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Message boards : GPUGRID CAFE : What does loss of net neutrality mean for volunteer computing?

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Message 37251 - Posted: 10 Jul 2014 | 5:21:09 UTC
Last modified: 10 Jul 2014 | 5:21:39 UTC

This is a link to a staff blog posting at SETI@Home. This is a very important issue in the United States right now. I know some other countries are in a somewhat better position in regards to all this, but I thought it would be worth sharing here.

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=75141#1538832

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Message 37744 - Posted: 27 Aug 2014 | 3:09:29 UTC
Last modified: 27 Aug 2014 | 3:27:18 UTC

Yes, there is meaningful fear in this country. Much of it is bought and payed for already by lobbyists.

For example, the head of the FCC, whose job it is to regulate these kinds of companies, is one of the telecommunication industries' lobbyists.

Of course the public's best interest is irrelevant beyond placating snake-tongued words. They only have to keep us (as a whole) happy and ignorant or in conflict with each other enough to allow them to rule our country... and our lives for us.
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Message 39235 - Posted: 20 Dec 2014 | 23:17:28 UTC

I've been taking classes in international cybercrime and crypto... I don't mean to pose as devil's advocate - but international cybercrime is the primary traffic on the web right now. Not a day goes by without another major corporation having big stuff stolen (see krebsonsecurity). If I were in government, I would be *really* worried about the net going the route of Gangland Chicago during Prohibition. But I would be unable to do anything about it other than let crazy economists rule the web. It seems that it's either them or Russian/China cybercrime. The bad guys are not going to go away.

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Message 44298 - Posted: 26 Aug 2016 | 8:12:07 UTC - in response to Message 39235.

I've been taking classes in international cybercrime and crypto... I don't mean to pose as devil's advocate - but international cybercrime is the primary traffic on the web right now. Not a day goes by without another major corporation having big stuff stolen (see krebsonsecurity). If I were in government, I would be *really* worried about the net going the route of Gangland Chicago during Prohibition. But I would be unable to do anything about it other than let crazy economists rule the web. It seems that it's either them or Russian/China cybercrime. The bad guys are not going to go away.

Eye opening cyberwar in real time to prove the point!
http://map.norsecorp.com/#/

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Message 44299 - Posted: 26 Aug 2016 | 9:14:59 UTC

There are issues on both sides that are simply confused and lead to and have lead to things that have now come to pass where everyone claims victory and everyone in the same breath claims failure.

For instance, the main fight you hear about net neutrality is the ability to let the internet not be controlled by the government against the users and the companies that run the websites and trade the information on the information superhighway.
Then there is the argument that the internet should not be controlled by corporations for their own purposes against the users.
Then there is the argument that the internet should only be controlled by the users who access and use the information on that superhighway.
Then there is the other side of each of these.
The government wants to control the internet in order to (presumably) keep us safe from this cyber crime and Russian and Chinese mob style activity attacking everything from corporations, governments, and individual end users to take advantage, profit, and distort everything that can be retrieved of such an attack.
The corporations want control of the internet because of the sheer profit of control. A company that can control a portion of the internet is a company that can charge every user and company that passes through it.
The end users fight for a free internet (not in cost, but in content) free from corporate dictation of action or government control of activity.

Then you have another angle of things, like monopolies. There is two aspects regarding a monopoly in the USA. One is where many sections of the country are completely controlled by one company, like Google now, or Comcast, or Charter or Verizon, or several others. There are only a few places where you can even get a choice between 2 or 3 companies. Like in my area, we can choose Comcast, Verizon, or RCN. This is a huge rarity in the country of monopolies to internet access. The other options are satellite or dial-up, which is slow or spotty at best.
The second part of corporate monopolies is that many of the corporations that control access to the internet are also content creators. When a content provider becomes a content creator, there is a major conflict of interest that their own content will get the best speed, most advertising, and the cheapest access to the end users. This also allows for a great disparity between actual content and pushed content (like the difference between news that happens vs news made up for ratings.) This forms a secondary form of monopoly within the original monopolies of country region.
This second side of net neutrality leads to things like Netflix having to pay Comcast for access to the internet by the end users for a greater amount of traffic. The truth of the matter is that Netflix should charge the end user more and then Comcast should also charge the end user more instead of one charging the other for the activity the end user is doing over the Comcast network with the Netflix traffic.

