PuppyGuard
Member
If you enjoy using the interwebs, you might want to see this.
Net Neutrality
- Thread starter PuppyGuard
- Start date
Lanthus
New Member
I haven't been keeping up on net neutrality news, but all sorts of things can happen if companies can prioritize traffic in any way they see fit. From initial thinking, the good that can come from it is if certain types of time-sensitive traffic (games and voip for example) had higher priority than, say, web pages or e-mail. I don't think that's what companies would have in mind though.
I can imagine the situation being something like Google signing a deal with Comcast. Then, Comcast charges you for reasonable access to YouTube in a similar way that they would charge for HBO. You might end up with different levels of access to different resources depending on what ISP you have since they might all sign different deals with content providers. Want to use bittorrent? Maybe that will cost more.
ISPs will, of course, have a limited network capacity. I would think it would be the case that higher tier traffic takes up as much of the network resources as it needs, and the rest is limited to what is left over (or however the traffic would be scheduled, don't know). This sort of tiered internet makes it so smaller sites have a reduced ability to reach their audiences. YouTube might be super fast and Break.com might be super slow. It wouldn't take long before a user becomes frustrated with waiting for pages to load and eventually ditches Break.com. There was research done a few years ago showing that people are only willing to wait 4 to 8 seconds for a page to load. It's not a level playing field, like the video says.
In order for newer, smaller companies to compete equally, they would need to pay to raise their traffic priority. Imagine if early Google was slow just because they couldn't afford to arrange some deals with the ISPs. According to Google's own data, when their pages were made to load 0.5 seconds slower, traffic to the site decreased by 20%. Suppose it was even slower. Maybe it would never have gained enough popularity and we wouldn't have Google now. Other new and innovative companies could be hurt by something like this. Smaller companies might not have the resources to pay for such a thing. Even if they did, as more and more companies joined in on this higher tier, each company gains less and less an advantage over the other. So, the companies lose out on money, the customer loses out on money, and the ISP gains it all. This doesn't really benefit us. They'd make a resource artificially scarce and charge more for it.
I can imagine the situation being something like Google signing a deal with Comcast. Then, Comcast charges you for reasonable access to YouTube in a similar way that they would charge for HBO. You might end up with different levels of access to different resources depending on what ISP you have since they might all sign different deals with content providers. Want to use bittorrent? Maybe that will cost more.
ISPs will, of course, have a limited network capacity. I would think it would be the case that higher tier traffic takes up as much of the network resources as it needs, and the rest is limited to what is left over (or however the traffic would be scheduled, don't know). This sort of tiered internet makes it so smaller sites have a reduced ability to reach their audiences. YouTube might be super fast and Break.com might be super slow. It wouldn't take long before a user becomes frustrated with waiting for pages to load and eventually ditches Break.com. There was research done a few years ago showing that people are only willing to wait 4 to 8 seconds for a page to load. It's not a level playing field, like the video says.
In order for newer, smaller companies to compete equally, they would need to pay to raise their traffic priority. Imagine if early Google was slow just because they couldn't afford to arrange some deals with the ISPs. According to Google's own data, when their pages were made to load 0.5 seconds slower, traffic to the site decreased by 20%. Suppose it was even slower. Maybe it would never have gained enough popularity and we wouldn't have Google now. Other new and innovative companies could be hurt by something like this. Smaller companies might not have the resources to pay for such a thing. Even if they did, as more and more companies joined in on this higher tier, each company gains less and less an advantage over the other. So, the companies lose out on money, the customer loses out on money, and the ISP gains it all. This doesn't really benefit us. They'd make a resource artificially scarce and charge more for it.
AFireInAsa
#1
A little more on the subject for anyone interested (you should all be interested!).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhpdqoG5tKw&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhpdqoG5tKw&feature=player_embedded