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Why is Netflix Buffering? Dispelling the Congestion Myth

publicpolicy.verizon.com

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Re: Why is Netflix Buffering? Dispelling the Congestion Myth

#211

Post by [deleted] »

rayiner wrote: post #169
Alupis wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abstraction or not, you are missing the bigger picture. 1) Level3 has offered to split the cost with the Big5 ISP's of upgrading their infrastructure.[1] * This would increase throughput and capacity for both Level3 and the consumer networks. 2) Netflix has offered free Open Connect Appliances to all major ISP's.[2] * This would allow consumer networks to only download a video once , then serve it up locally within t…

In a world where everyone watches Netflix, the traditional peering arrangements dramatically favor companies like Verizon. Unsurprisingly, they're fine with the existing peering arrangements. Companies like Level 3 are offering to "share the cost" of upgrading the networks, because under the traditional arrangements, they would have to bear the full cost of the upgrades. Everyone in this discussion is just looking ou…

[deleted]

Re: Why is Netflix Buffering? Dispelling the Congestion Myth

#212

Post by rayiner »

mcphage wrote: post #207
rayiner wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean to say that there is no such thing as what software folks think of as the "internet": the sort of idealized network that you think of when you're dealing with sockets instead of edge routers. Obviously "internet" exists as a marketing term, but it refers to what's described in the Cisco article, not to the idealization. Do you get upset when you sign up for a United flight and one of the legs is operated by a…

> I mean to say that there is no such thing as what software folks think of as the "internet": the sort of idealized network that you think of when you're dealing with sockets instead of edge routers. Obviously "internet" exists as a marketing term So what you're saying is, Verizon's selling a product ("internet access") that doesn't exist—and that it's not their fault that they can't provide it, since it doesn't act…

The product ("internet access") is the same thing that everyone sells under that label: access to a private network that's connected to all the other private networks that are sold under the same label. That's what the "internet" has always meant. What doesn't exist is what software folks and net neutrality proponents think of as the "internet": this idealized homogenous network where every path between any two TCP/IP sockets is equally good. But you don't get to take a well-understood label, apply your own idealized definition to it, then attack companies that are using that label consistently with its traditional definition.

Re: Why is Netflix Buffering? Dispelling the Congestion Myth

#213

Post by jmccree »

Alupis wrote: post #143
DanBC wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wrong -- I'm paying Verizon for access to the internet -- more specifically, for access to Netflix. If I can't get Netflix, I don't pay Verizon. I either get a new ISP, or don't have internet at all You might not like the logical conclusion: the ISPs charge people for what they actually use.

Not necessarily. If Level3 is be believed (and they are credible imho), the Big5 ISP's here in the states are just flat-out refusing to make any network upgrades. Level3 has even offered to split the costs with them, since it benefits Level3 as well. What happened to all that "National Broadband Act" funding the Big5 ISP's got? What about annual infrastructure upgrades? These guys are not coping with the data-driven…

What's hilarious here, is that Level3 played the exact same game Verizon is playing now. Back in 2005 they dropped their peering entirely for several days with Cogent due to "Unbalanced Traffic Ratios" as cogent was sending L3 more traffic than L3 was sending them.

It's always historically been the case that settlement free peering required balanced traffic ratios. The difference is L3 used to have far more consumer networks buying transit from them. Before, level3 was needed to connect a bunch of different regional ISPs together who each purchased IP transit. Now, every consumer ISP of any size can orderup a nationwide backbone network (from level3 ironically, yes despite being in a peering war for ip transit, comcast's nationwide fiber network is leased from level3.)

Many of the old Ma Bells that were broken up used to be clients of level3. Through the mergers, many of them now own Tier 1 backbone networks. Verizon, ATT, and CenturyLink all are now also competing backbone providers with Level3 as well as being consumer ISPs. This leaves Level3 in the position Cogent was in when L3 depeered them.

Level3 will now gladly split the costs for unbalanced traffic ratios now that it benefits them. 10 years ago they would have tried to extract transit/paid peering from the same situation from someone else.

