Page 3 - Virgin to throttle net for it's users

Half the point of my bringing up this interesting topic guys, is that there's no government agency, or watchdog, or international organisation, governing over whether companies stick to being 'net neutral' or not. There's only us, their consumers. Of course, it's not happening now, but petrol prices were fine a few years ago too.

Its the fact that this whole issue is a very realisable, possible reality. Whether it be ISPs making sites pay for prioritised traffic to their users, or consumers being made to pay more for access to 'premier' sites, or a wider range of them. Some companies have caught on to the ideas, and are understandably thinking about making a large load of profits out of their implementations.

Its about whether we want to allow these sorts of things to be introduced, and possibly [as would be alledged anyway] significantly degrade the quality and access to the internet we know today.



By the way, sorry, I really can't help myself, but look at this pdf from 'netcompetition.org' - http://netcompetition.org/Why_Net_N...tream_Issue.pdf

If you don't spew after reading that, you must be a politician, or a lobbyist >_>

the whole point of net neutrality is that the net is biased or regulated by anyone, including the government. If regulated, then the regulator's only job would be to make sure the network isn't biased in any way. Which telcoms would have us believe they are capable of doing.

Who regulates the biases in the regulators?

In the US, we used to have concepts of civil liberty, but after 9/11, it all changed, and what used to be free speech because terrorist activity. So the regulators' biases changed.

I see no reason to believe that the 'net neutrality' police will be any more free of bias and corruption than any other police force.

Well that's what the Telecoms would have you believe as well, by the sounds of that pdf.

The ideal situation would of course be to have no regulator at all, as the current situation is. The fallback would be to have governments try to do a decent un-lobbied job of making sure its unbiased.

But still it's pretty hard to skew/bias/tier the network (due to corruption, say), when it's your job not to. Or at least, I'd like to think so >_<

Don't stop thinking ...

What could we possibly do ... as individuals ... as a group, maybe something, maybe not

pdf's make sounds now ...

credible get ...

The ultimate regulator is the people ... taking a lot longer than I thought ...

This recent article mentions net neutrality:

AT&T: Internet to hit full capacity by 2010
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1035_22-6237715.html

There was another interesting article about it I saw recently but can't remember where now.

I'd be willing to make this guy a small wager, hell i'll even give him 10:1 odds on the fact that the 'average household's internet traffic will not increase more than five million fold* in the next three years.

This guy is either scare mongering, blissfully ignorant, lying or a combination of the three.

-MBirchmeier

*assuming 105 million us households given the 1990 census and that doesn't even include international net traffic.

I'm not for Net Neutrality, if companies want to make a premium toll lane, go right ahead. Virgin's plan to slow down those who don't pay (versus speeding up those who do) is highly dodgy (right along with this quote, what corporate lackey came up with these numbers!?!?)

In the grand scheme of things is there much of a difference between speeding up those that pay and slowing down those that don't?

There's a finite amount of bandwidth available, reserving half for 'premium' customers, essentially cuts the bandwidth in half for those that don't pay.

Additionally when these controls are in place what will stop virgin from drastically slowing down competitor sites, (keeping pictures from loading for example) to make competitors look unresponsive and incompetent?

I know I'm making the slippery slope argument, but there's just so little good to be gained from implementing these systems, and quite a lot to be abused.

-MBirchmeier

I think there is. What Vigrin is doing is basically extortion (give me money or i will slow down your website!) AT&T wants to offer a premium service by speeding up those that pay. There idea is not to say "only premium taffic on these pipes!". The amount of band width would stay the same, it would just give preference to packets from paying sites. Your experience to a non paying site would still be a crap shoot, just as it is today.

How exactly does one verify if the pipes are uniformly clogged, or your site is being strong armed? How does one verify if the entire net is effectively being strong armed? Who oversees to make sure the companies play fair?

Are we back in the boat of 'trust us'? Or is there an effective way to police such policies?

-MBirchmeier