View Full Version : Is this true or not?
ontheball
26-10-2008, 22:00
The following in bold I found on a website and is related to a discussion about virgin media saying they will slow down any sites that dont pay them a premium.
Neil Berkett, the new CEO of Virgin Media (my ISP at home in London, along with BT) has announced that he considers Net Neutrality to be "a load of *******s" and he's promised to put any website or service that won't pay Virgin a premium to reach its customers into the "Internet bus lane."
As a Virgin customer, I'm not paying to see those services that bribe Virgin to reach me, I'm paying to reach the entire web, whichever bits I think are useful, as quickly as Virgin can deliver them.
Theoretically, I'm locked into a Virgin plan for another six months, but as far as I'm concerned, they've just announced that they're violating the agreement by announcing that the services I can reach will be systematically slowed down unless they pay Virgin extra. That means that we're now null and void. I'll be calling to cancel today.
It's just Neil talking a load of bollox :)
xspeedyx
26-10-2008, 22:33
They wouldnt slow down the service they would just give a higher limit of bandwidth to a site that pays them more, you wouldnt see a massive difference anyways
Non technical senior managers (also known as morons)! If they start slowing down content delivery by sites that are popular, they are going to lose customers who are going to move to ISPs who don't slow down content delivery. And besides, it's more probable the content providers will run out of system bandwidth before their ISP does - remember content deliverers have to have an ISP as well!
slowcoach
27-10-2008, 16:07
I think they have already started, it would appear that VM has refused to pay VM so they have slowed the site down. :p:
darkbeing
05-12-2008, 06:05
They wouldnt slow down the service they would just give a higher limit of bandwidth to a site that pays them more, you wouldnt see a massive difference anyways Actually they are promising to deliver content at normal speeds, if sites pay, and reduced speeds if they dont. The fact is that VM are a media company, incase you hadnt guessed, and the object is really to throttle competition unless the competition pays them money for being a content provider (for having hardware on which the other media companies media is transported).
Non technical senior managers (also known as morons)!
This issue of net neutrality should not just be lightly swept under the carpet. I believe the particular moron you speak of has enough power within the company to make his opinion count. I believe that the model the afforementioned moron,
Neil Berkett, would like to see is one where they would basically blackmail the BBC and other media providers into handing over large amounts of cash to VM in order to have their content delivered at an acceptable speed. Niel Burkett himself is on record as stating that he believes the BBC should pay them to deliver BBC content.
He then also wants to rip off the customer by saying to them, "The bbc are paying us to provide content which you can have if you pay us to recieve it".
Since a picture can say more than words, this is the picture Burkett seems to paint
http://prorev.com/709NET.jpg
If anyone disputes this, maybe they can get his viewpoint direct from the horses mouth
neil.berkett@virginmedia.co.uk
you can call his office on
Tel:01256 754554
Fax: 01256 754501
(this contact information is readily available at several sites its not a big secret)
This post on the Digg website basically sums it up
http://digg.com/tech_news/Virgin_Media_CEO_attacks_net_neutrality
Virgin Media this month have launched their own on-demand TV service 'Mix it up TV' after complaining previously that the BBC's offering, iPlayer had been consuming its network with traffic growing 25% /month. Arguing that services like this and youtube will ultimately result in 'crashing the UK infrastructure'.
All ISPs are arguing that the Internet was never designed to deal with this level of traffic but when I subscribe to unlimited 20mb VM cable broadband (which I do), that's what I expect to get! Not 20mb with google and every other service gets throttled-to-*****!
Money must be invested into overhauling the current infrastructure, replacing copper with fibre. But this overhaul can't be undertaken without sufficient NN regulation!
Corporate-funded, astroturf smear campaigns like Hands Off the Internet and dontregulate.org are succeeding in obfuscating this simple principle in the eyes of every-day consumers arguing that with regulation, the Internet's ability to continue innovating will be suppressed. The truth is very simple though.. without NN, or some similar regulation, we will see the greatest learning resource known to man and the last realm of true free-speech, reduced to an online vending machine for porn and advertising!
