The girl at the start is a cutée....
I have no idea what they are on about anyone care to enlighten me.
What's net neutrality?
Virgin neutrality story
- Thread starter <Dubz>
- Start date
The girl at the start is a cutée....
I have no idea what they are on about anyone care to enlighten me.
What's net neutrality?
Soldato
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they want to dictate what content and websites get bandwidth priority, in a nutshell
This is insane, the fact virgin want to dictate what you use your Internet for is pathetic. You pay for a service and expect to get what you pay for, if you go to virgins site they state there package as up to 20mb broadband with no download limits, obviously there are limits and they get away with this because no one enforces anything.
Now they want to tell me that if i want to look at a certain site i may be hindered because virgin don't favor them PFFF ******** is what springs to mind, if you think for one second it has anything to do with virgin not being able to buy infrastructure/bandwidth your sorely mislead, its down to greed and extorsion, they want companies to pay them for the previlige of getting there customers, ill break it down, the BBC decide that because virgin have a greater percentage of Internet customers they want to target them for advertising and news, so now to do so if virgin have there own way the BBC will have to pay virgin a chunk of money for the previlige of you using there website if they don't pay then the BBC's website will feel like you are on a 56K modem.
In a nutshell virgin are proclaiming that you are there customer, anything you take an interest in on the Internet has to be governed by them, you cant be a customer of any one else through the internet unless virgin say so and have taken there cut of whatever profits may be made in advance, next they will be trying to tell us weather or not we can use the net to watch video or just to browse websites, weather or not pictures can be displayed because "it may use to much bandwidth and wont be fair on other customers". I think someone touched on something before that not many people have thought of, Gaming seems to be the next big target for Virgin, why should you be able to use your Internet that you pay good money for to play games without paying them extra for the previliage.
Think about this, the web is a very large place spanning the whole of the world, do you think all websites are going to pay virgin media for there customers use? do you think a giant like America needs the custom of a small countrys inhabitance like the UK, ask yourself just how much of the net would be usable after something like this is put into place.
Now they want to tell me that if i want to look at a certain site i may be hindered because virgin don't favor them PFFF ******** is what springs to mind, if you think for one second it has anything to do with virgin not being able to buy infrastructure/bandwidth your sorely mislead, its down to greed and extorsion, they want companies to pay them for the previlige of getting there customers, ill break it down, the BBC decide that because virgin have a greater percentage of Internet customers they want to target them for advertising and news, so now to do so if virgin have there own way the BBC will have to pay virgin a chunk of money for the previlige of you using there website if they don't pay then the BBC's website will feel like you are on a 56K modem.
In a nutshell virgin are proclaiming that you are there customer, anything you take an interest in on the Internet has to be governed by them, you cant be a customer of any one else through the internet unless virgin say so and have taken there cut of whatever profits may be made in advance, next they will be trying to tell us weather or not we can use the net to watch video or just to browse websites, weather or not pictures can be displayed because "it may use to much bandwidth and wont be fair on other customers". I think someone touched on something before that not many people have thought of, Gaming seems to be the next big target for Virgin, why should you be able to use your Internet that you pay good money for to play games without paying them extra for the previliage.
Think about this, the web is a very large place spanning the whole of the world, do you think all websites are going to pay virgin media for there customers use? do you think a giant like America needs the custom of a small countrys inhabitance like the UK, ask yourself just how much of the net would be usable after something like this is put into place.
I agree that net neutrality should be protected but that video is probably not the best way to get the point across:
Token cute chick - Check!
Room of intergeeks - Check!
Vulgar language - Check!
Melancholy music - Check!
Over zealous talk of freedom - Check!
Final shot of token cute chick looking like her puppy just got hit by a truck - Check!
Token cute chick - Check!
Room of intergeeks - Check!
Vulgar language - Check!
Melancholy music - Check!
Over zealous talk of freedom - Check!
Final shot of token cute chick looking like her puppy just got hit by a truck - Check!
Very good points, it frustrates me to see people talking/acting as though they're being so hard done to, just because the ISP, (which is a private company) is being selective over which traffic type it decides to prioritise over another.
When the user is paying £25-40 a month, and the equivilent business user who is receiving perhaps 4-8Mbit with an SLA pays anything from £300-800 a month.
And when the basic user on say 20Mbit, gets capped to 5Mbit after exceeding the quota, they STILL get what a business user paying a fortune can get.
I don't agree with Net Neutrality, on the basis that to enforce it goes against its own meaning.
By that I mean the internet is supposedly a free arena for people to share and do what they want, however its owned by thousands of other private companies all of whom need to make money in order to provide it, to enforce net neutrality, is exactly the same as enforcing any law over the entire internet - the same as banning filesharing which goes against the idea of it.
As far as i'm concerned no single law or idea can be enforced upon it, because its nobodies to enforce, who's gonna tell china to take off Google's government restrictions?
