Hacker News Reader

Comment by MatthewB | Hacker News Reader

This is exactly what I've been fearing for a while. As soon as we go soft on the net neutrality issue, ISPs are going to take advantage. Favoring some traffic over others because they are part of an ISPs product line is ridiculous and anti-competitive.

With practices like these it will become increasingly rare for startups to be able to compete with large companies because customers won't want to spend extra money to use a startup's service.

There is a distinct difference between capping a customer's traffic after a certain point (which I don't agree with either) and favoring some traffic over another.

This is bad for everyone.

View on HN

But some traffic is favored over others, by sheer network topology. Internet traffic costs money or peering agreements (which is ultimately just money that happens to cancel out). Traffic from the network you are currently connected to is much, much cheaper for the ISP.

I offer the opposite argument, which is that charging you for data sourced within the same network the same as external traffic is what would be the bizarre, anti-consumer behavior. If you want force anything on the ISPs, force them to allow others to home their services directly on their network for some reasonable fee, and then treat it also as uncharged traffic.

(I'm not sure it carries the day, so debate away. It should be put out there, though.)

There is a lot more complication and loophole-ability in forcing ISPs to allow others to home their services than there is in forcing net neutrality in its traditional definition.

For what it's worth, often times if you rent a server, you get no charges for communicating with other servers in the same data center.

This is slightly different since the company you rent the server from is paying an ISP for internet traffic. If you don't use that bandwidth, the server company isn't charged and they pass the savings to you.

With this issue, you're still using the network bandwidth you paid for, it's still going on the internet, but its end point is a server owned by the ISP. You are not accessing a special subnet IP - you're using internet DNS and internet infrustructure to pass this "free" data. I would even bet that if there was damage to the network and there was no direct route to the server, your packets may end up routing outside of the ISPs inrastructure.

how much money does internet traffic cost?

how much cheaper is local traffic from the ISP versus traffic coming from a server 1500km away?

how much money does it cost to send internet traffic to varying distances.

there's no problem with the argument, but "much, much cheaper" doesn't mean anything in an industry where every byte can be measured and tracked.

we're not asking how much does Shaw feel like billing us today, we're asking how much does 1 Mb of data cost them to send over distance.

http://drpeering.net/white-papers/Internet-Transit-Pricing-H...

So roughly a penny a gigabyte as of 2011.

So Comcast's 250gb limit costs them $2.50?

I doubt it. This is just the cost of transmitting data from say Netflix to Comcast.

Don't forget costs such as network infrastructure, staff, etc etc.

To take an anology from the pharmaceuticals industy, the second GB costs one cent, the first one is a fair bit more expensive.

I would gladly pay per gig at that rate, and then some.

If you want to pay for the infrastructure and fixed costs too, go right ahead.

Anyone remember posting to USENET with 'rn' and you'd get a stern lecture that your post would "cost the network hundreds or thousands of dollars" are you sure you want to do this (Y/N).

Remembering, of course, that it's typically 95/5 billing. So only near-peak traffic matters, but it matters a lot.

Traffic from the network you are currently connected to is much, much cheaper for the ISP.

That's not always true. Eyeball networks are often spectrum-constrained and congested on the last mile. When a DOCSIS network becomes congested, the most common relief is a node-split, and those are very expensive.

That's not how the Internet business model works. Receiving data is effectively free. Transit providers charge the sender for the bitrate (high for the web host, low for the web user) and a fixed fee for the connection, which you will have to pay regardless. Peering is paid for per connection and often by the web hosts who want to avoid transit and get better latency to the ISPs customers. In terms of traffic, there is effectively no difference in cost between sending traffic internally or receiving it from an external source. The reason for data caps is that ultimately networks are capacity constrained, but mostly at the last mile, not at the peering and transit links.

This is totally false. Inter-AS traffic is often priced using bandwidth in peered connections. In a bandwidth discrepency situation one isp will usually have to pay a lot more for the inter-AS traffic.

Right, and that's the sender, which is what I said. Note that the amount of traffic is effectively irrelevant since the connection is supposed to be dedicated. The only reason why the amount of traffic matters is that you need to decide which side pays what.

No. Generally the agreement works like this: "we'll set up a peering agreement between us. As long as the traffic differential is within 3%, peering is free. Beyond that point, the exceeding party will pay an excess penalty of x/GB."

I really do think ISPs should operate based on some sense of duty cycle. Part of the problem with the word "unlimited" is that it's still a holdover from the dial-up days.

For example... Guarantee me "unlimited" 5Mbps internet at a 20% duty cycle. That's 300GB a month. The cap is there by convention, but the internet is still "unlimited". Alternatively, give me 8640 "Bandwidth minutes" a month with the option to auto-throttle if I might go over, or disconnect for the month at 8640.

