[edynoid]

Paying for traffic to be prioritized is the exact opposite of net neutrality. No need to pay lip service to the idea then. The obvious danger here is that small indie studios may not be able to afford making enjoyable real-time multiplayer games.

How about improving public internet infrastructure instead?

[reitzensteinm]

As a small indie developer I don't understand your argument. Building a network like Riot can only be done by billion dollar publishers, but I could conceivably use this network.

If you don't want solutions like this, are you also against private networks? In addition to Riot, Google famously cuts the gordian knot of CAP in Spanner by declaring their network won't go down.

If it's ok to do it yourself but not outsource it, "think of the little guy" holds no water.

[pingyong]

Steam might be a better example here, as Valve already allows devs to use their private network for game servers.

Although it should be noted that all of this effort is only worth it because greedy ISPs are unwilling to peer to certain other networks in most (all?) cases, as the private network is still running through the same cables for most of the way.

[ergothus]

Why would Riot give this network to competitors? Only to make money. If that price gets too high. You, as s small indie developer, have just been driven out of the market.

That's the logic of the above post. The answer is NEITHER "outsource it" NOR "do it yourself". Instead, if the public offering is good enough, you dont need either option. That's how the internet has worked and grown so far.

[reitzensteinm]

Right, so you want to outlaw networks like those of Google and Riot?

Not sure I can get on board with that, but it would level the playing field.

[ergothus]

This isn't me, this is the whole concept of net neutrality - the internet is a utility where all access is equal access, at least in terms of priority. (obviously we have rate limiting and people generally don't have protests about that - it's priority that is a problem)

Many of the complaints in the reaction to the article is that the article is using the language of net neutrality to argue for the opposite (pay for access, which includes the ability to pay more for privileged access).

[ArtWomb]

Riot's investment in private cloud is in turn informing game design for an upcoming FPS codename: Project A ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iGU6PctOBg

[Iv]

Net neutrality is about content-neutrality and origin/destination neutrality. It is not opposed to give packets higher priority when there is a technical reason for this.

Having a protocol and routes that guarantee low ping but require low bandwidth makes sense to me. A lot of the current infrastructure is built for TCP: something that can handle losses and actually uses packet loss to maximize its bandwidth use.

Having specific shortcuts to open fast lines do not threaten net neutrality. For instance, I think game devs, would love if you could "reserve" 10KB/s of the lowest ping you have, out of your 500 MB/s "bandwidth budget" and reserve it to a given port.

And note that it is not just games that require it. Telepresence applications are limited also because of this problem.

[fragmede]

There are also technical reasons why Netflix (or any other company significantly affected by net-neutrality) needs to pay Comcast extra in order for their packets to get higher priority, so everyone can watch on Netflix without stuttering and drop-outs.

Paying for higher-priority traffic/more bandwidth looks very, very similar to paying for traffic not be throttled. Some might argue it's the same thing.

IMO the difference is that backbone packet transit is different than end-user ISP transit. Unfortunately net-neutrality gets very muddy with, eg Verizon being both the backbone and the end-user ISP. Netflix network engineers are keenly aware of transit, which is part of the reason why they run their own CDN.

[mikepurvis]

A protocol like that would be terrific because then each hop along the path would know exactly what is going on without needing to have explicit rules built in or be making it up based on heuristics and DPI.

[gnode]

I don't see how this is any more against network neutrality than regional mirrors / CDNs.

This is an optimisation which can be made by the game developer / host, where the alternative would be prioritisation by the ISP, which would go against net neutrality.

[wayoutthere]

The ISPs charge lots of money for the CDNs and private networks that want to connect to their customer networks at the edge. This is the net neutrality argument; it's almost impossible to get good performance at scale without paying extra for it.

I actually think the problem this is meant to solve is an example of why, from a purely pragmatic sense, net neutrality is effectively impossible to deliver at scale. Someone has to eat the costs somewhere, and the publishers are the ones who benefit the most financially.

[wbl]

A bike courier or lawyer racing to the court house benefits far more from the roads then others but doesn't pay more. Common carrier regulations were widespread in moving atoms.

[wayoutthere]

Then why are toll roads a thing? They explicitly allow vehicles to pay more for a faster road.

[gnode]

Toll roads charge you for travelling over them. They don't charge the business you're travelling to based on how much value you have to them as a customer.

[Braggadocious]

not really a faster road as anyone stuck in an expresslane behind a prius will tell you, but a less congested road free of peasants. Not really sure how this analogy syncs up but just throwing in my $0.02.

[wayoutthere]

> but a less congested road free of peasants

That's exactly what paid prioritization is though? A less congested bandwidth link free of peasants?

