New Legislation Could Eventually Lead to ISP Throttling Ban

An anonymous reader writes "Comcast's response to the FCC may have triggered a new avenue of discussion on the subject of Net Neutrality. Rep. Ed Markey (D — Mass.), who chairs the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, introduced a bill yesterday whose end result could be the penalization of bandwidth throttling to paying customers. 'The bill, tentatively entitled the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008, would not actually declare throttling illegal specifically. Instead, it would call upon the Federal Communications Commission to hold a hearing to determine whether or not throttling is a bad thing, and whether it has the right to take action to stop it.'"

Depend on how much you pay

[marzipanic]

... and even then depends on the company.

We have had the same ISP for years and never had any trouble, we pay for the fastest broadband available which is £40 per month. It changed hands (I will not repeat the name) and now we are throttled, but it is called an AUP. We do not download that much and many "name not mentioned" ISP customers have had exactly the same problem!

They even got found out!

My point is, they are making a public show when they are (or will) do it anyway... just with a nicer name than "throttling", Acceptable Use Policy is much nicer sounding, it really fools us Brits!

Re:net neutrality

[eln]

I think you are, but I'm sure the telcos will have the laws changed to suit them. In my mind, once you start paying attention to the content going over the line in ANY way, you lose your common carrier status and all of the immunities that go with it. Of course, I'm not a billion dollar corporation with lots of powerful lobbyists in Washington, so my opinion on the matter doesn't mean anything.

Re:net neutrality

[Shakrai]

but I'm sure the telcos will have the laws changed to suit them

I wasn't aware that Comcast was a telco.

Re:net neutrality

[bagboy]

Most telcos run an ISP with a non-regulated sub-division which are not subject to "common-carrier" rules.

hmm

[vtscott]

I was particularly interested in this comcast comment from the article:

Importantly, in managing its network, Comcast does not block any content, application, or service; discriminate among providers; or otherwise violate any aspect of the principles set forth in the [FCC's] Internet Policy Statement.

So, they don't block any content? That doesn't seem consistent with their terms of service [comcast.net] (interesting parts bolded by me):

Comcast reserves the right to refuse to transmit or post, and to remove or block, any information or materials, in whole or in part, that it, in its sole discretion, deems to be in violation of the "Content and information restrictions" section above in this Policy, harmful to its network or customers using the Service, negatively affecting its network or customers using the Service, or otherwise inappropriate, regardless of whether this material or its dissemination is unlawful. Neither Comcast nor any of its affiliates, suppliers, or agents have any obligation to monitor transmissions or postings (including, but not limited to, e-mail, file transfer, newsgroup, and instant message transmissions as well as materials available on the Personal Web Pages and Online Storage features) made on the Service. However, Comcast and its affiliates, suppliers, and agents have the right to monitor these transmissions and postings from time to time for violations of this Policy and to disclose, block, or remove them in accordance with this Policy and the Subscriber Agreement.

So what is it comcast? Do you block content or don't you? Either they are lying to the government or they are lying to their customers. And don't get me started on the internet policy statement (pdf warning)... [fcc.gov] I'm sure comcast is all about this one:

To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to competition among network providers,application and service providers, and content providers.

not sure where the Federal interest is

[wiredog]

Interstate commerce clause. It's in the Constitution of the United States.

Re:What about the other end?

[Bert64]

Yeah, i have no issues paying for a 1mb connection or whatever, but i do object to paying for an "unlimited" 100mb connection, where the small print declares there is actually a "fair use" limit and doesnt even say what it is.
Any limit imposed should be clearly defined, and i would gladly pay extra for a true unlimited connection. It should also be mandatory to declare any contention up front too, like "you have an 8mb link to a 800mb backbone, which has up to 200 users so you're connection could drop to 4mb during busy periods". Customers should know exactly what service they're paying for.

Re:What about the other end?

[GiMP]

The problem I see is that some protocols, such as SMTP, provide little in the way of authentication while consuming very little bandwidth per connection, while having access to increasingly large pipes for decreasingly small amounts of money. My point is, with SMTP messages being so small, I'm not sure it is responsible to give big pipes for SMTP traffic for a low cost. Remember, SMTP comes from a different age than online videos, and there is a big difference between a single user requesting a video online, and a server operator sending emails to thousands of users with the equivalent bandwidth.

Do you really expect to push 700,000 SMTP messages per hour on a $6/mo account? Even on a $20/mo account? While you might not see the difference between 100mbps of outbound SMTP traffic versus inbound HTTP traffic, there is the major difference. The HTTP requests are requested, while the SMTP traffic is well... not. While some HTTP content could be illegal or unwanted in some fashion, it is all requested. If a user types in whitehouse.com instead of .gov, they get what they requested, even if they didn't receive what was expected. I think the difference lies in what is responsible.

Though you might not like to hear it, I should also note it is much more affordable to offer 100mbps of HTTP traffic than it is to offer 100mbp of (outbound) SMTP traffic. I base this on the expenses associated with dealing with SPAM. In comparison to HTTP, which is "mostly harmless", the vile nature of SMTP consumes more technical resources, which drives cost.

I'm not saying that reactive methods don't work at all, but there is a definite lag between the time that the first message is sent and when the first complaint is received. Say you're mailing a message that is 512kb, if the lag until notification is 30 minutes you've sent 360,000 messages. If that lag is 8 hours, as I find is more typical, it could be almost 6 million messages! These are all to recipients that may, or may not, want it! Now, if you're a trusted customer that has a legitimate need for sending such bulk mail, there shouldn't be any problem in reducing or modifying such limits. However, good security usually starts with a default-deny policy.

With VPS accounts being offered at low prices (eg. $6/mo), it is very easy for someone to mis-configure their SMTP server, or authorize a stolen credit card with the intention of spamming. From an unmanaged VPS, emails are not monitored, managed, or otherwise handled the host other than as a carrier. When you're rejecting 75% of orders due to failed payment information, you get concerned that some of those that do succeed in using your order form might just not be who they say they are. Web hosting is a very hostile environment, and it is often difficult to provide a reliable, robust environment without active measures. Are you saying that every web host must configure accounts, and wait 8+ hours before finding out if they've now in the spam business?

Everyone talks about identity theft, but much of it originates from phishing sites and spam. I'm afraid that before long, any web host that doesn't do any sort of active anti-phishing / anti-spam will be blacklisted. It is already approaching that point. Large ISPs are already insisting upon SPF. Unfortunately, when you're not directly managing the DNS and SMTP servers, you can't enforce SPF on all of your netblocks. My question is, when someone on your network does manage to send those 6 million emails in 8 hours, will you get deblacklisted while having hosts on your network that aren't using SPF? For now, the solution is to claim carrier status, and hope that is believable when you're still not big enough to warrant direct IP allocations, or multi-homing.

Realistically, if small hosting providers expect to be allowed a market, they must be carry out responsible and appropriate measures to ensure that their services are not abused. If such measures are entirely reactionary, it might not be enough.

I'l