Some will say "but a few years ago we could send everything we wanted across it and there were no restrictions on any type of data"
My answer to that is, the internet is evolving and is being used for far more things than just sending data, companies such as the BBC are exploring ways of moving from normal methods of transmission to using the internet to distribute their media.
Which in the long run will cost ISPs more cash to accomodate it.
I agree that net neutrality should be protected but that video is probably not the best way to get the point across:
Token cute chick - Check!
Room of intergeeks - Check!
Vulgar language - Check!
Melancholy music - Check!
Over zealous talk of freedom - Check!
Final shot of token cute chick looking like her puppy just got hit by a truck - Check!
LOL, you are right. I am slightly concerned but to be honest - and as a Virgin Media user - if everything I use will still be as fast as it is now, I won't complain!
Hmmmmmm
A bloke on the Internet tells you that Virgin will make all the websites that don't pay virgin crawl to a halt and everyone is up in arms?
Now I understand net neutrality but no ISP in their right mind is going to throttle popular websites to an unusable level, they might throttle then a bit but to make an appreciable difference would be commercial suicide, it won't happen! Unless you are downloading big files I doubt you'd even notice. Yes its wrong but if it allows the ISP to make a little extra cash to stop me having to pay more for my connection then I'll live with it, my 20Mb line is great even when it gets throttled back everything still loads just as fast I just get slower downloads for files, webpages- no change.
Can't see what all the fuss is about.
MB
A bloke on the Internet tells you that Virgin will make all the websites that don't pay virgin crawl to a halt and everyone is up in arms?
Now I understand net neutrality but no ISP in their right mind is going to throttle popular websites to an unusable level, they might throttle then a bit but to make an appreciable difference would be commercial suicide, it won't happen! Unless you are downloading big files I doubt you'd even notice. Yes its wrong but if it allows the ISP to make a little extra cash to stop me having to pay more for my connection then I'll live with it, my 20Mb line is great even when it gets throttled back everything still loads just as fast I just get slower downloads for files, webpages- no change.
Can't see what all the fuss is about.
MB
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It's much more likely they'll just give priority to certain traffic (VOIP from providers who share a bit of the profit for example), or even give blanket priority to certain types of traffic (VOIP is much more sensitive to delayed/lost packets than gaming, which again is more sensitive than torrents) rather than limit everyone who doesn't.
I know which of the 3 I would rather get through in a timely manner, and which groups would be the first to complain because the 80%+ data passing through the network for which timing isn't vital is getting the same priority as the 5% for which it is absolutely vital, thus causing problems (Sorry Mr WoW addict your data is being dropped along with some of everything else because we're near capacity at that router, and we can't drop more of the gigbits of torrent packets to let your game run properly).
As I understand it almost every ISP, router and host already gives lower priority to some types of data and have done for years (icmp/ping packets tend to get dropped first with many routers when loads reach a certain level...).
I know which of the 3 I would rather get through in a timely manner, and which groups would be the first to complain because the 80%+ data passing through the network for which timing isn't vital is getting the same priority as the 5% for which it is absolutely vital, thus causing problems (Sorry Mr WoW addict your data is being dropped along with some of everything else because we're near capacity at that router, and we can't drop more of the gigbits of torrent packets to let your game run properly).
As I understand it almost every ISP, router and host already gives lower priority to some types of data and have done for years (icmp/ping packets tend to get dropped first with many routers when loads reach a certain level...).
Its not normal webpages, its more to do with streaming content and a lot of it revolved around things like BBC iplayer, and content providers using the internet as a medium to carry their content instead of the cable TV network/satellite/analog.
The general idea was, that if anyone wanted to use the service in this way they should pay extra money to allow the the ISP to accomodate the content, anyone who didn't pay wouldn't get their traffic guaranteed, so in times of congestion people who have effectivley paid for an SLA, get one, people who don't get marked down.
Just what i was going to say, if the isp's considering it realised this they would probably see it's such a ridiculous idea and just won't work, not only is it wrong and the user will only see the isp as the bad guy but websites either can't or won't pay protection money to these dirty isp's because they're already paying fairly all they should, this really sounds like an illegal practice to me anyway.
Another issue which is starting to show is how isp's want to split up the data to monitor and shape it, the issue here is they should treat data as a personal communication from one point to another and thats all their job should be, to monitor would be like royal mail opening all your letters, also if they do monitor and shape and the user is found to have done something illegal shouldn't those protections for the isp go because they would no longer be able to claim they don't know whats passing over their networks?
Because they aren't monitoring the content, they are monitoring the type of data being sent. To continue your analogy it is like Royal Mail charging you different amounts for letters, parcels or postcards. So they will still be ignorant of the content they will just know what type of data it is, streamed media, web pages, torrents etc. Must current shaping is done on volume atm anyway, so you get throttled when you hit a certain amount.
