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Comment by nitrogen | Hacker News Reader

there's a lot of practical uses for more limited types of Internet plans being available in world of IoT, especially

Can you clarify what you mean by this?

Not the parent poster, but for instance, but think having a dozen data loggers out in the field that only need to transfer a few 100k of data each day. No need for 4G or multi gigabyte packages plus hefty per-device line/access fee.

That has nothing to do with net neutrality. These companies are free under any form of the law to offer you a small-cap low-speed plan for a small fee but they don't bother.

If they restricted the services you could access or their relative speeds, then you get into trouble.

This is the fundamental misunderstanding.

Most in the ISP crowd agree with what you are agreeing with. But the net neutrality folks predominantly reject this approach.

I want surgery over IP. I don’t want surgical packets treated the same as a YouTube packet.

You can pay for lower latency on your end.

Then buy a dedicated line with SLA's and such in writing. I don't understand how people don't understand this by now.

> I want surgery over IP. I don’t want surgical packets treated the same as a YouTube packet.

Do you really think these two statements are at all related?

You definitely don't want surgery over the Internet - what happens when someone slices through your local fibre cable, for a start? Think about what you're saying.

ISP: Here's a cheap IoT plan! $5 a year!

Customer: Yay I'll buy a ${Brand} IoT device.

...

Customer: ISP, why isn't my {$Brand} IoT device working on your network?

ISP: Oh you need the $150 a month add-on to support your ${Brand} IoT device because ${Business Decision}.

The benefits of net neutrality still applies to IoT devices IMHO.

This doesn't make any sense, because nobody would buy the $150 a month add-on for an IoT device. This is why net neutrality makes no sense: The arguments for it are based on illogical premises. Verizon could charge $150 a month, but nobody would buy that service, and they make no money. But a $5 a year plan, gets a TON of new sales, hundreds of thousands of IoT devices, hypothetically, and the network limitations keep it from being hacked and abused in ways that make it unprofitable for Verizon to offer such a $5 offer. That connection could be restrict to only talk to $IoTDevicesServer, and it becomes incredibly worthwhile for Verizon to offer, as the cost of connectivity chips gets drastically lower, and IPv6 means they no longer need to worry about wasting IP addresses.

Fundamentally, ISPs are already charging the most money they can get away with at this point and time. The law doesn't change that, and net neutrality doesn't restrict that. They like money, so they set their prices as high as possible. The only thing net neutrality laws prevent is cheaper, limited internet plans BELOW that. For smaller things, low income families, etc.

What part of net neutrality proposals would prevent ISPs from offering lower speed plans at lower prices?

Also, where has anybody argued that net neutrality would prevent the customer from choosing to block all but a specific host?

You've come down against net neutrality in every thread I've seen about it lately. Have you come across any arguments in favor that are persuasive to you?

Net neutrality outlaws any conduct by the ISP to regulate or throttle off destinations by which site it is. Customers aren't doing it, the ISP is. Even Ajit Pai's proposal demands transparency so customers can make their own decisions, but net neutrality would indeed prohibit specific use Internet offerings.

Nobody could offer one because net neutrality would prohibit an ISP from intervening if you popped the SIM into another device to surf the web with it.

Google and Netflix are both against allowing such because streaming video, of which these companies own the largest providers of streaming video, would be the primary thing limited plans would all definitely restrict. Neither company wants ISPs selling Internet plans that can't use their video services.

Even if it'd be good for the customer.

> because streaming video, of which these companies own the largest providers of streaming video, would be the primary thing limited plans would all definitely restrict.

No, the primary thing limited plans would all definitely restrict would be the quantity of data transferred. That's what all the cellular providers already have the infrastructure to monitor and control. And once you've created an IoT-oriented tier of service that is limited to eg. 100MB/month, there's no reason to expend further effort trying to identify and block video streaming services.

I also don't see any reason why a provider couldn't offer a customer-controlled firewall option that disables access to everything but specific endpoints for IoT devices, especially if the "customer" is the IoT device service provider.

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