If they can charge YouTube a few cents and lower my bill - so much the better.

OK, if they charge WebmasterWorld a few cents...?

When they target just a few big sources it's extortion.

Everybody pays for the web now and pays a fair share.

It has nothing to do with your choice of ISPs, if one charges YouTube, they'll all charge YouTube, then suddenly YouTube doesn't exist because it's not making money already.

Then the reduced rates subsidized by YouTube go away, but my guess is you'll never see a subsidized rate because the ISP will just keep all the money.

So what next, go after HULU? Fox.com? Abc.com? NYTimes.com, Wikipedia?

Who do you go after when all the big content sites are driven offline?

The internet is much like the roads in the BM world.

Everyone pays to build the roads, they don't charge people extra to put stores along the roads and they don't charge premiums to the businesses when the roads need improvement, it's in the gas tax for the people using the roads.

@rbarker I'm saying, if the public good subsidizes it, then there should be some public ROI.

So long as their strongest assurance of profit is their access to public right-of-way/utility, then they are beholden to me (i.e., the public) the strongest service, or at least equal service.

The bottom line is isp's made great sounding promises, but now that users are suddenly using more bandwidth than they used to the margins are getting thinner. I dont see Google using a large chunk of Comcast's pipe, I see it the other way. The request comes from a Comcast user. No site pushes their data to an ISP. it is requested by a user.

The user has paid for this through their bill. I suggest the providers are realising they can't actualy deliver on their promises.

Mack.

I am sure you have many, many options (and growing) for internet access.

You'd think. Having just spent months researching ISP's where I live (heart of silicon valley) I can tell you there are exactly two that don't require a substantial outlay of capital: Scamcast, and the phone company. Both are fairly rotten.

I suggest the providers are realising they can't actualy deliver on their promises.

The problem is they have already maximized their customer base for the most part.

Once you hit market saturation point you still have to find new sources of revenue to "grow" and make those numbers for WallStreet.

Comcast is busy buying Universal to own content and therefore enhance their bottom line.

They're trying to convert Dish and DSL and even landline phone customers to VOIP.

The last thing that leaves is looking for new untapped revenue sources within their existing business model such as adding more pay content or finding ways to charge others for accessing your network.

Bottom line, greed and in this case I'll claim again: extortion.

extortion - when a person unlawfully obtains either money, property or services from a person(s), entity, or institution, through coercion

Forcing YouTube only to foot that bill or be throttle for slower service is coercion, therefore extortion ;)

Scamcast, and the phone company. Both are fairly rotten.

How do you figure Comast is rotten?

Been using it in SV when it was @Home, it was shaky then.

When AT&T bought it for a couple of years, then it was rotten.

Now it's very fast and dependable.

If you're not happy, you have some 3G and 4G choices which I also have, and when you're not mobile, you'll wish you were using Comcast at the end of the day.

A federal appeals court has ruled that the Federal Communications Commission lacks the authority to require broadband providers to give equal treatment to all Internet traffic flowing over their networks.

So who does?

A lot of people here are confusing net netutrality with traffic shaping and throttling:

Throttling: Reducing the amount of bandwidth customers can use, usually based on a cap
Traffic shaping: reducing the speeds of certain types of traffic, while giving other priority (e.g. slow down bittorrent, give priority to web browsing, audio and video)
non-Net Neutrality: slowing or speeding up traffic depending on who the customer is connecting to. SO, for example, an ISP does a deal with one internet radio station, so speeds up their traffic and slows does or blocks all the other internet radio stations.

Most people in favour of net neutrality have no problem with 1) or 2) in principle. In markets where there is a lack of competition there might still be an issue of abuse of monopoly, and it should be transprent, but those are different issues.

The problem with 3) is that it runs around the market by creating costs that will ultimately affect end users, but that are not usually visible to them: there will be a huge network of deals that the average end user will not know about, but they will just suddennly find that, some services work better and other worse - they are likely to assume its the sites:

For example imagine that a user who has been using Google, reading the BBC news, and buying their music from Amazon gradually finds that Bing is fast but Google is slow, the BBC loads slowly but CNN is fast, that music bought from iTunes downloads fast but if you buy from Amazon its slow. Will the average user think "my ISP has done some deals, I ahd better switch"? Will they think "Google, the BBC and Amazon are slow, so I had better use Bing, CNN and iTunes"?

