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by bombcar 970 days ago
In a simplistic view, net neutrality prohibits QoS bandwidth allocation. You can't prioritize video over Linux ISO downloads.

In reality that would be solvable.

3 comments

This is not true at all. What it means is that an ISP can't prioritize their own video service over say, Netflix. Or their own (perhaps ad-infested) download service vs a straight ISO download from a distro's site.
Net neutrality prohibits ISPs from restricting internet traffic based on content, senders, and recipients [1]. It is not exclusively about restricting internet for profit reasons.

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

The former Net Neutrality regulations provided exceptions for an ISP's own VoIP (phone), IPTV and other managed services.
The former Net Neutrality regulations provided exceptions for an ISP's own VoIP (phone), IPTV and other managed services. That means the bundled phone service is inherently more reliable than an unaffiliated VoIP service using best effort delivery. As long as they did not anti-competitively block or hobble a competing over the top phone service they were legally fine.

On cellular the effect of priority is much more apparent. The "bundled" phone call service has very high priority and can function normally under network stress/congestion. Over the top Whatsapp or Facetime calls will suffer audio glitches or fail to connect under the same conditions.

Indeed. There should be no need for bandwidth "allocation" because fiber would provide enough for high-bandwidth tasks (video and games) and low-bandwidth tasks (sending emails) at the same time, for everyone. If large ISPs hadn't been purposefully committing subsidy fraud instead of building fiber, they wouldn't have to rely on lies about network scarcity. (For bonus info, see another comment I wrote [1].)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37949298