Internet Companies Want Wireless Net Neutrality Too 38
jfruh writes As it looks more likely that the U.S. will impose net neutrality rules on landline ISPs, big Web companies are aiming to get wireless data providers under the same regulatory umbrella. The Internet Association, a trade group that includes Google, Facebook, Amazon.com, and eBay, wants the FCC to "harmonize" the treatment of mobile and wired broadband providers in its net neutrality rules. Wireless providers are fighting back, claiming their networks are fundamentally different.
Fundamentally different. (Score:4, Insightful)
"fiercely competitive,"....aww.
"Give us monopolies and then you can regulate us. Deal?"
Not trying to be a smartass but ... (Score:1)
Is there a citation?
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Either way it wont be until 2020 at the earliest. Internet providers will ignore the rules while they fight this all the way to the supreme court.
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Can we talk about two things at the same time? (Score:1)
There seems to be two disjoint discussions on the same thing around here...
When we talk Net Neutrality we talk about giving every node on the Internet an equal chance to speak.
When we talk about Netflix/Google/Amazon buying fast lane access to users, we're violating the rules of Net Neutrality to give people what they're paying for faster.
Do you see how when we celebrate one side of this, the other side loses?
Re:Can we talk about two things at the same time? (Score:5, Insightful)
When we talk about Netflix/Google/Amazon buying fast lane access to users, we're violating the rules of Net Neutrality to give people what they're paying for faster
I'm pretty sure thats why when we talk about netflix being forced to buy fast lane access to users in order to get video to their customers at the speeds the customers paid their ISPs for, we use negative and derogatory terms about the ISPs, especially Comcast.
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QoS has nothing to do with net neutrality, it merely signifies what the sender would prefer to be done (when prioritization is necessary) among it's own packets. If I want to prioritize SSH and VoIP, then I'll set the necessary bits so that when I fill the bandwidth with other stuff, those tend to get priority.
QoS is perfectly possible within a neutral framework. The providers treat each customer equally, if the customer wants certain aspects of it's own traffic prioritized, it could do that without impedin
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Apparently nobody here has used the QoS features in Shibby's version of Tomato-USB.
Torrenting and Netflix and gaming and multiple kids playing with Facebook and Youtube, all at once, all on 2Mbps of downstream while maintaining sufficient low-latency that interactive tasks and VoIP work fine?
Why not?
I did this just last night, as I have many nights before.
I'm perfectly capable of prioritizing my own bandwidth, thanks. I don't want my ISP prioritizing it on my behalf. Ever. At all. Not even a little bit.
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But then, you obviously didn't know that, given your basic misunderstanding of how QoS actually works.
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Nothing I'm doing with QoS involves DiffServ -- at all.
That you proclaim otherwise shows that you haven't used the QoS features of Shibby's version of Tomato-USB.
And until you do, we don't really have much to talk about here.
The fact remains that I can rate-limit specific ingress UDP and TCP streams based on a number of parameters, leaving room in the otherwise-saturated pipe for other packets, using nothing more than an ancient freebie WRT54G and a small Shibby build.
How does this all work behind the scene
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Again, you haven't used it. You're working with a theory, and really have no idea what you're going on about.
Latency increases somewhat under load (as it must), though not appreciably enough to affect any of the things we do with it. Jitter is very low as well. No matter how hard people or things hit the network, the user experience remains very responsive for interactive tasks...perceptibly the same as it is with an unladen connection.
This, as opposed to hundreds of torrent peers hammering away, one or
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Nay, I have plenty of clue. But the private commercial networks I manage do not benefit from QoS, as all packets that transverse these networks are equally important and congestion is -- by design -- not an issue.
You really don't have a clue that it's even possible to solve this problem with a home gateway. Your perception clouds your vision.
Your loss, friend.
Now get off my lawn.
Re:As in (Score:5, Funny)
Of COURSE wireless carriers are draconian.
They transmit everything through the air. Dragons fly in the air. Therefore they're draconian.
Oxi-moron this is... (Score:2)
Net neutrality is not what the name implies, at least not to the end user. How one can come up with a set of rules that are "neutral" to all users and providers is going to look like the IPv6 equivalent of a rube Goldberg machine, or it's going to be very disruptive to the internet in the USA.
You can mandate "equal packet routing treatment", but that doesn't mean a network operator has to keep the links between the source and destination from being saturated (as in the Netflix/Verizon dispute). You can m
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Routing around regulation is what American Innovation does best.
Unmetered services. (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone offering select unmetered services such as music pass access, etc. should be prepared to lose this battle.
Maxxed out and Congested until... (Score:1)
Seems like they're all maxxed out and congested until they want to offer a great deal on data for the new iPhone. Suddenly, additional bandwidth is available for these new subscribers.
Wireless bandwidth is limited (Score:3)
Wireless bandwidth is limited by the allocated spectrum. With landlines, you can always drag more fiber or copper, hook it up, and expand your bandwidth. You can't do that with wireless.
But I expect to be modded down because I'm not jumping on the "everything should be unlimited" bandwagon.
Re: Wireless bandwidth is limited (Score:5, Informative)
Net neutrality is not even anything close to unlimited bandwidth. It is about not discriminating traffic. At&t can keep their 2 GB caps, but they can't discriminate websites or discriminate customers for the matter
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And although overload doesn't always happen, it's something to be dealt with. We don't yet have the technology to o
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The telcos do, that way they can degrade Vonage connections until you cave in and get their phone service.
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In mobile, you can invest in newer technologies, more spectrum and better antennae. There is quite a bit of bandwidth available in the licensed spectrum, the spectrum is actually just as big for wireless than for copper and fiber. And precise direction of specific channels is also being worked on.
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Wireless bandwidth is limited by the allocated spectrum. With landlines, you can always drag more fiber or copper, hook it up, and expand your bandwidth.
You can only safely put so many runs on a pole. And first you have a have a pole. So no, you cannot always drag more fiber or copper. But now we have pretty good spectrum-sharing technologies as well as beam forming and wireless is getting better all the time, whereas phone poles are pretty dead tech.
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Wireless bandwidth is limited by the allocated spectrum. With landlines, you can always drag more fiber or copper, hook it up, and expand your bandwidth. You can't do that with wireless.
No, but you can:
This is how wireless carriers increase bandwidth. There's considerably more bandwidth available, per square mile, in a city than in a rural area. Not because they have more spectrum in the city. But because each tower services a smaller cell.
It's slightly more complicated than that; adjacent towers need to use non-overl
How is it... (Score:2)
What are the carriers marketing? (Score:1)
If the carriers are marketing "Internet access" then it's deceptive to be anything other than "net-neutral" and the FTC should use its existing powers to force them to at least change their marketing.