FCC explicitly prohibits fast lanes, closing possible net neutrality loophole

Comments

• maynarkh@feddit.nl ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Good. The thing is that network “fast lanes” work by slowing down all other lanes.

  source

  • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It’s also responsible for the last few years of streaming price hikes. ISPs throttle streaming services, customers complain, streaming services pay for fast lanes and pass the cost on to customers.

    Fuck Ajit Pai and his orange overlord.

    source

    • Kid_Thunder@kbin.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • UltraMagnus0001@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      And his fucking Reese’s Cup

      source

      • -> View More Comments
  • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

    source

    • maynarkh@feddit.nl ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      See also “deregulation” types arguing for even more stringent regulation of unions.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
• mozz@mbin.grits.dev ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  "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.

  source

  • vithigar@lemmy.ca ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

    source

    • mozz@mbin.grits.dev ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Incorrect, and that was exactly my point

      This is like saying that if the fruit at a store is rotten sometimes, it's not the grocer's fault, because the fruit had to come a long way and went bad in transit. The exact job you are paying the ISP for, is to deal with the hops and give you good internet. It's actually a lot easier at the trunk level (because the pipes are bigger and more reliable and there are more of them / more redundancy and predictability and they get more attention.)

      I won't say there isn't some isolated exception, but in reality it's a small small small minority of the time. Take an internet connection that's having difficulty getting the advertised speed and run mtr or something, and I can almost guarantee that you'll find that the problem is near one or the other of the ends where there's only one pipe and maybe it's having hardware trouble or individually underprovisioned or something.

      Actually Verizon deliberately underprovisioning Netflix is the exception that proves the rule -- that was a case where it actually was an upstream pipe that wasn't big enough to carry all the needed traffic, but it was perfectly visible to them and they could easily have solved it if they wanted to, and chose not to, and the result was visibly different from normal internet performance in almost any other case.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • TonyOstrich@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Ehhh, I get what you are saying but I would rephrase the above poster’s comment a little then. If a person is paying for 100Mbps and they are able to get/find a source or some combination of sources that are able to supply them 100mbps of data then that’s what they should be getting. The easiest example being a torrent for popular Linux distros.

      I personally think the solution to that should be some kind of regulatory minimum around the advertisement of speed or contractual service obligation. For example if a person pays for a 100Mbps connection then the ISP should be required to supply that speed at +/- 5% instantaneous and -.5% on average (because if you give them a range you know they will maintain the lowest possible speed to be in compliance).

      Don’t look too hard at my numbers, I pulled them out of my ass, but hopefully it gets across the idea.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Distance would add latency but shouldn’t reduce speed on well maintained infrastructure.

      source
    • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      There’s always going to be some level of loss and retransmission. It would take a perfect stream of UDP, since TCP needs acknowledgements in order to continue sending data. That can be reduced by window scaling and multiplexing, but it’s still going to happen.

      source
  • Tja@programming.dev ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Very rarely your are paying for 100Mbps. You are paying for “up to” 100Mbps.

    source

    • jwt@programming.dev ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It’s so weird that that phrasing is even accepted as the norm. It would be unacceptable if a grocery store charges you for ‘up to’ 2 liters of soda, and then tells you to go fuck yourself when they give you only 0.5 liter.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I just checked my agreement, and it says something like this:

      Stated Speeds not guaranteed and are affected by many factors. In all cases, actual speed will likely be lower than speed indicated during peak hours.

      But the marketing says nothing about “up to” like it does with typical cable and DSL services (we use a small, local ISP), and I’ve honestly never seen my speed go below the advertised limit. Every time I test it (and I’ve tested during peak hours as well), I get pretty much exactly what’s advertised.

      That said, the agreement I’m reading is kind of funny:

      Random stupid stuff in my agreement

      > Pinging or other network probing is prohibited. Yet when I call support, they ask me to do a ping test. I know what they’re intending to say (it’s talking about hacking, such as nmap-ing some remote service), but the wording is awkward. And this: > You may not use {service} to advertise, solicit, transmit, store, post, display, or otherwise make available obscene or indecent images or other materials. So I guess they don’t like porn. It goes on to talk about stuff involving minors, but this wording seemed broad. > You may not use the Service to transmit, post… language that encourages bodily harm, destruction of property or harasses another. I guess I can’t troll. > You may not advertise, transmit, … any software product, product, or service that is designed to… spam, initiation of pinging, flooding, mail bombing, denial of service attacks, and piracy of software. So I can’t recommend lemmy I guess, since people here like piracy. Oh, and I also can’t tell people how to check their network connection by using ping…

      Blah, blah, blah, I’ve probably violated a half-dozen of those provisions. I’m guessing most of them won’t stand up in court, and they’d have a hard time proving anything since everything should be TLS encrypted.

