British ISPs Embracing Two-Tier Internet 305
Barence writes "Britain's leading ISPs are attempting to construct a two-tier internet, where websites and services that are willing to pay are thrust into the 'fast lane,' while those that don't are left fighting for scraps of bandwidth or even blocked outright. Asked directly whether ISP TalkTalk would be willing to cut off access completely to BBC iPlayer in favor of YouTube if the latter was prepared to sign a big enough cheque, TalkTalk's Andrew Heaney replied: 'We'd do a deal, and we'd look at YouTube and we'd look at BBC and we should have freedom to sign whatever deal works.' Britain's biggest ISP, BT, meanwhile says it 'absolutely could see situations in which some content or application providers might want to pay BT for a quality of service above best efforts.' PC Pro asks if it's the end of the net as we know it."
Tipping point: whether websites buy into this (Score:4, Interesting)
Already here (Score:3, Interesting)
There's an Akamai server on my ISP. www.foxnews.com resolves to it, traceroute reaches it two hops off the router on the other side of my DSL bridge, and the homepage loads up blazingly fast.
On the other hand, my packets to www.cnn.com wander around a series of various tubes, until they find their way to Atlanta. www.cnn.com is noticably slower to load. traceroute shows that about twice as much latency accumulates, until it stops at CNN's router.
FOX news is paying my ISP, indirectly through Akamai, for a higher tier of service for my ISP's customers. Their competition does not, and their tier of service is noticably slower.
I try my hardest, but I can't think of a damn thing that's wrong here.
Re:Tipping point: whether websites buy into this (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's hoping that affected sites put up an intro page on any ISPs that slow them down, explaining to the user that the site is slow not because of problems on the site's end, but rather that it's the user's ISP, the company he pays to get access to the internet, that is artificially slowing things down.
That tells the user you can't afford life in the fast lane. That you are strictly second tier.
Wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
And how exactly do they do that? They do it by delaying the packets sent by those who don't pay extra.
No, they locally cache the content providers data so that you don't have the round-trip of getting it over the "real" internet. Realistically it's far too much trouble to manage networks by doing anything to the traffic itself, which implies all kinds of expensive packet inspection. It's far simpler to improve performance by local caching or by QOS for traffic to specific destinations - that the user would want improved access for anyway...
Re:Two very different things (Score:5, Interesting)
...companies have agreed to pay for delivering content to the consumer at faster transfer rates.
Does this mean consumers no longer have to contend with bandwidth and maximum download caps as long as consumers are willing to accept variable speeds? Otherwise, what good does it do me if YouTube wants to pay extra to feed me uncompressed HD quality video in real time if my internet connection can only accommodate a fraction of the required bandwidth and download allotment? For example, my ISP has tiered services. Let's say I'm on the lowest tier. YouTube has paid to have its content delivered at the fastest possible speed. So for as long as I'm surfing YouTube, my connection behaves as if it's on the highest tier. Did I understand you correctly?
That's all well and good except for the fact that every consumer ISP (at least in the US) has pretty much oversold its available bandwidth. It's a zero sum game. In order for my connection to be temporarily upgraded when surfing YouTube, my neighbor's connection will have to be downgraded when he's surfing Vimeo (which didn't pay extra for content delivery in this hypothetical scenario) which may violate my neighbor's minimum level of service (unless of course ISPs downgrade that somewhere in the small print). Because let's be honest here, the extra money that ISPs will be collecting for this prioritized delivery isn't likely to go into upgrading infrastructure because we all know what the US telcos did with the tax payers' money that was earmarked specifically for upgrading infrastructure.
EDIT: lol... the captcha for my post is "extort"
Re:"above best efforts?" (Score:2, Interesting)
"Best effort" in networking terminology is the priority given to traffic that isn't specifically prioritised or limited. There's nothing wrong with what he's saying.
Except for the fact that it doesn't make any sense. How can it be the "best effort" if something can be prioritised ahead of it?
Just because "networking terminology" is stupid, doesn't mean we have to accept it at face value.
Re:Shouldn't governments impose balance? (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, if no other ISP is willing to give "Net Neutrality," and the ISPs can make more money by not offering it, why would any of them.
If this happens, then the Net will become the next cable TV company.
What you pay for is what they decide you will see.
So much for freedom of expression and leveling the playing field.
To recap, once one ISP can do this, they all will.
Re:Two very different things (Score:5, Interesting)
I say we offer them the choice, they can be classified as common carriers and thus carry everything equally or they can discriminate and be responsible for everything that they carry.
No, there is something very wrong... (Score:5, Interesting)
"Best effort" is what we had for years without a tiered Internet. Using that label for a second tier is seriously disingenuous. Before, effort was made to ensure that pipes had sufficient capacity, and that congestion was the exception, and not the rule--that is "best effort". No longer.
Relegating all second class traffic to a permanently congested and insufficient pipe can hardly be considered "best effort". There is no incentive for them to provide sufficient capacity for Internet services which compete with their own services. In fact, quite the opposite.
The reason that the Internet was such a powerful engine for innovation, is exactly because it had excess capacity, and the ability to support new applications. If all Internet traffic is now to be relegated to the scraps of bandwidth remaining from so called "managed services", it is dead for all practical purposes.
Sure, it will hobble along, but a tiered Internet can never provide the rich opportunities for innovation, or even competition with established services. That is why it is crucial that this not happen. Under a neutral Internet, there is every incentive to provide sufficient bandwidth so that it works well for everyone. Once you start carving it up, those incentives disappear, and the incumbent monopolies will prevail.
Content providers, not ISPs, have power (Score:4, Interesting)
ISPs seem to be confused about who is en route to achieving monopoly powers.
In the UK, consumers have a real choice of ISPs and negligible brand loyalty to any of them. iPlayer, Facebook, Google and YouTube on the other hand border on being a staple part of lifestyle. Most people I know also use iPlayer and I'm quite certain they'd all change ISP if theirs stopped delivering it. On that subject, TFA is on shaky ground about contract lock-in because ceasing to provide a significant service is a failure to deliver/material variation which renders the contract unenforceable, and, in my (limited) understanding of contract law, it is nigh on impossible to have valid terms in standard-form contracts to waive such rights.
OK, ISPs could speed up certain companies and not others, and this could get to a point where they're not literally barring access but it's impractical for bandwidth heavy content to compete without doing so. But you're still going to have consumers who are more concerned about content and you're still going to have the 3rd party options like Akamai. The risk for consumers, as the article correctly points out, is the barriers that are created preventing new startups gaining traction.
If it wasn't enough that people are already more bothered about the content than their ISP, all of those companies have various content-sharing and other agreements already, they are clearly not averse to forming agreements on other issues. The balance of power is forming overwhelmingly in the hands of the big content providers.
ISPs should think twice. Some content providers are already showing signs of some monopoly power and by creating further barriers to competition the ISP is throwing itself towards an inevitable conclusion: the content providers charging the ISP.