Game Developers Note Net Neutrality Concerns To FCC 74
eldavojohn writes "A list of notes from game developers (PDF) was sent in a letter to the FCC which represented a net neutrality discussion between the developers and FCC representatives. Game Politics sums it up nicely, but the surprise is that developers are concerned with latency, not bandwidth, unlike the members of many other net neutrality discussions. One concern is that each and every game developer will need to negotiate with each and every ISP to ensure their traffic achieves acceptable levels of latency for users. 'Mr. Dyl of Turbine stated that ISPs sometimes block traffic from online gaming providers, for reasons that are not clear, but they do not necessarily continue those blocks if they are contacted. He recalled Turbine having to call ISPs that had detected the high UDP traffic from Turbine, and had apparently decided to block the traffic and wait to see who complained.' It seems a lot of the net neutrality discussions have only worried about one part of the problem — Netflix, YouTube and P2P — while an equally important source of concern went unnoticed: latency in online games."
Doh! (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems a lot of the net neutrality discussions have only worried about one part of the problem -- Netflix, YouTube and P2P -- while an equally important source of concern went unnoticed: latency in online games."
The issue isn't specific to ANY type of usage - net neutrality, or rather the lack of it, impacts all uses of the network.
As long as connectivity providers are also application providers, any application they don't like is a potential candidate for connectivity problems.
What about Private Servers? (Score:5, Insightful)
One concern is that each and every game developer will need to negotiate with each and every ISP to ensure their traffic achieves acceptable levels of latency for users.
Or in the case of private servers (where they still exist), every private server (or private server hosting company) would have to negotiate separate deals.
Re:Doh! (Score:1, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Doh! (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as connectivity providers are also application providers, any application they don't like is a potential candidate for connectivity problems.
As long as ISPs face potential competition, any connectivity problem is a potential candidate for "losing-customers" problems.
Of course, that depends on ISPs not being entrenched in their crony capitalist markets through special licensing, franchises, and subsidies - as bequeathed by your bipartisan fascist overlords.
Re:What about an open standard for TCP priorities? (Score:4, Insightful)
Some of us live in countries where video conferencing at high-end blu-ray quality is entirely feasible (54 Mb/s).
This will gobble down gigabytes of data at high priorities, and if we're using software that isn't widely available or even custom built, you're saying "fuck off, you're being an asshole".
A teleconference at those bandwidths would take up more than 20 GB/hour, and you said it yourself, Skype (and similar) require low latency
Re:but the users wouldn't tolerate it, anyway (Score:2, Insightful)
What precise ISPs are you talking about? Most people in the US have only one or two options for broadband... if both of their options only provide nonneutral service... where exactly do you want them to go? Most people do not have the option of moving just to get access to a different broadband service.
I'm a big fan of competition myself, but there is *no* competition for US broadband service. Leaving it up to the "competitive" market in this case will allow large telecommunications companies to do what they have always done... charge high prices for subpar service. This should not be surprising, this is what all the economic models say will happen if you have a monopoly/duopoly situation...
Re:Doh! (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the summary was fine and that it's obviously a concern about throttling in regards to latency. Games, far more than youtube and other streaming sites, are far more impacted by latency. If the ISP's using throttling, or delaying tactics at the packet level to prioritize traffic, it will have a huge impact on the online gaming experience. What's funny is the effects may be subtle to borderline irritating so that users get a degraded experience that would be easy to blame on the content provider and not the internet provider.