      Fortunately, my ISP is pretty decent and doesn’t seem to care what I do with it.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • xavier666@lemm.ee ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      This is BS by the ISP. My ISP advertises they give 140 Mbps, I get 140 and sometimes 150 Mbps. Maybe during peak hours I may get slightly less, like 130. But it’s not supposed to be drastically low, like 80-90.

      However, the user must also consider that some issues are beyond the ISP’s control, like how loaded the destination server is.

      source
• MehBlah@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  We just dropped our ISP(Windstream) for never once giving us the bandwidth we are paying for. Their excuse was overhead. However I was on a call with their engineering dept and one of their guys read out the QOS and it was for less than what we are paying. When I brought that up they abruptly cut off everyone but the sales guy who continued to try to blow sunshine up my ass despite knowing it was all bullshit.

  source

  • captainlezbian@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Oh yeah sales people always think bringing an engineer onto a call is a great idea until they try it a few times. We’re a blunt people who want a fair exchange

    source

    • Croquette@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yeah because we know how it works behind the curtain.

      I didn’t go in engineering to fuck people over. I want to be proud of my work, and the salespeople put their dirty shit all over it.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • thejoker954@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Shit, TIL I’m an engineer lol.

      source
  • Liz@midwest.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    QOS?

    source

    • You999@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Quality of service, networking term for rate limiting. Essentially whatever the QOS is set to is the maximum speed you will see.

      source
    • PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Quality of Service. On the user side, it can be used to ensure high-priority traffic actually gets through first.

      In networking, all of the data is bundled into packets. These packets are sort of like a shipping package; They contain a shipping label about where the data packet is going, and how soon it should be delivered. That latter part is QoS. If you have a compatible network, enabling and properly configuring QoS will allow the network to prioritize certain “urgent” data packets over other less urgent packets.

      Maybe your large download is a low priority compared to your VoIP traffic. Because the download will still get done eventually if the packets get delayed by a few milliseconds, but if the VoIP packets end up waiting in line then you’ll get stuttering, bad call quality, dropped calls, etc… So QoS ensures those VoIP packets get delivered before the download packets do.

      But on the ISP’s side, QoS basically means “we’re throttling the fuck out of you so we don’t have to actually build decent infrastructure.” Because if your neighborhood’s line can only handle 2000Mbps of total traffic, but the ISP has sold 3000Mbps worth of service, the ISP can use QoS to throttle everyone in your neighborhood and ensure that every user on that line still gets connectivity. It’s not the connectivity they were promised, but it’s enough for most people to not notice.

      For instance, maybe you have three users with 1000Mbps connections. So when only two of them are using that 2000Mbps line, everything is fine. But when the third user connects, they find that they’re basically locked out. The line is already totally full, so all three users begin experiencing connectivity problems. To avoid this, the ISP uses QoS to throttle everyone; everyone gets throttled down to 666.66Mbps to account for that third user. No single user is getting the promised 1000Mbps, because the ISP has over-sold their infrastructure and is using QoS as a stop-gap to avoid actually upgrading. But since all three users can connect, and most won’t bother actually checking their speeds, the ISP is able to get away with it.

      source
  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Did it at least feel good?

    source

    • MehBlah@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Nah it was very frustrating at the time. However its better since we started the transition to a new provider.

      Its not complete yet but it did indeed feel good when my latest in long line of sales reps called me about a new 36 month contract. Windstream is mismanagements prototype. They have achieved greatness in sucking. They have good technical people who are prevented from fixing problems by their clueless management personnel. These people also change all the time. That revolving door there must be spinning at thousands of RPM’s.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
• Kolanaki@yiffit.net ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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.

  source

  • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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. They didn’t speed up anything. The law was repealed, so they went back to price gouging large data users.

    source

    • my_hat_stinks@programming.dev ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • chiliedogg@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      The FCC really started pushing for net neutrality in the Bush administration.

      In 2005, the Madison River Telephone company (now Lumen/CenturyLink) blocked Vonage from using its networks and the FCC stepped in to stop them. They then established 4 principles of an Open Internet:

      Consumers deserve access to the lawful Internet content of their choice.