It will be a disaster for small sites which will be unable to make these deals.

[edited by: graeme_p at 4:37 am (utc) on Apr 7, 2010]

If you want to understand what the fuss is about net neutrality, imagine your telecoms company would only allow you to phone businesses that had paid them a fee to allow incoming calls. It would not matter that they had paid their own telecoms company, they would have to pay yours a customer access fee as well.

Now imagine that you are running a business that takes orders by phone, and all the telcos start doing this. You would have to pay every telco in the country a fee so their customers would be allowed to phone you.

Now apply that principle to your web site.

Demaestro.

Nobody, that's why it works so well.

I pay my ISP to deliver the content that I choose to access, not to exclude content providers who have failed to bribe them.

Carriers should be able to do whatever they want - including charge big users - for how thier pipes are being used.

Agree 100% but you charge the user not the content provider. If you allow them to charge the content provider then the ISP's or large media conglomerates will be able to leverage the bandwidth to squeeze the little guys out of business. My guess is anyone reading this is the little guy. Comcast's WorldWebmaster at the highest speed possible anyone?

The solution to this is simple, you allow them to control the bandwidth through tiered pricing at the consumer level. This will allow them to maintain control of their network because those running p2p 24/7 aren't going to be able to afford to do it anymore. I believe Comcasts claim is only about 1% of their customers are causing this issue.

You do not allow them to discriminate against content providers otherwise the internet is going to become a much smaller place.

The diverse numbers of opinions in this thread is fascinating and encouraging. It says to me, that no one has the right answer and at this point, consumers have enough choices that there is little harm in allowing the current system to continue.

Let the market figure it out.

sidebar: thanks for making me go look at broadband choices again. I just realized I can get at&t uverse now at 24mbps at the house! That's faster than my fiber at work!

What we need to remember is that no one country can impose a law, and I think this concept has far greater reaching implications that just net neutrality. If a law is enforced somewhere, and sites and services are operating out-with that territory it could hand a huge advantage to competing services.

In regard to ISP's, can you imagine if Comcast decided to bill youtube for 5% of its bandwidth cost and Youtube simply refused. Does this mean Comcast would really block youtube content from being carried over its network. In doing so offering a 2nd class service to its users?

Mack.

> Comcast would really block youtube content from being carried over its network.

There have been whispers that something like that is currently happening. They did it to bit torrent, there is not reason they can't do it to YouTube.

Notice how many ISP deals google has been making? They have a datacenter - just around the corner- of many major isps.

There have been whispers that something like that is currently happening. They did it to bit torrent, there is not reason they can't do it to YouTube.

I thought for bit-torrent sites that Comcast was only throttling connections not terminating or blocking them.

That is ok though let them piss off their customers, with 4G coming out and a lot of wi-fi initiatives Comcast will either have to convince every other provider to follow suit or they will lose people to the companies that don't treat their users like crap.

Hopefully the market place will sort this one out.

First, all the judgment is saying is that, under current laws, the FCC does not have the jurisdiction to tell Comcats not to favor traffic.

The judgment does not tell Comcast that they are allowed to shape traffic.

Second, this is horrible news: the treatment of Internet traffic does needs to be supervised by someone; basically we are now told that that someone is not the FCC. So who is it?

Third, Internet traffic shaping raises so much questions and is is in such a murky moral zone, that I favor it being completely forbidden.

Lastly, make your voice heard through your $. Switch out of Comcast, switch out of the big players. I just got off the phone with the quasi-monopoly in my town, after telling them good-bye for good and for ever.

Second, this is horrible news: the treatment of Internet traffic does needs to be supervised by someone; basically we are now told that that someone is not the FCC. So who is it?

The internet is a privatly owned network, it does not need a public watchdog. IF you don't like what your ISP does you go find another one, you don't huff and puff and tell big brother that they better straighten up.

