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Netflix Agrees to Pay Comcast to End Web Traffic Jam

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Re: Netflix Agrees to Pay Comcast to End Web Traffic Jam

#191

Post by gnoway »

georgemcbay wrote: post #113
steveplace wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

run a search at broadbandnow.com, see what you get

broadbandnow.com isn't fine-grained enough to be trusted. For my zip code they list AT&T UVerse, AT&T DSL, Cox and Time Warner. The reality of my actual address is that my only options are Time Warner and AT&T DSL (old school fully copper DSL, not UVerse). I'm positive these are my only wired options because I have researched this extensively (including actually calling the companies, not just relying on bad Internet…

Yes, this site says I have Cox and Comcast in my zip code. I can assure you that Comcast is not doing cable internet business in my zip code or anywhere near my zip code. I don't believe they have a presence anywhere in the county.

Also the information blurb at the bottom says I have a fiber provider, but none are listed.

Finally, it's missing some local providers which I am positive exist; our local power/water provider also provides Ethernet to local business and some residential areas, but it's not listed.

Re: Netflix Agrees to Pay Comcast to End Web Traffic Jam

#192

Post by ghshephard »

wmf wrote: post #96
twoodfin wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would Net Neutrality help here? Comcast wasn't throttling Netflix vs. other content, they were refusing to build bigger pipes to Cogent.

It looks like Comcast was refusing to upgrade specifically to hurt Netflix, which falls under the sprit of net neutrality if not the letter.

Net Neutrality requires that you treat all traffic the same, regardless of source/destination - it certainly doesn't require that you create larger connections without being paid for them.

And, let's face it - anybody who has ever used Cogent for transit (usually at 1/3 to 1/10th the cost of other providers) knew what they were getting into.

Re: Netflix Agrees to Pay Comcast to End Web Traffic Jam

#194

Post by noclip »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #182
valas wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think it would drive down Netflix costs? In old world there were a dozen of "tier1" providers who would all peer with each other more or less settlement free. It is conceivable that one of these providers (I think it was Cogent in this case) was offering " low rates " to take Netflix traffic and deliver that traffic to Comcast over their settlement free peering. As traffic flow between Cogent and Comcast w…

Peering agreements existed in the form they did because of the underlying assumption that traffic would be roughly symmetric. Services like Netflix that send massive amounts of traffic in a single direction violate this assumption. This is one of the underreported issues in the whole net neutrality debate. In the late '90s I worked in the WAN engineering group doing capacity planning at a big regional CLEC, which act…

If you pay for (say) a DS3 line, there's an implicit assumption that you are not going to be pumping 44.736 Mbit/s through it 24/7.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. This is exactly the assumption commercial customers paying for unmetered links are making, otherwise they wouldn't be paying for unmetered links. Not being oversubscribed is supposed to the entire point. If ISPs' business models depend on them being able to break their promises to customers paying for continuously saturated links that's their problem, but they're still on the hook for what they're being paid to provide.

Re: Netflix Agrees to Pay Comcast to End Web Traffic Jam

#195

Post by ghshephard »

scelerat wrote: post #20

And so the precedent is set. This is the direction I see things going: For $70 a month from Comcast you can get Amazon, Google, and Facebook. For only $10 more a month you can add Netflix and Spotify. Want Pandora? Sorry, you'll have to switch to AT&T for that. The broadband providers are used to this type of packaged service given their history as cable television providers. It's how they make their money beyond pro…

This is exactly the opposite of what you are talking about - there is no preference being provided for Netflix traffic. There is no charge going to the customer for access to Netflix.

This is simply the case of a provider, discovering that Cogent provides poor transit services, realizes that you actually have to pay in order to get good Internet peering. This has always been the case on the Internet.

As long as Comcast treats all traffic the same regardless of source, destination, packet type, etc.. I'm fine with their behavior here.

Re: Netflix Agrees to Pay Comcast to End Web Traffic Jam

#196

Post by mikeash »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #182
valas wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think it would drive down Netflix costs? In old world there were a dozen of "tier1" providers who would all peer with each other more or less settlement free. It is conceivable that one of these providers (I think it was Cogent in this case) was offering " low rates " to take Netflix traffic and deliver that traffic to Comcast over their settlement free peering. As traffic flow between Cogent and Comcast w…

Peering agreements existed in the form they did because of the underlying assumption that traffic would be roughly symmetric. Services like Netflix that send massive amounts of traffic in a single direction violate this assumption. This is one of the underreported issues in the whole net neutrality debate. In the late '90s I worked in the WAN engineering group doing capacity planning at a big regional CLEC, which act…

Isn't flat rate pricing completely orthogonal to net neutrality? Net neutrality doesn't mean you can't charge me for usage, it just means you can't charge me differently based on the kind of usage, as opposed to the volume.

