Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Mongrel]

Interesting.

Looks like the first shoe has dropped.

[Thad]

At a conference in New York, the Verizon group will present test results showing that when an ISP co-operates with a file-sharing software maker they can speed downloads an average of 60 per cent — though collaboration boosted some downloads six-fold on fast Internet connections.

"This test signifies a turning point in the history of peer-to-peer technology and ISPs," said Robert Levitan, chief executive of file-sharing company Pando Networks Inc. "It will definitely show ISPs that the problem is not peer-to-peer technology, the problem is how you deploy it. It is possible to deploy P2P to their advantage."

The problem is that the industry is run by people who are so incredibly fucking stupid that they need to be told very very obvious things like this.

What, you mean there's a technology that has both positive and negative implications?  No fooling!

That's the disconnect between us and them -- they don't actually understand how BitTorrent WORKS, they just know people are using it for copyright infringement.  I think now that somebody is explaining to them, "Look here, this takes the load off your servers and spreads it around," that should hopefully sink in.

Of course, the RIAA and MPAA have always responded to new technologies myopically, seeing only the negatives.  Remember when the MPAA tried to get video tapes banned?  If there were any justice in the world, none of the people involved in that suit would have been allowed any portion of the hundreds of billions of dollars the home video market went on to generate.

[Mongrel]

Just a little reminder that it CAN happen.

[Mongrel]

Really. You don't say?

[Thad]

Hearings.

Lessig hypothesized an electricity grid that would query whether a device plugged in was made by Sony or Toshiba, or was approved, saying that such a network could be built, but one would need very strong arguments to convicne the world to change. That should be the same with the internet, he argued.

[...]

Lessig's message was oddly echoed by the Christian Coalition of America's Michele Combs, who correctly pointed out that Comcast's ongoing interruption of BitTorrent programs uses one of the same techniques the Chinese government uses to censor the internet in China - fake reset packets.

"We have seen network operators block political speech and block the most popular application on the internet -- Comcast blocked people downloading the King James bible," Combs said, referering presumably in the first case to Verizon blocking pro-choice SMS messages and in the second case to an AP story that tested out whether Comcast was interfering with BitTorrent by attempting to download a public domain translation of the Bible.

[Kazz]

you fuck with KJV, you fuck with me

[Thad]

Time Warner to start charging based on bandwidth.  Not QUITE a net neutrality issue as they're not discriminating based on where that bandwidth goes, but obviously related.

Those of us who remember the early 1990's remember the days before flat-rate Internet service, and I can't imagine I'm the only one who was ever subjected to a family talk when Prodigy's six-cent-a-minute messageboard charge piled up on the old credit card bill.  As such, my first instinct is not to think this is a good idea.

That said, it COULD be implemented in a reasonable fashion.  Brad recently decided to pay $10 or so extra a month to double our connection speed, and I think that is perfectly reasonable.  And as a guy who once singlehandedly ran an ISP, I totally agree that if one customer is using more bandwidth than all the others put together, that customer should carry that extra weight.

So there are good, logical reasons to do this, and it could benefit both consumers and ISP's alike.  But in practice, I expect it to be unreasonable and exploitative.

A Time Warner Cable spokesman confirmed an Associated Press report that the company will charge customers between $29.95 a month and $54.90 a month based on their data consumption and desired connection speed.

That's fine.  I am okay with that.

Customers will be charged $1 for each gigabyte (GB) over their plan limit.

That is not fine.  I am not okay with that.  That's like the old six-cents-a-minute fee -- something that can get out of hand, fast, and result in a very unpleasant surprise at the end of the month.

This could become a trend.  And if it does, that's bad news for consumers.

Here in Phoenix metro, there are only two high-speed Internet providers, Cox Cable and Qwest DSL.  (There are other DSL ISP's, but all of them use Qwest's loop.  And, I can speak from experience, Qwest has a tendency of undercutting its competitors.)  Competition is a joke.  I can't speak for the rest of the country, but I have a hunch that's a common problem, having very few choices for ISP's with similar prices and similar services.  Saying "screw you, I'll go to another ISP" doesn't work so well when everybody has the same support and pricing.

[Brentai]

EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm comparing bandwidth usage to cell-phone minutes here.

I'm not sure how most providers do it, but Sprint handles my usage billing by just changing my plan month to month based on my needs.  i.e. if I go over the time limit on the plan I chose, I just get bumped up to the next plan for the month, no penalty, and then go back to the regular one next month.  Eventually you hit the point where you just pay the flat-fee unlimited usage fee - which is pretty high but not nearly as bad as paying per-minute.

