[pyuser583]

Did any of the bad effects of not having net neutrality actually occur when it was gone?

Did ISPs throttle competition?

I haven’t seen any reports of this happening. I haven’t seen any studies showing this happening systematically.

I’m woefully uninformed, so I really would like to hear more about this. What has been happening these past few years?

[calgarymicro]

Worth noting that California's net neutrality law[0] probably stymied most efforts by ISPs to start prioritizing traffic nationwide.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Internet_Consumer_P...

[SllX]

What I’ve never understood is the argument that what California does regulating ISPs could actually affect the service plans in 49 other States.

Think about it: these are service plans offered through cables that already exist, and that cross defined borders right? But what all an ISP has to do to offer different service plans in California, Oregon, Nevada and Arizona is to merely offer different terms to different people based off the State they reside in. That’s just paperwork (and you know, delivering on the agreed upon service for the agreed upon price), not automobiles.

So I don’t really buy the argument that because California did a thing, ISPs couldn’t do all the supposed bad evil stuff they were going to immediately do once the FCC failed to “save the internet” anywhere else (although maybe other States also did the thing California did).

[kstrauser]

Users in California may download from a service in New York. Users in New York may download from a service in California. I suspect it would be more expensive than it's worth to have asymmetric infrastructure that would allow them to them to throttle the New Yorker without violating the law for the Californian.

All that network management would require teams of engineers and specialized hardware, all for something that may change on a whim and be obsoleted. What if New York copies California law? Bam. That investment instantly evaporated.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

>50% of US GDP is in states that are almost certainly going to prevent traffic throttling: https://www.naruc.org/nrri/nrri-activities/net-neutrality-tr...

It's probably not worth it to add in a whole bunch of BS just to try to make a bit more money in maybe Fl and Tx.

Especially given the fact that it's not as straightforward as it seems - and legal consequences could easily outweigh any benefits.

On top of that, I'd be surprised if ISPs tried to throttle traffic even in Fl and Tx and people in those states didn't pressure their government to ban it as well.

Net neutrality is wildly popular with the public.

[SllX]

> Net neutrality is wildly popular with the public.

I didn’t say it explicitly but I think this is the real reason that the ISPs largely haven’t changed their business practices independent of what the FCC says it can or can’t do. They don’t want the FCC in their shit, but they also don’t plan to do all of the worst case scenarios envisioned in say, this video from 2006: https://youtu.be/cWt0XUocViE

And one of the scenarios that did come to pass (high speed and slow speed lanes) was never even prohibited by the FCC back when it did pass net neutrality rules: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/01/netflix-is-so-bi...

> Netflix ultimately paid ISPs for interconnection but the dispute had an impact on the FCC's net neutrality proceedings. The FCC didn't ban interconnection payments but set up a complaint process so that companies like Netflix can challenge specific payment demands as being "unjust" or "unreasonable." There have been no major public disputes since then.

So I mean, I get it. In 2006 it was easy to see how turning the Internet into cable TV would be terrible, but if that was ever a danger, it probably isn’t now? And the internet is so much more important now that if it ever did look like that was going to happen, we could pass a real law then. In the mean time I’m going to enjoy listening to the court proceedings when the FCC is sued because they said they didn’t have the power to govern ISPs when they had a different set of commissioners.

[joecool1029]

> Net neutrality is wildly popular with the public.

In the tech bubble.

Outside of the bubble you will be hard pressed to find people able to actually articulate what net neutrality is. And those people are easily swayed by partisan means: ('The democrats want more government regulation that's going to increase your internet and wireless bills') ISP's only have to claim 'your costs have gone up due to new government rules preventing us from selling discounted service' or something to that effect and you will find that 'widespread' support eroding away.

[InSteady]

Average Joe and Jane consumers are quite familiar with data limits, more expensive access to highspeed data, throttled data based on arbitrary stuff, etc. People may not have heard of net neutrality, but that doesn't mean the basic concepts are over their head.

"AT&T could choose to throttle your streaming data when you don't use their partnered app to watch sports on your phone" cuts through the BS pretty directly.

[s3p]

This did not happen. Net neutrality was supported by EVERYONE who was not in government at the time.

