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Comment by padseeker | Hacker News Reader

How do we, IT savvy people capable of monitoring, testing and verifying this stuff, use our collective skills to monitor each ISP and communicate who is doing the best/worst job?

As long as there is at least one ISP provider who is not throttling traffic, we should reward that ISP that does not discriminate on web traffic, and punish the ones that do. You might have to show some differences across different regions and cities, but this is critical. I don't know enough about monitoring web traffic to figure this out but it sounds like an awesome project to spearhead. How do we get started?

It's just that I'm just a little sick of the finger pointing, and would prefer to do whatever I could to fix the problem or use the markets to promote the good companies and punish the bad ones. If there is a market where all the ISP providers are throttling then you have a better case for government regulation. Who's with me?

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As someone who is in DC doing net neutrality advocacy on a daily basis, I love this question. One of our major challenges is that ISPs have data on their networks and we don't. That leaves us in a position to speculate about what is "really" happening and hoping that someone out there happens to have the technical skills to potentially uncover a problem. The HN community's ability to evaluate claims made by ISPs as legitimate or illegitimate based on technical constraints is incredibly valuable.

Interestingly though, there is an argument that even ISPs don't have the right data, and that this is a reason - or at least an excuse - for throttling. See http://www.bobbriscoe.net/presents/1005ftw/1005ftw-briscoe.p... There is an ietf working group (ConEx) on exposing the kind of information necessary, with the idea that this would provide the right kind of incentives for ISPs not to throttle. I'm not sure that ISPs wouldn't anyway have the incentive to be a gatekeeper, but it would be a good idea to remove any possible excuse.

Or, you could refer to the product you're interested in buying, as they can provide information about how well different internet providers can service their product:

http://ispspeedindex.netflix.com/results/usa/graph

Check out these projects: http://projectbismark.net/ http://www.fcc.gov/measuring-broadband-america https://www.samknows.com/

I want to express my gratitude for your thoughtful and more effective approach. The aha! nature of this article and the sensationalistic title lead me to believe that it's a knee jerk reaction.

thanks - the concern is legit, it might be throttled like the article said. OR the guy on the phone is inept and has no idea what he is talking about. Either way the threat is real possibility but whether it is actually happening is hard to verify.

Lack of competition though is a hard barrier to climb. If there are only say 2 ISPs in your area it seems like you are pretty much SOL. And that is where government intervention needs to happen.

I'm with you.

The primary problem we'll have is the 'reward' system in locales with only one provider. You'll have to focus on markets with multiple providers. The solution involves building an escrowed Bitcoin fund which does payouts based on provider's aggregate throughput. How that is implemented, I have no idea.

I was thinking a lot simpler - keep tabs on each ISP in each market. Determine who has the least discriminatory network. Once enough data is collected you can make recommendations. ISP X is the best, ISP Y is the worst, anyone who cares needs to switch from ISP Y to ISP X. No bitcoin needed.

You can have a coordinated event, a cancellation day where all users of ISP Y cancel on the same day and switch to ISP X. Make a big deal about it. Tell your friends about it.

The one concern I have is in certain markets there might not be enough competition. If all the providers in that market are throttling then you have a stronger case for the government to get involved. Heck, there might even be collusion in those markets. But you might be able to bypass any government enforcement of Net Neutrality if there are enough well informed consumers punishing the bad ISPs and patronizing the good ISPs. It aint rocket science.

I love the idea of a coordiated switch day. That makes management take notice.

This is one of the reasons I'm a loyal Sonic customer, despite paying more dollars for less bandwidth, relative to my friends and coworkers who use, for example, Comcast.

It would be easier to just get Net Neutrality into the law / regulations.

Or, just ask the NSA who is already collecting ALL THE TRAFFIC!!!

Because more regulation is a good idea when education about the problem is this low...

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