Why Your Netflix Traffic Is Slow and Why the FCC Won’t Necessarily Make It Fast

> Whether ISPs should need to build out enough network to satisfy peak usage completely is a separate issue, but irrelevant here.

No, that's exactly the issue. If the ISP doesn't massively overstate their capacity, there is no congestion. If there is no congestion, there are no complaints. If there are no complaints, there is no problem!

Remember, customers aren't asking the ISP to allow them to utilize their connection 100%. They're asking for 10%. Asking an ISP to not overstate their capacity by more than 10x is a pretty fucking reasonable thing to do, Net Neutrality or not.

Sure. Here's the relevant info from Netflix.

https://help.netflix.com/en/node/306

So you can see that they recommend 3Mbps for SD and 5Mbps for HD.

The problem is that the ISP has promised 50Mbps per customer to said customer, but then they are not allocating enough resources at various points throughout their network to actually deliver on 5Mbps per customer to Cogent or Level3. Ostensibly Cogent and Level3 can handle the upgrade and increased bandwidth, and ostensibly the ISPs internal network can handle the increased bandwidth, the congestion was at a number of peering points only. Those were the bottlenecks.

This doesn't JUST affect Netflix customers, but in fact ANY traffic that runs from Cogent or Level3 to the ISPs customer or vice versa. It just so happens that A LOT of that traffic is Netflix, but it's not EXCLUSIVELY Netflix. There are a great many people that buy transit from Cogent and Level3, meaning that ISPs are harming more than simply Netflix customers but ALL their customers.

Please understand that if the ISP isn't making an effort to ensure that their peering arrangements are sufficient to satisfy the demands of their customers, that is the ISPs fault, and not the counterparty's fault. Especially when the counterparty is willing to make the necessary upgrades to relieve the congestion, and the ISP is not because the ISP wants to get paid for it.

Remember that the ISP is the one that's offered highly asymmetric internet access to their customers. They should not be surprised that their customers utilize said service in an asymmetric fashion. Failing to upgrade the peering connection isn't "standard operating procedure" for a consumer-facing ISP. It's that ISP doing something highly unusual because they think they can get away with it.

Consumer-facing ISPs have generally arranged their business around a highly-asymmetric, consumer-pays model. Right? If I want more download, I have to pay more. I don't get free, unlimited "as much as I want" downloads, and only pay for the uploads, right? So for a consumer ISP, the principle is "receiver pays"

For a commercial, content producers, the model is "sender pays" which makes sense. That's why hosting companies buy transit from Level3, Cogent, etc. They're paying to send.

What's happened is that Netflix has already paid to send, and ISP customers have already paid to receive, and ISPs have said "yeah that's fine, but if you REALLY want to send, you're going to have to pay AGAIN"

That's the sticking point.

Nobody's arguing that anyone should get a free ability to send, or a free ability to receive. All traffic is generally double billed, once for the sender's connection and once for the receiver's connection.

The "innovation" here is that some ISPs have decided that SOME traffic should be TRIPLE billed. Once at the sender, once at the receiver, and a third time when it crosses from the sender's network to the receiver's network.

Why, if triple billing is OK, should only the consumer ISPs be allowed to do it? Why doesn't Cogent or Level3 charge consumer ISPs extra for receiving more than they're sending? Under the consumer ISPs model of "receiver pays" it would be entirely reasonable for Cogent or Level3 to charge extra, wouldn't it?

You're basically arguing that the way consumer ISPs handle this is acceptable. OK. Why isn't the exact opposite also acceptable? It's not as though most consumer ISPs have a global transit network! They're the ones that desperately need more download than upload to satisfy their highly asymmetrically provisioned customer connections, right?

Ultimately the problem here is that there are several analytical frameworks that one can use to decide who is the asshole here and who is the saint.

Given that I'm held captive by my consumer ISP and have a fair amount of choice over what content I subscribe to, I'm more inclined to believe that the consumer ISPs are abusing their power over the content providers. I don't have pleasant interactions with them basically ever so I can't see why I would extend them the benefit of the doubt.

> That's why it's better to let everyone bargain it out amongst themselves. ... In a free market, the resources should flow to whoever needs them most.

If I had the opportunity to ditch my ISP who wants to throttle Netflix through underhanded, shady tactics I WOULD ABSOLUTELY DO SO!

But the various entities were granted regional monopolies on certain wire plants like coax and utp and those huge, huge, huge advantages have yet to be leveled by the same entities that enacted the laws which caused them.

If I had the option to choose from at least say 5-10 different ISPs and some of them did what Comcast, Verizon and AT&T choose to do and other did not, I would vote with my wallet and choose a provider who does not engage in such tactics. This would cause those providers to lose customers and eventually, those providers to reconsider their "paid peering" stance. Or not! But I wouldn't be subject to the whims of a few business folk at a company that I have no practical way to influence.

As it stands, I do not have that choice. So I'm not terribly opposed to various ISPs being told through various means to play nice or have their toys taken away.

But given that I don't have any kind of real choice (duopoly at best and I'm in a major metro area!) it's kind of disingenuous to say "the free market knows best!" when there is in fact not a free market. Free the market up and let people duke it out. But don't pretend that the un-free-ness of the market somehow doesn't exist just because there are multiple long-haul transit providers.