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Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

cringely.com

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Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

#91

Post by nitid_name »

spindritf wrote: post #57
spankalee wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not, because the other side also paid for it to their ISP, CDN, or the build-out and operation of their own CDN. What Comcast and friends are asking for is a _third_ payment, just because. And don't be mistaken, if they win this battle they will start looking for the fourth payment, which is from their customers for faster service to "premium" sites like Netflix, HBO, iTunes, etc.

because the other side also paid for it to their ISP, CDN, or the build-out and operation of their own CDN. That's like saying that you should be able to park for free because you paid for your car, all the taxes on it, and the fee for issuing a driving license. Paying your ISP doesn't necessarily grant you unlimited access to every other network on the Internet. There is no God-ordained fee structure here. It can be…

> Paying your ISP doesn't necessarily grant you unlimited access to every other network on the Internet.

That's actually the whole thrust of the argument, as I understand it. Net Neutrality says "If I buy internet I should get all internet at the flow rate I bought internet."

Content providers would buy a flow rate, consumers would buy a flow rate, and the people providing that flow rate (e.g. Level 3 for the CDNs, Comcast for the consumers) would deliver that flow rate, regardless of what or where it is going.

Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

#92

Post by vinceguidry »

api wrote: post #25

While I agree with the general thrust of the article, there is one fallacious argument here. Cringely argues that cable breaks even and money is made on the net, but that's an artificial distinction. What if cable disappeared? Would they still make money if they had to pay for the upkeep of the network with only Internet fees? The desperation and risk of this game of chicken convinces me that the answer might be "not…

What makes you think of desperation and "a game of chicken"? What's really at stake here? Looks to me like only something ISPs have already learned to live not having, customer approval.

Far as I can tell, there's not much more they can lose here until the business landscape changes, and it's a toss up as to whether this sort of brinksmanship is going to drive changes in that landscape or not.

Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

#93

Post by Jtsummers »

jonknee wrote: post #79
JTon wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too risky, no? If Comcast said the problem was not with their network, but with bit CDNs. Customers would shift their rage towards them instead. The whole thing would turn into a PR pissing match

I'm going to go with customers being mad with who they send a big check to every month (e.g. Comcast). 99% of people only know about their ISP, not their ISP's providers.

Not a big check, but they'd also be frustrated with Netflix/Hulu/Amazon Prime whom they also send money to each month (or year). The average customer wouldn't understand that it's the middleman causing problems, not one of the two endpoints (service provider or content provider).

Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

#94

Post by wtmcc »

api wrote: post #25

While I agree with the general thrust of the article, there is one fallacious argument here. Cringely argues that cable breaks even and money is made on the net, but that's an artificial distinction. What if cable disappeared? Would they still make money if they had to pay for the upkeep of the network with only Internet fees? The desperation and risk of this game of chicken convinces me that the answer might be "not…

Internet service is a much higher margin business than television. I don’t see why Big Cable should want to stay in it, at this rate.

81% of the money TWC takes in video subscription fees they spend on video programming from Viacom, EPSN, HBO, etc. [1]

3% of the money TWC takes in broadband subscription fees they spend on high-speed data. [2]

These figures do not include infrastructure investments ($3.2 billion in 2013). [3]

[1] (4,782m+772m)/6,825m = .81. (http://ir.timewarnercable.com/files/doc_financials/Annual%20...) [2] 175m/5,822m = .03. (Ibid) [3] 3,198m. (Ibid)

Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

#95

Post by knome »

droopybuns wrote: post #50

So on the one side is the fat-cat ISP who doesn't want to make expensive capital investments ih their transport. And on the other side is the fat-cat vc funded video content providers, who don't want to pay for the their mp4-based saturation of all the pipes. This is a negotiation. There are two active media campaigns that are trying to gin up our anger against The Other Guy (tm) as part of their negotiations. I just…

I'm paying my ISP to maintain a good enough connection to the backbone infrastructure such that I can download what I want.

The content providers are paying their ISP to maintain a good enough connection to the backbone infrastructure such that they can upload what they want.

The content providers ISP is maintaining a good connection, and shunting their packets into the backbone happily.

The problem, is my ISP is being a dick and refusing to upgrade their connection. The backbone is dropping my packets because my ISP isn't holding up it's side of the bargain and giving the backbone the connection it needs to offload the traffic I'm requesting. Instead, they want the businesses I request packets from to pay them a toll to deliver those packets.

This isn't how the system is supposed to work, but they don't mind breaking everything and pissing everyone off if it means they can put a surcharge on the traffic I request.

Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

#96

Post by hga »

keehun wrote: post #42

Maybe I'm naïve beyond any recognition, but shouldn't the ISP's or whoever is peering charge based on the bandwidth amounts? It sounds like they have a flat-rate contract with each other and now they're charging more?

Inexperienced in the field? This sort of thing has been going on since at least the '90s; this search ought to bring up some relevant hits: https://www.google.com/search?q=uunet+peering+ma-east

One thing to focus on is that there are 2 customers, and two middlemen. E.g. Netflix Level 3 Comcast a Netflix subscriber.

Netflix and the Netflix subscriber are each paying their ISPs hefty sums for access to "the Internet". In the ideal world, Level 3 and Comcast would peer at various points for maximum efficiency on both their networks.