Content creation on the Internet is weighed as high as 80% created by individuals! Compared to traditional media this is phenomenal, with TV having practically 0, radio 5% and newspapers, the occasional op-ed piece. Telco's want to become gatekeepers, charging for every media packet as it enters and leaves their network.
Milambar
05-12-2008, 07:03
Indeed, it paints a very dire picture, and I'm afraid, its also a true picture of the future of the internet.
All the major ISP's want this, and all they need to do is close ranks, and economically kill any upstart that fails to toe the line. Unless theres governmental legislation brought in to block this from happening, and I hope there will be, then, it WILL happen. Its too much of a lucrative earner for the ISP's for it NOT to happen.
Net neutrality does not exist, and Neil Berkett is 100% right, it is a load of ********.
Even right now certain traffic is higher priority than others, and has it's own seperate bandwidth, net neutrality is a pipe dream that will never, and should never happen.
Every ISP in the world has peering agreements and links with the big bandwidth users, it keeps their external transit costs down (bandwidth costs ISPs money remember) and ensures that the end users get a good degree of service. Of course ISP's want the big bandwidth users to sign agreements and directly peer with them, if they don't they're having to move their traffic offnet which costs a huge amount more than keeping it onnet with a direct link to the content provider. All through the history of the internet big bandwidth using sites have peered with ISPs, it provides both sides with a mutual benefit as it keeps the costs of both down. Offnet traffic isn't just expensive for ISPs, it is for content providers too. The only reason it's getting so much press now is that the ISPs are turning around and going "our offnet bandwidth can't really cope with all this extra traffic, and we can't afford to put in fatter pipes without raising prices, so, either peer with us or your traffic's going to be sat on a congested pipe", they aren't going to artificially slow down traffic if the site owners don't pay, it's a process that will happen naturally due to the constant increases in bandwidth that consumers are using, so there's only two ways to stop it, 1: peer with more content providers and keep more traffic onnet. 2: raise prices to pay for more external transit. Which would you prefere?
With net neutrality there are no peering agreements, all your traffic comes the same way, through one nice big heavily congested pipe. Anyone that thinks that is anywhere near optimal needs their head examined.
Net neutrality is one of those great principles that, like communism, looks great on paper, but will NEVER work in the real world. There is no such thing as a neutral network, and neither should their ever be. Would you be happy if your skype calls started lagging because someone was torrenting constantly? You'd probably be on here crying for VOIP traffic to be QoS'd to a higher priority, and there goes your neutral network.
darkbeing
06-12-2008, 00:42
Net neutrality is one of those great principles that, like communism, looks great on paper, but will NEVER work in the real world. There is no such thing as a neutral network, and neither should their ever be. Would you be happy if your skype calls started lagging because someone was torrenting constantly? You'd probably be on here crying for VOIP traffic to be QoS'd to a higher priority, and there goes your neutral network.
hahahahaha
With net neutrality there are no peering agreements, all your traffic comes the same way, through one nice big heavily congested pipe. Anyone that thinks that is anywhere near optimal needs their head examined. Are you just trolling or are you seriously expecting me to take this statement seriously ?
Can I make a tiny suggestion that you read up on what Net neutrality actually is?
You may argue the ins-and-outs of wikipedia and its biases but it is none-the-less a good place to learn what the issues are and exactly what NN amounts to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality
The term "net neutrality" (or "network neutrality") was coined in the early 2000s. However, advocates argue that the concept existed in the age of the telegraph. In 1860, a US federal law subsidizing a coast-to-coast telegraph line stated that
...messages received from any individual, company, or corporation, or from any telegraph lines connecting with this line at either of its termini, shall be impartially transmitted in the order of their reception, excepting that the dispatches of the government shall have priority.
—An act to facilitate communication between the Atlantic and Pacific states by electric telegraph, June 16, 1860
In 1888, the automatic telephone exchange was created by Almon Brown Strowger who is said to have created it to bypass biased telephone operators who diverted unsuspecting customers to his competitors. This automating created a "neutral" environment that was free from unseen tampering to telephone users.[12]
According to Sir Tim Berners-Lee: "If I pay to connect to the Net with a given quality of service, and you pay to connect to the net with the same or higher quality of service, then you and I can communicate across the net, with that quality of service."[1] "[We] each pay to connect to the Net, but no one can pay for exclusive access to me."[11]
Do you understand what Berners lee is saying ? keep reading it till you do - its very important in the debate.