I would assume that if a phone company can do that, an ISP can damn well do the same.  We'll see though.

[Thad]

Of course they can.

Whether they actually WILL is another story.

The cell phone market has slightly more competition (though still not that damn much), and I think there are a hell of a lot more people who go over their allocated minutes/text messages/whatever than use the kind of bandwidth that would incur extra fees.  If there's no competition and only a few people are complaining, nothing's going to change.

[Arc]

Wrapping my head around Sprint's Anytime Minutes platform was like fishing from the lifestream, until they provided charts. Then I figured out how going over in minutes throws you into another bracket where you can once again go over in minutes. Now if only my phone tabulated said minutes so that I wouldn't have to check the website every week...

... Which reminds me of my ISP's newsgroup bandwidth limit. Finding out just how much you've used for the month, and the date it'll turn over, is pure Adventure Time. Which is to say, hidden away in the far corner's of the planet, and guarded by ridiculous pop-up monsters.

[Kayin]

They said they will supply monitors to inform you of your remaining bandwidth and overages. Personally I would prefer something closer to what Terra's hosting provider does (lol furry server of hate lawl okay whatever) , in that, if they go over, their bandwidth gets cut back.

Of course this isn't a money making scheme so without competition that'll never happen (unless consumer backlash is intense).

[Mongrel]

Haha, Americans complaining about cell phone service haha.

 

[Niku]

Haha, foreigners.   

[Brentai]

Who said I was complaining?

[Shinra]

Wrapping my head around Sprint's Anytime Minutes platform was like fishing from the lifestream, until they provided charts. Then I figured out how going over in minutes throws you into another bracket where you can once again go over in minutes. Now if only my phone tabulated said minutes so that I wouldn't have to check the website every week...

... Which reminds me of my ISP's newsgroup bandwidth limit. Finding out just how much you've used for the month, and the date it'll turn over, is pure Adventure Time. Which is to say, hidden away in the far corner's of the planet, and guarded by ridiculous pop-up monsters.

That's only for fair and flexible! Now with power pack minutes, you're subjected to flat FUCK YOU fee as soon as you go over.

[sei]

Personally I would prefer something closer to what Terra's hosting provider does (lol furry server of hate lawl okay whatever) , in that, if they go over, their bandwidth gets cut back.

This is how it's handled in Australia.  A friend of mine gets cut down from DSL speed to something along the lines of dial-up, and it's not fucking pleasant.  I don't find the $1/GB over the limit thing acceptable either.  I'm also pretty scared about it, as (was mentioned above) it's not all that common having more than two broadband carrier options in a given area.

The purpose of the new pricing structure is to relieve strain on the network caused by a small number of heavy users, says Time Warner spokesman Alex Dudley. The 5% of heavy users consume so much data in the form of multimedia downloads and the like that they slow down the network for the average subscriber, he says. Time Warner believes usage-based pricing could result in more users surfing the Web at faster speeds by forcing the most avid downloaders to curb usage or pay a premium that could then be invested in upgrading the network. "The goal is to make sure that everyone's experience is as good as it can be," Dudley says. "And what we have is a very small number of users who use a disproportionate amount of the network's capacity."

A thin veil for further profiteering.  I can't help but suspect that this is some sort of precaution being taken in anticipation FiOS or (years down the line) hopping on board The Grid.

Going by what people tend to do online, the average user probably doesn't notice bandwidth much beyond the benchmark of having enough of it to reasonably stream youtube/hulu/google video/myspace video.  I'd say something about conservatively-throttled P2P running in the background, but I'm too lazy to hunt down BitTorrent statistics about upload-speed-limiting user behavior trends.

[Mongrel]

Oho!

[Guild]

Yeah.


Here's the issue as far as I understood it:

Option A: ISPs are allowed to give higher bandwidth to higher-paying companies.
Option B: ISPs are prevented from doing this.

I'm for option A. I believe that free market competition inspires higher quality products.

[Catloaf]

No.  That would just make internet cost more for the average person.  While businesses that don't even need faster internet get it.  And it would also make internet at public schools even slower, striking another blow against the poor.

In addition, it would mean the death of a large portion of internet based gaming would be decimated.  Due to ping rates being based now on how much you pay.  So rich n00bs would be a even HIGHER percentage of the game populations.

[Guild]

Free markets don't support massive losses in customer base.