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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

#221

Post by ghshephard »

noclip wrote: post #194
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm looking forward to chipotle_coyote response on this, but I don't think he's referring to the circuits that commercial customers pay for, but instead the ISP peering circuits - which are usually expected to run at much less utilization.

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

#222

Post by MichaelGG »

wnevets wrote: post #188

Only america can you charge twice for the same product

I've got a site. It has large files. Is Comcast required to provide free peering for me? Where do I sign up for my 10GbE port (my site's small so 10G is enough)?

Oh wait, I buy from a friend who runs an ISP. Turns out, he only has a single 10G connection for all his customers. Can he call Comcast for a free peering arrangement now?

That's not how things work.

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

#223

Post by revelation »

mikeash wrote: post #196
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 se…

The idea is that usage-based pricing doesn't make sense for customers because there is a hard limit on consumption simply based on the terrible state of last mile connections. Simply put, charging 2014 dollars for usage on a line with a capacity that was last relevant in 1985 is not motivated by actual capacity limitations, but a simple money grab.

(Not to mention that there are no inherent variable costs to transporting bits. Water needs to be purified, electricity is obviously usage priced - but you can be pushing bits forever once you have the hardware setup.)

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

#224

Post by jbnicolai »

teddyh wrote: post #45
jaggederest wrote: post #4

Wow, Netflix has decided to negotiate with the terrorists? I'm pretty disappointed. Edit: Having read more of the non-paywalled version, I have to say I think they're shooting themselves in the foot, even if Comcast was offering a better price than Cogent. It sets a terrible precedent, and gives Comcast the leverage to bump the price extortionately at the end of the deal.

> negotiate with the terrorists? The term you should be looking for is “paying the danegeld”: That if once you have paid him the Danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane. — Dane Geld, Rudyard Kipling

Thank you for introducing me to that fantastic poem. In case others are interested as well: http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/dane_geld.html

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

#225

Post by jonknee »

ghshephard wrote: post #215
jonknee wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pass…

Comcast is prepared to provide that bandwidth to its customers subject to it's fair use cap of 300 Gigabytes. What they aren't prepared to do (for better or worse) is install larger circuits to Cogent so that Cogent's customers have unblocked access to Comcast's customers. Netflix could have held out, and made Comcast out to be the bad guy, or could have leaned on Cogent to get the circuits installed - but, in this c…

> Netflix could have held out, and made Comcast out to be the bad guy, or could have leaned on Cogent to get the circuits installed - but, in this case, they folded and just decided to pay Comcast.

How would that work? Comcast customers by and large can't switch to another broadband provider and Netflix customers can certainly switch to another video provider (Comcast!). It's not like this is a brand new issue, Netflix has held out for a long time. The Comcast / TWC merger is what finally did it, 30M combined customers is too big to risk on a public game of net neutrality chicken.

Surely they're still working on lobbying efforts to make it illegal for a company like Comcast to simultaneously have a monopoly on selling broadband and compete with services using said broadband. It's pretty obvious at this point that internet access is a utility and it should be treated as such.

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

#226

Post by nitrogen »

ghshephard wrote: post #215
jonknee wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pass…

Comcast is prepared to provide that bandwidth to its customers subject to it's fair use cap of 300 Gigabytes. What they aren't prepared to do (for better or worse) is install larger circuits to Cogent so that Cogent's customers have unblocked access to Comcast's customers. Netflix could have held out, and made Comcast out to be the bad guy, or could have leaned on Cogent to get the circuits installed - but, in this c…

What they aren't prepared to do (for better or worse) is install larger circuits to Cogent so that Cogent's customers have unblocked access to Comcast's customers.

That's totally backwards. Comcast's customers are paying for access to Cogent's customers, including Netflix.

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

#227

Post by rayiner »

joenathan wrote: post #186
rayiner wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is a problem, then build physical infrastructure so your business isn't dependent on someone else's pipes. If states and municipalities put up roadblocks to it, then let's focus on tearing down those roadblocks. I think it's ridiculous and self-serving for internet companies to complain about this. Getting bits to customers is a critical part of any online business. You can either do it yourself, or pay someo…

So if I need to drive to a customers site I should build my own interstate?

If you drive to your customers house over a private road, you can't complain if they charge toll.

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

#228

Post by gnoway »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #57
cmircea wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not when their competitors will do the same. Heck, what competitors? Many areas only have Comcast service!

>> "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.

Most US municipalities have a franchise agreement for a particular service. The franchisee has exclusive rights to provide a service in the franchised area. So there is often one cable tv provider and one wired telephone provider in an area. This naturally leads to one cable internet and one DSL provider. Some areas do also have a fiber provider (Verizon FiOS, Google Fiber).

These same areas are often also serviced by wireless providers, either cellular, satellite or some other kind of fixed wireless.

Note that while DSL tends to be available in every market, it may not actually be available at your home due to distance from the CO. Or it may be available but you're so far away that the performance would not be worth what it cost.

So the problem is that there's a clear hierarchy of what's good in any area. Where I live it's cable > DSL >> wireless/satellite. Compound this with the pricing structure: where I live it's wireless/satellite >> cable == dsl, with cable having some speed tiers that DSL can't match. At the end of the day, for any consumer trying to make a decision on value and performance, there's often really only one option.

I'm going to assert that this is how it looks for the majority of the geographical US. I'm not sure about the larger metro areas.

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

#229

Post by jejones3141 »

rayiner wrote: post #147
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…

If this is a problem, then build physical infrastructure so your business isn't dependent on someone else's pipes. If states and municipalities put up roadblocks to it, then let's focus on tearing down those roadblocks. I think it's ridiculous and self-serving for internet companies to complain about this. Getting bits to customers is a critical part of any online business. You can either do it yourself, or pay someo…

Internet companies that are also cable providers have an inherent conflict of interest; they want to keep as many people as possible tied to the dinosaur technology of cable as long as they can--so it's in their interest not to provide sufficiently good service to let people cut the cable, or to strong-arm networks into not providing their programming via the net.
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