Rate Limit known FCC IP addresses?

[samelawrence]

It's probably not possible to do in the context of a simple JS plugin, but my technical knowledge doesn't allow me to know this for sure... so I figured I'd ask it here and raise an issue.

Someone has figured out how to rate limit the FCCs traffic on their site, effectively reducing them to Dial-Up speeds: https://gist.github.com/kyledrake/e6046644115f185f7af0

Would it be possible to include this in this plugin... just to really drive the point home to the FCC that we won't tolerate a slowlane, and to give them a taste of the medicine?

Just a thought, and I'd love feedback on if this is possible to execute in JavaScript, and if so, how; and if not, why not. Thanks!

[rubbingalcoholic]

Your idea would be possible, but difficult to achieve.

The widget uses an animation to simulate slow loading of the web page in order to make a point about net neutrality. It's set up to only show once per user per site (using cookies) However, it would be possible to bypass this and show the slowdown effect every time a known FCC IP address accesses the page.

The reason is difficult is due to the fact that the widget is purely in JavaScript, and there's no native way to get an IP address using JavaScript. We would need some kind of server-side service that would echo back the user's IP address using JSONP, so the widget could pull it in and compare it. This would require effort and maintenance to create.

Additionally, the page content is initially hidden until the cookie check executes. If we also have to wait to get a result back from the server before showing the content, the page responsiveness could be inhibited considerably for users who had already seen the animation.

So while the idea is possible, I think the cost in terms of maintenance and user experience would not be worth the benefit of speaking directly to the FCC.

Thanks for the feedback!

[samelawrence]

Thanks for the response! That makes sense.