Taking The Profit Out Of Killing 'Net Neutrality' (cringely.com) 257
Robert Cringely has a plan to ensure that internet providers will never profit from the end of net neutrality:
We are being depended upon to act like sheep -- Internet browsing sheep, if such exist -- and without a plan that's exactly what we'll be. The key to my plan is that this is a rare instance where consumers are not alone. There are just as many or more huge companies that would prefer to keep Net Neutrality as those that oppose it... Those companies in favor of Net Neutrality obviously include the big streamers like Amazon, Hulu, Netflix, YouTube and a bunch of others. They also includes nearly every big Internet concern including Google, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft. Those are some pretty big friends to have on your side -- our side...
So I suggest we all join ZeroTier (ZT), a thriving networking startup operating in Irvine, California. There are other companies like it but I just think ZeroTier is presently the best. ZeroTier is a very sophisticated Virtual Private Network (VPN) company that has created a Software Defined Network that goes beyond what normal VPNs are capable of. To your computer or almost any other networked device (even your smart phone), ZT looks like an Ethernet port, whether your device has Ethernet or not. Through that virtual Ethernet port you connect to a virtual IPv6 Local Area Network that's as big as the Internet itself, though the only users on this overlay network are ZT members.
The trick is to get all those big companies that are pro-Net Neutrality to join ZT. The most it will cost even Netflix is $750 per month, which is probably less than the company spends on salad bars in their Los Gatos HQ. Embracing ZT doesn't mean rejecting the regular Internet. Netflix can still be reached the old fashion way. I just want them to add a presence on ZT, too... What the ISPs won't like about this plan is that ZT traffic can't be read to determine what rules or pricing to apply. They could throttle it all down, but throttling that much traffic isn't really practical.
So I suggest we all join ZeroTier (ZT), a thriving networking startup operating in Irvine, California. There are other companies like it but I just think ZeroTier is presently the best. ZeroTier is a very sophisticated Virtual Private Network (VPN) company that has created a Software Defined Network that goes beyond what normal VPNs are capable of. To your computer or almost any other networked device (even your smart phone), ZT looks like an Ethernet port, whether your device has Ethernet or not. Through that virtual Ethernet port you connect to a virtual IPv6 Local Area Network that's as big as the Internet itself, though the only users on this overlay network are ZT members.
The trick is to get all those big companies that are pro-Net Neutrality to join ZT. The most it will cost even Netflix is $750 per month, which is probably less than the company spends on salad bars in their Los Gatos HQ. Embracing ZT doesn't mean rejecting the regular Internet. Netflix can still be reached the old fashion way. I just want them to add a presence on ZT, too... What the ISPs won't like about this plan is that ZT traffic can't be read to determine what rules or pricing to apply. They could throttle it all down, but throttling that much traffic isn't really practical.
Here's the link... (Score:5, Informative)
...to ZT [zerotier.com] that was so thoughtfully removed in the summary.
Re:Here's the link... (Score:5, Interesting)
ZT traffic can't be read to determine what rules or pricing to apply
There's no need to read ZT traffic. There's no need to apply rules or pricing. They will just block all of it. 100% guaranteed.
If you think that Comcast/AT&T/Verizon, et.al., give a shit, you haven't been paying attention.
A better plan (Score:2, Interesting)
Rather than everyone joining a universal VPN, which as the parent mentioned they could just block, here is my proposal.
If you have a reasonable state, have the legislature create net neutrality rules in the state. All packets within the state must obey network neutrality. For the most part, this will take care of the problem within the state, as the Internet routes around the bullshit. You might need to have the state encourage a few key nodes to be located within the state as well.
This is not a 100% sol
Re:A better plan (Score:4, Insightful)
The ISP will just route all traffic 10m across the border and throttle it there.
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Then politicians can campaign against the evil ISP and one thing they can campaign on and deliver is broadband without the bullshit.
Some politicians have tried that, including Hillary Clinton. In Nov 2016, they mostly lost, although mostly for other reasons. This is not a winning electoral issue. The people that care about this are too sparse and diffuse to matter.
