Hacker News Reader

Comment by prat | Hacker News Reader

"So, for example, broadband providers could offer a special gaming channel, or a more secure banking service, or a home health monitoring capability – so long as such offerings are separate and apart from the public Internet."

Can somebody explain? Does this mean verizon would be able to sell special secure service to say, bank of america for its public site? What is the meaning of "separate from public internet"? doesn't this eventually mean that by paying verizon, BOA would be able to offer secure service than a bank who did not buy the "special service" from verizon? Am I missing something here?

If this is the case, what is to stop verizon from going a step ahead from offering "secure" to "faster" service to those who care to pay. then where goes net-neutrality.?

View on HN

here in switzerland some of the DSL providers also provide their own set-top box that provides access to TV channels.

Which is funny because at first the Cable TV companies brought internet to the households and now the phone companies are bringing TV.

Anyways: While the bandwidth for internet is available at bandwidth from 300/100 kbit/s up to 20/1.2 Mbit/s, the TV functionality uses bandwidth independent from those plans allowing even the 300Kbit/s customers to watch TV in acceptable quality.

If what this Google proposal means is something like that, we really shouldn't care. This is not about building a private internet, this is about adding additional (and voluntary) services to the existing internet connection.

This is what its supposed to be about, but the worry is that the television companies that are also providing internet, will just create new 'services', that are effectively a non-net-neutral internet.

They're called walled gardens. The real internet considers them damage and routes around them. Don't be concerned.

If the special treatment that BoA pays for does not degrade my (or anyone else's) internet performance, and does not degrade the speed or accessibility of other bank websites, I don't mind. I think the "separate and apart" means this goes further - I can't just type https://www.bankofamerica.com/ and get the special service.

I understand.. so yes - we as users won't mind. but what if I were another bank? The security upgrades that I would normally pay Infosys to do for me now no longer give me a competitive advantage over BoA. I'd have to pay verizon in addition to get the same "special service" to offer the same security (replace with speed/features etc.) right?

Yep, that's pretty much what it is. The words "upgrade" or "in addition" are purely PR: what is the difference between slowing down website A but not B, or increasing the bandwidth for website B but not A? I'd imagine that in the USA you'll get faster broadband in the future: either the "normal" usage gets redefined each time, or you could be stuck with "normal" being the situation in 2010 for the next decade or more.

When you increase bandwidth for A but not B because A is paying you more money, you are behaving in the exact same way that the internet does: paying for a faster connection leads to more bandwidth. When you slow down B but not A because A is paying you more money, you are actively messing with packets, holding back ones from B while pushing ones from A further up the queue. Speeding up A is not the same thing as slowing down B.

Eh??? Paying for a faster connection??? What are you trying to say? That if I own a website then it's ok to be charged money by an ISP to get an extra chunk of the last mile to the user???

No. You're charged for the connection your server has to the wider internet. The end-user is charged for their connection to the wider internet.

Note that I'm talking about the total bandwidth available, not the speed of the connection to an end-user. The distinction is important: having more bandwidth means that you can send data to more users without sacrificing individual speed.

Peering arrangements between providers are the closest it should be possible to get to paying for a larger chunk of the last mile: because the server they are trying to talk to is fewer hops away, they will have lower pings, and possibly more responsive page-loading. In a situation where the connection of a network to the backbone is saturated, this appears to be the same as giving the peered provider's packets priority, since that connection is not saturated. This situation is somewhat distinct, however, being an issue of incompetence or third-party malice (the connection is either too small for normal usage or being attacked) instead of hardware designed to prioritize packets by source (which would be malice or greed on the part of the provider). This assumes a simple network topography, with a single connection to non-peered network, but it may be expanded to explain situations involving larger networks.

Perhaps you are missing the point. If I pay for more bandwith and you do not then we will access every website at the same speed. You might access all sites slower than I do, but the sites you access, are all accessed at the same speed.

So you would have no artificial incentive to visit say the BBC rather then Huffington Post.

But, what internet prioritization is about, is that regardless of the speed of bandwith you have, some websites will be slower and some faster. Sure, if you have a 10mb and I have a 20mb then the slower sites will be even slower to you than me, and the faster sites not as fast as mine, but that is the point. Not that a user can access all sites faster or slower, but that all users can access some sites faster and some slower, regardless of the package they have.

So, if this was the case say in 1998, when Google was the newest and best thing, google.com would be so slow and Yahoo so fast that possibly people would just stick with yahoo.

Your Infosys stuff will still work - but BoA may be able to add additional end-to-end or last-mile advantages above that. I think (though I'm not sure) that part of this deal precludes exclusivity - BoA cannot prevent another bank from getting the same service for the same money.

That makes sense.. so it boils down to the ban on "exclusivity" - if it wasn't for that, then for sure there is no net neutrality.But even with that in there,

I am sure it won't be difficult to find a conflict of interest given enough time and freedom for verizon to strategize. For a hypothetical example, what if verizon itself spawns a paypal like website using its own secure service for free for which others have to pay?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com