[tstrimple]

Same way California auto standards impact auto standards across the entire country. California is the most populous state with a higher disposable income. At some point, creating a product specifically for 12% of the US population with money to spend while maintaining a separate product for the rest of the country becomes too much of an economic burden and the standard gets applied across the board instead.

[godelski]

> What I’ve never understood is the argument that what California does regulating ISPs could actually affect the service plans in 49 other States.

What I've never understood is the argument that what Europe does regarding privacy could actually affect the privacy of other countries.

Sure, some websites detect your location and apply different rules to you but a lot end up just following GDPR and apply it universally because it is easier and cheaper to do that than do a "means testing" and apply specific rules. Creating all those rulesets makes for an increasingly complex system, makes it more prone to error (which includes doing those banned actions within California and resulting in a lawsuit), and just is overall more expensive. Determining country origin is presumably a lot easier than determining state origin too. Not to mention that California is the most populous state and the biggest tech sector. Pretty much the argument is ISPs have bigger fish to fry when they're restricted from doing something to a large portion of their customers.

No one and nothing are truly independent. That's always been a lie being sold. Choices you make affect others and choices collectively made affect you. It's literally the definition of a society. On HN we have these discussions about Chrome's dominance allowing them to have control over how the internet is structured. We've had these discussion about Apple's dominance influencing right to repair. And so on. Monolithic forces are never going to be stopped by single player boycotting. My usage of Firefox for over a decade never did anything to dethrone Chrome and I never expected it would, but hey, it also can't happen without people like me. Just needs to happen at a larger scale.

[SllX]

Except for the fact that the facts are different.

When you sign up with an ISP, you’re signing up for a guaranteed service at a physical location with defined jurisdictional borders and laws governing it. My ISP throttling their New York customers who try to use Netflix isn’t going to affect me. Honestly throttling their Oregon customers wouldn’t either.

This is factually different from Facebook who serves people independent of their location, residence or citizenship and don’t give a fig about who your ISP is because laws might cover someone based on any or all of those whereas a Californian who invades Texas is no longer covered by California-specific consumer protection laws, and to the extent that businesses choose to adhere to them in Texas is incidental. ISPs are very much bound by the location they setup infrastructure in in the way that the services you access through that connection are not as evidenced by the fact that they already take into account your residential address when determining 1. if they can service your location at all and 2. what services and what quality guarantees they can make to you.

Also just to make a note on GDPR, one of the screwy things about it is that covers EU citizens. EU citizenship is a complicated enough thing, but there’s a lot of people with EU citizenship living elsewhere in the world. Fully complying with GDPR is a much more onerous requirement in terms of infrastructure and professionals you need to hire than ISPs complying with a net neutrality law in one State. I’m not saying there’s no additional overhead, it probably is easier to have contracts that are as standard across as many markets as possible, but ISPs are already skilled at working within local jurisdictional requirements.

[godelski]

> When you sign up with an ISP, you’re signing up for a guaranteed service at a physical location with defined jurisdictional borders

It's messier than that. This works if all NY, OR, <whatever state> gets its traffic distributed through a guaranteed hub in those locations. Specifically when you know the end point of the user. Let's just take the simple case and say a Google employee sitting in a CA office is working with a Microsoft employee sitting in a WA office and assume OR has a throttling service. The hubs along the way are Seattle, Vancoover, Portland, Eugene, Redding, SF. Do the Portland and Eugene servers throttle? To do this they'd need to know: 1) the source destination, 2) the final destination, 3) the type of traffic, 4) the type of service, and so on. Are they going to have that? Probably not. And then it'd be trivial to get around if you start using encrypted traffic and encrypted DNS services. The ISPs just can't do that wish such granularity that they don't risk being sued by CA.

> Also just to make a note on GDPR, one of the screwy things about it is that covers EU citizens.

A note on the CA thing, the DOJ and several ISP lobby groups tried to get CA's law overturned at a federal level immediately after it was passed. It's been upheld. So they kinda already looked at a solution that strongly implies what the parent implied about other states likely implementing similar laws were the ISPs to start such fuckery.

CA here isn't just acting as a filter in that they do a thing and so having to work around them is more cost than its worth. They are _also_ an example, where they tried to get the laws overturned and failed. So they don't want to get any more similar laws in other states because that will have even more of an effect and tighten what they can do even further.

