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Verizon made an enemy tonight

iamnotaprogrammer.com

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Re: Verizon made an enemy tonight

#31

Post by vfclists »

kentonv wrote: post #7

I think this issue may be more subtle than we want it to be. I'm no fan of monopolistic ISPs, but it is true that when you have a peering point with unbalanced traffic flows, the side sending more traffic is supposed to pay the side receiving more traffic. You pay per byte sent, just like how the sender of a letter pays postage. This has always been the case, and as long as Verizon charges Level 3 the same amount per…

I think you are ignoring the crux of the argument. Verizon has agreed with the customer basically to "go fetch" what the customer asks for. Netflix is not sending data to the customer, the customer is the one who has asked Verizon to "go fetch" at a price agreed between them.

Verizon operates on the agreement with the customer that they can afford to meet the customers data needs at the price agreed.

Your ISP is like a courier service who agrees to collect and deliver your parcels from the parties you order from, with the understanding that you are bearing the full cost of the delivery.

At no point do they state that if the party you are ordering from will not pay them a fee, they can wilfully restrict the amount and the speed at which the parcels are delivered.

The OP's experiment demonstrated clearly that Verizon's didn't lack the ability to deliver the packets at the speed he had 'ordered' regardless of source, but was deliberately throttling the speeds when they realized they were from Netflix. By routing the connection through the VPN, Verizon lost the information the throttling was based on and the downloads arrived at a higher speed.

Any one who hosts a server knows that you can transmit terabytes of data for a tenth of the price ISPs charge customers.

It is purely corruption and venality on the part of the FCC and the legislators when entertain the arguments from the ISPs on net neutrality and ignore the breach of faith and contract that the ISPs attitude towards the customers entails.

The proper solution is the for the customers like the OP to bring class action suits against the ISPs and force them to reveal the financial and technical details to see if they have any substantial bearing on the ability of the ISPs to deliver on the services they have promised.

Re: Verizon made an enemy tonight

#32

Post by simonh »

[deleted] wrote: post #26

[deleted]

Asymmetric data flow is intrinsic to the service Verizon sells to the majority of it's last mile customers. It's pretty much intrinsic to DSL that the download bandwidth you get is vastly higher than the upload bandwidth.

When you buy that download bandwidth from Verizon, there's nothing in the fine print that says what you may or may not fill it with. If you fill it with Netflix video, that's your business because you paid for it. It's not Verizon's because they have sold it to you, and it's not Netflix's because you requested the data. It's your data that you paid Netflix for traveling to you on your bandwidth you paid Verizon for.

Re: Verizon made an enemy tonight

#33

Post by toast0 »

kentonv wrote: post #14
nishonia wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...it is true that when you have a peering point with unbalanced traffic flows, the side sending more traffic is supposed to pay the side receiving more traffic. Up until very recently the only time you paid for peering was when you were actually buying transit. Level 3 is definitely on the right side of this argument, not only logically - but also from the perspective of precedence. Anybody interested in learning…

Hmm, I guess I don't understand why sending packets to an end user over an ISP is not "transit", but I'll go ahead and admit I know very little about this subject and am probably wrong.

Peering is when you send packets from your network (or your customers' networks) to my network (or my customers' networks). Transit is when you send packets from your network (or your customers' networks) to my network, and I agree to deliver it, regardless of if it's within my network, my customer's networks or beyond my network (via peering or my own transit connections).

Peering is historically settlement free at public exchanges and in private connections with balanced traffic. When a private peering is not balanced, historically the peering would be disconnected, but in the mid 2000's, paid peering started showing up more frequently as an option. Paid peering is often less expensive than transit, but it depends on the networks involved and the volume.

Re: Verizon made an enemy tonight

#34

Post by [deleted] »

x0x0 wrote: post #28
[deleted] wrote: post #26

[deleted]

I think everyone, at least here, is perfectly aware of this. The problem is verizon wants to have their cake and eat it too: bill people for (a quite large) profit margin on last mile access, then turn around and tax content providers. As if asymmetric access wasn't already part of the deal when selling last mile internet pipes. This is a textbook example of why monopolies are bad, or verizon exists to fuck us and is…

[deleted]

Re: Verizon made an enemy tonight

#35

Post by toast0 »

kaeawc wrote: post #5

Wonder what location he tunneled from / to to get around Verizon's bottleneck.

