Net Neutrality and throttling of testmy.net by ISP

[Nick de Sieyes]

Wondering if folks here who are more knowledgeable than I have an opinion on the matter of network throttling....

 

Let's say a certain imaginary ISP has over-commited it's resources by signing up too many users and now can't provide those users with the upload/download speeds it's advertising. Let's call this imaginary ISP 'FuseJet'. The only way that users like me know that they're not receiving advertised speeds is by coming here to TestMy.net and testing their speeds, assuming the measured speeds here are the same as elsewhere on the internet. Given the repeal of the net neutrality laws, what's to stop FuseJet from throttling UP subscriber access/speed to TestMy.net to hide poor upload/download speeds elsewhere on the internet?

[CA3LE]

Keep in mind the adjustments to the 2010 Open Internet Order now require ISPs to be transparent about any content blocking, throttling or paid prioritization.  If you ever feel like that's happening and they aren't being transparent, please post it on the Internet for others to see.

 

I don't expect ISPs to prioritize or de-prioritize TMN traffic any more than they did prior to 2015 when Net Neutrality was enacted.

 

What I do expect to see is premium access to things that we shouldn't have to pay for... and extra billing for bandwidth for those services if you don't pay your ISP for a premium lane to those services.  And THAT is BS.   --- but I wouldn't expect to see that in 2018, they're just setting up the prerequisites.

 

• https://www.fcc.gov/restoring-internet-freedom

[Sean]

If ISPs decide to throttle traffic, they would need to do this all services to be effective, in which case it would probably be easier for them to charge by maximum speed like many ISPs did in the post, e.g. one price for 10Mbps, a higher price for 50Mbps and so on.  Otherwise, it would be relatively straight forward to overcome with the use of a VPN.  Let's say an ISP prioritises port 8080 to deliver fast speed tests while throttling everything else, just use something like OpenVPN over port 8080 with a VPN privacy service.  To the ISP, all your traffic would be seen and treated as speed test traffic.

 

For example, about two years ago the Irish cellular networks Three and Vodafone were doing something similar, i.e. throttling most traffic over the standard web ports (e.g. HTTP port 80), while letting port 8080 run at full speed to deliver fast speed tests, at least with the well-known Ookla Speedtest App.  At the time, it meant one could get 4G speed tests over 20Mbps, yet faced slow browsing speeds similar to a 1Mbps connection.  All I had to do was make a VPN connection over port 8080 (same port # as Ookla uses for its speed tests) and everything performed a heck of a lot better.  A few months later, Three changed their tactic by prioritising certain services such as YouTube when the network is congested.  This means YouTube can potentially play 4K fine even when the speed tests (including Ookla) deliver low test result figures. 

[Nick de Sieyes]

Thanks folks, thoughtful responses both. Appreciated.