These different aspects of the debate, some of which are not mentioned often and others which are hotly debated, are all part of a bigger debate which simply asks the question, "Who owns the internet?" or "Who should own the internet?" or just "Who should control the internet?" The normal answers to these questions are: the governments of individual countries, the regional groups of countries which share unions, the corporations that spend all the money to fund the internet for their own profit, all the companies and individuals that pay for internet usage on the building, hosting, and offering websites, the end users who use those websites, or even the cyber-criminals (hackers, hactivists, social engineers, and deviant mob related or evil government related activity) that do most of the activity between all the websites and internet enabled hosts out there.

And with all of this said, with no conclusions being made, because the need for these questions to be asked and answered need to be asked and thought in all the minds of anyone who are involved in finding any solutions regarding those answers. Also, with all of this said, there are more nuanced things that should be asked and answered like "What is the environment we want the internet to be?" Do we want the internet to always be the wild wild west or do we want it to have definite structure or do we want it to be free form but with rules so multiple structures can exist simultaneously over the same lines of communication without affecting one another?

I haven't been conclusive on all I wanted to say on this topic, but I think I got out the main points. And the main point of them all is this... What is net-neutrality and what sides of the above issues does net-neutrality stand with and against. I noticed that the e-mails I got from a net-neutrality group of which I did at one time sign a petition was unclear on many of these issues and then claimed victory when some of the most egregious things in my opinion were completely lost. They stood behind the losses claiming the wins were more important, even though those losses seemed larger issues than the things won. I got very mixed messages and had mixed feelings about the results to what I thought was a group that was trying to define net-neutrality the way I see the issues being solved optimally.

I suppose, without getting into politics here, the same is true when debating issues of a Republic, a Democracy, Socialism, Communism, Fascism, an Oligarchy Dictatorship, Anarchy, Absolute Imperial Monarchy, Constitutional Monarchy, Aristocracy, or a Democratic Republic. When asking which is best, you will get many answers for many reasons. But if you ask the specific questions about the difference between them and what aspects of each you feel are good or bad aspects, you will come to your own answers that many differ from the main question asked with no followup.

I also totally admit that I don't have the answers to all of the questions that sit well with me in all situations, but some aspects of each possible answer for each question do help me come to general ideas of what I think the internet should look like and some ideas I feel are totally detestable from all angles.
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Message 44300 - Posted: 26 Aug 2016 | 9:17:04 UTC

To answer the original question that is the name of this thread, I do not see the loss of or a complete success of net-neutrality affecting volunteer computing very much at all.

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Message 44311 - Posted: 27 Aug 2016 | 11:03:22 UTC - in response to Message 44300.
Last modified: 27 Aug 2016 | 11:18:50 UTC

'Net Neutrality' is about sending all types of data at the same rates; without throttling, it's not about cyber crime, hacking, spying...

Obviously we don't want our uploads and downloads throttled in the same way online gamers don't want their connections to be glitchy or intermittent and viewers of streaming media want good resolution, which requires good transfer rates. However, we have the capability to adjust our Boinc Managers to whatever the situation is, so unless we are struggling to meet a 24h or 48h deadline for bonuses we're reasonably ok - we're less vulnerable to throttling/can do something about it, so it won't impact on us as much. Contrast watching an Amazon video and halfway through it cuts out.

PS. That Norse attack map shows that the biggest target is the US but also that the biggest attacker is the US. Next up as an attacker is China, followed by the Netherlands. The second biggest target is the UAE. Russia isn't in the top 10 as an attacker. Not sure how many of these are valid attacks though. Could be 'suspicious activities' rather than 'attacks'.
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Message boards : GPUGRID CAFE : What does loss of net neutrality mean for volunteer computing?

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