Perhaps the whole balanced traffic ratios requirement doesn't work in a time when every consumer ISP has their own nationwide fiber network and many also own Tier 1 IP networks. Or perhaps expect Level3 to start looking to get bought/merge by Time Warner cable or Cox to even the playing field.

Re: Why is Netflix Buffering? Dispelling the Congestion Myth

#214

Post by jmccree »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #189
rayiner wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're paying Verizon for a connection to their network, but that doesn't make it Verizon's responsibility to pay to upgrade every intermediate network on the way to every destination a Verizon customer might request data from. That is not how peering on the internet has ever worked. See this circa 1999 article about peering and settlement on the internet: http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac123/ac147/archived_issues/i.…

> See this circa 1999 article about peering and settlement on the internet The purpose of the arrangement you're pointing to is so that transit providers (e.g. Level 3 or Cogent) could distinguish other transit providers from transit customers whose traffic was characteristically asymmetric. The reason transit providers care more about upload bandwidth than download bandwidth is that customer ISPs can easily offer we…

Please remember that Verizon is also a Tier 1 transit provider! They own (via Verizon Business) the old MCI/Worldcom/UUnet backbone that was one of the largest transit providers. Level3 and Verizon are both transit providers.

Re: Why is Netflix Buffering? Dispelling the Congestion Myth

#215

Post by cs702 »

rayiner wrote: post #202
cs702 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the problem is that the ISP's network does not have sufficient capacity at that particular endpoint to receive the traffic pulled (and paid for) by its customers. The bottleneck at that endpoint is the ISP . -- PS. Travel is far too different to use in an analogy -- e.g., it doesn't involve delivery of continuous services to customer premises.

Your analogy paints the internet as a distribution system, with some fungible commodity (water, electricity) flowing from sources to sinks. That may be how Netflix uses the internet, but that's not how the internet is designed. It's designed to be a mesh, with nodes being peers to each other. The distributed structure of ownership isn't an accident of history. The internet was designed around that structure. Its much…

Yes, my analogy paints the internet as a distribution system for a fungible commodity, because bits ARE a fungible commodity, just like water and electricity. A 1 is indistinguishable from every other 1, and a 0 is indistinguishable from every other 0.

In case it's not obvious, I agree that ISPs are NOT reponsible for upgrading infrastructure outside their network. What I'm saying is that ISPs are responsible for upgrading their network so it has sufficient capacity to receive the traffic pulled (and paid for) by ISP customers.

Re: Why is Netflix Buffering? Dispelling the Congestion Myth

#216

Post by jmccree »

groby_b wrote: post #101
jpgvm wrote: post #93

ITT: People that don't understand that settlement free peering needs to be mutually beneficial. When you pay Verizon you pay for access to their network. Not access to Netflix's network. Verizon will has transit agreements with some people to use it's network and settlement free peering with other ISPs of similar size. When I go to by transit from Verizon to host my website do I expect to get settlement free peering?…

You're missing a point. Netflix _pays_ for their bandwidth. Namely, their network provider. (Or more likely, their peering points). It's not like somebody showed up at their office and said "Here's a giant pipe, push all you want". And "they're not paying to the right people" is an incorrect argument. You pay _your_ connection point for money, and the recipient pays theirs. Intermediate connections need to be handled…

As far as I know, there has been no claim that Level3 pays Verizon for their peering. The Verizon-Level3 peering is settlement free as both are large Tier 1 networks. What verizon is refusing to do is upgrade the size of the interconnections until Level3 either pays them for paid peering or gets their traffic ratios back to an equal ratio.

Level3 as a Tier 1 who pays no one for peering or transit, and is of course not going to do that. That leaves their transit client Netflix with the choice to either use other providers, who will likely run into the same traffic ratio issue, or pay for peering directly with Verizon.

When Netflix is pushing out 1/3rds of the internets whole traffic, and it's all going in one direction, there's practically no tier 1 network out there that can provide transit for that without breaking their peering agreements, except perhaps the same content providers (Verizon, ATT) offering paid peering to netflix. It's not unreasonable with their traffic levels to expect netflix to peer directly with the largest consumer networks.

