[Cicada2026]

I think treating the internet connection as a casual "product" is irresponsible and outright wrong. It provides access to education, news, communication, and entertainment. I mean when Russia blocked LinkedIn the response was that authoritarian government is limiting its citizens freedom but when American businesses are throttling firefighters connection it's a healthy competition... "Verizon admitted that the throttling of first responders was in violation of Verizon’s own policies, but in a statement to Motherboard denied that the fracas had anything to do with net neutrality. " Yes it does.

[freeone3000]

No, it doesn't. Net neutrality is the idea that all content should be treated identically. The idea that you should have unlimited data, or that data should be billed monthly, or any of these other things that are nice are not the same.

An easy way to picture it is common carrier. The postal service does not ask what you are sending. It asks you how big it is. It charges you based on when it needs to arrive. There is no mention of the contents - a dimensional pound of feathers and a dimensional pound of lead cost the same to ship Express Post. Net Neutrality is the expansion of the same idea to the internet - that Spotify, Netflix, my cat blog, and Hacker News cost the same, and are charged the same, per "standard reliability" kilobyte.

[wool_gather]

Another good analogy, I think, is to electricity. Should your electric usage be differentiated between your alarm clock and your toaster?

https://github.com/ryanpcmcquen/ryanpcmcquen.github.io/blob/...

[Junk_Collector]

Both of these analogies are against net neutrality though. The postal service has special requirements and costs for shipping packages that could impact it's services or employees such as Ord-D and Hazmat. Electrical services differentiate between loads that have an impact on the service in the form of power factor correction fees. You just don't see these as a typical homeowner because nothing you run has enough impact to warrant it.

There are two major parts/ideologies in Net Neutrality centered around the idea that traffic should be treated equal no matter what it is, and that traffic should be treated equal no matter where it is from or two. Both of these stances lead to interesting and nuanced technical discussion or at least used to before they became a broader public platform.

[hannasanarion]

But a package is still a package, and electricity is still electricity. Neither the post nor the power company care what you're using your electricity for or what you're sending in your packages as long as you pay an appropriate cost for your usage.

A byte from Netflix takes exactly the same number of packets on the wire as a byte from Hulu or a byte from fcc.gov. Charging more for transferring one of these over the others is pure rent seeking.

[tengbretson]

> A byte from Netflix takes exactly the same number of packets on the wire as a byte from Hulu or a byte from fcc.gov.

This may be true, but its irrelevant unless the COGs for an ISP is measured in packets. It's almost certainly not.

[hannasanarion]

It pretty much is. That's what customers pay for: how many bytes they can get per unit time. How much the ISP needs to spend on infrastructure is exactly proportional to the total bandwidth customers in an area are using at peak. More usage means they need to install more switches. What label is on the return address of the traffic makes no difference to the expense on the ISP.

[Junk_Collector]

If I am using voice traffic, it is very sensitive to routing delay. The total transit time that packet route takes is much more important than the amount of bandwidth I need to throw at it. If I am using an emergency service such as 911, that packet must keep going through regardless of other traffic congestion no matter how many people are streaming Netflix at the moment. Netflix itself is relatively immune to impact from group delay and doesn't need prioritization for reliability but it does require a large amount of bandwidth to be available in order for it to function properly. A packet, is not just a packet that can be simply interchanged if you want maximum performance out of your network.

Also you have the issue that sparked the large public prominence of Network Neutrality. Netflix was renegotiating their peering agreements and the ISPs were trying to soak them on the last mile costs. ISPs felt Netflix should bear the cost of network expansion since their service was generating all the traffic that they needed to upgrade to accommodate. Netflix felt the cost should be primarily carried by the ISPs. This has almost nothing to do with you as a consumer, but Netflix successfully branded it that way to garner public support. N.N. complicates adds a lot of uncertainty to what is legal to negotiate in a peering agreement between companies. L3 is probably going to be the big loser here, not Comcast.

And finally, because I see a lot of posts on this chain that don't understand what Power Factor is, it probably needs to be pointed out. A refrigerator has an inductive motor in it's compressor that it uses to chill the air. A toaster is a simple resistor. The inductive nature of that motor degrades the power network by transforming some real power into imaginary power (mathematical terms) and basically messing up the phase relationship on the distribution network itself. This ratio of real(useful) and imaginary(useless) power is called Power Factor and the power company measures it and asses a fee based on how much you screw it up. A typical household does not run enough of anything to noticeably impact the networks power factor so most consumers don't know about it but if you were running a hundred refrigerators you would absolutely be charged more than running a thousand toasters.

What does that have to do with packet networks? Well, when the traffic (electrical load) impacts the function of the distribution network, the cost is passed on to the user that generates that load. Not all Kilowatts of power consumed are equal.

[hannasanarion]

"Last mile costs" are what consumers already pay for. The ISPs claim that netflix needs to pay extra or else they won't give their own customers the service that they have already paid for is extortion, plain and simple.

Netflix was already paying for an uplink connection of sufficient bandwidth. The customers were already paying for a downlink connection of sufficient bandwidth. The assertion that it's necessary to hold one party hostage in order to get more money from the other is absurd.

UPS doesn't demand that Amazon pay for its new trucks, and it certainly doesn't hold Amazon packages hostage until they do so. They're supposed to buy their infrastructure with the profit that they're already generating. And ISPs are seeing record profits right now.

[bduerst]

That's just splitting hairs.

IP packets aren't at risk of blowing up in ISP employee hands, and even if they were, it wouldn't justify allowing ISPs to charge more for Netflix than NBC streaming.

