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Observations of an Internet Middleman

blog.level3.com

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Re: Observations of an Internet Middleman

#101

Post by chris_mahan »

rayiner wrote: post #69
bryanlarsen wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet somehow we manage to spend trillions of dollars on streets, sewers and other infrastructure

Those things are built with public money, not private money, which introduces problems of its own. Once you start using public money to build infrastructure, politics determines the level of spending rather than actual demand. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that we have $3.6 trillion in delayed maintenance and underinvestment of our core infrastructure (water, sewers, bridges, power lines, etc): ht…

I want enough bandwidth to stream three HD 1080p movies at the same time (there are three people in my house) with enough left over for VOIP Phone and normal internet. I currently pay $80/month for that. ($50 for internet, 28+change for VOIP). I am willing to pay $120/month (that's frankly $4/day, not enough to really matter) for that. Can I buy it? No. Because no competition.

Why? Because utility monopoly. Why? Because lawyers and lobbyists and clueless and corrupt politicians.

Any question?

Re: Observations of an Internet Middleman

#102

Post by wmf »

orik wrote: post #100
cs702 wrote: post #81

In short: if you're in the US, you're paying your ISP for a certain amount of bandwidth, but your ISP is not giving it to you, because its connections to middlemen like Level 3 are maxed out. Level 3 proposes to split the cost of expanding those connections (as is common), but your ISP refuses unless it gets additional payment from Level 3, Netflix, or someone else. Meanwhile, you don't get the bandwidth you've purch…

Disclosure: I work at a small ISP. We mostly compete with Frontier DSL and Comcast Business Class. If you're buying residential it's safe to assume you're purchasing a burst-able speed and downloads/uploads aren't going to sustain that for hours on end. Much in the same way that a Utility Company probably isn't gathering enough water for everyone to be maxing their pipes 24/7, residential ISP's don't operate under th…

Realistically, we're talking about customers who are paying for 10+ Mbps and were getting less than 2 Mbps.

Re: Observations of an Internet Middleman

#103

Post by [deleted] »

orik wrote: post #100
cs702 wrote: post #81

In short: if you're in the US, you're paying your ISP for a certain amount of bandwidth, but your ISP is not giving it to you, because its connections to middlemen like Level 3 are maxed out. Level 3 proposes to split the cost of expanding those connections (as is common), but your ISP refuses unless it gets additional payment from Level 3, Netflix, or someone else. Meanwhile, you don't get the bandwidth you've purch…

Disclosure: I work at a small ISP. We mostly compete with Frontier DSL and Comcast Business Class. If you're buying residential it's safe to assume you're purchasing a burst-able speed and downloads/uploads aren't going to sustain that for hours on end. Much in the same way that a Utility Company probably isn't gathering enough water for everyone to be maxing their pipes 24/7, residential ISP's don't operate under th…

[deleted]

Re: Observations of an Internet Middleman

#104

Post by wmf »

nitrogen wrote: post #70
rayiner wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe we make Cable companies share their last mile networks like we did with DSL? Which killed investment in DSL. Who wants to spend billions on infrastructure they are forced to lease out at wholesale rates to competitors?

In other words, who wants to spend billions on infrastructure they are guaranteed to profit from due to regulated rates set on a cost-plus basis?

And yet telcos weren't happy with the regulated profit that unbundled DSL provided them. Either they're just lying (which I consider entirely credible) or it's not that simple. For example, if the regulated profit is less than in an unregulated scenario, "shareholder value" thinking will argue for deregulation. Also, there's no profit if the regulated cost-plus price is so high that nobody buys it (what if the cost of FTTH is over $100/month?).

Re: Observations of an Internet Middleman

#105

Post by wmf »

nitrogen wrote: post #91
wmf wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why doesn't it count?

Because the two have different physical limitations. DSL is strongly limited by distance to a cabinet, and most people can't get any better than 7mbit/s, 20 if you're lucky. Thus, DSL provides no pressure on cable, and the only reasons people use DSL are because they get it bundled with their phone and TV service, or because they got fed up with the cable company and switched to a lesser service out of frustration. I…

OK, so crappy DSL doesn't count as competition. But U-Verse vs. cable is not "no competition".

