A modest proposal on internet neutrality

[marplots]

Quite the opposite, it is you who is saying the ISPs should be able to treat data differently.

Spanish, English, Swahili, it doesn't matter what is transmitted or who transmits it, all gets treated the same. That's net neutrality.

So, to clarify, are you saying the government can control what a corporation has to transmit through equipment the private company owns, strung on privately owned poles, on private land, solely because the government controls the easement? (And it's just as much "control" if they mandate the status quo or demand a change.)

But we've settled the minor point about most cable running through public land, right? (I don't want to leave that hanging out there if I was wrong.)

 

[Newtons Bit]

Are cable transmission lines mostly on public or private property? If it's private property under government control, that would align with what I've found.

An easement is property owned by anyone (government, corporate, individual, etc) but rights to use that land are given to others.

I'm currently working on a new building in Santa Fe that has had an easement... issue. The city owns the water main. The water main is about 8ft below grade. The new owner of the land can place sidewalks, parking lots, or really anything on top of the land that can be easily removed so that the city may work on the main. However the city refused to allow a different water line (for a condenser) to cross their water main.

Easements are kinda weird. But we the people who own the land, give away our rights to use our land to the various infrastructure providers (water, gas, cable, phone, power, road, sidewalk, etc) under the premise that the easement will be used for the common good. When the common good is no longer being served, expect the people who own the land being used to protest (or demand regulations).

 

[Sceptic-PK]

Who built the copper networks that presumably still carry most of the bandwidth? Surely ISP's are not actively laying cable around? Sounds awfully inefficient.

 

[elbe]

Who built the copper networks that presumably still carry most of the bandwidth? Surely ISP's are not actively laying cable around? Sounds awfully inefficient.

Actually they are, though a lot of it is fiber. My company has fiber from at least three different ISPs run to it for redundancy and, in the case of comcast, because comcast provides crap service.

 

[fuelair]

Yes, it's nearly all on publicly owned land. Do you think private land goes right up to the street? And who do you think grants easements, the tooth fairy?

If they don't want to treat all internet traffic the same then yank the easements and let landowners charge a fair price for them, I think $1,000 per foot per month is fair.

I'm good with that!!!

 

[Sceptic-PK]

Actually they are, though a lot of it is fiber. My company has fiber from at least three different ISPs run to it for redundancy and, in the case of comcast, because comcast provides crap service.

Yeah right. Sounds ridiculous.

 

[elbe]

Yeah right. Sounds ridiculous.

Erm, why? Seriously, that's what we have. I may be a little, let's say, dismissive of comcast but we actually just bought a fiber line (I say "A" line but with our two US datacenters it's a bit more complicated than that; though likely only a connection to each) from them because our customers who use comcast as their ISP were suffering performance problems connecting to our products (we provide cloud services, and other software products, for a niche industry).

Internet performance is important enough to us that tier 1 network problems cost us money.

 

[Sceptic-PK]

Erm, why?

Because of the duplication (ISP's all building their own networks around each other) or monopolisation (1 ISP is the only game in town and new investment is prohibitively expensive).

 

[elbe]

Because of the duplication (ISP's all building their own networks around each other) or monopolisation (1 ISP is the only game in town and new investment is prohibitively expensive).

That's pretty much true for consumer ISPs, but when you are dealing with data centers things get a bit more complicated. And expensive.

Redundancy is actually a really good idea, though expensive. When you want to talk to a web server your packets jump from router to router through multiple networks to get to their destination. At random times any particular hop that you get routed (the routes are not, of course, static) through may have abnormal latency so having multiple network entry points provides, such as Level3 and AT&T, can work around temporary network problems that could otherwise cost your connection performance, and, potentially, money, if latency and reliability are crucial to your income. If you look at the link I provided above it shows network latency and reliability (packet loss) issues. If everything were always speedy we wouldn't need redundancy, but as you would likely see some connections are just slower sometimes.

 

[Sceptic-PK]

That's pretty much true for consumer ISPs, but when you are dealing with data centers things get a bit more complicated. And expensive.

Yeah fair enough, I am talking only for average consumer stuff. Our entire (copper) network in Oz was built by the government, which helped lower barriers to entry for ISPs even after the network was sold. The new FTTP plan was to do much the same- replace the copper with fiberoptic, with all ISP's renting the network from the government. "Net neutrality" in this context would be meaningless, as the infrastructure wasn't owned or developed by the ISP, and you wouldn't be limited by geography with respect to which ISP you chose to use (to a large extent).

