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Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

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Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

#291

Post by pdonis »

Angostura wrote: post #275
ChuckMcM wrote: post #97

There is an interesting unbalance because Comcast has so much leverage by owning the last mile, they can push around Tier 1 providers. I'd like to fix that, mostly by creating a public policy around municipally owned Layer 1 infrastructure between customers in their cities and a city exchange building. Conceptually it would be no different than the city owning the sewers and outsourcing the water treatment plant to a…

Sorry to be dense, but it is not quite clear to me how ownership of the last mile affords such leverage. It would seem that if you need to buy bandwidth for end users, you would be negotiating transit like anyone else - I'm clearly missing something.

> It would seem that if you need to buy bandwidth for end users, you would be negotiating transit like anyone else

It would sure seem that way, but the recent Comcast-Netflix deal shows that it isn't necessarily that way; big ISPs can exert enough pressure on content distributors to get the distributors to effectively pay the transit costs.

Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

#292

Post by pdonis »

CocaKoala wrote: post #134
diminoten wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm referring more to the fact that ISPs probably reserve the right to negotiate with peers on their terms in their contracts, not on your terms. You having a month of 720p instead of 1080p Netflix is worth it to the ISPs instead of raising your service prices by $5 bucks every single month.

Oh; instead of referring to some bullshit clause in my contract, you're referring to something that's actually irrelevant. That's weird, but okay. I can roll with it. ISPs probably do reserve the right to negotiate with peers on their terms, but I don't care about that because I'm not paying them to have a certain agreement with peers, I'm paying them for a certain quality of service. If they are not providing that s…

> If they are not providing that service (an example being giving me 720p Netflix instead of 1080p like I have paid for) then that seems like a pretty straightforward contractual violation

But your contract with your ISP most probably does not guarantee you 1080p Netflix instead of 720p. It basically says something equivalent to "we'll give you enough bandwidth for 1080p Netflix whenever we can, but we don't guarantee it, and if you don't get it, there's nothing you can do about it".

Please note that I am not saying the ISPs are the good guys here. I'm just saying that trying to nail them on contractual violations doesn't seem like a fruitful approach to me.

Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

#293

Post by pdonis »

diminoten wrote: post #145
CocaKoala wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh; instead of referring to some bullshit clause in my contract, you're referring to something that's actually irrelevant. That's weird, but okay. I can roll with it. ISPs probably do reserve the right to negotiate with peers on their terms, but I don't care about that because I'm not paying them to have a certain agreement with peers, I'm paying them for a certain quality of service. If they are not providing that s…

This is turning into a flame war. If you can't see how negotiating peering agreements is relevant to a post whose first sentence begins, "There’s a peering crisis apparently happening right now among American Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and backbone providers..." then I don't know how we can continue... The crisis, if you've read the article, is that Level3 is getting shunned by 5 of its client ISPs. The ISPs a…

> The ISPs are NOT shunning other backbone providers, just Level3.

Is this true? Or is Level3 just the only one we know about? As I remember it, the transit provider that was linking Netflix to Comcast before the Comcast-Netflix deal was Cogent, not Level3.

Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

#294

Post by pdonis »

yebyen wrote: post #240
JTon wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't have to say CDN explicitly. They can simply say Netflix or Hulu. For example, "Dear valued customer. The recent slow down of your Netflix service is the result of an issue with Netflix servers. ISP_X service is fully functional. Please contact Netflix customer support for further assistance"

I'm pretty sure Netflix just paid Comcast, and maybe I'm not keeping up with the issues as they arise and I'm really uninformed about the current state of things, but if Level3 is still having a dispute with Comcast, and Comcast blames Level3's actions on Netflix just because they need to blame someone who their customers will recognize... Forget about the gigundous case for libel Netflix would have against Comcast o…

> I'm pretty sure Netflix just paid Comcast

They most certainly did; and what's more, the transit provider Netflix was using prior to paying Comcast was, IIRC, Cogent, not Level3.

Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

#295

Post by ilaksh »

runeks wrote: post #244
mhandley wrote: post #39

Would be very interesting to see what happened if the big CDN providers just depeered Comcast for 24 hours. Would certainly cost Comcast a fair amount in customer support calls, bad publicity, and properly bring the debate to the general public.

What's the purpose? We're getting to the root cause of the problem here: lack of competition. These ISPs already have the lowest customer ratings. If the customers could switch to another ISP they would. This stunt would amount to kicking a man that's lying down. He's already used to the shitty quality of his Comcast connection, but now he's being punished by CDN providers without being able to do anything about it.

