Net Neutrality and the Future of the Internet

Apparently ISPs are already throttling internet speeds




Comcast and Verizon were forcing Netflix's speeds to slow to a crawl effectively making it impossible for anyone to use the service until Netflix agreed to pay their fees; this sort of extortion is going on before Net Neutrality has even been officially destroyed.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/05/15/fcc-approves-plan-to-allow-for-paid-priority-on-internet/

no surprise, but still....

    

http://time.com/101794/obama-backs-away-from-net-neutrality-campaign-promises-after-fcc-vote/

Who now has the strength to stand against the armies of AT&T and Comcast?

'Vodafone has said that a small number of governments have direct access to communications flowing over its networks.
Most countries Vodafone operates in need a warrant to intercept communications, the firm said.
However, in some countries police have a direct link to customer's phone calls and web communications.
In six out of the 29 countries, governments have a permanent link to monitor communications, the BBC understands.
Vodafone said that in a small number of countries, it "will not receive any form of demand for lawful interception access, as the relevant agencies and authorities already have permanent access to customer communications via their own direct link".
The firm said it could not specify the countries that have a direct line into its networks, because those countries have laws prohibiting disclosure of surveillance methods.'- BBC


Six to many.   

http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/09/att-and-verizon-say-10mbps-is-too-fast-for-broadband-4mbps-is-enough/

Tell that to S Korea!

This falls more under the "future of the Internet" heading, but Quartz has a really interesting article up about just how big Facebook's walled garden has gotten and how many people never leave its confines. Despite my age, many of my formative Internet experiences were spent in communities with a lot of older people who came from Usenet and remembered with disdain the walled garden of AOL that flourished in the '90s. But it has also been evident for many years that the more corporate, closed off parts of the web have been growing much faster than the open Internet so beloved of techies and cyber-utopians.

Millions of Facebook users have no idea they're using the Internet - Quartz

Indonesians surveyed by Galpaya told her that they didn’t use the internet. But in focus groups, they would talk enthusiastically about how much time they spent on Facebook. Galpaya, a researcher (and now CEO) with LIRNEasia, a think tank, called Rohan Samarajiva, her boss at the time, to tell him what she had discovered. “It seemed that in their minds, the Internet did not exist; only Facebook,” he concluded.

This is more than a matter of semantics. The expectations and behaviors of the next billion people to come online will have profound effects on how the internet evolves. If the majority of the world’s online population spends time on Facebook, then policymakers, businesses, startups, developers, nonprofits, publishers, and anyone else interested in communicating with them will also, if they are to be effective, go to Facebook. That means they, too, must then play by the rules of one company. And that has implications for us all.

The effects of the misconception also are visible in the survey results. We asked respondents whether they follow links out of Facebook. In both countries, more than half of those who don’t know they’re using the internet say they “never” follow links out of Facebook, compared with a quarter or less of respondents who say they use both Facebook and the internet. If people stay on one service, it follows that content, advertisers, and associated services also will flow to that service, possibly to the exclusion of other venues.

In India, you can get a Facebook-only data plan for $2.50 a year (the cheapest full data plans cost about $10 a year.) In the Philippines, Facebook-only plans cost a fifth as much as data plans. In Ghana, telecom operator Tigo once sold a Facebook phone. It looked like a Blackberry with a big blue “F” as the central button. Even in America, Sprint offers a data plan (paywall) solely for access to Facebook and Twitter.

Already services are starting to move away from the open web and to Facebook. And it’s happening not just in the poor world, but in poor parts of the developed world, where there also exists a sense among some that using an app isn’t the same as using the internet, which requires a web browser like Safari or Internet Explorer. Salix Homes manages government-owned subsidized housing in some the poorest parts of Salford, a deprived area in the north of England. Salix recently decided to accept complaints and rent payments from its tenants on Facebook.

