Let's re-emphasize: the dire predictions of removal of net neutrality didn't come to bear. They didn't pass the sniff test either. The dire predictions were fake news - however they are now the official record in the media, and won't get corrected.
Why would they start to use that power while the process is still ongoing, and there's (as can be seen in this very article) still active investigations of fraud in the underlying process?
That also brings up why do they want (and spend millions on) the removal of net neutrality if they didn't plan on violating net neutrality in the first place?
This is an undue presumption of bad faith.
There are many situations where Net neutrality legitimately harms global internet routing efficiency and user experience. For example, under net neutrality ISPs are not allowed to privilege high priority packets such as real time video streams. It’s much more nuanced than net neutrality good, isps greedy and evil. Think about it from the perspective of a network engineer working for an ISP.
Net Neutrality does not block standard QOS techniques.
Additionally, ISP level QOS of IP packets based on content rather than src/dst is mainly vaporware anyway. You don't have the time to favor certain types of packets at the routers, the streams are going too fast.
That’s not true. Nailing down what ISPs are allowed to do in terms of QoS is still very much an open question. It’s not legally clear, for instance, why Comcast would be allowed to prioritize real-time video streams yet not be allowed to deprioritize BitTorrent sharing. What you’re referring to is peering discrimination but the whole of net neutrality is a larger and more complex subject.
Additionally, I'm not just talking about peering discrimination. The residential ISPs want the ability to restrict arbitrary sources and destinations at the last mile even if capacity exists on the rest of their network and their IX.
The caveat is that throttling is allowed if it is “reasonable network management” which is defined as actions being done with a “technical network management justification.”
And this is where legislation ends, under the ambiguity of reasonable and technical. Comcast tested this when a complaint was filed against them for throttling BitTorrent. I consider throttling BitTorrent “reasonable” and justifiable under purely “technical” reasons but clearly other people disagree. Enough people probably disagree that they had to deny any such throttling practices, meaning that in practice they would likely not be allowed to throttle based on technical reasons alone.
So what you're saying is that there was a process for figuring out the inevitable ambiguities, and you just disagree with the ruling?
As an aside, I also don't see the "reasonable", "technical" justification for throttling bittorrent anymore than throttling https.
The fact that what constitutes “reasonable” and “technical” QoS is ambiguous and strongly dependent on popular opinion is a huge design smell for net neutrality legislation.
> As an aside, I also don't see the "reasonable", "technical" justification for throttling bittorrent anymore than throttling https.
If 20% of your customers are using 80% of your network capacity because of BitTorrent then yes, throttling them is both technical and reasonable.
>No, we're not setting out to throttle Netflix. (We won't need to, because use will go up, and it's already in the contract we reserve the right to traffic shape anyway, and given we won't improve infrastructure, it's a given it will happen).
The stuff in parentheses is the unsaid part that would upset the normal people. The Network Engineers in the crowd heard it loud and clear though .
If Net Neutrality (and the incentive it creates through forbidding QoS to dynamically prioritize traffic), should have lead to investment in the infrastructure to increase network throughput to meet actual demand. Instead, POTS got torn down, broadband stagnated as ADSL lines were milked for every possible cent, Unlimited data plans disappeared and were replaced with caps...
We have more IP addresses than we should ever need, yet the biggest hurdle to robust connectivity is no one wants to spend money to actually get the wires strung/buried/overhauled. Why? because screw y'all. We're near if not de facto monopolies now, wires cost money, and they'd subtract from the exec bonus that gets cut.
https://www.cnet.com/news/verizon-throttled-california-firef...
When you start resorting to rationing (data caps), you have an infrastructure problem. Fix it. Don't embrace it.
It really does beg the question why it was ever needed in the first place.
Nonetheless, the very charitable "perhaps the dire predictions didn't come to pass precisely because of the amount of controversy that was generated" would be neutrally described as "fake news must be published so that bad things don't happen". That's not a valid civilizational setup: it's both ripe for abuse, and also teaches people to dabble in double-think for sake of the greater good.