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Observations of an Internet Middleman

blog.level3.com

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Re: Observations of an Internet Middleman

#141

Post by lmm »

paganel wrote: post #86
toyg wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could have a situation where the government mandates net neutrality and at the same time compensates the likes of Comcast in some way (recognising their role as public utility and basically sanctioning their monopoly, but without taking over their operations entirely). You could have an anti-monopolistic legal action that splits Comcast but prevents Level3 from taking over / being present in that market. Etc etc.…

> time compensates the likes of Comcast in some way Serious question, how would one find the exact sum with which Comcast should be compensated in the absence of a functional market?

Analyse the available facts and make a best guess, just like we do with private companies operating as regulated monopolies in e.g. water supply.

Re: Observations of an Internet Middleman

#142

Post by BrechtVds »

peterwwillis wrote: post #134
pdonis wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not giving any indication as to whether they have even attempted to expand capacity on their side. I guess you missed this part then: "Six of those 12 have a single congested port, and we are both (Level 3 and our peer) in the process of making upgrades – this is business as usual and happens occasionally as traffic swings around the Internet as customers change providers."

Didn't miss it. And it would seem that has nothing to do with Comcast. Just read the paragraph again. They have 6 peers who are using a single 10 Gigabit Ethernet port and somehow (who'da thunk?) it is congested. So they are upgrading their one port that is degrading traffic for six peers. They're right, it is business as usual, and you do have to change ports as traffic flows change. This has nothing to do with Leve…

As I understand it there are 6 peers with the following situation:

  - Between 1 to 20 ports between Level3 and that peer
  - 1 of those ports is congested
  - They are handling the upgrade together, which is business as usual.
Then there are 6 other peers with the following situation:

  - Between 1 to 20 ports between Level3 and that peer
  - Almost all of those ports are congested
  - The peer refuses to augment capacity
"Congestion that is permanent, has been in place for well over a year and where our peer refuses to augment capacity. They are deliberately harming the service they deliver to their paying customers. They are not allowing us to fulfil the requests their customers make for content."

Re: Observations of an Internet Middleman

#143

Post by sergiosgc »

If this is a game of chicken, Level 3 and Cogent should play it to the end game. They are powerful enough to get Comcast and the other ISPs to concede. Just null route any interconnect that consistently drops packets and fails to get negotiated for an upgrade. The catch? It must be done by both L3 and Cogent.

Comcast is playing the monopoly card against what is an oligopoly of backbone providers. Comcast isn't strategically as well positioned as their actions would indicate.

It is one thing for Comcast to have degraded Netflix service. It is a different thing to present their customers with access to only half of the Internet .

Re: Observations of an Internet Middleman

#144

Post by dzhiurgis »

DrJokepu wrote: post #111
andruby wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For once, I am glad to be living in a densely populated European country. We can easily switch ISP's if one decides to pull these kinds of dirty tricks.

Well, except that the local telco (e.g. BT in the UK) almost certainly has monopoly over the last mile of your connection, regardless of who your ISP is (they rent the last mile from e.g. BT Openreach or maybe TalkTalk) and it's not uncommon for them to refuse to fix congestions at their exchanges (or even admit their presence) for extended periods. So, you know, it's not like it's all utopistic here or something.

The worst bit is that OpenReach are publishing data where they will wire the cabinets, but are hiding information when the cabinets will be wired to your house.

They are actually going to court for this false advertising.

Re: Observations of an Internet Middleman

#145

Post by massysett »

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…

> only reasons people use DSL are because they get it bundled with their phone and TV service

Some people use DSL because they're happy with DSL. DSL can be had for cheaper, and many people do not need the higher speeds of cable. HN readers and other geeks who dominate these online discussions assume that everyone is like them and that they need the fastest speed possible while sneering at any available alternative that is "just" 7 megabits. 7 megabits gets you instant page loads on any website. Sure it't not as good if you want to stream four movies to your house at once...but not everyone needs that.

The fact is that Comcast is right when they point out that they do face competition, not only from DSL but also from other services such as wireless. That you and many other people do not like these alternatives does not mean they do not exist. Many people find them to be perfectly adequate and for them the other services are the best value.

Re: Observations of an Internet Middleman

#146

Post by twic »

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…

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 the assumption that every consumer will have maxed their connection at the same time

That's not what's happening, though. What's happening is that the ISPs have not provisioned enough capacity to serve the actual aggregate demand at peak times. The hydraulic analogy would be if water pressure dropped every day between 0800 and 0900 because everyone was having their morning shower. That would not be acceptable to customers, and nor is the situation with ISPs.

Re: Observations of an Internet Middleman

#148

Post by josephlord »

peterwwillis wrote: post #121
forgottenpass wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet neither seem to accept their share in the cost. It seems like Level3 is ready and willing to go. Comcast is just leveraging their monopoly to get out of standard peering practices. They know that by causing a fuss the lookie loos will show up and say "oh my, a controversy, lets split the difference!" Bonus points if you can work in the phrases "right balance" and "fair share." If it's because it's hard for Level3…

> It seems like Level3 is ready and willing to go. To go where? Not to their checkbook. First they mention in the article how "usually" networks agree to upgrade parts of their network to handle additional interconnects, and don't pay service fees to each other. Then they mention saturated ports, not giving any indication as to whether they have even attempted to expand capacity on their side. We are also left to bel…

> Then they mention saturated ports, not giving any indication as to whether they have even attempted to expand capacity on their side.

How can they upgrade the capacity on their side? Suppose they drive 100GBit to the router that connects to Comcast. They can still only push 10GBit to Comcast if Comcast only make a single 10GBit port available. What they tell us is that they are ready and willing to upgrade their side and Comcast are not ready/willing to upgrade theirs.

> ....You really don't know the meaning of the word compromise? One of them has to meet the other half way. Ideally both of them would do this at the same time, but in the bizarre reality of this business, both of them are being children, neither wanting to move first, it would seem from this writing. Too bad this is just one tiny public PR stunt and probably not the whole story.

"Compromise" is a very bad long term strategy with extortionists, blackmailers, kidnappers and jackasses in general. "Compromising" with someone being an jackass is likely to lead to more jackass behaviour in the future.

Re: Observations of an Internet Middleman

#149

Post by josephlord »

josephlord wrote: post #51
revelation wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They said its not from the UK and judging from their connection points, I guess its Deutsche Telekom.

Don't know they described them as a monopoly position and cable is pretty strong in Germany. I think Spain or Italy might be better guesses. Telefonica in Spain might be a reasonable guess. Ono the cable company isn't huge. I think Telecom Italian is dominant in Italy and there is virtually no cable at all so that would be my guess.

Too late to fix typo: Telecom Italia (not Italian).

Re: Observations of an Internet Middleman

#150

Post by cs702 »

twic wrote: post #146
orik wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 the assumption that every consumer will have maxed their connection at the same time That's not what's happening, though. What's happening is that the ISPs have not provisioned enough capacity to serve the actual aggregate demand at peak times. The hydraulic an…

Exactly. Great analogy!

What's more, the utility company is getting water through a pipe that goes to a middleman near a river, but that pipe doesn't have enough capacity to deliver the water necessary for all utility customers to take their morning shower at the same time. So what does the utility company do? It blames the middleman and the river for "sending too much water"... and demands payment from them!!!

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