DAFUQ?
Why would Netflix or Google pay for electricity or rack space used for their cache servers? Installing these servers is already profitable to ISP: it reduces their uplink costs! The only problem here is that some greedy fuckers want not just some help with load reduction, they want to receive double payment for traffic: both from their customers AND from content providers.
Additional regulations and their invariable unintended consequences are precisely what we don't need. We all know how this game is played, don't we? Any new regulations will be written by the ISPs, themselves. Either the monopolies must be rescinded, or the ISPs must be classified and treated as public utilities, both of which the ISPs will fight tooth and nail (with copious campaign contributions and legal challenges). Any other "solution," however, will merely increase and extend our suffering.
I don't know specifically what The Netflix boxs at the ISPs are but it sounds suspiciously like a Riverbed Wan accelerator with a hugh cache at the ISP.
The way that works is that the accelerator at each end of the connection will, the first time it sees a unique piece of data, break the file up into little chunks and saves it in a local cache as it sends the file to the remote end at the ISP. The remote accelerator receives the file and also breaks the file up into the same arrangement of small chunks as it continue to send the file to where ever it was requested from. In the netflix case it is a netflix subscriber.
The next subcriber of that ISP who wants to watch the same movie will send the request over the internet and it will go through the Wan accelerator which knows that it has seen that file before so in stead of forwarding the request off to Netflix central, it just sends the copy from the local cache back to the subscriber instead.
The reason it breaks the file into little chunks is that if there is a small change to the file, such as the regular cut and the directors cut of a movie, the accelerators only need to send the chunks where there are differences and not the entire file again.
Believe me, Netflix is not investing millions of dollars in these devices because of anything to do with net neutrality or because they care how smooth your experience is. That is only a side benefit. It is so that they save millions of dollars in their own bandwidth costs as they only have to stream a movie to any ISP once instead of every time someone connecting to the internet through that ISP wants to watch the latest movie. At least that is, during the time that the movie is popular. The cache will age data and drop it off over time but that doesn't matter for an obscure movie only watched once a year by one subscriber.
With all the ongoing debates over there. I am surprised that no-one had pointed out to Donald that if it goes ahead, an ISP could charge him personally $1000 a tweet if he wants them delivered.
It's a basic Squid anyone can build at home, there are even docker images for stuff like that.
i guess that movies don't really have running changes do they.
you are probably right. netflix still end up with the same end result of saving on bandwidth costs
I think an argument can be made that "net neutrality" is one set of ethics in the wider scope of ethical and practical guidelines that allow the web to work. The sole purpose of net neutrality would be to protect citizen's access to information without bias, and to set a fair standard for companies that use the web. Of course, this is not the web as we know it today.
If an ISP is caching websites or video, they will be more competitive against another ISP that doesn't, just by sheer perceived speed by the end user. That Netflix even offers this to ISP's is just a testament to how fast we have out-paced our old infrastructure. It's a simple solution that is a temporary fix to our nationwide bandwith starvation.
Intel just released optane or whatever that caches and supplements a hard drive, but it is really a stupid temporary fix for not buying an SSD. Same concept in theory and application.
I realize an ISP has to make money. They have to pay the bills. But when the folks at the top want a bigger yacht to compete with their friends in the billionaires club, that shit rolls downhill. They cut costs, monetize everything possible, and everyone who works for them feels the pressure to make the company more money.
Amen! Only way I can see the need for a provider, so to say, to be able to distribute under all circumstances is if we get remotely controlled robotic surgeons and such where a low ping and high bandwidth needs to be reserved on the network. Or critical infrastructure like police communication or other public domains need to be able to communicate, either to us, the citizens, or among themselves.
I know the actual limit is about hte input/output hardware and the repeaters (also repeaters at which intervals) but just thought I'd be funny to point to this video. The physical limit of visible light in a fiber optic cable is "a terabyte in a few hundredths of a second".
I actually read recently that the Netflix proxy is not always faster than a direct connection to them anyway... so ya'll are right the benefit is to Netflix more so than the end user unless it happens to be faster than the end user normally gets.
