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

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

#51

Post by msandford »

toast0 wrote: post #43
msandford wrote: post #34

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 up…

I've never understood the "double pay" argument. You pay for internet. Netflix has to pay for internet too. To deliver packets to Comcast's network, Netflix can chose to pay any number of transit companies, or they can cut out the middle man and pay Comcast. Why is it ok for Netflix to pay a transit company, but not Comcast?

So Comcast has historically been a consumer ISP, not a transit provider. Consumer ISPs have traditionally had to buy service from transit providers in order to give their customers access to the internet. So in this case your monthly service fee went partially for the last mile and partially for the actual internet connection from the transit provider. Bandwidth is expensive.

As some ISPs got bigger, they were able to negotiate peering agreements instead of paid service since it was in both party's best interest. A could bill B $10k/mo for service and B could bill A $10k/mo for service and in the end it was a wash. This makes sense too. Once this happened your bill largely reflected the cost of the last mile, since the transit was now free. Bandwidth has gotten cheaper.

What we're seeing now is that some ISPs have gotten so big that instead of paying transit providers for access to the greater internet, or simply getting free peering, they're charging others for peering to them. How are they able to do this? They have an effective monopoly on their customers and they're "leveraging" this to get even more money. Now my monthly fee goes to pay for the last mile, and someone else also has to pay for the last mile. Am I getting a discount? No. Bandwidth isn't getting cheaper, but the last mile is getting paid for twice. Is the last mile getting faster? Also no.

So this feels very much like a monopoly abusing their position of power to get extra money.

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

#52

Post by pedrocr »

toast0 wrote: post #43
msandford wrote: post #34

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 up…

I've never understood the "double pay" argument. You pay for internet. Netflix has to pay for internet too. To deliver packets to Comcast's network, Netflix can chose to pay any number of transit companies, or they can cut out the middle man and pay Comcast. Why is it ok for Netflix to pay a transit company, but not Comcast?

> Why is it ok for Netflix to pay a transit company, but not Comcast?

Because transit providers are actually providing a service to Netflix. They allow them to dump all the traffic in one location and then the transit provider will build out a network to take care of moving the traffic to anywhere in the globe where there's an ISP requesting it. The transit provider will then not pay the ISP to take the traffic and deliver it to their requesting user. When Netflix connects directly to Comcast that's not what's happening, Netflix has to get the content to Comcast's network by itself and the Comcast network is already paid for by the user. So if Netflix pays Comcast then Comcast is getting paid to create the network by both the user and Netflix.

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

#53

Post by ikeboy »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #48
ikeboy wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the hardware upgrade, the peering agreement is only free when each side sends the same amount of data. Netflix is sending a lot more than it's receiving, in which case their ISP needs to pay for peering. Edit: I'm just explaining why a hardware upgrade was besides the points that were being made. These are the facts regardless of who you think is in the right. The argument was over bandwidth usage, not…

Uh no. Comcast's customers are requesting more traffic than they send. That is how residential asymmetric ISP services are specifically designed to be used. Netflix isn't the bogey man just because they offer a service consumers want and have already paid their ISP to deliver. If Netflix was split into 1000 smaller VOD services streaming the same traffic volume who would Comcast blame for having to shoulder the same…

>If Netflix was split into 1000 smaller VOD services streaming the same traffic volume who would Comcast blame for having to shoulder the same burden?

In that case many of those would be Comcast customers, and peering would end up equal.

Netflix has a problem because it's an outlier. I'd like to see the chart without Netflix and see if comcast still receives more than it sends then.

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

#54

Post by rayiner »

toast0 wrote: post #33
jackmaney wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Growth in internet speeds was way faster from 2004-present than from 1996 to 2004. In 1996, my parents had 28.8 kbps dial-up. In 2001, they got 256 kbps DSL. That's 10x over 5 years. In 2006, they got 50 mbps fiber. That's 200x over 5 years. See: http://www.ieee802.org/3/ad_hoc/bwa/public/sep11/cloonan_01a....

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

#55

Post by ikeboy »

chimeracoder wrote: post #50
ikeboy wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the hardware upgrade, the peering agreement is only free when each side sends the same amount of data. Netflix is sending a lot more than it's receiving, in which case their ISP needs to pay for peering. Edit: I'm just explaining why a hardware upgrade was besides the points that were being made. These are the facts regardless of who you think is in the right. The argument was over bandwidth usage, not…

> Netflix is sending a lot more than it's receiving, in which case their ISP needs to pay for peering. All Internet traffic has more download than upload (for the end-consumer). This is literally why ISPs offer faster download speeds in end-consumer packages than upload speeds - they know that consumers will need to download more than they upload. In vector calculus, this is known as divergence . Traffic on the highw…

>All Internet traffic has more download than upload (for the end-consumer). This is literally why ISPs offer faster download speeds in end-consumer packages than upload speeds - they know that consumers will need to download more than they upload.

Yes, but they also have commercial customers that send out lots of data. Netflix is an outlier all by itself, outweighing the connection.

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

#56

Post by ikeboy »

msandford wrote: post #44
ikeboy wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the hardware upgrade, the peering agreement is only free when each side sends the same amount of data. Netflix is sending a lot more than it's receiving, in which case their ISP needs to pay for peering. Edit: I'm just explaining why a hardware upgrade was besides the points that were being made. These are the facts regardless of who you think is in the right. The argument was over bandwidth usage, not…

Netflix is only sending the data at the request of Comcast's customers. Comcast is the company which created an asymmetric network such that their customers can request far, far more data than they are able to send. They are reaping the rewards of that decision. It hardly seems reasonable to expect that all the companies that Comcast peers with to have data flowing in equal amounts both ways since the design of Comca…

Why aren't the customers that send less data than they receive balanced out by those that send more than they receive? For every byte being sent, there's someone on both sides, so an ISP serving a large enough area should balance out. Except with huge outliers like Netflix.

