[NNagain] On "Throttling" behaviors

[David Lang]

On Thu, 5 Oct 2023, Sebastian Moeller via Nnagain wrote:

> I started composing a long reply to a previous post, but realized that due a philosophical difference that was not going in a productive direction, so instead, let's discuss our preconceptions first, as these clearly have bearing on our positions in the NN discussion? Or not, if you prefer not to go down this rabbit hole that is also fine ;)
>
>
>> On Oct 4, 2023, at 17:53, Colin Higbie <colin at higbie.name> wrote:
>> 
>> I suspect we are all after similar long-term goals – open access to as many people as possible with performance metrics that users appreciate (as opposed to raw bandwidth marketing claims that can mask buffer bloat problems).
>> 
>> What I fear many here are missing in this discussion is the damage regulations cause. There is an assumption in this response that humans can architect rational legislation that will make things better. The preponderance of evidence is that regulations don’t do that.
>
> 	[SM] I see a lot of evidence for harm caused by lack of regulations or lack of enforcement of regulations, e.g.:
> a) the Enron scandal (at its base fraud and the attempt to hide that fraud)
> b) the Lehmann brother sub-prime market scandal, "innovations" in debt reselling resulted in a massive almost global crisis where in many countries the tax payer ended up paying for the damage caused by under-regulated finance-product-innovation.
> c) anti-competitive behavior of tech companies, be it purchase of potential competitors with attractive products only to let these whimper and die, be it collusion on hiring to artificially restrict the employment supply side, ...
>
> In these cases either stricter regulations and/or stricter enforcement of regulations could have saved us (as society) a lot of cost... 
>
> But I mighr be looking at this too single-minded, if you want, please give examples of where regulations strangled innovation... I will however likely not accept pure hypotheticals of the kind "with less regulation we would have seen more innovation", as that is simply not provable one way or the other.

try to run a business and you will run into a TON of regulations that make it 
hard to exist without providing significant value.

>> I also support legislation specifically around busting the regional and local 
>> monopoly contracts that cable companies use. Those currently prevent much of 
>> the competition that I embrace as the rapid driver for commercial 
>> improvement.
>
> 	[SM] That is not going to help, there is not a queue of folks that are 
> just waiting for local monopolies to end to throw fiber cables into the ground 
> and hook up whole neighborhoods... IMHO what would work better is to force 
> local monopolies to carry bit stream traffic for competing ISPs at a price 
> close to the incurred cost (as if the monopolist would need to hire its own 
> access lines, with a smudge of surplus on top)... I base this on what happens 
> in my own home market, where the incumbent is forced to offer wholesale 
> products for other ISPs, with regulated prices that such competitors (if 
> acting efficiently) can still make a profit when offering internet access 
> below the price of the incumbent. This while heavy on regulatory intervention 
> works reasonably well and means that in the incumbents foot print consumers 
> can actually chose between a few different ISPs.

in the telco/DSL space there actually is such a regulation and for the last 
couple of decades I've had such an ISP (until monday when the local telco 
discontinued the type of DSL that will reach me and I got shut off)


Here in California there is also a similar regulation for Electical power, you 
can purchase your power from specialty providers, delivered through the local 
monopoly lines

The municipal fiber being put in in my town will be run by one company, with 
several ISPs providing access over it (according to the plan anyway)

It's just not cost effective to have multiple companies running wires/fibers 
past every house, and doing so for a new ISP is a huge investment with very 
little return. Google tried it in the fact of hostile ISPs and even eith their 
deep pockets, had trouble making it work

David Lang