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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

#161

Post by immibis »

timvisee wrote: post #52
Liftyee wrote: 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

It actually can, depending on where it is. Paperclip optimizers don't optimize for route length - they optimize for paperclips received. When Vodafone or Deutsche Telekom gets your packet, they try to send it to one of their customers, because their customers pay them to receive traffic, even when it's a longer route.

If you're sending a packet from German Shittytel to German Okaytel, and Okaytel just happens to buy a connection to Singapore from Asiatel to get packets to Asia, and Singapore Internet Corp just happens to buy a connection to German Shittytel to get packets to Europe, they'll be glad to send your packet all the way to Singapore so Asiatel will have to pay them for it. But if you sent your packet to a VPN server in Berlin with a neutral peering with both ISPs, the packet would take a nearly common sense route.

In practice, these situations don't happen, at least not this extreme. Partly because ISPs are trying their best not to be the recipient of this. Okaytel doesn't want their packets to be round-tripped through Singapore - that's a bad user experience and they're ultimately paying for it in money as well. So they might negotiate with Asiatel that Asiatel won't tell Shittytel that it's able to deliver packets to Okaytel - in fact there are often BGP attributes they can set to do this automatically. Business is incredibly cut-throat and incredibly stupid. I guarantee Shittytel has a lot more money than Okaytel because they are better at "extracting value". Not only the ISP business is like this btw.

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

#162

Post by sunaookami »

pimeys wrote: 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.

Deutsche Telekom peering is infamous for being bad, they want extremely high fees that not even Meta is willing to pay: https://about.fb.com/de/news/2024/09/warum-wir-unsere-direkt...

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

#163

Post by immibis »

globular-toast wrote: post #59

When can we start doing meshnets again? I was excited about it in '05 long before I could afford networking equipment. 20 years later and we've only regressed.

Right now. There's Freifunk in Germany. But we're all terrified of laws now. There was a time when hackers would dare to sticky-tape cables out their window and across the street. Not any more, everything's all nice and regulated and a strict order is harshly enforced. If I place a fiber anywhere outside of my apartment I expect to be deported.

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

#165

Post by j-bos »

thelaxiankey wrote: post #133
lwn wrote: post #48

I recently moved to a Dutch municipality that runs its own non-profit ISP. They installed a symmetric 1 Gbps fiber connection with a static IP at my house for 40 euros per month. The service is solid, there’s no upselling or throttling, and hosting things from home just works. I bring this up because when we talk about “open”, “fair” and “monopolies” the model of a local, non-profit ISP backed by the municipality cou…

i've wondered for a long time why this isn't a more common solution to these services that are almost inevitably monopolous. power, water, and internet kind of things.

Good explainer vid: https://youtu.be/CIEQPwf9MHY

tldr: one town in the US did it and it became an economic miracle, big telcos noticed and have set up lobbying and advertising infra to ensure it never happens.

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

#166

Post by radeeyate »

lwn wrote: post #48

I recently moved to a Dutch municipality that runs its own non-profit ISP. They installed a symmetric 1 Gbps fiber connection with a static IP at my house for 40 euros per month. The service is solid, there’s no upselling or throttling, and hosting things from home just works. I bring this up because when we talk about “open”, “fair” and “monopolies” the model of a local, non-profit ISP backed by the municipality cou…

And here I am in the US paying $50+/mo for CenturyLink to give me 20Mb down and 0.5Mb up.

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

#167

Post by marcusb »

galaxy_gas wrote: post #158
cachius wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. I thought it was something factually wrong.

It is also likely factually wrong as most major ISPs use GGC for popular traffic

After using Deutsche Telekom as an example of how great direct peering is, a few paragraphs later the article uses Deutsche Telekom as an example of the dangers of using peering provider intermediaries.

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

#168

Post by emeril »

radeeyate wrote: post #166
lwn wrote: post #48

I recently moved to a Dutch municipality that runs its own non-profit ISP. They installed a symmetric 1 Gbps fiber connection with a static IP at my house for 40 euros per month. The service is solid, there’s no upselling or throttling, and hosting things from home just works. I bring this up because when we talk about “open”, “fair” and “monopolies” the model of a local, non-profit ISP backed by the municipality cou…

And here I am in the US paying $50+/mo for CenturyLink to give me 20Mb down and 0.5Mb up.

shhhh.... don't say any.... the US is the bestest country in the world...

we're also really good at feeding our poor and disabled too

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

#169

Post by tormeh »

pimeys wrote: post #120
mtmail wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue here seems to be the landlord.

Yes. It's the so called Berlin issue. If you're lucky enough to find an apartment, you have a good chance of getting a slumlord who does everything to make your life miserable. I'd buy my own place, if there would be anything available. Probably need to move to another city or country.

This is what you get when you have rent control. Landlords are going to maximize profits somehow, and if they can't increase rents, they'll decrease costs and try to find ways around the rent cap to squeeze tenants anyway. There's a gap between market price and regulated price, and that tension causes a lot of issues. Not that non-regulated pricing has no issues either, but at least it's a bit more up-front about the way in which you're getting squeezed.

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

#170

Post by Nevermark »

Companies claim mergers of competitors are good because they increase efficiency, to get permission to centralize markets to a far greater degree than any cartel could.

Once under more centralized control, new and old efficiencies are moved from customer benefits per charge, to conglomerate revenue per expense.

The centralization enables the change, and defends it from competitive pressure.

And regulators keep falling for it, because industry money has so many ways to push watchdog decisions in the direction they want, under the cover of relentless PR.

--

It would be a very blunt instrument to require companies that reached 50% market share, or $500m valuation, for more than three years to split into independent companies. In any way they wanted to organizationally and asset-wise, as long as the highest valued component was valued at less than 60% of the original. (Strategically owner/leadership designed breakups often result in a greater sum value. So more than one component may end up worth more than 50% of the original.)

A very very blunt economic instrument, indeed.

But I really think markets would become more dynamic, competition fiercer, technological growth faster, economic growth higher, and customer benefits greater.

Great for the labor market too. Both in job creation and economic mobility. The continual emphasis on developing new leadership talent for success created spinoffs would be significant.

Startups would have fiercer competition in terms of incumbent adaptation and innovation, but lower passive barriers based on scale, brand, etc.

Billionaires would continue to be minted. Warren Buffet adds value to many companies without creating self-serving keiretsu out of them. Other billionaires would tilt more toward the multi-founding pattern, instead of the single-company (or tree of controlled subsidiaries) mogul type.

(I am aware that some markets, especially some utility type markets, "want" to be monopolies due to objectively high costs of duplication. But even those can be made more decentralized and more competitive by increased modularity on functional lines, and similar decompositions, suited to specific economics and practicalities.)

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