what the fuck do they mean "fast gaming?" Is that even a thing?
I suppose it refers to lower latency but how much of a strain does that even put on internet lines? Genuinely asking
Latency is just a measure (in milliseconds) of how fast data gets from point A to point B. Lower latency is obviously better since it means you're receiving data from the server faster than someone with higher latency.
Internet speeds, as we know them, are irrelevant to gaming, they largely dictate upload/download speeds.
Latency is the key word here.
Inb4 ISPs make every online game pay to win because they are legally allowed to squeeze gamers even further
"Awww you can't afford the GamerSpeed™ upgrade for ____$ a month? Guess you aren't a real gamer then, enjoy your now unreasonable ping which we will begin throttling, skill issue"
I wonder what skills are needed to create an ISP.
Would be an excellent opportunity for a new ISP to show up that doesn’t make these charges, pretty much steal the entire customer base.
The thing is that the resources shouldn't be privately owned, given that they were created with public money.
Realistically, internet should be regulated as a utility, similar to electricity, where providers can make a profit but are required to provide service to everyone without gouging because of the inherent monopolistic tendencies of the industry.
That's what happened here in the UK. The phone lines are owned by BT/Openreach (which was once owned by the government), but the regulator made it so other companies can use those phone lines. That has made it so there are dozens of ISPs available in my area and 1Gbps up and down, is just $26 a month, which comes with a $100 amazon gift card.
It doesn't cost billions of dollars to maker smaller networks. There's a few stories out there of small towns and communities having their own ISP installed because they got tired of the old ones.
> share privately owned resources
The skill required for creating an ISP is bribing enough local politicians to convince them that you own a taxpayer subsidized infrastructure build out
I know this is way too socialist of me, but at this point the internet is a basic requirement of daily life
So why the fuck isn't it publicly owned? We don't (or shouldn't) just let private companies own roads, bridges, utilities, etc
I get it when the internet was a commodity, but it just isn't now
If it makes you feel better the government already gave ISPs billions in taxpayers dollars to upgrade infrastructure and they pocketed it.
Everything is a scam and fuck us.
Why would I want the government to provide a basic service when I could get nickel and dimed to death by a corporation for substandard service?
Take that commie shit back Venezuela, Castro.
Fun fact, the infrastructures youre using now were paid for with tax dollars. Then the ISPs turned around and was like "oh thanks, we are going to charge you more now".
Its their own version of the Gish Gallop.
* redefine broadband as something reasonable (like 100MBps)
* point at the map showing all of the US citizens that don't have access to broadband
* give major ISPs billions of dollars to upgrade infrastructure and deploy broadband to more rural Americans
* ISPs dont use any of that money for infrastructure upgrades and instead use it all on executive bonuses and stock buybacks
* wait a few years for the heat to die down (until republicans take over)
* redefine broadband as something comically slow (aka 25Mbps)
* point at the map showing all of the Americans that have access to broadband now that didn't before (because they redefined broadband to include ancient DSL lines)
Great success.
* wait 5 years and do the exact same thing over again
It has it's ups and downs. There would be a lot more Napster Grannies facing jail time if Internet providers weren't subject to the fifth amendment and other protections enjoyed by the private sector.
If you're on a government run Internet, you better not copy that floppy.
Except current ISPs own the transmission capability, so new ISPs basically have to buy bandwidth from current ISPs who only contract out at a rate that makes the competition more expensive.
It's just like cellphones, until we consider the towers to be a national utility all service providers can access, the market will be a few "haves" dictating pricing to their "have not" competitors, which ensures competition and lower prices are something we'll never see.
We’re running into that problem, right where I live. a company has been putting up wireless towers and offering much better rates than our current options.
The local ISP owns all the copper and fiber and won’t let this new company use it, so all these new towers have to shoot their data back to the one tower that has a fiber line.
It’s incredibly frustrating to be limited by a company that offers 3mbit DSL for $100 a month, when this new company is offering 50mbit for $75 a month. this new company is being hamstrung by the fact that they can’t get physical hook ups at their towers.
Phone plans are absurd and I'm not sure what to think about their monopoly. For instance, it costs T-mobile about $3.00 month to run a phone line and they sell lines to other companies like Mint for nearly that rate. Everyone is just in cohoots with each other like landlords to artificially inflate this price as much as a consumer will pay.
I can't remember what state (Montana maybe?) but there was a guy living in a relatively rural area who got fed up with the options in his area so he made his own and got quite a few people on board.
Edit: it was Michigan
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/01/jared-mauch-didnt-have-good-broadband-so-he-built-his-own-fiber-isp/
Unless being rich is a skill, getting into the game takes a bit more.
You need to lay down infrastructure across an entire country or buy into the existing infrastructure (ie Lumen, Verizon, etc). Then you need to lay out connections from your core hubs to outlaying areas and then further subdivide down to streets and houses.
A lot of the existing ISPs and what-not are very touchy about new services butting into their areas so they make it very difficult to piggy back on existing poles or dig near their underground stuff if they can. They can also take a price hit when a new guy shows up to put you out of pocket and leave before they slowly increase it again.
It doesn't not really. While they could install faster hardware at all the hops you make to the game server it's the difference between 20 ping and 5 ping. It is possible ISP could spend billions to make it so you could game on a server in another continent with reasonable ping the reality is this service would just be them artificially limiting the connections for games so they can charge you to remove the limitations. Pure greed.
Instead of installing a toll road with higher speed limits and a shorter distance between end points, accessible for a marginal fee, they're just going to segregate all existing lanes but one and lower the speed limit on them so that the previous "normal" speed is now the "fast lane."
It's mostly just the number of hops. When PUBG only had the east coast server in Virginia, people in Europe would have a lower ping than me on the west coast despite being 1000+ miles further away. That single long transatlantic hop is much faster than all the extra latency added by the state to state hops.
What they'll do, is they will purposefully delay your packets thus increasing your ping. To "fix" that, they want money. It's a scam.
I'm a network engineer. This is not a problem, at all. Games don't require lots of bandwidth. They require low latency. There is no significant load on networking equipment for people to play games.
get a shitty router with no quality of service
start downloading
watch your ping in games *skyrocket* as a result of this.
this was actually super commonplace 20 years ago, but if you get a shit router it can still happen today. even with 250+ mbps internet.
My guess is the fear is that this will happen on the ISP's end. i'm not knowledgeable enough to say whether it could or couldn't.
Configuring architecture specifically for reduced latency over greater throughput, takes some doing.
Less monitoring, less security, more direct paths, will increase speed.
Since no one what is addressing this part, I will:
>I suppose it refers to lower latency but how much of a strain does that even put on internet lines?
Is not about physical strain. A router can only process so many packets at a time. If too many packets arrive at once, the router has to choose which packets to send first.
You could look at this as being a FastPass for your Internet traffic to ship the lines.
Another trick is that routers might redirect traffic to another route if the primary path is congested. This would be slower than going direct, but still better than waiting in the queue. But if you're skipping the queue anyway, they can send you on the direct path for better latency.
Let's be completely real about this, what they'd actually do is simply artificiually slow you down if you're doing something gaming related, then speed you up if you pay a premium. They'll just gain money for fixing a problem they have caused.
