So I wasn't just imagining things when I mentally replaced the 'L' in Thiel's name with an 'F'. The article really covers this subject better than the video and is worth the read even if I don't agree with all of his conclusions. For instance he asserts that competition hampers innovation because competitors are too busy fighting it out to take the time to do so, when innovation will be what differentiates you from the competition in the first place. He reasons that monopolies have the time and money to plot out the future, but without competition why bother when you can just continue to profit from the status quo. He seems to assume that monopolies will act as beneficent rulers and not greedy tyrants, even though recent events involving ISP monopolies would suggest the latter.

My biggest complaint about Verizon is that they took all these tax benefit arrangements with many states, in return for the promise to build out "broadband" infrastructure. In those agreements, Verizon said they would do FTTH (fiber-to-the-home, 10Mbps or more), but some years later they conveniently redefined "broadband" as 512kbps DSL, after saving 10s of millions of dollars from each of those states.

That is literally criminal (breach of contract), but nothing ever happened to them for doing so.

Once the infrastructure is built, Verizon (and Comcast, AT&T, TimeWarner, etc) profit margin is ENORMOUS. (more than any oil company makes on gasoline, by %)

If they are going to charge so much, they should at least deliver what they promise, and make an effort to make popular sites (netflix, youtube) as fast as possible.

I don't mind if ISPs attempt to throttle certain criminal sites (piratebay, sarahpalinchannel, etc)

Of course, now that ISPs are more aware of this test video they'll do some voodoo to circumvent it working properly. One thing I learned in a recent CS class, that Comcast routes traffic to the shortest and quickest route if you go to any "speed test" website. And for any other website it will often send your traffic through a hub several states away.

Fuck those guys.

Had this same problem. All fixed using a VPN. If you ask me, the ISP's are shooting themselves in the foot because they can't decipher VPN traffic at all and they are forcing us to use them more and more.

Ummm... I'm confused. Does Trancecoach and others like him think that Netflix doesn't pay to access the Internet? That Google, Amazon, Netflix and the like all have a free access pass to the Internet? Or when they say "In other words, people who stream video should pay for it, and not the people who don't." are they talking about end users and not the companies paying millions to access the Internet already? Or are they confused on other aspects?

Perhaps some aspects of this video confused them...

Right now if a person pays $45 a month for 15Mps they should expect all that content delivered to them at 15Mps. The way the ISPs want to rig it, is they want to go to Netflix/YouTube/Google/Amazon and other services and make them pay extra to get to that 15Mps. If Netflix doesn't pay then the ISP slows that content down to 10Mps, even though the end user is paying for 15Mps access. They aren't coming to the end user, yet, and having them pay extra for streaming access as shown in this video, though I'm sure they'll triple dip that too eventually. (Another problem I have with the video, beyond suggesting they'll just charge the end user extra, is that Netflix and others are willing partners in this scam, when Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix and all the others have been the biggest ones to support Net Neutrality and are fighting against the cable companies, while the video seems to suggest they'll handing the money over willingly.)

And if they mean the end user... then a person not streaming and only needing access to basic text and web stuff can get the basic 3Mbps option for only $30 or 2Mps option for $15. Streaming users do pay extra already. They pay for the extra bandwidth... if all you do is browse Facebook and tweet and the like and are using the 15Mbps or higher plans than you are an idiot. The end users do pay. As do the content companies like Netflix and YouTube/Google, Amazon and the rest...to the tune of millions a year. Yes, the content itself is far more expensive. For Netflix streaming a movie is cheaper than sending the DVD, postage is semi-cheap, but the people cost a lot. Still, they pay to access the Internet just like everyone else. Nobody is getting a free ride. This is just the ISPs trying to double, and potentially triple dip fees, and Net Neutrality seeks to stop them from double and potentially triple dipping. Bad enough we have to put up with banks double dipping ATM fees...

Big companies like Google, Netflix, Amazon and the like can potentially pay the fees if they have to. The question then becomes can sites like videosift pay whatever ComcastWarner, Verizon, AT&T want? I know my little blog couldn't pay extra... not that my site's users would need more than the 3Mps plan, if that, to access most of the content... save of course when I embed a YouTube video I made.

TLDR: The end user already pays extra if they stream above and beyond what an end user who doesn't stream pays. Also Netfilx, Amazon, Google and the like all pay millions to access the Internet, they don't get their access for free. What the ISPs want to do is tell Netflix, if they want to reach that customer who's paying $40 for 15Mps access at the full speed that consumer is already paying for, then Netflix has to pay that consumer's ISP in ADDITION to the costs they are already paying. If they don't pay, then the consumer is given that content at a slower speed than what they are paying their ISP to get it at. The ISPs are trying to double dip, and someday may triple dip. Net Neutrality would stop the ISPs from doing that.

Free market doesn't come into it. The internet itself is not a free market invention. It is essentially a public service that we allow contractors (the ISPs) to maintain in the same way that building companies maintain roads.

