Why is Netflix Buffering? Dispelling the Congestion Myth • Hacker News Board

Re: Why is Netflix Buffering? Dispelling the Congestion Myth

#181

Post by rayiner » Thu, Jul 10, 2014, 8:54 PM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #175

rayiner wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a world where everyone watches Netflix, the traditional peering arrangements dramatically favor companies like Verizon. Unsurprisingly, they're fine with the existing peering arrangements. Companies like Level 3 are offering to "share the cost" of upgrading the networks, because under the traditional arrangements, they would have to bear the full cost of the upgrades. Everyone in this discussion is just looking ou…

[deleted]

There is this tendency to paint any dispute between established companies and new internet companies as "old-world archaic business models" holding up progress, but it's inane. There's nothing obsolete about selling bandwidth for money. Indeed, in a "modern data-driven society" building and owning the pipes is more relevant and important than ever!

Re: Why is Netflix Buffering? Dispelling the Congestion Myth

#182

Post by ubernostrum » Thu, Jul 10, 2014, 8:55 PM UTC

ancap wrote: post #163

ubernostrum wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment assumes that capitalism does not have an inevitable degenerative end state of cronyism and other ills. The balance of history suggests strongly that it does.

It sounds like you don't know what capitalism is. Here's the definition Google spit out: "an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state." Seeing as cronyism necessarily requires state influence and capitalism requires the lack of state influence, your conclusion falls on its face.

Capitalism as ideally defined is a period an economy often passes through extremely briefly; one of the exit paths is consolidation of enough power/wealth/influence in a handful of individuals or corporations to begin effectively purchasing government actions as desired.

Unless you would like to argue that no true Scotsman would ever abuse a position to make a buck...

Re: Why is Netflix Buffering? Dispelling the Congestion Myth

#183

Post by scott_s » Thu, Jul 10, 2014, 8:58 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #139

Alupis wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong -- I'm paying Verizon for access to the internet -- more specifically, for access to Netflix. If I can't get Netflix, I don't pay Verizon. I either get a new ISP, or don't have internet at all. It's rather simple. Verizon's customers are consuming traffic, and it's Verizon's job, as a consumer network , to facilitate consumption of said traffic.

> Wrong -- I'm paying Verizon for access to the internet -- more specifically, for access to Netflix. If I can't get Netflix, I don't pay Verizon. I either get a new ISP, or don't have internet at all You might not like the logical conclusion: the ISPs charge people for what they actually use.

I would have no problem with that, and I think the only reason we haven't moved to that model already is that we started out with the "unlimited" model. That's how my other utilities work.

Re: Why is Netflix Buffering? Dispelling the Congestion Myth

#184

Post by scott_s » Thu, Jul 10, 2014, 9:03 PM UTC

diminoten wrote: post #87

cs702 wrote: post #51

Verizon is blaming Netflix for sending "an unprecedented amount of traffic" and "not taking steps to ensure that there is adequate capacity for their traffic to enter" Verizon's network. The thing is, Netflix is NOT pushing any of that traffic to Verizon. It is Verizon's customers who are pulling that traffic from NetFlix -- and they are paying Verizon to deliver it !!! More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id…

Well, Netflix is pushing traffic to Verizon. Saying they're not is factually incorrect. They're just doing so in response to requests coming out of Verizon networks. Still though, Verizon customers are running Netflix apps, which are making the requests, so it's not like customers are doing the requesting "in the raw", or as "informed" consumers. They're just clicking "play" on Netflix video devices. Also, Verizon cu…

I gave you an upvote correction. I know it's frustrating, but sometimes comments get an unfair downvote, and then I think two issues kick in. One, less people see the comment, so you're less likely to get the correction upvote. And two, the priming effect kicks in, and people see your negatively voted comment as inherently negative, and don't give it a correction upvote, or pile on.

I've seen this happen for a while. My only advice is to just roll with the punches.

Re: Why is Netflix Buffering? Dispelling the Congestion Myth

#185

Post by IBM » Thu, Jul 10, 2014, 9:03 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #128

cs702 wrote: post #51

Verizon is blaming Netflix for sending "an unprecedented amount of traffic" and "not taking steps to ensure that there is adequate capacity for their traffic to enter" Verizon's network. The thing is, Netflix is NOT pushing any of that traffic to Verizon. It is Verizon's customers who are pulling that traffic from NetFlix -- and they are paying Verizon to deliver it !!! More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id…

You're paying Verizon for a connection to their network, but that doesn't make it Verizon's responsibility to pay to upgrade every intermediate network on the way to every destination a Verizon customer might request data from. That is not how peering on the internet has ever worked. See this circa 1999 article about peering and settlement on the internet: http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac123/ac147/archived_issues/i.…

Hey rayiner. I just wanted to say I appreciate your posting on HN about net neutrality and topics related to this and how diligent you are about it even though it's often contrarian (but right) and going to get you downvotes. I upvote every comment you make whenever I see a story like this unfolding in exchange for being unwilling to fight the good fight myself. I don't know how you do it, but thanks.