[SllX]

ISPs are already rate-limiting users based off the service tier they paid for. If you’re paying for 250 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up, you’re not getting the 1 Gbps down 5 Mbps up connection that your neighbor is offering. If you choose to upgrade to the 1 Gbps plan, you’re using the same equipment over the same wire.

Choosing to then sell you an additional premium option where you get the full 1 Gbps you theoretically could get but don’t already pay for, but they’ll give it to you for a selection of curated services including their own is possible, and to incentivize you to not use a VPN, they won’t count it against your data cap when you access Netflix at 4K on 4 screens simultaneously because you’re now a VIP customer—all of that would violate the spirit of net neutrality. T-Mobile already does similar things as a “bonus” for their customers and technically, it’s not net neutral. There’s all kinds of ways to discriminate between paying customers, and that was the original fear of not having net neutrality: that the internet would become just like cable TV. That hasn’t happened with or without net neutrality as law (or as an FCC rule at least). Pretty much most markets have explicit data caps on some ISPs at least now, but the way it started was ISPs rolled that out slowly, over the course of years, market by market.

You are correct that other States could pass similar laws. I don’t follow the politics of other States much, but if California can do it, so can they, but other States can’t rely solely on the fact that California did a thing and now they don’t have to bother taking any legislative action themselves, if it’s important anyway (and I’m not convinced this particular issue counts as important). California even won in Federal court, great! There’s precedent for it now, but that doesn’t mean ISPs would necessarily lose in a different circuit, and they could always force a circuit split in a friendlier district.

[mywittyname]

I know for a fact there are tech companies that build out separate systems for EU and US data pipelines. It's not really a big deal to have a lawyer look over the data that's being collected and flag stuff as can be collected in Europe, and can be migrated to the USA for processing. Companies generally run EU-specific infrastructure anyway. GDPR is honestly one of the easier aspects of operating in Europe.

[godelski]

> I know for a fact there are tech companies that build out separate systems for EU and US data pipelines.

Great, me too. I thought it was clear in my first sentence...

>> Sure, some websites detect your location and apply different rules to you but a lot end up just following GDPR and apply it universally because it is easier and cheaper to do

[l33t7332273]

I thought the internet was purely a federal law domain.

It looks like this law was challenged on those grounds, but the challenge lasted until after Biden was elected and the suit dropped.

[kstrauser]

The FCC declared that it didn't have authority to regulate net neutrality. When they did, California declared that if it's not in-scope for the FCC, then there's no federal-state conflict in California regulating it themselves.

[bojo]

I think the point is that California, a sizable and notable state, implemented a law that affects everyone regardless of federal law.

[foota]

Parent is saying that California may not have the legal authority to regulate the internet in that way, since some powers are given only to the federal government.

[connicpu]

Whether they do or do not have the authority isn't something that can be answered by anything but speculation until it's been tested in court, and I don't think any of the ISPs had enough to gain through packet prioritization that it was worth the risk of going to court.

[kstrauser]

It's been tested and upheld in court. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Internet_Consumer_P...:

"Ninth Circuit ruled unanimously in January 2022 that California's net neutrality law may continue to be enforced and cannot be overridden by the FCC as, current as of the decision, Internet services were classified as information services."

[wddkcs]

Funny if the benefit was that negligible when it seems like they fought for it so hard originally.

[ilyt]

Also see emission standards.

[connicpu]

Exactly. Even if their laws only technically apply within California, no car maker is going to build a car that cannot be legally sold in the single largest market in the US. It gets even more difficult with the internet as there are few internet providers who don't have at least some kind of connection to California and therefore fall under its jurisdiction, and ensuring you only apply prioritization to packets that don't involve California is extremely tough.

[mywittyname]

These emissions regulations don't cover just California, but most of New England, the Pacific, and the mid-Atlantic states as well. I think New York has a way to "fast track" new emissions laws from California, so that the states are kept in sync.

"California cars" were a thing in the early days when emissions were difficult to comply with. Even modern cars come with a "50-state compliant emissions" line item on the window sticker.