[throw0101a]

> The ISPs charge lots of money for the CDNs and private networks that want to connect to their customer networks at the edge.

CDNs can get closer to end-users by peering at Internet Exchange Points (IXPs).

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_exchange_point

Maybe not as close/fast as right on an ISP's network, but probably closer than a trans-continent or trans-ocean hop.

[wayoutthere]

That's how it works; no large telco I've ever worked for is willing to put third party gear (or really any gear that hasn't gone through extensive validation) into their head ends. An IXP is just a datacenter that the big ISPs and transit providers use to exchange traffic. The business agreements determine the price paid (which in some cases is zero, but often not, and is negotiated like any other business deal).

[throw0101a]

> The business agreements determine the price paid (which in some cases is zero, but often not, and is negotiated like any other business deal).

I do not understand this part: why is a business agreement necessary to simply discover BGP paths?

There is an ISP with users that want to go to Youtube or Akamai: the ISP has a router with the full BGP prefix list of the Internet, including for those of YT and A. YT and A are probably in most of the larger IXPs, and presumably the ISP in question is also at a few IXPs.

Why would a business agreement be necessary for the ISP to send traffic over the IXP's switches to the CDN(s)? What's the point of connecting into an IXP if you add the 'overhead' of business agreements?

[wayoutthere]

> Why would a business agreement be necessary for the ISP to send traffic over the IXP's switches to the CDN(s)?

Because that's how distribution works and has always worked under corporate capitalism: the company making money off the content itself pays to distribute it (on the Internet, this is generally understood to be the originator of the packets). So the ISPs charge the CDNs and companies like Netflix to accept their traffic. A common argument is "well I already pay for that as a customer!" Telecom business models are a lot more complicated than that, and if 100% of their revenue came from subscription fees you'd be paying a lot more than you do now.

> What's the point of connecting into an IXP if you add the 'overhead' of business agreements?

Because it's a convenient location to house network gear with easy access to multiple large ISPs and upstream networks? An IXP is just a datacenter. What makes it an IXP is the fact that multiple large telco networks are hosted there.

From the wikipedia article linked above: "The Vancouver Transit Exchange, for example, is described as a 'shopping mall' of service providers at one central location, making it easy to switch providers, 'as simple as getting a VLAN to a new provider'. The VTE is run by BCNET, a public entity."

[gnode]

This is not the net neutrality argument. It should be a cost saving for both the CDN and ISP to connect directly, because this saves both parties needing to pay for IP transit. That the ISP may charge the CDN for this is because in a vacuous regulatory environment they have been allowed to ransom their customers.

The behaviour of discriminating based on application or financial potential is not tolerated (legally or socially) in other common carriers like mail.

[wayoutthere]

> It should be a cost saving for both the CDN and ISP to connect directly, because this saves both parties needing to pay for IP transit.

It almost always is a cost savings -- I've worked enough interconnect agreements and the dispute is always over value capture (who gets how much). Transit is expensive; but transit is paid by the originator. The ISPs incur indirect costs that are harder to measure, so it has to be negotiated.

> The behaviour of discriminating based on application or financial potential is not tolerated (legally or socially) in other common carriers like mail.

It's not? Because big companies absolutely get preferential treatment with mail too. USPS does things for Amazon they do not for anyone else.

It hasn't always been like this, but deregulation craze in the 90s/2000s weakened a lot of the protections we had against it.

[krageon]

> Paying for traffic to be prioritized is the exact opposite of net neutrality

This is exactly what peering is a significant chunk of the time. You pay for better peering in the fees that you pay to the right server parks. If that's the exact opposite of net neutrality, it has been dead for a very long time.

[loup-vaillant]

Last time I've heard the term "peering", it didn't describe an exchange of money. Just an exchange of bits, where the peering partners set up a link and send data to each other.

Transport however is indeed traditionally paid.

As for paying someone to send data destined to their network, that's weird. Unlike transport, they want that data, why would you pay to deliver it to them?

[krageon]

And how do you believe those peering agreements are reached? What moves people to peer with each other?

[ojilles]

Mutual beneficial outcomes, without exchange of significant amounts of money are totally possible.

As an example, AMS-IX is completely non-profit, see: https://www.ams-ix.net/ams/about-ams-ix

[Edit: realised I didn't actually answer your question: it is much cheaper, at scale]

[throw0101a]

Does there have to be an explicit agreement? Why can't both parties simply advertise via BGP and let the algorithm sort it out?

If an online service can determine where the majority of its users are network-wise, then they'd set up a mirror at the closest IXP.