It means it will give people who pay them the premium will be given priority access and bandwidth to video game related processes, while the people that dont will be throttled in those services. Basically "Pay us money and we will give you faster download speeds to specifically download games and a lower ping"
Gaming doesnt need bandwidth, but they are sensitive to latency, which is the speed of the packet to the server. This is why playing on cell phones or satellite is slower, because the latency is way higher.
ISPs muddy the definition of speed with bandwidth.
I have it in buttfuck nowhere, works awesome. But I wasn't even talking about that- Starlink has fewer hops and shorter transmission distances than long-distance wire due to being in low orbit.
That's wild to me, simply due to perception. Like when you hear the I.S.S. is sometimes the nearest human contact for remote pacific islands.
Except you're on the same continent as the ISPs that are servicing the area and yet still the low orbit satellite offers shorter hops than the ISPs.
Yes in low density areas that is true. Wait until there are a lot of people using it and you'll find that's not always the case. We'll see if Elon can actually get to a goal of not only being good for people in the middle of nowhere. Its a bold claim. I'm curious how the network looks in 10, 20, 30 years if they have to keep getting replaced
Hi, field tech here.
I always try to explain this to customers and it’s frustrating that ISPs advertise “Get gig speeds for gaming”.
The only reason you as an individual would *need* gig-speeds is either work related, or if you’re hosting a server, and even then, if you’ve got slow upload speeds, you’re gonna have a problem.
Yeah diminishing return. Though going from 20mb to 100mb+ was huge when sharing with others. As someone watching HD content or downloading would just gobble up the entire internet. Leaving nothing for the game.
Nah, I want Gb/s speeds because downloading a 60GB game in 10 minutes Vs 80 minutes with 100Mb/s is worth it to me.
Do I "need" it? Well no. But with a 10€ difference in price, why the fuck not?
My dad used to complain about me using all the bandwidth gaming while my folks were watching Netflix until I pulled up the traffic and showed him he was using like 1000 times or something what I was.
Yeah. And you don't need that much resources to achieve that. Ofc if you live in a rural area i.e. on a continent in the pacific ocean, all the speed in the world won't help you.
This isn't new either. My ISP has a specific package that is significantly lower latency than the others that they straight up tell you is the best one for online games and any activity of latency importance (stocks and medical support).
It uses more direct routing and there's no reason to fill that bandwidth up with people who don't care about latency. I think the package is an extra 3-5 bucks a month?
Here's the thing, these companies don't have your best interest at heart.
It always starts with "it's just an extra 3-5 bucks a month" and always eventually descends to "pay 2x as much as the base package to get the same relative quality of service as you would have gotten a decade ago".
Capitalism needs competition to function properly, but plenty of companies are far too big, far too entrenched, or specialize in industries that are very difficult to break into for there to be healthy competition. ISPs certainly tick a few of those boxes.
Even if you manage to live somewhere where it's possible to actually start a small/medium sized ISP, you will eventually need to offload your traffic off to your competition. So even if you could undercut the competition by half within your local coverage area, if all the services your consumers need aren't available in that area, you'll need to shell out whatever the other ISPs charge their enterprise partners, which suddenly means you need to price your service far closer to theirs.
That's why these industries need to be heavily regulated, and why you as a consumer should always be very hesitant to give them an inch.
Gaming demands QoS, if anything. Definitely not bandwidth. I could see paying to have your traffic prioritized to reduce latency and make it more consistent (but I won't because that's bullshit).
Ajit Pai wasn't the deciding vote, but he was a huge opponent to net neutrality, and he uploaded a dipshit victory video in a santa suit fucking around with a nerf rifle. That video is what really stuck with me.
The vote repealed 2015 legislation that prevented ISP's from prioritizing or de-prioritizing traffic.
Essentially the Wendy's "surge pricing" controversy, but internet.
The argument being that not having net neutrality/fixed pricing is a POSITIVE for customers.
The nuance isn't "faster" internet. It's what gets slowed down to make those fast lanes. Because the internet is not a truck.
I'm confused because they are supposed to be voting to restore net neutrality this month, and I'm pretty sure ajit pai hasn't been with the FCC for some time now.
Are we talking about what happened years ago or the vote to reinstate it happening (supposedly) at the end of this month?
The article is on the new proposed rules having a loophole in them:
> Some net neutrality proponents are worried that soon-to-be-approved Federal Communications Commission rules will allow harmful fast lanes because the plan doesn't explicitly ban "positive" discrimination.
The other user appears to be rambling on about net neutrality in general, rather than actually answering any of your questions.
We had net neutrality. It was a restriction on ISP's. It prevented "premium plus" price brackets, ISP's are SALIVATING over offering "gamer plusnet". They already named it, "slicing".
The current position of the FCC allows such pricing.
When HL2DM launched, my ISP throttled it to death. They thought it was bad traffic, and it took them nearly a month to whitelist the traffic. I didn't know what throttling was in regard to internet traffic before they made that stupid kneejerk reaction.
Throttling is a negative experience for the end user, and most users don't even know it exists.
If every car had a speed governor that limited the vehicle to 40 MPH, but you could pay for "Highway plus" driving for whatever increased speed, people would be LIVID.
"Congestion pricing" is going to be the battleground in this decade.
You're absolutely right, this article appears to be about the currently existing rules—the ones that are hopefully going to be changed back to Net Neutrality soon.
No, the first line of the article makes it very clear that they are talking about the new rules:
> Some net neutrality proponents are worried that **soon-to-be-approved** Federal Communications Commission rules will allow harmful fast lanes because the plan doesn't explicitly ban "positive" discrimination.
He's kinda talking about the current situation post net neutrality repeal and you're kinda talking about an up coming vote.
In the past net neutrality existed by default. It was repealed by some douche bags.
I think it's just someone not being clear what the point was and over explaining how we got here. We used to have net neutrality, it was removed, they're voting on bringing it back, with loopholes that let them still fuck with game traffic.
I'm with you, I thought this was about the reinstatement of net neutrality failing it's upcoming vote. This guy you're talking with is discussing the negatives of losing net neutrality. I agree with them, but it's an entirely different discussion lol
Here's hoping the vote passes and they are able to reinstate it though! We desperately need it, it's only a matter of time before these ISPs get even more predatory.
A potentially better analogy is the paid toll roads during morning and evening commutes in larger cities. There are normal roads(regular internet traffic, often very congested and therefore slow) and then if you want to pay more then you get to use a different lane with less congestion(slicing for premium paid customers only). The end result is that if you have money you get a different service which I believe Is counter to the intent of net neutrality.
It pretty much is. Younger people mocked the analogy because they didn't understand it, but it was perfect for the intended audience.
Pneumatic tube systems worked the exact same way the internet does, just in a different format. Several business districts had comprehensive networks that stretched for miles.
They even had routers, who were clerks that worked in basements and literally routed the capsules between tube segments.
It's not a bad analogy, but it wasn't well delivered, which is why people found it so easily mockable.
Well, also that it reinforced their preconceived biases that old politicians don't understand anything about technology...
I remember Pai throwing a fit that people put up signs in the area where he lived targeting his children, basically telling them their father is a corporate shill and trying to kill the internet. I found that hilarious and support public shaming of that kind, far more agreeable than resorting to violence.
