[lilei]

> It's amazing what happens when Internet is treated like a utility.

It's not really like a utility though. A utility usually has a low fee and charge per use. Not that I encourage data or bandwidth limits, but there's a difference. Consider you could either get gigabit for $90 or you could get a fixed speed or data (say 10 mbit or 100gb) for $30 but full speed access to Netflix, YouTube, Windows Update etc. is included. How many people would pay $60 extra for unlimited access to the rest of the Internet?

I think it's a fair question to ask why consumers are paying for both installation, the bandwidth itself and the services they access (in cash or ad revenue) while everyone else is making money.

Edit: Not sure what the point of downvotes is. If you can't answer a basic argument like this you can't expect your views to be taken seriously. But hey, instead of actually doing something relevant let's talk about which Internet connection we all have.

[loup-vaillant]

First, bandwidth is limited. It's whatever download and upload you sign for.

Second, there is no such thin as "full speed access to Netflix" or whatever. It's limited by your own bandwidth at least.

Third, when you pay for an internet access, you pay for a public IP and associated bandwidth, so you can send and receive as much IP packet as your bandwidth will allow you, no matter the provenance or destination.

In practical terms, your ISP will be connected to other operators (either other ISPs, or transport/backbone operators), with peering agreements (data flows freely in both directions at no charge), or pricing schemes where the sender pays the receiver for the privilege of having the data transmitted. What your ISP will not have is a direct connection to each and every service out there. They don't have to update their infrastructure every time a new web site comes up. As such, access to Netflix, Youtube, or http://loup-vaillant.fr are not separate services.

ISPs that treat access to particular web sites as separate services are just plain lying. The real "separate service", for which they actually spend money, is the throttling/filtering/censoring infrastructure they have to put in place to charge different web sites differently. Text book malicious features, not unlike DRM.

A final note about bandwidth: operators tend to bill themselves to the 95th percentile of instantaneous bandwidth spend in the last month. Spikes cost as much as a flood. Because in practice, what matters is how much bandwidth you expect the other operator to sustain —because it determines how much they need to spend on infrastructure. Because of this, is it perfectly legitimate for a user to max out her bandwidth, continuously throughout the month. ISPs should calibrate their network, and bill, accordingly.

[AstralStorm]

Although sometimes the money you pay is actually for a caching proxy space within the ISP's control for a set of services.

Very rarely a low latency link. (like VoIP/real time specialized services)

[loup-vaillant]

> sometimes the money you pay is actually for a caching proxy

That would make sense, and I agree it could be sold and charged separately, though I don't like the conflict of interest (the temptation of prioritising proxy data at the expense of everything else).

More to the point, is that even possible with generalised TLS? Or are big streaming web sites tailored for this capability?

[lilei2]

What you're describing is how net neutrality works, not how the Internet works.

> First, bandwidth is limited. It's whatever download and upload you sign for.

I said that I don't encourage bandwidth limits, not that it wasn't limited. The point is you usually sign a flat fee, you don't have universal access and then pay for traffic, more like in a country like Andorra.

> Second, there is no such thin as "full speed access to Netflix" or whatever. It's limited by your own bandwidth at least.

It's only limited because the ISP has limited it, it's entirely possible to give someone with a slower overall internet connection a higher speed to certain services. > They don't have to update their infrastructure every time a new web site comes up. As such, access to Netflix, Youtube, or http://loup-vaillant.fr are not separate services.

I don't see you point. ISP do peer directly with services, but I never said they had to. You just have to have a separate exchange for full speed services.

> ISPs that treat access to particular web sites as separate services are just plain lying. The real "separate service", for which they actually spend money, is the throttling/filtering/censoring infrastructure they have to put in place to charge different web sites differently. Text book malicious features, not unlike DRM.

I don't agree with throttling, but "throttling" (or congestion) does occur naturally on the Internet.

I think you really don't get my point, so I'll try and explain in another way.

Today you pay a higher amount for something like a 100 mbit or 1 gigabit connection. That's for all the infrastructure and bandwidth for giving you that access (or at least hopefull something close to it). How this works differs, but generally your ISP would pay to access bigger networks.

Now imagine instead if your ISP only guaranteed you a certain amount of normal Internet traffic, either as bandwidth or data. And then it would be up to the services to pay for the infrastructure and bandwidth to deliver their content at a higher rate. It would really just be a formalization of what's already happening with transit vs. peering. If you want to see it from a technical perspective, how it is today, imagine having 10 mbit to the open internet and 1 gigabit to all the services that your ISP peers with (even in the extended network). Then imagine possibly your ISP getting paid by those services instead.

I'm not saying that it's a great idea, I'm saying that it is a winning one. Because consumers would pay less, ISPs would require less infrastructure or pay for less bandwidth (as you said these things are related) and it's actually creates incentive for people to roll out Internet access. And if you want net neutrality it's an argument like this you would have to be able to argue against.

[loup-vaillant]

OK, I think see your point. Your scheme could be compatible with net neutrality with a few tweaks. The ISP could offer a separate channel for its special YouTube access the same way it offers separate channels for TV right now. Net neutrality is saved as long as the actual internet connection doesn't discriminate —being universally slow is perfectly allowed.

But here's the thing: it's not transparent. The customer has to explicitly subscribe to those high speed channels, just like they do TV right now.

