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Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

coffee.link

81–90 of 225 posts

Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#81

The solution - as always - is regulation. ISPs typically already have very generous business models with widespread monopolies on customers, overwhelming barriers to entry for new companies, and a lack of rate controls allowing then to price arbitrarily - all of which supports immensely profitable businesses without the need for additional extraction of capital from other parties. Regulators and consumers alike shoul…

Regulation isn't good enough. The government needs to make their own competing ISP. Hell, at least in the US, there's precedent for this: government builds and maintain all the roads; they run most transit and intercity rail operations; and they run physical mail delivery. At one point they even owned most of the railroads[0]. Communications and travel infrastructure are things government is moderately good at. For s…

As I’ve stated in other comments, the reason western governments don’t do this more often boils down largely to regulatory capture. Every single time there’s been a large mobilization of efforts to regulate some aspect of tech - municipal broadband expansion, cable box standardization and openness, right to repair, DMCA reform, privacy reforms, mandatory binding arbitration clauses, EULA’s, provider monopolies, etc - tech money floods into regulators and political races to counter the will of the mobilizers and their supporters. Then those same ghouls repeat mantras like “disrupt” and “deregulate” to convince people that actually it’s a good thing you only have three cellular networks, one cable provider, one telephone provider, two operating systems, and four media conglomerates to choose from. At one point these slimeballs claimed anyone who used anything else (like Linux, or GrapheneOS, or FOSS) was obviously a criminal who wanted something for nothing, such was their fear of an open ecosystem.

Regulations get a bad rap because for decades the only ones to really get passed have only entrenched existing players and (rent-seeking) business models while blocking new entrants or competitors. I’m 100% in agreement with you that every single state and country should have an internet network that’s open access and governed solely by that country’s constitutional law - a sort of digital state, if you will, with which they can court business and interest groups alike to represent their interests globally. Instead, we’re presently stuck with a “whoever donates the most money to politicians wins” model, and that means the open internet exists in spite of the interests of Capital, not because of their good graces.

Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#82
Thank you for writing this article. It is a rare take on what is happening, and not everyone has the expertise to write it. It seems easy enough to share to consumers who may be affected by this. And it does have some action steps too.

Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#83
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely there's a reasonable expectation that Netflix would work at decent speeds, especially given that Netflix's infrastructure, nor the network load as a whole are to blame, but rather the specific ISP bureaucracy? Getting 1/1000 the listed speed does not strike me as something even a 75 year old computer neophyte of a judge would take kindly too, unless it were for very good reasons.

I don't think there really is much that can be done. Even under ideal conditions, an ISP could only possibly guarantee the advertised link speed between you and their routers, not between you and any particular node on the Internet. Is it possible an ISP might be doing things that harm the QoS? Yeah, sure. But the angle to approach that problem is not by complaining about instances of limited bandwidth.

In the US the FCC named and shamed broadband ISPs for their low speeds and "magically" those speeds increased over the following years. Overcome with greed, some ISPs eventually found ways to cheat on the benchmarks though. https://www.fcc.gov/general/measuring-broadband-america

Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#84
post #9

It's important to keep in mind that Deutsche Telekom is basically doing the same, and has been… forever? I disagree with this move, but it is not without precedent.

They mention it extensively in the article.

They certainly do; however, we all know the game: Headlines only. Reading TFA? Meh

Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#85
post #62
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the true link speed's not even what's being asked for. 4K Netflix never goes above 20 Mbps as far as I know, so getting just 1/50 the advertised speed to one of the most well-known internet services in existence, hardly seems like a big ask, especially when the only reason that it can't reach that speed or higher is because of the ISP, given that swapping to one that aren't being knobheads about it fixes the prob…

It is mostly the middle, and not either of the endpoints, that is the real problem. You have a 1Gbps link, the Netflix DC you're reaching probably has multiple links with aggregated bandwidth measured in Tbps, but at some point in between the two there's a 10Gbps link being shared between 5000 subscribers at peak times and now the bottleneck is 2Mbps per subscriber. This link may or may not be under your ISP's (or Ne…

at some point in between the two there's a 10Gbps link being shared between 5000 subscribers at peak times and now the bottleneck is 2Mbps per subscriber. This link may or may not be under your ISP's (or Netflix's ISP's) control, and it may or may not be the only relevant bottleneck.

No, that link is absolutely under Vodafone's control. They're deliberately not upgrading it so that they can extort money from Netflix.

The solution ... is content distribution.

CDNs have been worldwide, including Germany, for a long time. That's not the problem here.

Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#86
Telefonica does this.

Until I switched, it would only peer with other Tier 1 providers 2000 mi away from my location, even though there is a large IX 5 mi from home co-located with a large regional ISP with several other networks and appliances connected to it.

I filed a complaint but it is impossible to escape the event horizon of the customer service black hole, and customer protection regulation agents fail to appreciate how clownish it is to have 100 ms ping to my university 5 mi away.

So I switched and recommended everyone within earshot to do so as well.

To this day I fail to understand the logic behind not peering locally.

Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#87

The play by major content providers is "not to pay" and "block inter.link" Sure, you lose Vodafone germany. Then you explain clearly why to every major media. This coukd be stopped fairly quickly.

"The play by major content providers" like Google? Where in order to become a "Verified Peering Provider" you are not permitted to use a IX?!

https://peering.google.com/#/options/verified-peering-provid...

Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#88

The solution - as always - is regulation. ISPs typically already have very generous business models with widespread monopolies on customers, overwhelming barriers to entry for new companies, and a lack of rate controls allowing then to price arbitrarily - all of which supports immensely profitable businesses without the need for additional extraction of capital from other parties. Regulators and consumers alike shoul…

The current trend in govt regulation is actually going in the opposite direction, with telecom lobbies in Europe pushing for "fair share" (pretty much an implementation through law of what Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone Germany are doing right now) through the Digital Networks Act. South Korea pioneered "fair share" govt regulations in 2016 (which caused Twitch to exit the market in 2024 due the exorbitant "fair share…

Unfortunately you're going to get regulatory capture and extortion when the "bad guys" are local but the "good guys" are foreign.

Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#89
post #17
post #7

Is there anything that Vodafone customers can do legally to punish Vodafone or not delivering on their broadband contracts? If you're paying for a 1Gbps connection and Netflix is only able to stream to you at 0.93 Mbps because Vodafone or Inter.link are choking off the supply, surely that's breach of contract on Vodafone's part? I'm sure Cory Doctorow has a word for what's happening here.

"If you're paying for a 1Gbps connection" That's why you are paying for a "up to" 1Gbps connection. (I think it was already a struggle that they had to put the "up to" in the big advertisement)

At least here in the Czech Republic, ISPs have to also list a "guaranteed speed", and it can't be less than some fraction of the advertised maximum. I don't know what part of the Internet that speed is supposed to be measured against, though.

Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#90

Bell Canada also has had a long-standing policy of refusing to peer with internet exchanges. They'll only truly peer with other direct backbone providers and a handful of one-off peer with other large networks (google, cloud flare, etc), but their historical position as Canada's base backbone (not so much anymore, but it was definitely a thing pre-2005) has meant their policy is most people should pay them to peer. I…

it’s also insane because probably no Canadian wants their traffic going through the US unnecessarily, since all the 51st state takeover crap.
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