 

[elbe]

Yeah fair enough, I am talking only for average consumer stuff. Our entire (copper) network in Oz was built by the government, which helped lower barriers to entry for ISPs even after the network was sold. The new FTTP plan was to do much the same- replace the copper with fiberoptic, with all ISP's renting the network from the government. "Net neutrality" in this context would be meaningless, as the infrastructure wasn't owned or developed by the ISP, and you wouldn't be limited by geography with respect to which ISP you chose to use (to a large extent).

I believe most consumer runs are generally owned by the local ISP (in the US), but due to local utility monopolies there are limited ISP choices. Cable companies usually have complete control over an area so they likely own the lines from their facilities to your door, give or take. DSL operates through phone lines so any telecom operating in your area could provide that service, but those are also often utility monopolies. Sat is a whole other bag.

There is some issue, I think, over what would happen if a new provider moved in (competition, not replacement). The local may not allow them to share their lines requiring them to run their own both increasing their initial costs and possibly locking them out if they can't get permission. Google, on the other hand, is intentionally putting fiber in that would be open to other providers that want to move in, directly encouraging competition.

I'm going off the top of my head so some of that may not be entirely right.

ETA: I will say that if you've got the money you can probably get larger business class ISPs to run fiber directly to your door. We did it to our office, which isn't exactly downtown.

 

[Sceptic-PK]

Nah that all makes perfect sense, cheers.

 

[Random]

A cable TV company is allowed to not carry a TV station if it does not want to. Why should an ISP be forced to carry a particular web site?

It is all about limited bandwith and traffic. "Net neutrality" is a nice sounding name to make you appear to be a jerk for being against something so cool. And yet it is akin to making contractors build a four lane highway to every business in America, from Disneyland to your Aunt Mabel's doublewide trailer where she runs a home jewelry making business.

Resources are limited, and your Aunt Mabel does not deserve a four lane highway up to her house, nor do her online clients need to have the same bandwidth access as Netflix.

It is not about limited bandwidth and traffic, although that is what the ISPs are hanging their hats on. If it was really about bandwidth, the ISPs could just have fixed charges based on the amount that people upload and download. Nobody would argue with that.

What is really at stake is the ability of ISPs to slow down and cut off sites they do not approve of in order to drive traffic to sites they do approve of. Its like Wal-Mart being given a contract to maintain all roads in America, and we find that all roads going into K-Mart are now single lane, with lots of speedbumps. You can still get to K-Mart, but Wal-Mart is so much more convenient...

Now, the ISPs have sworn on a stack of bibles that they are not going to use their ownership of the physical infrastructure to force people to visit only sites that they own or are have made deals with, while crushing any and all competitors. They are merely opposed to any and all physical, technological, legal, or regulatory mechanisms that would prevent them from doing this. You trust the ISPs, right?

 

[Muldur]

Congress should simply pass a law declaring outright what we all know that ISPs are in reality: they are "common carriers" and have no right to judge or control the content transmitted.

 

[BenBurch]

An easement is property owned by anyone (government, corporate, individual, etc) but rights to use that land are given to others.

I'm currently working on a new building in Santa Fe that has had an easement... issue. The city owns the water main. The water main is about 8ft below grade. The new owner of the land can place sidewalks, parking lots, or really anything on top of the land that can be easily removed so that the city may work on the main. However the city refused to allow a different water line (for a condenser) to cross their water main.

Easements are kinda weird. But we the people who own the land, give away our rights to use our land to the various infrastructure providers (water, gas, cable, phone, power, road, sidewalk, etc) under the premise that the easement will be used for the common good. When the common good is no longer being served, expect the people who own the land being used to protest (or demand regulations).

Exactly. We have franchises that cities award that allow people to put wires on poles in return for providing a contractual level of service. We can decline to renew those at any time, and to hell with your infrastructure investment.

 

[Francesca R]

I think that the ISP industry, at least those who want to remain network neutral, and there are quite a few, should form an industry trade organization which will audit the neutrality of member firms and allow those who pass the audit to display the (insert good marketing idea here) badge on their web sites.

Yes, fine idea.

Consumers, where they have a choice of a neutral ISP and one that is going to play games with their traffic will probably choose the neutral company, and this will force even those companies now committed to providing an un-equal access service to change and provide a neutral service in addition or instead.

You seem convinced; I'm not. Shouldn't even need collective action if that was the case. A single service seller would hoover up all the business in their demand segment just by going it alone.

What we need and must have are ISPs who are Common Carriers, and who must treat all traffic the same [ . . . ]

That's a more immodest proposal, in contradiction to your OP