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Netflix replies to Verizon cease and desist letter

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Re: Netflix replies to Verizon cease and desist letter

#181

Post by sliverstorm »

icambron wrote: post #177
sliverstorm wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if Comcast's network is built around the idea that traffic is exchanged relatively equally? They put in gigabit switches everywhere, a nice fair balanced network. Then Netflix comes along, and suddenly 35% of Comcast's customer traffic is all going to a handful of Netflix DSNs? Suddenly Comcast has to redo the whole connection. They have to buy top-shelf hardware just for Netflix. I don't know if this has happen…

Edit: rewritten because I misunderstood your point. Funny, I actually just added an edit to my post above that discusses this. Comcast adds interconnect capacity as needed. So in at least one way, it's actually easier this way, right? Just one peer to make sure they have capacity for. But either way, it's Comcast's job to run a network that's optimized for its customers needs, not some abstract concept of fairness. A…

I am not talking about imbalance in U/D, but rather imbalance in destination (or source). If tremendous amounts of traffic is going to or from just a small handful of nodes, you need tremendous routers & pipes going to those nodes.

Re: Netflix replies to Verizon cease and desist letter

#182

Post by randomfool »

sliverstorm wrote: post #147
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is it really fair to treat them like every other company? Interesting question. I guess from my perspective I buy broadband from AT&T and they tell me under no uncertain terms that I have a cap at x amount of gigabytes. As a customer I expect to use all of that. >Guilt tripping Verizon into adding more routers is a major net positive to Netflix's business. As a customer it shocks me they aren't doing so. Yesterday…

You only really pay AT&T for one end of the pipe though. If your end can deliver 100Mbit/s, how responsible are they for the other end of the pipe? Have they met their commitment? This is the biggest part I think people are missing- they are not thinking about the upstream end of the pipe. Maybe it's the same story even when you do consider the upstream, but I'd at least like people to acknowledge that aspect.

Netflix is saying that they have sufficient bandwidth on the other side, but that Verizon has a bottleneck in their connection to the backbone.

Re: Netflix replies to Verizon cease and desist letter

#183

Post by josh2600 »

sliverstorm wrote: post #140
LeoPanthera wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix isn't sending their data to customers unsolicited. Customers are requesting that data, through a pipe which they have already paid for . It is unfair for Verizon, or any other ISP, to ask to be paid twice for the same bits. What bits I am asking for, as a customer, shouldn't make a damn bit of difference.

There's two ends to the pipe though. To my understanding, the upstream ends are linked largely thanks to peering , which is based on mutual benefit. At the upstream level, nobody charges other providers because everybody is interacting with everybody- sort of like, "I bought this round, but I know you'll be buying the next" so you don't worry about balancing the books. Then Netflix comes along, chews up 35% of intern…

Relevant Wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network

Re: Netflix replies to Verizon cease and desist letter

#184

Post by pionar »

josh2600 wrote: post #122
dkhenry wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is going under the false assumption that when I bought bandwidth from my ISP they didn't _really_ need to provide me with that bandwidth for realzies. This isn't netflix driving network upgrades this is Verizon customers driving network upgrades. If VZ didn't promise the customers the bandwidth they wouldn't need to upgrade their backhaul to provide it. I mean it would be like Verizon wireless charging apple to…

... Your wireless network service is best effort. This is why your service provider doesn't have to compensate you for dropped calls or dropped packets or towers with insufficient capacity. The word "promise" is not an accurate reading of the legal concepts at play in bandwidth purchase. Dedicated bandwidth for consumers is expensive and completely unavailable on cellular networks. Verizon also doesn't have to let iP…

> Your wireless network service is best effort.

Wouldn't intentionally throttling and/or not keeping up your capacity intentionally be a violation of this "best effort" doctrine? Not arguing, honest question.

Re: Netflix replies to Verizon cease and desist letter

#186

Post by hga »

whoopdedo wrote: post #157
drusenko wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not as far off as you think. It seems very few commenters to this thread understand how the internet actually operates from a business perspective. When you install a server in a colo, you don't get free transit. You find a transit provider (like Level3, Cogent, or NTT) and you pay them for bandwidth. You can understand this very intuitively as most hosting services (like AWS) will charge you for bandwidth. As…

If there is imbalance between the traffic Comcast is sending to other networks versus what they receive that's because of the policy to forbid residential customers from hosting their own servers. Comcast created this situation because they wanted to force the internet to behave more like television.

Exactly. The "equal traffic" concept totally fails for consumer last mile providers. In fact, it's technically more expensive for them to provide symmetrical service due to head end noise, but it also fits with their "you're supposed to consume content, especially ours, not supply it" attitude.

