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

71–80 of 112 posts

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

#71

Post by pedrocr »

ikeboy wrote: post #67
pedrocr wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are huge companies so they can probably also provide transit service but that's not the case in this dispute. Netflix is willing to deliver the content anywhere Verizon/Comcast/etc require it either directly or by hiring a transit provider. So Netflix doesn't want transit service from these ISPs, it's already paying or building that by itself. The user is also already paying for the ISP network to work, so all s…

Should anyone be able to connect to an ISP for free? Why can't I host my website for free, just paying an upfront cost for a server, and get it hosted in an ISP's facility? Is there a relevant difference between that and what Netflix wanted?

> Should anyone be able to connect to an ISP for free?

Yes if they are willing to interconnect with that ISP at every exchange point. In practice that's expensive and what transit providers are for. Here's my proposal for a simple set of rules that would solve all these disputes:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7644339

>Why can't I host my website for free, just paying an upfront cost for a server, and get it hosted in an ISP's facility?

You should be able to do something similar to that to provide service for only that ISP's users. In fact Netflix does exactly that with some ISPs:

https://openconnect.itp.netflix.com/

This doesn't allow you to host your website for free because it only adds connectivity to the users of that specific ISP, not the whole internet. For that you have to buy transit.

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

#72

Post by ikeboy »

pedrocr wrote: post #71
ikeboy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should anyone be able to connect to an ISP for free? Why can't I host my website for free, just paying an upfront cost for a server, and get it hosted in an ISP's facility? Is there a relevant difference between that and what Netflix wanted?

> Should anyone be able to connect to an ISP for free? Yes if they are willing to interconnect with that ISP at every exchange point. In practice that's expensive and what transit providers are for. Here's my proposal for a simple set of rules that would solve all these disputes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7644339 >Why can't I host my website for free, just paying an upfront cost for a server, and get it ho…

So if I wanted to only serve most of US users, I could set up a handful of servers and get access to all for free under your plan?

How many times would they need to interconnect with a particular ISP? Once?

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

#73

Post by pedrocr »

ikeboy wrote: post #72
pedrocr wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Should anyone be able to connect to an ISP for free? Yes if they are willing to interconnect with that ISP at every exchange point. In practice that's expensive and what transit providers are for. Here's my proposal for a simple set of rules that would solve all these disputes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7644339 >Why can't I host my website for free, just paying an upfront cost for a server, and get it ho…

So if I wanted to only serve most of US users, I could set up a handful of servers and get access to all for free under your plan? How many times would they need to interconnect with a particular ISP? Once?

> How many times would they need to interconnect with a particular ISP? Once?

It's right there in the link. You'd have to interconnect with Verizon/Comcast at every one of their regional interchange points. It would become very expensive very fast for a single small website, but it would be reasonable for a transit provider or a very large content provider that already has servers everywhere (like Google). There would be no free riding, everyone would need to pay for their own way, either by directly physically connecting to the interchange points or by paying a transit provider that already does.

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

#74

Post by msandford »

ikeboy wrote: post #70
msandford wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, but they also have commercial customers that send out lots of data. Who? From what I can tell even their commercial offerings are heavily asymmetric to downloading: http://business.comcast.com/internet/business-internet/plans... Download / Upload (in Mbps) 16 / 3 50 / 10 75 / 15 100 / 20 150 / 20 So who are these companies that use Comcast to send a lot?

That's not for businesses running websites, that's for using the internet in a business. http://business.comcast.com/internet/business-internet/web-h... is relevant, although it doesn't give speeds. But presumably anyone who buys that is sending more data out of comcast than they are receiving. And as I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I'd like to see a chart of data in and out excluding Netflix and large companie…

The plans listed on that page are:

Storage / Transfer / Price

10MB / 100MB / Free

300GB / Unlimited / $20

400GB / Unlimited / $40

500GB / Unlimited / $80

You must realize that these are absolutely NOT true commercial offerings. They don't even list what your commit bandwidth is!

Also you can't run your own applications there! Do you really think Netflix runs off of a shared server like this? They're a HUGE AWS customer running many thousands of VMs. How do you access control things, how do you deploy your code, how do you do basically ANYTHING with this offering from Comcast? I suspect that you don't.

Here are some legitimate commercial offerings: http://www.hostgator.com/dedicated

If you notice, they have a page dedicated to their network. What familiar names do we find on this page? Cogent and Level3! http://www.hostgator.com/network

Notice that there is no mention ANYWHERE of ANY COMPANY that might even a LITTLE BIT be considered a consumer ISP. Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, Cox, etc, none of them are mentioned.

