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Comment by corobo | Hacker News Reader

Either their infrastructure supports what the customer is paying for or it doesn't. If the ISP is running crusty old routes they're slacking and customers should migrate away from them as soon as feasible.

ISPs should provide connection to the internet for their customers in exchange for a monthly bill. How they do that isn't the customer's concern and it shouldn't be Netflix's concern. The only ISP Netflix should be paying is their own link to the internet (AWS last I heard)

Side note, Netflix isn't using any traffic. They're not sending me a UHD video stream unsolicited. I'm using the traffic.

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>Side note, Netflix isn't using any traffic. They're not sending me a UHD video stream unsolicited. I'm using the traffic.

Milk companies put their lorries in the highway to deliver their products. You're the one buying milk. Are you the one who's using the highways?

If Netflix wants a premium highway let them pay for it. Otherwise they will have to use the normal highway, the one that's worked fine until Netflix decided to fill it with lorries.

The grocery store bought the milk so that’s why the truck is on the highway. The truck (Netflix) wouldn’t be there if the grocery store (customer) didn’t order the milk.

If we imagine Netflix traffic as milk trucks delivering milk B2C, the “downlink” road to a milk buyer’s house would likely be maintained by neighborhood home owners’ association, thus ultimately paid for by the consumer.

Those highways between the farm and the neighborhood, though… Anyway, either the analogy breaks or it’s onto something!

In a less direct sense, yes. If there was no demand for milk in my area there would be no milk lorries sent to my area

Sidebar: I do wish HN had a rule against these kinds of analogies as they do other reddit-esque puns and the likes. The internet is not like a milk truck, it's not like a series of tubes, it's like 1s and 0s being communicated across a worldwide mesh of cables of varying material under the control of varying entities

We're all at least vaguely techy enough that we're on HN, we can understand at least the basics. Lets talk about what it is, not what it's like.

Let’s break it down:

BOB pays ALICE for a connection at fixed uplink/downlink parameters to the public collective of interconnected autonomous networks commonly referred to as INTERNET.

BOB uses the service as advertised to connect to CAROL’s autonomous network.

ALICE fails to adequately peer with CAROL’s autonomous network and calls it a feature.

BOB can’t switch ISPs because ALICE has monopoly on the service where he lives.

ALICE tries to muddy the waters with nonsensical milk lorry analogies that have nothing to do with fiber optic cables to maintain its monopoly and further leverage it to run protection racket on CAROL.

Sounds about right?

When BOB is paying ALICE for the service, he is implicitly paying for whatever “highway” connects his house and CAROL’s milk depots. Everything between the two points is ALICE’s responsibility. If ALICE doesn’t like that BOB mostly orders his milk from CAROL’s then she shouldn’t offer the service as supporting fixed amount of lorries per hour.

>ALICE fails to adequately peer with CAROL’s autonomous network and calls it a feature.

It also works the other way around: CAROL does not want to pay ALICE to have premium access.

Also, laughable that you call me a shill. Seems like the most used argument when you don't agree with someone. I'm not even American. So your "BOB can't switch ISPs" does not even apply here.

> It also works the other way around: CAROL does not want to pay ALICE to have premium access.

How does this logically follow? CAROL advertises fixed downlink/uplink connection to any autonomous network. How is it “premium access” to deliver on what you are actually advertising?

It’s like selling SSD drives and then saying oh yeah but if you store video files in this particular video codec they will play at only 15 fps unless the codec vendor pays us extra for a firmware update.

> So your "BOB can't switch ISPs" does not even apply here.

It applies to the particular Netflix/neutrality debate.

> also works the other way around: CAROL does not want to pay ALICE to have premium access.

As others have mentioned there is no extra "premium" access needed.

Netflix pays for their whole upstream, probably a bit extra for redundant uplinks etc.

Customers pay for the entire downstream.

