"FCC" stands for Federal Communications Commission. It is an organization that regulates how internet service providers (ISPs) are allowed to handle traffic.
Recently, the FCC announced that it would create new rules that may allow Internet Service Providers to treat traffic in a different way than before. Some people — companies big enough to pay extra, basically — may get faster internet than the rest of us.
Instead of treating everyone equally, ISPs will only be required to give you a "baseline" level of service. Big companies will be able to get faster, better service.
That also means that the richest content providers will get an advantage over smaller firms, basically eliminating the competition. It could go as far as ISPs effectively charging "protection money" from clients in return for not slowing down their content.
Allowing ISPs those pay-for-priority schemes would be a disaster for start-ups, non-profits and everyday internet users who cannot afford these unnecessary tolls.
This would be a big threat to net neutrality and the open internet in general. In light of this, a big coalition led by Amazon and Microsoft has formed to take a stand against it:
On May 08 2014 22:52 Elurie wrote: Paying more for faster speed.... isn't that already the norm?
The graphics made it look like paying more to get access to more websites, much like cable TV packages. That would be pretty horrible.
It's not faster speed, it's prioritized transfer. The internet provider is refusing to upgrade its infrastructure in face of increasing demand and instead is offering prioritized handling of specific traffic. It's not faster speeds (Netflix isn't paying for 1 Gbps more), it's paying extra to make sure that their transfer speed is more accurately reflecting consumer experience on the other end.
Edit: More information from Vox
If you're the customer of a major American internet provider, you might have been noticing it's not very reliable lately. If so, there's a pretty good chance that a graph like this is the reason:
These graphs comes from Level 3, one of the world's largest providers of "transit," or long-distance internet connectivity. The graph on the left shows the level of congestion between Level 3 and a large American ISP in the Dallas area. In the middle of the night, the connection is less than half-full and everything works fine. But during peak hours, the connection is saturated. That produces the graph on the right, which shows the packet loss rate. When the loss rate is high, thousands of Dallas-area consumers are having difficulty using bandwidth-heavy applications like Netflix, Skype, or YouTube (though to be clear, Level 3 doesn't say what specific kind of traffic was being carried over this link).
This isn't how these graphs are supposed to look. Level 3 swaps traffic with 51 other large networks, known as peers. For 45 of those networks, the utilization graph looks more like this:
The graph on the left shows that there is enough capacity to handle demand even during peak hours. As a result, you get the graph at the right, which shows no problems with dropped packets.
So what's going on? Level 3 says the six bandwidth providers with congested links are all "large Broadband consumer networks with a dominant or exclusive market share in their local market." One of them is in Europe, and the other five are in the United States.
Level 3 says its links to these customers suffer from "congestion that is permanent, has been in place for well over a year and where our peer refuses to augment capacity. They are deliberately harming the service they deliver to their paying customers. They are not allowing us to fulfill the requests their customers make for content."
The basic problem is those six broadband providers want Level 3 to pay them to deliver traffic. Level 3 believes that's unreasonable. After all, the ISPs' own customers have already paid these ISPs to deliver the traffic to them. And the long-standing norm on the internet is that endpoint ISPs pay intermediaries, not the other way around. Level 3 notes that "in countries or markets where consumers have multiple broadband choices (like the UK) there are no congested peers." In short, broadband providers that face serious competition don't engage in this kind of brinksmanship.
Unfortunately, most parts of the US suffer from a severe lack of broadband competition. And the leading ISPs in some of these markets appear to view network congestion not as a technical problem to be solved so much as an opportunity to gain leverage in negotiations with other networks.
Well it got approved in the vote. Hopefully, the FCC will come to their senses during the next phase where the people can have have their voices heard.
How is it possible this hasn't got more attention here yet? Do people not care that your internet providers are about to start selling you site packages like they're cable companies?
Ars Technica just had an article today on the lobbying of various people involved. Unsurprisingly, those in favour received more than twice as much funding as those against.
On May 17 2014 08:01 tshi wrote: didn't the blackout thing work last time? There might be a bigger one if it keeps moving through.
Yeah it did fairly okay. This time some places are considering instead throttling connections severely to demonstrate the issue. One place limited all FCC IPs connections to their site to 28.8 kilobits. Others are considering doing it for ALL users and having a message related to the issue.