Democrat politicians support NN because get donations from content creators. Republican politicians oppose it because they get donations from telecoms. So NN will live or die depending on whether Ds or Rs win or lose on other issues.
With Trump in the Whitehouse, NN is dea
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NN is dead for now. If the Democrats win in 2020, it may come roaring back.
Unpopular opinion here, so beware. And yeah, disagreeing mods may downmod but that does not change the validity of my arguments.
First things first: my network, my rules. If you don't like it, don't go on my network. I operate a very small personal network where I provide services (free of charge) to family and friends. For that I have an AS number and some IP space, and I purchase transit from a Tier-1 ISP.
If I want to throttle something, that should be my right. I want to block something, that should b
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Was going ok until the conservative party that got in when the fibre rollout was just ramping decided that the old copper networks were too good to just throw away, so changed to using the old cable networks and replacing fibre with copper based VDSL.
The copper based rollout is becomi
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There is a solution which allows for a competition of ISPs - open local loop. When I lived in Sweden I could choose from between at least 10 ISPs - all running through the same Fiber to the Apartment. There is one thing that the EU does better than the US and that is maintaining a competitive market and protection of the the consumers interests.
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Freight railroads in the US are built, owned, and operated by private companies. (See CSX, Norfolk Southern, BNSF, and Union Pacific)
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Yes, but they were (originally) largely subsidized by the goverments' (of all sizes) giving them land, eminent domain, etc...
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Oh wait- I don't have any other ISPs to choose from.
And this is exactly my point. This should be fixed. Not "net neutrality".
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Re:A better plan (Score:5, Informative)
Which is why Verizon et al are also petitioning to pass a federal law that prevents states from passing state laws to protect privacy/neutrality. Because internet is "inherently interstate"... you heard it right, they're looking to both claim they don't deserve Title2 and that they are interstate and shouldn't be able to be regulated by states either.
After careful examination... (Score:2)
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I have an even better plan: To deal with net neutrality issues, everyone should buy $mycompany's stuff. Buy $mycompany's stuff. That will fix net neutrality issues.
Well, for me anyway, I'll have enough money to buy all the bandwidth I need. Scaling it up is left as a homework exercise.
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ISP's will not and cannot block VPN's (Score:2)
The reality is that nowadays a LOT of workers use VPN's form home to do work, so no ISP can realistically block VPN traffic.
ISP's blocking this or that is everyone's worst fear of having no NN but every time an ISP has tried for any content (even torrents) they have quickly reversed course.
Personally, I am pretty sure that if you use a service like this your traffic is almost certain to be collected by the government (as they would probably capture a lot of juicy material to hold over people). So I've alwa
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Personally, I am pretty sure that if you use a service like this your traffic is almost certain to be collected by the government (as they would probably capture a lot of juicy material to hold over people). So I've always seen it as a choice as to whole you want knowing what you do with your connection - an ISP or the government. I know which I trust less (yes, even over Comcast).
You are daft if you still don't think the NSA is recording everything you do. They may not look at it, but they have it.
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they will create a service called "XFinity Business Premium!" and charge an extra $20 a month
You say they will but right now Comcast is in fact advertising on Twitter that they will block/limit/throttle nothing.
Again, every time some ISP has tried anything like this they quickly backed off.
Comcast MAY put forth new options to provide QOS guarantees around some types of traffic but it will not mean limiting normal traffic for people that do not subscribe to those services.
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You're not thinking about this from the right angle - they will never block this website. Why? Because they'd need a good reason or they will be sued by the government. Meanwhile, it is vastly more profitable to throttle them and demand money. They could even throw in extra fees for lost advertising dollars because that company takes away their targeted advertising power. The ISP is entirely in power here to make whatever demands it wants to, and the ISPs don't want to block sites, they want to extort them.
Re:Here's the link... (Score:5, Insightful)
They're posting this crap on a tech site, and they expect people to actually buy into it?
This is advertising bullshit. There is nothing about ZT that would prevent ISPs from throttling the shit out of it, or banning the traffic altogether. That's assuming that ZT would even have the capacity to deal with the traffic in the first place, which they don't.
