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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

#301

Post by Spooky23 »

valas wrote: post #132
ffk wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The deal was a paid-peering deal, which would likely drive down Netflix costs. We don't have any information on whether net neutrality was harmed. Hopefully netflix will provide information on this. Peering is a practice where two sides agree to maintain their side of the infrastructure and not charge for metered bandwidth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peering

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…

I work in a totally different environment -- a very large enterprise IT environment with 200k+ users and probably 2,000 physical locations.

When we do business with cloud providers or other third parties, we usually start with internet based access. When the relationship gets bigger or needs to serve a large portion of our base, we typically either peer with that provider (in the case of big cloud providers like Amazon, Microsoft, etc) or establish dedicated connectivity between our networks.

I think Comcast, Verizon, TWC, etc has a point here -- as a relationship grows with another party, you should have a more robust connection. Netflix hasn't wanted to do that -- it prefers to use a shitty ISP (Cogent) for cheap, and augment it by co-locating content on end-user ISP networks for free. Services like Netflix and Youtube stretch the net-neutrality argument, because they aren't good citizens.

That said, the end-user ISPs cannot be allowed to discriminate, which their monopoly power will almost certainly enable them to do.

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

#302

Post by [deleted] »

the_ancient wrote: post #270
santosha wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither Comcast nor Netflix are trying to operate a non-profit, it's a payment dispute between two large companies who disagree over who should pay. You could just as well argue that Netflix was letting Cogent / Comcast fight it out instead of directly peering with ISPs which benefits customers.

The Biggest problem here is, I as a Comcast customer have already paid Comcast to bring me the packets from Netflix... That is what my outrageous bill every month is for.. They will now be DOUBLE BILLING for the same packet, a cost that WILL BE passed along to the netflix customer.

[deleted]

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

#305

Post by betterunix »

rayiner wrote: post #242
betterunix wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

"Its silly to pretend that the abstraction is the reality"

No more silly than pretending the the abstraction of "files" and "directories" is reality. No more silly than pretending that your computer is running a Python program, when in reality there are sequences of machine language instructions being run. Computers are useful because of abstractions.

"There is no Internet, just a bunch of private networks connected together"

You might have missed the definition of "an internet:"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internetwork

There is, in fact, an Internet that we use every day. The overwhelming success of the Internet is due to the abstraction it presents, which is best-effort routing of packets from one host to another -- without regard for what networks the hosts are connected to, what arrangements govern their connections to those networks, and perhaps most important of all, what applications those hosts are running. On the scale of positive improvements to human communication, the Internet is up there with the printing press and written language.

"Now that real money is in play, the fiction of the internet is crumbling and the physical nature is becoming exposed."

No, what we are seeing is the impact of years of systematic attacks on the Internet by companies that are desperate to protect obsolete business models. Comcast is worried about the imminent demise of cable TV and all the power and profit that came with it. AT&T is worried about the demise of long distance fees, roaming charges, SMS charges, and all the power and profit that came with controlling the phone system. The recording industry and movie industry worked hard to leave the Internet divided into "consumers" and "services," even though the system itself was designed to be far more general.

In short, had we told these companies to adapt or die rather than tolerating their efforts to roll back the clock, we would not be in the situation we are in today. This has nothing to do with leaky abstractions, physical limitations, or the design of the Internet. It is just a power grab, a systematic effort to destroy a good thing that threatened the entrenched players.

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

#306

Post by fpgeek »

tod222 wrote: post #259
rayiner wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost nowhere does Comcast actually have a monopoly on broadband.

A duopoly or oligopoly isn't much better. There's still a marked lack of choice for the customer, which results in lock-in and higher prices. The Hacker News readership includes many people capable of starting ISPs. Comcast's large profits, which have been used to fund a string of high cost acquisitions, are a juicy target for potential competitors. Yet you never see discussion of ISP startups on Hacker News because…

> This wasn't the case in the 90s, and had Hacker News existed back then ISP startups would have appeared frequently.

Indeed. The late 90s / early 2000s were the golden age of the CLEC. There were certainly pain points (like getting copper pairs provisioned), but I remember not caring that my building didn't support Comcast Internet because I had an SDSL connection from Telocity and an ADSL connection from Speakeasy.

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

#307

Post by mbetter »

jsz0 wrote: post #293
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. In your opinion why doesn't the same responsibility apply to Cogent?

It does. In this case, it appears that Cogent was the only party actually interested in making it happen.

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

#308

Post by nknighthb »

res0nat0r wrote: post #298
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

AT&T was broken up into a bunch of smaller regional monopolies that did not compete with one another. (Almost a century after its founding, by the way, and decades of on-and-off litigation.)

The cable industry has evolved into a bunch of regional monopolies that do not compete with one another.

The effect of breaking Comcast up AT&T-style would be... a bunch of regional monopolies that do not compete with one another. And then, as with AT&T, proceed to consolidate via M&A into larger regional monopolies... that do not compete with one another. Same as now.

Welcome to the American telecommunications industry.

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

#309

Post by _delirium »

the_ancient wrote: post #270
santosha wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither Comcast nor Netflix are trying to operate a non-profit, it's a payment dispute between two large companies who disagree over who should pay. You could just as well argue that Netflix was letting Cogent / Comcast fight it out instead of directly peering with ISPs which benefits customers.

The Biggest problem here is, I as a Comcast customer have already paid Comcast to bring me the packets from Netflix... That is what my outrageous bill every month is for.. They will now be DOUBLE BILLING for the same packet, a cost that WILL BE passed along to the netflix customer.

But what about the Comcast customers who don't use Netflix? They win from this deal! At least, if you make the assumption that costs are passed on to the consumer, as you seem to be making.

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

#310

Post by lern_too_spel »

jsz0 wrote: post #293
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. In your opinion why doesn't the same responsibility apply to Cogent?

Sonic and Google Fiber manage it fine. This is clearly a case of Comcast trying to get paid from both ends and screwing their customer with poor access to the services they want in the meantime, which conveniently nudges their customers to their own competing services.
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