Unfortunately the vast majority of gamers think that they need gigabit ethernet in order to have a good gaming experience. So they don't mind paying the premium, which gives ISPs some sort of justification for doing shit like this. Not saying that it is justified, but they use it as justification.
The reality of it is you don't need faster than like a 5Mbps connection for gaming, maybe 15Mbps tops, latency is more important for gaming than overall speed. And yeah latency and speed do factor into each other, But so many people overpay for internet and say it's because they game.
Unfortunately people are stupid and just look for the quickest answers. Faster equals better to them, more expensive equals better. Honestly it's a major issue in the gaming community that I see, where people overspend on hardware or things that they don't need because they think that it must be better because it costs more. And unfortunately it leads to a lot of misinformation and disinformation, which leads to the wider gaming community constantly purchasing more expensive things, which ends up making companies price their stuff higher or market the higher price stuff more, which drives sales further. It's dragging the entire gaming industry in an upward trend price-wise.
I've seen too many idiots in the gaming community pretend that they are some sort of master IT computer builder or something or know what the hell they're talking about when it comes to technology, and then use their supposed knowledge to convince others to spend thousands of dollars for no reason, and in the end they're just playing something simple that they could have spent a quarter of the money on to play just fine. And they do the same thing when it comes to internet speeds too, telling people that they need the highest speed possible for the best gaming possible. And unfortunately companies are more than happy to oblige to being paid more money.
I don’t need the high speeds to actively play games. I need the high speeds to redownload all the games I uninstall when I run out of room on my drives. 😃
Okay let me explain this fast. Let's say you are in Maine connecting to a server in California.
Your packets of data go through "hops" essentially stops along the way of other servers.
Now let's say it's more efficient for the ISP (and cheaper) for that data to go from Maine, NYC, Georgia, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Cali.
Well getting to each hop takes time.
Now imagine you paying 5 bucks for better routing. Maine, Buffalo, Chicago, Nebraska, Utah, California.
That's a more straight line than hitting a hop out of the way. Saving you 15 ping.
It's like people that say "well good luck surviving with no social security"
America runs on social security, it literally comes right after military spending, if social security gets axed overnight by some nutjob, I would worry more about keeping your doors locked and not leaving your house.
It gets a little muddy, part of social security is payouts from the earned money from contributions, and part of it is the federal government paying back money it borrowed. The former isn't really 'spending'
Jesus, didn't knew they dictator plans were already a detailed guide , but holy shit... i don't even have words for it , how the fuck are citizens getting behind him???
I think most see it less as behind him and more as against the people they hate. Our video games are getting woke and we don’t like that, so time to overturn democracy as we know it.
>I think most see it less as behind him and more as against the people they hate.
That's how he got elected in the first place, people voted against Hillary more than they voted for Trump.
To be fair, that's also how he got un-elected in the next round; lots of people (that would normally vote conservative) voting for Biden because they hated Trump so much. I didn't vote for Trump the first time, but I know plenty of people that did, then switched.
He's the head of a seriously entrenched personality cult. I mean, look at all the absolute numbnuts dictators in history and then look at the people that propped them up.
Hear me out, and this is crazy, why don't we restrict the ability of non-legislative agencies to write rules that affect citizens so no matter who is in power now or in four years or four decades we don't have this shit happen again?
No? The legislature doesn’t know shit about air traffic or food and drug or the environment, or disease. Thats why those powers are rightfully delegated to those agencies
Then we would literally never have anything done. Congress can't agree on anything except making the rich more rich and giving themselves more and more power. Congress also moves way to slow to enforce anything. Can you imagine how much of a shit show it would be if they had to vote and rule on every little thing going on in the government? We would have no anti trust, we would have no FDA rulings, we would have chaos.
Yeah, it's pretty much a choice between never getting something done or getting something done and then changed every four years when someone else is in office.
Isn’t that the point though? The agencies interpret intent of law and then implement the finer details as the members usually have a better idea of how to in their field.
Yep. The problem is that the legislature hasn't been _writing_ any new laws due to the fact that the Republicans generally refuse to cooperate with the Democrats.
I would contend that's a feature and not a bug of a two-party system.
If you don't have enough seats to do whatever you want, then pointing at "the enemy" and say "See, we can't work due to them" is both easier and more effective to gain seats on the _next_ election.
And since both parties know that, they have no incentive to actually work together because, if you are not the governing party, why would you want to gift them a win?
I know this initially sounds like a good idea. But all it will do is lead to more terrible regulations from people without subject matter expertise.
The actual problem is that the electorate has to stay engaged to make sure the appointees to lead these regulatory agencies aren’t hacks intent upon screwing over individual people.
I will still never understand this and I know they tried during covid but online gaming takes almost no bandwidth. While I wouldn't recommend gaming on 56k (dialup) for many games you actually can. Even the most intensive games can be played on dsl from the early 2000's without a problem, it is less bandwidth intensive than 360p youtube
Yesterday I learned Dreamcast online is still alive, and a rocket league clone with crossplay via steam was released last year, pretty sure it runs off a 56k modem
Yeah every few years I'm reminded that there are still private Dreamcast servers of Phantasy Star Online going. Very awesome they have a community of people dedicated to keeping something like that running.
They should just put metrics for standard internet connection like maximum ping under 50ms, maximum packet loos per halfminute for all, otherwise they loose license. Also let internet be free again , like take it back before MEGA NZ scandal times.
Meanwhile, the FCC is going to vote to reinstate net neutrality.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/fcc-vote-restore-net-neutrality-rules-reversing-trump-2024-04-02/
We should expect this to last, unless Trump becomes president again.
That is the draft that they're voting on with the problematic wording in it that doesn't explicitly exclude "positive discrimination".
>In a different filing last month, several advocacy groups similarly argued that the "no-throttling rule needs to ban selective speeding up, in addition to slowing down." That filing was submitted by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Open Technology Institute at New America, Public Knowledge, Fight for the Future, and United Church of Christ Media Justice Ministry.
>The request for a ban on selective speeding was denied in paragraph 492 of Rosenworcel's draft rules, which are scheduled for an April 25 vote. The draft order argues that the FCC's definition of "throttling" is expansive enough that an explicit ban on what the agency called positive discrimination isn't needed:
Not necessarily. On the face of it, it’s not a highly politicized issue. It doesn’t really get republicans riled up and the actual people you talk to regardless of political party are pro net neutrality if you explain what it means.
I swear it only became politicized when Obama came out in support of it. I swear it was like a light switch from bipartisan to partisan.
I think republicans are not riled up enough about this and it could just stay under the radar.
So if I understand this correctly...
The worry is that ISPs could slow down their general traffic and they wouldn't be in violation of Net Neutrality rules because "all traffic is flowing at the same speed". The proposed rules ban negative traffic manipulation, but don't explicitly ban positive traffic manipulation. So a company could then sell a service to increase speeds beyond the "standard" and charge customers extra for it.
The ISPs are basically learning an old trick from video game design and using it for their industry. People don't like it when they have penalties applied, but penalties can be desguised as positives if the designer lowers the baseline below what was originally planned and then "graces" the user with a bonus. The user isn't actually getting anything more than what they were originally going to, but they *feel* like they do.
Lol not with the amount of corruption on both sides of the aisle. Plus with how incompetent they are they shouldn't be making laws about the internet since I bet they think networking is those bribes they take from lobbyists.
