems with, and thus makes a great scapegoat to point people at, show how "bad" they are, then get them to support something 99% unrelated. It's a classic bait and switch.

Do you have any idea at all how "treating all packets the same" will solve the problem(s) you mentioned earlier? I don't think you do. Heck. I've been arguing this same topic a half dozen times at least over the last several years, with many different people, and I have yet to hear a single person actually explain in anything remotely displaying an accurate technical understanding of packet based networks, how on earth Network Neutrality would fix the problems they are upset about. Apparently, the answer is "magic".

Do you have an answer? Because if not, then your entire argument boils down to "someone told me I should be arguing for X because of Y".



Ah. So this isn't actually about solving the problem, but punishing companies you don't like. At least that's a bit more honest than most people are at this point in the discussion.




We do regulate cable and phone providers. And while we could perhaps tweak that regulation a small amount, by and large it prevent them from committing serious abuses. Trust me, there's a lot worse than "my internet is kinda slow".



Opposed to "treat all packets the same"? Because it's the equivalent to swatting a fly with a sledge hammer, 5 feet to the left of where the fly is, and right over where some valuable stuff that you don't want broken is. That's why. It's a terrible terrible answer to the relatively minor and occasional abuses that ISPs may engage in. There are far far better ways to deal with that.



Well, as long as we're remaining specific and avoiding hyperbole...




Given that you haven't yet clearly explained what you think "classified as a utility" means in this context, how about no?



Tell me why you think this matters and I'll answer.


I'll point out *again* that phone companies and cable companies are treated as utilities for certain parts of their business. You're moving the goalposts all over the place here. Basic phone service and basic TV (when replacing broadcast), are "utilities", and are regulated as part of the license they receive to run wires to your home. Services beyond that are bonuses, and are not utilities.

I'll point out *again* that ye old ISP back in the day was also not a utility. And you would have been laughed at for suggesting it. I get that you want to move to that state (for reasons that I think are misguided, but whatever), but the biggest issue is how people approach this whole topic as though they're trying to restore a state that once existed in the past rather than proposing a change to a new never-before-existed state. You did it here with the whole "back when ISPs were just ISPs" bit. Proponents of NN do it constantly, arguing that the big internet businesses are the ones proposing some kind of changes that will take away your long held internet freedoms, when the reality is that packets have *never* been treated equally, people and businesses have *always* paid more money for more bandwidth, and the "free internet" formed under these conditions just fine. What they fail to mention is that it is in fact the NN proponents who are proposing new legislation which would radically change the way the internet works, and not in ways that would benefit most users.

But that requires actually understanding the proposed changes beyond "treat all packets the same". Which most people, sadly, don't.

Hmm, I think what we have here is a clear failure to communicate. In your defense, I am not known for being very transparent, or even coherent. You do have that going for you.

With that said, maybe we should start from the other side. Do you think common carrier status, as outlined by the president, is a good idea? If not, why not?

I was initially going to respond to every damn quote you put in your post, but I have a headache and I really should not be up much longer. So lets take it one small post at a time. Have mercy..

If people heard him chanting in rapid succession every time he went to the toilet, he'd probably be shipped of to the funny farm.