this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2023
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Video streaming is a MUCH heavier load than text based sites and even image based sites. Anecdotal, but I am aware of at least four of the street side boxes that failed early in the pandemic because the constant teleconferencing and streaming was literally orders of magnitude more concurrent traffic than at any time in the past. That has a cost. Theoretically, it is a "one time" cost but it is also a significant one.
My personal feeling is that this is the ISP's, optimally the local government's, problem. But I don't know enough about how Korean ISPs and infrastructure are handled to have a proper opinion on this. But I can definitely see a push to throttle certain sites that make up a significant majority of the overall load. It is not net neutrality but... is one site accounting for 40 or 50% of the traffic net neutrality either?
It’s as simple as this:
If my ISP charges me for X connection speed, I should be able to use what I paid for. Bandwidth caps make no sense, “internet” is not a resource that has to be generated.
What happened in the pandemic was the first real test displaying very clearly that ISPs are overselling/overprovisioning their network, and hoping we don’t notice that they haven’t actually used the money to upgrade or improve their network.
It’s easy to point the finger at the big bandwidth sources and ask for more money, but it’s wrong and it’s double-dipping. They’re using Twitch and Netflix as the scapegoat for their lack of reinvestment.
Data caps are reasonable as long as they're clearly disclosed; double-dipping isn't.
Data caps are similar to usage-based billing in other utilities like water and electricity. They're reasonable because even a typical heavy residential user does not come anywhere near saturating their link 24/7, which is reflected in the ISP's provisioning and pricing. If you want residential internet service that can handle every user saturating their link constantly, you can have much higher prices or much slower speeds. Do you want that?
Two things.
Firstly, would it make sense to have a “water-cap” and if you hit it your house can’t get water for the rest of the month?
Secondly, everyone’s cap resets at the same time. Meaning that everyone has full access and aren’t at their cap. How does that prevent saturation up to the point that
[speed]*[time]=[cap]for the heavy users? Because it will be days until a reasonable cap is reached.The way I've seen it implemented, it's a cap after which speed is reduced or there are additional charges. Are you aware of ISPs with hard caps?
What are you talking about? I work in cloud and fiber infrastructure - the major players pay for fiber connections and close proximity to their customers.
ISPs have an obligation to their customers to provide a service at the speed their customer is paying for - regardless of what is coming down the pipe.
Btw there is a good argument with net neutrality that the ISP doesn't even have a right to know what services you are streaming. Because that shit can be sold to data brokers. Ofc this kind of argument is always better suited for the EU, but Considering freedom is a big thing for America, I assume the freedom to govern over your own data should be a right regardless.
It varies from municipality to municipality but I have lived in a couple places where I definitively know that the flow is:
And from my own home improvement work, I would be shocked if the county did not have to be looped in for any significant work to the various drops that lead to housing blocks. I vividly remember being confused as to why there needed to be a county truck and a Comcast truck out by the box when they finally acknowledged my internet was fucked (mostly because I provided them three or four weeks worth of log data).
Like I said. I don't know how South Korea handles things. So I can't have a proper opinion on this. But I understand well enough that there are a significant number of steps between "I want fiber" and "comcast/verizon lets me give them money for fiber".
And if the issue is just significant load from twitch streaming (I would say Youtube Streaming, but I doubt most Koreans watch Ludwig and he is basically the only streamer that exists on that platform): I can very much see an argument for telling Amazon that they have to chip in for the infrastructure improvements. Because fuck Comcast (or, I guess, Korean Equivalent Of Comcast?) but also... fuck Amazon.
If one site accounts for 50% of all web traffic, we're faced with an inescapable decision to accept or reject that this site is the primary purpose of the internet now. If you have any arguments for why we should decide to limit it, please put them forward! On this end, it seems like the basis for anything other than the neutral position (i.e. to prioritise preserving the neutral relationship between the user and the internet access) is arbitrary.
I got the numbers: https://wachee.co/blog/internet-traffic-used-by-streaming-services/
Streaming in general is over half of internet traffic, while (in the US) Netflix alone is 30% of all traffic.
Usually I am all for any kind of data because trends tend to be indicative
But that is 2019 data. Before The Pandemic. And internet traffic is something that very much shifted as a result of people being locked in their own homes for weeks, if not months, at a time. It is a big chunk of a LOT of the tech layoffs that are currently happening globally and a large part of this particular topic.
To put it in context. xqc is (last I checked) the biggest streamer on the planet (and increasingly a deranged incel who just bitches about his ex-wife while also promoting hate and bigotry but..) and mostly went from disgraced esports nobody to the biggest streamer on twitch (and probably now kick) in 2020. Similarly, Ludwig (who seems to be a left leaning centrist) is very much on the "pokimane" track of getting big and similarly got big in 2020 and used that to become the de facto face of Youtube in 2021.
And I would go so far as to say the vast majority of the "O(100) concurrent" mid-tier streamers have similar stories. 2020 is what let them turn this into a full time job.