The latter is something that more people ought to be thinking about, consumers using Netflix are not just consuming more peak bandwidth, they're competing with the video offerings of all of the big last mile providers.

Although. AT&T doesn't actually offer U-verse video service to very many of their subscribers; don't know about Verizon's FiOS vs. plain DSL offerings (except that they're shedding small population states and markets as fast as they can), but the others are cable companies so they obviously do.

Re: Netflix replies to Verizon cease and desist letter

#187

Post by jjoonathan »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #120
josh2600 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you draw the line? What shouldn't we socialize?

Excellent question. Anything that doesn't have a natural monopoly. I can say with certainty that the following should be socialized or delivered in non-profit ways: * Water * Sewer * Power * Internet * Healthcare * Fire * Police * Roads * Education (added per /u/CodeMage) Feel free to chime in if you can add anything I forgot.

I'd just like to point out that Adam Smith himself (the "Carl Marx of Capitalism") agrees with you for fire, police, and roads at the very least (I haven't read everything he wrote). If he were born today rather than in 1723 I suspect his list would look very much like yours.

Re: Netflix replies to Verizon cease and desist letter

#188

Post by drzaiusapelord »

josh2600 wrote: post #143
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is it really fair to treat them like every other company? Interesting question. I guess from my perspective I buy broadband from AT&T and they tell me under no uncertain terms that I have a cap at x amount of gigabytes. As a customer I expect to use all of that. >Guilt tripping Verizon into adding more routers is a major net positive to Netflix's business. As a customer it shocks me they aren't doing so. Yesterday…

I'll reiterate the problem carriers face that I stated earlier. Customer revenue is decreasing and because the market is saturated they cannot add enough customers to combat the atrophy of revenue. As shareholders expect growth every year, ISPs are forced to look for new revenue streams. If you don't think they should be doing this as a private company, reclassify them as a utility. Otherwise shareholder demand is wh…

>If carriers have to change their amortization patterns (more routers, faster) they have to change their financing which damages the value of the stock.

Welcome to the world of business. Change is constant, you can't just tell your customers, "Whoops we didn't plan for that."

I also disagree that its as hopeless as you make it out to be (in many nations 100mbps or even 1gbps unlimited internet is trivial to get). They can raise prices on customers, lower caps, throttle netflix users, etc if they're in such financial dire straits. Their competitors will love this as customers will migrate to them. Their competitors may have a more nimble management structure and can provide the data at this level.

What I don't get, assuming they really are in dire straits and not trying to monetize artificial scarcity, is why don't they just push out a notice, "Due to network limitations, we are throttling streaming video users to 4mbps which is enough for medium quality 720p streaming. The investment to support 1080p streaming is impossible for us. Love Verizon."

Actually, I know why they won't do this, because Comcast will pay for the router upgrades and steal all their customers once they find out. So they go around their customers' backs and try dirty dealings with Netflix and others. These guys being duopolies in most markets (substitute AT&T with Verizon in some states) just decided to not compete and simply change the rules at the FCC, which is pretty much a textbook description of collusion.

Re: Netflix replies to Verizon cease and desist letter

#189

Post by [deleted] »

sliverstorm wrote: post #181
icambron wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: rewritten because I misunderstood your point. Funny, I actually just added an edit to my post above that discusses this. Comcast adds interconnect capacity as needed. So in at least one way, it's actually easier this way, right? Just one peer to make sure they have capacity for. But either way, it's Comcast's job to run a network that's optimized for its customers needs, not some abstract concept of fairness. A…

I am not talking about imbalance in U/D, but rather imbalance in destination (or source). If tremendous amounts of traffic is going to or from just a small handful of nodes, you need tremendous routers & pipes going to those nodes.

[deleted]

Re: Netflix replies to Verizon cease and desist letter

#190

Post by addflip »

flavor8 wrote: post #161
addflip wrote: post #37

Verizon fios customer here. There has been a noticeable drop in the quality of streams in the past couple of months. The picture went from excellent > barely functional(after the FCC ruling) > watchable(after the peering agreement) still not great. Kudos to Netflix.

Yeah, same here. I was watching a movie on Roku/Netflix 6 weeks or so ago. Quality was 2* (out of 4, meaning OK, but visible encoding artifacts now and again) and yet it still fell back to the buffering screen 8 times in 30 minutes. I got fed up and rented the same movie on Amazon (still on Roku) and watched it in HD without a single instance of buffering. After it was done I switched back to Netflix and tried to wat…

That's funny. I'm using a Roku as well and had pretty much the same experience except I rented a movie from M-Go. Of note, I'm paying for "Quantum" speeds 75/35.
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