If California ratcheted up emissions standards too high, there's the possibility that such segregation could emerge again, particularly when it comes to trucks. There are already several trim levels of trucks that are specific to Texas, because the market there is so big. I could see a truck coming with a sticker that says, "RAM TRX can not be registered or sold in CA, WI, NY, [...] due to emissions restrictions."

[dragonwriter]

> I thought the internet was purely a federal law domain

It is not, there are plenty of state laws that have applied to the internet. On the specific issue of net neutrality, the FCC in 2019 lost in the D.C. Circuit in its attempt to assert that state law regulations for neutrality were preempted, specifically because the repeal rested on them reclassifying in a way which means they don’t have the power to preempt state regulations.

> It looks like this law was challenged on those grounds

It was (EDIT: well, not on the broad “internet is a federal law domain” grounds, but the narrower “net neutrality regulations by the states were preempted by the terms of the FCC neutrality repeal” grounds), by multiple parties, and those challenges failed.

> but the challenge lasted until after Biden was elected and the suit dropped.

No, while the DoJ dropped its case then, the case making the same arguments by the broadband industry continued until the industry participants dropped it after the Ninth Circuit ruled (similar to what the D.C. Circuit had previously), that by reclassifying broadband under Title I in its net neutrality repeal, the FCC had removed its ability to restrict state regulations, which would only exist if it were regulated under Title II.

[ImJamal]

Why would you think it was a federal law domain? The federal government is technically only allowed to do what is granted in the Constitution. The 10th amendment says anything else is left to the states. Last I checked nothing in the constitution mentioned the internet. Not that the federal government lets that stand in their way.

[l33t7332273]

Like the other comment said, the internet is basically as interstate as a thing can get by design.

The interstate commerce clause is extremely broadly interpreted. It can, for example, be used to prevent a farmer from growing grain on their own farm to feed their own cattle that reside on that very farm(Wickard v. Filburn)

[ImJamal]

I think Wickard vs Filburn is one of the worst decided cases out there. If I live in California and visit a website hosted in California there is no reason why there should be any interstate commerce involved.

[thfuran]

What if all the traffic ends up routed through Nevada?

[thebradbain]

Yet it can’t be used to stop California vehicle emission standards, which is why almost all car manufacturers in the US make cars up to California’s higher standards, because they’re so big.

[bigstrat2003]

In fairness, while I detest that California's laws become de facto national laws, it doesn't seem appropriate to use the commerce clause there. California isn't trying to regulate interstate commerce, it's not their fault that manufacturers are too cheap to have different models that meet California's standards while having a normal model for the rest of the country.

[l33t7332273]

Right but the internet is inherently an interstate enterprise. That’s why I feel it likely falls under the purview of congress.

[hn_acker]

Not a lawyer, but I found an explanation about why states can pass net neutrality laws. Communication over the internet has both interstate and intrastate components. More on the intrastate component later. The Commerce Clause gives Congress authority to pass legislation to regulate interstate commerce [1]. Congress can also delegate a portion of its authority to federal agencies such as the FCC.

What happens when the FCC chooses to abandon its authority to regulate ISPs? More specifically, what happens when the FCC chooses to deregulate the ISPs by reclassifying broadband from Title II to Title I? Then the FCC cannot preempt state laws regarding telecom unless Congress gave it an authority to do so. In Mozilla Corp. v. FCC, 940 F. 3d 1 (D.C. Cir., 2019), the FCC tried to argue that it could preempt state net neutrality laws [2].

Quoting the page 132 of the case text PDF (which you need to download to ctrl-F, since Justia's PDF viewer messes up whitespace between words) [3][3.5]:

> Third, the Commission points to 47 U.S.C. § 160(e). That provision says that “[a] State commission may not continue to apply or enforce any provision of [the Act] that the Commission has determined to forbear from applying under subsection (a).” Subsection (a), in turn, gives the Commission some flexibility to forbear from regulating technologies classified under Title II. Id. § 160(a).

> That Title II provision has no work to do here because the 2018 Order took broadband out of Title II. So the Commission is not “forbear[ing] from applying any provision” of the Act to a Title-II technology. 47 U.S.C. § 160(e). On top of that, Section 160(e)—as a part of Title I—does not itself delegate any preemption authority to the Commission. People of State of Cal., 905 F.2d at 1240 n.35.

