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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?

#301

Post by amatix »

mentat wrote: post #280
danielweber wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think people who tear up the street to put in sewers have never thought "hey, while we are at it, let's build some conduit down here and then sell that?" I know they literally work on sewers, but they aren't dumb. They understand their business better than random people on the Internet do.

So please tell us, why is it not done? Contract provisions? Lack of profit?

Both.

Most common, SewerCo says "pay for half of our digging costs" and FibreCo says "You're getting paid by the city to dig it up already! Why should we pay again?"and round and round we go. Also, if either SewerCo or FibreCo's work has delays, then there's another whole drama about who pays/is responsible for additional work, penalties, and so on. And the respective Project Managers don't give a rat's ass about the other company since hitting their budget/timeline is the only thing that matters.

Seems like something that can (and should) be worked out, but unless local government steps in and mediates/forces their hand there doesn't seem to be a great urgency. Locally (in NZ) ElectricCo and FibreCo are starting to be the same company in a number of cases, in which case "stop arguing and just do it" is just a management edict.

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

#302

Post by rhizome »

JTon wrote: post #169
rhizome wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

Um, that would be a trade libel.

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

#303

Post by army »

jsz0 wrote: post #154
thedufer wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It sounds like Level3 wants to enter into bigger-money contracts with the ISPs As the article points out, peering rarely involves money (and shouldn't ever; as the word peer implies, its a largely symmetric relationship). The ISPs' customers are paying the ISPs for bandwidth and then requesting traffic. Level3 is providing said traffic and then the ISP drops it because they don't have enough bandwidth. How can a re…

> stop promising things they aren't willing to deliver on. Very few ISPs offer residential Internet access with SLAs that guarantee performance or even availability. They mostly promise only a 'best effort' class of service.

Right, and the problem is that their version of best effort doesn't involve trying very hard at all, since they have minimal competition in most local markets.

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

#304

Post by army »

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…

I don't think the cable companies have much of a side. I think a large part of the problem is complacency about improving service on the cable companies' side rather than active malfeasance: they simply don't have to work very hard to retain customers since the local markets are monopolies or small, stable, oligopolies.

There just needs to be some more competition to hold their feet to the fire.

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

#305

Post by singlow »

busterarm wrote: post #261
jimbokun wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not true. I work for a cable/fiber ISP. Customers always blame the ISP. Even when the problem is the feed (like with CW's networks last month)...or when some dipshit construction company digs where they aren't supposed to. Luckily I don't work for one of the horrible ISPs that everyone hates, but we're definitely more in the blame-receiving business than is warranted. Folks don't understand the complexity involved in…

When the customers call you, it is because they blame you. You never hear from the ones who don't blame you.

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

#306

Post by Nexxxeh »

Spooky23 wrote: post #86
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

Ask your mom who her favorite CDN is.

Akamai. Moms love Akamai.

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

#307

Post by rosser »

danielweber wrote: post #272
rosser wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And FTTx could be done at considerably lower cost, if we simply had the will to do it, and the patience to leverage existing work. For example, last week, they were tearing up the street in front of my building to put in new sewer lines. I don't even want to speculate what that might have cost. But now that the work is done, to lay fibre, they'll have to do it again . If, instead, they'd said, "Well, while we're here…

You think people who tear up the street to put in sewers have never thought "hey, while we are at it, let's build some conduit down here and then sell that?" I know they literally work on sewers, but they aren't dumb. They understand their business better than random people on the Internet do.

My brother used to do utility plumbing — literally, laying sewers. I know they think this. It's not them that's the issue; it's short-sighted municipal governments, it's contracts, it's "Well, who's paying for it?", it's liability issues, it's these and countless other little inanities.

That said, it kinda blows my mind that someone on HN would actually think I was talking about the people laying the sewer line when I said, "Well, while we're here..." Were you straw-manning, or did you really just not think that one through?

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

#308

Post by mullingitover »

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…

> "On a more evil side, this would also stop chord [sic] cutters. Pirating content is no longer 'free', and Netflix would cost significantly more than $10/month ($10/month + 'x'GB * $/GB)."

Maybe you've been living under a rock, but ISPs who are also cable television providers are very interested in caps, arguably to protect their cable television business. [1] http://www.pcworld.com/article/2155286/comcast-exec-says-ban...

This whole debate about who's supposed to pay for peering is smoke and mirrors. The truth is that cable companies have a conflict of interest between their two businesses, and they're attacking the internet side to protect their cable tv business. End of story.

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

#309

Post by pas »

runeks wrote: post #243
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…

Interesting suggestion. I've often thought about this. What I hear (I'm not very knowledgeable in this field) is that somewhere up the chain, someone has to pay for bandwidth (per GB) (can anyone confirm this?). But consumers prefer to know how much they will pay each month, and so they get that -- a flat rate service. So now we have a situation where a company's expenses are measured in GB of data transferred, and t…

Virtual Servers come with some TeraBytes per month. AWS and Google Compute Engine counts traffic by the GigaByte.

Most upstream providers at colocation facilities use 95th percentile pricing, that is you have a gigabit link, or a 10g link, and every 5 minutes they take a sample of current speed, and then at the end of the month they sort those samples and take the sample at the "95th percentile", which can be understood as link utilization discarding bursts which, gives a speed, which you can multiply by the length of the month, and you get transferred bytes (or octets as network/telco people like to call it).

A 100Mbps link is ~30 TB per month. If you do business on the internet, the moment you get big enough, you can negotiate these prices.

Just buying a gigabit ethernet port is not even that expensive ( https://ams-ix.net/services-pricing/pricing ), but this is without peering, and you have to either deal with every non-open partner there ( https://ams-ix.net/connected_parties ) or get transit from someone who has a full coverage of the internet. (That is all the prefixes assigned by local internet registries are reachable via them.)

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

#310

Post by nknighthb »

exelius wrote: post #284
wtallis wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The laws of physics prohibit wireless from serving current needs in an urban density. It's not a solution for the future.

Wired connectivity certainly isn't either. I find myself using my home internet connection almost exclusively for movies and games -- not exactly the great innovative services everyone talks about. I use my phone for almost everything else: online shopping, communication, news consumption, even work since I tether my laptop to it when I'm on the go. It's a lot more convenient; and the only thing I really need high ba…

How do you think your wireless signals get to the rest of the world? Microwave backhaul is almost dead, those cell towers (and there are tons of them in urban environments, partly for want of spectrum) are wired up with fiber.
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