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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?

#191

Post by jeremyjh »

diminoten wrote: post #168
shiftpgdn wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well the CDN could alternatively blackhole these networks.

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

#192

Post by nostrademons »

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…

IIUC that's similar to how the electricity grid works in Texas - the last mile is public, but then there are dozens of power companies that contract and subcontract to supply the actual juice. It is, reportedly, a disaster. You get small new companies popping up all the time and dying through mergers and acquisitions. Some own just a single power plant, some own nothing physical at all and are just a reseller to handle billing & arbitrage or broker cost differences. If there's a problem theres's nobody to call and nobody whose responsibility is fixing it. Consumers are left in the lurch whenever there's a merger or acquisition, and the company they pay their bills to usually bears little resemblance to who they initially signed up with.

(Come to think of it, before the wave of banking consolidation in the mid-2000s, this also described the banking situation in New England. My college bank account went from Bank of the West to BankNorth to TD BankNorth in the time it took me to graduate, and my credit card went from BankNorth to TD BankNorth to FIA Card Services to Bank of America in the 3 years I stayed in Massachusetts after graduation.)

IMHO the root problem is that consumers have no leverage because there are millions of them and none own any of the means of production, and so I'm more bullish on new technologies like mesh networking as a way of solving the problem.

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

#193

Post by rosser »

larrys wrote: post #139
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.

Can't do that. These are corporations with vast paper trails. The concept of "Tortious interference" [1] comes to mind but I'm certain there are other legal theories that could be employed by Comcast. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference

I think the point is that Comcast is already engaging in tortious interference, and then trying to charge the upstream provider for the privilege. Sure, they could file suit on those grounds, but the countersuit would follow very quickly, and it would be joined by everyone.

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

#194

Post by tonyarkles »

rhizome wrote: post #166
noselasd wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not sure of a more eloquent way to say this. Comcast's customers are the CDN's customer's customers.

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

#195

Post by diminoten »

CocaKoala wrote: post #185
diminoten wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't the forum. Email me (provided in my profile) if you'd like to continue this discussion.

Your profile, at time of viewing. Congratulations; I'm done here. user: diminoten created: 1831 days ago karma: 1799 avg: 1.51 about: QA/Wannabe Dev submissions comments

Oh sorry, I thought the email field was available!

diminoten@gmail.com

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

#196

Post by sliverstorm »

pessimizer wrote: post #147
qnaal wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fearmongering- the internet is not going to be that easy to kill.

If they stop supplying it to us without discrimination it will. The internet is made up of plastic and metal boxes that are under other people's control - not magic.

Things that cannot be simply cut off:

    - populist revolutions
Things that can:

    - electricity

    - the internet

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

#197

Post by dfc »

freehunter wrote: post #172
dfc wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is asymetrical warfare. When I got to that sentence I thought "Really, a war comparison?". I couldn't figure out where you were going to go with the comparison but I thought I would play along. After reading your comment a couple of times I still can't figure out what the connection is to asymmetric warfare. Who are the belligerents and the casus belli? How is this different from traditional "telecom warfare"?…

Really? It's an off-the-cuff remark to describe a fight that's slowly playing out. It's a pretty common phrase.

Yes, really. I have never seen the free market be offered as "the solution" to a metaphoric asymmetric conflict. It seems like there is an inherent existential crisis that has prevented people (up until now) from suggesting the free market as a solution to asymmetric warfare. Is it really a free market when such large asymmetries exist between market participants?

That being said I find the suggestion that the colloquial definition of "asymmetric warfare" is "a fight that's slowly playing out" to be even stranger. Do you think that is the definition of "asymmetric warfare"? I must be reading different works than you because I cannot remember seeing "asymmetric warfare" used--and most certainly not commonly used--as a placeholder for a fight that is slowly playing out.

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

#198

Post by jrochkind1 »

You would think, okay, if Comcast is terrible at maintaining sufficient peering for it's customers needs -- and if the OP proposal to throw Comcast out of peering exchange points happened, that would certainly lead to increased terribleness for it's customers -- then eventually it's customers would choose a different ISP. The market would solve it.

The problem is that in many many markets, Comcast (or another ISP) are pretty much the only choice. Customers don't have another option, no matter how much Comcast underfunds it's peering infrastructure or gets thrown out of peering exchange points.

So what is the consequence to Comcat for underfunding? What is the consequence to Comcast for even such a disastrous outcome as getting kicked out of the peering exchange point? Not a lot.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but 'regulate them as a common carrier' is certainly part of it, since they are a monopoly, and the common carrier regulatory regime was invented for exactly such a monopoly.

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

#199

Post by gph »

timr wrote: post #164

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…

>basically expect to pay a low, ever-declining price for bandwidth, while someone else eats the costs of a growing network infrastructure

Are we though? Our bills have only been increasing. The amount of money they put into infrastructure has decreased[1].

The Telecoms did have to put a lot of initial investment into infrastructure, but that was largely from laying the wires. Most of them are already starting to see positive returns on those investments [2]. They already have the infrastructure to support traffic to consumers in the last mile. The peering infrastructure being upgraded shouldn't cost them even 1/10th as much.

So why should they get to pass their peering infrastructure costs on to the content providers? They should pass it on to the consumer if they must, after all it's us trying to get the content. But really they are going to be making such a large profit off us over the coming decades it's ridiculous for them to cry poor.

Net neutrality is fairly meaningless when it comes to the last mile. I doubt hardly anyone is saturating their last mile worth of bandwidth. I regularly have three streams going in my household and it doesn't saturate my bandwidth. That part isn't what needs upgrading.

[1]http://www.vox.com/2014/5/12/5711082/big-cable-says-broadban...

[2]http://dailycaller.com/2013/02/15/does-cable-really-have-a-9...

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

#200

Post by eldavido »

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.

This would be an unmitigated disaster. Everyone would call Comcast, Comcast would tell the story their way, and things would be even worse than they are now. They'd probably get on national nightly news talking about how their "partners" "unfairly" "cut them off from the Internet".

It would be pretty interesting to watch the spin machine in action, though. 100% pure PR spin.

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