[edited by: J_RaD at 7:27 pm (utc) on Apr 7, 2010]

That is ok though let them piss off their customers, with 4G coming out and a lot of wi-fi initiatives

wi-fi? cisco pulled out of WiMAX, and if you think a wi-fi ISP is going to be awesome you've never used one. Wifi in general is easily saturated. Nothing is going to beat the speed and reliablity of copper or fiber.

Nothing is going to beat the speed and reliablity of copper or fiber.

True...... UNLESS they are throttling your connection as Comcast has admitted to and wants to continue doing.

I would take an inferior mbps over a managed and arbitrary one. At least I know what I am getting.

15-20 mbps doesn't mean crap unless they leave that connection open. If they are going to monitor it and change it on a whim then I would rather take my $$ elsewhere. Even if that means a slightly less speedy connection.

I don't think 4G is going to come close to broadband/dsl connection... I know that it can't, but it is a great alternative when your provider decides to police you.

Demaestro, what is your suggestion for how an ISP should balance things if a small number of heavy users are causing congestion for everyone else?

>wi-fi? cisco pulled out of WiMAX

Funny you should mention that. We just took delivery of 7 Clear wimax modems to use for PubCon. They run about 4-5meg right now. Pretty good for wireless.

True...... UNLESS they are throttling your connection as Comcast has admitted to and wants to continue doing.

I would take an inferior mbps over a managed and arbitrary one. At least I know what I am getting.

15-20 mbps doesn't mean crap unless they leave that connection open. If they are going to monitor it and change it on a whim then I would rather take my $$ elsewhere. Even if that means a slightly less speedy connection.

Why shouldn't comcast manage connection speed to ensure everyone has a good constant flow.

if you ran a network and you had 10 users doing P2P and really ripping up the bandwidth then your other 1000 users connection speed drops to SLOW why shouldn't you jump in and start leveling it out?

its the same thing that is done in large scale LAN's you can't just let everyone run amuck.

If they are going to monitor it and change it on a whim then I would rather take my $$ elsewhere. Even if that means a slightly less speedy connection

then you do that, and instead of the company managing their network you'll be at the mercy of whoever is taking up more bandwidth slowing down your connection.

Demaestro, what is your suggestion for how an ISP should balance things if a small number of heavy users are causing congestion for everyone else?

My suggestion is put a meter on them, tier your pricing based on use, and connection speed.

$X for high speed (up to 30 gig data transferred monthly)
$x+$20 for super high speed (up to 60 gig data transferred monthly)
$x+$30 for uber high speed (up to 100 gig data transferred monthly)

Use extra money to make your network stronger so that "a few" bad users can't "clog up the tubes"

What you don't do is pick on websites or services that have higher bandwidth associated with them. And you certainly don't sniff packets to guess if you should throttle it or not.

If I am not a high bandwidth user but the only site I ever go to is Youtube, but I only watch 2 videos a week. How is it fair that I get a slower connection even if my usage is low when looked at over a month compared to someone who goes to a site or service not deemed a bandwidth hog but still uses more data transfer than my 2 videos a week.

Why shouldn't comcast manage connection speed to ensure everyone has a good constant flow.

if you ran a network and you had 10 users doing P2P and really ripping up the bandwidth then your other 1000 users connection speed drops to SLOW why shouldn't you jump in and start leveling it out?

They absolutely should manage the speed to make sure everyone has a good constant flow.

Just not the way they propose to do it, Yes they should level it out... but by going after the bandwidth hog not the site they use.

Another example of not addressing the actual person causing the problem but looking for deep pockets to recoup from.

You are saying there are 10 people out of 1000 that are slowly down connection speeds and you think the solution is to tax the website those 10 are using rather than charging the 10 for a premium service?

What sense does that make? If I had a road and the same 10 people kept blocking it to go into a store would you give the store a ticket for blocking the road?

Let the market figure it out.

Markets deal poorly with monopolies and quasi-monopolies, that is well-established.