Re: Why is Netflix Buffering? Dispelling the Congestion Myth

#217

Post by agwa »

SilasX wrote: post #210
agwa wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because your VPN providers are no doubt using a different transit provider than Netflix (Level 3) so your traffic is bypassing the congested peering points. The peering disputes are affecting not just Netflix traffic, but traffic between Verizon and any site using Level 3 for transit. (Not to take the blame away from Verizon. I'd love to see them try to use their logic to explain why other, non-Netflix service…

So ... if movak could costlessly move the traffic to a better route, why isn't that the normal way it's working now? Why can't Netflix just use that route?

It wasn't costless. The VPN providers paid for the bandwidth rnovak consumed.

Re: Why is Netflix Buffering? Dispelling the Congestion Myth

#218

Post by SilasX »

agwa wrote: post #217
SilasX wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So ... if movak could costlessly move the traffic to a better route, why isn't that the normal way it's working now? Why can't Netflix just use that route?

It wasn't costless. The VPN providers paid for the bandwidth rnovak consumed.

But don't people get the same results from free ones? And even if rnovak [1] was paying for it, that's still pretty cheap for the traffic to be shifted like that, with Netflix being aware of the costs, so it's still (AFAICT) hard to reconcile with the claim that Verizon isn't deliberately discriminating against Netflix.

[1] sorry, rn -> blurred into m

Re: Why is Netflix Buffering? Dispelling the Congestion Myth

#219

Post by agwa »

SilasX wrote: post #218
agwa wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't costless. The VPN providers paid for the bandwidth rnovak consumed.

But don't people get the same results from free ones? And even if rnovak [1] was paying for it, that's still pretty cheap for the traffic to be shifted like that, with Netflix being aware of the costs, so it's still (AFAICT) hard to reconcile with the claim that Verizon isn't deliberately discriminating against Netflix. [1] sorry, rn -> blurred into m

Free VPN providers are almost definitely absorbing the cost as part of a freemium pricing model, and cheap VPN providers are probably overselling their bandwidth under the assumption that most of their customers won't use much.

The reason why routing Netflix via VPNs currently works so well is because not many people are doing it. If more people did, then 1.) VPN providers would start to charge more, and 2.) the peering points between Verizon and the VPN services' transit providers would become more congested.

rnovak's "proof" of deliberate discrimination against Netflix was that encrypting Netflix traffic caused Netflix to perform better. That's simply not the reason - the reason is that the VPN traffic avoids the congested Level 3/Verizion peering points. Netflix traffic is not the only traffic that's suffering - any traffic coming from Level 3 is. (In fact, this issue has affected me, even though I'm not a Netflix customer, because I regularly access servers which get their transit from Level 3.) It might be that Verizon is playing extra-hard ball in the negotiations because Netflix traffic is involved, but any discrimination is not exclusively against Netflix and it's not because of deliberate packet inspection. Not even Netflix claims it is.

Re: Why is Netflix Buffering? Dispelling the Congestion Myth

#220

Post by mcphage »

rayiner wrote: post #212
mcphage wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean to say that there is no such thing as what software folks think of as the "internet": the sort of idealized network that you think of when you're dealing with sockets instead of edge routers. Obviously "internet" exists as a marketing term So what you're saying is, Verizon's selling a product ("internet access") that doesn't exist—and that it's not their fault that they can't provide it, since it doesn't act…

The product ("internet access") is the same thing that everyone sells under that label: access to a private network that's connected to all the other private networks that are sold under the same label. That's what the "internet" has always meant. What doesn't exist is what software folks and net neutrality proponents think of as the "internet": this idealized homogenous network where every path between any two TCP/I…

> But you don't get to take a well-understood label, apply your own idealized definition to it, then attack companies that are using that label consistently with its traditional definition.

If someone were to talk to Verizon's sales people, and watch their commercial, and read their sales copy—and then be presented with those two definitions, which do you expect they would believe Verizon is using?

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