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Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

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Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#101

I'm surprised to read an obviously AI written article ("This isn't about efficiency—it's about extraction") from a tech/news site. Does anyone else find this weird? It make me question the editors note about how much background research was actually done.

Hate it, but doesn't surprise me one bit.

This article is 2700 words of repetitive slop. It seems that people are adapting to this new world.

Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#102

Ironic that I switched to HN from chess.com because Deutsche Telekom‘s peering with Cloudflare (or more its lack of) made the site even more unusable than usual. 5 minutes ago I thought „Maybe it’s time to switch to Vodafone“

Do not switch to Vodafone. Even without their peering it's still a horrible ISP

Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#103
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this is great when it works it does raise some interesting challenges, what happens if the ISP loses money, should taxes be used to cover the cost since this is a public service? Is it reasonable for this ISP to undercut commercial offerings? Internet is in a weird grey zone where it's almost a utility but not on the same level as water or sewage. I'm glad this non-profit ISP exists but on a national level I wo…

Why make the assumption that municipalities must treat their internet services as a second-rate utility? Many local governments are competently run. If the internet is out, it's going to be just as visible and probably will yield as many complaints as losing power, sewer, and water.

> If the internet is out, it's going to be just as visible and probably will yield as many complaints as losing power, sewer, and water.

More. Far more visible. Much easier to go without municipal power than without internet.

Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#104

I'm surprised to read an obviously AI written article ("This isn't about efficiency—it's about extraction") from a tech/news site. Does anyone else find this weird? It make me question the editors note about how much background research was actually done.

It didn't seem AI to me.

The easiest way to notice it is its excessive use of what Wikipedia calls "negative parallel construction". [1] It's a super common genai tic

> This isn't about efficiency—it's about extraction

> The problem isn't your connection to Vodafone—it's Vodafone's restrictive connections to the rest of the internet.

> Vodafone's exit from public peering isn't an isolated technical decision—it's part of a broader pattern of large telecoms trying to reshape internet economics in their favor

The more obnoxious signs though is the excessive length, loose structure, repetition, and lack of serious editing. Writing ~3000 words used to take quite a bit of effort, so you'd need to be at least a strong enough writer to organize and structure your thoughts to make it that far. Now it's so easy anyone can put out tons of generated content on whatever topic they want.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing

Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#105
post #7

Is there anything that Vodafone customers can do legally to punish Vodafone or not delivering on their broadband contracts? If you're paying for a 1Gbps connection and Netflix is only able to stream to you at 0.93 Mbps because Vodafone or Inter.link are choking off the supply, surely that's breach of contract on Vodafone's part? I'm sure Cory Doctorow has a word for what's happening here.

There's definitely not anything in the contract that promises performance to a 3rd party, especially not in a residential contract. The legal options are switch to a different ISP and/or start a new one. Not always easy or practical, but there you go.

Who is to say where the performance problem is? Certainly not your contract.

Maybe if the last mile is cronically congested, or between the local aggregation switch and their regional exchange points, you might have a legal case. But if the issue is insufficient connectivity between their network and other networks, I would be very surprised if the contract terms covered that at all.

There's a bunch of networks throughout the world where their policies mean you can get more economically acheive better connectivity to their customers by hosting outside the geographic boundaries of the network rather than inside it. Doesn't make sense from a theoretical point of view, but when German ISPs won't interconnect within Germany, serve their customers from Poland or France and the connectivity picture may change significantly. Worst case, serve them from the US (but the latency may be too high)

Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#106
post #98
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

at some point in between the two there's a 10Gbps link being shared between 5000 subscribers at peak times and now the bottleneck is 2Mbps per subscriber. This link may or may not be under your ISP's (or Netflix's ISP's) control, and it may or may not be the only relevant bottleneck. No, that link is absolutely under Vodafone's control. They're deliberately not upgrading it so that they can extort money from Netflix.…

There are two issues here. If the CDN is so poorly interconnected with Vodafone that there's one bottlenecked link, then it's not really accomplishing its job, at least as far as "inside of Germany" is concerned. It might have reduced pressure on another bottleneck, like links between the US and the EU, but it still needs to spread out more. If Vodafone is blocking that, then pressure should be applied to force them…

Nah, you're just an apologist for rent-seeking ISPs and you're trying to cloud the argument with unnecessary details.

Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#107
post #106
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two issues here. If the CDN is so poorly interconnected with Vodafone that there's one bottlenecked link, then it's not really accomplishing its job, at least as far as "inside of Germany" is concerned. It might have reduced pressure on another bottleneck, like links between the US and the EU, but it still needs to spread out more. If Vodafone is blocking that, then pressure should be applied to force them…

Nah, you're just an apologist for rent-seeking ISPs and you're trying to cloud the argument with unnecessary details.

"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#108
post #55

Awesome. The only internet connection we get IN THE MIDDLE OF BERLIN is Vodafone Cable. Deutsche Telekom wants to build fiber here, but our landlord refuses to open the door to the cellar because he wants to kick everybody out and raise the rent for new tenants. What a time to be alive.

The issue here seems to be the landlord.

Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can file a complaint with the "Federal ministry for digital transformation" (formed this year). It does actually work, but it's a lengthy process. I did force my cell phone carrier to grant me proper 4G speeds last year, after spending many hours with their help line and ultimately complaining to the (then) ministry of transportation and digital infrastructure.

Can you elaborate on what was wrong with your cellular connection?

My plan advertises "up to 50 Mbit/s" on a 4G connection. I was getting less than 1 Mbit/s a lot of the time. Websites and videos would not load properly.

I downloaded the app of the german ministry that allows you to take speed tests and file a complaint. After multiple weeks of measuring connection speeds on the cellular network, I was able to file a complaint.

Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#110
post #5

New selling point for all the VPN sponsored segments... "if you're on Vodafone Germany, make your connection speeds faster with YetAnotherVPN!"

A VPN won't make your route shorter

If the shortest route is congested, a longer route can be advantageous if it avoids congested hops.
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