I do think something on that scale is in order again. I'm hoping Google gets involved. Say what you will about some of their business practices, but if they got involved and either blocked their site or got the message across in some way, people would know. To some of the less computer-savvy, Google practically is the internet.
Eh, it's why I've been a proponent of government controlled ISP forever. ISP companies have natural monopolies, and therefore cannot be treated as a free market according to every economic school of thought.
And I think almost every video I've seen about this topic is extremely biased towards being against this, and I wish people did some readings from both sides of the issue to get a better idea of the situation.
Honestly I'm to too worried about this here in Canada. We have a little bit of competition between ISPs here, and I feel quite confident in our government in not allowing this. I don't know why exactly it is, but I feel like this is something that US citizen need to worry about, but I think every country in Europe and Canada will be unaffected by this.
Ars Technica just had an article today on the lobbying of various people involved. Unsurprisingly, those in favour received more than twice as much funding as those against.
I'm guessing you just skimmed this because that's not what the article said. Just said that the ones who lobbied the FCC got twice as much from the telecommunications industry as the average congressman. Judging from the fact that the lobbying came from the energy and commerce committee (the congressional committee with oversight over telecommunications) why is it all that surprising.
If this passes it would pretty much be the end of Twitch. Some ISPs already cripple their throughput to extort money from them (eg Time Warner), the end of net neutrality would make this kind of thing completely legal.
On May 17 2014 09:54 R1CH wrote: If this passes it would pretty much be the end of Twitch. Some ISPs already cripple their throughput to extort money from them (eg Time Warner), the end of net neutrality would make this kind of thing completely legal.
On May 17 2014 09:54 R1CH wrote: If this passes it would pretty much be the end of Twitch. Some ISPs already cripple their throughput to extort money from them (eg Time Warner), the end of net neutrality would make this kind of thing completely legal.
Assuming you have 3~ or more providers in your area, it could also reduce the price of internet connection to effectively 0, by ISPs making money on these premium fees from websites, rather than from the customers themselves, which would mean more universal access to internet, and likely increased speeds. And if you do have that competition, you can give a big "fuck you" to the companies that slow down the sites you like, and simply switch ISP.
I don't think it's not nearly as bad as it's made out to be. Just approach it from a natural monopoly perspective like household water, electricity provider, etc... And just regulate it, and set standards to ensure the companies aren't overstepping their boundaries, like every other free market for natural monopolies. And in the case of having several companies, prevent any oligopolic behaviour.
On May 17 2014 09:54 R1CH wrote: If this passes it would pretty much be the end of Twitch. Some ISPs already cripple their throughput to extort money from them (eg Time Warner), the end of net neutrality would make this kind of thing completely legal.
Assuming you have 3~ or more providers in your area, it could also reduce the price of internet connection to effectively 0, by ISPs making money on these premium fees from websites, rather than from the customers themselves, which would mean more universal access to internet, and likely increased speeds. And if you do have that competition, you can give a big "fuck you" to the companies that slow down the sites you like, and simply switch ISP.
I don't think it's not nearly as bad as it's made out to be. Just approach it from a natural monopoly perspective like household water, electricity provider, etc... And just regulate it, and set standards to ensure the companies aren't overstepping their boundaries, like every other free market for natural monopolies. And in the case of having several companies, prevent any oligopolic behaviour.
If you really think for a second that any company is going to use this to cut the price of internet then you greatly underestimate the desire of a company to increase there bottom line. The best case scenario is you may see a hold on price increases for a few years but that's about it.
Ars Technica just had an article today on the lobbying of various people involved. Unsurprisingly, those in favour received more than twice as much funding as those against.
I'm guessing you just skimmed this because that's not what the article said. Just said that the ones who lobbied the FCC got twice as much from the telecommunications industry as the average congressman. Judging from the fact that the lobbying came from the energy and commerce committee (the congressional committee with oversight over telecommunications) why is it all that surprising.
I suppose I should have specified what I meant since I was rather non-specific. I did read the article, just forgot to elaborate on what I meant by lobbying.
And no, it isn't surprises. Doesn't make it any less depressing though.