[NNagain] "FCC explicitly prohibits fast lanes, closing possible net neutrality loophole"

[Karl Auerbach]

As a matter of drafting the FCC has left some potholes:

"We clarify that a BIAS [Broadband Internet Access Service] provider's 
decision to speed up 'on the basis of Internet content, applications, or 
services' would 'impair or degrade' other content, applications, or 
services which are not given the same treatment,"

That phrase "speed up" is too vague.  Does it conflict with active or 
fair queue management?  Does it prohibit things that some Ethernet NIC 
"offloads" do (but which could be done by a provider) such as TCP data 
aggregation (i.e. the merging of lots of small TCP segments into one big 
one)? Does it prohibit insertion of an ECN bit that would have the 
effect of slowing a sender of packets?  Might it preclude a provider 
"helpfully" dropping stale video packets that would arrive at a users 
video rendering codec too late to be useful?  Could there be an issue 
with selective compression?  Or, to really get nerdy - given that a lot 
of traffic uses Ethernet frames as a model, there can be a non-trivial 
amount of hidden, usually unused, bandwidth in that gap between the end 
of tiny IP packets and the end of minimum length Ethernet frames. (I've 
seen that space used for things like license management.)  Or might this 
impact larger path issues, such as routing choices, either dynamic or 
based on contractual relationships - such as conversational voice over 
terrestrial or low-earth-orbit paths while background file transfers are 
sent via fat, but large latency paths such as geo-synch satellite?  If 
an ISP found a means of blocking spam from being delivered, would that 
violate the rules?  (Same question for blocking of VoIP calls from 
undesirable sources.  It may also call into question even the use of IP 
address blacklists or reverse path algorithms that block traffic coming 
from places where it has no business coming from.)

The answers may be obvious to tech folks here but in the hands of 
troublesome lawyers (I'm one of those) these ambiguities could be 
elevated to be real headaches.

These may seem like minor or even meaningless nits, but these are the 
kinds of things that can be used by lawyers (again, like me) to tie 
regulatory bodies into knots, which often a goal of some large 
organizations that do not like regulation.

In addition, I can't put my finger on it, but I am sensing that without 
some flexibility the FCC neutrality rules may be creating a kind of no 
cost, tragedy of the commons situation.  Sometimes a bit of friction - 
cost - can be useful to either incentivize improvements and invention or 
to make things (like spam) less desirable/more expensive to abusers.

         --karl--

On 5/10/24 7:31 AM, Frantisek Borsik via Nnagain wrote:
> "Net neutrality proponents argued that these separate lanes for 
> different kinds of traffic would degrade performance of traffic that 
> isn't favored. The final FCC order released yesterday addresses that 
> complaint.
>
> "We clarify that a BIAS [Broadband Internet Access Service] provider's 
> decision to speed up 'on the basis of Internet content, applications, 
> or services' would 'impair or degrade' other content, applications, or 
> services which are not given the same treatment," the FCC's final 
> order said.
>
> The "impair or degrade" clarification means that speeding up is banned 
> because the no-throttling rule says that ISPs "shall not impair or 
> degrade lawful Internet traffic on the basis of Internet content, 
> application, or service."
>
> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/05/fcc-explicitly-prohibits-fast-lanes-closing-possible-net-neutrality-loophole/
>
>
> All the best,
>
> Frank
>
> Frantisek (Frank) Borsik
>
> https://www.linkedin.com/in/frantisekborsik
>
> Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp: +421919416714
>
> iMessage, mobile: +420775230885
>
> Skype: casioa5302ca
>
> frantisek.borsik at gmail.com
>
>
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