[Macworld]

Post your comments for Inside Net Neutrality: Find an honest ISP here

[lenn]

The VPN's i've tried lower my download speed too much and aren't nearly as reliable as I need them to be. How about doing a review on some low cost VPN services that don't degrade the users high-speed connection much.

lenn

[tbailey]

Quote:
"But those days are largely gone for most of us and, unless you live in a rural area, you probably have numerous options when it comes to Internet connectivity."
Unfortunately not for me. Only one ISP where I live. They charge $60 for 1.5meg connection. That's what no Competition does for you.
Why can't DSL have competition like dial up had? There are several dial up options but only one when it comes to a DSL provider. Why is that? If it is a local call to a town that has multiple DSL providers, why can't I get DSL service from them?!
Oh well, rural life. Has its pros and cons.
Tom

[wardoggie]

I thought this was a good article and a good series. I'd been keeping up with net neutrality off and on and it kind of served as a good "reset" for me. It saddens me to think I might one day have to use encryption to use Bit Torrent for legal purposes. I wonder if the technology cat-and-mouse game is sufficient to keep the playing field level, or is legislation necessary?

[Netizen_Kane]

tbailey said:

Quote:
"But those days are largely gone for most of us and, unless you live in a rural area, you probably have numerous options when it comes to Internet connectivity."

Unfortunately not for me. Only one ISP where I live.

That's true even for some of us urban dwellers. I'm in the center of a medium size city and the only options I have for broadband are cable and DSL. I don't even want to think about how slow Hughesnet would be. The phone company also offers FTTH, but not to most neighborhoods, even though they claim they've pulled fiber to almost all of them. I'd switch to FTTH in an instant if they offered it to me. But DSL is too slow, so I have only one option: cable.

Where the heck is the Internet over power lines technology that they were claiming some years ago would storm the country?

[Totally_lost]

IFF (that is If, and Only If) we lived in a utopian world with universal infinite free bandwidth, then the implicit assumptions this article is based on, would indeed support the the authors assertions, position, and conclusions.
Our society, technology, and businesses however exist in the real world where fairness, resources, and markets are constrained by free market forces.
First, what is your fair share of the bandwidth from your ISP? If you are paying for a fiber or T-1 connection to a tier 1 backbone provider, with a Service Level Agreement (SLA) clearly stating they will deliver 100% of link bandwidth 100% of the time, then that is your fair share. Costs for this SLA generally start about $1k/mo and rise with bandwidth. Any other Fiber, T1, DSL, Cable, Ethernet, Wireless, or other broadband connection without a 100%/100% SLA, implicitly means your network connection is oversubscribed and you are sharing connections and bandwidth with other users, and YOUR fair share of that connection is less than 100% of the time and/or bandwidth. With sharing comes social responsibility and/or controls to allocate the shared resource. A typical residential broadband connection is generally oversubscribed better than 50:1 to the internet backbone, meaning the residential consumers fair share is about 1/50th of their nominal purchased connection speed.
Any free market ISP which is unable to at least break even, will run short on cash and be in bankruptcy soon. Nearly all free market ISP operations must yield either pay checks for employees and investors, or the business will be closed.
Any ISP offering unlimited fixed rate service is probably overcharging a large number of light users to pay for the resource usage of a few heavy users (IE light users pay more per MB than heavy users do). If distribution and bandwidth are universally free (local, national, and international distribution infrastructure are provided by government taxes), then this model might be ok. If the ISP incurs significant expenses for backbone access, and has to build out their own distribution network (routers, cable, switches, etc) then there is a real cost for bandwidth that should be fairly allocated to the users consuming it. Nearly all free market countries have this market problem, and socialist contries providing universal governmental infrastructure do not.
The fairest system for all users, is simply the electric power model, charge a base rate for the basic connection to cover billing and local loop costs, and then cover core distribution infrastructure and backbone bandwidth using pure metered service. In this model, all users pay just their own fair share. This model also has natural conservation of resources, as people will only use the resources they are actually willing to pay for. This model also inhibits people also just downloading 6TB of disk space every month with data they are unlikely to every really use, simply because the network bandwidth is free.
In the real world, saturated networks drop packets, which seriously slow interactive network access to a crawl, while only mildly impacting non-interactive bulk downloads and file sharing. This translates into the light users getting "screwed" and the heavy users rudely taking more than their fair share impacting other users. In a free market, the light users will vote with their feet, and move to the service that is faster for them. Since these users are were ALL the profit is, it's natural for any ISP to look for ways to send the bandwidth hogs that actually cost more than they pay elsewhere, and do everything possible to attract and keep the light users that actually produce a profit.
Most internet users could have $10/mo 3mbps metered service with better than 60:1 over subscription and get better service than they do today sharing unlimited flat rate service with bandwidth hogs -- and the ISP would get a better return on investment, and be able to pay more people higher wages. Unfortunately, the current model strains infrastructure capacity, holds down return on investment and wages, and yeild poorer service to 95% of the customers. Just so a few heavy users get more than their share.

