So Where Are YOU on Net Neutrality?

FlyByKnight

It's a simple question. I won't dilute with my personal stance in the OP. I just figured since we're ALL gamers, no matter our political/social/economic stances this effects us all and should be a hot topic. Discuss.

FlyByKnight

FYI, for those interested - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality

cameltosis

I am for net neutrality with some minor exceptions. 

I believe the overwhelming majority of internet traffic should be neutral and I don't think there should be any changes to speed/price depending on what type of content you are consuming or uploading. 

That said, I'm not opposed to a small amount of critical traffic being given priority. I'm thinking things like the military, or power infrastructure, that sort of thing. I don't know how you'd practically implement such a thing and I would hope that critical systems already have more robust methods of communication than the internet, but in case they do rely on the internet then I'd rather Netflix was a bit slower instead of there being a nuclear meltdown!

dave6660

I wish the broadband service provider market had some actual competition in the US.  At least I would have other options if/when my ISP decides to start throttling or blocking content I want.

FlyByKnight

@BillMurphy @SBFord

Can I get an assist? I put this in off-topic and it's not updating to the front end. I think it's a kind of important/hot topic. Thanks.

Grunty

FlyByKnight said:

@BillMurphy @SBFord

Can I get an assist? I put this in off-topic and it's not updating to the front end. I think it's a kind of important/hot topic. Thanks.

Off topic hasn't been shown in the Recent Discussion listing in over ten years.  People complained that they didn't want to be distracted by caturday, religion and politics posts showing up in their serious discussions about the latest MMO nerf.

BillMurphy

Grundy has the right if it. Best to repost in general.

Cleffy

In my opinion, there is a lot of misinformation spread on the subject. It mainly tries to portray net neutrality as a means to reign in corporate greed. The act passed in 2015 by the FCC to me seemed like a power grab to expand the authority of the FCC to regulate and censor the internet. The FCC really only has one purpose, to regulate the RF spectrum in order to prevent interference.

The type of corporate greed that net neutrality attempts to prevent is already self-regulated through the structure of the internet. Even though there is limited competition at the local level, the local ISP must make many deals with other ISPs to get data from point A to point B. The easiest way is to connect with a regional ISP that connects many local ISPs together. The regional ISP usually has it's own rules in order to promote many local ISPs to connect to them. This includes how to send and receive data across their local network and how to prioritize packets. It really isn't in the regional ISPs best interest for Comcast to limit the connection of packets from ATT. A big local ISP might be able to get away with this practice for a limited amount of time, but the regional ISP may begin to take action including preventing their local network from connecting to their regional network significantly increasing the local providers latency.

What local ISPs are now facing is the extinction of phone and video services meaning the internet service will become their main source of revenue. Due to this they have to adjust their business strategy. It actually works out a bit better for the ISP since they no longer have to give Time Warner millions a month to license their service and can get a flat rate from the customer. What we are starting to see is a value added service for using a particular ISP. For instance get free netflix when using TMobile. Or get Amazon Prime when using USA mobile. Cable companies in particular can leverage this feature due to how they create an internet connection. They can take 32 TV channels off air and bond that RF frequency to streaming Netflix instead. It doesn't take much effort for the ISP, but allows a dedicated 4k30fps stream for the consumer.

What net neutrality does is prevent ISPs from offering value added services. What is portrayed in the media is that ISPs are working with a limited pie and reserving more of the pie towards these value added services. But hard-wired ISPs are working with an every growing network that they can take services away from fading services like HD video programing and dedicate them to internet services instead. It is also portrayed that ISPs will throttle it's competitors which hasn't happened yet. There has only been throttling of high-bandwidth type communication like peer to peer programs, games, and video streaming.

The proposal to make ISPs title 2 because there is no competition is counter productive. Title 2 created the ATT monopoly. The end of title 2 for ISPs is what allowed there to be competition in the first place. The main issue with competition in any local area are the individual local governments not allowing more than 2 or 3 communication providers.

What the current proposal under the FCC does is take away power from the FCC and allow the ISPs to self-regulate again. So I don't really see anything wrong with that.

someforumguy

Net neutrality does not prevent ISP's from offering value added services. It just prevents them from throttling services that are not in their interest.

Let's say an ISP purchases HBO. With net neutrality in effect, HBO needs to compete with Netflix on their own merits. It has its own shows, so has obvious value for the ISP to offer.

But without net neutrality, the ISP could chose to throttle Netflix so it would become unusable for anyone using that ISP. Giving HBO unfair advantage over Netflix. 

This is especially a problem in regions where people can't chose between ISP's. Creating local monopolies because the ISP can determine what service will be available for you and render the competition of those services obsolete.

This is the whole point of net neutrality. Preventing monopolies and promoting competition based on demand.

ISP's (as in internet access) should be seen as infrastructure. You don't want Amazon to be able to ban their competition from roads, do you?

Jemcrystal

I want Comcast to stop clocking back our speed and overpricing high speed internet.  Game makers get blamed when their games do not run right on people's systems but no one looks at how fast their internet is.  The guilty party has been Comcast Xfinity all along.  Corporate greed ruined our games.  No ping for you!

Cleffy

I know the premise of net neutrality is to treat all packets equally. This means two things. 1st you cannot throttle or block particular traffic. 2nd you cannot give paid priority to certain packets.
This was not all the FCC did with the rule change in 2015. It also gave them the power to censor certain types of activity. Determine pricing structures of ISPs. And implemented a vague guideline for enforcing undefined rules that seem wrong to the regulator.
Personally I don't see anything wrong with a rule that packets should not be throttled or blocked based on their content. I do have a problem with everything else. You can see the everything else was the point all along after the FCC rescinded that rule change and Congress is discussing implementing net neutrality rules. The rule I defined does not go far enough for some congressmen which I am sure will be massively misrepresented in the media in the coming months.

Currently I have 1 gig service. My company much like Comcast has been upgrading their network prior to the 2015 rule change in the ramp up to DOCSIS 3.1. Now they offer packages starting at 15 mb/s ~ 1 gb/s. The average package is 75 mb/s for $50. That's very good compared to where they were in 2010 starting to offer 50 mb/s service.

There are only 2 instances of Comcast misdeed in regards to net neutrality. 1st is throttling of port 80 for peer to peer connections. This inadvertently affected mmos. That was changed about 6 months later. Then there was the throttling of Netflix, and people jumping the gun that Comcast was extorting Netflix to pay a fee in order to connect their network directly to Comcast's. However, this story was false and was not retracted as the 2015 net neutrality debate was over. It was actually an error on Cogent's side that they corrected a month later.

riveroftime

i'm really undecided on this... where are we with the topic now? 

Arclan

Damnit I voted wrong; can't edit it?  I intended to vote that I am strongly against ENDING Net Neutrality.    It is an extreme move towards censorship masquerading as something useful.

gameralacrity

Given the current monopolies/companies that control most of the market it seems like it could just get "whacky" quick.

Gutlard

The FCC can make their own determinations on what they deem as competitive even in single-provider markets. WAI! Woohoo!

Gut Out!