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   xoxoxoBruce  Thursday Jul 13 11:20 PM

July 14th, 2017: Net Neutrality

Miss Cellania gives us a look at the future without Net Neutrality.

Quote:
Here's what could happen is we lose net neutrality, although I would guess that the prices would be higher. This leaves out the back end, in that websites like Neatorama (and mine) would not be able to negotiate a ($$$) deal to get onto one of those tiers. Casual websites would go completely out of business, and you'll pay through the nose for others. The money would not go to the websites, either, but to the providers. They should be classified as a utility. What can you do? Let your voice be heard.

Your Mom can't wait to say, "I told you so"


Snakeadelic  Tuesday Jul 18 09:35 AM

I've been squeaking about this one in the Internet section for quite a while.

We the people can shout all we want. The big companies are about to be handed their very own money-printing presses. Nothing but failure of their profit margin will change what they do!



Undertoad  Tuesday Jul 18 09:41 AM

And here I though net neutrality was about packet prioritization. It turns out to be about whatever you fear. It's a bogeyman.

T-Mobile offered free music streaming for specific services - basically, hey you pay for 2 GB/month, but we know Spotify and the like use up a lot of that. We'll give you that part without worrying about the data limits.

That was apparently against this form of net neutrality where apparently the rule is things are not supposed to cost more or less for one bit than for another.



Snakeadelic  Tuesday Jul 18 09:43 AM

If our provider ever restructures Internet billing like this, we're going back to discs from Netflix (if available), dumping cable entirely (we'll buy GoT on DVD; we've got the first 6 seasons already) and me being grateful we have hundreds of DVDs (not counting the couple hundred my neighbor has) while I also have thousands of words of non-Internet-dependent creative writing to keep occupied with.



Undertoad  Tuesday Jul 18 09:48 AM

I believe I have a standing wager with you where I will pay your entire internet bill if it happens and you have to vote for Trump if it doesn't. (Not that I wanted an additional Trump vote in the land but it needed to be something to make the wager interesting)



xoxoxoBruce  Tuesday Jul 18 10:15 AM

Quote:
Originally Posted by Undertoad View Post
And here I though net neutrality was about packet prioritization. It turns out to be about whatever you fear. It's a bogeyman.

T-Mobile offered free music streaming for specific services - basically, hey you pay for 2 GB/month, but we know Spotify and the like use up a lot of that. We'll give you that part without worrying about the data limits.

That was apparently against this form of net neutrality where apparently the rule is things are not supposed to cost more or less for one bit than for another.
No it wasn't, that was their choice not yours, a gimmick to promote T-mobile. So anyone that wants to listen to streaming music should switch to T-mobile? And if you can't or won't, fuck you? If you don't live in the urban land of choice, fuck you? If 2GB isn't enough for you just pay more? Because they can't charge for speed they nail you for GBs?

You seem to forget you're a computer dude, the 1%, most people are not and don't even understand your workarounds you've been citing for years as evidence it's not a problem. But none of the ones you've stated solve that last mile problem for the millions who don't have a choice in the last mile.

When they came for the Netflixers, I said nothing.
When they came for the gamers, I said nothing.
When they...


Undertoad  Tuesday Jul 18 10:23 AM

I wasn't the one that said it was against net neutrality to charge zero for the bits. Other people said that. But if they can charge more for specific services they can also charge less, Q.E.D.

I'm not sure why it should not be permissible for any service to offer free bits. Once it gets to the service location people offer free WiFi. That is pretty much the same thing. Go to any McDonald's or Starbucks for your free bits.

And I don't understand the complaint. I have Verizon and have plenty of bits to stream music. Frankly, we all do. Streaming music requires a faction of the bandwidth required to stream video.

The last mile problem has nothing to do with net neutrality, but there's that bogeyman again. Net neutrality is the name for whatever you fear on the Internet. If you fear last mile then call it net neutrality.



xoxoxoBruce  Tuesday Jul 18 10:58 AM

Fearing the last mile is knowing that's the choke point where they have most people by the balls, where all these charges, fees, limits, and controls can be implemented. The ISPs know that and are against net neutrality because it restricts how much they can squeeze those balls, and whose.
If the ISPs raise the rates for everyone, customers can take it or leave it. If the rates are too high, enough will leave it, especially if they have an alternate, to cost the ISPs money. Profits are the end all, be all, for them. That and Net Neutrality are the only tools the consumers have.

