Good. The thing is that network "fast lanes" work by slowing down all other lanes.
this post was submitted on 09 May 2024
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It’s responsible for the last few years of streaming price hikes. ISPs throttle streaming services, then customers complain. Streaming services pay for fast lanes, then pass the cost on to customers.
Fuck Ajit Pai and his orange overlord.
The problem historically isn't that streaming services are paying for fast lanes but that they have to pay not to be throttled below normal traffic. In other words, they have to pay more to be treated like other traffic.
Even crazier is remember that there are actual peering agreements between folks like cogentco, Level 3, comcast, Hurricane Electric, AT&T, etc. What comcast did that caused the spotlight was to bypass their peering agreement with Level 3 and went direct to their end customer (netflix) and told them they'd specifically throttle them if they didn't pay a premium which also undermined Level3's peering agreement with Comcast.
Peering agreements are basically like "I'll route your traffic, if you route my traffic" and that's how the Internet works.
Do you have a link to an article or a Wikipedia page that I could read more on this?
I found this wikipedia article about backbones and peering but it really isn't that great but in the results it also came up with this pretty good presentation from Carnegi Mellon. I was only going to browser a few of the slides but the information isn't really all that much and the illustrations are good. I think Prof. Nace did an excellent job here. Much better than I would have.
Netflix and im sure the other services also have "netflix in a box" media servers that they drop in these peering exchanges and CDN edge datacenters in order to get their media as close to the customers as possible.
The basically bend over backwards to cause ISPs the least amount of traffic, and its still not enough.
I was trying to find the old Level 3 blog post but didn't because I believe they basically said that Comcast needed to upgrade its infrastructure and never did. Netflix was the cashcow they saw to essentially make them pay for it. As a Comcast customer, I see it as charging the customer twice -- first for the Internet service for the content and again because Netflix is going to pass that extra cost onto you (and everyone else who isn't a Comcast customer).
You're right on about CDNs and edge / egress/ingress PoPs. It also keeps it cheaper for the likes of Netflix/Amazon/etc. in the long run with the benefits of adding more availability.
No. It really isn't. If that were the case, the streaming services wouldn't actually be making a lot more money. Netflix market cap has gone up by $120,000,000,000 over the last 5 years, for instance.
Stop making up false excuses for simple greed. Streaming services are just after as much money as they can get from you.
If it wasn’t so goddamn infuriating, all of these “free market” enthusiasts trying to argue that introducing artificial scarcity into the market to try to game the whole system would be kinda hilarious.
See also "deregulation" types arguing for even more stringent regulation of unions.
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Gotta love how ISPs were told they can't slow some things down, so they thought they could get away with speeding other things up instead.
They didn’t speed up anything. The thing that told them they can’t slow things down is Net Neutrality. That’s what this is. It was created under Obama, repealed under Trump, then reinstated under Biden. When the law was repealed, they went back to price gouging large data users. Now it’s back in place.
The concept of net neutrality definitely existed long before Obama so it's a bit questionable to say it was created under him. Did anything specific happen under him to enforce net neutrality more than it already was?
You're definitely right about Trump though. It seems like he took every opportunity to screw over the US public in favour of corporate interests.
"Fast lanes" have always been bullshit.
If you're paying for 100mbps, and the person you're talking to is paying for 100mpbs, and you're not consistently getting 100mbps between you, then at least one of you is getting ripped off. This reality where you can pay extra money to make sure the poors don't get in the way of your packets has never been the one we live in.
Of course, there are definitely people who are getting ripped off, but "fast lanes" are just an additional avenue by which to rip them off a little more; not a single provider who's currently failing to provide the speed they advertise is planning to suddenly spend money fixing that and offering a new tier on their suddenly-properly-provisioned internet, if only net neutrality would go away.
As Bill Burr said, I don't know all the ins and outs, but I know you're not trying to make less money.
If you're paying for 100mbps, and the person you're talking to is paying for 100mpbs, and you're not consistently getting 100mbps between you, then at least one of you is getting ripped off.
That's only really true of you're relatively close to each other on the same ISP. The father apart and the more hops you need to make the less likely it becomes, through no fault of your ISP.
I wonder if this would affect speed tests. I know using Ookla's speed test is inaccurate because ISPs change speeds when connected to certain servers.
I never use Ookla for this reason. I use the Google speed test here in the states.
fast.com is pretty good, too. No nonsense, and run by a company renowned for server throughput optimization, so it should rarely be on their end if it’s a slow result
It’s also Netflix, and I’ve found networks that throttle speeds to streaming sites also throttle speeds to fast.com which can be really helpful if you’re aware of it and really annoying if you aren’t
And if they prioritise it etc then they are just prioritising netflix. It was a great idea!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Federal Communications Commission clarified its net neutrality rules to prohibit more kinds of fast lanes.
While the FCC voted to restore net neutrality rules on April 25, it didn't release the final text of the order until yesterday.
The final rule "prohibits 'fast lanes' and other favorable treatment for particular applications or content even when the edge provider isn't required to pay for it... For example, mobile carriers will not be able to use network slicing to offer broadband customers a guaranteed quality of service for video conferencing from some companies but not others," said Michael Calabrese, director of the Open Technology Institute's Wireless Future Project.
Under the draft version of the rules, the FCC would have used a case-by-case approach to determine whether specific implementations of what it called "positive discrimination" would harm consumers.
Under the original plan, "there was no way to predict which kinds of fast lanes the FCC might ultimately find to violate the no-throttling rule," she wrote.
Any plan to put certain apps into a fast lane will presumably be on hold for as long as the current net neutrality rules are enforced.
The original article contains 765 words, the summary contains 189 words. Saved 75%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Fucking yes. This is genuinely a HUGE win.
How long are we going to bitch about this bullshit that never materialized or happened?
TMO offering different plans and killing quality on cheaper plans is about the only company I've actually seen use any part of this shit and it's been 15 years now.
Just because it hasn't happened yet, doesn't mean it won't slowly be added over the next 5-10 years.
Making Laws/rules doesn't need to wait for a bad to happen.