Chairman Wheeler Proposes New Rules for Protecting the Open Internet [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

Chairman Wheeler Proposes New Rules for Protecting the Open Internet [pdf]

transition.fcc.gov

53 pointssinak16 comments

> No Throttling: broadband providers may not impair or degrade lawful Internet traffic on the basis of content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices.

Could this put an end to ISPs blocking ports 80 and 25 for home servers?

The "no blocking" and "no throttling" requirements are both subject to the exception for "reasonable network management."

I wouldn't be too sure that the FCC wouldn't see preventing or restricting server usage on residential connections as "reasonable." The general thrust of the way they talk about the internet is somewhat rigid and one-way, even in this document. They go out of their way to note that the proposal is for consumer internet access, and not the services offered to "edge providers" (though they leave open the possibility that the courts might force them to treat both the same).

> I wouldn't be too sure that the FCC wouldn't see preventing or restricting server usage on residential connections as "reasonable."

Bittorrent is peer-to-peer where each peer is both server and client, and the FCC very early on -- even before attempting to adopt general open internet regulations -- ruled that throttling bittorrent wasn't "reasonable network management". This seems to be a fairly strong indicator that preventing servers on "residential" connections would not generally be reasonable network management.

They'll almost certainly still be able to block open mail relays, but it sounds like port 80 is about to be set free. Expect carrier-grade NAT to become even more common in retaliation.

> They'll almost certainly still be able to block open mail relays

On what grounds? Open mail relays certainly get abused, but there's nothing inherently illegal about them or the traffic they serve.

I expect an explicit allowance for this, because that's the easy way out and there really isn't the political will for anything else.

Increase spam in general by misconfigured mail servers getting hacked and IPs getting blacklisted.

It seems like NAT would be a blatant example of blocking access to legal content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices.

IPv6 exists and works, and if we're going to expect our ISPs to get with the times we should be prepared to do so ourselves. NAT for IPv4 is ultimately unavoidable and thus excusable, but that doesn't mean that they can't use it to make the transition to IPv6 rougher on people who still need IPv4.

Upstream speeds vs downstream speeds will still likely be governed by the laws of economics

I'm really looking forward to getting details on what will constitute "reasonable network management". If they're given the freedom to explicitly prioritize VoIP then they get to pick winners and losers when they choose how to identify and classify flows as being VoIP. Stupid or subjective QoS shouldn't be included under the reasonable network management banner, but bad QoS is so popular that I fear the commission may not know better or may not require ISPs to know better.

I don't find QoS at odds with Net Neutrality. High Netflix usage on an ISP's network shouldn't kill voice calls or interactive applications.

Deciding what goes into the 'video' 'voice' 'p2p' QoS buckets is (and will always be) fuzzy... The litmus test is 1) is payment involved? and 2) what are the offerings of the company who owns the pipes?

You don't get to charge YouTube for higher QoS over Netflix, nor can 'TimeWarner Telepresence' work fine during peak periods but FaceTime and Skype do not.

> High Netflix usage on an ISP's network shouldn't kill voice calls or interactive applications.

Net neutrality violations are not necessary to ensure this. On a network that does fair queuing/flow queuing, the first application to suffer from congestion will naturally be the one using the most bandwidth: Netflix, not VoIP. No explicit and subjective buckets or classification needed.

>Some data services do not go over the public Internet, and therefore are not “broadband Internet access” services subject to Title II oversight (VoIP from a cable system is an example, as is a dedicated heart monitoring service).

Am I missing something here - VoIP isn't part of broadband? I've a VoIP/SIP provider (Anveo) which I use as a home phone - entirely over broadband.

To what kind of "VoIP not part of broadband" is this referring to?

They're saying that only the internet connection portion of "triple play" services will be affected. The cable companies that offer landline telephony over the same coax as the DOCSIS internet service and television are using VoIP behind the scenes but only exposing POTS to the customer, and they're not changing anything about that.

Here in the UK, for example, 21CN's changed the network so that all phone calls go over VoIP, but not over the Internet - they go over the same cables, protocols, etc, but it's a private, internal service (imagine your ISP runs a 10.* network internally, and your phone line is connected to that).

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