Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

cringely.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 392 posts

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

#221

Post by [deleted] »

nostrademons wrote: post #192
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 hand…

[deleted]

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

#222

Post by kej »

sadris wrote: post #218
jrochkind1 wrote: post #198

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) ar…

> Comcast (or another ISP) are pretty much the only choice. Customers don't have another option If an entire town is angry, their city councilors will very quickly utilize eminent domain on the fiber in the ground and sell it to a competitor.

But not before the ISP lobbies the state legislature to decree that cities can't annex fiber.

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

#223

Post by spindritf »

Karunamon wrote: post #206
spindritf wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

>who pays for the expansion to accommodate traffic generated by Netflix? They are already being paid - that is the problem. They are trying to double dip. A visual aid (not the real arrangement, but good enough for discussion: Netflix Level3 Comcast Me Netflix pays money to Level3 for an internet connection. I pay money to Comcast for an internet connection. Leve3 and Comcast have an agreement to connect to each othe…

They're not being paid already because the explosion of streaming video traffic is a relatively new and ongoing process. They expect to be paid more for moving more bits.

Now, you might expect the capacity of the network to simply increase as a matter of technological progress. But it's not that crazy of a notion to charge more for doing more. They could make their own customers pay but they're trying to shift it to Netflix, and indirectly to Netflix users. There's nothing fundamentally unfair about it.

The answer that they shouldn't charge anyone more amounts to financing the expansion by their investors (in the form of lower returns). It's not a political problem, it's an economic one. All of those companies are after money, whether in additional fees or lower costs.

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

#224

Post by unexpected »

nostrademons wrote: post #192
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 hand…

A lot of this is not true. I live in Texas, and electricity is not a disaster. You can choose from a variety of rates and providers (you can visit powertochoose.org to see the site), but the local electric utility provider (the company that used to have the monopoly) is the guy you call when electricity goes out.

In the D/FW area, that's Oncor (and is for most of Texas).

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

#225

Post by seehafer »

cobookman wrote: post #219

I've previously interned at one of the mentioned Cable Companies, and I see both sides. The solution is to make it 'capitalistic'. Change all of our internet contracts from Unlimited (up to 'x' GB/month), to a simple $/gb cost. It would be in the ISPs best interest to provide their customers the fastest internet connection as possible. E.g, if a customer can stream a 4k video vs SD then the ISP would make more money…

How does changing plans from unlimited to metered data make them more 'capitalistic'?

An example of making things more capitalistic would be to make illegal the municipal contracts granting monopolies on last mile service.

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

#226

Post by nostrademons »

unexpected wrote: post #224
nostrademons wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hand…

A lot of this is not true. I live in Texas, and electricity is not a disaster. You can choose from a variety of rates and providers (you can visit powertochoose.org to see the site), but the local electric utility provider (the company that used to have the monopoly) is the guy you call when electricity goes out. In the D/FW area, that's Oncor (and is for most of Texas).

Interesting. I'm reporting on my sister's complaints, for providers in the Houston area.

Edit: Hmm, interesting. Perhaps they just picked an unlucky initial provider and then got gobbled up successively.

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

#227

Post by exelius »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #188
exelius wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Good points, allow me to share with you a bit of my strategy. There is a case to be made that much of the tearing up of the streets is a function of people laying down multiple communication infrastructures along side each other. We looked though the permits for the last 12 months and compared that activity to a on-going repaving and road maintenance work. There are several interesting variables at play in that, cost…

This is all well and good if you're talking about relatively wealthy cities like Sunnyvale with a good tax base, but many cities like Detroit, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia are literally crumbling. They operate much more in a "try to keep the lights on" capacity because they just don't have the money to do anything else. The roads are constantly torn up from traffic and just never get fixed, water and sewer don't always function properly and the schools are an utter disaster.

Basically, many cities have much more pressing problems than telecom infrastructure. Not to mention that federally, the FCC holds jurisdiction and thus final say over what cities can and can't do. What may look like standardization to you in Sunnyvale starts to look like a hodgepodge of municipal implementations at a federal level, and the FCC may stop you from standardizing at the local level until they've developed standards at the federal level. It's bureaucracy at its finest; but it does serve a purpose.

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

#228

Post by Karunamon »

spindritf wrote: post #223
Karunamon wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>who pays for the expansion to accommodate traffic generated by Netflix? They are already being paid - that is the problem. They are trying to double dip. A visual aid (not the real arrangement, but good enough for discussion: Netflix Level3 Comcast Me Netflix pays money to Level3 for an internet connection. I pay money to Comcast for an internet connection. Leve3 and Comcast have an agreement to connect to each othe…

They're not being paid already because the explosion of streaming video traffic is a relatively new and ongoing process. They expect to be paid more for moving more bits. Now, you might expect the capacity of the network to simply increase as a matter of technological progress. But it's not that crazy of a notion to charge more for doing more. They could make their own customers pay but they're trying to shift it to…

The fair and forthright thing to do, if that's really the case, is to charge me more. I am their customer, Netflix is not. Comcast's job is to deliver what content I ask for.

Except, they won't do that, because an ISP who will play in good faith will come along and eat their lunch, and their plans are already absurdly expensive.

It's not as if Netflix is blasting unsolicited traffic into Comcast's network that they should somehow compensate them for the inconvenience. "Oh, So sorry! That neighborhood scamp Netflix, blasting their packets all over the place".

The fact that it's Netflix is utterly irrelevant in truth. In the end, Comcast's customers are the ones requesting the data. It's just the simple fact that it's all coming from one source starts the wheels turning, where if it was more spread out, they couldn't come after any one person in particular to seek rent.

>Now, you might expect the capacity of the network to simply increase as a matter of technological progress.

As it has been for the past couple of decades? Yes, that is exactly what I expect.

I'm not saying they shouldn't charge more. I'm saying they shouldn't piss on the internet's leg and tell them it's raining. Don't come to us with that 'But but but capacity!' argument when their behavior with Netflix clearly indicates the opposite, and less so when you're a monopolist with the second worst customer satisfaction score in the entire country, and even more less so when it's their damn problem in the first place!

On top of that, streaming video is a time-sensitive medium and others are not. The sane thing to do (again, assuming this is really a capacity issue, which I absolutely believe is 100% grade A horse manure) would be to throttle down the other, non-time-sensitive packets like torrent, http, mail traffic. Basic QoS.

If you believe this company's stated reasons for anything, you are being played for a fool. They can not be trusted.

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

#229

Post by otterley »

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…

> 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 alternatives.

This is what the condemnation process is for. The government is unlikely to have to spend $500B to rebuild it; probably much less for the depreciated capital.

> Furthermore, do you trust your city to properly maintain said infrastructure? Because I sure as hell don't. All I have to do is look at the pothole-strewn roads outside my house to know that.

I wouldn't judge that quality of municipal infrastructure maintenance by the number of potholes, because fuel taxes pay for road maintenance, and many jurisdictions haven't raised fuel taxes in decades (i.e. they're not keeping up with inflation).

Instead, you might look to your water, sewage, garbage and electricity services - there, public utilities score quite well, and it's because they're usually not operating at a significant loss.

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

#230

Post by randomfool »

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…

ISPs charge users for the bandwidth they consume (or you pay extra for an unlimited connection, which is often not really unlimited).

So ISPs are already charging consumers for amount of data transferred, and consumers for the size of the pipe (maximum bandwidth).

Post reply on HN