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Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

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

#161

Post by spindritf »

tjgq wrote: post #140
spindritf wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. The point of net neutrality is that, while ISPs should not be held liable for what other entities in the network…

That's a nice goal but it doesn't answer the crucial question: who pays for the expansion to accommodate traffic generated by Netflix?

Netflix? Comcast's subscribers? All of them or only the ones using Netflix? Level3? Comcast's investors? Tax payers? Some combination of the above? And if so, in what proportion?

This is completely impervious to "I already paid and I demand..." argument because everyone listed there already paid and wants something. Preferably cheaper or paid by someone else.

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

#162

Post by noselasd »

rhizome wrote: post #125
klodolph wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would also give the CDNs a fair amount in customer support calls, bad publicity, and make their paying customers angry about lost business.

Support calls from whom? CDNs effectively sit behind the Comcast site.

From the CDN customers. They'll be annoyed if they find out the service they paid money for isn't doing what it's supposed to do.

Since they've paid the CDN, they don't care what Comcast has done or is doing - they paid the CDN, it's the problem of CDN.

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

#163

Post by diminoten »

CocaKoala wrote: post #157
diminoten wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They spent money on upgrading their network, and now that money is going to waste if the ISPs don't make use of the additional bandwidth (for additional money). ISP customers are not suffering, because L3 is just one of many providers. What content does L3 provide that no one else can? And if that's the case, how is L3 not a monopoly in that respect? Aren't we all calling for more competition in this space anyway?

I guess I'm confused; in one post you're pointing out that I'm getting a month of 720p video instead of 1080p, but now you're saying that I'm not suffering. If my quality of service is being degraded, is that not suffering in the context of this issue? I'm paying for service and yet not getting it. So clearly there IS an issue, because connections are suffering. Are you telling me that ports between L3 and various IS…

First of all, L3 doesn't actually provide Netflix content, I don't think, so your video stream is unaffected entirely by L3's agreements with any ISP.

Second of all, you have no SLA with your ISP, so your quality of service is, "best effort". If you want an SLA, you have to pay, otherwise you're going to get the best that the ISP can give you, which means some degraded performance. That's what you've paid for. If you want better, pay more money.

Third of all, you really should read the submitted article. It's very clear you haven't. When you do, you'll find that L3 is the only backbone provider not playing ball, and the other backbone providers are paying, which means that there actually are nicely upgraded connections (I don't know about "plenty of bandwidth to spare"), paid for by the network backbone providers.

When you read the article, you'll be much better informed on this topic. I do recommend also reading L3's blog post. There's some good info there, and it provides all the "sourcing" you've asked for.

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

#164

Post by timr »

People keep claiming that there should be a "free market" for bandwidth...but then they say that the ISPs should have to absorb the costs of peering (which can be significant -- the hardware isn't free) without passing the costs on to anyone. The backbone providers complain when the cost is passed to them; the consumers scream bloody murder when the costs are passed to them in the form of a bill.

Obviously, there's no free market in the status quo: we (consumers) basically expect to pay a low, ever-declining price for bandwidth, while someone else eats the costs of a growing network infrastructure. There's an economic disconnect, and legislating that it shouldn't exist seems worse than futile.

I say: pass the costs on to the consumer, and break down the monopolies on last-mile cable service. If the cable companies had to compete for subscribers, they could still pass on the costs of improving their infrastructure, but they'd have to compete with everyone else to do it.

In other words, the problem here isn't "net neutrality" -- it's that we've got a monopoly at the last mile that we need to destroy.

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

#165

Post by Jtsummers »

danielweber wrote: post #144
Jtsummers wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would they still make money if they had to pay for the upkeep of the network with only Internet fees? In parts of the country, slower-speed copper, fast-download cable, and a few fiber networks are already built out. The cable distribution giants like Time Warner Cable and Comcast are already making a 97 percent margin on their “almost comically profitable” Internet services, according to Craig Moffet, an analyst a…

"97% profit margin" is a self-doubting figure. As soon as you hear it you should know that someone is trying to sell you something. It's like deciding Microsoft's profit margin based on the cost to physically acquire CD-ROMs.

Alright, perhaps I shouldn't have quoted that, but let's continue with the 2 edits of my post where I found real figures on revenue and costs. Video revenue is (in absolute terms) higher than internet revenue. Video revenue growth is slower than internet revenue growth. Video customer growth is actually shrinkage, they're losing customers (hundreds of thousands each year). Internet customer growth is actually growth (over one million each year).

The primary video cost (programming) is approaching 50% of video revenue, and it's growing at a pace that has literally equaled or exceeded video revenue growth for each annual period in the linked document. So, making an assumption here that's likely untrue, if we consider that the other costs are distributed equally between the two (marketing, tech support, physical support, etc) then the internet service is approaching parity with the video service, and will exceed it in several more years as the higher profit business component.

I suppose if someone else has more time to dig through this document or other insight from being in the industry they could chime in with which has the greater costs once programming is removed from the equation.

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

#166

Post by rhizome »

noselasd wrote: post #162
rhizome wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Support calls from whom? CDNs effectively sit behind the Comcast site.

From the CDN customers. They'll be annoyed if they find out the service they paid money for isn't doing what it's supposed to do. Since they've paid the CDN, they don't care what Comcast has done or is doing - they paid the CDN, it's the problem of CDN.

Those customers aren't getting depeered, only Comcast.

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

#167

Post by Jtsummers »

jimbokun wrote: post #160
Jtsummers wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

If ABC has a blank channel, but you can still watch CBS and NBC and ESPN just fine, the average consumer will assume the problem is with ABC. If all the channels are blank, the average consumer will blame the cable company. Similarly, if "the Internet is down", from the customer's perspective, they're going to blame the ISP, not Netflix/Hulu/Amazon.

That's if everyone particpates on a Comcast/TWC/Cox/etc. boycott. If my parents can get to Amazon Prime but not Netflix, they'll assume the issue is Netflix. (ok, maybe not my parents, but the idealized tech-unaware parent)

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

#168

Post by diminoten »

shiftpgdn wrote: post #148
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.

At this point this seems to be the ONLY solution. Knocking Comcast off the internet for 24 hours would result in a lot of attention towards net neutrality and their lackadaisical attitude towards peering.

They wouldn't be knocked off the Internet, they'd just have to route their packets through less efficient paths, which would slow everything down significantly.

The Internet would more or less shut down from traffic overload if all of Comcast's customers lost all the shortcuts that Comcast has created for them to content.

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

#169

Post by JTon »

rhizome wrote: post #128
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 don't think it would go that way, their customers would more often say, "what's a CDN?"

They don't have to say CDN explicitly. They can simply say Netflix or Hulu. For example, "Dear valued customer. The recent slow down of your Netflix service is the result of an issue with Netflix servers. ISP_X service is fully functional. Please contact Netflix customer support for further assistance"

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

#170

Post by alex_doom »

exelius wrote: post #159
ChuckMcM wrote: post #97

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…

This is how it should probably be done if we were starting from scratch. A system like the one you describe would cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $300-500 billion; which isn't completely insane as far as national infrastructure projects go. The problem is that we're not starting from scratch. It's a lot harder for the government to justify that expense when there are a number of viable privately-owned alternati…

> if you had $500 billion to spend and you had to choose between overhauling the nation's education system (which desperately needs it) and providing better Internet access to people, which would you choose?

They'll choose D. Build a new sportsball arena

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