[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.

[salawat]

What you're trying to put your finger on is that we are beginning to hit utilization levels of network resources where the previous model of statistical multiplexing is starting to show signs of strain.

You used the FedEx plane as an analogously to new faster/higher bandwidth infrastructure. The USPS trucks contents may have been on one of those jets at one point (if the contents are considered to be packets, and the truck was a lower bandwidth link).

However, network operators nowadays, instead of building up infrastructure capable of ensuring all traffic gets similar QoS (which costs money), resort to traffic shaping, route analysis, and DPI (looking in the box to figure out what it is), to try to eke out that QoS is more congested links by making the losses at least explain away-able.

This is the opposite of the colloquial way of handling net neutrality, which is to faithfully deliver every packet regardless of content, and mind your business in terms of what it contains.

You don't lookatthe package. You don't shake it. You don't paw at it, poke it, or molest it. Just get it from A to B.

Or did I mess up?