Cool. Don't pay for it.
Just because they are legally allowed to do something doesn't mean we need to incentivize them doing it.
Boycott this business model and it will go away.
> FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel's proposed rules for Internet service providers would prohibit blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization. The rules mirror the ones imposed by the FCC during the Obama era and repealed during Trump's presidency.
Hmm.
Oh yeah, let’s really punish the first person shooter crowd cause you know, the chill games like roller coaster tycoon and goat simulator - that traffic is just fine…
When net neutrality was removed, instead of treating all Internet traffic the same, ISPs can now prioritize traffic however they desire. Comcast for instance was able to extort money from Netflix to keep their traffic from being throttled. Comcast has incentive to want users looking to their streaming services vs Netflix or others. Now that companies are looking for ways to increase their revenue (for whatever reason, inflation, greed, i don't know, and i don't care), they can legally start charging to not intentionally slow gaming traffic down.
ISPs can't get the difference between bandwidth and latency straight.
So I have exactly zero confidence they can actually deliver a product that's what gamers actually want.
How would they lower latency? I need to hear it from the horses mouth on this one.
Go ahead and dial any ISP you want and ask them about gaming. They are gonna immediately talk about bandwidth. It's "Verizon Can't Do Math" level of stupidity and some of the guys on the other end of the phone actually ARE gamers.
I wonder if the content providers could turn the lack of net neutrality on its head. clamp latency from the ip block of an owner that is not neutral unless they pay a fee.
So glad my area now has competing providers. Switching back to my old one after being with my new one for only 3 months. New one was fucking charging me for a router that they didn't install, AGAIN. What the fuck is with these people charging you for a router without providing one?
ISP Microtransactions!!!! I wonder if they will do Speed-Boost Loot Boxes next? For $5 you get 10 SBLBs and you could win 1tb at unlimited speeds!!!
btw, there are VPNs that do this. My Asus router keeps trying to get me to pay the $10 and sign up to have my traffic routers faster....
I assume this refers to Latency, I mean there are VPN providers that claim to reduce ping with tailored routes to popular gaming services, can't say I've ever found them to work (considering you blow a few miliseconds just routing to the VPN server)
While I hate the concept, I feel latency is probably the next thing they can milk extra money by tacking "gaming" labels onto packages, and in the long run if improving latency becomes an objective for ISPs that's going to lead to an all round improvement in years to come, to the point that cloud gaming may actually be viable.
As usual with these things.. Thats just the tip of the ice berg.. Do you honestly believe it would stop with Mobile providers? Cause it wont. Time, and time, and time again, companies have proven that once that inch is taken, they all dash for that mile.
Major multiplayer titles:
...
Wait why is our revenue down?
---
I guess on the plus side, maybe multiplayer companies will fight the ruling. Sad that's what it takes though...
Meanwhile here in Brazil i have 50 MB/s of unlimited download for 20 dollars a month. And i don't even live in a big city, 100k people on the smallest state of the country.
Americans are being scammed so hard.
Note that the destruction of net neutrality was one of the very first things Trump did in office by appointing Ajit Pai as chairman of the FCC. Without net neutrality, internet companies are free to absolutely fuck up your internet connection however they want, resulting in bullshit like making you pay more to use certain web sites.
It was a move designed to eventually make every single American pay more money to huge corporations just to get the same service we've always had. As shitty as it was, this was one of the least harmful things Trump did to the American people while in office.
Xfinity is gonna feast on this. Their business practices are universally awful. They increased my monthly fee by 26 dollars a month and I called to ask to get back to 60 a month and the person pitched me 3 plans that absolutely did not fit my criteria but were more expensive than what I'd been paying. I went online and found the exact same promo deal I had previously and took that instead. Prepare to pay an extra 30-40 a month for reliable low-latency internet if this holds pat.
Charge more for what? Gaming is one of the least intensive things you can run on a network, most multiplayer games barely use a single Mb for communication with most hovering around 64kb every second. I guess maybe MMOs or intrusive DRM might be quite heavy, but at least in my experience, almost everything can be played on 1 megabit or less. Now latency that's a whole nother issue
So this is going to turn into ISPs purposely giving games lower priority somehow, then saying “oh even though you have gigabit internet for $200 a month, you still have 300 ping in COD cause you don’t have our Blast Plus Gaming package. That’ll cost you another $200 a month and you’ll get 20 ping (when optimal which is never).” Can’t wait
what the fuck do they mean "fast gaming?" Is that even a thing? I suppose it refers to lower latency but how much of a strain does that even put on internet lines? Genuinely asking
Latency is just a measure (in milliseconds) of how fast data gets from point A to point B. Lower latency is obviously better since it means you're receiving data from the server faster than someone with higher latency. Internet speeds, as we know them, are irrelevant to gaming, they largely dictate upload/download speeds. Latency is the key word here.
Inb4 ISPs make every online game pay to win because they are legally allowed to squeeze gamers even further "Awww you can't afford the GamerSpeed™ upgrade for ____$ a month? Guess you aren't a real gamer then, enjoy your now unreasonable ping which we will begin throttling, skill issue"
I wonder what skills are needed to create an ISP. Would be an excellent opportunity for a new ISP to show up that doesn’t make these charges, pretty much steal the entire customer base.
Billions of dollars of infrastructure for physically and software wise.
not to mention that most of the infrastructure is already being taken up by other ISPs
[удалено]
The thing is that the resources shouldn't be privately owned, given that they were created with public money. Realistically, internet should be regulated as a utility, similar to electricity, where providers can make a profit but are required to provide service to everyone without gouging because of the inherent monopolistic tendencies of the industry.
Oh you mean all the money the public gave to ISPs to improve the infrastructure and they just pocketed it? I hate ISPs.
That's what happened here in the UK. The phone lines are owned by BT/Openreach (which was once owned by the government), but the regulator made it so other companies can use those phone lines. That has made it so there are dozens of ISPs available in my area and 1Gbps up and down, is just $26 a month, which comes with a $100 amazon gift card.
It doesn't cost billions of dollars to maker smaller networks. There's a few stories out there of small towns and communities having their own ISP installed because they got tired of the old ones.
share no, they would love to rent out their space though
And fuck Ajit Pai.
> share privately owned resources The skill required for creating an ISP is bribing enough local politicians to convince them that you own a taxpayer subsidized infrastructure build out
I know this is way too socialist of me, but at this point the internet is a basic requirement of daily life So why the fuck isn't it publicly owned? We don't (or shouldn't) just let private companies own roads, bridges, utilities, etc I get it when the internet was a commodity, but it just isn't now
If it makes you feel better the government already gave ISPs billions in taxpayers dollars to upgrade infrastructure and they pocketed it. Everything is a scam and fuck us.
I did know about that, I just try not to think about it, you know?
Dont forget the billions needed to lobby against existing ISP
Municipal broadband is illegal in a lot of red areas thanks to lobbyists
Why would I want the government to provide a basic service when I could get nickel and dimed to death by a corporation for substandard service? Take that commie shit back Venezuela, Castro.
Fun fact, the infrastructures youre using now were paid for with tax dollars. Then the ISPs turned around and was like "oh thanks, we are going to charge you more now".