[als2663]

Great reading of the issue. Talking about everybody's "right" to unlimited bandwidth is wonderful, but as you said - most delivered bandwidth is shared bandwidth - including the internet "cloud". Imagine what our costs would be if everybody "demanded" that they had their full bandwidth 24/7. We'd have a "traffic jam" that would make the LA freeways look like a stroll in the park.
We are a small ISP, providing DSL connectivity to our customers, using our own DSLAMs, and our service agreement specifically prohibits using a public server on our network. That is what Torrents actually set up as, and most of the users are too uninformed to limit the upstream bandwidth, so when somebody sets up a torrent program on their computer, they are opening their computer up (at full upstream bandwidth) to the world. When that happens, the network at that DSLAM slows to a crawl. The downloads are not the big issue - it is the uploads that kill us. A torrent server (somebody's computer) has thousands, if not millions of customers hitting it for long periods, and this will take all of the available bandwidth all of the time. Trust me - I can show you graphs of exactly what happens.
What most customers don't understand is that as you said, internet bandwidth (and the wires to the house) costs money. If one of our customers wants a full T1, we can certainly get it for them. Our cost (including the internet bandwidth) is in the $500/month range in the city, and about $800/month in remote areas (mileage dependent). To deliver it to the customer (along with all of the other things like email, spam filtering, websites - all of which cost money) and a small thing like paying salaries, force our prices up a small amount from there, with the net price to the customer ranging from $600 to $1K.
Why people think they can get 1.5M or 7M down (with 896K up) on a DSL line for less than $50 per month, and then "demand" that they have full use of the bandwidth 24/7 is beyond me.
All of these services, whatever the technology, DSL, Cable, FTTH, stressed polyester backbone with 2 prefabricated wood-pulp transducers (2 paper cups and a piece of string), even the Internet Backbone, require that bandwidth be shared. The best analogy that I can come up with is the highway system. That is also a shared resource, and sometimes it gets busy, and everything slows down. If you don't like it then build a private road that only you can use, but be prepared to pay for it.
As a small ISP we need restrictions on what a user can do in order to keep the costs of the shared facilities reasonable. We explain this to our users before installing the service. My belief is that the people "demanding" full access 24/7 have no real understanding of how the network actually works, and that most users are reasonable if the reality of the situation is explained to them and that their expectations are set correctly. Unfortunately, most users are not well informed and most of their ISP's do little to correct the situation.
In regards to the article above - I challenge the author to find an ISP that has no limitations on upload or download that can possibly make money (and therefor stay in business)and provide the 24/7 SLA that he desires. Not gonna happen for $50 per month. Guaranteed! Show me one and I'll sign up for 10 circuits, run torrents with wide open servers at full bandwidth 24/7 and bring the service to its knees as far as all of my neighbors are concerned.