I'm already annoyed that 25% of my bill is bullshit charges and fees. I don't stream anything but maybe youtube or Vimeo. Don't know if that counts. But I sure as hell don't want to be limited to what websites I can go to. Thankfully porn is rich and will always be there.



Undertoad  Tuesday Jul 18 12:19 PM

Those fees are because your service includes legacy telephone and/or TV cable. A lot of those fees are old-school hidden taxes, like tariffs and 911. If someone were to provide you with Internet service alone, none of those would be on there. Anyone can just deliver you bits, the problem comes with dealing with local and state governments, and the systems they put in place decades ago.

At the same time, all ISPs now want to be video providers. They have a desperate need to get you enough bandwidth so that you can consume their high-priced cable services with a set-top box. That's where the big bucks currently are. Enormous bucks. That means enough bandwidth to stream porn until you get into the 4K stuff, at which point you'll have to download the videos and view them later, instead of streaming. (It'll be worth it though)

It also means it's very hard for them to block things. Impossible to block anything low bandwidth, for both technical and competition reasons. 3G service is so cheap and ubiquitous that it is built in to devices like the Kindle and people can just assume it works without paying anything. The cost is built in, but it's so low that it's invisible.

Nobody has ever outright blocked websites AFAIK. Throttling perhaps but not blocking, please list counter-examples if you have them. Here is a case where if the tech geeks can do it, you can do it. If Reddit were to be blocked I could give you a virtual private network that could access it for free. The mere fact that it's trivial for geeks makes it impossible for large networks to do. If I can make $1 selling you Reddit, Verizon cannot make $30.

And, part of the reason is that vireless is solving the last mile problem, and competition solves the net neutrality problem. And all that is possible only if the FCC handles allocation of freqencies well, and permits a marketplace to happen. Voila a problem that the FCC was actually created to solve and one it's completely allowed to work on. Nobody seems too concerned about that, I wonder why. It's a much bigger problem then net neutrality. But, once the bogeyman is here it is all we will think of.



xoxoxoBruce  Tuesday Jul 18 03:12 PM

Yes most of the fees are phone, TV, and local government related, for now. The two biggest are ESPN and "local sports", neither of which I ever use. I don't want to see any more added internet. Sam Knows reports to me every month my daily up, down, lost, latency, etc, performance which is pretty good. I don't think I need 4K, no need to be able to distinguish each hair on the areola.

I think you're right about not blocking individual sites... yet, otherwise half the dark net, and much of the deep net would have disappeared. But net neutrality would prevent that in the future, keeping the pipes open to all, not just those who could pay.

OK, you can make a virtual network network to provide me reddit for a buck. What does that do for somebody in bumfuck ME, or KS or AK? Of course that's a buck on top of paying my ISP for most everything else. Or are you saying you can give me the whole net for a buck and the IPSs can't stop it from being available to you?

It seems to me net neutrality is not about a bogeyman but rather blocking a bunch of potential bogeymen. The warnings I hear are a shotgun of possibilities alerting people of consequences they haven't thought of so think well fuck it I'm not affected.
An awful lot of tech smart people are concerned about this but that may be about protecting the status quo. I don't know, but can't see how it can hurt.

I don't understand how classifying ISPs a utility affects or interferes with the FCC's role in allocating frequencies, either. We saw with the telephone how the FCC saved us a fortune with their interference in something they weren't created for originally. We've also seen an end run with the phone service which has caused these ISP monopolies. The FCC should be flexible enough and powerful enough to slow the ass-fucking of the people.



Undertoad  Tuesday Jul 18 05:07 PM

There is a virtual server that serves cellar.org and, if we like, we can direct all your web traffic through that server. We can encrypt it, so Comcast (or whomever your provider is) can't even see what it is. Most people who work from home operate this way; they connect to their workplace over a highly secure connection, and all the Internet they get at that point actually comes via their work. It's kind of like a "secure tunnel". Comcast isn't going to block those types of connections; it would be ruinous to do so.