Everyone in between just have to accept the bits and forward them within reasonable time (Netflix has some caching in the client so it shouldn't be to hard unless someone has oversold their capacity.)

> Also, laughable that you call me a shill.

I looked at your recent comment history and I agree.

That said you really seem to defend an undefendable practice to the point where I understand where people get that idea from.

So I'd rather guess you enjoy annoying people on the internet to see them get mad.

The way I see it is net neutrality is very unfair to the isp. It creates unnecessary burden to the isp. Of course Isp will hate it and will fight for it as much as their can.

Those ISPs can only fight this “burden” by taking advantage of their unfair monopoly. If there was an actual free market competition there would be no need for net neutrality in the first place.

BOB could just switch to using DAVE’s ISP service, who would be happy to connect him with CAROL’s AN without any throttling.

Its not the ISP fault if they are the monopoly.

Wouldn’t you agree those ISPs are very well compensated for this “burden” by not having to compete?

IT is their fault when they block competition in the marketplace and try anything they can to prevent cities to open up the market to competition.

Its in their best interest to block/prevent competition.

Just because an action is in their best interest does not absolve them from the fault of that action. Arguably, one can usually safely assume the opposite.

What extra burden?

They get paid by customer to deliver bits.

The only extra burdens I see is the "burden" of 1) not double dipping and 2) not overselling their offerings.

> What extra burden?

All the work to make sure it comply with net neutrality.

AFAIK in more than one case that has been the burden of:

not taking extra steps to throttle Netflix,

i.e.

the burden of not double dipping.

I think few people are arguing that Netflix should get special treatment, only that:

* ISPs should treat all bits the same (unless I as the receiver has asked for something else).

* ISPs should have enough capacity to serve their customers.

It maybe that case but regardless, net neutrality disadvantage to the isp. Of course they are not happy with it.

I'd argue that

- basic honesty (not pretending they don't get paid)

- and not extorting money from other companies by keeping said customers hostage

shouldn't be considered a disadvantage?

While your statement of "of course they are not happy with it" is true, it's not a defense in my mind. The same could be said about any regulation that controls indefensible practices of companies.

From oil companies, to fishing companies, to waste disposal to whatever, most companies from a purely technical viewpoint would be more than happy to get rid of regulations that control what and how they can do business. Yet, we have those regulations in place for a reason.

In this case we simply ask that ISPs deliver the bits we paid for. I don't want Comcast treating my bits differently anymore than I want my mail carrier to hold my packages ransom because they seem important and I'd probably pay more for them.

My mail carrier doesn't read my mail. Comcast shouldn't either.

Yes of course it always depends on which side are one on. If I'm the customer sure I don't want isp throttle my bits but If I'm the isp, I want the freedom to throttle.

Yea, I wasn't disagreeing with your logic.. I guess I was saying that, it doesn't matter (not trying to be insulting lol).

Ie, in a purely technical sense corporations shouldn't want any laws/regulations. But that's not really a relevant fact to anything, is it?

Net neutrality requires that ISPs actually deliver what they've advertised and collected payment for and claimed to deliver. Of course they're not happy with that. It's much easier to deliver less than promised but still pocket the full payment.

Correction - make it comply with Title 2. Net neutrality isn't what the FCC killed, Title 2 (which is still a massive blob of legislation, even if you discount the stuff in forbearance) is a set of laws that ensure a kind of neutrality.

Milk companies put their lorries in the highway to deliver their products. You're the one buying milk. Are you the one who's using the highways?

Yes, I think that is the right way to think about things here.

As to the rest of your comments - Imagine if Amazon could pay the USDOT for special lane on the highway.

Except that I pay for an highway that should support 100 mb/s and they pay for an highway that should support 100 mb/s, yet it only support 10 mb/s.

The Netflix route is using too much bandwidth? Then upgrade it, that's what your customer pay you for. For sure there will be route that will be unequal, some too big, some too small, but that's part of ISP job to make sure its impact is minimal.

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