The reason there is no competition is because of regulations and physical constraints. We need ultra wideband mesh nets. Or some kind of single strand fiber with a glue that attaches it to the street and a new law that says that laying fiber strands is a natural right of every citizen.

Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

#296

Post by pdonis »

diminoten wrote: post #163
CocaKoala wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I'm confused; in one post you're pointing out that I'm getting a month of 720p video instead of 1080p, but now you're saying that I'm not suffering. If my quality of service is being degraded, is that not suffering in the context of this issue? I'm paying for service and yet not getting it. So clearly there IS an issue, because connections are suffering. Are you telling me that ports between L3 and various IS…

First of all, L3 doesn't actually provide Netflix content, I don't think, so your video stream is unaffected entirely by L3's agreements with any ISP. Second of all, you have no SLA with your ISP, so your quality of service is, "best effort". If you want an SLA, you have to pay, otherwise you're going to get the best that the ISP can give you, which means some degraded performance. That's what you've paid for. If you…

> When you do, you'll find that L3 is the only backbone provider not playing ball

Where does the article say that? It says Level3 is having peering problems, but I don't see anywhere that it says Level3 is the only transit provider having peering problems.

Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

#297

Post by pdonis »

diminoten wrote: post #238
thedufer wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It sounds like Level3 wants to enter into bigger-money contracts with the ISPs As the article points out, peering rarely involves money (and shouldn't ever; as the word peer implies, its a largely symmetric relationship). The ISPs' customers are paying the ISPs for bandwidth and then requesting traffic. Level3 is providing said traffic and then the ISP drops it because they don't have enough bandwidth. How can a re…

If Level3 can't give Netflix what it promised Netflix it would deliver, maybe Netflix should use a different CDN. Other CDNs aren't having this problem, because they're willing to work with the ISPs.

> Other CDNs aren't having this problem, because they're willing to work with the ISPs.

Do we know this?

Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

#298

Post by ctz »

jamescun wrote: post #212
ChuckMcM wrote: post #97

There is an interesting unbalance because Comcast has so much leverage by owning the last mile, they can push around Tier 1 providers. I'd like to fix that, mostly by creating a public policy around municipally owned Layer 1 infrastructure between customers in their cities and a city exchange building. Conceptually it would be no different than the city owning the sewers and outsourcing the water treatment plant to a…

This is similar to what we have in the UK. The organisation responsible for last mile connections is Openreach, and for all its failings, we in the UK are served rather well by the setup. I have the option of six ISPs, 4 national and 2 local. The issue with Openreach is the odd situation it has found itself in after several government reshuffles and countless legislation; leaving it under BT Group's umbrella but acco…

> The organisation responsible for last mile connections is Openreach

About 30% of UK homes are also served by ex-Telewest/NTL/Virgin Media cable. The last mile arrangements for that are almost identical to how AIUI things work in the US: the whole line from your door to the internet is owned and operated by one company, and there is no LLU-like competition.

Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

#299

Post by pdonis »

diminoten wrote: post #236
_ikke_ wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without customers asking for content, L3 wouldn't provide anything to Comcast. It's at the specific request of the customers that L3 relays the replies. The customers initiate the request, and L3 provides the response. Without the service L3 provides, Comcast wouldn't be able to (as efficiently) provide the service to their customers. In a sense, Comcast should pay L3 for their access to the content.

But they're not asking for L3, they're asking for Netflix. So maybe Netflix should hire a CDN that can play ball with Comcast, instead of L3, who is apparently being shut out.

> So maybe Netflix should hire a CDN that can play ball with Comcast, instead of L3

Um, didn't someone upthread point out that Level3 doesn't actually carry any Netflix content?

Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

#300

Post by Rezo »

The extreme download vs upload traffic asymmetry between Comcast and L3/Netflix has been mentioned several times as a straw man argument for why Comcast is justified in charging Netflix directly.

Maybe Netflix could find some creative uses for all that idle viewer upload capacity to reduce the deficit ;)

- Have every Netflix client cache and serve chunks of the most popular streams P2P-style. You could have a DHT algorithm for discovering chunks or have Netflix's own servers orchestrate peer discovery in a clever way, for example by only connecting Comcast customers to peers physically outside of Comcast's own network. This would reduce Netflix's downstream traffic and increase viewer uploads.

- Introduce the Netflix-Feline-Image-KeepAlive-Protocol, whereby every Netflix client on detecting a Comcast network uploads a 5MB PNG of a cat to Netflix's servers over and over again while you're watching a video. Strictly for connection quality control purposes of course.

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