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

#75

Post by tzs »

ikeboy wrote: post #56
msandford wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Netflix is not an outlier when it comes to asymmetrical traffic. The typical Comcast customer receives from Google far more data than they send to Google. They receive far more data from Amazon than they send to Amazon. Same for their interaction with Facebook, Twitter, Hacker News, Reddit, the bank, their email provider, their gaming guild forum, and so on. About the only time they might be sending as much as they receive is when they are using the internet for a voice or video chat.

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

#76

Post by wmf »

msandford wrote: post #68
ikeboy wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

> Yes, but they also have commercial customers that send out lots of data. Who? From what I can tell even their commercial offerings are heavily asymmetric to downloading: http://business.comcast.com/internet/business-internet/plans... Download / Upload (in Mbps) 16 / 3 50 / 10 75 / 15 100 / 20 150 / 20 So who are these companies that use Comcast to send a lot?

That's business cable, but Comcast also has business fiber that's symmetric up to 10 Gbps. http://business.comcast.com/ethernet/products/dedicated-inte...

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

#77

Post by wmf »

ikeboy wrote: post #69
msandford wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While we're asking each other silly questions, let me ask you this: if my ISP says that they're providing me with "internet access" but actually only provides me with "most of the internet minus a few people we'd like to shake-down access", this is OK?

No, and luckily nobody was doing that. And my question was serious. If you think that what Netflix was asking for should be given as a matter of principle, then it shouldn't matter how large they are, and absolutely every website should never have to pay for bandwidth again. What exactly am I missing?

The principled way to solve this is to give Comcast a choice of receiving traffic over transit or free peering, but either way they have to deliver customer traffic without congestion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9193591

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

#78

Post by tzs »

ikeboy wrote: post #69
msandford wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While we're asking each other silly questions, let me ask you this: if my ISP says that they're providing me with "internet access" but actually only provides me with "most of the internet minus a few people we'd like to shake-down access", this is OK?

No, and luckily nobody was doing that. And my question was serious. If you think that what Netflix was asking for should be given as a matter of principle, then it shouldn't matter how large they are, and absolutely every website should never have to pay for bandwidth again. What exactly am I missing?

Netflix does pay for their bandwidth. They pay their ISP for it. What you are missing is that Comcast is not Netflix's ISP, and Netflix does not use any of Comcast's bandwidth.

When a Comcast customer uses their Comcast internet connection to use Netflix, or Google, or HN, or any other site, it is that customer who is using Comcast's bandwidth. It is not Netflix, Google, or HN using it.

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

#79

Post by ikeboy »

msandford wrote: post #74
ikeboy wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not for businesses running websites, that's for using the internet in a business. http://business.comcast.com/internet/business-internet/web-h... is relevant, although it doesn't give speeds. But presumably anyone who buys that is sending more data out of comcast than they are receiving. And as I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I'd like to see a chart of data in and out excluding Netflix and large companie…

The plans listed on that page are: Storage / Transfer / Price 10MB / 100MB / Free 300GB / Unlimited / $20 400GB / Unlimited / $40 500GB / Unlimited / $80 You must realize that these are absolutely NOT true commercial offerings. They don't even list what your commit bandwidth is! Also you can't run your own applications there! Do you really think Netflix runs off of a shared server like this? They're a HUGE AWS custom…

>Notice that there is no mention ANYWHERE of ANY COMPANY that might even a LITTLE BIT be considered a consumer ISP. Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, Cox, etc, none of them are mentioned.

From the page:

>We utilize a wide array of network carriers including Level 3, nLayer, Comcast, Cogent Communications, and Hurricane Electric.

Take that back?

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

#80

Post by ikeboy »

tzs wrote: post #75
ikeboy wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Netflix is not an outlier when it comes to asymmetrical traffic. The typical Comcast customer receives from Google far more data than they send to Google. They receive far more data from Amazon than they send to Amazon. Same for their interaction with Facebook, Twitter, Hacker News, Reddit, the bank, their email provider, their gaming guild forum, and so on. About the only time they might be sending as much as they r…

But some of those sites are going to be Comcast customers, who serve customers from other places.

I'm not saying that an average consumer is sending as much as they receive, but Comcast doesn't only have consumers, they also serve websites. That should balance out for small websites in and out of their network.

Post reply on HN