[shadowgovt]

Improving public internet infrastructure is an excellent idea, but if you're expecting game devs to rely on that solution, you're asking them to please defer being successful at their goal until we've finished boiling the ocean.

We should anticipate some will say no thank you and strike out forging their own waterways.

[Braggadocious]

If you want net neutrality you should be excited by companies building private networks because it means there's a competitive market that no one ISP or government can control.

[iamaelephant]

Ah yes, private enterprise, that thing that always leads to neutrality and openness. That must be why the ISP market is USA is so robust.

[Braggadocious]

If you didnt like the ISP market in the USA wouldnt you want to be able to open a portal to an alternate ISP markets?

[huffmsa]

I can pay FedEx to get my shit somewhere faster than my competitors.

My customers are delighted by this and in turn they spend more with me and less with my USPS shipping competitors.

Data packets are just digital shipped goods. The same rules should apply.

[siffland]

One main difference is anyone can buy a truck and start a shipment company. Unless you have a ton of cash you cannot lay down infrastructure for your own ISP and must pay someone else to sue theirs.

Also I am pretty sure a lot of our infrastructure for the internet was subsidized (via grants or what not) by the government for the big tel-co companies (I have been trying to find legit links to source, but in my quick limited search only found Reddit threads). If this is true, then we, the taxpayers, helped pay for the internet we use and should get at least net neutrality.

Just my opinion, probably wont match everyone else.

[samatman]

Anyone can buy a router and start an intranet.

Building a shipment company which can reach everyone in a country is a substantial capital investment, which I suspect is higher than that for a nationwide private network, though which is higher is irrelevant to the argument.

The roads, which the trucks require, are subsidized by the government.

In other words, I don't see the differences you're claiming.

Net neutrality, as an argument, applies to Internet; I've never seen a claim that it should apply to private networks, even those which use IP/TCP/UDP.

[Supermancho]

> Anyone can buy a router and start an intranet.

Thats more like saying that anyone can pick up a piece of mail and become a mail carrier. There are all manner of legal and practical barriers that require an internet to work outside of your street.

[samatman]

Perhaps this is true where you live.

Where I am, it's a simple matter of setting up some high-power relays and building a mesh network in the permitted radio band. People do it all the time.

Also, I think you meant courier. Mail is quite tightly regulated at the federal level, at least in the United States.

[huffmsa]

As there are to carry packages.

[huffmsa]

And FedEx had a huge initial capital investment to buy the planes and pilots they needed.

$50m-ish I think in 70s-80s money before they even shipped a package.

And they still barely made it off the starting line.

[nannal]

There are a number of feasible things which are not permitted by law. There are significant advantages to ensuring net neutrality exists and is maintained.

[matz1]

Then the law may need to be changed, there are significant disadvantages of ensuring net neutrality.

[huffmsa]

Great, so make it law that you can only allocate a certain percentage of your network to priority traffic.

Or that any unbought priority capacity is made available to neutral internet traffic.

It's not a mutually exclusive situation.

[nannal]

I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that the best method of preserving net neutrality was by not having it.

It really is a mutually exclusive situation, either all traffic is treated equally or it isn't.

This isn't animal farm, some packets are not more equal than others

[giggles_giggles]

This sounds like you are saying that reclassifying ISPs to be regulated under the FCC instead of the FTC would ban traffic shaping.

Obviously not all packets are equal. VOIP is an example of a high priority protocol. BitTorrent is low priority.

Legislating traffic shaping at this level would be absurd. Have I been living in a cave? Are Net Neutrality advocates arguing that it should be illegal for network operators to perform any kind of traffic shaping, even that which would prioritize the traffic for latency sensitive applications?

[wtallis]

> Are Net Neutrality advocates arguing that it should be illegal for network operators to perform any kind of traffic shaping, even that which would prioritize the traffic for latency sensitive applications?

At least some of us NN advocates believe it should be illegal for ISPs to perform the kinds to traffic shaping that explicitly identify and prioritize certain ports or protocols over others. Because that kind of traffic shaping is not really necessary to offer good QoS, and thus there's no reason to continue allowing it.

[Fjolsvith]

> This isn't animal farm, some packets are not more equal than others

Some packets are more equal because they are being greased with payment to transport providers. Like Bitcoin transactions, you can pay more to have it done faster. Or the HOV lane in big cities - pay a fee or bundle the 'packets' to get downtown ahead of the rest of the traffic.

[huffmsa]

Or the Chicago expressway. You get the convenience of skipping local roads (and a higher likelihood of getting shot than driving through Baghdad, but that's a digression), but it costs $5-6 to use the road.