It doesn't matter what kind of gateway you're running. ISPs can throttle/block any point of entry they want without net neutrality. If you run over their lines, they can bend you over and no amount of of garbage like this will help.
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Mod parent up. ZT is just a proprietary VPN system with a few fancy features. Nothing special about it.
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Nice thought Cringely, but if Netflix used ZeroTier, somebody is going to pay more than $750 per month just for the electricity to power the switches that carry their traffic.
And... (Score:2)
Here's another link [wikipedia.org], in case the first one doesn't work.
Lol... (Score:5, Insightful)
Running away from walled gardens to another walled garden is not a solution to the net neutrality problem and certainly doesn't "take the profit out" of it. It just moves that profit to another company. /vertisement.
Re:Lol... (Score:5, Informative)
I only had a quick look at ZeroTier, but it doesn't seem to be a walled garden. It's a peer-to-peer network and their business model is to make money from support and closed-source licensing, while the software is available to the public under GPL.
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I only had a quick look at ZeroTier, but it doesn't seem to be a walled garden. It's a peer-to-peer network and their business model is to make money from support
So they want to be the gatekeepers of the internet to protect us from the gatekeepers of the internet, and they will only fail in such a way as to generate a support request when they are failing to meet payroll? That doesn't sound like a win to me.
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It's gatekeepers all the way down.
So to speak.
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https://news.ycombinator.com/i... [ycombinator.com]
Naive ideas like zerotier depend on central "tracker" nodes, not the torrent kind, but more like DNS. Sure, you can run DNS alt roots, but nobody will use those, because DNS isn't federated, DNS authority is a hiearchy.
People should know be
Re:Lol... (Score:4, Insightful)
Running away from walled gardens to another walled garden is not a solution to the net neutrality problem and certainly doesn't "take the profit out" of it. It just moves that profit to another company. /vertisement.
Yeah, I'm kind of not seeing how this is a solution. The FCC wants to make a multi-tiered Internet, where you pay more to get the data you want. With this... you pay more to get what you want.
That's even assuming it doesn't just get throttled into oblivion. Or worse, bought by Comcast or AT&T.
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See, the problem isn't that ISPs are trying to throttle Internet traffic unless the website pays a toll (mak
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You just basically claimed that we don't need existing net neutrality regulations then described a solution that consists primarily of exactly that. They really brainwashed you good. I suggest you see a professional. Seriously. Wake the fuck up.
Re:No, the FCC doesn't "want" that (Score:5, Insightful)
The FCC wants to roll back imperial fiat which should have been legislated properly.
What's an "imperial fiat"? Is that some sort of Italian car driven by an Emperor? Or are those just words that don't convey meaning, but you think they sound educated? Like "paradigm shift". Also, the FCC was empowered to pass the rules it did, just as the current regime is empowered to declare those older ones void. None of this is a matter of overreach, no matter what the current board's leadership claims.
The FCC also doesn't want to have to regulate ISPs as common carriers, because that's an incredibly expensive piece of work.
Odd. Regulation is remarkably easy and inexpensive given a} the regulations are already published, and b} this kind of regulation doesn't require any actual effort on the FCC's part until one of the mega-ISPs decides to try to weasel those regulations for "value-added-services", a.k.a. more profit. And even then, it's a fairly simple matter of passing a decision.
This isn't like regulating the alcohol industry, where you actually need people to go out and try to get bartenders to serve under-agers and the like.
Your internet is no different with the rollback of this fake "network neutrality" then it was for the 8 years Obama was in office and it was okay. And, for the record, nothing about this "network neutrality" prevented anything you feared happening to the internet.
What alternate-history universe are you from? In ours, several ISPs were on the brink of, and beyond the brink of anti-consumer actions. The most obvious example was double-dipping, demanding additional payments from Netflix. "It would be a terrible shame if something happened to your pretty packets as they traverse our network." Consumers were already paying for their bandwidth... for the ISP to obtain, transport, and deliver the packets that were requested. If consumers contract for #Mbps and a monthly cap of #Gb of data, they've paid for those bytes' transit, and that they come from a source with deep pockets shouldn't matter.
