0111narwhalz wrote: ↑Thu Dec 28, 2017 3:41 pm
So is there something an ISP provides other than up/down bandwidth? And is there a load other than the total bandwidth through their network?
Because if not, users (business or private) who put more load already pay more by their bandwidth fee. If the load is close to the ISP's limit, its charge can be greater-than-linear to discourage the highest users (like streaming servers).
This is not the issue. The issue is ISPs charging sites more simply because they
don't like them - or blocking them entirely from reaching their users. The sources I linked earlier in the thread list a good number of examples where this already happened before the Net Neutrality (uppercase) laws were put in place. The issue is also charging users separately
by site, which has not happened
yet.
With net neutrality, all sites and users must be charged with a common set of rules - they cannot be discriminated against. Without net neutrality, ISPs may treat all parts of data exactly how they want to treat them - and they
can and
do intercept packets to look at their contents and information. Up until now, they haven't been allowed to treat any parts differently.
Unless I've misunderstood something, there is no difference between a packet which comes from the ISP's service or from a competing one as far as the infrastructure knows.
You have misunderstood. If only the source and destination could read packets, the NSA would never have existed.
If a customer has paid the ISP to deliver n packets to them, it shouldn't matter whence they come. If a customer has paid the ISP to take n packets and deliver them to their respective recipients, it shouldn't matter where they're going.
This is the core concept of net neutrality: all data should be treated equally. It doesn't matter where it comes from, or where it goes. You can charge x dollars for x bandwidth, and x more dollars for x more bandwidth, but all customers must be offered the same prices - both on the user end, and the site end. (Until now, thanks to the FCC obliterating net neutrality.)
I live in an area where there is no comcast, charter, verizon, AT&T, or whatever. There is only Windstream. They are the only ISP for most (all?) of Georgia. If you want internet, you have to deal with Windstream. If you want to deal with something else? Tough. They have the monopoly. They offer terrible service for exorbitant prices. I have download speeds of up to about 500 KB/s. Upload is about 32 KB/s. This is
one fifteenth of the national average. The service goes out frequently. Without any competition, they can charge whatever they want for as bad of service as they feel like giving us. We can complain, but with no one else to go to, we can't do anything about it - they have a monopoly here. Net neutrality kept them from charging us by site, but now we don't even have that.