I just cancelled my netflix subscription. I hope you do the same. Let them know why.
Netflix Agrees to Pay Comcast to End Web Traffic Jam
201–210 of 351 posts
Re: Netflix Agrees to Pay Comcast to End Web Traffic Jam
#202Earlier 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…
You forgot to mention the part about how it actually does balance out because Comcast is receiving $18B billion a year for internet bandwidth from the its customers. Customers are requesting more data, but Comcast wants to be paid on both sides because they have a monopoly over the customer.
If it is really expensive to accept Netflix's offer of free hardware and free bandwidth then the additional cost should be passed to the customer. The problem is that it's not actually more expensive and Comcast knows their customers can't choose someone else so it's a much better strategy to squeeze the content providers.
Re: Netflix Agrees to Pay Comcast to End Web Traffic Jam
#203And 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 Comca…
According to the article, "the average speeds of Netflix's prime-time streams to Comcast subscribers had dropped 27% since October"
I guess the question is, did all other traffic see the same drop? And what changes in their network would cause this?
Re: Netflix Agrees to Pay Comcast to End Web Traffic Jam
#204And 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…
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Re: Netflix Agrees to Pay Comcast to End Web Traffic Jam
#205Heres what I would be trying if I was netflix. Probably sure I'd have trouble pushing it against the rest of the company but I'd try this: 1) Collect evidence of network tampering/filtering 2) Get agreement in place to pay for better service 3) Collect the rest of the evidence that network filtering was in place when it gets lifted. 4) Simultaneously hit comcast up for breaching the neutrality agreements, while notif…
They have already done 1 and 2. The problem is #4 isn't possible because there aren't neutrality agreements to breach. Comcast provides shit service to Netflix and that's perfectly legal.
Re: Netflix Agrees to Pay Comcast to End Web Traffic Jam
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't understand. This is the creation of an economic moat (a term coined by Warren Buffet.) The gatekeeper creates a toll and the tradesman agrees to pay the toll. This is an entry cost to new market players and therefore reduces competition. This toll may be increased as the biggest player (Netflix) grows in size and this benefits them, as eventually new startups have $1+ million startup costs and nobody is wil…
I'd have to string strongly with this. Everything we know about Netflix is that they're a data driven company. Chances are it's far more likely they have seen viewing rates drop for Comcast customers who were affected by the slow-down. If a typical end-user sees their internet working normally, bu see slow-downs selectively to streaming to sites like Netflix, chances are they're going to wrongly attribute the slow-do…
It's very easy for netflix to educate the users about whose responsible for the issue.
Re: Netflix Agrees to Pay Comcast to End Web Traffic Jam
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> "Many areas only have Comcast service!" Do a lot of people in the US only have access to one or two ISP's?? If so why? I'm in a not particularly urban part of Ireland and I can choose between at least 5 ISP's, decent speeds, and a good variety of prices.
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I can't recall the last time I even heard of somebody in the US having the choice of more than two high-speed ISPs. At best, your choice is cable from one company and DSL or fiber from another. I'm sure there must be some places where there's three or more, but they must be extremely rare.
There are more if you count wireless, but those don't really work as a substitute for real home broadband, even with companies (e.g. Clear) that pretend they do.
Re: Netflix Agrees to Pay Comcast to End Web Traffic Jam
#208Earlier 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. "
This may be the cases for ISP-ISP connections, but every transit circuit I've ever purchased as an end-user has two elements, a Non Reccurring Charge (NRC) to set up the connection, and then a monthly recurring charge (MRC) consisting of, a port speed, and a 95th percentile metered usage charge.
e.g. I might get a gigabit port set up for an up front $5000 NRC, and then a 24 month contract for $2000/month port speed, and then pay $5/megabit @95th percentile of 5 minute averages sampled over a month.
The ISP samples the usage of my port every 5 minutes, (8640 samples in a 30 day month), drops the top 5% (432 samples), and then charges me the cost of the next sample (sample #8208) - If the sampled speed at #8208 was 1 Gigabit, and sample #8207 was 0 kilobits, then I am still charged $2000/month + 1000 * $5 = $7000/MRC for that month.
Cogent has always had a reputation in the industry for being the cut-rate player (to the point of other ISPs just dropping them as peering connections, resulting in companies literally not being able to communicate with their customers) - Netflix was trying to rely on Cogent to send data to their customers, presumably because they were charging significantly less than "Tier-1" transit-providers, and finally came to the realization that yes, you do get what you pay for.
None of this surprises me, and none of it appears relevant to the conversation regarding Net-Neutrality - this is a peering discussion, pure and simple.
Re: Netflix Agrees to Pay Comcast to End Web Traffic Jam
#209Earlier 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…
You forgot to mention that network technology has leapfrogged last mile connections many many times over. In many ways, the problems have gotten considerably easier for many ISPs, and there are no capacity problems at big exchanges, and certainly no barriers to scaling up.
Re: Netflix Agrees to Pay Comcast to End Web Traffic Jam
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 Comca…
According to the article, "the average speeds of Netflix's prime-time streams to Comcast subscribers had dropped 27% since October" I guess the question is, did all other traffic see the same drop? And what changes in their network would cause this?
Exactly - was it the case that ALL cogent traffic being blocked - from everything that I've read, it was. Cogent's circuits were just overloaded. They had sold transit to Netflix that they were unable to provide.
Netflix customers, in this situation, can point their fingers at Netflix (who, in turn, can point them at Cogent).
If Cogent provided 1 Gigabit of transit to Netflix, but didn't have circuits with which to connect Netflix to their customers, well, It will be interesting to see what kind of Liquidated Damages Netflix wrote into their contract with Cogent. Maybe it will be enough to pay their peering fees with Comcast.