Unfortunately, most customers are in fact stupid, and a data cap is often the best way to say "We let you use our internet resources at up to NN% duty cycle per month"

Customers are not stupid for not knowing about duty cycle in the slightest. The scheme you described above is completely incomprehensible. Perhaps if you tried to explain it in more engaging and inclusive ways, "most customers" would not be "stupid". Defining "20% duty cycle" and "bandwidth minutes" and "auto-throttle" in non-technical terms would probably be a good start.

Until then, stop being patronising and calling people outside of your area of expertise "stupid". It's not going to win you any arguments.

> There is a distinct difference between capping a customer's traffic after a certain point (which I don't agree with either)

Why do you not agree with it? Is it because you feel that you have no choice in the matter, or because you think it is somehow wrong to charge for some things and not others. Once again, this is the ISP's house, and their rules. They can charge $10 billion per byte. You don't have to pay of course.

The big problem I see with this is if they deliberately slow down services like Netflix. Or if by providing their own streaming service, they are exhausting the bandwidth, thus effectively throttling services like Netflix. Otherwise, they have a natural advantage: they are transmitting data from a much closer location. Otherwise, it would be like requiring that your water company deliver you water sourced in the Alps for the same price as from your local reservoir.

EDIT: Back to data caps issues: I love them. Because now if there is any question on what I can or cannot do, there is no fuzzy wording about "appropriate network use", etc. I get 100GB a month or I do not. Anything "unlimited" is evil. My big issue is that companies like Verizon, AT&T, etc. only sell plans that are capped very low: 2GB a month is nothing for the way I use data. Give me 200GB a month and I'll pay $30-45/mo for the privilege. And while you are at it, drop the silly minutes notion. Just provide data.

Monopolies are bad.

The infrastructure was paid for by taxpayers.

Your libertarian logic does not apply here.

Oh boy. I am not talking about any political agenda. All I am saying is that (1) it costs the ISP less to transmit data between their servers and your house than between Netflix to their servers to your house and (2) the ISP can charge almost whatever it wants. The only reason why they do not, is because they actually want to make money.

Also, it's not quite right: the tax payers did not pay for the infrastructure. The local government did, based on lobbyist pressure from the ISP. While you and are are shooting shit on HN companies like Time Warner Cable do this: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/05/op-ed-north-...

The local government is funded by taxpayers.

The ISP can charge whatever they want... unless we decide to break up their monopoly.

My point is that there is a difference. The local government is a nice centralized place where the ISP can go to lobby for subsidies. Of course, it's the tax payers' money, but individual tax payers do not directly decide where it goes. Some shady person who years ago went door to door campaigning and has been running unopposed is now in charge of who gets the subsidies.

Trust me, I understand how taxes work. I also have seen how, despite great opposition from the people, the bill that basically guarantees Time Warner Cable a monopoly in NC was passes through all the hoops and not a single politician stepped up and said "WTF is this?"

I don't understand your point

This article was about Canada

It does not matter very much, so far as I see it. My point is this: you pay your taxes. The money all goes into one large fund. It is then divided accirding to the planned budget. If I wanted a cut of that money I would look for the easiest spot to do that: where the budget is defined. Here the issue is that, while you, as a tax payer and a citizen, have a direct say in who decides on the budget (you elect them), you have no direct control over how the money is distributed. If you do not like what is happening, all you can do is vote for the other guy /gal at the next election. However, your local ISP can affect the budget. They can, for example, say that it is too expensive to serve some areas and that without government subsidies, they will not do it. That is how they get the subsidies. At least in some cases this also goes together with making generous contributions to the campaign fund of the politician who helped push through the bill that allowed the subsidy.

So my point is that the individuals making the decision to give an ISP money, at least theoretically do not always represent your interests. This is clearly what happened with TWC in North Carolina, as mentioned in the post I linked.

Municipalities are also funded by the monopolists. Most people aren't aware of this but for example when Comcast goes into Centerville, USA and is granted an exclusive cable franchise they kickback some money to the local government, called a franchisee fee, as part of the agreement. It's all perfectly legal and publicly documented. Here's an example from Comcast:

http://www.mrsc.org/franchises/A5o2774.pdf

See section 3.1 This town gets 5% of Comcast's subscriber revenue.

the tax payers did not pay for the infrastructure. The local government did

Face, meet palm

Re-read my comment. You seem to labor under the impression that I don't know how taxes work. That is not the case. I was simply pointing out that there is a difference between who provides the funds and who decides where they go.

If you have to write this, it means your previous comment needs editing.

No-one "labor[s] under the impression that [you] don't know how taxes work", they simply dismiss your comment, or downvote it, as someone who doesn't know what they are talking about, unless you are some kind of celebrity, which you are not.

"They can charge $10 billion per byte."

I can think of two times in my life when, if this were the case, I would've been without internet for a very long time.

I think the reason why people hate caps is because there is nonobvious how much data you have used or even are currently using at any moment. Sure you can typically log in and discover how much you have used but that workflow is well beyond what the average consumer is willing to do, even if they are technologically aware enough to know to do so.

