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Netflix replies to Verizon cease and desist letter

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Re: Netflix replies to Verizon cease and desist letter

#171

Post by sadris »

stonemetal wrote: post #87
josh2600 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Playing Devil's advocate here for a second: If Netflix is 35% of global internet traffic at peak capacity (as per the Akamai CEO's comments at a number of events), is it really fair to treat them like every other company? That is to say, if Netflix is really the sole driver of Network upgrades, why does Verizon have to subsidize their costs of business? I'm not taking the stance that this is correct, only querying as…

>Verizon have to subsidize their costs of business I don't see that argument going very far. Netflix has an ISP and pays for their own bandwidth. Why should they pay twice for their bandwidth? If verizon has a problem with the amount of data their customers are requesting from netflix they could always disallow that or institute data caps etc.

Yep, I still don't understand why land line ISPs don't charge by the MB like cell services do.

Re: Netflix replies to Verizon cease and desist letter

#172

Post by NoPiece »

danudey wrote: post #81
jessaustin wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would that be anything other than a blatant lie? Are they going to mail the customer a different model of modem? Do any current cableco-provided modems not have built-in wifi?

> Do any current cableco-provided modems not have built-in wifi? No, but all of their features can be enabled/disabled by the ISP remotely.

I have a Ubee cable modem from Comcast that doesn't have wifi, and I think had an Arris before that that also didn't have wifi.

Re: Netflix replies to Verizon cease and desist letter

#173

Post by randomfool »

drusenko wrote: post #131
josh2600 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Playing Devil's advocate here for a second: If Netflix is 35% of global internet traffic at peak capacity (as per the Akamai CEO's comments at a number of events), is it really fair to treat them like every other company? That is to say, if Netflix is really the sole driver of Network upgrades, why does Verizon have to subsidize their costs of business? I'm not taking the stance that this is correct, only querying as…

You're not as far off as you think. It seems very few commenters to this thread understand how the internet actually operates from a business perspective. When you install a server in a colo, you don't get free transit. You find a transit provider (like Level3, Cogent, or NTT) and you pay them for bandwidth. You can understand this very intuitively as most hosting services (like AWS) will charge you for bandwidth. As…

If Netflix is paying Level3 enough to send the data to users, but Verizon is not paying Level3 enough to get the data on behalf of their users then it sounds like Verizon's fault.

Peering agreements should be about saving costs on both sides, but if Netflix is willing to pay Level3 for sufficient bandwidth then Verizon should have the ability to handle that for their users.

Re: Netflix replies to Verizon cease and desist letter

#174

Post by josh2600 »

mr_luc wrote: post #162
josh2600 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An ISP's job, as a private company, is to maximize shareholder value. The circuit consumers are sold is a "best-effort" connection in stark contrast to, say, a T1, which is a dedicated circuit. It's also very hard to prove that Verizon is throttling, versus, say, simply physically underprovisioning the connection. With respect to public money, I think you've hit the nail on the head. The crux of the Net Neutrality de…

I just wanted to call out where you say that it's "hard to prove" that ISPs are purposefully degrading service. Hard to prove in a court of law, perhaps, but the speeds of access to the businesses being extorted can tell a pretty convincing story. This chart: http://appledailyreport.com/backend/wp-content/uploads/2014/... paints a nice picture of how ISPs want to extort businesses that are in more profitable lines of…

Sorry I was speaking from a court of law viewpoint. It's really obvious if you look at the network charts but it would be really hard to get those into a court for a lot of reasons.

I understand that it would be a negative impactor on the future of nations and innovation; I'm asking if that's enough to actually drive change. My sense is that, historically, with respect to ISP behavior, over time they get what they want. I'm not saying this is right, I'm simply noticing a trend, just as many have noted that less-private social networks win over more privacy focused businesses.

