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S.Korea broadband firm sues Netflix after traffic surge from 'Squid Game'

reuters.com

141–150 of 243 posts

Re: S.Korea broadband firm sues Netflix after traffic surge from 'Squid Game'

#141

A lot of commentors here are defending that netflix shouldn't pay data charges. I don't know how internet prices works for big players, but from the perspective of a little guy, it seems kinda reasonable that netlflix pay, doesn't it? I mean, why am I paying for bandwidth on AWS? Shouldn't that be paid for by the downloading party? If I download something from my neighbors computer over a p2p app, then we both still…

  > why am I paying for bandwidth on AWS?
Because when you signed up for services on AWS, you agreed to pay for egress and ingress bandwidth delivered at very high speeds.

When I signed up for my ISP, I agreed to pay for a rate of speed that was sold to me as "unlimited" with some restrictions, but none that even came close to resembling "don't download video too much".

It also ignores the value Netflix provides. My parents chose to buy faster internet service than they otherwise would have purchased because of Netflix. If Netflix was not in the picture, they would have purchased the cheapest plan available. It's not a fairness failure, it's a marketing failure.

Re: S.Korea broadband firm sues Netflix after traffic surge from 'Squid Game'

#142
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is wild. ISPs have been overselling "unlimited" connections for forever, and being paid for it, but when their customers actually want to use literally the service they paid for, _legally_, it's somehow wrong? I guess that's the thing with Netflix though, it's torrent-like traffic, but legal, so there's no excuse to stop it and they have to come up with something. "oh they're generating explosive traffic th…

The thing that's most ridiculous about this is that the bandwidth is essentially "free" for SK telecom. They sit a netflix caching server in their network and the traffic never leaves. Other than the cost of switch ports (which are dirt cheap relatively speaking) they have absolutely 0 overhead beyond power and cooling for the netflix box which again with their user count is a rounding error. I'm not sure if the lawm…

> The thing that's most ridiculous about this is that the bandwidth is essentially "free" for SK telecom. They sit a netflix caching server in their network and the traffic never leaves.

Wouldn't that require them to MITM the Netflix traffic, which I would hope is under TLS?

Re: S.Korea broadband firm sues Netflix after traffic surge from 'Squid Game'

#143

The Internet is literally a series of erbium doped tubes, analogous to highway traffic. Videos of cats at high enough bandwidth can melt optical interconnects. For the same reason truckers pay some tax for brutalizing the roads, giant content providers beaming data through these systems must be taxed lest the Internet infrastructure be destroyed and the cost only be burdened by general taxpayers instead of users. (be…

> literally [...] analogous to highway traffic. No, it isn't. Cars can't spawn clones as they travel down a branching set of roads. But IP Multicast can do this, which is how IPTV works on the ISP level. And multicast is basically emulated by edge distribution boxes so that the traffic moving into the ISP can be multiplied to multiple customers.

I don't think the parent was serious, I believe it's a reference to The Internet is a series of tubes[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_of_tubes

Re: S.Korea broadband firm sues Netflix after traffic surge from 'Squid Game'

#144
post #142
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that's most ridiculous about this is that the bandwidth is essentially "free" for SK telecom. They sit a netflix caching server in their network and the traffic never leaves. Other than the cost of switch ports (which are dirt cheap relatively speaking) they have absolutely 0 overhead beyond power and cooling for the netflix box which again with their user count is a rounding error. I'm not sure if the lawm…

> The thing that's most ridiculous about this is that the bandwidth is essentially "free" for SK telecom. They sit a netflix caching server in their network and the traffic never leaves. Wouldn't that require them to MITM the Netflix traffic, which I would hope is under TLS?

Netflix ships them the box is they ask and sign a contract that they will plug it in and have a security guard it so.

Re: S.Korea broadband firm sues Netflix after traffic surge from 'Squid Game'

#146
post #142
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that's most ridiculous about this is that the bandwidth is essentially "free" for SK telecom. They sit a netflix caching server in their network and the traffic never leaves. Other than the cost of switch ports (which are dirt cheap relatively speaking) they have absolutely 0 overhead beyond power and cooling for the netflix box which again with their user count is a rounding error. I'm not sure if the lawm…

> The thing that's most ridiculous about this is that the bandwidth is essentially "free" for SK telecom. They sit a netflix caching server in their network and the traffic never leaves. Wouldn't that require them to MITM the Netflix traffic, which I would hope is under TLS?

