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The article does a decent job of introducing the concepts of peering and transit. However, it's pretty long winded and goes through a number of tortured justifications. Here's a much simpler explanation: Comcast is charging Level 3 because they can .
Lots of people seem to be forgetting that content providers want to connect to customers just as much as the customers want the content. Comcast:"L3 you want to connect to all my cable customers fast and you don't want to pay even more to get to me through AT&T so lets make a deal." It makes perfect sense that Comcast should be paid for access to their customers.
Even though Comcast customers already pay Comcast to receive those bytes? As others have pointed out above.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
? Just because an agreement doesn't make 100% sense to you doesn't mean it can be unilaterally broken!
Above, I'm not speaking of any particular agreement. For the current Level3-Comcast issue, as I read that "article" they didn't break it, but Level 3 would cause operating conditions that made the existing Comcast contract no longer applicable, so they needed a new agreement of some sort.
I still fail to see why a leaf node internet provider thinks they should be paid for receiving the data their customers have requested. Paying for transits is easy to understand, and in a complicated topology paying for bytes-in as a peer makes sense because they may be transits. For a leaf node network like Comcast, whose customers pay to receive bytes and pay to have their connections installed to then demand payme…
I have an internet connection from Comcast. If I only ever connect to other Comcast customers, I should get my connection for free?
I still fail to see why a leaf node internet provider thinks they should be paid for receiving the data their customers have requested. Paying for transits is easy to understand, and in a complicated topology paying for bytes-in as a peer makes sense because they may be transits. For a leaf node network like Comcast, whose customers pay to receive bytes and pay to have their connections installed to then demand payme…
http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/edxjp/level_3_ou...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even though Comcast customers already pay Comcast to receive those bytes? As others have pointed out above.
Paid magazines often still sell advertising space, same is true for paid cable channels, so it's not unheard of to charge both the "broadcaster" and the "receiver".
Obviously, without legislation, the internet will end up being no different, with Comcast, AT&T, and ultimately high-traffic sites like espn.com nickel-and-diming each other and end users. Sticking to the principles on which the web was (allegedly?) founded doesn't hold much water in a shareholders meeting.
I hate to sound so cynical and resigned to this fate, but left to their own devices this seems like exactly what the big ISP's and sites will do.
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Internet does not work that way. You have a connection to certain operators network (at certain bandwidth) and that operator may have connections to one or more other operators. There is no "internet" you have bandwidth to, only interconnected networks. The connections between operators can be classified into two classes. If the operators feel that they both get relatively equal mutual benefit, they may connect each…
utterly stupid. comcast is a customer of level3, not a peer. even though marketing has blurred the lines (i blame overly ambitious hosting companies), there is a very large difference between peering and being a transit customer. what applies here is a transit agreement, even though george ou completely skips over that in his analysis by assuming comcast is not a customer. to be redundant: this is not a peering spat,…
Right, where comcast pays L3 to deliver what comcast has to send. L3 still needs to pay someone (either comcast or someone else) to take the what they have to offer. No one wants traffic, thats why L3 has to pay to send Netflix to customers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Above, I'm not speaking of any particular agreement. For the current Level3-Comcast issue, as I read that "article" they didn't break it, but Level 3 would cause operating conditions that made the existing Comcast contract no longer applicable, so they needed a new agreement of some sort.
It's good that you qualified what you're saying, because the natural assumption is that you are talking about the particular agreement under discussion.
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