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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

#291

Post by MichaelGG »

nitrogen wrote: post #261
vidarh wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That has never been how the internet works. You pay a part of the costs, the other party pay a part of the cost. When the other side opts for a cheap, poor quality connection (like Cogent), you suffer no matter how much you pay, and it's not your ISPs fault. It's not Comcasts responsibility if Cogent did not have peering arrangement or had paid for sufficient capacity to handle their end of the connection, that their…

It is Comcast's responsibility because I was paying them $1xx a month to take care of it. Bulk transit bandwidth is significantly cheaper than the price I was paying, so there's no justifying the claim that both sides have to pay.

Cool, let's be partners. I'll provide a service you want to access at 10Gbps, for an hour a week. I've got no connections to Comcast. I'll call up my brother, who runs a little ISP. I buy 10Gbps from him, and so have 5 other customers. You try to access my site. Packet loss ensues.

Since you've paid Comcast, they're now required to go to my brother's ISP and arrange more peering, right? Also, since you're paying, I shouldn't have to pay my brother, and he shouldn't have to pay anyone else, right?

Come to think of it, why isn't all hosting bandwidth free? Why do Azure and AWS charge for outbound bandwidth, but not inbound?

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

#292

Post by hueving »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #282
ghshephard wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>It should be on Comcast to ensure their network can get their customers the data they want.

I agree in spirit, but how do you make the distinction? If Cogent has poor connectivity to the wider Internet, is it on Comcast to fix that?

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

#293

Post by jsz0 »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #282
ghshephard wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It should be on Comcast to ensure their network can get their customers the data they want.

In your opinion why doesn't the same responsibility apply to Cogent?

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

#295

Post by twoodfin »

wmf wrote: post #248
jasomill wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does that include the Galapagos islands or a server in someone's garage that gets slashdotted?

You can't really guarantee uncongested paths at all times to the "whole Internet".

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

#296

Post by kbaker »

cwp wrote: post #257
mikeash wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think the resistance to usage-based billing is practical rather than economic. With a flat-fee scheme you can look at your bill and say, "yup, $89.95 is what I agreed to pay each month." With usage-based billing, the amount will float up and down and it's hard to understand how the amount is calculated. Usage-based telephone bills are broken down by calls, which you can probably remember.("What's this 46 minute cal…

I think the analogy to water or electricity billing is actually a very good one.

My electricity bill shows only X kWh per month. There is no "itemization" of usage. However I can purchase watt meters that can monitor power anywhere (including the main grid connection) if I decide the bill is too high.

I can definitely imagine a similar service sitting on the router or provided by the provider that does bandwidth accounting to deliver a picture of what is going on. I'm sure there would be many third party device manufacturers willing to do this traffic accounting as well.

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

#297

Post by betterunix »

rayiner wrote: post #235
betterunix wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internet companies already pay for their access: they pay their own ISP and hosting bills, just like Amazon pays UPS to ship packages.

They don't pay their ISPs to get their packets all the way to the customer. They're reliant on somebody else's property to get them there.

That is how the Internet works. You used multiple networks' property just to reply to my HN post. I doubt you paid all those networks, and I doubt that you could realistically use the Internet if you had to pay every network that stood between you and the websites you like to visit. Why should Internet companies have to pay your ISP when you do not have to pay theirs? Nowhere in the design of the Internet is your connection differentiated from an Internet company's connection.

Really, the point of the Internet is that you can communicate with other Internet users without having to worry about what ISP or network they are connected to or what arrangements govern that connection.

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

#298

Post by res0nat0r »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #265
rayiner wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost nowhere does Comcast actually have a monopoly on broadband.

This is true if you have some antiquated definition of broadband that includes a competitor offering "up to" 896kbps while Comcast offers everything from 1 to 20+ mbps, but false for everybody else.

Question: If Comcast is such a monopoly that everyone here keeps repeating ad nauseam, why hasn't it been broken up ATT style yet?

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

#299

Post by arg01 »

hueving wrote: post #292
lern_too_spel wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>It should be on Comcast to ensure their network can get their customers the data they want. I agree in spirit, but how do you make the distinction? If Cogent has poor connectivity to the wider Internet, is it on Comcast to fix that?

Cogent has been trying to upgrade their connection to Comcast and Comcast has been stalling working with Cogent for months. It's pretty clear cut in this case. A rule when the CDN and the ISP already have a direct connection is not overly unreasonable. Comcast customers are requesting a large amount of data from Cogent, Cogent tries to work with Comcast to improve the existing connection, Comcast refuses.

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

#300

Post by Wingman4l7 »

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 was from 2009; it's more prescient than ever, and no less terrifying: http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/net-neut...
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