Re:FCC Chairman Ajit Pai will step down on January 20
by Rebelgecko on Monday November 30, 2020 @04:31PM
(#25259269)
Didn't Netflix create fast.com to help find out if any ISPs were throttling Netflix servers? I imagine they'd be pretty vocal about it if any ISP was artificially harming them. Although I guess the problem of net neutrality is that smaller streaming services would need equivalent speed tests to verify if they're being hurt by lack of NN.
Re:FCC Chairman Ajit Pai will step down on January 20
by mywittyname on Monday November 30, 2020 @04:51PM
(#25259497)
Netflix finally acquiesced and paid ISPs (Verizon, AT&T, Cox) money to stop throttling their service. Though, this happened long before Pai took control of the FCC (~2014).
If you have one of those ISPs and Netflix, then you're paying your ISP twice: directly for the internet connection, and indirectly for the privilege of being able to use Netflix. This was literally the argument in support Net Neutrality, which ISPs said would never happen. It only took months for ISPs to capitalize.
Re:FCC Chairman Ajit Pai will step down on January 20
by jakelazaroff on Monday November 30, 2020 @05:46PM
(#25260031)
Wasn't that a peering agreement? IIRC, ISPs weren't throttling Netflix per se — Netflix was just paying them for direct access to their last-mile networks, rather than going through "the open internet".
How would you know? Absolute blocks are one thing, artificial performance differences another. If your ISP was slightly reducing the performance of one streaming service to advantage another, how many people would actually test for this? If a phone maker (apple/google/whatever) was feeding an ISP money to ensure their phones would be that little bit better on the network, wouldn't most people chalk that up to differences in hardware? True evil survives by being difficult to detect with certainty.