There are some more hopeful sentiments in the article as well as more information on the surveys and data, so I encourage you guys to read the whole thing. This issue is very near and dear to my heart due to the massive role that the Internet has played in my life for the better part of the last decade. I don't think that the "wild west" of the web is necessarily going to cease to exist, but it will be further marginalized. But on the other hand, the increasing number of people online might mean that, even if a lower percentage of Internet users leave handful of social media sites that are dominating, there might still be an increase in absolute numbers who post on the rest of the web. And it's worth noting that people who spend a lot of time on the web for pleasure, especially those who interact with people they don't otherwise know IRL, have always been a minority, so this isn't necessarily as big of a change as it might seem to someone who spends a lot of time on forums. But it is an unfortunate trend nonetheless, IMO.

The good news is that net neutrality was passed by the FCC earlier today. The bad news is that, well, it takes a little explaining.

I like to listen to a local news radio station while I'm driving, and when I was leaving this morning they mentioned the FCC vote later today. The thing of it is, I had never heard them talk about this before. Now all of a sudden, because of the vote, this is going to be all over the news, and people who have no understanding of the issue and have done no prior research on the subject are going to have their opinions formed by the likes of commentators like Rush Limbaugh.

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2015/02/25/net_neutrality_is_obamacare_all_over_again

It's terrifying how people, and I'm thinking of a certain kind of person (technology illiterate, unwilling to try, rarely uses the internet, etc.). It's terrifying that these people will think they're experts on the topic because Rush Limbaugh told them what to think, and that they'll vote for politicians who will want to undo what was done today.

I didn't know it passed! That's great!

It may be partly due to John Oliver. I posted this on the wrong thread:

http://www.vox.com/2014/6/2/5773686/john-oliver-delivers-the-clearest-most-hilarious-explanation-of-net

as long as they don't mess with my youtube, my Hobbit boards and my porn. I have no problem, they can do whatever the hell they like.

"And that's the problem. The cable companies have figured out the great truth of America.If you want to do something evil, put it inside something boring."

I haven't read too much about the FCC's exact ruling but this sounds like the best case scenario at this point.  Better than I had let myself hope for, anyway.

John Oliver vid plays fine Halfy outside US- cant believe US net speeds are slower than UK- as ours are shite- you poor bastards!

I don't know about over there but i'm getting between 16 and 20 at all times paying for 18... i got no complaints

Well if 16- 20 is mbps then thats way, way better than round here.

I just did a speed test and it came back as -

Downl speed - 6.13 Mbps
Upl speed - 0.32 Mbps
ping latency - 54.13 ms

ping latency. is that a tardy Chinese person?

I've rarely seen an actual peak download speed above 6.5 Mb/s, but on doing the online speed test I get:

ping: 24 ms
download: 53 Mb/s
upload: 5.5 Mb/s

Again, I think that's theoretical. There's enough traffic and waiting your turn that effectively it is, as I said, perhaps a tenth of that.

53?! I'm on 2.32.

53 Mb/s is really good... we offer (I work for a company that provides internet to people) 75Mb/s but its much more expensive than the 18Mb/s, which was enough for me at 30 bucks a month.

They say by next year they will be doing a Gb/s tier as well... I'm not sure if I see it happening but the higher ups than me say its coming

Pettytyrant101 wrote:
Upl speed - 0.32 Mbps

Hmmm, so this is what has been taking the awards so long.

Yeah it pays a large part in it truth be told. The purist edits are even worse, they ca be over 5gig, can take me quite literally days, 24hours a day, constant uploading just to get them up. And one screw up in all that time, one dropped connection, one power out, one pc fuck up needing a reset- and its back to square one again and literally days wasted

Not net neutrality, but the undersea cable network is impressive:

http://submarine-cable-map-2015.telegeography.com/

and explained in some more depth here:

http://www.vox.com/2015/3/13/8204655/submarine-cables-internet

to me what's amazing is the cables across the pacific - a mind numbing distance - and the single cable going from New York to Angola. That last one really takes the cake.