Here's more information about the program: https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/

I believe YouTube has the same type of program.

Re: S.Korea broadband firm sues Netflix after traffic surge from 'Squid Game'

#147
post #142
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that's most ridiculous about this is that the bandwidth is essentially "free" for SK telecom. They sit a netflix caching server in their network and the traffic never leaves. Other than the cost of switch ports (which are dirt cheap relatively speaking) they have absolutely 0 overhead beyond power and cooling for the netflix box which again with their user count is a rounding error. I'm not sure if the lawm…

> The thing that's most ridiculous about this is that the bandwidth is essentially "free" for SK telecom. They sit a netflix caching server in their network and the traffic never leaves. Wouldn't that require them to MITM the Netflix traffic, which I would hope is under TLS?

Netflix provides the ISP with the box, afaik the box contains a signed certificate for a Netflix subdomain specific to that box. The "real" Netflix servers direct the customer to that subdomain for the actual content.

Re: S.Korea broadband firm sues Netflix after traffic surge from 'Squid Game'

#148
post #142
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that's most ridiculous about this is that the bandwidth is essentially "free" for SK telecom. They sit a netflix caching server in their network and the traffic never leaves. Other than the cost of switch ports (which are dirt cheap relatively speaking) they have absolutely 0 overhead beyond power and cooling for the netflix box which again with their user count is a rounding error. I'm not sure if the lawm…

> The thing that's most ridiculous about this is that the bandwidth is essentially "free" for SK telecom. They sit a netflix caching server in their network and the traffic never leaves. Wouldn't that require them to MITM the Netflix traffic, which I would hope is under TLS?

No, Netflix's applications would have users of that ISP use the CDN server which they would locate within SK Telecom's network.

Netflix calls it their Open Connect Appliance: https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/appliances/

That server would, of course, have a connection to the Internet, they push logs to AWS and get updates from Netflix's authoritative servers in Netflix's other datacenters, but they also serve HTTPS connections to thousands of ISP users; the upstream traffic would be minimal.

Re: S.Korea broadband firm sues Netflix after traffic surge from 'Squid Game'

#149
post #142
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that's most ridiculous about this is that the bandwidth is essentially "free" for SK telecom. They sit a netflix caching server in their network and the traffic never leaves. Other than the cost of switch ports (which are dirt cheap relatively speaking) they have absolutely 0 overhead beyond power and cooling for the netflix box which again with their user count is a rounding error. I'm not sure if the lawm…

> The thing that's most ridiculous about this is that the bandwidth is essentially "free" for SK telecom. They sit a netflix caching server in their network and the traffic never leaves. Wouldn't that require them to MITM the Netflix traffic, which I would hope is under TLS?

My guess Netflix can guide that by handing back different IPs when the end user requests the netflix server name. They can also handle it in application the netflix application can look and see it is in a network that has a box and just goto that ip/host/proxy instead of the generic one. Netflix still controls the keys. No MITM needed.

Re: S.Korea broadband firm sues Netflix after traffic surge from 'Squid Game'

#150
post #135
post #8

> South Korean lawmakers have spoken out against content providers who do not pay for network usage despite generating explosive traffic It's impressive how this framing has gotten so much acceptance. The content providers are not generating the traffic, the users are, and they are paying their ISPs to be able to do so.

Don’t miss the past paragraph in the article, “In the United States, Netflix has been paying a fee to broadband provider Comcast Corp (CMCSA.O) for over seven years for faster streaming speeds. https://reut.rs/2Y8wOzb”

Two points: 1. In 2014 Netflix made similar deals with AT&T and Verizon. 2. It is not extortion by the ISP, "pay up or else". But Netflix was simply building up its own CDN-capabilities. They ditched Akamai and Limelight and for that they needed their own server endpoints into the networks.

https://www.streamingmediablog.com/2014/02/heres-comcast-net...

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