It would only have changed the words that ISPs use to throttle traffic. Instead of "throttling Netflix" they would just "throttle encrpted video playback" but still could have given preference to their data which is a live stream.
How about they don't throttle anything because they've been paid to deliver the packets already? Just a thought. Also, the main purpose behind network neutrality.
You got suckered.
Well, there's an assumption. Turns out I don't live in the country getting suckered. I just know that crap flows downhill.
But here's the biggest sign that you're off your rocker: if the network neutrality regulations were ineffective, why would the FCC under Ajit Pai be so incredibly zealous about repealing them? It should be easy to earn voter happiness by bowing to the public pressure and saying "fine, let them keep their placebo regulation." Right. Because it's not a placebo. It's very much protecting the public from more predatory practices than the massively-profitable ISPs are already undertaking.
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Odd. Regulation is remarkably easy and inexpensive given a} the regulations are already published, and b} this kind of regulation doesn't require any actual effort on the FCC's part until one of the mega-ISPs decides to try to weasel those regulations for "value-added-services", a.k.a. more profit. And even then, it's a fairly simple matter of passing a decision.
Title II is not remarkably easy especially for new small ISPs entering the market hoping to bring some much needed competition.
Your first hint of this practically nobody including Wheeler et al wanted Title II. Only after FCC lost in court was it invoked as a means to grant themselves the authority to move on with NN.
Even then many of the Title II regulations were exempted (27 exemptions and over 700 associated regulations) by FCC so they would not be applicable to ISPs. The exemptions exist for a reason.
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You know, the rest of your post was pretty good. It's too bad you had to include this bit of idiocy in the beginning:
What's an "imperial fiat"? Is that some sort of Italian car driven by an Emperor? Or are those just words that don't convey meaning, but you think they sound educated? Like "paradigm shift".
Both of those phrases are perfectly sensible. "Paradigm shift" is a big jargony, and is often overused by business types to describe minor changes in perspective that are definitely not paradigm shifts, but there's nothing at all wrong with "imperial fiat". Just read the definitions of both words and combine them.
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If not Zerotier, we will band together somehow (Score:4, Insightful)
The internet is not for sale by any pseudo owner. Fuck them. This is the commons and we can control it if we organize.
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Slow down there, Adam Smith... Who are you calling "parasites"?
I remember HUNDREDS of billions of dollars being paid over the last couple decades in the forms of grants and tax breaks to those poor, over-taxed corporations for upgrades and service that was never delivered. What about all of the government subsidies and funding that paved the way for the Internet, computers, etc?
Want to know what happens when a country socializes the risky research and infrastructure and then privatizes the profits? Look
see PRC dude (Score:5, Interesting)
This approach (tunneling traffic to avoid the ISP slow lane) is too simple for a reason- it is trivial for the carriers, or anyone with simple flow data, to detect tunneled/VPN traffic and then route it prejudicially (even if the carrier cannot read the encrypted payload). Itâ(TM)s what PRC and other totalitarian regimes have been doing for years : penalizing tunneled traffic by default.
And then they completely refuse packets (Score:5, Interesting)
..from Zero Tier, because it "promotes cyberattacks." What do you do then?
Not practical? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why woudn't throttling this be practical? If the ISPs are free to throttle everything else, and they don't mind their customers suffering, why would they stop at a VPN, especially a VPN that is meant to stop throttling. In fact they can throttle it much more than any other type of content, since it just means that the users will stop using it and switch back to accessing their content directly.
Re:Not practical? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's actually more practical to throttle everything other than their approved content from a technical standpoint. Whitelisting your golden IP ranges is rather easy.
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A big telco buys the best deep packet inspection at the time and that equipment had limitations given the need for speed and what the private sector wanted to pay. Its fast but can only look for a few sets of information.
A file checksum for US law enforcement on every movie, picture, file that has to be found and tracked in real time for US law enforcement.
