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

Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

cringely.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 392 posts

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

#341

Post by Fuxy »

yaddayadda wrote: post #242
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…

Utah already has something like this called UTOPIA ( http://www.utopianet.org/about-utopia/ ). The participating cities run fiber optic lines. The city pays for the fiber optic lines (lots and lots and lots of political controversy about this!) then subscribers can pick and choose what services and from which providers they want. I'm in a participating city and love it! Unfortunately politics, both the governmental a…

Yay progress!

Don't let it die that's a pretty significant step forward.

Regarding Lever 3 and all other Tier 1 providers I suggest they build a database of all ISP's that let their connection saturate and if this keeps happening they cut connections and ban their ass.

All ISP's on the ban list should be forced to pay a large fee to be able to connect back with any Tier 1 providers.

At the end of the day regardless of how big you are you're not an ISP if you don't have access to the Internet.

If Concast and friends want to play the who is more important game i would wager Tier 1 providers are in a better position to win it.

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

#342

Post by throwawayaway »

Fuxy wrote: post #341
yaddayadda wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Utah already has something like this called UTOPIA ( http://www.utopianet.org/about-utopia/ ). The participating cities run fiber optic lines. The city pays for the fiber optic lines (lots and lots and lots of political controversy about this!) then subscribers can pick and choose what services and from which providers they want. I'm in a participating city and love it! Unfortunately politics, both the governmental a…

Yay progress! Don't let it die that's a pretty significant step forward. Regarding Lever 3 and all other Tier 1 providers I suggest they build a database of all ISP's that let their connection saturate and if this keeps happening they cut connections and ban their ass. All ISP's on the ban list should be forced to pay a large fee to be able to connect back with any Tier 1 providers. At the end of the day regardless o…

I can't help but think that Spotify's much derided torrent style streaming of data between users on their upload channels, would be a pragmatic workaround for netflix and others:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify#Technical_information

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

#343

Post by josephlord »

ctz wrote: post #298
jamescun wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes but the key difference is the word "also". Those 30% have an additional choice over the services using OpenReach final mile connections. In the US many people only have the one service that owns the cable and the service.

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

#344

Post by kevingadd »

runeks wrote: post #248
gph wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>basically expect to pay a low, ever-declining price for bandwidth, while someone else eats the costs of a growing network infrastructure Are we though? Our bills have only been increasing. The amount of money they put into infrastructure has decreased[1]. The Telecoms did have to put a lot of initial investment into infrastructure, but that was largely from laying the wires. Most of them are already starting to see…

> Are we though? Our bills have only been increasing. I would venture the guess that the price you pay per megabit has decreased. The problem is that the number of megabits you demand has increased faster than the price per megabit has decreased.

Your guess is false. Comcast raises prices twice a year. My plan has gone up in price by about $20/mo since I activated it a couple years ago with no increases in speed or reliability.

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

#345

Post by yaddayadda »

femto wrote: post #330
yaddayadda wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, there is an Australian corporation, Macquarie Capitol Group, that may take over the administration of UTOPIA - http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/money/57282051-79/macquarie-uto...

Macquarie Capital isn't little known here. They are famous for being able to extract maximum fees from public infrastructure. If they live up to past form [1,2], they will turn UTOPIA into a river of gold, and the source of that river will be the customers. [1] http://www.smh.com.au/travel/blogs/travellers-check/the-true... [2] http://www.smh.com.au/business/macquaries-sydney-airport-pla...

Good to know!

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

#346

Post by TomGullen »

exelius wrote: post #159
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 how it should probably be done if we were starting from scratch. A system like the one you describe would cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $300-500 billion; which isn't completely insane as far as national infrastructure projects go. The problem is that we're not starting from scratch. It's a lot harder for the government to justify that expense when there are a number of viable privately-owned alternati…

> Or to put it another way: if you had $500 billion to spend and you had to choose between overhauling the nation's education system (which desperately needs it) and providing better Internet access to people, which would you choose?

Pretty sure that's a false dichotomy, there's no reason you can't have both (given a few years).

US military budget is ~$650 billion. Is that more important than investing in an educational system that desperately needs overhauling?

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

#347

Post by danielweber »

incongruity wrote: post #317
danielweber wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a shared network. It's not bullshit that you don't have SLA guarantees. Business customers get those, and they pay a lot more for them.

There's an old saying in the car world – people buy horsepower and drive torque. Car companies always talk up the HP (even when they're kind of sad for the weight of the car, but I digress)… ISPs sell peak speeds and customers live the reality of the fine print that talks all about it being a shared line and that real speeds will often be lower than the advertised peak… Yes, it's their fault, but no, it's not – expec…

Even the power company -- which, for all its complexity, is a vastly simpler system to model and predict -- turns off my AC from time to time to keep up with load.

Availability of a shared network cannot be guaranteed. It's the irresistible force. Even if consumers don't understand, it still cannot be guaranteed.

Or, they could each have explicitly allocated pipes. They will pay a lot more for the privilege, though, just like they would pay a lot more for a private road instead of one they have to share with their neighbors.

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

#348

Post by darkr »

throwawayaway wrote: post #342
Fuxy wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yay progress! Don't let it die that's a pretty significant step forward. Regarding Lever 3 and all other Tier 1 providers I suggest they build a database of all ISP's that let their connection saturate and if this keeps happening they cut connections and ban their ass. All ISP's on the ban list should be forced to pay a large fee to be able to connect back with any Tier 1 providers. At the end of the day regardless o…

I can't help but think that Spotify's much derided torrent style streaming of data between users on their upload channels, would be a pragmatic workaround for netflix and others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify#Technical_information

Netflix is reportedly looking into this already: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/netfli...

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

#349

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

femto wrote: post #327
yaddayadda wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Utah already has something like this called UTOPIA ( http://www.utopianet.org/about-utopia/ ). The participating cities run fiber optic lines. The city pays for the fiber optic lines (lots and lots and lots of political controversy about this!) then subscribers can pick and choose what services and from which providers they want. I'm in a participating city and love it! Unfortunately politics, both the governmental a…

That sounds like a similar model to Australia's endangered National Broadband Network. The government owned NBNCo lays the fibres to customers' homes, then ISPs lease bandwidth to service their customers. It seems to be facing the same issues that you describe, with some politicians being unable to stomach publicly owned infrastructure.

God no! That is not how Labor's NBN works, nor how it is priced. Simon Hackett, the founder and former owner of Internode did a very good job of explaining by NBN Co.'s pricing model is retarded and why the network build is dumb [1]. In brief, the wholesale pricing model precludes new ISPs entering the market, and Labor's NBN is not dark fibre to the premises, again see [1], along with Simon's other talks on the subject. Frankly, the less of Labor's NBN that gets built the better.

1. http://simonhackett.com/2013/07/17/nbn-fibre-on-a-copper-bud...

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

#350

Post by vidarh »

mtourne wrote: post #339
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…

Exactly what happened in France circa 2000. France Telecom the national operator was forced to maintain the last mile and open to other ISP at the city exchange. This has allowed newcomers like Free (Free ISP), to disrupt the high speed internet market both in costs and speeds. It seems that telecom is one area where laissez-faire leads to less competition, and worse offers for potential customers.

This is the case in most EU countries, due to EU regulation of the telecoms sector.

Ironically, it is a result of deregulation of the sector, from a situation where most EU countries previously had a single government-owned operator. As part of the de-regulation, to ensure the former public telcos did not get a stranglehold, a long range of rules were put in place to guarantee competitors access to the existing subscriber base.

Post reply on HN