According to Google's Guide to Net Neutrality:
"Network neutrality is the principle that Internet users should be in control of what content they view and what applications they use on the Internet. The Internet has operated according to this neutrality principle since its earliest days... Fundamentally, net neutrality is about equal access to the Internet. In our view, the broadband carriers should not be permitted to use their market power to discriminate against competing applications or content. Just as telephone companies are not permitted to tell consumers who they can call or what they can say, broadband carriers should not be allowed to use their market power to control activity online." [22]
hahahahaha
Are you just trolling or are you seriously expecting me to take this statement seriously ?
Can I make a tiny suggestion that you read up on what Net neutrality actually is?
You may argue the ins-and-outs of wikipedia and its biases but it is none-the-less a good place to learn what the issues are and exactly what NN amounts to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality
Do you understand what Berners lee is saying ? keep reading it till you do - its very important in the debate.
I understand exactly what net neutrality is, it's shocking really, but the clue is in the name, it's a network that is completely neutral and indiscriminate when it comes to traffic, all traffic is treated equally and routed on a first come first served basis, with no priority given to what sort of data it is or where it comes from or is going to.
As a network administrator that has been part of the design and implementation of many a businesses network, and worked for a couple of ISPs, I can safely tell you that NOT A SINGLE ONE has a neutral network.
None of the net neutrality debate is about paying for exclusive access to end users, so your quote is irrelevant. It's about ISPs wanting content providers paying a higher rate to get priority dedicated bandwidth to them, or else sitting in conjested pipes with all other traffic. The two are entirely different things, and the whole crap about multiple tiered subscriptions where you have to pay £x a month more to get access to certain sites is just scaremongering nonsense, there isn't a single ISP in the world that would dare implement that as it's commercial suicide.
Having a non-neutral network with transit links between content providers with high bandwith usage providing dedicated bandwidth however, is something that is going to be drastically needed in future, and is what ISPs want, and is what Neil Berkett was on about when he said net neutrality was a load of *******s. They want the content providers to pay for the carraige costs because they simply cannot afford to upgrade their external network links to cope with the predicted rise in bandwidth.
If we're going to start throwing quotes around, how about we throw out a couple from the westminister debate on net neutrality? Specifically that it is "extreme... unattractive and impractical" and that it was "an answer to problems we don't have, using a philosophy we don't share"
darkbeing
06-12-2008, 01:48
None of the net neutrality debate is about paying for exclusive access to end users, so your quote is irrelevant.
You are wrong because part of net neutrality is the idea that if my network is larger and higher quality then you pay to cross my network but all my traffic goes free across yours. So you are saying that you would adopt a non neutral stance and rip up the agreements on Tier1 networks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network
See also
http://www.zdnet.com.au/insight/communications/soa/Net-neutrality-is-an-American-problem-/0,139023754,339292161,00.htm
However, Simon Hackett, the managing director of Adelaide-based ISP Internode, argues that it is ridiculous to suggest bandwidth is "running out".
"I don't subscribe to the view that network capacity is finite at all... Optical fibre basically doesn't run out of capacity, it's just a question of how fast you blink the bits at each end," he said in a recent interview with ZDNet.com.au.
"The [Net neutrality] problem isn't about running out of capacity. It's a business model that's about to explode due to stress. The problem, in my opinion, is the US business model," said Hackett.
"The US have got a problem," weighed in Justin Milne, group managing director for Telstra Media and former chief of Australia's largest ISP BigPond. "Their problem is that unlike Australia, they [offer] truly unlimited plans."
The problem with an "unlimited access" plan, explains Hackett, is that it "devalues what a megabyte is worth". American customers have never been able to put much of a dollar value on traffic, as historically, US ISPs have "had it very easy" in terms of bandwidth costs. The United States invented the internet, developed the first content for it, and the rest of the world essentially subsidised the US to connect to that content .... The final choice, says Michael Malone, CEO of ASX-listed ISP iiNet, is to charge content providers, the model that has stirred up controversy.