In short, the FCC gave up its authority to preempt state net neutrality laws the moment the FCC reclassified broadband from Title II to Title I.

There's another important point which starts on page 134 and continues to page 135 [3.5]. (If you want to ctrl-F it, you'll have to select just the first few words because page breaks in the PDF obstruct paragraphs.)

> Not only is the Commission lacking in its own statutory authority to preempt, but its effort to kick the States out of intrastate broadband regulation also overlooks the Communications Act’s vision of dual federal-state authority and cooperation in this area specifically.

Meanwhile, back on page 126 [3.5]:

Section 152 of the Communications Act provides, as relevant here, that “nothing in this chapter shall be construed to apply or to give the Commission jurisdiction with respect to * * * regulations for or in connection with intrastate communication service by wire or radio of any carrier.” 47 U.S.C. § 152(b). That provision divides regulatory authority “into two separate components: interstate communications, which can be regulated by the [Commission]; and intrastate communications, which cannot.”

Therefore, states actually have Congress's blessing to regulate broadband to some degree: states have authority over communications confined within the respective states.

So what about the Dormant Commerce Clause, which prohibits states from "passing legislation that discriminates against or excessively burdens interstate commerce" [1]? I don't know whether courts have come to an answer about whether state net neutrality laws violate the Dormant Commerce Clause. So instead I'll pose food for thought: To what degree do you think state net neutrality laws burden interstate commerce? Is the burden excessive? Net neutrality means that an ISP can't restrict traffic on the grounds of content, senders, and recipients [4]. What kind of burden does that place on an ISP which offers internet in multiple states?

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/commerce_clause

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corp._v._FCC

[3] https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/cadc/1...

[3.5] https://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-courts/cadc/18-10...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality

[tracedddd]

I don’t know the specifics of federal authority when it comes to internet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it fell under interstate commerce, which is how they justify federal drug laws.

[ImJamal]

I can live in California and visit a site in California and my traffic might not leave the state. That is pretty much irrelevant now that Wickard v. Filburn is a thing though.

[Facemelters]

The internet pretty squarely falls under the Commerce Clause

[hn_acker]

Internet communications which exit/enter the state do, but there's still the issue of communications which stay within the state. The states have Congress-given authority to regulate intrastate (not interstate) internet communications. Moreover, by reclassifying broadband from Title II to Title I, the FCC gave up the part of its authority that allowed it to preempt state net neutrality laws. I wrote more on this technicality in a different comment [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37946794

[dragonwriter]

Even when conduct could Constitutionally be regulated by the federal government under the Commerce Clause, that doesn't preclude state regulation unless Congress has (1) specificallly regulated that states may not regulate, or (2) has regulated in a way which the State regulations at issue would fundamentally conflict with.

So, yes, the internet is Constititionally a thing the federal government can regulate, but that doesn't make it Constitutionally a thing state governments can not regulate.

[ImJamal]

I can live in California and visit a site in California and my traffic might not leave the state. That is pretty much irrelevant now that Wickard v. Filburn is a thing though.

[dragonwriter]

The lawsuits over the FCC repeal, the California law, proposed laws in other states, and the Presidential election and the expectation that the FCC would revisit the issue and readopt neutrality regulations (and that any major conduct violating the neutrality principles made that both more likely and would be specifically targeted in the new regulations) all contributed to restraint.

[welder]

Net Neutrality Violations: A Brief History https://www.freepress.net/blog/net-neutrality-violations-bri...

Ask HN: Internet magically gets faster when opening speedtest? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31062799

T-Mobile begins blocking iPhone users from enabling iCloud Private Relay in US https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29880073

[ezfe]

The T-Mobile thing was eventually deduced to be:

>T-Mobile’s situation is a little more complex: most customers shouldn’t have any issues with iCloud Private Relay. But those who use content filtering services (like the carrier’s Family Controls) won’t be able to use iCloud Private Relay, the carrier tells us.

Which is reasonable, since a content filtering service is incompatible with a VPN

[falcolas]

There have been many reports of ISPs overwriting ads and adding content to non-https content. Also bundled content on mobile providers not counting against caps, etc.

Many also lie on speedtests, though I don't know if that counts.

[subtra3t]

Iirc they also limited data speed on netflix and other ott platforms, no?