If Verizon's recently released data is accurate, location probably doesn't make much of a difference. The key is that packets from the VPN provider to the user need to not arrive via the congested Level3 Verizon interconnections.

Re: Verizon made an enemy tonight

#36

Post by nishonia »

rtpg wrote: post #27
djchen wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well that's a convenient argument, given that Level 3 sends way more traffic than it receives on that link, and currently (it seems) isn't paying for that difference. That is true if Level3 was sending traffic through Verizon to say Cogent or HE. But in this case, the OP is requesting this traffic through VZ and he is paying VZ to carry this traffic for him.

>requesting this traffic through VZ and he is paying VZ to carry this traffic for him. That's a very disingenuous way of putting things. Let's get all the actors in play here: Netflix - The website/service you're trying to access Level3 - Netflix's ISP Version - Your ISP You So to get to Netflix you'er going through 2 different entities. If you consider Level3 and Verizon to be on the same level ( after all, they're…

> after all, they're both ISPs

No, Level 3 is not an ISP. So the argument doesn't work the other way around. Also, you've framed things to make it sound as if Level 3 is initiating the traffic, when it is Verizon customers who are pulling data from the Level 3 network.

Re: Verizon made an enemy tonight

#37

Post by nitrogen »

kentonv wrote: post #20
nitrogen wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it were considered "transit" in the same sense as delivering packets from one network to another across large distances, then consumer Internet access should be free because it's always biased in favor of receiving rather than transmitting bytes. Verizon should even be paying its customers to accept the extra bits they get.

That doesn't seem entirely obvious, since last-mile infrastructure is a completely different beast from backbones. But yeah, I clearly don't know what I'm talking about at this point. Sorry.

I think you understand more than you admit ;-). The last-mile infrastructure is indeed a completely different beast, and Verizon is last-mile infrastructure. So backbone-to-backbone might be symmetric, but backbone-to-last-mile should never have been expected to be symmetric.

Re: Verizon made an enemy tonight

#38

Post by [deleted] »

simonh wrote: post #32
[deleted] wrote: post #26

[deleted]

Asymmetric data flow is intrinsic to the service Verizon sells to the majority of it's last mile customers. It's pretty much intrinsic to DSL that the download bandwidth you get is vastly higher than the upload bandwidth. When you buy that download bandwidth from Verizon, there's nothing in the fine print that says what you may or may not fill it with. If you fill it with Netflix video, that's your business because y…

[deleted]

Re: Verizon made an enemy tonight

#39

Post by jpgvm »

Verizon, TWC, Comcast. All of these providers are local monopolies.

This is the root of the problem.

Here in Australia I can choose any number of retail ISPs that will service my Fibre to the Home connection. If I was not living in the building I am now I would be able to choose any number of ADSL ISPs. This creates competition and fixes the problem.

Funnily enough this access is legislated here in Australia. Yes. Legislated.

There can be no ISP monopolies in Australia.

Better yet we have embarked on building a Fibre to the Home national network called the National Broadband Network which functions under the same scheme, ensuring we won't have any bullshit monopolies for the foreseeable future.

Americans should campaign for the same solution, enforce last-mile wholesale and legislate separation of ISP retail from ISP wholesale business units.

Everyone wins.

Re: Verizon made an enemy tonight

#40

Post by vfclists »

kentonv wrote: post #7

I think this issue may be more subtle than we want it to be. I'm no fan of monopolistic ISPs, but it is true that when you have a peering point with unbalanced traffic flows, the side sending more traffic is supposed to pay the side receiving more traffic. You pay per byte sent, just like how the sender of a letter pays postage. This has always been the case, and as long as Verizon charges Level 3 the same amount per…

@kentonv With regard from the customer end, the issue of peering arrangements is basically a false one. Netflix shouldn't have to pay a penny to anyone. Verizon's agreement from the customer viewpoint requires them to build their pipes right up to Netflix's doorstep if that is what it takes them to collect and deliver the packets the customers have requested.

This whole debate is basically about the legislators and the FCC giving Verizon et al an opportunity to rip off both customers and service providers.

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