The trouble is they are trying to split it up and treat it as services where as its nothing but 1's and 0's and should be treated as such, information can be gathered by just knowing the type of data and it's destination and who knows in the future what they might do with it, why should it be monitored and shaped when the costs are the same being just data, they're trying to place control where it isn't needed, in time the networks will grow and things will improve.
The problem is that whilst the data is just ones and zeros, some things are very sensitive to lost or delayed packets, ask anyone who has played online on a 56k modem, or whilst their house mates are downloading.
To be fully "net neutral" (a bit of a silly term), is to treat all data with the same priority regardless of how much of a certain type there is, and if it is time sensitive.
For a physical world analogy, the internet is the highway, the data packets are the vehicles on it.
You wouldn't even try to send building materials (bit torrentl) via motorbike courier, but by truck - whilst at the same time you wouldn't send urgent documents (VOIP) needed same day by truck, you'd use a motorbike courier (or similar).
Or as another analogy - Royal Mail operate first and second class mail, they are both dealt with in almost the exact same manner, the only difference is that first class mail gets loaded onto the van's first, both will get where they are going (often at the same time depending on how busy they are), but the cheaper service can take longer.
Unless there is an unlimited network capacity at all points up to the end user you're always going to face some problems with data being lost or delayed - so if you're a net neutral ISP you lose roughly the same amount of data regardless of what type it is - for some types it won't matter in the slightest that it's lost even 20% of the packets, for others losing (or delaying) just 5% might make it unusable.
Oddly enough the same apps that tend to use the most bandwidth are also some of the most tolerant of lost packets, whilst those that are most frugal are most affected by lost packets.
As long as an ISP doesn't deliberately slow down all but the data from it's "partners" not being net neutral can actually be a very beneficial thing for the average user who needs his VOIP, online games etc to work.
What a lot of non neutral ISP's are suggesting is that when they do have to start dropping/delaying data due to capacity issues they give some level of priority to data from partners who have signed some form of SLA with them, or where it's more sensitive to the loss/delay.
As I think i put it in another thread when they find they need to drop say 10% of all data due to network issues, they try to drop it from the types of data where it's going to have least affect (bit torrent users would just see a slowdown in their multi gb file transfers), as opposed to
VOIP or Games players for whom a 10% loss of packets could make their apps unusable, the oeveral affect of giving a preference to the VOIP/games traffic wouldn't make much difference to say the torrent users in such a situation.
It's also worth considering that if say Virgin signs a deal with Youtube or the BBC to give a preference to their data when capacity becomes an issue, it can also mean they move the traffic off their general network links to private peering points, with the result that most of the time many users might actually see an improvement.
It might also mean that the ISP has that little bit more money to put into upgrading it's network to meet the increased demands put on it, many of the isp's are reportedly finding it very hard to make any proft as it is...
Virgin have done more in some ways than almost any other ISP to prevent some of the looming problems things like the BBC Iplayer are going to cause in regards of network traffic, by working with the BBC for a way around it - in the case of the Iplayer by implementing it onto their TV VOD system taking it off the "data"* network, and onto the TV data side of things.
*Which itself brings up an interesting question, as the whole of the telephone system becomes fully digital, travelling along the same physical lines as the "computer" data, does that mean that to be "net neutral" the likes of BT would have to be willing to give internet data the same priority as they give for phone use? (it's all 1's and 0's...).
If priority was the only issue then all you essentially need to know is the priority flag set on a particular packet, also why would the likes of youtube and bbc iplayer etc require a signed agreement as all they depend on is a certain level of streaming bandwidth that can be met currently and in the future from network growth, i honestly believe any issues are only very temporary, the isp's need to just continue without too much fuss and things will improve.
Anyway the idea is flawed and wrong as everyone is paying fairly already, the isp's need to invest in their network and make more realistic promises in future, by then i don't think anyone will be complaining either as we will have faster speeds and no cap anyway due to the network growth.
Anyway the idea is flawed and wrong as everyone is paying fairly already, the isp's need to invest in their network and make more realistic promises in future, by then i don't think anyone will be complaining either as we will have faster speeds and no cap anyway due to the network growth.
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So what's the point in the P2P ban thing that the French were imposing?
Surely everyone with a 20Mb connection are using it to download "massive files"
Otherwise it would be a waste of money.
You could happily use a 2mb connection for your gaming needs.
Surely everyone with a 20Mb connection are using it to download "massive files"
Otherwise it would be a waste of money.
You could happily use a 2mb connection for your gaming needs.
exactly.
I don't think so myself once it starts where does it stop and as a virgin/ntl customer for about 10 or 11 years i had enough of them at moment.
just started playing on-line again after a rest of about 2 years and at moment their broadband sucks as i keep losing my connection and after midnight it gets worst.
I will be moving now o2/be is at my exchange
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