Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

freedom-to-tinker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 112 posts

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

#31

Post by GhotiFish » 

  Comcast claims that Netflix was sending traffic at such 
  high volumes as to intentionally congest the links 
  between different transit ISPs and Comcast, essentially 
  taking a page from Norton’s “peering playbook” and 
  forcing Comcast and its peers (i.e., the transit 
  providers, Cogent, Level 3, Tata, and others) to upgrade 
  capacity one-by-one, before sending traffic down a 
  different path, congesting that, and forcing an upgrade.
>Resolving the dispute: Paid peering (March 2014). Both sides of this argument are reasonable and plausible—this is a classic “peering dispute”

Both sides of this argument are reasonable and plausible?

Are you kidding me? If Netflix was intentionally shaping their traffic to disrupt Comcast, how is that not a denial of service attack? That sounds like a criminal accusation more than a bargaining position.

If Netflix actually was doing that, shouldn't comcast be sueing rather than asking for money for a peering arrangement?

also, and this is more to my own ignorance than it is to a counterpoint. I thought peering arrangements were things that happened between ISPs. Netflix is a customer of an ISP.

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

#32

Post by chrisBob »

If your ISP wanted to give you good service they could also add a few Netflix OCAs to their rack[1]. Opening up the last mile could allow the competition to use this technique to improve service while using Comcast's (or Verizon's...) network for all of the data.

[1]http://gizmodo.com/this-box-can-hold-an-entire-netflix-15925...

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

#33

Post by toast0 »

jackmaney wrote: post #24
toast0 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You can't really regulate an impossible solution though.

Unbundling has a clear model that works (or is at least workable), look at the US between 1996 and 2004, or most of Europe now.

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

#34

Post by msandford »

Yet again, someone fails to understand that this is Comcast abusing their (effective) monopoly to extract additional money via double-paying.

First I pay for internet access. 50Mbps "theoretical max" but it's fairly reasonable to expect to get say 10% of that most of the time.

Then Netflix has to pay again, in order for me to get the internet traffic that I requested. If Netflix doesn't pay, then Comcast schedules upgrades more slowly than they normally would such that my Netflix experience is degraded. They're not reducing capacity, they're just growing capacity in some areas much, much more slowly than in the rest. To get extra cash.

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

#35

Post by dzdt »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #21
djrogers wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And cable secured maasive legal and bureaucratic hurdles to prevent anyone else from doing the same.

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

#36

Post by ikeboy »

DannoHung wrote: post #11

The transit providers have pretty much all agreed with Netflix's side of the story to the best of my knowledge. For example: http://blog.level3.com/open-internet/observations-internet-m...

That post doesn't mention Netflix at all?

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

#37

Post by toast0 »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #21
djrogers wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Cable built an internet infrastructure across America on top of existing outdoor wiring plant (including access to poles) built up over many years.

Cable built up the outdoor wiring plant by offering a compelling new service (great reception for local TV and exclusive national programming) without significant competition (you could get a giant satellite dish, but compact dishes were not available until after cable was mostly entrenched).

It's not easy to overlay additional infrastructure wiring to compete with existing services (most areas already have good enough internet and video services from one or two providers; especially when a new entrant prompts upgrades from the incumbents). On the other hand, it's very easy to use wholesale access (if available) to provide middle mile competition. You would just need a couple routers (one at last mile provider building; one in a local carrier hotel/colo), a leased line between them, and a transit account.

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

#38

Post by 01Michael10 »

kokey wrote: post #5

It's refreshing to see more writing popping up from people that 'get' it. It's a shame that most of it is after people spent a decade campaigning for the wrong thing.

Wrong, preserving Net Neutrality was very important but it's just not the whole solution and no one ever said it was... It's called taking the first step.

The next step is stopping the TWC/Comcast merger.

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

#39

Post by tzs »

With Comcast, it's almost obvious that the net neutrality won't change this because Comcast was already operating under net neutrality requirements. To win approval of its NBC merger, Comcast agreed to be bound by net neutrality requirements until 2018. When Verizon won its lawsuit to strike down the FCC's 2010 rules that did not change this. Comcast remained bound by its agreement.

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

#40

Post by skylan_q »

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...

Nick responds directly to that graph:

https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/feamster/why-your-netflix...

Post reply on HN