Re: Observations of an Internet Middleman

#106

Post by rhizome »

rayiner wrote: post #28
jeffasinger wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The core issue isn't at the last mile, but in connecting a last mile network to the internet? Maybe we make Cable companies share their last mile networks like we did with DSL?

> Maybe we make Cable companies share their last mile networks like we did with DSL? Which killed investment in DSL. Who wants to spend billions on infrastructure they are forced to lease out at wholesale rates to competitors?

Who wants to spend billions on infrastructure they are forced to lease out at wholesale rates to competitors?

The government should, but they wouldn't lease them out to competitors, but providers who happen to be in competition with each other. Make the last mile a utility, like sewers.

Re: Observations of an Internet Middleman

#107

Post by nullc »

exelius wrote: post #3
wdewind wrote: post #2

Here's the part that doesn't make sense to me, and hopefully someone can explain it: Netflix pays Level 3 and Cogent to connect them to Comcast's network. Comcast claims that only the Level 3 connection is saturated, and that Netflix is sending all their bandwidth over Level 3 because it's cheaper for them. Doesn't Level 3 buy a contract from Comcast that says "we get to send this much data per month"? If Netflix (or…

I think Level3's issue is that Comcast is unwilling to increase the capacity of their links without payment from Level3. If Level3 engages in settlement-free peering with Comcast and their network traffic graph looks anything like the 100gbit link in the article, I don't blame them: it's a 20:1 disparity in traffic in vs traffic out. What's happening here is that Level3 and other transit providers are starting to see…

Right, there is a disparity — so, explain why it shouldn't instead be Comcast paying Level3?

Even if you want to privileged "sending" as being more charging worthy since you control what you send— in this case it's Comcast customers that have requested those bits, hosts connected to the level3 network are providing them.

Networks like comcast have built out imbalanced networks which likely wouldn't exist without their access to monopoly infrastructure. Practically anyone they peer with except other consumer broadband monopolists is going to be unbalanced.

Re: Observations of an Internet Middleman

#108

Post by jeremycole »

If Comcast doesn't like the amount of bandwidth their customers use watching Netflix, they always have the option to notify their customers and null-route or otherwise stop Netflix from working at all. However while it "works" but sucks they appear to be doing their jobs while their customers blame Netflix for sucking while largely being unaware that it's actually Comcast that sucks.

Re: Observations of an Internet Middleman

#109

Post by nullc »

venomsnake wrote: post #19
exelius wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Level3's issue is that Comcast is unwilling to increase the capacity of their links without payment from Level3. If Level3 engages in settlement-free peering with Comcast and their network traffic graph looks anything like the 100gbit link in the article, I don't blame them: it's a 20:1 disparity in traffic in vs traffic out. What's happening here is that Level3 and other transit providers are starting to see…

Torrenting provided a lot of traffic that could bring symmetry to the amounts send/received. And yet it was frowned upon.

Torrenting moves large amounts of traffic into last mile infrastructure which tends to already be congested because its very costly to upgrade.

Due to using many distinct flows it also tends to not be very TCP friendly and takes a fairly unequal share of the bandwidth. And while users will give up and do something else when their interactive service becomes slow, a congested torrenting host keeps torrenting.

Re: Observations of an Internet Middleman

#110

Post by nullc »

erichocean wrote: post #83
LandoCalrissian wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's completely crazy and just blatant extortion on Comcast's part. The current system is pretty straight forward. Level 3: Server(Who Level 3 Charges) -> Level 3 -> Comcast -> End User Comcast: End User(Who Comcast Charges) -> Comcast -> Level 3 -> Server Now Comcast wants to charge everyone in the chain that isn't them. They are attempting to do this by degrading (or at the very least not upgrading) their services…

Ahem. "Techno-libertarians" aren't the ones who gave Comcast its monopolies on the last mile. Please leave them out of this.

No, physics and economics did. When you're talking about building infrastructure that will take 20 years to pay itself off _absent_ competition, only the most profitable of the profitable locations can afford extensive physical plant competition.

In communications networks monopolies are natural, especially in last mile networks, and will exist absent any government action. That in some cases some governments have mildly strengthened these monopolies in exchange for commitments to cover otherwise unprofitable areas, its not really that important this subject.

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