I never quite understood what the net neutrality debate was about, having even spent some years at ISP in NYC. So net neutrality is all about giving unlimited data access to pulic safety workers?
People who support net neutrality believe that if private corporations are allowed to bill packets based on destination/origin/content instead of treating them all equally, society would be worse off. Here is a prime example of a corporation being extremely petty in a emergency situation when possibly lives are at risk. To quote:
'Verizon's throttling has everything to do with net neutrality -- it shows that the ISPs will act in their economic interests, even at the expense of public safety," County Counsel James Williams said on behalf of the county and fire department.'
How then will a corporation act when the stakes are even lower? Act in public interest or profit seeking?
Verizon's throttling has everything to do with net neutrality
And that's just wrong. Verizon throttled the fire department after they hit the specified bandwidth limit, without regard to the content of the traffic. The people who are mad at Verizon are claiming that they should have treated the traffic differently because it was more important, which is exactly the opposite of net neutrality.
It's about preventing ISP from becoming a gatekeeper and abusing its position as a physical network owner to control information flow (which can commonly be used for fleecing the end user, hampering competition, censorship or whatever other sinister purpose).
To give a more easy to understand example. Imagine a water network company, which can influence whatever they want by controlling who gets water and how, because water is so vital for everyone. That's abuse of their water network ownership. So it makes perfect sense for such entity to be forced to remain neutral to prevent any potential of such abuse. That's exactly what net neutrality is about.
But that doesn't apply to this case, because Verizon was previously being neutral. Verizon didn't cut off the fire department because of the type of data the fire department was using. Verizon shut off the fire department because the fire department hit the cap in the internet plan they signed up for.
Verizon is now treating the fire department different from everyone else, so now that Verizon removed the fire department's cap, Verizon could be argued to be no longer neutral.
tooltalk was expressing confusion about how Net Neutrality relates to this case.
How are data caps artificial? Verizon needs to pay money to have capacity in its cell towers. If more people use more data, that means Verizon needs to build more powerful cell towers. By limiting people's data, Verizon doesn't need as many towers. If people pay more, that funds Verizon to build more towers.
Caps don't manage capacity. Capacity is saturated by simultaneous usage. That's managed by limiting bandwidth, not by setting a monthly data cap. In practice caps are simply a rip off, masked under the need to manage the network.
One way of thinking about a data cap is just a bandwidth limitation measured over a long period.
Bandwidth cannot be measured instantaneously, it has to be measured over some period of time. I'm not sure what the normal period ISPs use is, but maybe it's 0.1 seconds. Then if someone has a 100 Mbps download connection and a 1 TB monthly download data cap, that person effectively has 2 bandwidth limits: a limit of 100Mbps when measured over 0.1 seconds, and a limit of 3.086Mbps when measured over 1 month.
Or you could say it's a 3.086Mbps connection that allows bursting up to 100Mbps as long as the bursts are paid back with downtime.
Data caps incentivize conservative use of a shared resource. They don't prevent congestion (only surge pricing could do that, but nobody wants to check market rates before sending a packet), but they make congestion a much rarer occurrence.
Q.E.D. So these claims that caps are a network management tools are false. They don't even make congestion a more rare occurrence. If network can't cope with simultaneous usage, no amount of monthly caps will fix it. The only way to do it is to build it up.
What caps do, is forcing users to pay for more expensive plan with less caps. Or disadvantage competitors against ISP's own services that are excluded from those caps. It's a rip off scheme.
> They don't even make congestion a more rare occurrence.
Because if everybody uses more data there won't be more congestion? Sorry, that does not even qualify as wishful thinking. What caps do is force people who use the network more than others to contribute roughly proportionally more to its investment and maintenance.
If you really expect guaranteed uncontested bandwidth, anytime, anywhere, then your network could only ever sell you as much as you'd get if every one of their customers would gather in a single cell and fire up their radios at once. You would dream of modem speeds - and not be willing to pay even a cent for that tiny amount of service.
Because congestion is not caused by using more data, it's caused by more people using connection simultaneously. As I said above, monthly caps don't help for that at all. I.e. let's say now is the time when all caps are reset (beginning of the month). Everyone starts using the network - boom! You have congestion even if amount of data they consumed is small.
To make the analogy more easy to digest. Let's say you have a highway that's commonly overloaded. Instead of adding more lanes or limiting the number of cars per hour, you start limiting the distance that cars can go. How is that going to help? It will still get congested.
So ISPs should stop pretending already that caps are a network management tool - it's not. It's a user fleecing and anti-competitive tool they use to increase their profits.
> Instead of adding more lanes or limiting the number of cars per hour, you start limiting the distance that cars can go. How is that going to help?