The internet itself (i.e. the physical network and the IP layer) grew out of DARPANet; a US government-funded defence initiative and the world wide web (the HTTP layer, HTML, etc) came from CERN; an EU multi-state research project.

The point is that the infrastructure itself was not created by the cable companies, they merely built on it. And they have no more right to decide to charge for different data than a road maintenance company does to charge different freight companies different rates.

A hosts entry is a way to override dns for a single hostname and cause untold trouble in future that you will never be able to sort out or understand

Anyway, what do you get if you open terminal and look up the IP address of the cdn? Command is:

nslookup cdn.videosift.com

It might help @lucky760 sort out the problematic nodes if he knows this, so please cut and paste the results of that command back here... particularly if the problem is your ISP and not the CDN itself.

nvm, it's fixed.

Mostly this, although I also don't think ISPs should charge for download/upload volume or "bandwidth", since it really isn't a limited resource. They already charge you for a given max speed (which often isn't actually delivered). BUT that's another issue. About the whole "free market" angle, think about it like this:

Would a free market have so many industry powerholders embedded into the FCC or as lobbyists? I see lobbying as the antithesis of "free market". Lobbying is a corporation basically giving up on providing a product/service that people actually choose to use because it is legitimately the best choice for them, and just saying "meh, let's rig the game instead of actually trying".

Not to mention that in many places in the US there is NO competition for available ISPs in a given area. You've got option A or, well, no ... that's all there is. And even if you consider the US as a collective entity, the number of "competing" ISPs across the country is pretty small in terms of who actually owns the pipes, and getting smaller all the time with more mega-mergers etc.

Seems like another non-issue. In other words, people who stream video should pay for it, and not the people who don't. Right now, people who don't are subsidizing some of the costs for those who do. I don't really get the "problem," but I haven't put a lot of time looking into it.

In other words, what's the issue with NN? That they won't let you access porn sites or whatever? I think freeing it up for ISP competition would take care of access and cost issues. Like if Verizon was to introduce "static" onto your calls, then AT&T would take a larger chunk from them by not doing so. In a free market, businesses have to compete for your business. In a free market, you cannot really introduce a false scarcity. Only if there is a cartel or monopoly can that happen (which, in this case -- and in every case -- is ultimately the government).

In a competitive environment, no sane provider would want a reputation as a bad provider who intentionally messes with their own quality of service. That makes no sense. The restriction of ISP competition seems to be more of a problem and it is for this reason that the whole NN issue strikes me as another unnecessary freakout.

Baby steps: ISPs take GCHQ to court in UK over mass surveillance, Chaos Computer Club files complaint against GCHQ

You actually had an option to switch ISP? Most of us are left with the options of 'pre-determined ISP A' or 'shitty alternative like Verizon 3mbps or Satalite'.

Despite my other comments, I do believe this is a really really important thing, even for those of us not in the US.

If the ISPs get away with it there, then the ISPs in the rest of the world will go running to their respective governments and go "waaaahhh, but the ISPs in the US can fuck their customers over.... why can't we?" (to which I reply "have you seen my cable bill? You're already fucking me over, you bastards", but I digress).

So yeah, *promote this schizz. USA peoples! Contact your local corrupt elected official and bribe their ass to fix this!

People miss the point with net neutrality.

The internet is a packet delivery system.
You are literally paying your ISP for a packets-per-second delivery rate across their network.

That literally means, that the ISP is obligated to make an honest best effort to route your packets at the rate you subscribed to.

Any action to deliberately throttle your packets down to below your subscribed rate, is deliberately not providing a paid for service - i.e. fraud/stealing/whatever.

Net neutrality is the concept that they deliver all packets without prejudice.

That they don't inspect your packets, and decide to treat them differently based on their content.

Kind of how the postal service charges the same to send a letter from point A to B, regardless of what you wrote in that letter.
The postal service doesn't say things like :
"This letter describes a picture. We only allow 3 'letters describing a picture' per month, and you already sent 3, so this one will have to wait.".



So for example, comcast v netflix.

Reports such as this build a case for deliberate throttling : http://www.itworld.com/consumerization-it/416871/get-around-netflix-throttling-vpn

We know comcast wanted netflix to pay for network integration/improvement.
One way to do that is by twisting their arm : deliberately throttle netflix traffic to netflix customers, until netflix pays up (and along the way, selectively not deliver paid for bandwidth to comcast customers)

That would be singling out netflix packets - a non-neutral action.

(blah blah, I changed ISPs because my own experience suggested netflix throttling.)

-scheherazade

To the best of my knowledge, and it's been a few years since I looked at IP* in any depth, QoS only really works where you can control the entire network, end to end. I don't believe there is any support for QoS in the underlying IP.

But yeah, as I said before, I'll be snowboarding in hell before I trust the ISPs with that kinda power.


* IP as in TCP/IP (internet protocol) not Intellectual Property

Isn't this what QoS settings on routers are for? I'm not very tech savvy about this stuff.
It's the ISPs job to deliver the end users internet at the advertised speed. How the customer prioritises the packets should be entirely up to them.