[redofromstart]

A great and exactly correct statement of the situation. No "net neutrality" partisan can provide a similar clear explanation for why it's correct to let a few greedy narcissists bogart the whole bandwidth -- and that's because there isn't one.

[Graphos]

Excellent comments that bring balance to the article.

[wardoggie]

The problem as I see it is that ISPs use bandwidth as a selling point. Currently in my area, Comcast touts how much faster it is than DSL. Well, that's great, but when their customers try to actually use that speed using Bit Torrent, they run into problems. There's a good discussion of it at TorrentFreak.

IMO, if the problem truly is "a few greedy narcissists," it's wrong to restrict everyone else from using a useful, legitimate Internet application. Define what constitutes "a few greedy narcissists", pluck the bad apples from the barrel, and let the rest of us carry on as we have been.

Paying for bandwidth (actually a traffic allocation) is the way web hosts work, and if BT in seed mode is considered a public server, I'm okay with paying for the data I actually send and receive. But ISPs should also be required to give me the bits-per-second I'm actually paying for, too. The problem is that ISPs don't want to advertise "limits". The general public doesn't understand them and it complicates their billing (try explaining SLAs to my mom... I'll wait). So the ISPs want it both ways: promote their high-speed capabilities, and collect higher fees for them, while crippling their users' ability to utilize them.

If net neutrality (in this context) is a bad thing, and you're only able to use ISP-approved protocols, that needs to be stated up front before a contract is signed, so consumers can decide for themselves. According to als2663, uploading is the big issue, not downloading. So, people who only want to use email and the web can flock to ISPs that restrict applications like BT. People who want to use BT in addition to email, web, FTP, etc. can find those that don't. IMO, that's what a free market is all about.

[als2663]

Again - I just want to make it clear - the ISP is not the issue. Almost any ISP can give you a dedicated facility if you are willing to pay for it. As I said - I can give you a dedicated DS1 (1.544 Mbps) for $600 to 1K per month. I can give you a DS3 (45 Mbps) for about 7K per month. I can give you dedicated OC-3 fiber (150 Mbps) for about 15K per month (assuming that you are willing to pay construction costs). The issue is the type of facility that you are using. If you use a "shared" facility (for $25 to $100 per month) in order to keep your costs low - then you have to be willing to share it, and not keep it tied up 24/7.

Think of a phone party line (if you are old enough to remember them). You were sharing the wires and etiquite required that you didn't keep talking all of the time so that others couldn't use the line. Shared network facilities are the same way. I tried to point out earlier that the internet backbone is also a "shared" facility.

An example - everybody in the greater Denver area (2.5 million people) demands that they have access 24/7 at full bandwidth (let's use 1 Meg to keep the math simple. That would require somewhere around 2.5 terrabits/second to get your data to the ISP's, and an additional 2.5 terrebits/sec to get your data into the internet - so we're talking 5Tbps just to support the Denver area. Add in the 10 largest cities in theUS and the numbers get huge very quickly. Who do you think is going to pay for this?

Our cost for internet connectivity (into the internet) runs us about $50/Mbit/sec/month (and that is a really cheap price) - so with 3000 customers at 1.5M, we would need 4.5 Gbits/sec into the internet which would bring our cost to something like $225,000 per month - just for the internet connectivity. Now of course we need another 4.5 Gbits to get the data from your local CO to us - so there is another $225,000 per month. We are now at $450,000 per month to support 3000 customers, which works out to about $150/customer/month (our cost) just for the bandwidth. Let's add in the local connectivity - dedicated T1 to every house from your CO - say average at wholesale - $300 per month. Cost of mail servers, routers, software, web servers aside, wholesale cost to each customer for dedicated bandwidth would be on the order of $450 per month. Add in the servers, salaries, profit, and guess where we are? about $600 per month.

