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

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

#21

Post by JoeAltmaier » Wed, Mar 25, 2015, 5:34 PM UTC

djrogers wrote: post #19

k2enemy wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would this solve the problem though? Having competition at the last mile doesn't solve the problem of congestion in miles 2-100 where there is still one company.

The point is that if 'last-mile' services were open to competition, then there would (could) be many companies in what you call the 2-100 mile arena. Building an ISP infrastructure is merely difficult and expensive. On the other hand, thanks to municipal involvement, lobbying, time-based monopolies, etc. building last-mile everywhere is basically impossible.

Exaggeration. Cable did it everywhere in America over a period of a couple of years.

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

#22

Post by cheald » Wed, Mar 25, 2015, 5:34 PM UTC

k2enemy wrote: post #3

PaulHoule wrote: post #2

This is why the Net Neutrality ruling was not a big step forward. The right way to solve the internet problem is "unbundling"; that is, the people who own the last mile lease it out to companies that sell you internet, video and other services. If Comcast customers were getting a bad netflix experience they could switch to an ISP that gives a good one.

How would this solve the problem though? Having competition at the last mile doesn't solve the problem of congestion in miles 2-100 where there is still one company.

The last mile is where competition becomes difficult due to physical buildout restrictions. There are quite a lot of "mile 2-100" companies; it's not like Cogent is the only game in town.

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

#23

Post by DubiousPusher » Wed, Mar 25, 2015, 5:34 PM UTC

> And, while it is also worth considering whether the impending merger between Comcast and Time Warner cable might exacerbate the current situation, I predict that this is unlikely. In general, as one access ISP gains more market share, a content provider such as Netflix depends on connectivity to that ISP even more, potentially extracting increasingly higher prices for interconnection. In the specific case of Comcast and Time Warner, it is difficult to predict exactly how much additional leverage this will create, but as it turns out, these two ISPs are already in markets where they are not competing with one another, so this specific merger is unlikely to dramatically change the current situation.

I'm having trouble with this logic. Increased leverage over content providers seems like it would exactly exacerbate this situation.

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

#24

Post by jackmaney » Wed, Mar 25, 2015, 5:34 PM UTC

toast0 wrote: post #18

phkahler wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The right way to solve the internet problem is "unbundling"; that is, the people who own the last mile lease it out to companies that sell you internet, video and other services. That's terrible. The ISP should give me "internet access" which includes everything out there. They should not get to pick and chose what I can get. >> If Comcast customers were getting a bad netflix experience they could switch to an ISP…

> This is called competition. It's what you get with net neutrality. Since every ISP has to give you everything equally, the only way they can compete is by building better infrastructure and compete on ping time and bandwidth. This is how it should be. Allowing them to prioritize certain services for a fee (regardless of who pays) means allowing them to stagnate - in fact paying them to stagnate - which is bad for e…

> no regulator is going to compel an ISP to peer with all networks at all peering points.

Then we need new--and more stringent--regulation.

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

#25

Post by ikeboy » Wed, Mar 25, 2015, 5:35 PM UTC

I tried explaining this to people before the FCC stuff passed, but they just insisted that evil comcast was slowing down netflix streams.

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

#26

Post by JoeAltmaier » Wed, Mar 25, 2015, 5:37 PM UTC

jackmaney wrote: post #20

phkahler wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The right way to solve the internet problem is "unbundling"; that is, the people who own the last mile lease it out to companies that sell you internet, video and other services. That's terrible. The ISP should give me "internet access" which includes everything out there. They should not get to pick and chose what I can get. >> If Comcast customers were getting a bad netflix experience they could switch to an ISP…

> Since every ISP has to give you everything equally, the only way they can compete is by building better infrastructure and compete on ping time and bandwidth. And customer service.

and reliability.

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

#27

Post by wmf » Wed, Mar 25, 2015, 5:39 PM UTC

k2enemy wrote: post #3

PaulHoule wrote: post #2

This is why the Net Neutrality ruling was not a big step forward. The right way to solve the internet problem is "unbundling"; that is, the people who own the last mile lease it out to companies that sell you internet, video and other services. If Comcast customers were getting a bad netflix experience they could switch to an ISP that gives a good one.

How would this solve the problem though? Having competition at the last mile doesn't solve the problem of congestion in miles 2-100 where there is still one company.

In theory there wouldn't be "one company" anywhere other than the wires. If you have a choice between ISP A who is deliberately congesting Netflix, ISP B who receives Netflix over uncongested transit, ISP C who was uncongested extortionate peering with Netflix, or ISP D who has uncongested free peering with Netflix then you just choose whichever ISP provides the price and performance that you prefer. And if all the customers choose ISP D, maybe the other ISPs will change their policies to try to win customers.

Unfortunately there are other problems (like "your DSL being down is not our fault") with unbundling.

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

#28

Post by toast0 » Wed, Mar 25, 2015, 5:40 PM UTC

k2enemy wrote: post #3

PaulHoule wrote: post #2

This is why the Net Neutrality ruling was not a big step forward. The right way to solve the internet problem is "unbundling"; that is, the people who own the last mile lease it out to companies that sell you internet, video and other services. If Comcast customers were getting a bad netflix experience they could switch to an ISP that gives a good one.

How would this solve the problem though? Having competition at the last mile doesn't solve the problem of congestion in miles 2-100 where there is still one company.

Unbundling requires sharing of last mile infrastructure to allow for competition in the middle mile. Last mile wiring has huge barriers to entry, middle mile wiring barriers are significantly lower.

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

#29

Post by ikeboy » Wed, Mar 25, 2015, 5:41 PM UTC

icehawk wrote: post #15

Last I checked it was the consumer ISPs that were stalling with peering upgrades according to multiple transit providers http://blog.level3.com/open-internet/verizons-accidental-mea... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9264381

Verizon responded to that post.

http://publicpolicy.verizon.com/blog/entry/level-3s-selectiv...

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

#30

Post by msandford » Wed, Mar 25, 2015, 5:41 PM UTC

higherpurpose wrote: post #8

dpark wrote: post #7

Cogent publicly offered to pay for both sides of the peering upgrades in order to fix their congestion problem. http://www.cogentco.com/en/news/press-releases/631-cogent-of... Pretty sure Comcast didn't take them up on the offer. Doing so would have fixed the issue and Netflix wouldn't be writing checks to Comcast now.

You mean this check handed right here? http://knowmore.washingtonpost.com/2014/04/25/this-hilarious...

That's Netflix paying Comcast directly, not Cogent giving Comcast the few grand to upgrade the link that they were purposefully not upgrading to force Netflix into paying.

EDIT: Also worth noting that Netflix has to pay every month (which is what Comcast wants) rather than Cogent just giving them $10k once for new hardware (not as delicious as lots more money!)