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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

#281

Post by diminoten »

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…

You don't see any way around this?

I guess you've never heard of VPNs, then?

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

#282

Post by lern_too_spel »

ghshephard wrote: post #210
platinum1 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

Why should Comcast provide transit at a a reasonable price to Cogent when Cogent hosts data that competes with Comcast's own services? Their uneven traffic argument is a relic of the telephone era -- Comcast's customers pay them for 20 Mbps of bandwidth to services they want, but what they get is just 20 Mbps to speedtest.net. It should be on Comcast to ensure their network can get their customers the data they want.

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

#283

Post by lern_too_spel »

ghshephard wrote: post #208
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. " 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 us…

That's one way to look at it. The reason there even is such a thing as a cut-rate service like Cogent is that ISPs like Comcast have a captive audience and can increase their transit fees with impunity. The CDNs that go along with that extortion are the ones that don't get labeled "cut-rate."

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

#284

Post by cdash »

cheald wrote: post #280
JohnTHaller wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And part of that payment is for the ISP's peering agreements with other providers. Why would I pay just to connect to Verizon? I want my connection beyond Verizon to the peer networks hosting Netflix, Facebook, YouTube, etc. No customer would only pay for the last mile if that's all they got.

Yes, part of that payment is for access to those negotiated peers. However, just because a customer is paying indirectly for peer access doesn't establish an obligation on the ISP to support arbitrary uncompensated resource consumption on the behalf of their contracted peers. It's an entirely separate contract. Cogent should pay Comcast market peering costs for the unreciprocated bandwidth they send to Comcast. That'…

This is stupid, Cogent is providing Comcast customers with what they are requesting. Now Comcast says no way, I don't give a shit what my customers are asking for, you have to pay us as well. How is Cogent abusing Comcast by providing Comcast's customers with data they have requested.

No, I don't think Comcast is being abused at all and its much more likely they just don't give a shit what their customers want because they know there is nothing the customer can do about it and so they let service degrade in order to extort more money.

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

#285

Post by dovel »

ghshephard wrote: post #195
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 Comca…

What if, say, ISP1 and ISP2 both have shitty performance of netflix and then netflix pay for ISP1 to make it better. They do not pay ISP2. So, essentially netflix is available only for ISP1 and not ISP2. That sounds like that the parent comment is saying and what could happen here.

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

#286

Post by cheald »

cdash wrote: post #284
cheald wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, part of that payment is for access to those negotiated peers. However, just because a customer is paying indirectly for peer access doesn't establish an obligation on the ISP to support arbitrary uncompensated resource consumption on the behalf of their contracted peers. It's an entirely separate contract. Cogent should pay Comcast market peering costs for the unreciprocated bandwidth they send to Comcast. That'…

This is stupid, Cogent is providing Comcast customers with what they are requesting. Now Comcast says no way, I don't give a shit what my customers are asking for, you have to pay us as well. How is Cogent abusing Comcast by providing Comcast's customers with data they have requested. No, I don't think Comcast is being abused at all and its much more likely they just don't give a shit what their customers want becaus…

Because Cogent and Comcast have a peering agreement in which they agree to exchange traffic that is more or less symmetric (since that means that both partners will be spending approximately equivalent amounts on infrastructure development and maintenance). It has been customary for consumer-bound traffic to not count against the balance, since it was a relatively minor portion of the overall traffic exchanged. With the advent of high-resolution consumer-oriented video services like Netflix, that has changed - consumer traffic has become a significant portion of overall traffic exchanged, which causes a flow disparity between the two peering partners and places a disproportionate burden on one.

If this were not consumer-bound data, then Cogent would likely already be paying for the disparity. As it is, it's a good guess that Cogent has refused to compensate Comcast for the additional load on their network build-out and maintenance costs, instead relying on the good-faith consumer data exception to exempt them from paying for it. Comcast's response to this was to steal Netflix's business from Cogent, thereby alleviating the uncompensated load that Cogent was placing on their network and improving Netflix's deliverability.

There's no such thing as a free lunch. If you're a service provider, you're paying someone for delivery of your bytes. Netflix just cut out the middleman here. It's not like Netflix didn't already have to pay for the bytes they delivered - they just changed who they're paying.

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

#287

Post by rayiner »

nitrogen wrote: post #260
rayiner wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Remember when there used to be five different cable companies listed in the weekly TV listings? Maybe you never saw that in your area, but when I was growing up in a semi-rural suburb, there were many cable TV competitors. Surely they didn't all require franchise agreements to want to enter the market. Further, assuming franchise agreements exist and were necessary, consumers and municipalities should expect better f…

You're totally ignoring the difference between cable systems now and cable systems back then. Building modern HFC networks capable of supporting broadband requires tremendously more investment than cable TV systems of yore.

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

#288

Post by MichaelGG »

gtirloni wrote: post #231
MichaelGG wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your expectation is that if Netflix intentionally prevents users from using their service because they don't like the user's choice of ISP, that will turn out well for Netflix?

If you want to ignore all the details in this discussion, how much power each company has and how much they're willing to leverage it.. sure, go ahead. The whole net neutrality discussion is a power play between content providers and fiber owners, nothing else. The discussion about freedom and competition is awesome (and right!), but at the end it's these two huge groups fighting each other while we are screaming "th…

What would Netflix be losing? A lot of customers? And handing all of them over to Comcast's on-demand service. It'd be a massive win for Comcast.

There's no net neutrality issue in this discussion at all. Comcast is simply declining to upgrade its peering with Cogent. How is that net neutrality? If Netflix comes to me tomorrow and decides to buy all their transit through me, is Comcast somehow required to give me lots of free peering?

Netflix might be the majority(?) of Cogent's traffic, and Comcast might decide that it's not worth upgrading the connections for them. But as long as Comcast isn't discriminating traffic on their end (via some traffic shaping mechanism, I'd guess), then it's simply a matter of "Comcast thinks Cogent has enough connectivity, and sees no reason for them to upgrade the connections while getting nothing in return".

Their customers may disagree, but it up to them to not buy the service. (Perhaps the real problem here is lack of competition in the ISP market?)

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

#289

Post by MichaelGG »

dovel wrote: post #285
ghshephard wrote: post #195

Earlier 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…

What if, say, ISP1 and ISP2 both have shitty performance of netflix and then netflix pay for ISP1 to make it better. They do not pay ISP2. So, essentially netflix is available only for ISP1 and not ISP2. That sounds like that the parent comment is saying and what could happen here.

Why would Netflix want to do that?

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

#290

Post by josephlord »

nailer wrote: post #77
k-mcgrady wrote: post #57

Earlier 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.

Ireland and Britain enjoy better competition since they're a smaller area. Australia and the US OTOH are terrible since the population is so spread out (Australia's slightly better as the population is mainly coastal).

No Britain enjoys better competition because BT's final mile is heavily regulated so that competitors can offer services and are charged regulated prices for access to the unbundled local loop.

The BT Group was also forcibly split into separate operating companies, particularly OpenReach which owns the local loops and sells services to all ISPs including BT Retail.

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