So, if Comcast willing to sell you 20GB, it often has to be 20GB of nearly anything, because blocking a *source* is really hard to do. Problem is, video is so large that the VPN will soon use up all of its bandwidth; but Reddit is text, so that is of zero concern. A picture = 1,000 words; a video = 1,000,000,000 words.

Public VPNs are currently available. They aren't used to fetch websites blocked by ISPs, because that doesn't happen. Setting up the connection can be made very simple such that even Bumfuckers in AK can do it.

Quote:
We saw with the telephone how the FCC saved us a fortune with their interference in something they weren't created for originally
Using the same interference they are also the most successful government censors in the last three decades. Good luck to us all.


xoxoxoBruce  Tuesday Jul 18 08:54 PM

Comcast nor Vios has ever mentioned GB, is that something they do for VPNs as well as mobiles?



Undertoad  Tuesday Jul 18 08:56 PM

It's MB, I always make that mistake. It'll be 20GB soon enough as FIOS is rolling out gigabit FIOS right now.



tw  Wednesday Jul 19 10:06 AM

Quote:
Originally Posted by Undertoad View Post
The last mile problem has nothing to do with net neutrality, but there's that bogeyman again.
That is where history screams false.

DSL was available in 1981. Why no DSL (or other broadband) in 1990? The last mile. Net neutrality did not exist. Even Isenberger (chief scientist in the Bell Labs) in 1990 was silenced for openly stating, "The internet is coming". The last mile provider historically have stifled innovation when net neutrality did not exist.

Clinton passed the Federal Communication Act. That forced last mile providers to provide broadband (that law also put numbers to the definition of broadband). Suddenly Verizon, AT&T and others were forced to provide broadband internet due to something called free market competition. Suddenly stifled innovations from the Silicon Valley were liberated because net neutrality was the law.

How to get bigger campaign contributions? Michael Powell (an extremist) started attacking net neutrality. We should be paying $20 monthly for the Time Warner, Comcast, Verizon, et al internet. People in other countries with free market access pay that little when free market competition and innovation exists. We pay $50 (or higher) due to what Michael Powell did not 2003 to harm net neutrality.

You should have access to at least five internet providers. We all only have two. Cell phones are not the topic. We are discussing full feature, unrestricted internet access.

We know from history beyond doubt that the last mile providers have and are a greatest restriction to innovation and free market competition. Paragraph one makes that obvious. Restricting bit rate is part of a larger program to enrich and protect a few large providers. To destroy more net neutrality.

We know companies such as Comcast even bought software to subvert or block services they did not want on their networks (ie Bittorrent, Skype). Net neutrality enabled the FCC to expose and stop that. Last mile provider must destroy net neutrality - to make that and other 'profit increaser' possible. Profits should only increase with innovation - not service restrictions. Profits created by innovation occur when free markets are enabled by net neutrality.

Comcast is making so much money (due to alsmost no competition) as to build three largest buildings in Philadelphia, buy NBC, buy Universal Studios, and almost buy a major cell phone company. They already have a monopoly (actually a duopoly) in their phone, internet, and cable markets. Many people are now paying over $150 per month for the service. Obstruction of monopolies, of higher prices, and of stifled innovation is net neutrality.

We were denied internet access by last mile providers for almost 15 years. Last mile providers are why net neutrality laws were created. Only net neutrality liberated the internet, encourages free market competition (lower prices), and promotes innovation. Monopolies (or duopolies) stifle competition to enrich the top management and their elite friends. Enemy of monopolies is net neutrality.

UT describes good service where more net neutrality still exists. He forgets why we were denied internet for about 15 years - until net neutrality liberated the internet from 'we hate to innovate' and 'we are THE phone company' last mile providers.


Undertoad  Wednesday Jul 19 12:16 PM

Heh, of course not. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 has nothing to do with net neutrality and doesn't even mention it. Some net neutrality rules were introduced in 2015.

~

Depending on where you are, you can certainly get Internet access over a private circuit. You're completely allowed, even in residential areas, to talk to someone like Hurricane Electric and purchase an interconnect to get the net to wherever you are. You need not get Comcast or FIOS.