Any p2p use.
Fast deep packet inspection thats in use only finds network things that are very differe
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You still didn't explain why throttling would be a problem.
The ISP doesn't need to know who you are trying to communicate with to throttle the communication. They can just throttle everything EXCEPT the things they can identify and have been 'compensated' for.
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New VPN networks can look like other trusted and protected networks when detected in the middle of another network in real time.
A telco would have to investigate the origin and destination of every suspected VPN user.
Find the network that responds like a VPN? Slow it.
Thats a lot of interesting requests been pushed around the world from one telco trying to detect a skilled set of changing VPN ser
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A monopolistic ISP can still throttle everything it can't identify. They can slow everything they can't positively identify as someone who is paying their extortion money. And their reputation does not matter if there is no effective competition. Are their customers going to go without internet access?
HAHAHAHAHA wtf is this (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, lets solve this buy paying ZT a ransom instead of AT&T or Verizon.
No, I don't think so. This is just a (very) thinly veiled ad for yet another company trying to make a profit off providing access to services people are already paying for.
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paying ZT a ransom instead of AT&T or Verizon.
In this case it's paying ZT *and* AT&T or Verizon a ransom. Which easily illustrates *why* this is utter crap, the owner of the wire still has supreme veto power, so all a solution like ZT can do is give you warm fuzzies.
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The reduced revenue will knock some sense into the greedy republican politicians
Except the greedy giant corporations in question are notably liberal in their politics and support, and it's that handful of giant corporations that's got the vested interest in maintaining a system with compliance costs so high that competition can't get started, even in tiny rural areas where those huge corporations you're shilling for won't bother to invest. Stop shilling for Comcast, shill.
Several practical issues (Score:5, Insightful)
What the ISPs won't like about this plan is that ZT traffic can't be read to determine what rules or pricing to apply. They could throttle it all down, but throttling that much traffic isn't really practical.
If they can throttle popular destinations like NetFlix, or protocols like BitTorrent, why wouldn't throttling a VPN be practical?
Once all the video companies are on ZT, followed by social media and search, (don’t forget gaming!), that’s probably 80 percent of all Internet bandwidth.
For fast-paced games, low latency is very important and any kind of additional layer will add latency.
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If they can throttle popular destinations like NetFlix, or protocols like BitTorrent, why wouldn't throttling a VPN be practical?
It's practical, but not desirable. Throttling a VPN is an all-or-nothing proposition - you throttle all traffic on that flow or none of it.
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To whom, exactly? Not everyone has a choice in which broadband ISPs are available.
Or they could just fall back to dialup and get the same effective speed anyways.
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As they would only be throttling the traffic that they did not explicitly recognize. I'm still not sure that's a problem. For TCP, it's not going to be delivering new packets to the end-user faster than they acknowledge the receipt of each one, so the user's speed is controlled that way, with redundant acknowledgements ignored. For UDP, it can just drop packets entirely if the received content as amortized over the last some fixed number of packets or period of time exceeds some bandwidth threshold. Dit
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A VPN network can alter its origin, ports, ip ranges, encryption again and again.
Is it a paying bank under that code? p2p? A US consumer trying to escape been slowed by their own US telco?
A telco then has to re work its entire network to hunt down and slow encryption that could be paying banks, gov, contractors, p2p, a skilled new consumer VPN network
What can a telco do then to uncover creative and advanced new VPN use?
Send requests to the origin com
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Right... (Score:5, Insightful)
So everyone in the country should send their traffic through a single VPN? How does that scale to 300m citizens, and what will stop the VPN company from throttling webpages that don't pay their internet baksheesh?
300 million citizens? Give me a break. 250 million of those citizens can't even fucking spell VPN, and they certainly don't give a shit about Net Neutrality.
These are the same citizens who will happily shell out an extra $10 per month for the "premium" internet tier just to feed their social media addiction. Those against Net Neutrality know this.
The masses proved long ago that ignorance is bliss. Don't expect them to start caring anytime soon.
