Net Neutrality...

[ameerat42]

Have you heard about it/know what it's about?
I heard an interesting show on the radio about it last night, ie, the wee hours.
I tried to stay awake for the whole show - and I dreamed that I did. Well, most
of it at least. I'm still trying to find the program, as it summed it up well.

Basically, do you think you're/we're getting pretty poor Internet service now?
Do you think the ISPs are mainly to blame?

It's neither of those that's the problem, so if you said "yes" to both those questions,
then you/we are in for a worse serve.

Whatever the service standards from ISPs are like, they are not going to be the problem if
the "principle" of Net Neutraiity gets significantly changed by the US FCC.

Here is a humorous video on the topic, but the nub of the whole idea occurs about
3mins 18secs in... Here the presenter gives the actual and the hyped version of what
will happen.

Will the Internet go the way of the works of Ozymandias? (Is it already there?)
(Click on the play button in the link for a spoken rendition - while you still can)

If I can find last night's radio program - a more sedate but no less insidious report - I will
post it up.

- - - Updated - - -

Found it - a repeat apparently, but...
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/...t-risk/5077308

And listen to the audio link here:
http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podca...31107_1920.mp3

[Steve Axford]

I think it's a complicated question. When I worked with such things, the concept of priority traffic made heaps of sense. It allows you to ensure that important traffic always gets through, allows you to circumvent network flooding by some malign player, but also also allows market manipulation. I suspect that it will happen, at least in some areas.
P.s. I only listened to the funny clip as I don't have time for the longer one yet.

[ameerat42]

Ta Steve. I wonder who decides what's "important"? Biggest spenders, I suppose - or other plutocrats
Even that funny clip gave you the general idea.

[Steve Axford]

Having spent 20 years in high end computing and being focused on system performance, I do find it a bit incredible that queue management in the internet would ever have been neutral (ie there wasn't any). If you want to get the best performance from any queue, you will always have a priority system. Even roads (where there is very limited priority opportunities) will sometimes have bus or taxi lanes and ambulances or police take priority by turning on their sirens. To have a network where management commands have to queue with normal traffic makes no sense. The only alternative is to have separate virtual channels, which is more complex and wasteful of network bandwidth. It strikes me as a non-issue, but I've been out of the industry for about 10 years now and I am not up to date with the politics.

[Steve Axford]

I read a bit more about it and the internet network providers (there must be an acronym for them) obviously have the ability to prioritise traffic currently. What they do is limited by legislation, so the question is political and not technical.
Still, I don't think my lousy service is due to anything much more than a useless network. Maybe if I lived in Sydney or Melbourne I could complain about my Netflix streaming speed, but here we get no Netflix streaming. Zero speed. So slowing the traffic isn't going to make any difference.

[ameerat42]

Well, they repealed it:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-st...-a8111066.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/14/t...peal-vote.html

There might be appeals