You can get even a Gigabyte connection. It'll be a couple thousand a month, but here's the good news: you can resell it, as slightly-less-than-gigabyte internet, to as many people as you can connect. If you own an apartment building, you can wire the whole thing for this shared gigabyte and charge everyone in the building $20/month.

But if you find that difficult to do, you may want to hire a network admin to make sure the service is running. A tech support person to make sure people have a place to call for help. A billing department.... hmm this may mean more than $20/month to really price out.

It's hard. In 1996 I was running the tech end of an ISP and we connected people at 50K/min, 400 times slower than the average cable/FIOS connection, and charged people $20/month. But we went out of business, hmmm.



Undertoad  Wednesday Jul 19 05:52 PM

Quote:
You should have access to at least five internet providers. We all only have two. Cell phones are not the topic. We are discussing full feature, unrestricted internet access.
Yes, don't include wireless because they don't have a "last mile" problem and as such defeat tw's last mile objections. All wireless is "last mile"...

Which is why 5G wireless is just around the corner and will wind up *replacing* a lot of wired Internet in the next decade. It'll be here soon enough and will provide faster speeds than current wired connections. It's not just for phones, Sparky!

(But in case you missed this as well, phones are computers.)


tw  Wednesday Jul 19 09:41 PM

Quote:
Originally Posted by Undertoad View Post
Which is why 5G wireless is just around the corner and will wind up *replacing* a lot of wired Internet in the next decade.
5G is a done deal. 6G is now on the drawing boards.

Meanwhile, there is not enough bandwidth for all that demand. That is why more TV channels are even being taken away. First channels 83 through 69 were taken away. Now all channels down to 38 will be taken away meaning many TV stations must change frequency. And meaning reception of all stations will significantly decrease.

And change necessary for known current demand. Mobile cannot meet this growing data demand. Most everyone knows that. Some here should know it. Internet providers must get net neutrality eliminated today to gain control of where most of the internet will exist.

These same providers are now vying for control of the internet backbone. Which can be made even more profitable once they eliminate net neutrality. All that means higher consumer costs AND obviously less innovation.


tw  Wednesday Jul 19 09:54 PM

Quote:
Originally Posted by Undertoad View Post
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 has nothing to do with net neutrality and doesn't even mention it.
Outright lie. That law was the benchmark that defined net neutrality.

No law or regulation says "net neutrality". The term is an umbrella that describes the many features implemented mostly in 1996 and that made the internet so innovative and successful. FCC regulations, changed by extremists for the benefit of the big data transporters, is the slow elimination of net neutrality. If we had free markets in the last mile, then 100 mbs internet would costs $20 per month.

Obviously internet is now grossly overpriced - and will sharply increase. Innovation means costs should decrease.

We know Comcast, Verizon, Time Warner, et al already have massive profits at $50 for only 20 mbs internet. (Many must pay even more for that.) We know that consumer costs will increase as they surcharge data providers. That is not even debatable.

Unfortunately, UT is entrenched in the 'we want to protect Comcast, et al' camp. UT has long denied net neutrality even exists or is necessary. How curious. Major innovators of internet technology almost unanimously agree that net neutral is necessary. And that an extremist administration wants to subvert it.


xoxoxoBruce  Wednesday Jul 19 11:47 PM

Quote:
Originally Posted by Undertoad View Post
It's MB, I always make that mistake.
Understandable, but still neither Comcast(now xfinity) nor Vios, has ever mentioned MB or GB to me, only speed.


Undertoad  Thursday Jul 20 12:07 AM

FIOS will sometimes advertise speed as "75 up 75 down" or "50/50" or something similar, Comcast will generally advertise their down speed and they may say something like 100 Mbps. That's Mega bits per second.

So in the case of 75/75, they will transmit up to 75,000,000 bits of data per second, and receive 75,000,000 bits of data from you per second. Very roughly speaking, you can translate that to 7,500,000 characters per second.

I abbreviate that as "75 MB" but, believe it or not, the capitalization of "B" is fiercely argued over in tech weenie sectors, so even that is probably wrong. 75 Mbps is probably right.