Re: Netflix replies to Verizon cease and desist letter

#175

Post by mantrax5 »

gorhill wrote: post #163
mantrax5 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An ISP's job, as a private company, is to maximize shareholder value. You lost me there. "There is only one valid definition of a business purpose: to create a customer." ~Peter Drucker (whose writings contributed to the philosophical and practical foundations of the modern business corporation) “On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world. Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy… yo…

> "There is only one valid definition of a business purpose: to create a customer." And yet financial statements are reported in dollar units, not in customer units.

A business should be solvent, so of course they're in dollar units.

A business is a balancing act of many "should"s and "could"s.

But when your top priority, or god forbid, sole priority, becomes "maximizing" money, versus contributing in a meaningful way to society, your business no longer deserves to exist.

Re: Netflix replies to Verizon cease and desist letter

#177

Post by icambron »

sliverstorm wrote: post #155
icambron wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If Netflix is 35% of global internet traffic at peak capacity (as per the Akamai CEO's comments at a number of events), is it really fair to treat them like every other company? I don't see why not. I think it might make more sense to think of it as streaming video, the category of goods, rather than Netflix, the company. So 35% of global internet traffic is people streaming videos. And who cares that it's video; fr…

What if Comcast's network is built around the idea that traffic is exchanged relatively equally? They put in gigabit switches everywhere, a nice fair balanced network. Then Netflix comes along, and suddenly 35% of Comcast's customer traffic is all going to a handful of Netflix DSNs? Suddenly Comcast has to redo the whole connection. They have to buy top-shelf hardware just for Netflix. I don't know if this has happen…

Edit: rewritten because I misunderstood your point.

Funny, I actually just added an edit to my post above that discusses this. Comcast adds interconnect capacity as needed. So in at least one way, it's actually easier this way, right? Just one peer to make sure they have capacity for.

But either way, it's Comcast's job to run a network that's optimized for its customers needs, not some abstract concept of fairness. And in this hypothetical, it's not on Netflix that streaming lots of content is not compatible with how Comcast happened to build its network. Comcast needs to fix its network so that its customers can get their data.

Re: Netflix replies to Verizon cease and desist letter

#178

Post by sliverstorm »

anoncow wrote: post #135

Someone please clarify my doubts. When I run a server, I have to pay for bandwidth costs. For eg. My website hosted on linode gets me 20TB of data transfer limit. I expect end users to be able to view content worth 20 tb of up/down data transfer. Netflix runs its own servers but the ISP providing connectivity must be already charging Netflix for a certain bandwidth and data transfer limit. If the ISP is charging for…

Netflix has their own ISP.

Netflix's ISP and Verizon pay eachother nothing to exchange traffic (called peering).

Verizon wakes up one day and says, "Shit out of all the ISPs we peer with, Netflix and their ISP is responsible for 35% of our traffic, we have to do huge upgrades on the link to them, and they aren't paying us a dime"

That's my understanding of what is going on.

Re: Netflix replies to Verizon cease and desist letter

#180

Post by jjoonathan »

sliverstorm wrote: post #155
icambron wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If Netflix is 35% of global internet traffic at peak capacity (as per the Akamai CEO's comments at a number of events), is it really fair to treat them like every other company? I don't see why not. I think it might make more sense to think of it as streaming video, the category of goods, rather than Netflix, the company. So 35% of global internet traffic is people streaming videos. And who cares that it's video; fr…

What if Comcast's network is built around the idea that traffic is exchanged relatively equally? They put in gigabit switches everywhere, a nice fair balanced network. Then Netflix comes along, and suddenly 35% of Comcast's customer traffic is all going to a handful of Netflix DSNs? Suddenly Comcast has to redo the whole connection. They have to buy top-shelf hardware just for Netflix. I don't know if this has happen…

Netflix isn't "doing" anything to Comcast. Comcast's customers are demanding (and paying for) the asymmetrical traffic. If they have to redo the connection, so be it -- they promised their customers connectivity, and if that means installing new hardware to achieve connectivity so be it.
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