A list of ways to “Break the Internet” for the 48 hours before the FCC vote

Re:A list of ways to “Break the Internet” for the 48 hours b... by SilasX on Tuesday December 12, 2017 @06:14PM (#15910401)

>Simply net neutrality is your ISP ignoring the contents of your packets and simply routing them to their intended destination.

So then, concretely: say I have an expensive, faster link in my network. I don't look inside the packets, but I allow them to specify some flag in the header that indicates they want to use the fast link (and I keep track of which peer is requesting it to compare to how many such usages they've paid for).

Is that a NN violation? Is that harmful to the internet? Do current or proposed regulations allow it?

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Re:A list of ways to “Break the Internet” for the 48 hours b... by openasocket on Tuesday December 12, 2017 @06:30PM (#15910535)

If the ISP customer is able to specify which link to use and be charged accordingly, that's not necessarily a violation of the spirit of net neutrality. If a bad ISP implemented this and made the slow path absurdly slow, well then you just always use the fast link and it's the equivalent of the ISP just charging you more. It's not harmful to the Internet, and I believe current regulations allow it.

If the server the customer is connecting to is able to specify which link to use and the server pays the bill for that usage, that's a different matter. If a bad ISP implemented this and made the slow path absurdly slow, servers would be forced to use the fast link in order to access the ISPs' customers, and now the ISP is forcing Netflix et. al. to fork over money just to be able to access their customers. That will hurt the Internet, and current regulations do not allow it.

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Re:A list of ways to “Break the Internet” for the 48 hours b... by lurr on Tuesday December 12, 2017 @07:36PM (#15910932)

I'm actually not sure I buy this now.

Lets say I'm an ISP and I build out 2 networks. 1 is 10 times faster than the other. Both end up at the same place and then go out to users.

If I offer companies the option of paying more for the faster network, why is that a problem?

In your scenario it certainly seems reasonable that I should be able to just switch off the slower network, and keep the new prices under the argument that I put in significant amounts of money to upgrade.

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Re:A list of ways to “Break the Internet” for the 48 hours b... by openasocket on Tuesday December 12, 2017 @07:42PM (#15910973)

> Lets say I'm an ISP and I build out 2 networks. 1 is 10 times faster than the other. Both end up at the same place and then go out to users.

> If I offer companies the option of paying more for the faster network, why is that a problem?

If the company in question is a customer of the ISP, there is no problem. The problem I mentioned was when you, as a company, have to pay money not just to your own ISP, but to your customer's ISP, just to give them their data.

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Re:A list of ways to “Break the Internet” for the 48 hours b... by MAGZine on Tuesday December 12, 2017 @06:21PM (#15910457)

Yes, because it means treating packets different based on their contents. In this case, the contents are some header flag.

Is it harmful to the internet? Yes, because it promotes winners and losers. Not just from the consumer perspective. Maybe corporations can pay to have faster downlink to your customers using the same technology.

Current regulations do not allow it. Or, at the minimum, it's a grey area.

You might have seen your argument branded as an "internet fast lane," which I'd suspect would be so much of a fast lane as a slow lane for everyone else.

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Re:A list of ways to “Break the Internet” for the 48 hours b... by SilasX on Tuesday December 12, 2017 @07:05PM (#15910751)

How is that any different from allowing someone to pay more to use more of a plane (e.g. first class seats)? Is this just a general argument that everyone should pay the same and get the same?

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Re:A list of ways to “Break the Internet” for the 48 hours b... by icebraining on Wednesday December 13, 2017 @08:05AM (#15913949)

The analogy of the planes is not very helpful, because each flight is paid for individually. The idea is that traffic to certain peers (not the ISP customers, but whoever they are communicating with) should not be discriminated against. So you can pay for faster service, but all packets coming from or to you would get flagged, not just those going to certain servers.

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