Back to your scheme, the customer would not pay less. Costs have to be recouped somehow. If YouTube pays for the privilege of using the ISP's fast channels, they're likely to multiply ads, or even ask users to pay to use YouTube at all. Either way, the customer will pay eventually.

Generalise this, and you get nearly free internet access that's now useless, and various paid subscriptions to a number of walled gardens (think porn networks). The walled gardens will then pay the various ISPs back for the privilege of accessing their users.

One won't simply set up a web site. It will need to be part of a network, which may charge for the privilege, or police the content to protect their reputation (just like YouTube). One won't simply host a server of any kind at home: it will get crappy communication, if at all (with everything moved to the walled gardens, there is little point in supporting anything else).

I don't like that one bit.

[lilei2]

I don't like it either. What I'm saying is that this is something people who support net neutrality has to be able to refute.

Most consumers only want slow traffic to many websites and fast access to a few websites, but the are paying for a lot more. The example of "sites" might be a bit convoluted. We could as well make the differentiation based on geography, which is sort of already the case. Get 1 gigabit domestically and 10 mbit internationally. Now it up to people who want to host something to buy transit into the country. (This is sort of how it works in China, where a lot of people don't speak English anyway).

> Back to your scheme, the customer would not pay less. Costs have to be recouped somehow.

People who use the Internet less would presumably pay less and people who used the Internet more, including setting up servers, accessing services far away or anything else that require more infrastructure, would pay more. Which is sort of the case today with upstream bandwidth.

My overall point would be that the open Internet costs money and I'm not sure people can be convinced to keep it ones there's an alternative.

[loup-vaillant]

The open Internet doesn't cost that much. The US happens to have monopoly prices, but here in France, a decent broadband (and even Fibre!) connection can be had for as little as 30€ per month, and the ISPs still make a profit as far as I know.

Few people can't afford that much. The real reason behind the net neutrality attacks (we have those in the EU all right) is profit maximization —which tends to be incompatible with any kind of common good in the first place.

> My overall point would be that the open Internet costs money and I'm not sure people can be convinced to keep it ones there's an alternative.

How about asking around? Especially to non-technical people, with and without an explanation about the implication of such a choice. They may surprise us.

[mirimir]

OK, so I get an unmetered symmetric 100 Mbps uplink for less than $50 per month. It happens to be through a private ISP, so I'm insulated from this bullshit, unless backbone ISPs play dirty. But anyway, I want Internet connectivity for many reasons, and they're constantly changing. The idea of getting hobbled general access plus full-speed access to some restricted set of services is insane. I mean, would you expect me to order access specifically for whatever I wanted? There's also the fact that I hit just about everything through VPNs, so ISPs wouldn't even know what I'm accessing.

I don't get your question about "why consumers are paying for both installation, the bandwidth itself and the services they access". I don't pay for "installation", but rather for access, by month. I only pay for a few services, and never see ads. For the most part, I only pay for the unmetered 100 Mbps uplink.

[lilei2]

I realized that it's pretty fruitless to discuss these things on HN, but since you responded I will give you a response.

This isn't something that is generally happening, at least not outside mobile connectivity where certain services are sometimes included. It's not really about what you, or other 'heavy' Internet users wants, but about consumers. People who want net neutrality have to have a response to normal people why it's relevant to them.

More and more people are getting access to broadband, yet it's still quite expensive. The idea, which you will have to defend against if you ultimately want net neutrality, is that companies could pay for the bandwidth. So you as a consumer would pay for connectivity, say 10 mbit. But instead of you just having access to 10 mbit, other companies would be able to pay to deliver to you at full speed. So when you pay for Netflix part of that money might go back to the ISP. This is to some extent already happening, but through various transit and peering agreements.

> I don't get your question about "why consumers are paying for both installation, the bandwidth itself and the services they access". I don't pay for "installation", but rather for access, by month. I only pay for a few services, and never see ads. For the most part, I only pay for the unmetered 100 Mbps uplink.

You do (usually) pay for installation, it's just that it's "baked in" to contract time and fees of your connection. That's why you usually can't get a really cheap connection on a wired installation. A 1 mbit connection would still usually cost you a fair bit, if it's even available. With something like electricity you do also pay for installation, but since that is largely universal it's really part of the overall cost. Point being that a lot of people lack broadband because they can't afford the installation cost and that is a big different between Internet access and other utilities which are much more universal.

[mirimir]

Thanks. Those are decent arguments. But ...

> More and more people are getting access to broadband, yet it's still quite expensive.

Why isn't that an issue in so many countries, where broadband is widely available, and not all that expensive?

> The idea, which you will have to defend against if you ultimately want net neutrality, is that companies could pay for the bandwidth.

OK, that works for Netflix. But it increases barriers to market entry, and thus stifles competition. And more generally, it's a regression to pre-Internet walled gardens.

> Point being that a lot of people lack broadband because they can't afford the installation cost and that is a big different between Internet access and other utilities which are much more universal.

Back in the day, the US had the Rural Electrification Administration. Everyone got access. But they still had to pay for the electricity. So why not for Internet access? Users could pay for some mix of bandwidth and throughput.

I mean, when I lease VPS, I typically get either uncapped 100 Mbps uplinks, or 1 Gbps uplinks capped at 1-10 TB/mo. VPS with 1 Gbps uplinks and 5 TB/mo go for about $20/mo.