What it's about for Google and what it's about for the rest of us are very different things. For Google it may be about whether they have to pay to broadcast YouTube, and they shouldn't, since without rich content there would be no reason for the wires to even exist in the first place, which is why I think this is short-sighted of Comcast. Users are willing to pay for more bandwidth because they need it to download YouTube videos and Netflix.

However, that's not the major problem. For the rest of us (at least, those who are not multi-billion-dollar corporations), it's about barriers to entry.

Lack of net neutrality (and yes, that is a good name for it, it means the network is not biased in favor of particular traffic) provides an opportunity for the biggest players to erect barriers to entry. As a small site owner, I can't afford to pay every ISP out there for premium service on their wires. If they decide to charge site owners for speed, the performance of small sites will suffer. That reduces innovation and diversity, and allows big players to consolidate their quasi-monopoly position.

Maybe some people here are big enough that they see themselves as sitting on the other side of that fence -- and that's fine, but try to remember that you started out small too, and you might not be where you are now if the net had not been neutral when you started.

Another way Comcast is shooting themselves in the foot: this ruling was based primarily on the judge's interpretation of the FCC's own internal rules. Those can be changed by the FCC itself -- so basically all this ruling does is force the FCC to expand its own regulatory powers significantly in order to do what it is currently planning to do with broadband.

Furthermore, it should be pretty obvious by now that the internet is a utility. Business in general can't function any more without it. So it is going to be heavily regulated, utilities always are. If the FCC doesn't currently have the power to do this, Congress will eventually be forced to expand their power or create another agency that has it.

In other words, the end result of this ruling is likely to be that the FCC will end up with much greater regulatory power, not less. Comcast will hate that, but it's their own fault.

If the telcoms had left well enough alone, instead of trying to mess with the packets in the first place, we wouldn't need to be having this discussion and there would be no need for regulation. It's just another case of companies with financial muscle sacrificing the long-term interest of all for the sake of short-term gain.

So it is going to be heavily regulated, utilities always are.

It's a global utility, the US has no control over what the rest of the world does.

Sure, you can regulate the network within your borders but all bets are off once you cross those borders and implementing really stupid regulations could cause companies to move from the US to more broadband friendly countries.

There have been whispers that something like that is currently happening. They did it to bit torrent, there is not reason they can't do it to YouTube.

But bit torrent is a protocol used primarily by copyright bandits and they run a network within the Comcast network that is against the AUP. In theory they could just block anyone doing a download from a Comcast member's machine because it's the end server in a network, violation the TOS.

However, YouTube is a global service, there's nothing about it violating their AUP or TOS until you hit your monthly 250GB limit.

Big difference as throttling the later could get them sued while throttling the former is within the rights of their CURRENT service agreement.

BTW, often times those whispers are started by people using wifi connections which as we know, with multiple devices online (I have 6 that can stream), don't realize it's their own network responsible for buffering issues or a temporary routing problem outside their network.

I can watch streaming Netflix for hours without issue for days at a time and suddenly it has buffering issues. You could blame Comcast or you could run traceroute and see where the hang up is happening.

The internet as a whole is a global utility, yes, but internet access to a particular geographic area is not, and that's what we're talking about. ISPs serve particular locations. We're talking about a court ruling that affects ISPs serving locations in the US.

China, for example, definitely does not have net neutrality, they block certain kinds of traffic altogether. That doesn't prevent the US from having net neutrality.

This brings up a good point though. What happens when the EU requires net neutrality (which they almost certainly will) and the US does not? My expectation would be that the European-based internet would prosper and the US-based internet would stagnate.

What happens when the EU requires net neutrality (which they almost certainly will) and the US does not? My expectation would be that the European-based internet would prosper and the US-based internet would stagnate.

Exactly my point in that US-based companies could jump ship to more internet friendly destinations.

However, don't forget that in international telephone calls and other transactions there are these things called tariffs which the US could apply to any incoming traffic from any country and literally make the US market unattainable unless they paid a premium to access it.

Of course the EU could respond in kind and the global village starts moving at dial-up modem speeds all of a sudden.

I had a sudden vision of two non US content providers. One pays for priority access, the other takes them to court locally for bribing the US ISP to favour their traffic.