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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

#241

Post by ghshephard »

jonknee wrote: post #225
ghshephard wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, Netfl…

Completely agree with you here. It's time that the United States realizes that it's approach towards broadband was flawed and tries something new.

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

#242

Post by rayiner »

betterunix wrote: post #175
aleem wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Consumers are going to get screwed on the front & back end of this. Netflix is network heavy and competes with Comcast offerings using Comcast's own network. That was the key motivator here. Even if Comcast has a monopoly in select areas, it cannot do price differentiation in just those select areas. IANAL, but that sounds illegal.

"Netflix is network heavy and competes with Comcast offerings using Comcast's own network" Funny, back when I was a Comcast customer, I do not remember paying for "Comcast Network Access." I remember paying for "Internet Access;" sure, I went over Comcast's network, but I (maybe naively) thought that such distinctions were irrelevant on the Internet (that was kind of the point, if memory serves).

Its silly to pretend that the abstraction is the reality. There is no Internet, just a bunch of private networks connected together. No amount of wishful thinking will change that underlying reality. Now that real money is in play, the fiction of the internet is crumbling and the physical nature is becoming exposed.

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

#243

Post by ghshephard »

terminus wrote: post #234
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…

> Services like Netflix that send massive amounts of traffic in a single direction violate this assumption. Netflix does not send any data. Comcast customers request lots of data from Netflix. Significant difference. Another example (just in the other direction): A backup provider needs to pay up big-cable because their customers are uploading a lot of data?

Your second example is actually really fascinating - backup and photo providers get awesome deals on bandwidth because that part of the circuit is typically highly underutilized. So, ironically, it's a case where backup providers argue that their circuits should be charged at much less than market rates because the traffic is going in the opposite direction ,and their provider usually has circuits going idle in that direction.

I'm willing to wager that backup providers haven't run into any upload issues with Comcast for this reason.

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

#244

Post by ggreenbe »

simplimedia wrote: post #158
SwellJoe wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My cable subscription is "Internet". I do not have a cable television subscription, and have no desire to have one; even back when Comcast was offering cable TV for $1 added to the Internet price and seemed shocked that I wouldn't want it...I replied, "I don't have a TV. WTF would I do with it?"

For a business...it was $300 cheaper to install Comcast with TV than without as of Oct 2013. I pay $2/month for TV but got free install and I can cancel TV in a year. It seems to me they need another mouth to feed.

Maybe I'm missing something but why would it be cheaper for Comcast to include TV?

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

#245

Post by ghshephard »

mikeash wrote: post #200
philwelch wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 blockin…

Comcast wasn't blocking or rate limiting Netflix (in this scenario) - they had over utilized circuits with Cogent, who is a transit-provider that sells cut-rate transit of lower quality (and much lower cost) than other transit providers.

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

#246

Post by rayiner »

nitrogen wrote: post #232
rayiner wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even after TWC and Comcast combine, they will be the only wired TV choice for only 9% of customers.

9% of 300 million is a freaking huge number.

My guess is that in a true free market, a big chunk of those households would have no cable service at all. That is to say without the franchise agreements that gave them quasi monopolies in those areas, providing service wouldn't have been attractive in the first place.

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

#247

Post by wmf »

ghshephard wrote: post #192
wmf wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think Cogent's cheapness has much to do with it. When Netflix was using Tata, Comcast refused to upgrade their Tata links. When Netflix used Level 3, Comcast found a way to create congestion there.

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

#248

Post by wmf »

jasomill wrote: post #173
wmf wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Equivalently, they were refusing to upgrade specifically to help Netflix.

Comcast customers are paying for uncongested paths to the whole Internet, not just 70% of it.

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

#249

Post by massysett »

clubhi wrote: post #201

I just cancelled my netflix subscription. I hope you do the same. Let them know why.

I did, about a week ago, due to poor picture quality and a library barely better than Amazon Prime, which I pay for anyway for the shipping. Had they made this Comcast deal a few weeks ago I probably would have kept them if the picture quality were better, but now that I've cancelled I won't bother to sign up again to see if it improves.

I was surprised that when I cancelled I didn't even get a single form asking why.

Netflix is $8 a month for all you can stream, so I suppose I can't expect any more than a poor library of B movies and old TV shows.

It's not up to me how Netflix and Comcast sort out their business disputes. Netflix was not delivering service that was worth their measly $8 a month.

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

#250

Post by ajasmin »

wmf wrote: post #146
toast0 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like standard paid peering; there's nothing non-competitive here. If you're a small provider, you tend to buy transit from one or a few providers, and pay per bit in whichever direction has the most traffic. If you're bigger, maybe you can setup peering. If you have relatively balanced flows, and meet other qualifications, you can usually get free (settlement free) peering. If your flows aren't balanced,…

The tradition when backbones peer with each other was for traffic to be balanced. When a content provider peers with an eyeball ISP, free peering makes sense regardless of balance.

That makes a lot of sense. Not solving this earlier is a detriment to the customers of both companies.
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