Re: Why is Netflix Buffering? Dispelling the Congestion Myth

#186

Post by cs702 » Thu, Jul 10, 2014, 9:16 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #176

cs702 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great comment -- it deserves an answer. Imagine for a moment that we're talking about water service instead, and that we live in an alternate reality in which, due to accidents of history, the water network evolved much like our Internet, with peering and settlement agreements between privately owned water networks. So, to borrow your words: you're paying your water service provider for a connection to their water ne…

But the problem here isn't that you can't fill your internet connection, period, but that you can't fill it with traffic from one particular endpoint. There is a bilateral aspect to the problem here that's totally ignored in your hypothetical. Different example. Air Canada has an unlimited North America flight pass: http://www.aircanada.com/en/offers/air/wallet_na_faq/wallet_... . You can characterize this pass as bu…

No, the problem is that the ISP's network does not have sufficient capacity at that particular endpoint to receive the traffic pulled (and paid for) by its customers. The bottleneck at that endpoint is the ISP.

--

PS. Travel is far too different to use in an analogy -- e.g., it doesn't involve delivery of continuous services to customer premises.

Re: Why is Netflix Buffering? Dispelling the Congestion Myth

#187

Post by wdewind » Thu, Jul 10, 2014, 9:18 PM UTC

Alupis wrote: post #180

fyrabanks wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Realistically it's absurd that Netflix isn't use a whole variety of ISPs to manage the load themselves. Other big data providers do it. Why can't they? IIRC, Netflix offered to provide hardware to all the major ISPs that would cache Netflix content at the ISP data centers. Not a single one took them up on the offer.

That was the Open Connect Hardware. Free big storage boxes for all ISP's who wanted them. They also offered to change their entire distribution model to P2P as-to keep the traffic burden inside the consumer isp's network (which effectively costs them nothing, it's ingress traffic that is the major costs). Level3 has even offered to split the costs of upgrading the Big5 ISP's peering connections. All options were refu…

> They also offered to change their entire distribution model to P2P as-to keep the traffic burden inside the consumer isp's network (which effectively costs them nothing, it's ingress traffic that is the major costs).

Why wouldn't they do this anyway? How does the ISP have any say in whether or not Netflix distributes their content via P2P? Or am I misunderstanding?

Re: Why is Netflix Buffering? Dispelling the Congestion Myth

#188

Post by jpgvm » Thu, Jul 10, 2014, 9:19 PM UTC

bobcostas55 wrote: post #122

jpgvm wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not inventing reasons. Netflix is serving the content, Netflix pays for it to move. Simple as that. The issue is Layer 3 is not buying enough transit from Verizon to match the disparity in the traffic it wants to send beyond what is covered by settlement free peering. If you look at the diagram on the Verizon post you can see the link is saturated in one direction and only at 30% utilization in the other dir…

L3 should not have to buy anything from Verizon. The only reason they're paying them at all is that the blackmail worked in the past. That is not how peering agreements work.

No, it is how peering agreements work. None of you have ever negotiated a peering agreement which is exactly why you don't understand that Verizon is in the right here, L3 is just providing cheap (and inferior) transit and Netflix is just bitching because it bought a Ford and expects a Ferrari.

Re: Why is Netflix Buffering? Dispelling the Congestion Myth

#189

Post by AnthonyMouse » Thu, Jul 10, 2014, 9:28 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #128

cs702 wrote: post #51

Verizon is blaming Netflix for sending "an unprecedented amount of traffic" and "not taking steps to ensure that there is adequate capacity for their traffic to enter" Verizon's network. The thing is, Netflix is NOT pushing any of that traffic to Verizon. It is Verizon's customers who are pulling that traffic from NetFlix -- and they are paying Verizon to deliver it !!! More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id…

You're paying Verizon for a connection to their network, but that doesn't make it Verizon's responsibility to pay to upgrade every intermediate network on the way to every destination a Verizon customer might request data from. That is not how peering on the internet has ever worked. See this circa 1999 article about peering and settlement on the internet: http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac123/ac147/archived_issues/i.…

> See this circa 1999 article about peering and settlement on the internet

The purpose of the arrangement you're pointing to is so that transit providers (e.g. Level 3 or Cogent) could distinguish other transit providers from transit customers whose traffic was characteristically asymmetric. The reason transit providers care more about upload bandwidth than download bandwidth is that customer ISPs can easily offer web hosting services to balance their traffic load, so it would be fruitless to charge the ISPs more for not sending the transit provider more traffic they have to carry. Better to give the ISPs free transit than that.

But Verizon isn't the transit provider here, they're the ISP. By sending Verizon a lot more traffic than they receive, Level 3 is effectively offering Verizon a huge amount of free transit in the other direction. That's like free money. Verizon could trivially use it to out-compete AWS on bandwidth pricing and make a boatload of easy cash. But that wouldn't unbalance the playing field for competitors of Verizon's video services.

Re: Why is Netflix Buffering? Dispelling the Congestion Myth

#190

Post by danielweber » Thu, Jul 10, 2014, 9:31 PM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #175

rayiner wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a world where everyone watches Netflix, the traditional peering arrangements dramatically favor companies like Verizon. Unsurprisingly, they're fine with the existing peering arrangements. Companies like Level 3 are offering to "share the cost" of upgrading the networks, because under the traditional arrangements, they would have to bear the full cost of the upgrades. Everyone in this discussion is just looking ou…

[deleted]

We heard this excuse from Blockbuster and Hollywood Video when RedBox and Netflix ate their lunch

This comment is a complete non sequitur in an otherwise good exchange. Blockbuster and Netflix weren't in dispute over who should pay for sharing an infrastructure node shared between them. Instead it's a generic "popular Internet company good, other company bad" argument.