This, combined with borderline draconian pricing schemes, makes for horror stories where someone had a $30/month plan and they end up getting charged $300 for using 2x their rate.

When you decide to use your hair dryer, you don't have to wonder if it's going to cost you $0.15 or $15.00. Electricity or water utilities are billed generally flat per-usage, the pricing schemes that come with bandwidth caps are not. So you paid $30 for X amount of data, which should indicate that the cost per data is $30/X, but if you use Y amount of data you have no idea what the price of it will be; it depends on your historical usage (and that of your teenage kid or neighbor who was on your open wifi or ...)

Bandwidth caps are a perfectly reasonable concept; higher usage actually does cost the company more to provide. But it is simply not the case that sending 1000 texts costs the company $10 but sending 2000 texts costs the company $100. It seems extremely likely to me that the plans are deliberately obtuse so that they can fleece customers of their money without any way of the user knowing until very far after the fact.

ISPs easily could redirect users to a page that says "You have used your quota for the month, would you like to continue at our per-byte rate of XXXX?" and block all their traffic until the user sees the page in the browser and click yes. I'm fairly certain that anyone who actually uses a capped plan would greatly prefer having the choice. They do not do this because they don't actually care about overages, they are being underhanded to trick people into using an expensive service without their knowledge.

When you decide to use your hair dryer, you don't have to wonder if it's going to cost you $0.15 or $15.00.

If you are a commercial customer, you actually might. Often times big consumers will have tiered rates based on time of day or caps that trigger punitive rates when they are exceeded.

Not just big customers. Here in Toronto (not in Shaw's jurisdiction, but if Shaw isn't slapped hard on this very soon, Rogers and Bell will do the same), we have Time-Of-Usage rates with smart meters. Our usage is still fairly predictable because there's three time bands, but we pay 5.9c/kWh at low price, 8.9c/kWh at mid price, and 10.7c/kWh at high price (http://www.torontohydro.com/sites/electricsystem/residential...).

Same in California, with PG&E we had an gas & electricity rate that increased quite steeply if you went beyond "normal household" amounts.

That is interesting; I was aware of day/night variable rates but not punitive usage caps. I suspect that even in places that have them, the punitive caps 2-3 orders of magnitude higher than the original per-watt usage rate like they are with text message caps.

Perhaps it is just me, but I have heard many instances of people getting charged 10x as much as their base plan for data overages, and I've never heard someone complain about power overages (though I have heard people complain about getting a higher bill than they original expected because they were loose with their power usage across the whole month).

Unlimited isn't evil, it's the lack of definition that's evil. Define it better and everything is fine. For example, Unlimited internet at 20% duty cycle works the same as an arbitrary 300GB cap at 5Mbps.

One big issue (fear?) with caps that I have, when companies switch to capped pricing and get comfortable with it, they will be extremely opposed to the idea of increasing the cap at a future date. As the internet has grown over the years so has our consumption of bandwidth. I have seen many monopolistic behaviours of the ISP's over the years and it seems that this will just be another tool to inflate the cost of the internet. It almost seems that we are slowly moving towards a bandwith model where only the rich will be able to fully utilize the internet, which is somewhat sad seeing as how libirating of a tool it can be.

I don't understand the furore over unlimited data. Over here, in Greece, our Internet plans are unlimited at 24 mbps and nobody has so much as hinted towards capping, ever.

> "They can charge $10 billion per byte. You don't have to pay of course."

This would be true if there was competition in the marketplace, or if the internet is a substitutable good.

If Evian decided to raise the price of their bottled water to $50 a bottle, I don't have to play - there are many other brands out there. Not only that, even if all the bottled water manufacturers out there decided to price fix, I can substitute bottled water for tap water, or melted snow from my front yard, etc etc.

The internet doesn't work like that - there is no easy substitute for internet access, and in modern life is downright a necessity. Exclusivity agreements with both municipal and federal governments (exclusive operating zones/bandwidth allocation) means they own a monopoly over the market.

When you have a service that is a life necessity (or damn near it) and a monopoly, bad things happen.

Where do you live? Chances are if it's in the US, I could name at least six alternatives to your current ISP for you- just as you could name six other bottled water brands.

I'm not the OP, but here's why I disagree with it. Functionally, there's no way for you to appeal overage charges. Very few consumers have the ability to measure their bandwidth usage, and those that do do not have the legal firepower to challenge ISPs in court. I mean, even if you manage to get a day in court, who are the jurors going to believe - the ISP with the $50,000 traffic measurement box, or you with a BSD router lash-up? In practice, bandwidth caps mean that ISPs just get to either drop or drastically throttle your service towards the end of the month by saying you've exceeded your limit.

I won't accept bandwidth caps unless a) usage is determined by an open, transparent and verifiably accurate method and b) there exists an appeals process by which one can appeal erroneous cutoffs. Without that, the power inequality between ISPs and regular consumers is an invitation for abuse.

This is not bad for everyone. Such blatant abuse of data capping rules is excellent ammunition for net neutrality advocates.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com