Ethernet is a PHY spec (Score:2, Insightful)
"The sex symbol, airplane enthusiast and adventurer continues to write about personal computers and has an active consulting business in Silicon Valley, selling his cybersoul to the highest bidder." - [Emphasis Added]
After seeing this, he should really drop the "L" fro
How did this blatent ad get on slashdot (Score:5, Interesting)
There is not information here, no news, nothing funny just a blatant add for a company with a really expensive and really dubious sounding VPN. I view slashdot as my source of all news that is not fake. What went wrong here. @cowboy_neil - we need answers.
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"Robert Cringely" are the key words. This idiot has a long, long history of trolling slashdot. My working theory is that he keeps finding backdoors in the article submission code because I can't imagine even the dumbest slashdot editor (it's a low bar, I know) hitting accept on his garbage.
Sigh (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Blatant slashvertisement. Seriously. Stop it.
2) "They could throttle it all down, but throttling that much traffic isn't really practical."
If they can throttle the entirety of the Internet, except Netflix, they can certainly throttle all of ZT too.
Uhhhm... No. (Score:2)
No, really, Just No.
1) This approach just puts all the eggs into one easily taxed basket.
2) Does NOTHING to combat last mile access issues, which is the real thorn in the side here (The same people that control the last mile, and thus prevent competition in their blocks, are the very same people behind wanting to murder net neutrality. They will just deny you access to this service over their network/refuse a peer relationship with them/charge you a shitload of money if they detect packets for this network
A lot of advocates are unreasonable (Score:3)
I see people on social media saying "I pay for da interwebz, I'll do whatever I want and oh btw, I'll do it at the full speed I was 'sold.'" A lot of these are people that should know better, who should know that they were never sold a package with a QoS agreement with the ISP. The reason you can afford 75mbps+ at a rate that is supportable on a few bucks above minimum wage is precisely that "up to $Xmbps" in the contract and the other stipulations that make it clear they can impose QoS policies to give the best service to the most people. Turns out streaming 4k NetFlix to 1% of their users might not fit that description.
Thanksgiving morning, I tried to download an update to IntelliJ which is about 500MB of data. My FiOS connection was slow probably because my neighborhood, which is pretty large, were all home streaming NetFlix, Hulu, etc. waiting for Thanksgiving dinner. Anything I tried to download over an ordinary HTTP connection was slow, but NetFlix was just fine for my kids... So as far as I know, I was on the losing end of bandwidth prioritization.
To me this wailing that streaming users might be discriminated against is like hybrid drivers complaining that they might face additional alternative taxes to cover the fact that their cars put the same wear on the roads, but don't fund it properly through the gas tax. It may not be fair, but those shared resources (private or public) are not elastic. It costs money to maintain them and keep the same level of service as usage patterns change.
The Good Old Days (Score:4, Informative)
They damn well CAN throttle that much traffic. AT&T, Comcast, and the rest of the big ISPs all dream of the days of yore when there was AOL, CompuServe, and GEnie. Nothing but a few walled gardens, and the paying customers lived inside and almost never ventured out.
THAT is what they want, and how they will throttle. Comcast vs non-Comcast traffic is how it will be played. They'll prioritize THEIR VoIP over companies like Vonage, implicitly harming competition. Want NetFlix? Well, Xfinity Streaming is just like Netflix, but faster and cheaper!
These companies desperately do not want to become only transport providers, or dumb pipes. The money is in the content -- what the roads lead to, not the roads themselves. The ISPs was the return of the Company Town, where they own the roads AND the stores, and a big toll gate leading out of town.
Cringely indeed (Score:2)
This is not a solution, this is paying more for a new unproven service with an opportunistic ad.
First of all, Netflix or other services joining it is just wishful thinking. Come back when you have the vast majority of them already paying for it. This isn't how things works out there, throwing low prices thinking these companies will fish - you have to go directly at them and make a business proposition. If you didn't bother to even do that, how can you think people will buy it?