[Junk_Collector]

The mail analogy is that some items have special requirements for handling and routing. I won't route Hazmat through post offices that can't handle it just as I won't route high security network traffic through China. Shipping perishable goods requires that those goes be given prioritization so that the arrive before spoiling. Real time voice data requires a minimum time delay. Is it OK to prioritize voice packets over other data to ensure quality?

Another question you might ask. Is it OK to prioritize data that is destined for the 911 network over data that is heading to Pornhub? What about a university? What about Khan Academy? What do you do with encrypted data where you can't tell the type or destination? What if the encrypted data is malformed such that it is causing detrimental performance to the broader network?

Management of a modern network like the internet is an amazing challenge that requires all kinds of work to find optimal solutions. We need real technically nuanced discussion and consideration to craft legislation that actually solves problems and doesn't create significant new ones. We don't need badly flawed analogies designed to garner public support that only apply if you don't know about the topic.

[bduerst]

All analogies are inexact by nature, which is why it's splitting hairs to nitpick them to death.

These are fringe use cases that still don't justify an ISP charging more for Netflix streaming over NBC.

[tengbretson]

That's an interesting analogy. While a power company doesn't necessarily differentiate based on alarm clocks and toasters, they will bill you differently based on the impact your load has on their delivery system even if the kwh is the same.

Given two loads of equivalent kwh most power companies will charge you a different price based on the power-factor of the load.

[shkkmo]

The matching analogy to kwh is data usage.

The matching analogy to power-factor of the load is bandwidth, not traffic source.

Thus charging more for higher bandwidth during high traffic periods is both reasonable and allowed under NN.

Charging more for higher bandwidth or data usage because of the application is not allowed under NN.

[mlindner]

> Charging more for higher bandwidth or data usage because of the application is not allowed under NN.

ISPs would never charge customers depending on the product because measuring that is practically impossible. They never even wanted to do that nor advocated doing so (this was a major source of misinformation put out by the pro-net neutrality camp). What they do want to do is bill the service, namely very large companies that use tons of data, for example earlier Netflix, for the cost of the infrastructure build out they need to do. They're not interested in small companies that produce small amounts of data, nor the end users. They're interested in recouping infrastructure costs from those that drive it upward, which isn't end customers.

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

> Given two loads of equivalent kwh most power companies will charge you a different price based on the power-factor of the load.

Or in other words: They will bill you based on the amount of kWh they are actually transporting for you ... which is precisely what network neutrality is about?

[ktjfi]

Now that you mention it, it sounds like a good idea. From a European perspective, taxing electric usage made by heating, cooking or watching TV differently seems right.

[bduerst]

Why does that sound like a good idea from a European perspective, or from any perspective?

[ktjfi]

I was under the impression that electricity is not very taxed in the US, while here it is.

Also we have different tax rates for different things. You don't pay the same tax for eggs than for electronics. I don't know if the US has that. Applying the same to electricity sounds good. Hard to implement though.

[nemo44x]

In many places your electricity usage costs more per kilowatt hour as you consume more kilowatt hours. So in essence, more power hungry appliances do cost more per kilowatt hour to use. For example, if someone powers an AC during the summer, their bill will be higher in a non-linear way based on the excess electricity consumption during this time. This makes running the AC more expensive per kilowatt hour if you view it this way. You could be consuming 2x the electricity but have a bill that is 3x higher.

The analogy for the net would be that domains that require more kilobytes would begin to pay more per kilobyte to have it delivered. I'm not saying I agree with this at all but the electricity analogy can be applied very easily to anti-net neutrality advocates' point of view.

[ThirdFoundation]

I don't think that's the point though. If I understand correctly, the point is that it's okay to charge by usage -- just not specifically giving different rates to different things.

Net neutrality says that the ISPs can't throttle Netflix's speed while giving priority to another streaming platform. It's okay if users are charged by usage (even, perhaps, non-linearly) -- but it's not okay in the eyes pro-NN people if the ISP charges more for Netflix than, say, their own streaming platform. A byte should cost the same regardless of its use (much like a kW of electricity costs the same for a toaster as it does your refrigerator or another brand of toaster).

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

> The analogy for the net would be that domains that require more kilobytes would begin to pay more per kilobyte to have it delivered.

1. What does any of that have to do with domains?

2. What does any of that have to do with network neutrality, i.e., discrimination based on content?

[mruts]

But electricity costs are not fixed, in the US at least, they float with the market. So electricity during the day is more expensive than electricity at night.

This is how a good market should work. Why should the internet be any different? I think the only reason why net neutrality is a thing people support is because of the monopolies the service providers have in many parts of the country. If there was healthy competition in the space, I don't think anyone would be talking about net neutrality.

As such, I think we should be focusing our efforts on deregulation and creating some real competition in the space instead of net neutrality.

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

> But electricity costs are not fixed,

It's not network fixedness, it's network neutrality.

[mlindner]

No it's not. Net Neutrality is the idea that large bandwidth users should not be charged when they cause most of the cost of the ISPs. Netflix and similar countries want to be able to grow forever and not be billed for the required hardware growth that ISPs need to put out to support those companies products. ISPs should be able to charge for that.

An ISP doesn't bill you for how many bits you download because data traffic is extremely peaky, way more peaky than water or electricity. If they build their network assuming a certain amount of peakiness and then everyone suddenly massively blows out those estimates because some new company comes along that massively uses more data, someone needs to get charged for that. That cost should fall on the company causing that so they can properly set the price of their product to how much data traffic they drive.