[behringer]

yes as I understand it netflix is or has sent some ISPs "protection" money, specifically Comcast. https://qz.com/256586/the-inside-story-of-how-netflix-came-t...

If you value the internet at large, never get your service from Comcast.

[bityard]

In the neighborhood where I live, there are exactly two choices: Comcast or AT&T. Every time I think I have a grip of which one is more evil, I am proven wrong.

(Starlink is not an option, for a huge number of reasons that I won't get in to here. T-Mobile has an attractive-looking wireless 5G package for home Internet, but hide the fact that you're getting third-world service via CGNAT, which means it is really only useful for content consumption.)

[dfxm12]

Interesting as this talking about performance degradation and payments from netflix to comcast in Dec 2013-Jan 2014. Nextflix happened to raise prices of their service a few months later in Apr 2014...

[wmf]

Exactly. When Netflix pays extortion to ISPs that money comes from your pocket, not Netflix's profits.

[bradleybuda]

And when Netflix stops paying money to ISPs, the ISPs will get that money from... your pocket.

All of this is fungible and companies compete for the marginal dollar of revenue. Despite the wishcasting of central planners, there's no magic way to manifest money out of the pockets of one class of corporations without the system shifting to a new equilibrium.

[TheRealDunkirk]

It's a self-contained lesson in corporation taxation, I suppose.

[aldousd666]

Tell PA to stop granting them a local monopoly in my area then. I'll gladly switch when I have an alternative that works. I have nothing here in rural western PA except comcast and they have just been jacking the cost up year after year and sucking more and more.

[FireBeyond]

Their big argument there was around asymmetry. "Netflix sends us a huge amount of data. That's not what peering was made for - it was meant to be more equal sharing of traffic. That's why we want to charge them."

So how about "We send BackBlaze, Dropbox, Acronis, etc., huge volumes of our customer's backup data, so we should be paying them"?

Hah. Not likely.

[ThrowawayIP]

My ISP absolutely was replacing ads with "Locally relevant content." I've got that email somewhere buried in my inbox.

[edmundsauto]

How do they lie on speed tests? I thought that measured actual data throughput.

[etrautmann]

Presumably, an ISP might detect if a test was being run and unthrottle data speeds for the test, analogous to the Volkswagon emission testing scandal.

edit: strange to post this and find a second post with exactly the same two points submitted while writing. I guess my thoughts aren't that special

[swashboon]

This was why Netflix setup Fast.com to use production servers and use data loads that mimic actual streaming video. Early on in streaming ISPs were throttling Netflix traffic when the household streaming demands started spiking (around 6 at night when every house in America would get home and turn on some streams). I believe there was a whole fight over peering agreements related to that... Speedtest.net was definitely getting gamed and may still be or at least Comcast et al was prioritizing burst traffic because residential customers realized the 'up to' home internet service could be pretty bad if your cable lines was over subscribed.

[FireBeyond]

> Speedtest.net was definitely getting gamed and may still be or at least Comcast et al was prioritizing burst traffic

Hell, during the height of this Comcast partnered with Speedtest, and now hav their own Speedtest servers all over the country, so you don't even leave Comcast's network.

[snuxoll]

> Hell, during the height of this Comcast partnered with Speedtest, and now hav their own Speedtest servers all over the country, so you don't even leave Comcast's network.

Most ISP's do, and if you tell it to use the server of some other provider off-net they'll happily make the excuse that "we can only guarantee bandwidth to the edge of our network."

It's a crap excuse, because, duh, you have no control over the path traffic takes once it leaves your AS on hopefully the best route - but if you have poor connectivity to your peers that's still on you.

[wredue]

I think most larger ISPs current have their own speed test nodes these days.

It’s problematic if they don’t, because if Comcast detects a virgin running a speed test, they can throttle virgin traffic to give lies as results. So virgin need to run their own nodes.

If you kill net neutrality, that behaviour is legal.

[KETHERCORTEX]

Simplest way to do this: good speed on Speedtest, rubbish everywhere else.

Also, by default Speedtest tests the connection from you to the nearest testing node. A lot of times it's the one hosted by your ISP, so the measured speed is the speed inside the ISP's local network and not the speed from you to outer Internet.