Pay us and the services will c
It's a good idea (Score:2)
But then ZT becomes an "ISP" of sorts (Score:3)
Sad to say, solves wrong problems (Score:2)
Activating a VPN does little to nothing to solve the throttling issue. The throttling is done against the upstream services, at the routing or "network layer", where the ISP's organize connections to local hosts. Simply making that connection from another host in a preferred region leaves the connections to that remote region sill simply leave the remote region throttled, as well, especially if this "single solution" VPN solution is detectable at the routers or firewalls and can be preferentially throttled
In the War Room at YouTube (Score:2)
I'd be intetested to hear what ideas those big players might come up with. If ad money and tracking should suffer I expect even ideas including hardware, finance and politics may be considered well within fair play. Drone and balloon meshes, a Youtube VPN, PACs to remove incumbents, federal lawsuits and hostile takeovers are all potential tools for such juggernauts. It just has to hit their bottom line, so they can then turn around and do the same favor for Pai's crowd. There should be people already wargam
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I have met more than one person that believes the FUD that we need to have central authority on the Internet to prevent Russians from manipulating elections. It's not going to be hard for those in power to strip the Internet away from us, turning the information superhighway into a very long toll booth.
Kill the profit (Score:3)
It won't work, but here's what will. (Score:3)
I call it "don't feed the trolls," and it works like this. The moment an ISP starts throttling someone, this coalition of content providers blacklist that ISP. Anyone on that ISP gets a black screen telling them what's going on and contact their ISP to stop the throttling. No paid fast lanes, just the black screen.
This will work because which ISP wants to be the first one to lose Netflix, Facebook, Google, and so on?
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I predict that people who need those online services will use their cell phones or pay for VPNs to bypass the blocks until they have setup their community broadband ISPs. It will be wonderful, at least where such competition is legal.
Security through obscurity? (Score:2)
Another problem with this proposal is that only 0.01% of the population can understand what ZeroTier does, so even if ALL of them adopt it, they won't have a significant impact on the network. Also, the
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Seen this idea somewhere else... oh wait? (Score:2)
Somebody recently suggested just this sort of thing: https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
Oh wait. That was me. Only, I didn't suggest a single company benefiting.
It'll happen legally, not technically (Score:2)
A natural consequence of ISPs trying to negotiate individual deals with content providers is that the content providers will ally to increase their bargaining power. I suspect the ISPs will be in for a rough surprise if say the top 20 content providers (YouTube, Netflix, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, Amazon, eBay, Wordpress etc.) join forces to "negotiate" because if one site is slow that site has a problem. If users feel all the big ticket sites on the Internet are slow, the ISP has a problem. The
So let me see if I have this right... (Score:2)
Service providers view consumers as a resource. Data providers like Google, Netflix, etc. also view consumers as a resource. So we're supposed to believe corporations in the latter category will come charging to the defense of consumers and start a war with a rich, exceedingly powerful enemy?
Yeah, right.
Far more likely: one group of rich, powerful corporations form an alliance with another group of rich, powerful corporations to shaft consumers more vigorously, more thoroughly and with even greater gus
What the FCC aims to kill is a neutrality impostor (Score:5, Insightful)
What the FCC proposes to end in December isn't network neutrality; it never was. It's an impostor masquerading as network neutrality because some influential wonk put that label on it and legions of ignorant fools propagated it.
Meet the real network neutrality: citizens owning the very same physical network that they use. It's time for eminent domain to be applied against that network and get rid of this chatty impostor once and for all.
ISPs will black list major VPNs (Score:2)
The ISPs will block VPNs claiming they are maleware sites. They won't even need to go to the effort of throttling, you simply won't be able to reach your favorite VPNs.
Re: (Score:2)
There is a flaw in this plan... (Score:2)
Sure the big ISPs can't see what type of data you're sending, but they could check to see if the traffic is routing to ZT's network and just bill it at the highest rate.
Reads like an ad (Score:2)
Is this a sponsored press release for Zero Tier VPN? I know it's Robert Cringley, I know he makes passing reference to other VPN providers, but this reads like an ad.
Look the author up on wikipedia (Score:3)
Then consider the irony of this guy talking about profits and corruption.