Are you implying that you (or anybody) that "demands" full bandwidth is willing to pay that? Because if you are - then buy a dedicated T1 from your ISP, and you'll be able to Torrent to your computer burns up. Notice how the numbers all come out about the same? ISPs don't make them up. It is based on a calculation of costs and fair profits (so we can stay in business).

If you want to pay $50 per month, you'll get "shared" service, and most ISPs have a user agreement that requires that you "share" the network and not hog all of the bandwidth that your neighbors are also sharing. If they don't they are idiots. If you want dedicated bandwidth that is all yours, that you don't have to share with anybody, then be willing to pay for it. As I said earlier - every ISP that I know of can set you up with a dedicated line - no restrictions. It is "your bandwidth" and there will be an SLA (service level agreement) attached to it. To my knowledge no purveyor of "shared" networks has a SLA that goes with the network (other than to say that the "bandwidth" is "best effort" and will vary based on congestion, etc., and most have what we call an AUP (acceptable use policy) that restricts your use of the network in some way shape or form.

I didn't mean this to be a diatribe, but I'm afraid that it is truning into one. I have no objection to people using our network in any way they want to - as long as what they do doesn't affect other people on the network. If you want to run a torrent at 2 AM for a couple of hours - fine - but don't be running it at 7:30 AM when the market opens and business people who are using the network can't get to their servers and websites becsause you are downloading (and uploading) a movie. If we find people being inconsiderate of their "shared" neighbors, we call them and tell them to stop it. If they don't we throttle their bandwidth. If they still insist on being inconsiderate - we disconnect them and tell them to find another ISP. I' m really lucky if I make $10/month per customer after expenses, and for $10 I am certainly not going to put up with behavior that puts the rest of my customers at a disadvantage.

[DJRizzo]

I don't consider limiting bandwidth a Net Neutrality issue as long as the limits are consistent and fair to all users, i.e. not limited to a specific service, protocol, end user, or outside servers being accessed. I've always felt it misleading how certain ISPs, the cable giants in particular, advertise a maximum speed yet can rarely deliver that speed due to the fact that their services are almost always shared by others in the same locality. If one or more users are taking a larger piece of the shared bandwidth than is fair, I think they should be throttled.

Of course overall speed is affected by issues beyond the ISP's hardware. I supported DSL for a couple years and when we received speed complaints we had to inform the customer that we can only guarantee speeds within our own network. Our officially recognized speed tests would be the speed between our last router and the customer's router and they were almost always in excess of advertised speed.

A better bill would be one that required the ISPs to more accurately disclose the speeds end users will actually experience.

[wardoggie]

als2663,
Sorry to get you all riled up. I only referenced you to support the assertion that uploading (BT traffic and, I assume all other uploads, including FTP) causes a bigger strain on the shared resource (bandwidth) than downloading. Remember: I am in favor of charging people according to what they use and how fast they use it, so I am not against ISPs making a profit.

But while you seem very technically knowledgeable, you also seem to be misunderstanding the issue I've raised. It's very close to deceptive advertising (and I work in advertising, so I am very sensitive to these issues) to stress one feature (high-speed internet access) in your advertising and not allow people to use it the way they want -- unless it's spelled out ahead of time. That is honesty, and that's the title of the article: Find an honest ISP.

You said, "Why people think they can get 1.5M or 7M down (with 896K up) on a DSL line for less than $50 per month, and then "demand" that they have full use of the bandwidth 24/7 is beyond me." The answer is, "Because you probably advertised your service as 1.5Mbps or 7Mbps high-speed internet access and the general public doesn't understand the implications of the agreement." Some of the people who "abuse" the system know exactly what they're doing. Some don't. Education and awareness are the keys to getting the latter group to conform to acceptable use policies while either rooting out or charging the former group for their transgressions.