Comcast enjoys a local municipality government monopoly in their markets, with iffy competition from state and Federal monopolies granted to the RBOCs Verizon, AT&T, and in theory CenturyLink (which owns the US West states, but has never been very serious about Internet service and especially their own "TV"/cable service), and all the small ILECs who provide telephone service where the big boys had no interest.

One big problem here is that "TV"/cable service deployment for the first two RBOCs, who cover the vast majority of the population, has been halted outside of contractual requirements with municipalities and the like. (If you're in a really bad spot, like I am, on unincorporated land adjacent to two cities, the local cable company is not required to provide service and doesn't, AT&T provides slow and expensive (but reliable!) ADSL with very small caps, 150 GiB per month ... and now they're buying the DirectTV my parents use to get around that cable company problem!)

So as noted in the article, the bandwidth flow might be asymmetrical, and for these local "last mile" ISPs, there are technical and economic reasons for only providing asymmetrical service in the first place, e.g. head end noise, but all the Netflix bits coming in through Level 3 to Comcast Netflix subscribers are paid for, by the hefty payments the subscribers pay to Comcast for access to "the Internet". (And which are soon going to get caps as well from what I've read.)

But Comcast would of course prefer you get your "TV"/cable bits from them, and have no particular interest in enabling Netflix to supplant them. And they're now committing fraud on their subscribers, by telling them they're providing access to "the Internet", but deliberately degrading significant portions of it.

Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

#97

Post by ChuckMcM »

There is an interesting unbalance because Comcast has so much leverage by owning the last mile, they can push around Tier 1 providers. I'd like to fix that, mostly by creating a public policy around municipally owned Layer 1 infrastructure between customers in their cities and a city exchange building. Conceptually it would be no different than the city owning the sewers and outsourcing the water treatment plant to a contractor (or two). Creating a new "ISP" would involve installing equipment in the City Exchange(s), providing compatible customer premises equipment to subscribers, and then patching their 'port' at the City Exchange to the ISP's gear.

Its going to be a long conversation :-)

Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

#98

Post by diminoten »

CocaKoala wrote: post #84
diminoten wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Streaming services utilize a buffer, so no , it isn't the end of the world if packets are dropped. The buffer gets used while the packets get retransmitted. As for multiplayer games, most use UDP, and the ones that use TCP tend to use some tricks that allow for a certain amount of latency. This is why the Internet isn't currently down, even though this is currently a problem. No widely used Internet-based technology…

Twitch.tv, justin.tv, youtube. That's off the top of my head and I'm confident there are more than I'm missing. There are plenty of video streaming services; not all of them are as large as netflix, but to say "Netflix is a unique case" is pretty weird. And dropping packets isn't the end of the world, but it's certainly not good. Should we just ignore a problem just because the world isn't ending?

Netflix is a unique case. No one even comes close to network usage. Not even close. It's a very unique case, given its volume.

And I don't know who here said to ignore this problem, but they're wrong too. It's just that this isn't the "It’s insulting." problem the submission tries to paint it as. His solution is to "throw the bums out". Are you kidding me? Why are we wasting our time reading and talking about this tripe?

Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

#99

Post by mhandley »

[deleted] wrote: post #54
mhandley wrote: post #39

Would be very interesting to see what happened if the big CDN providers just depeered Comcast for 24 hours. Would certainly cost Comcast a fair amount in customer support calls, bad publicity, and properly bring the debate to the general public.

[deleted]

Monopolies are not so difficult to break. You just need to convince the politicians that doing so will get them reelected. And to do that you need to get the public really annoyed. Now how could you possibly do that I wonder

Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

#100

Post by spindritf »

talmand wrote: post #81
spindritf wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because the other side also paid for it to their ISP, CDN, or the build-out and operation of their own CDN. That's like saying that you should be able to park for free because you paid for your car, all the taxes on it, and the fee for issuing a driving license. Paying your ISP doesn't necessarily grant you unlimited access to every other network on the Internet. There is no God-ordained fee structure here. It can be…

I'm sorry, your comparison doesn't work for me. I don't see how those even remotely compare. What I was actually sold from my ISP and I'm currently paying for was indeed unlimited access to everything on the Internet. It's called an Internet connection and that's how I interpret what I'm paying for. If the bill can be split between me, my ISP, and Netflix then I want my bill lowered if my ISP is going to charge Netfl…

What I was actually sold from my ISP and I'm currently paying for was indeed unlimited access to everything on the Internet.

There is no such service. Not only does it not exist, it cannot exist. No ISP can provide that. Any independent network on the Internet can start dropping your packets tomorrow for any reason. Including a lazy admin filtering out your entire country. Or due to a copyright agreement. Happens all the time.

If they really promised "unlimited access to everything on the Internet", then you were misled but I doubt their lawyer would allow for it.

If the bill can be split between me, my ISP, and Netflix then I want my bill lowered if my ISP is going to charge Netflix to deliver bits I requested

Why? It may not be increased. Or it may be increased less than it otherwise would. Or it may be jacked to whatever amount they can get out of you.

That's the whole point. There is no pre-ordained price for carrying bits. There is no pre-ordained split between carriers and end points. There is no pre-ordained service level. It's all just a matter of agreement between parties. So now they're negotiating.

I don't understand however why some believe they have moral highground because "they already paid." Everyone already paid something.

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