I personally think the resistance to usage-based pricing in the tech community is really weird, although I mostly see it on the consumer end. Hard caps are bad, and caps that only apply to some services are really bad, but charging more if you use more is completely reasonable.

Re: Netflix Agrees to Pay Comcast to End Web Traffic Jam

#197

Post by davvid »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #182
valas wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think it would drive down Netflix costs? In old world there were a dozen of "tier1" providers who would all peer with each other more or less settlement free. It is conceivable that one of these providers (I think it was Cogent in this case) was offering " low rates " to take Netflix traffic and deliver that traffic to Comcast over their settlement free peering. As traffic flow between Cogent and Comcast w…

Peering agreements existed in the form they did because of the underlying assumption that traffic would be roughly symmetric. Services like Netflix that send massive amounts of traffic in a single direction violate this assumption. This is one of the underreported issues in the whole net neutrality debate. In the late '90s I worked in the WAN engineering group doing capacity planning at a big regional CLEC, which act…

The nightmare scenario is basically upon us: capacity requirements are climbing faster than ever [...] Which means either the ISPs eat the cost of upgrading their infrastructure (ha!) -- or they raise rates.

I dunno.. being profitable enough to buy time-warner cable for billions doesn't sound like a nightmare scenario from their POV. It sounds like they'd rather spend the money becoming a monopoly than improve their infrastructure.

Re: Netflix Agrees to Pay Comcast to End Web Traffic Jam

#198

Post by otterley »

This deal doesn't seem as bad as many make it out to be. The agreement appears to consist of a an interconnection arrangement between Comcast's backbone and Netflix's streaming POPs.

Prior to the agreement, the traffic was routed through Cogent, and Comcast didn't want to increase the interconnection bandwidth with Cogent.

I don't see this as a blow to Net Neutrality, assuming the deal is as described.

Re: Netflix Agrees to Pay Comcast to End Web Traffic Jam

#199

Post by allochthon »

smutticus wrote: post #87
aleem wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not going to happen. The onus is not on the consumer, it's on the service provider. The service provider may transfer the costs onto the consumer but Comcast won't directly charge the consumers a premium. That would be a bad move and Comcast would lose out its customers to competitors.

The reason Comcast would rather have Netflix pay than pass those costs to consumers is because they don't want to make net neutrality any more salient for consumers. If Netflix pays Comcast then it goes mostly unnoticed by the average person. If people have to start paying then the people screaming for net neutrality will start to scream louder, and Comcast really does not want that. It's not about competition with o…

Comcast worries about the FCC and Congress, not its competitors.

It would seem that worry extends only so far. In this case, if what you're saying is accurate, Comcast intends to take (i.e., extract rent), and it just doesn't want to get noticed while it takes. Fear of the FCC and potential consumer backlash do not extend so far as to help it to reconsider its basic strategy of expanding rents, even as its merger with Time Warner is under review. There's a certain boldness to Comcast's move in working out this deal with Netflix.

Re: Netflix Agrees to Pay Comcast to End Web Traffic Jam

#200

Post by mikeash »

philwelch wrote: post #73
scelerat wrote: post #20

And so the precedent is set. This is the direction I see things going: For $70 a month from Comcast you can get Amazon, Google, and Facebook. For only $10 more a month you can add Netflix and Spotify. Want Pandora? Sorry, you'll have to switch to AT&T for that. The broadband providers are used to this type of packaged service given their history as cable television providers. It's how they make their money beyond pro…

That's already the case if you want websites like ESPN3 or NBC Sports Live Extra.

The difference is that it's the actual web sites making that decision. ISPs aren't blocking ESPN, but rather ESPN is making the deliberate choice to only allow access to their web site from certain ISPs. This is dumb, I think, and annoying, but there's nothing fundamentally wrong with it. Where you start having problems is when your ISP, who you are supposedly paying for access to the entire internet, starts blocking certain sites because you haven't paid extra.
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