Regardless, the solution is not VPNs but rather last mile competition. It is what it has been from the start and it will continue to be that.
Look at the trouble Google Fiber is having getting Right of Way to the poles. If one of the largest and best capitalized and most politically connected corporations in the history of the planet is having a hard time... what chance does the small guy have?
The corruption is evident. its mostly state and city corruption but its consistent and national.
Either that gets dealt with... or the entire discussion is just hot air.
Slashvertising: Tinc, cjdns and now zerotier? (Score:2)
But um... (Score:2)
..they could just completely block Zero Tier unless you pay for "premium" internet access. Zero Tier is not the solution to net neutrality, it is its potential victim.
DOA.. (Score:3)
Any plan that starts with "we all" with respect to the entire nation may as well stop right there. "We" probably didn't read your article to in the first place, and most of the "we" who did will stop caring as soon as they realize it takes more than one or two clicks worth of effort, never mind when it costs money.
Its the same reason why you'll never prevent climate change by suggesting people drive less.. even if they agree with you, they simply won't do it. They'll excuse themselves for one reason or another or they'll decide that their personal contribution isn't enough to matter or so on.
If you want a significant number of people to follow your plan, you have to make it worth their immediate while. Or alternately, enforce an immediate punishment when they fail to follow the plan. Being immediate is the big thing though -- people are just way too good at finding excuses if the pros and cons are too vague or too far in the future.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Notice how full access costs pretty much the same under both "net neutrality" and "no net neutrality"
That illustration is of course flawed. There's no way it would cost the same, because all that specific example pricing would do is reduce revenue.
Sure, maybe the *average* user monthly fee wil lbe the same, but guarantee over the long run the per-user rate would increase, with them pointing to useless entry tiers as a way to say they are providing an affordable option.
Without net neutrality, Netflix and Netflix users need to pay slightly more on average, but others need to pay slightly less.
The cellular providers already have an answer to that, it's called indiscriminate throttling and caps based on amount of data transferred.
Re: (Score:2)
it results in higher charges to people who put heavy demands on infrastructure and lower charges to people who use the Internet only very lightly. Great, mission accomplished.
No, I'm saynig the per-user rate in aggregate will raise for *everyone*, as they revel in the ability to nickle and dime any useful content and brands and offer an advertising friendly useless 'basic' tier to show how cost competitive they are. Further, net neutrality allows the companies to adjust pricing to hit the heavy usage, but it doesn't allow non-technical criteria to factor in so they can't for example favor youtube over netflix so long as they both have the same network demand.
That worries me far less than the federal government picking the winners and losers, which is what it would do under FCC administration of net neutrality.
No, the federal gov
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It's not in the interest of consumers, because it will significantly increase the investments and hurdles for Internet startup companies to effect that there will be less competition and less consumer choices in the long run. You'll need millions of investment funding and countless deals and (re-)negotiations with Verizon and Comcast just to establish a new "cloud" backup product. God forbid someone wants to sell some innovative new web services that require high bandwidth, such ideas will more likely to be
Re: (Score:2)
It's easy to work out if you come at if from the other angle: ISPs aren't pushing for this so they can make LESS money.
So, the "average" individual will pay more, both in fees to ISPs and in increased costs in services passed on to the individual by companies who are in turn paying more for "unthrottled" or even premium internet access.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
They can say they like the current "net neutrality" because like all bills there are exceptions in the current "net neutrality" bill. Special conditions, special tax deductions, special FCC wink wink nod nod provisions, intended bureaucracy, etc. that allow big companies to skirt the law and still be in compliance with the law all while screwing over the little guy. If it truly was about "net neutrality" it would be a single bill, a few sentences, ..."all network traffic that travels on backbone carriers
Re: (Score:2)
It's true that Hulu doesn't allow VPNs, but for a different, and potentially subtle (to some) reason. Some of their content agreements are likely region locked. Want to watch TV shows in the US market? Must come from an IP address that some third party company they contract with believes was recently physically located in the US. There are all kinds of problems with this, but it's not really about net neutrality. It's about content providers wishing to control who can access which media after how much