[verdverm]

I've been using the Google widget when you search "speedtest"

It tests using a node 200+ miles away (they tell you where) AND it actually shows slow numbers when the pipe is slow. Turns out Amazon Video was the culprit, somehow using 80% of a 100Mb connection for a single stream...

[KETHERCORTEX]

> I've been using the Google widget when you search "speedtest"

Google doesn't show me this widget, but the speed test on Google Fiber's website is just a frontend for Ookla's Speedtest I mentioned. So I suspect that the widget does the same or similar stuff. I don't know for sure though.

> It tests using a node 200+ miles away (they tell you where)

"200+ miles away" from your physical location doesn't mean "outer internet outside your ISP". It doesn't mean "far away from your ISP's network" either.

For example, some mobile carriers may operate country-wide, but route everything through Important Central Connector To Outer Internet™ in the capital city. Consequently, internet services think that user's phone is in capital city.

So while you see "City 200 miles away" as a test node, it may actually be the closest one because your ISP's network structure adds these mandatory 200 miles. ISP's internet access node and speed test node may be literally across the street or in adjacent server racks.

Not saying that it is certainly the case, just trying to explain why words on test screen may mean things different from the ones we assume.

> AND it actually shows slow numbers when the pipe is slow. Turns out Amazon Video was the culprit

From your words, it didn't show you slow pipe. It showed you regular one that was busy with streaming video.

Also, ability to watch streaming doesn't necessary indicates actual internet speed since streaming services like Netflix can provide ISPs with the hardware for caching [1] and streaming from inner ISP network. Not sure if Amazon does that though.

> Amazon Video was the culprit, somehow using 80% of a 100Mb connection for a single stream...

Amazon streams with a higher bitrate than most of the competitors. 80 Mbps isn't that surprising given that Bluray disks have 40 Mbps bitrate for 1080p video. With streaming you also preload some video ahead in a buffer, so hitting 80 Mbps is completely normal.

[1] https://openconnect.netflix.com/

[verdverm]

The other node is in another country that does not have the same ISP. Again, it seemed accurate, so not sure why your even bringing it up. We could watch it change as we turned on and off the Amazon stream. That's how we figured out that it was this one service, not the ISP or Internet at large

Amazon says how many gigs per hour it uses for different qualities, none went over 2 digits in an hour, so there should have been sufficient bandwidth.

[404mm]

I assume they can prioritize speed test traffic. The Volkswagen method.

[smegger001]

I have had my internet dragging to crawl open speed rest and suddenly all of my tabs finish loading and have decent speed for the next 30 minutes just to slow down again. I am considering making a cron job to run wget to load speedtest home page every 20minutes

[falcolas]

Yes, exactly this.

[smolder]

Your ISP controls the flow of traffic to many different networks. Speedtest is always on a fast connection to give you the big number. Meanwhile they may aggressively throttle traffic to 80% of the other networks. Fast.com is a better speed test that is more (but not wholly) representative of your bandwidth to the internet at large.

[belltaco]

Some ISPs scramble to host their own speedtest or have a special version, like xfinity.speedtest.net

[patmorgan23]

You do traffic shaping and prioritize speed test traffic.

[edmundsauto]

This isn’t lying, it’s measuring something accurately but not measuring what you want it to measure. There isn’t a contract or regulation that they can’t prioritize certain traffic.

It does feel a bit deceptive, I grant. But to me, lying would be if they tricked speedtest into display 10mbit when only 2mbit of traffic was transferred.

Everyone games the tests. That’s why you can’t trust just about any performance test unless you run it for your workload.

[ericmay]

If nothing has happened then it's a good reason to make sure it stays that way - the law won't have an effect either way right? ;)

[shagmin]

I think other comments have already answered this. But in the back of my mind I imagine if companies abused it much worse than they did, they would've gotten much more unwarranted attention, and it was already deeply hated amongst tech savvy people and ISPs are already some of the most hated companies in general. Taking advantage while they could have would have dug that hole yet even deeper and would only make it more likely that a law would be created sooner rather than later making it illegal, so it just wasn't worth the investment on any meaningful scale.

[RHSeeger]

My phone plan (Verizon, common plan) limits the resolution of videos I can watch on my phone.