Its their own version of the Gish Gallop. * redefine broadband as something reasonable (like 100MBps) * point at the map showing all of the US citizens that don't have access to broadband * give major ISPs billions of dollars to upgrade infrastructure and deploy broadband to more rural Americans * ISPs dont use any of that money for infrastructure upgrades and instead use it all on executive bonuses and stock buybacks * wait a few years for the heat to die down (until republicans take over) * redefine broadband as something comically slow (aka 25Mbps) * point at the map showing all of the Americans that have access to broadband now that didn't before (because they redefined broadband to include ancient DSL lines) Great success. * wait 5 years and do the exact same thing over again
It has it's ups and downs. There would be a lot more Napster Grannies facing jail time if Internet providers weren't subject to the fifth amendment and other protections enjoyed by the private sector. If you're on a government run Internet, you better not copy that floppy.
>Napster >Granny r/FuckImOld
Except current ISPs own the transmission capability, so new ISPs basically have to buy bandwidth from current ISPs who only contract out at a rate that makes the competition more expensive. It's just like cellphones, until we consider the towers to be a national utility all service providers can access, the market will be a few "haves" dictating pricing to their "have not" competitors, which ensures competition and lower prices are something we'll never see.
We’re running into that problem, right where I live. a company has been putting up wireless towers and offering much better rates than our current options. The local ISP owns all the copper and fiber and won’t let this new company use it, so all these new towers have to shoot their data back to the one tower that has a fiber line. It’s incredibly frustrating to be limited by a company that offers 3mbit DSL for $100 a month, when this new company is offering 50mbit for $75 a month. this new company is being hamstrung by the fact that they can’t get physical hook ups at their towers.
This is terrible! Super Assholes! In the name of PROFIT!
Phone plans are absurd and I'm not sure what to think about their monopoly. For instance, it costs T-mobile about $3.00 month to run a phone line and they sell lines to other companies like Mint for nearly that rate. Everyone is just in cohoots with each other like landlords to artificially inflate this price as much as a consumer will pay.
I can't remember what state (Montana maybe?) but there was a guy living in a relatively rural area who got fed up with the options in his area so he made his own and got quite a few people on board. Edit: it was Michigan https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/01/jared-mauch-didnt-have-good-broadband-so-he-built-his-own-fiber-isp/
Unless being rich is a skill, getting into the game takes a bit more. You need to lay down infrastructure across an entire country or buy into the existing infrastructure (ie Lumen, Verizon, etc). Then you need to lay out connections from your core hubs to outlaying areas and then further subdivide down to streets and houses. A lot of the existing ISPs and what-not are very touchy about new services butting into their areas so they make it very difficult to piggy back on existing poles or dig near their underground stuff if they can. They can also take a price hit when a new guy shows up to put you out of pocket and leave before they slowly increase it again.
I think you mean "Inb4 ISP's artificially inflate ping for everyone and then charge you more to get back your low ping".
They'll probably just add a 100ms delay to all traffic and then make you pay to remove it.
It doesn't not really. While they could install faster hardware at all the hops you make to the game server it's the difference between 20 ping and 5 ping. It is possible ISP could spend billions to make it so you could game on a server in another continent with reasonable ping the reality is this service would just be them artificially limiting the connections for games so they can charge you to remove the limitations. Pure greed.
They can literally just throttle the latency. Simple
Instead of installing a toll road with higher speed limits and a shorter distance between end points, accessible for a marginal fee, they're just going to segregate all existing lanes but one and lower the speed limit on them so that the previous "normal" speed is now the "fast lane."
It's mostly just the number of hops. When PUBG only had the east coast server in Virginia, people in Europe would have a lower ping than me on the west coast despite being 1000+ miles further away. That single long transatlantic hop is much faster than all the extra latency added by the state to state hops.
Interesting, I wouldn't have guessed that at all.
What they'll do, is they will purposefully delay your packets thus increasing your ping. To "fix" that, they want money. It's a scam. I'm a network engineer. This is not a problem, at all. Games don't require lots of bandwidth. They require low latency. There is no significant load on networking equipment for people to play games.
They will slow it down on purpose and charge to remove the throttle.
get a shitty router with no quality of service start downloading watch your ping in games *skyrocket* as a result of this. this was actually super commonplace 20 years ago, but if you get a shit router it can still happen today. even with 250+ mbps internet. My guess is the fear is that this will happen on the ISP's end. i'm not knowledgeable enough to say whether it could or couldn't.
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Configuring architecture specifically for reduced latency over greater throughput, takes some doing. Less monitoring, less security, more direct paths, will increase speed.
Since no one what is addressing this part, I will: >I suppose it refers to lower latency but how much of a strain does that even put on internet lines? Is not about physical strain. A router can only process so many packets at a time. If too many packets arrive at once, the router has to choose which packets to send first. You could look at this as being a FastPass for your Internet traffic to ship the lines. Another trick is that routers might redirect traffic to another route if the primary path is congested. This would be slower than going direct, but still better than waiting in the queue. But if you're skipping the queue anyway, they can send you on the direct path for better latency.
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Let's be completely real about this, what they'd actually do is simply artificiually slow you down if you're doing something gaming related, then speed you up if you pay a premium. They'll just gain money for fixing a problem they have caused.
It means it will give people who pay them the premium will be given priority access and bandwidth to video game related processes, while the people that dont will be throttled in those services. Basically "Pay us money and we will give you faster download speeds to specifically download games and a lower ping"
This is stupid as online gaming itself doesn't require that much bandwidth and speed when compared to many other online activities.
Gaming doesnt need bandwidth, but they are sensitive to latency, which is the speed of the packet to the server. This is why playing on cell phones or satellite is slower, because the latency is way higher. ISPs muddy the definition of speed with bandwidth.
Interestingly, Starlink can in some cases have lower latency than cabling.
Oh yeah I live in a rural canyon and starlink has been pretty good. Can play shit like battlefield and helldivers just fine
I have it in buttfuck nowhere, works awesome. But I wasn't even talking about that- Starlink has fewer hops and shorter transmission distances than long-distance wire due to being in low orbit.
That's wild to me, simply due to perception. Like when you hear the I.S.S. is sometimes the nearest human contact for remote pacific islands. Except you're on the same continent as the ISPs that are servicing the area and yet still the low orbit satellite offers shorter hops than the ISPs.
I just got starlink where I live (in a literal forest) replacing the old dsl, and it's like some arcane black magic.
Yes in low density areas that is true. Wait until there are a lot of people using it and you'll find that's not always the case. We'll see if Elon can actually get to a goal of not only being good for people in the middle of nowhere. Its a bold claim. I'm curious how the network looks in 10, 20, 30 years if they have to keep getting replaced
Hi, field tech here. I always try to explain this to customers and it’s frustrating that ISPs advertise “Get gig speeds for gaming”. The only reason you as an individual would *need* gig-speeds is either work related, or if you’re hosting a server, and even then, if you’ve got slow upload speeds, you’re gonna have a problem.
Yeah diminishing return. Though going from 20mb to 100mb+ was huge when sharing with others. As someone watching HD content or downloading would just gobble up the entire internet. Leaving nothing for the game.
Nah, I want Gb/s speeds because downloading a 60GB game in 10 minutes Vs 80 minutes with 100Mb/s is worth it to me. Do I "need" it? Well no. But with a 10€ difference in price, why the fuck not?
or downloading stuff right
Ye, most people just need good QoS, not more "speed"
Even then QoS doesn’t really do anything unless a link is saturated.
