Re:The Repeal of Net Neutrality Is Official
by tzs on Monday June 11, 2018 @12:25PM
(#17285665)
> I want to take the devils advocate position here and ask: why shouldn't a vendor be allowed to charge more for tiered service?
The ISPs are allowed to charge more for different service tiers under the 2015 rules, and under the earlier 2010 rules. They regularly do so. Most offer multiple tiers differentiated by speed and/or data volume and/or quality of service guarantees.
What the rules are trying to deal with is the following scenario.
You and I are both end users on the same ISP. We've signed up for the same tier, along with numerous other people.
Consumer ISP plans are almost always oversold, so if too many customers at once try to use their plan to its full capacity there is may temporarily be slower speeds, higher latency, or increased packet loss. The ISPs keep track of how often this happens, and if it happens too often they are supposed to increase their network capacity.
If you and I have similar internet use habits in terms of the kind of things we do and when we do them, then the periods of congestion hit is about equally on average. One night maybe your Netflix movie has some problems, and my Amazon Prime Video movie is fine. Another night, maybe it is the other way around.
To reduce extraneous variables, let's assume that the Netflix servers that server your movies and the Amazon servers that serve my movies happen to be in the same city, and are connected to the same backbone provider, and let's assume that you and I are neighbors, so that your Netflix packets and my Amazon packets are going over the same infrastructure except at the very ends of the routes.
Now suppose our ISP talks to Amazon and says "If you pay us, we'll make sure that when we are congested and have to slow down or drop packets, we'll slow or drop Amazon Prime Video packets last". Amazon agrees.
Even though you and I are on the exact same tier, and paying the exact same amount to our mutual ISP, now I have fine movie nights every night of the week, and you get slowdowns and dropouts.
The ISPs are allowed to charge more for different service tiers under the 2015 rules, and under the earlier 2010 rules. They regularly do so. Most offer multiple tiers differentiated by speed and/or data volume and/or quality of service guarantees.
What the rules are trying to deal with is the following scenario.
You and I are both end users on the same ISP. We've signed up for the same tier, along with numerous other people.
Consumer ISP plans are almost always oversold, so if too many customers at once try to use their plan to its full capacity there is may temporarily be slower speeds, higher latency, or increased packet loss. The ISPs keep track of how often this happens, and if it happens too often they are supposed to increase their network capacity.
If you and I have similar internet use habits in terms of the kind of things we do and when we do them, then the periods of congestion hit is about equally on average. One night maybe your Netflix movie has some problems, and my Amazon Prime Video movie is fine. Another night, maybe it is the other way around.
To reduce extraneous variables, let's assume that the Netflix servers that server your movies and the Amazon servers that serve my movies happen to be in the same city, and are connected to the same backbone provider, and let's assume that you and I are neighbors, so that your Netflix packets and my Amazon packets are going over the same infrastructure except at the very ends of the routes.
Now suppose our ISP talks to Amazon and says "If you pay us, we'll make sure that when we are congested and have to slow down or drop packets, we'll slow or drop Amazon Prime Video packets last". Amazon agrees.
Even though you and I are on the exact same tier, and paying the exact same amount to our mutual ISP, now I have fine movie nights every night of the week, and you get slowdowns and dropouts.
That's what the rule is trying to stop.