It helps by making people think twice about doing unnecessary trips. Unlike driving, where people's patience for sitting in traffic is naturally limited, appetite for IP traffic is almost unbounded. Data caps prevent the equivalent of continuously running your toilet flush.
Except data caps still won't prevent the actual problem, I already explained above why. Even if you pretend it's a psychological deterrent - it's not really a solution to the technical issue. And ISPs will try to avoid admitting the obvious, that caps are a convenient tool to rip everyone off.
If they are worried about congestion, they have only two things they can do: 1. build their network up. 2. start reducing bandwidth of each connection, if they are too many of them.
Right after the last two hurricanes hit Florida, Verizon temporarily granted unlimited data to those in the affected area, which I thought was very sporting of them.
Even if your DSL/cable connection was still alive, your router battery backup ran out of power within hours, so cell phone data was the only way to communicate and stay informed.
Net neutrality means that every packet should be treated exactly the same, how does that marry up with giving preferential treatment for specific packets for safety workers?
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 56.3 ms ] thread'Verizon's throttling has everything to do with net neutrality -- it shows that the ISPs will act in their economic interests, even at the expense of public safety," County Counsel James Williams said on behalf of the county and fire department.'
How then will a corporation act when the stakes are even lower? Act in public interest or profit seeking?
And that's just wrong. Verizon throttled the fire department after they hit the specified bandwidth limit, without regard to the content of the traffic. The people who are mad at Verizon are claiming that they should have treated the traffic differently because it was more important, which is exactly the opposite of net neutrality.
At least semantically it makes it appear as if you read half of a qoute, reacted, and formed your reply based on that reaction.
To give a more easy to understand example. Imagine a water network company, which can influence whatever they want by controlling who gets water and how, because water is so vital for everyone. That's abuse of their water network ownership. So it makes perfect sense for such entity to be forced to remain neutral to prevent any potential of such abuse. That's exactly what net neutrality is about.
Verizon is now treating the fire department different from everyone else, so now that Verizon removed the fire department's cap, Verizon could be argued to be no longer neutral.
Data caps are unnecessary anyway, they are an artificial way to force uses to pay more.
How are data caps artificial? Verizon needs to pay money to have capacity in its cell towers. If more people use more data, that means Verizon needs to build more powerful cell towers. By limiting people's data, Verizon doesn't need as many towers. If people pay more, that funds Verizon to build more towers.
Bandwidth cannot be measured instantaneously, it has to be measured over some period of time. I'm not sure what the normal period ISPs use is, but maybe it's 0.1 seconds. Then if someone has a 100 Mbps download connection and a 1 TB monthly download data cap, that person effectively has 2 bandwidth limits: a limit of 100Mbps when measured over 0.1 seconds, and a limit of 3.086Mbps when measured over 1 month.
Or you could say it's a 3.086Mbps connection that allows bursting up to 100Mbps as long as the bursts are paid back with downtime.
Q.E.D. So these claims that caps are a network management tools are false. They don't even make congestion a more rare occurrence. If network can't cope with simultaneous usage, no amount of monthly caps will fix it. The only way to do it is to build it up.
What caps do, is forcing users to pay for more expensive plan with less caps. Or disadvantage competitors against ISP's own services that are excluded from those caps. It's a rip off scheme.
Because if everybody uses more data there won't be more congestion? Sorry, that does not even qualify as wishful thinking. What caps do is force people who use the network more than others to contribute roughly proportionally more to its investment and maintenance.
If you really expect guaranteed uncontested bandwidth, anytime, anywhere, then your network could only ever sell you as much as you'd get if every one of their customers would gather in a single cell and fire up their radios at once. You would dream of modem speeds - and not be willing to pay even a cent for that tiny amount of service.
To make the analogy more easy to digest. Let's say you have a highway that's commonly overloaded. Instead of adding more lanes or limiting the number of cars per hour, you start limiting the distance that cars can go. How is that going to help? It will still get congested.
So ISPs should stop pretending already that caps are a network management tool - it's not. It's a user fleecing and anti-competitive tool they use to increase their profits.
It helps by making people think twice about doing unnecessary trips. Unlike driving, where people's patience for sitting in traffic is naturally limited, appetite for IP traffic is almost unbounded. Data caps prevent the equivalent of continuously running your toilet flush.
If they are worried about congestion, they have only two things they can do: 1. build their network up. 2. start reducing bandwidth of each connection, if they are too many of them.
Like this case.
Sighs. So much fail.
Even if your DSL/cable connection was still alive, your router battery backup ran out of power within hours, so cell phone data was the only way to communicate and stay informed.
This is the exact opposite of net "neutrality".