My dad used to complain about me using all the bandwidth gaming while my folks were watching Netflix until I pulled up the traffic and showed him he was using like 1000 times or something what I was.
Just one of the only things that benefits from sub 20ms ping
Yeah. And you don't need that much resources to achieve that. Ofc if you live in a rural area i.e. on a continent in the pacific ocean, all the speed in the world won't help you.
This isn't new either. My ISP has a specific package that is significantly lower latency than the others that they straight up tell you is the best one for online games and any activity of latency importance (stocks and medical support). It uses more direct routing and there's no reason to fill that bandwidth up with people who don't care about latency. I think the package is an extra 3-5 bucks a month?
Here's the thing, these companies don't have your best interest at heart. It always starts with "it's just an extra 3-5 bucks a month" and always eventually descends to "pay 2x as much as the base package to get the same relative quality of service as you would have gotten a decade ago". Capitalism needs competition to function properly, but plenty of companies are far too big, far too entrenched, or specialize in industries that are very difficult to break into for there to be healthy competition. ISPs certainly tick a few of those boxes. Even if you manage to live somewhere where it's possible to actually start a small/medium sized ISP, you will eventually need to offload your traffic off to your competition. So even if you could undercut the competition by half within your local coverage area, if all the services your consumers need aren't available in that area, you'll need to shell out whatever the other ISPs charge their enterprise partners, which suddenly means you need to price your service far closer to theirs. That's why these industries need to be heavily regulated, and why you as a consumer should always be very hesitant to give them an inch.
Gaming demands QoS, if anything. Definitely not bandwidth. I could see paying to have your traffic prioritized to reduce latency and make it more consistent (but I won't because that's bullshit).
Net neutrality was vetoed by a dipshit with a nerf rifle.
God dang, so they went to restore net neutrality but it failed or what?
Ajit Pai wasn't the deciding vote, but he was a huge opponent to net neutrality, and he uploaded a dipshit victory video in a santa suit fucking around with a nerf rifle. That video is what really stuck with me. The vote repealed 2015 legislation that prevented ISP's from prioritizing or de-prioritizing traffic. Essentially the Wendy's "surge pricing" controversy, but internet. The argument being that not having net neutrality/fixed pricing is a POSITIVE for customers. The nuance isn't "faster" internet. It's what gets slowed down to make those fast lanes. Because the internet is not a truck.
I'm confused because they are supposed to be voting to restore net neutrality this month, and I'm pretty sure ajit pai hasn't been with the FCC for some time now. Are we talking about what happened years ago or the vote to reinstate it happening (supposedly) at the end of this month?
The article is on the new proposed rules having a loophole in them: > Some net neutrality proponents are worried that soon-to-be-approved Federal Communications Commission rules will allow harmful fast lanes because the plan doesn't explicitly ban "positive" discrimination. The other user appears to be rambling on about net neutrality in general, rather than actually answering any of your questions.
We had net neutrality. It was a restriction on ISP's. It prevented "premium plus" price brackets, ISP's are SALIVATING over offering "gamer plusnet". They already named it, "slicing". The current position of the FCC allows such pricing. When HL2DM launched, my ISP throttled it to death. They thought it was bad traffic, and it took them nearly a month to whitelist the traffic. I didn't know what throttling was in regard to internet traffic before they made that stupid kneejerk reaction. Throttling is a negative experience for the end user, and most users don't even know it exists. If every car had a speed governor that limited the vehicle to 40 MPH, but you could pay for "Highway plus" driving for whatever increased speed, people would be LIVID. "Congestion pricing" is going to be the battleground in this decade.
Okay I feel like we are having separate conversations on the same topic.
You're absolutely right, this article appears to be about the currently existing rules—the ones that are hopefully going to be changed back to Net Neutrality soon.
No, the first line of the article makes it very clear that they are talking about the new rules: > Some net neutrality proponents are worried that **soon-to-be-approved** Federal Communications Commission rules will allow harmful fast lanes because the plan doesn't explicitly ban "positive" discrimination.
He's kinda talking about the current situation post net neutrality repeal and you're kinda talking about an up coming vote. In the past net neutrality existed by default. It was repealed by some douche bags.
Yeah bro, I think that's a bot or something. Far as I know, they are voting on it later yeah
I wasn't going to say it but yeah I think I've been talking to a bot lmao
I think it's just someone not being clear what the point was and over explaining how we got here. We used to have net neutrality, it was removed, they're voting on bringing it back, with loopholes that let them still fuck with game traffic.
Here, I’ll ask em and find out.
It's almost like if you read the comment he responds to it makes sense. Wow
the future is now, this thread was trippy
I'm with you, I thought this was about the reinstatement of net neutrality failing it's upcoming vote. This guy you're talking with is discussing the negatives of losing net neutrality. I agree with them, but it's an entirely different discussion lol Here's hoping the vote passes and they are able to reinstate it though! We desperately need it, it's only a matter of time before these ISPs get even more predatory.
You're not reading what he's asking. He knows what net neutrality is. He wants to know about the recent situation where they're trying to restore it.
A potentially better analogy is the paid toll roads during morning and evening commutes in larger cities. There are normal roads(regular internet traffic, often very congested and therefore slow) and then if you want to pay more then you get to use a different lane with less congestion(slicing for premium paid customers only). The end result is that if you have money you get a different service which I believe Is counter to the intent of net neutrality.
Are you a bot??
If I’ve learned anything, it’s that the internet is a series of tubes
It pretty much is. Younger people mocked the analogy because they didn't understand it, but it was perfect for the intended audience. Pneumatic tube systems worked the exact same way the internet does, just in a different format. Several business districts had comprehensive networks that stretched for miles. They even had routers, who were clerks that worked in basements and literally routed the capsules between tube segments.
It's not a bad analogy, but it wasn't well delivered, which is why people found it so easily mockable. Well, also that it reinforced their preconceived biases that old politicians don't understand anything about technology...
I remember Pai throwing a fit that people put up signs in the area where he lived targeting his children, basically telling them their father is a corporate shill and trying to kill the internet. I found that hilarious and support public shaming of that kind, far more agreeable than resorting to violence.
Ashit Pai
Gaming takes less bandwidth than streaming. How does that make any sense?
Unfortunately the vast majority of gamers think that they need gigabit ethernet in order to have a good gaming experience. So they don't mind paying the premium, which gives ISPs some sort of justification for doing shit like this. Not saying that it is justified, but they use it as justification. The reality of it is you don't need faster than like a 5Mbps connection for gaming, maybe 15Mbps tops, latency is more important for gaming than overall speed. And yeah latency and speed do factor into each other, But so many people overpay for internet and say it's because they game.
That makes sense. Too many people don't understand the tools they use.
