Hacker News Reader

Comment by no_protocol | Hacker News Reader

> You wouldn't accept your electric company charging you different rates for each of your appliances.

I can get cheaper electricity for my water heater if I choose to attach it to a source that can be interrupted at times of peak load. I'm not quite sure this line of reasoning will stand.

Edit: It appears the linked article has been updated since I originally posted this. The new text is:

> You wouldn't accept your electric company charging you different rates depending on the manufacturer of each of your appliances.

This makes the argument much clearer and my concerns no longer seem important.

View on HN

Your comparison is invalid. Consumers generally tolerate that network management for some things is ok, for example, constraining the transfer speed of users at peak times.

This is a different scenario - the comparable scenario would be that your electricity company charges you a variable rate depending on which manufacturers appliances you buy, for example, if you buy and use only samsung appliances, you get a cheaper rate (and the electric company gets a kickback from samsung).

When you pay for an internet connection the only practical matter that I expect my ISP to care about is the speed I expect to get, the latency of the network, and the volume of traffic I am permitted over a period. Everything else is a congestion issue, and if they are going to manage what I can access to and modify the parameters of my connection based on resources I access, I am not buying Internet access, I am buying access to a curated online service.

> the comparable scenario would be that your electricity company charges you a variable rate depending on which manufacturers appliances you buy

The scenario you introduce is different from the specific line I was responding to. My intention was to show that some more consideration and rework of the idea could bring more clarity. You have helped refine Sam's point and now I understand it better, but as I read it, it seemed like something that should be addressed.

> Consumers generally tolerate that network management for some things is ok, for example, constraining the transfer speed of users at peak times.

I could have a switch to change my water heater to the non-interruptible service if I needed to use it during a time of peak demand. How does "pay more for priority" fit into the net neutrality picture? Is it okay as long as the user is the one choosing which of their traffic is in the fast or slow lane?

>The scenario you introduce is different from the specific line I was responding to. My intention was to show that some more consideration and rework of the idea could bring more clarity.

In your example you are choosing to accept interruption of service in exchange for a preferential rate.

Net neutrality preserves the integrity of internet access by stating that ISPs may not interfere with traffic based on it's origin or destination for competitive reasons (e.g. to coerce payments from service providers a consumer may choose to access). The core premise of Internet access is that a consumer is paying for access to the Internet. If a consumer chooses to permit the service provider to modulate service at the consumer side in order to gain preferential treatment (better price, etc), then this is a consumer choice.

> I could have a switch to change my water heater to the non-interruptible service if I needed to use it during a time of peak demand. How does "pay more for priority" fit into the net neutrality picture?

There are numerous ways to "pay for priority"; even with electricity you can pay a supplier to upgrade capacity in your area to ensure that you have the ability to more consistently draw power, especially at peak times (granted this is not a trivial process). With Internet access the same thing is available - if I want a 10Mbps connection, that has minimum bandwidth of 1Mbps at peak times, and 99% uptime, then I could reasonably expect to pay more than someone who only wants a 1Mbps connection, can tolerate a minimum bandwidth of 512Kbps at peak, and only needs 90% uptime.

This is not a net neutrality issue, and this should be consumer choice (I am old and from Canada, so the numbers above are low :P); allowing lower cost terms of service for less guarantees is a time honored tradition in delivering utilities and services, but most utilities in many parts of the world have a minimum standard that must be met to achieve regulatory compliance for consumer services (e.g. water pressure upper and lower limits, natural gas line pressure, electricity amperage and voltage, etc). Anything above that regulation-blessed "consumer grade" is an opportunity to extract value for priority, and is compatible with net neutrality.

The Net Neutrality issue is that your provider can then regulate the service which you have bought and paid for (network access to your ISPs network peers, and via those access to the Internet) to prevent you from access resources from specific sites and resources, and deliberately applying QoS to degrade a users experience with those third party sites and services in order to coerce the upstream services to pay the ISP.

This is why I say that a service that does this is not Internet Service, but rather a curated network service.

slightly modified:

The comparable scenario would be that your electricity company not only provides electricity, but also owns an appliance manufacturing chain. The electricity company charges you a different rate depending on which manufacturer's appliances you buy. Additionally, if you buy their appliances, then you get free electricity for those appliances.

The above scenario doesn't wrap in that it's not just a lower payment rate but, due to artificial caps on monthly usage, can lead to a situation where the only option becomes "use the ISPs preferred music/video/etc provider, or don't use that type of service at all".

edit:

P = (A * R) + (B * R') + C

Where:

P is the final bill a user pays (or data charged towards a cap)

A is the amount of services that are provided by the ISP/Provider/Pipe

R is the rate that is charged for the provider's own services

B is the amount of services that are provided by a third party

R' is the rate that is charged for the those third party services

C is a base payment amount (or zero in the case of considering P a data cap)

Assuming that equation, then the lower R is, the higher R' is, and lower P is, the more likely a consumer is going to choose ISP services.

So, if R is 0, then the ISP can slowly lower P (when considering it as a data cap) to be basically zero. Thus pushing out an ISP competitor services (or making new services not even viable), as the user is highly incentivized to use ISP services. The user is also incentivized to use ISP services, even if they are worse, otherwise be penalized with data cap usage or higher rates.

When R == R', then the ISP is a "dumb pipe", and competes to provides those services, and has no other incentive to do anything other than provide transit.

Presumably they wouldn't care which appliance you attach? The same deal would make total sense with e.g a smart charger for an electric car (in fact anything else would be nuts) and probably anything else with a big enough battery. If the difference between the two rates you are charged is large enough it may even make sense to have a battery and switch between the cheap source and the normal one if the cheap one is cut of.

I can imagine peak/off hour internet pricing, and that does sound reasonable to me as long as the overall rates are reasonable. There's no way people would go for the ridiculous per-GB rates mobile companies are charging right now, for instance.

I think it holds in the scenario you're talking about. If ISP's had different rates at different times and made those times public, you could choose to stop yourself from using certain things at those times, but it's your choice (or whoever you decide to let make that choice for you, but that doesn't have to be the ISP).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com