"The attempt is being made certainly in the UK but also in the US to push that cost onto the content owner by saying, you pay, and we'll prioritise your traffic," he said. "[And] if you don't pay, your traffic will be really crap."
Which is exactly VM's problem. They want to offer 1gigabit broadband if they could to users who havent a clue what 1gigabit is nor do they have the hardware that would adequately use it.
VM continually gets its willy out in public but remains a virgin. their sole aim is to flash the biggest and best at people but dont want to get their hands dirty explaining to users what that means in terms of wastage and irrelevence to consumers. Its a waste of energy, of bandwidth, and of opportunity. VM is a poser all mouth and trousers. its sole aim is bigger speeds in the hope that will make them look more manly to the customers, and to achieve that it will make the consumer pay unnecessarily for a service most dont use.
Most 10mb customers are writing the odd few emails and surfing ebay and google - thats it - thats all and yet they believe they need 10mb, because virgin tell them they do. VM love doing that because it makes them more money for no extra work.
Its idiotic money grabbing morons that have no love of technology but love of money that want an end to net neutrality. The only way VM can fund higher speeds is by limiting your access to the internet and what you view. it steals bandwidth from peter to pay paul.
when will people realise that 200 x 2mb customers = 40 x10mb customers and yet look at it - half the 10mb customers are being capped at 5mb. Its all just VM waving its dick in public but then seriously suggesting that makes them a man in the world of computing
so when they sign up 200,000 customers to 10mb they could have got 1 million on there at 2mb and 95% wouldnt see a degradation in the quality of their usage because they cant utilise 10mb
infact they would be hard pushed to shoqw a difference between 1mb and 10mb if they are just viewing a few sites and checking hotmail.
I will love the day they oust people like Neil Berkett from his office and others in all strata of VM that do not believe in net neutrality. So they can become a company that belives in sustainability rather than continued growth
I will support anyone at VM who belives that particular moron (Berkett) should go and be replaced by someone with more modern ideas
You are wrong because part of net neutrality is the idea that if my network is larger and higher quality then you pay to cross my network but all my traffic goes free across yours. So you are saying that you would adopt a non neutral stance and rip up the agreements on Tier1 networks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network
See also
http://www.zdnet.com.au/insight/communications/soa/Net-neutrality-is-an-American-problem-/0,139023754,339292161,00.htm
You just don't get it.
What you're saying is a very basic principle when it comes to transit agreements, of course you pay to directly peer to the main ISPs networks, and of course because of that agreement their traffic has free access to yours, it's because it's of benefit to you to have a direct peering with them because it costs you less than the external transit costs of moving the data to them would if you didn't.
You could peer with a network for x amount, and with that their bandwith to you wouldn't cost them anything, this makes sense for you if x is less than your external transit costs for the same amount of data to them, which it nearly always will be.
You're only paying for an "exclusive" pipe into the network which gaurentees bandwidth, you're still free to use any of the tier 1 networks to access it and then deal with any of the bandwidth constraints that that then gives you.
Which is exactly VM's problem. They want to offer 1gigabit broadband if they could to users who havent a clue what 1gigabit is nor do they have the hardware that would adequately use it.
VM continually gets its willy out in public but remains a virgin. their sole aim is to flash the biggest and best at people but dont want to get their hands dirty explaining to users what that means in terms of wastage and irrelevence to consumers. Its a waste of energy, of bandwidth, and of opportunity. VM is a poser all mouth and trousers. its sole aim is bigger speeds in the hope that will make them look more manly to the customers, and to achieve that it will make the consumer pay unnecessarily for a service most dont use.
Most 10mb customers are writing the odd few emails and surfing ebay and google - thats it - thats all and yet they believe they need 10mb, because virgin tell them they do. VM love doing that because it makes them more money for no extra work.