I think this is a misconception. Most, if not all, of the ISPs are public corporations. This means that the top brass answer to the shareholders. It is ultimately, the big shareholders that want the "bigger yacht," etc. They're the ones that put pressure on the executives who put pressure on upper management, and so on, and so on, and that's the shit that rolls downhill. That's not to say these guys are bystanders by any sense of the imagination, but people always seem to forget about the damn big shareholders that don't care about the long game and only care about big, short-term gains.
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So basically everyone already has internet. Everyone is already paying ISPs for broadband. The job of a corporation that is an ISP is to increase profits. Everyone is already paying you a subscription for your profit, so how do you increase profits? You minimize recurring costs, you charge your customers more, you monetize your customers. Minimizing recurring costs means service will stagnate or get worse.
The argument against net neutrality is basically, well, if you let them monetize customers, or you let them charge extra to customers that use certain services, then they won't need to minimize the recurring costs. But they already have insane profit margins, they're trying to maximize profits, they're going to minimize the recurring costs no matter what. There are only 2 ways to stop them from minimizing recurring costs and ISPs providing better service. Competition or Regulation.
Google added some competition in a few select cities and the quality of service in those cities improved by leaps and bounds. But as far as I know they have ceased rolling internet out. If its too expensive for Google, what chance to smaller companies have? not much. So really we need to rely on strict regulation.
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Looks here like Google still has upcoming roll-outs. Where'd you hear that?
Not to mention that Google really don't pay for infrastructure. They cut deals with cities, states, etc, and they use taxpayer subsidies and tax deductions. In the end, the headlines say Google paid a billion dollars to run fiber somewhere, but the reality is they ended up making a billion. And that's before they ever charge a single customer for internet.
Most ISP's get deals with already existing fiber runs that are paid for and maintained by a county utility, totally taxpayer funded. It's like toll bridges- we pay for them to be built, then we pay to use them too-forever:)
Another example is sports stadiums, same crap. But I better stop complaining before I get labeled a "commie"
Honestly that's how it's supposed to be, provided every ISP can then use those fibre lines, which I'm not sure Google does since I don't know how their contracts are.
But it's exactly how it works here in Germany.
Well yeah, stadiums are another stupid thing ...
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Grrr...
In CT when the ISP's were supposed to install fiber 10 years ago, that we have paid for a zillion times over by now, our governor forced the ISP's kicking and screaming to do what was mandated by Federal law. I watched as cable companies all over the state installed fiber. I was home when Optimum Online ran the fiber into the junction box for our condo, less than 100 feet away.
Then they never turned it on. I'm sure that the fiber is being used as trunk lines or whatever the term for it is. It might even be used in the junction box where it is converted to slow coax cable. All I know is a fiber line has been within sight of me for 10 years and I can't use it.
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Taxes
Money is the root of all evil. The reason why every damn service is moving to cloud/subscription based.
That sucks. I feel you. Just moved and went without internet totally for 2 1/2 months waiting for the local broadband carrier to hook me up. I think they had to wait until they got credit for a rural fiber connection from the government. They were out here checking "light levels" and all that while waiting for approval, even driving over an hour to my house. The fiber terminates across a gravel road in front of my house. Then they showed up to install it and ran copper. WTF? I too am 100 feet away from gigabit, and am stuck with 50/20. I'm no power user or anything, but may they all rot in hell anyways:)
That's so, just as you've had enough of their bullshit, they can sell you an upgrade and keep you suckling at the teat.
As I understand it, net neutrality is not about caching. It is about customers being able to access Media content over the internet from any media provider they want without hindrance or penalty.
The ISPs have all been consolidated into a few mega size providers. The consolidated ISPs have geographic monopolies and are all owned by different competing media companies who would much rather impede you from watching Netflix or Hulu and force you to watch their media product that they also get the advertising revenue from.
Fvck the FCC for being an enabler to the ISP's by accepting lobbyist money (under the table) for their BS legislation to get passed and fvck ISP's for being greedy opportunist scumbags that charge the consumer whatever they want for their services only to try to make even more money off of the data from websites the consumer frequently browses by selling it to the highest bidder (advertisers)