[TriLUG] Time-Warner (Spectrum) outage tonight

[Thomas Delrue via TriLUG]

On 01/03/2018 10:01 AM, Jeremy Davis via TriLUG wrote:
> hmmm.. almost smells like the compromise of net neutrality.. maybe not but
> it still offers a glimpse of what to expect if net neutrality goes away.. I
> can see how the ISPs would love to cramp Google's style if they could.. I
> don't fully understand the net neutrality Legislation that is supposedly
> being repealed. However, after all the Google Fiber competition that forced
> the ISPs to react.. a smart retaliation tactic may be to entrench more
> lobbyists on the the net neutrality repeal. Google was and probably still
> is the site with the most traffic on the Internet. So I would assume, based
> on my limited knowledge, Google would be among the first victims the ISPs
> go after.

I think the loss of Net Neutrality is horrible, I'll start by saying
that. I also don't think this is a
"no-more-net-neutrality-lets-run-a-trial" thing. At this point, I don't
think it makes much sense for this to be something like what you describe.

Repeal of the Net Neutrality provisions is the creation of a Moat for
the big players and a death knell for new players in the market: it is
an entrenchment of the current state of affairs, the big ones stay big,
the small ones are vassals to the big ones. (But then again, what's new
there?)
Big players can either pay to be prioritized or have enough weight to
make ISPs think twice about blocking access to them because said ISP
would have its customers complain; but small players will be footing the
bill for everyone else (what's new there) since they don't have that
type of weight to throw around nor will they ever, as will be made
certain by every-more-charging ISPs if they ever become successful.
Think of it as a "that's a nice business thing you got going there, be a
shame if no-one were able to get access to you, wouldn't it"-thing.
Many big ones are so big that an ISP cannot afford to block access to
these players, GOOG, FB and AMZN are a couple of those big ones that
fall into this category. The world wide web as many people know it
today, would cease to function if any one of these players is taken
away, blocked or 'inconvenienced'; if you don't believe me, just do a
wholesale block of all domains owned by these players and tell me how it
is going.

Just imaging an ISP cutting access to "The Left All-Seeing Eye" (the
right eye being FB and the eye in the back of your head being AMZN).
This would generate too many complaints and actually cost them customers
since, to many people, the Internet *is* GOOG+FB+AMZN and everything
else is something they don't care (too much) about. This would have
people either switching away from TWC/Spectrum (If they can, at least)
or have them complain loudly to the ISP and sufficiently long until they
either pony up more money, which makes the problem go away for them, or
until the ISP unblocks those sites.
And in the end, ISPs don't care too much about their customers, but what
they /do/ care about is lost^Wunrealized revenue. So I'm pretty certain
that the big players won't be blocked at all.(*)

If you really want a revolution about net neutrality, sadly the only
thing that will rile people up sufficiently, is to have ISPs indeed
block access to FB, GOOG, Twatter or a combination of those. Because in
the end, as long as they have panem(**) et circenses, they will stay
docile...

This is why Net Neutrality is needed because otherwise ISPs are the
gatekeeper to every single thing you need to function in this current
modern society, having given themselves the power to Taketh Away at
their leisure. And so far, they have not demonstrated themselves to be
worthy of having that trust put into them.

(*) Even NetFlix, who is so bandwidth hungry has been working tirelessly
to create a parallel internet if you will by plugging its data-centers
and servers directly into ISPs backbone/infrastructure and bargaining
deals with them that say "look, you don't have to worry about peering
costs because we'll eat that in how we make our own DCs talk to one
another, we'll put our content on your network already and how about you
don't charge us for that (or we could pull this from your network and
have your customers complain to you about not being able to access us
leading to 'unrealized revenue'). How about we call it quits, ey?"

(**) Technically, it was grain that was distributed, not bread. This was
 in a city that did not tax its citizens for it had enough riches from
its foreign campaigns to be able to afford this. (I highly recommend
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPQR:_A_History_of_Ancient_Rome as evening
literature)

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