newloop

Not all gigabytes are them same. If you're watching youtube in the middle of the night chances are it doesn't 'cost' much. You're essentially using spare capacity for both Google and your ISP. On the other hand if you're torrenting things from obscure networks at peak times then there's a lot more infrastructure considerations involved.

That net neutrality means that you can't use the network even though it would be available bothers me from a hacker perspective. In that sense it seem much better if there were no "speeds" or "GB" at all and you or the services pay for priority. (which probably isn't how it would play out)

The example is a bit contrived. That doesn't change that there are a number of scenarios where you want to be able to have granularity. You don't necessarily want to pay 24/7 for low latency for video calls, bandwidth to stream a VR movie or software updates to run at night.

The ISP game isn't exactly fair as is. The average person have to get a fast connection just so they can get decent access to the services they are already paying for or that is monetizing them.

While I wouldn't necessarily say that it's a level playing field (as large networks have huge advantages), this particular issue is more about consumer choice. That you can't, essentially, buy a laptop without Windows isn't a problem for laptop manufacturers, but it is for consumers.

I can't really say I'm against net neutrality, but like many Internet issues I think the debate is sloppy and full of assumptions. I think there are at least a few arguments against net neutrality.

1. The Internet isn't neutral to being with. To get connected to the Internet an ISP, especially a smaller one, will have to buy transit. But can also make peering agreements with other, often local, ISPs and large services like Google or Facebook. In reality, depending how things are connected, your connection speed will vary regardless based on business decisions. Net neutrality leaves those decisions up to, other, big players like large (tier 1) ISPs, cloud providers and big services instead of consumer ISPs.

2. The real problem isn't net neutrality, but competition between consumer ISPs. Net neutrality restricts the business model for ISPs even when there competition. Many consumers might actually just want news, social media, software updates, some streaming services and limited access to the open Internet. Yet, they are forced to pay for the rest of the traffic and infrastructure.

3. I used be a nice idea that the Internet was open and that most nodes where equal, but that isn't really the case anymore. There's a number big players with huge influence over Internet technology that makes a lot of money. While consumers pay just to access the Internet, don't get static ip addresses and limited upstream traffic. Internet protocols have not kept up with reality and hosting your own services are challenging with the prevalence of ddos, spam, ransomware, exploits etc. You can argue that the big services that makes a lot of money should today be, or at least have the possibility to be, paying more. Especially since they enjoy economy of scale.