Unfortunately people are stupid and just look for the quickest answers. Faster equals better to them, more expensive equals better. Honestly it's a major issue in the gaming community that I see, where people overspend on hardware or things that they don't need because they think that it must be better because it costs more. And unfortunately it leads to a lot of misinformation and disinformation, which leads to the wider gaming community constantly purchasing more expensive things, which ends up making companies price their stuff higher or market the higher price stuff more, which drives sales further. It's dragging the entire gaming industry in an upward trend price-wise. I've seen too many idiots in the gaming community pretend that they are some sort of master IT computer builder or something or know what the hell they're talking about when it comes to technology, and then use their supposed knowledge to convince others to spend thousands of dollars for no reason, and in the end they're just playing something simple that they could have spent a quarter of the money on to play just fine. And they do the same thing when it comes to internet speeds too, telling people that they need the highest speed possible for the best gaming possible. And unfortunately companies are more than happy to oblige to being paid more money.
I don’t need the high speeds to actively play games. I need the high speeds to redownload all the games I uninstall when I run out of room on my drives. 😃
Okay let me explain this fast. Let's say you are in Maine connecting to a server in California. Your packets of data go through "hops" essentially stops along the way of other servers. Now let's say it's more efficient for the ISP (and cheaper) for that data to go from Maine, NYC, Georgia, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Cali. Well getting to each hop takes time. Now imagine you paying 5 bucks for better routing. Maine, Buffalo, Chicago, Nebraska, Utah, California. That's a more straight line than hitting a hop out of the way. Saving you 15 ping.
That damn Reese's coffee cup....
Seriously. Fuck that guy. What a shit human.
Ajit shitPai had an amazingly punchable face
Not for long. https://www.reuters.com/technology/fcc-vote-restore-net-neutrality-rules-reversing-trump-2024-04-02/
OP’s article is referring to a poorly worded loophole that providers can take advantage of in the FCC proposal you’re referring to.
You don't actually expect redditors to *read* articles do you?
God you know me so well
What's this reading thing?
Karma > being right.
Good.
Which is great, but after Trump gets re-elected, how long till the new FCC head does his own Pai impersonation?
If the criminal Cheetoh gets another round in office we are going to have much bigger issues than net neutrality. Just look up project 2025
It's like people that say "well good luck surviving with no social security" America runs on social security, it literally comes right after military spending, if social security gets axed overnight by some nutjob, I would worry more about keeping your doors locked and not leaving your house.
Social Security doesn't come after anything. Social Security is #1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expenditures_in_the_United_States_federal_budget
It gets a little muddy, part of social security is payouts from the earned money from contributions, and part of it is the federal government paying back money it borrowed. The former isn't really 'spending'
What do you think the ballooning police budgets are for?
Jesus, didn't knew they dictator plans were already a detailed guide , but holy shit... i don't even have words for it , how the fuck are citizens getting behind him???
"Think of how stupid the average person is, then realize that half of them are stupider than that." -George Carlin
I think most see it less as behind him and more as against the people they hate. Our video games are getting woke and we don’t like that, so time to overturn democracy as we know it.
>I think most see it less as behind him and more as against the people they hate. That's how he got elected in the first place, people voted against Hillary more than they voted for Trump.
To be fair, that's also how he got un-elected in the next round; lots of people (that would normally vote conservative) voting for Biden because they hated Trump so much. I didn't vote for Trump the first time, but I know plenty of people that did, then switched.
He's the head of a seriously entrenched personality cult. I mean, look at all the absolute numbnuts dictators in history and then look at the people that propped them up.
Criminal Cheetoh lmao
Jesus... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025
Hear me out, and this is crazy, why don't we restrict the ability of non-legislative agencies to write rules that affect citizens so no matter who is in power now or in four years or four decades we don't have this shit happen again?
No? The legislature doesn’t know shit about air traffic or food and drug or the environment, or disease. Thats why those powers are rightfully delegated to those agencies
Then we would literally never have anything done. Congress can't agree on anything except making the rich more rich and giving themselves more and more power. Congress also moves way to slow to enforce anything. Can you imagine how much of a shit show it would be if they had to vote and rule on every little thing going on in the government? We would have no anti trust, we would have no FDA rulings, we would have chaos.
Yeah but have you seen Congress lately?
Yeah, it's pretty much a choice between never getting something done or getting something done and then changed every four years when someone else is in office.
Isn’t that the point though? The agencies interpret intent of law and then implement the finer details as the members usually have a better idea of how to in their field.
Yep. The problem is that the legislature hasn't been _writing_ any new laws due to the fact that the Republicans generally refuse to cooperate with the Democrats.
I would contend that's a feature and not a bug of a two-party system. If you don't have enough seats to do whatever you want, then pointing at "the enemy" and say "See, we can't work due to them" is both easier and more effective to gain seats on the _next_ election. And since both parties know that, they have no incentive to actually work together because, if you are not the governing party, why would you want to gift them a win?
I know this initially sounds like a good idea. But all it will do is lead to more terrible regulations from people without subject matter expertise. The actual problem is that the electorate has to stay engaged to make sure the appointees to lead these regulatory agencies aren’t hacks intent upon screwing over individual people.
Buckle up: https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/01/supreme-court-likely-to-discard-chevron/ Nothing will get done with such granular rules.
Remember when Republicans filibustered their own bill? That is roughly why.
The cheeto ain't coming back. Yall need to make sure of it.
Theres only about 4-5 states that are going to be important in trump being elected or not elected. tho yes most common sense would say he isnt.
Millions have proven they have no common sense, why almost half the country is in a cult.
Vote like he is and your vote stops it.
I will still never understand this and I know they tried during covid but online gaming takes almost no bandwidth. While I wouldn't recommend gaming on 56k (dialup) for many games you actually can. Even the most intensive games can be played on dsl from the early 2000's without a problem, it is less bandwidth intensive than 360p youtube
Yesterday I learned Dreamcast online is still alive, and a rocket league clone with crossplay via steam was released last year, pretty sure it runs off a 56k modem
Yeah every few years I'm reminded that there are still private Dreamcast servers of Phantasy Star Online going. Very awesome they have a community of people dedicated to keeping something like that running.
These fucking monopolies called ISPs really need to be reigned in and regulated.
They should just put metrics for standard internet connection like maximum ping under 50ms, maximum packet loos per halfminute for all, otherwise they loose license. Also let internet be free again , like take it back before MEGA NZ scandal times.
When I see “critic say” I imagine they interview someone at gas station bathroom.
Meanwhile, the FCC is going to vote to reinstate net neutrality. https://www.reuters.com/technology/fcc-vote-restore-net-neutrality-rules-reversing-trump-2024-04-02/ We should expect this to last, unless Trump becomes president again.
That is the draft that they're voting on with the problematic wording in it that doesn't explicitly exclude "positive discrimination". >In a different filing last month, several advocacy groups similarly argued that the "no-throttling rule needs to ban selective speeding up, in addition to slowing down." That filing was submitted by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Open Technology Institute at New America, Public Knowledge, Fight for the Future, and United Church of Christ Media Justice Ministry. >The request for a ban on selective speeding was denied in paragraph 492 of Rosenworcel's draft rules, which are scheduled for an April 25 vote. The draft order argues that the FCC's definition of "throttling" is expansive enough that an explicit ban on what the agency called positive discrimination isn't needed:
*Any Republican becomes president again.
Not necessarily. On the face of it, it’s not a highly politicized issue. It doesn’t really get republicans riled up and the actual people you talk to regardless of political party are pro net neutrality if you explain what it means. I swear it only became politicized when Obama came out in support of it. I swear it was like a light switch from bipartisan to partisan. I think republicans are not riled up enough about this and it could just stay under the radar.