[darknavi]

Ignorant here, do these FCC rules only apply to residential ISPs or do they also apply to cellular networks?

[supertrope]

These proposed rules apply to both wireline and cellular broadband. See item 60 on page 35 https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-397309A1.pdf.

The original Net Neutrality rules exempted cellular. The FCC used Title I regulatory authority hoping to use a "light touch" least ISPs sued and an appeals court voided the regulation with the rationale the FCC did not have the authority to do as long it continued to classify broadband as Title I "information service" instead of "telecommunications."

When the Net Neutrality regulations were re-done the FCC re-classified broadband as Title II "telecommunications" for more solid legal authority.

When the FCC changed to Republican majority they repealed the regulation and reclassified broadband back to Title I.

[malfist]

Did you upgrade your cell phone plan so you could have 1080p video on YouTube?

That's an example of non-neutral net

[criddell]

I'm on TMobile in part because I got a free Netflix and MLB.tv. Is that an example?

[ericmay]

Yea that's probably an example - those companies get preferential treatment on the network w.r.t traffic and so competitors have a harder time entering the market.

[criddell]

But if they simply give you a free subscription without any kind traffic shenanigans, it's not a net neutrality issue?

[zamalek]

> without any kind traffic shenanigans, it's not a net neutrality issue?

Yep.

But they do rate-limit people: https://www.t-mobile.com/support/plans-features/activate-hd-...

If you're on the top plan then you haven't experienced it. The irony is that T-Mobile was one of the ISPs throwing support behind net-neutrality, and now they are one of the most aggressive net discriminators.

[ericmay]

Probably not unless there is something I'm not considering

[l33t7332273]

I don’t think bundling other paid services counts. It’s only if the ISP treats the traffic to/from those paid services differently that you run afoul of net neutrality.

[plussed_reader]

The term you're dancing around is zero-rating, and it is viewed unfavorably.

https://dig.watch/topics/network-neutrality#:~:text=Zero%2Dr....

[snarfy]

But they do. Typically the bundled video services like Netflix or Apple don't count against your bandwidth usage.

[criddell]

TMobile gives me free Netflix, but I use it on my television which uses my home internet. So even if they zero-rated that service, in my case it's irrelevant.

Plus I think I have an unlimited* plan, so zero-rating something doesn't have much impact.

[pyuser583]

No, I did not. My cell data plan has never preferred one bit over the other.

[lotsofpulp]

If you are in the US, there is always a ranking of bits on a mobile network. Perhaps not by your plan specifically, but by the network operator.

https://www.reddit.com/r/NoContract/comments/tn4733/qci_leve...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QoS_Class_Identifier

[mmanfrin]

Every major plan I've seen has traffic shaping or throttling for streaming, even Google Fi itself for Youtube, their own property.

[Longlius]

That's because Google doesn't own the Google Fi infrastructure. They use T-Mobile's.

[malfist]

Lucky you, you must not be on Verizon, AT&T or TMobile

[talent_deprived]

Did you ever want to fly first class versus coach?

[LightHugger]

yes, they extorted netflix and other big providers into paying them or else they'd use the lack of net neutrality to basically delete their service. Which ends up meaning you pay more for streaming services like netflix and it's competitors.

[yoyohello13]

Relying on ISPs to not do evil is a losing strategy.

[m463]

Directly, I think every ISP that allowed unlimited traffic for their own streaming media service while counting third party streaming services against a cap.

[s3p]

Remember the Verizon zombie cookie?

https://www.wired.com/2016/03/verizons-zombie-cookies-will-f...

[dfxm12]

There was this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_California_wildfires#Veri...

[tlhunter]

On United flights I can use Facebook Messenger for free but not Signal.

[wredue]

Do you trust providers without net neutrality codified in to law?

I sure as shit do not.

[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

well I didn't have caps before net neutrality, so there's that.

[xwdv]

No. It was a nothingburger.

[throwawayqqq11]

Any financial lever will get pulled, its just a question of the right enshitifiers in charge, so just a matter of time. Expecting anything else is naive imo.

[downWidOutaFite]

I think Tier 1 ISP Hurricane Electric blocking traffic to Kiwi Farms because they don't like the content would qualify: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/08/isps-should-not-police...