Its idiotic money grabbing morons that have no love of technology but love of money that want an end to net neutrality. The only way VM can fund higher speeds is by limiting your access to the internet and what you view. it steals bandwidth from peter to pay paul.
when will people realise that 200 x 2mb customers = 40 x10mb customers and yet look at it - half the 10mb customers are being capped at 5mb. Its all just VM waving its dick in public but then seriously suggesting that makes them a man in the world of computing
so when they sign up 200,000 customers to 10mb they could have got 1 million on there at 2mb and 95% wouldnt see a degradation in the quality of their usage because they cant utilise 10mb
infact they would be hard pushed to shoqw a difference between 1mb and 10mb if they are just viewing a few sites and checking hotmail.
I will love the day they oust people like Neil Berkett from his office and others in all strata of VM that do not believe in net neutrality. So they can become a company that belives in sustainability rather than continued growth
I will support anyone at VM who belives that particular moron (Berkett) should go and be replaced by someone with more modern ideas
No one believes in net neutrality except people who have no idea how networking actually works, or those who will gain directly from it. Net neutrality is unworkable, and beyond all else is incompatible with the needs of the consumer.
I will love the day when the net neutrality ******** is exposed for exactly what it is, scaremongering by high bandwidth usage content providers who want a nice cheap ride into the ISPs networks, whilst blaming the ISPs when there isn't the bandwidth to provide smooth access to their services.
It's no suprise that the biggest advocates of net neutrality are the biggest bandwidth users, and that they stand to gain the most out of forcing ISPs to foot the bill for the increase in bandwidth that they themselves drive whilst sitting back and racking in the profit for themselves.
No one believes in net neutrality except people who have no idea how networking actually works, or those who will gain directly from it. Net neutrality is unworkable, and beyond all else is incompatible with the needs of the consumer.
That's something i've had fun trying to explain to people.
IIRC even at the most basic level pings tend to be dropped early when a router reaches a certain level, and net neutrality is a bad thing when congestion kicks in if you've got to give everything equal priority regardless of what it is, as some types of data are much more sensative to congestion than others.
I would much rather non urgent, bulk traffic (bit torrent...) gets dropped first, rather than traffic that is is actually very sensative to loss/delay such as games, or voice comms.
Or to put it another way, is net neutrality compatible with, or directly contradictory to, QoS settings (Quality of Service).
Or to put it another way, is net neutrality compatible with, or directly contradictory to, QoS settings (Quality of Service).
It is indeed directly contradictory.
A network with QoS can by definition never be a neutral network.
Of course the people that preach for net neutrality like to ignore this, or laughably try to claim that QoS is compatible with it, as long as it's protocol based rather than source.
Going back to what darkbeing posted about the phone system, because it's an interesting point that I forgot to make, thinking of the internet as being like the phone system is wrong, instead think of it like this, the internet is like the postal service. All letters have to get somewhere, but some letters are more important, because of this people pay more to get their letters places faster (1st class, 2nd class, Same day delivery, etc). This is the same with the internet, only instead of paying more, QoS prioritises certain things like VOIP. VOIP and the like should be your same day service, all tcp traffic needs recorded delivery (as it relies on acknowledgements), udp is just your standard 1st class (as it's just best effort), icmp traffic like pings and things like p2p traffic are a lowly 2nd class.
Now, you also have some big mail users, big companies that send lots of bills or mailshots. Net neutrality of the postal service would have all of these companies going down the road and dropping them off in the nearest postbox. That post box is going to get pretty clogged, the system for dealing with mail posted into postboxes is going to get clogged, and poor old pat isn't going to beable to deal with loading all that mail into his van, and god help the people working at the mail depots sorting the stuff.
So, big companies don't post their mail in post boxes like most people do, they have it picked up directly, and it's dealt with seperatly, only going into the normal delivery system for the "last mile" with the postman.
You know what that sounds like to me? A transit agreement!
The big companies aren't paying the same to post their individual letters either, they get special rates based on volumes of traffic. Incidently, the same as transit agreements online.
Ask yourself if you'd like the postal system to be a neutral network, if the answer is no (and it definitely should be) then the answer to wanting the internet as a neutral network is also no, because the arguments for each are exactly the same.
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