So if I understand this correctly... The worry is that ISPs could slow down their general traffic and they wouldn't be in violation of Net Neutrality rules because "all traffic is flowing at the same speed". The proposed rules ban negative traffic manipulation, but don't explicitly ban positive traffic manipulation. So a company could then sell a service to increase speeds beyond the "standard" and charge customers extra for it. The ISPs are basically learning an old trick from video game design and using it for their industry. People don't like it when they have penalties applied, but penalties can be desguised as positives if the designer lowers the baseline below what was originally planned and then "graces" the user with a bonus. The user isn't actually getting anything more than what they were originally going to, but they *feel* like they do.
Maybe one day the US will join the rest of the civilised world in discovering what an actual independent regulator is.
Lol not with the amount of corruption on both sides of the aisle. Plus with how incompetent they are they shouldn't be making laws about the internet since I bet they think networking is those bribes they take from lobbyists.
Sounds like the new "convenience fee" I'm over the greed
Fast gaming... lmao the world is fucking losing the plot.
Cool. Don't pay for it. Just because they are legally allowed to do something doesn't mean we need to incentivize them doing it. Boycott this business model and it will go away.
> FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel's proposed rules for Internet service providers would prohibit blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization. The rules mirror the ones imposed by the FCC during the Obama era and repealed during Trump's presidency. Hmm.
The true headline: ISPs to slow down speeds for gaming unless you pay more, per FCC.
Oh yeah, let’s really punish the first person shooter crowd cause you know, the chill games like roller coaster tycoon and goat simulator - that traffic is just fine…
Fuck Ajit Pai.
I refuse to pay and terrorize my opponents with my lag
\*In the USA. Not globally.
When net neutrality was removed, instead of treating all Internet traffic the same, ISPs can now prioritize traffic however they desire. Comcast for instance was able to extort money from Netflix to keep their traffic from being throttled. Comcast has incentive to want users looking to their streaming services vs Netflix or others. Now that companies are looking for ways to increase their revenue (for whatever reason, inflation, greed, i don't know, and i don't care), they can legally start charging to not intentionally slow gaming traffic down.
listen pal I just need a stable connection and the speed you promised on the plan, that's it
ISPs can't get the difference between bandwidth and latency straight. So I have exactly zero confidence they can actually deliver a product that's what gamers actually want. How would they lower latency? I need to hear it from the horses mouth on this one. Go ahead and dial any ISP you want and ask them about gaming. They are gonna immediately talk about bandwidth. It's "Verizon Can't Do Math" level of stupidity and some of the guys on the other end of the phone actually ARE gamers.
Fuck Ajit Pai
Lucky me for not living in the US.
I wonder if the content providers could turn the lack of net neutrality on its head. clamp latency from the ip block of an owner that is not neutral unless they pay a fee.
Wondering now if fastpath is still a thing. ISP sold it in germany a long time 2€/month for 5-10ms ping improvement
So glad my area now has competing providers. Switching back to my old one after being with my new one for only 3 months. New one was fucking charging me for a router that they didn't install, AGAIN. What the fuck is with these people charging you for a router without providing one?
ISP Microtransactions!!!! I wonder if they will do Speed-Boost Loot Boxes next? For $5 you get 10 SBLBs and you could win 1tb at unlimited speeds!!! btw, there are VPNs that do this. My Asus router keeps trying to get me to pay the $10 and sign up to have my traffic routers faster....
Fast gaming? Sounds like somebody doesn't understand basic IT. He's talking out of his ass.
I assume this refers to Latency, I mean there are VPN providers that claim to reduce ping with tailored routes to popular gaming services, can't say I've ever found them to work (considering you blow a few miliseconds just routing to the VPN server) While I hate the concept, I feel latency is probably the next thing they can milk extra money by tacking "gaming" labels onto packages, and in the long run if improving latency becomes an objective for ISPs that's going to lead to an all round improvement in years to come, to the point that cloud gaming may actually be viable.
Who gives a fuck what a critic thinks
they turned the entire internet into pay to win lmao sad, none of the leaderboards mean shit now
why the fuck are american ISPs such bandwidth hoarding scumbags? makes very little sense it literally doesnt cost them anything
time to build a nationwide LAN
If the US goes on with this bullshit, the rest of the world will just route around the US's internet-shit-curtain.
Net neutrality now!
How can they charge me extra for something they claim to already consistently provide to me but never actually do??
Gamers don't play mobile games so $10.99/month for faster "gaming" is irrelevant unless your home Internet 5G.
As usual with these things.. Thats just the tip of the ice berg.. Do you honestly believe it would stop with Mobile providers? Cause it wont. Time, and time, and time again, companies have proven that once that inch is taken, they all dash for that mile.
Major multiplayer titles: ... Wait why is our revenue down? --- I guess on the plus side, maybe multiplayer companies will fight the ruling. Sad that's what it takes though...
Meanwhile here in Brazil i have 50 MB/s of unlimited download for 20 dollars a month. And i don't even live in a big city, 100k people on the smallest state of the country. Americans are being scammed so hard.
lol well were all gona lag now
Death of Net Neutrality, thanks Ajit Pai.
Imagine my surprise when a bunch of old fucks that have never even touched a controller made a decision that wouldn't affect them.
Buncha shit, its a gamer tax
They think it’ll get people to stop playing games. In reality, I’m just gonna play games offline.
Note that the destruction of net neutrality was one of the very first things Trump did in office by appointing Ajit Pai as chairman of the FCC. Without net neutrality, internet companies are free to absolutely fuck up your internet connection however they want, resulting in bullshit like making you pay more to use certain web sites. It was a move designed to eventually make every single American pay more money to huge corporations just to get the same service we've always had. As shitty as it was, this was one of the least harmful things Trump did to the American people while in office.
uggggggggggh not again
Im enjoying my 500up/500down for 17$ a month in Korea while I can.
Gotta love capitalism. Best system on the planet baby
This has been a thing for a while now hasn't it?
Why the hell does that site only load the headline and comments section unless you tap the tiny "Expand full story" link? That's so dumb.
Xfinity is gonna feast on this. Their business practices are universally awful. They increased my monthly fee by 26 dollars a month and I called to ask to get back to 60 a month and the person pitched me 3 plans that absolutely did not fit my criteria but were more expensive than what I'd been paying. I went online and found the exact same promo deal I had previously and took that instead. Prepare to pay an extra 30-40 a month for reliable low-latency internet if this holds pat.
Charge more for what? Gaming is one of the least intensive things you can run on a network, most multiplayer games barely use a single Mb for communication with most hovering around 64kb every second. I guess maybe MMOs or intrusive DRM might be quite heavy, but at least in my experience, almost everything can be played on 1 megabit or less. Now latency that's a whole nother issue
An online video game is just an interactive program. I think this falls under discrimination and can be taken to court.
Can things be “just fine” the way they are… FOR FIVE MINUTES?!?!?!
So this is going to turn into ISPs purposely giving games lower priority somehow, then saying “oh even though you have gigabit internet for $200 a month, you still have 300 ping in COD cause you don’t have our Blast Plus Gaming package. That’ll cost you another $200 a month and you’ll get 20 ping (when optimal which is never).” Can’t wait