You also said, "We are a small ISP, providing DSL connectivity to our customers, using our own DSLAMs, and our service agreement specifically prohibits using a public server on our network. That is what Torrents actually set up as, and most of the users are too uninformed to limit the upstream bandwidth, so when somebody sets up a torrent program on their computer, they are opening their computer up (at full upstream bandwidth) to the world."

If you are making it clear to your customers that using BT is a violation of the service agreement and that their ability to do so is at your discretion, then you're part of the solution, not the problem. :D

Happy Friday!

Wardoggie

[als2663]

bq. If you are making it clear to your customers that using BT is a violation of the service agreement and that their ability to do so is at your discretion, then you're part of the solution, not the problem. :D
Well - sorry to get all riled up about this, and we do make a big effort to be part of the solution. Our customer service is what keeps us in business, and we charge a premium over Comcast and Qwest, yet still have a very loyal, expanding customer base. We don't target BT specifically, but it is invariably the culprit when we get bandwidth complaints from other users. Every once in a while it is somebody backing up a computer to the network, and we just politely ask them to do it after hours. They always agree. The BT issues is invariably kids who downloaded a client, leave it at the default settings (not knowing what they are doing), and figure it is a great way to get "free" movies. They leave their computers on 24/7 and even after the download is done, it kills our network because of the unthrottled upload as their computer is now server to the world.

Internet access, like everything else in the world today (cars, drugs, cell phones, you name it) is mostly Hype - Comcast says "up to 7M Service" yet in the small print it says uploads at 384K (which is a very good day if you ever get the speed and if you ever get 7M for more than 10 seconds at a time you are really lucky to the only person on the network). Vonage says "digital voice" yet they neglect to tell you that you can expect cellular quality with dropouts when the internet gets busy. Consimers should read the fine print no matter what they are buying. I find that most of the consumers that I come in contact with never read the fine print, and any ISP using shared bandwidth will indeed have a multipage AUP that spells all of this out, but nobody reads it and then they complain. That's why we point it out specifically and discuss it with each individual customer prior to installation.

I just get upset when the net neutrality wonks get going and attempt to put the blame on the ISPs for not giving everybody unlimited access for free as if it is a "right" that is guaranteed in the constitution. Although I personally despise Comcast and their ilk, I do understand why they have to limit usage based on protocols. As a small ISP using DSL and fixed IP addresses for all customers and no more than 48 customers ona single DSLAM, we can effectively monitor utilization on an individual customer basis, and if we get complaints about slow speed, can quickly narrow the issue to an offending party and take the appropriate measures. Large ISPs, especially those with large local networks (hundreds/thousands of users on a single cable) and no individual facilities that can be monitored on a per customer basis, have little choice but to limit users by packet type or protocol, or quickly go out of business because of non-offending customers that can't get any usable speed out of their connection. We do get a large number of customers switching to us because of this issue.

As long as people read the fine print (when was the last time you actually read an electronic licensing agreement?) there should be no surprises when their traffic gets limited if they are affecting other users. If they don't like their ISPs policies they should feel free to switch, but should realize that inherently, you get what you pay for. If you're gonna spend $50 then you aren't going to get a T1 - 24/7 for your exclusive use unless you have a really stupid supplier (who won't be in business for long).

Actually - I'm having a great Friday. Happy customers, network running smoothly, partner skiing, and just all in all a great day. All quiet on the home front (barring the usual "outlook express isn't working" or even better "My computer won't turn on" - which is obviously and ISP/network problem)

To the original article - if you can find an ISP anywhere - that will give you 1.5Mbps for anything approaching $50 per month, with a "guarantee" for full speed internet access up and down, 24/7, unrestricted in any way, then please let me know who they are, as I have to find out how they are doing it. I'll adopt their methods. Oh, and please include their SLA and all of the fine print iin the contract.

Sorry to rant - but you caught me on a slow day with lots of time on my hands while I wait for the phone to ring, and I just had to take the opportunity to get this off my chest and out to the "general public". 8>)

Al