      Consumers should be allowed to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement

      Consumers should be able to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network.

      Consumers deserve to choose their network providers, application and service providers, and content providers of choice.

      In 2009, they overtly added the principle of non-discrimination, and in 2010 they made the principles official with the Open Internet Order.

      Comcast sued and got the order thrown out, so they started the prices of reclassifying broadband, and the fight reached fever pitch in 2014 when it looked like the FCC was finally going to win for us.

      But between 2012 and 2016, the ISPs changed their tactics. They stated colluding with the major tech and streaming services pitching net neutrality as a good thing for the established businesses that could pay the ransom or engage in partnerships. A good example was T-Mobile exempting Netflix from their 2gig data limit on cellular plans. T-Mobile was able to advertise the partnership as a good thing instead of an assault on users and the open internet.

      Then the Trump administration took over and took a huge steaming dump on the FCC along with everything else, and the Biden administration just spent the better part of 4 years just trying to seat a commissioner to reinstate open internet.

      I’m not optimistic we’ll have it for long.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
• IllNess@infosec.pub ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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.

  source

  • Horsey@kbin.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I never use Ookla for this reason. I use the Google speed test here in the states.

    source

    • ozymandias117@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Try librespeed

      source
    • ripcord@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Its good for at least confirming the physical links between your system and your home network and the ISP are good.

      source
  • billwashere@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Or host your own speedtest like openspeedtest or libre speed. That’s what I do.

    source

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Can I have a link to your speed test?

      source
• gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Fucking yes. This is genuinely a HUGE win.

  source
• madcaesar@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Thanks Biden!

  source
• fne8w2ah@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  That’s hopefully a final middle finger to the reese-cup-shitpai.

  source
• autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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!

  source

  • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Good bot

    source
• xenspidey@lemmy.zip ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Yay, spam email servers now have full speed. Spam away! You do realize prioritizing traffic is kind of the network norm right? NN was one of those, let’s fix a problem that doesn’t actually exist. You know that right?!?

  source

  • baronvonj@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Network neutrality became policy after Comcast, Verizon, and ATT were all caught throttling Netflix while their own competing services were lagging behind in market share. It was a response to a real problem that was harming competitors and consumers.

    source

    • mozz@mbin.grits.dev ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I literally had this happen to me; it's why I don't use Verizon anymore. Youtube, too. There's a technical breakdown somewhere of precisely how they did it (roughly speaking, "accidentally" underprovisioning the exact exits from their network that would lead to Netflix's servers for no possible reason except to fuck with Netflix and degrade that service and only that service, which it accomplished very effectively.)

      source
    • abhibeckert@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      That’s fair, but personally I don’t think Net Neutrality was the right solution.

      They should have been found guilty of anticompetitive behaviour and split up into multiple companies.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
  • xePBMg9@lemmynsfw.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The type of traffic shaping you are thinking off can still be done under net nutrailty and was never an issue.

    source

    • xenspidey@lemmy.zip ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      The things NN is trying to “solve” was never an issue either

      source

      • -> View More Comments
  • Silverseren@kbin.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    pats your head It's okay, I know reading comprehension is difficult for some people.

    source

    • xenspidey@lemmy.zip ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I know Lemmy is the wrong place for this, it’s just another hive mind like reddit. Actual reading is what got me to this point. So maybe it’s you that should do some unbiased reading.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
  • TheRealCharlesEames@lemm.ee ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Bless your heart

    source

    • xenspidey@lemmy.zip ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Bless your heart

      source
  • Uranium3006@kbin.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    what a dumbass

    source
• aesthelete@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Good.

  source
• IsThisAnAI@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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.

  source

  • helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Just because it hasn’t happened yet, doesn’t mean it won’t slowly be added over the next 5 years.

    Not all laws need to be written before the bad thing happens.

    source
  • baru@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Roe vs wade should’ve been a law. Republicans said it wasn’t needed because of that case. If it isn’t a problem to have a law/restriction, then why argue against it?

    source
  • Kekin@lemy.lol ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    From like a week ago:

    telecomstechnews.com/…/att-turbo-charge-raises-ne…

    source
  • bitwolf@lemmy.one ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Most ISPs prepared material to lobby otherwise. It was shared, I’m pretty sure within this community, when they were discovered.

    source