What Will Come of the FCC Comcast Hearing

The FCC held its hearing on network neutrality and Comcast today at Harvard. One commentator not afraid to predict what will come of it is O'Reilly's Andy Orem, who writes: "The mere announcement of an FCC hearing on 'broadband network management practices' was a notch in the gun of network neutrality advocates. Yet to a large extent, the panelists and speakers were like petitioners who are denied access to the king and can only bring their complaints to the gardeners who decorate the paths outside his gate. What we'll end up getting is a formal endorsement of non-discrimination as a policy that Internet providers must follow, leading to continual FCC review of current practices by telecom and cable companies."

Comcast sucks

[Izabael_DaJinn]

Andy Oram links to his older article [lxer.com] (which he says is still relevant) where he blames the current situation on other things as well:

1 ) Bell telephone companies.

2) Congress

3) dot-com commerce sites.

4) Internet2

5) "And finally, I'm mad at the public for taking the lazy route and accepting the cheapest form of half-crippled Internet access instead of a high-capacity bidirectional connection that could make us full Internet citizens. Let's not blame the telcos--or at least not stop with them. No one in a position to care has cared enough."

I don't know. I myself can see all those as part of the big problem, of course, but I'd rather just point my finger at guys like this:

Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen: "I don't think we're restraining the customers from using the service in accordance with the way we're selling [sticking] it to them."

Re:Stop misusing "Network Neutrality"

[Tuki]

Also stop misusing "Network Management"! What they are dong is traffic shaping, which I would say is a Network Engineering function, not that of Network Management.

Re:it's simple

[Smordnys s'regrepsA]

...or option 3, they can charge based off of usage (hopefully with a peek/off-peek difference for pricing)

...or option 4, they can reinvest their massive profits into bulking up their infrastructure so they don't have to worry about volume.

Reasonable explanation...

[webword]

"The whole debate an extension of the years-old tussle over whether Net neutrality regulations, which would prohibit network operators from prioritizing traffic as they wish, are necessary to safeguard the Internet's historically open architecture."

Not perfect, but at least the article gets the core idea mostly right. Usually, it gets totally butchered, you know?

Re:Comcast in hot hot heat

[Kryptonian Jor-El]

Basically.

Look, Comcast is just being pissy because they dont want to put in new lines. End of story. In my area (as with MANY others) cable companies are bought out all the time. Comcast bought Adelphia, who had bought GE Communications probably 5 years before that. Comcast KNOWS that if it puts the money into upgrading its capacity, it will bankrupt, and some new, fancy cable company will come in, but its newly installed lines for pennies on the dollar, and take over. Problem solved for 5 years.

I don't care for Verizon personally, but they're doing the right stuff with this FiOS. They're laying down fresh fiber to eventually replace their old copper lines. The interwebz aren't getting any smaller, so this is the way all ISPs will have to go sooner or later (without some miracle in wireless tech).

Furthermore, I am paying for an unlimited service. Thats what its called and advertised as, unlimited. Well, fucking with my speeds and sending fake reset packets, well, that seems like a limit to me, doesn't it?

I envy you people that CAN bitch about other sucky ISPs, because Comcast is the only one I'll ever be able to bitch about here.

Poll

[DavidD_CA]

I'm curious what the /. community thinks... what if a company such as Comcast were to offer two plans:

1. $30/mo - The internet as we know it today without any preference to content providers, advertising, etc
   
2. 2) $15/mo - An internet where some content providers get preference, subsidizing the lower monthly bill.
   
3. 
   If companies offered a choice would we still care?
   
   Or are we worried that all providers will go the way of #2 and the price of #1 will inflate as supply dwindles?

Re:Comcast in hot hot heat

[calebt3]

Have you checked if Speakeasy DSL [speakeasy.net] is available in your area? Their Terms of Service [speakeasy.net] seem somewhat sane:

If you utilize any of your Speakeasy services in a manner which consumes excessive bandwidth or affects Speakeasy's core equipment, overall network performance, or other users' services, Speakeasy may require that you cease or alter these activities.

So there is the possibility that they will ask you to throttle your own speed during the day or something. Not likely, I know, but another paragraph gives some hope:

Speakeasy believes in the right of the individual to publish information they feel is important to the world via the Internet. Unlike many ISP's, Speakeasy allows customers to run servers (web, mail, etc.) over their Internet connections, use hubs, and share networks in multiple locations. Any service that causes a disruption in the network integrity of Speakeasy or its vendors, whether directly or indirectly, is strictly prohibited and could result in termination of service. This may include but is not limited to: IRC servers, adult-content servers, bots, webpages hosted on any Speakeasy servers, servers connected to a Speakeasy provided Internet connection, or shared networks. Speakeasy reserves the right to modify or terminate services at our sole discretion.

There is one other restriction:

Speakeasy respects the intellectual property rights granted under the US copyright laws and the interests of subscribers and content providers on the Internet. You may not store material on, or transmit material over, Speakeasy, Inc.'s information systems or servers in any manner that infringes the intellectual property rights of any entity or individual. All notices received by Speakeasy indicating any activity suspected to infringe upon third party intellectual property rights will be re-routed to the primary account holder on file, accompanied by a request to verify and possibly cease and desist. Speakeasy Inc.'s policy of service suspension or termination of members deemed to infringing the intellectual property rights of a third party is in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") as well as US copyright law.

So no seeding illegal content. But legal content (Vuze, for example) would seem to be acceptable.

Re:Stop misusing "Network Neutrality"

[Wesley Felter]

Did you invent the term? Why is your definition correct and all others wrong?

Re:I disagree

[kiddailey]

Please.

Yes, Bush has been a disappointment, but you're kidding yourself if you think his exit will have any measurable effect on policy.

I can think of a few hundred other people (congress and even the people that continue to vote these shills into office) to blame for lack of positive change along with the president, and they're not all related to the administration. In fact, last I looked, the Democrats controlled congress. If they really wanted to, change could have been long since happening.

As long as the money stays in Washington and we have career politicians, things will remain the same.

Re:Here's what will happen

[Antique Geekmeister]

Yet. What Comcast has been doing is cheap, and nasty: they're not traffic throttling, they're traffic poisoning by forging RST packets. I doubt Verizon's staff want to start down that road, but they're in a better fiscal position to do real traffic monitoring, and with their new fiber infrastructure, they'd better do something to shape it or the kids with the external Terabyte hard drives sharing warez and movie collections and trying to mirror PirateBay are going to flood their most critical connections.

Interestingly, it's going to be a problem overseas, too. An acquaintance in London is complaining about how the release of Iplayer has sucked up all the bandwidth in his neighborhood, and it's interfering with his on-line games. I wonder how the Brits will deal with their tax-funded television stations getting bandwidth shaped?