Anyway, roughly speaking, a modern HD movie takes up about 5 Megabits of a connection, so if you have a 20 Mbps connection, you can stream four movies at a time. With my 75 Mbps FIOS I can stream 15 of them.

Or you can retrieve the entire cellar.org... 17 years of images, text and data... in about a half hour. On my 75 Mbps connection it takes 8 minutes.

If that's too slow, they are now advertising 1Gbps connections. That's 1000Mbps. At that speed, your hard drives can be replaced with online cloud and you might not even notice.



xoxoxoBruce  Thursday Jul 20 12:16 AM

OK, I just have never heard either mention a Mb limit per month, only speed of moving it. I guess that's only for mobile?



Undertoad  Thursday Jul 20 08:22 AM

That is only for mobile - the limits there ARE in GB (Gigabytes), although VZW is now offering a choice of either 5GB or unlimited. So the infrastructure problems that burdened wireless are slowly melting away, as the competitors do battle.

Unless one streams video, you have to be very phone-involved to hit 5GB. Retrieving all 17 years of Cellar would do it. As bandwidth gets more available places like Facebook are obviously taking advantage by offering live streaming video of your friends. (The American dream of being on television has been answered. We can all be on it at any time. Too bad we have nothing interesting to say or do!)



xoxoxoBruce  Thursday Jul 20 02:50 PM

Hell, I'd been on both TV and radio 60 years ago when it really meant something... except to me. shrug



tw  Thursday Jul 20 08:25 PM

Verizon had a data limit because not enough bandwidth is available in the near future. So others (I believe T-Mobile) have no data limits resulting in more customers. But then T-Mobile did not have enough customers for their bandwidth.

Curious will be how this obvious bandwidth limitation will pan out. Since Shannon's Theorum on information capacity exists. And since moving to higher frequencies is not a viable option.

In order to entrench profits, the large data transporters must subvert net neutrality today so that monopolistic prices can be set in the future as they purchase, consume, dominate more of the internet.

Give Brian Roberts credit. He sees what he needs in 10 and 20 years. He needs net neutrality destroyed.



Snakeadelic  Saturday Jul 22 08:13 AM

So, I just got curious and went to Google. Entered the search string FCC net neutrality. Nothing else, just those 2 words and 1 abbreviation. Right now. Top headlines:

From Ars Technica: "FCC has no documentation of DDoS attack that hit net neutrality comments" with the subtitle:
"Records request denied because FCC made no "written documentation" of attack."

From PC Gamer: "More than 10 million people flooded the FCC with net neutrality comments"

From Gizmodo: "The FCC Is Full of Sh*t"
...and they're talking about the DDoS attack.

All those headlines are listed as less than 36 hours old--a 1 day ago, a 19 hours ago, and an 18 hours ago.

If the FCC is not keeping records of others' potentially prosecutable misuse of something they're desperately clutching for full control of no matter how it's labeled and packaged, WHAT IS THEIR (UNLADYLIKE WORDS HERE) JOB???

The 10 million comments have already been dismissed on the possibility that most were bot-generated just like the good old days of sexbots prowling the Yahoo chat rooms.

I'm so glad I never had kids. I really feel for public schools in areas with poor taxpayer compliance (either don't have to pay taxes because they don't make enough money or just don't for whatever their reasons). Government offices will most likely have unlimited pipelines to one another, but schools are already floundering with art and science programs vanishing faster than Arctic sea ice (and large chunks of scientifically-reviewed published material about climate change and the Arctic). If they keep forcing public schools to be nothing but standardized-test grist mills, we're going to have 2 or 3 generations of people unable to cope with job situations that don't come with a true/false or multiple-choice answer selection right at hand. In 10 years, when kids who are only in 3rd or 4th grade now start graduating, just imagine what customer service jobs are going to be like...

Those who believe Trump is an inappropriate choice for President are in for a long ride by the time we get to whoever his kids and their kids start electing.



Gravdigr  Friday Nov 24 02:24 PM

Attachment 62465



tw  Monday Nov 27 07:12 PM

Quote:
Originally Posted by Snakeadelic View Post
Entered the search string FCC net neutrality.
The Donald will tell you how to think. Don't worry; be happy.


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