atomic_fungus (atomic_fungus) wrote,
atomic_fungus
atomic_fungus

#2014: Breaking news: LIMBAUGH WRONG

I'm just as disturbed by this as you are. I've been listening to Limbaugh since 1992, and I've never heard him be this incredibly incorrect about anything. I'm not talking about matters of opinion; I'm talking about facts.

Limbaugh has historically been pretty tech-savvy, despite his preference for Apple computers; he knows enough about technology matters that he normally doesn't make a mistake like this one.

I just listened to him compare the FCC's net neutrality policy to the Fairness Doctrine, and he's wrong. "This regime wants to control the Internet!"

Net neutrality has nothing to do with politics. It's not about ComCast being required to ensure that certain viewpoints are given preferential treatment.

Net neutrality is about ISP's being required to treat all bits as equal.

When I contract with someone to provide me Internet access, I don't want them to treat some bits differently from other bits. I want them all treated equally; if I'm paying for 1.5 Mbps down speed, I expect that speed without my ISP spoofing my FTP applications to slow the data rate.

ComCast's policy does that: they peek inside the packets and decide--based on what they see--how they will treat those packets; and if they decide I'm using too much of my "unlimited" download bandwidth, they start injecting invalid packets to reduce the transfer speed.

The FCC's Net neutrality policy--which has been struck down--asserted that an ISP didn't have the right to do that, that they were to give all packets the same treatment and the same priority up to the limits stipulated in the service contract.

I'm really glad I don't use ComCast. Cable may be faster than DSL, but my big bandwidth use comes from torrenting anime, and ComCast--and the rest of the industry by extension--has been given the green light to effectively shut down their users which torrent stuff.

AT&T will probably follow suit, though, so I'll be screwed either way. *sigh*
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