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

#57

Post by msandford »

ikeboy wrote: post #53
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh no. Comcast's customers are requesting more traffic than they send. That is how residential asymmetric ISP services are specifically designed to be used. Netflix isn't the bogey man just because they offer a service consumers want and have already paid their ISP to deliver. If Netflix was split into 1000 smaller VOD services streaming the same traffic volume who would Comcast blame for having to shoulder the same…

>If Netflix was split into 1000 smaller VOD services streaming the same traffic volume who would Comcast blame for having to shoulder the same burden? In that case many of those would be Comcast customers, and peering would end up equal. Netflix has a problem because it's an outlier. I'd like to see the chart without Netflix and see if comcast still receives more than it sends then.

> In that case many of those would be Comcast customers, and peering would end up equal.

NOT HARDLY!

They would mostly be customers of small datacenters in various places all around the country, and thus, customers of Cogent and Level3.

Datacenters generally go for tier1 bandwidth, not consumer ISP bandwidth.

Look at the plans that they offer on their website. The fastest upload I can find is 20Mbps for $200/mo. http://business.comcast.com/internet/business-internet/plans...

That's $10/meg which is A LOT.

Three years ago if you were willing to buy in bulk, you could get bandwidth for as low as $0.65/meg as this HN user points out. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3892854 Based on his comments I suspect that you could get it for less than $0.50/meg today, maybe less than $0.25/meg.

Sure looks like Comcast wanting to have its cake and eat it too.

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

#58

Post by phkahler »

pyre wrote: post #17
phkahler wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The right way to solve the internet problem is "unbundling"; that is, the people who own the last mile lease it out to companies that sell you internet, video and other services. That's terrible. The ISP should give me "internet access" which includes everything out there. They should not get to pick and chose what I can get. >> If Comcast customers were getting a bad netflix experience they could switch to an ISP…

> This is called competition. It's what you get with net neutrality. You are stating that "Net Neutrality" will magically create competing ISPs in places where only a duopoly of and currently exist. Please explain to me how net neutrality will somehow affect things like local municipalities granting ISPs local monopolies. Or how "net neutrality" will allow new-comers to overcome the initial regulatory and capital inv…

>> Please explain to me how net neutrality will somehow affect things like local municipalities granting ISPs local monopolies. Or how "net neutrality" will allow new-comers to overcome the initial regulatory and capital investment hurdles to setting up a new ISP.

It doesn't. Local monopoly support from the government is a big problem, but it's also not the only problem. I actually have 3 options at my home and it doesn't seem to be causing an increase in service or a reduction in prices.

That said, as video moves to the internet and as the ISPs lose differentiation, we can hope for actual competition on access to what FCC regulation will make a commodity service. But I'm not entirely convinced that will happen either.

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

#59

Post by jdmichal »

pedrocr wrote: post #52
toast0 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood the "double pay" argument. You pay for internet. Netflix has to pay for internet too. To deliver packets to Comcast's network, Netflix can chose to pay any number of transit companies, or they can cut out the middle man and pay Comcast. Why is it ok for Netflix to pay a transit company, but not Comcast?

> Why is it ok for Netflix to pay a transit company, but not Comcast? Because transit providers are actually providing a service to Netflix. They allow them to dump all the traffic in one location and then the transit provider will build out a network to take care of moving the traffic to anywhere in the globe where there's an ISP requesting it. The transit provider will then not pay the ISP to take the traffic and d…

> The transit provider will then not pay the ISP to take the traffic and deliver it to their requesting user.

The "not pay" part is, I assume, based on the prevalent use of settlement-free peering in the industry. These agreements were based on a understanding that, over time, the traffic would wash out even between the two, so let's just not keep track and call it even from the start. This is not necessarily a given in all situations. Comcast asserted that the quantity of Netflix traffic was breaking this understanding.

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

#60

Post by vlan0 »

I have always felt that this issue has been overcomplicated. It seems what this really stems from is the classic ISP business model. From a pure network design standpoint, nearly every network has an uplink that is not large enough to sustain simultaneous high usage from most, or all, of its devices. Your classic endpoint data closet example would be a 48-port switch with 1Gbps access ports, and a 10-20Gbps uplink.

This problem seems much worse in the ISP world. Many years ago, ISPs could easily oversell their connection. Realistically only worrying about the small percentage of extreme users downloading high volumes of data via Usenet, BitTorrent, or other file sharing services. Life for an ISP was probably pretty great.

Now, with the sheer number of households streaming video, it seems to be apparent that ISPs are drastically overselling their connections. It does not even make logical sense to blame a single service if an ISPs upstream connection is saturated. If the ISP did not oversubscribe their connections at such ridiculous rates, this would not be an issue. Why does it matter that a single service is causing the largest portion of the traffic congestion?

Netflix recommends a 5Mbps connection to stream HD video. Most all devices today would stream at HD quality, if possible. How is it that an ISP such as Comcast doesn’t have the uplink capacity to sustain many users at a mere 5Mbps? I find it absurd that multiple ISPs are overselling their connection to the point where a speed of 1/7 of the average connection in the USA is too much of a strain. It really seems that the level of oversubscription is equivalent to having a data closet with a 48-port 100Mbps switch uplinked at 2Gbps . The whole situation just stinks of pure greed.

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