That sounds like a physical fast lane to me. Pay more, get a faster, more direct route.

[joezydeco]

But one extra FedEx plane shipping priority goods doesn't knock a USPS truck off the road for a day.

[huffmsa]

But it does means the USPS truck is less than optimally full, but still costing about the same to run, meaning tighter, if not negative, margins.

These tighter margins will (if they weren't government supported) eventually mean that the USPS should reduce the number of trucks they run to better optimize their costs.

[kuu]

Or at the very end, USPS is not able to compete, as it has less packages and their cost is higher. And in the end FedEx keeps all the packages and once the competition is out, they can raise the prices and not improve the quality of their service, as the cost of entering to compete is too high for any other company to afford it...

[GarrisonPrime]

The cost would be much less for a company to just take over the USPS infrastructure and run it in a different manner. No need to reinvent the wheel or start from scratch.

And if indeed a monopoly were to develop, it’s not as if they could charge whatever they want with impunity. There are many multi-billion dollar companies that would be more than happy to expand into the logistics field if the potential profits are there. FedEx would need to keep their costs reigned in to stave off that threat.

Even if a monopoly could never be assailed (untrue, but for the sake of argument) they still couldn’t do whatever they want. They raise prices, people will search for alternatives. Overnighting a contract too expensive? Companies will start to shift more towards secure verified digital signature and verification methods, and the service providers lose money. Bandwidth being too throttled to play online FPS games or stream HD shows? People will start to look towards more localized or even non-digital options, and the service providers lose money.

[Fjolsvith]

> as the cost of entering to compete is too high for any other company to afford it...

Companies like Amazon or Walmart?

[huffmsa]

If that were true then no one would have entered against USPS in the first place.

No one would have taken on IBM

[joezydeco]

Ugggggh. Net neutrality analogies are hard. Why are they so hard?

The point I was making was a lot simpler: you could fly 1, 100, 100000 additional FedEx priority jets around the world and it wouldn't delay a single USPS truck one second longer.

The original point at the top was that low-latency gaming across the net reduces a QoS issue to a net neutrality issue in the end if we can't add more bandwidth (or airspace) the moment its needed.

[huffmsa]

But if the higher latency traffic is asynchronous, like an email, then it simply doesn't need the same prioritization as the low-latency traffic.

And those FedEx planes could slow down the USPS traffic, more FedEx planes means more last mile trucks, more road congestion, FedEx buying more optimally located sorting centers, last mile carriers prioritizing FedEx pickup/drop-off over USPS, etc.

[joezydeco]

Like I said, net neutrality analogies are hard.

[shadowgovt]

Is the analogy for what Network Next is doing more like adding special trucks to the existing traffic or like building roads that only its trucks can go on (which don't interfere with existing roads)?

[deelowe]

FedEx doesn't have the ability to control the stop lights at each intersection along the way, the major peering providers do. This analogy doesn't work.

[huffmsa]

Traffic lights are more akin to the latency of hardware switches, which affect everyone.

FedEx does control which locations they stop at and make pickups/dropoffs.

You can pay more to make sure they only stop with you.

[xzcat]

Except that the marginal cost of each "shipped good" is only a very small handwave away from zero. Which, as I understand it, is fundamentally different from the cost model of shipping physical packages.

[huffmsa]

Up to a certain point, yes you pay per physical unit.

You get a lot better rate if you can fill a whole intermodal container. You get an even better rate if you buy that containers capacity for an agreed upon period of time.

There's a huge industry built around optimally buying space in shipping containers and transportation.

[wbl]

But FedEx has rates the same for everyone because they are a common carrier iiuc.

[huffmsa]

I don't think Amazon pays the FedEx Kinko's rates for their prime shipments.

And I believe a friend's law firm has a bulk deal because of how much next day mail they need to send.

[wbl]

Bulk discounts aren't per-customer price discrimination.

[GhettoMaestro]

You don’t get to dictate free human behavior. It’s so frustrating to see this trend on HN.

People have a right to build private internet infrastructure and sell it at a premium. Full stop. No qualifications.

Your opinion is naive and short-sighted.

[TulliusCicero]

Look at it from the perspective of a random game developer: which one do you actually have more control over?

You're essentially asking, "why don't you ignore the thing that definitely works right now, and instead try the thing that might work out in a decade or two if you get lucky?" Why would any sane business choose that option?

[vanderZwan]

No, the actual business question for indy developers is "why do you expect us to agree to buying a thing that we can't afford, instead of demanding at the societal level that we all improve the public good that we actually do have access to instead?"

That's what GPs remark of "only big players can afford private networks" was about, and it's the opposite of what you're claiming.