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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

#81

Post by ikeboy »

tzs wrote: post #78
ikeboy wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why should Comcast care whether Netflix pays their ISP or not? Either way, someone's trying to give them data for free.

And Netflix has its own CDN, which wants to connect directly to last-mile ISPs. In that setup, they aren't paying anyone other than the end ISP.

>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.

This is pointless semantics. If I send you something, we can either call it me using the bandwidth, or you using it. Doesn't change my point here.

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

#83

Post by ikeboy »

msandford wrote: post #51
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?

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 t…

Isn't the last mile getting used much more than previously, without prices going up? Is it valid to look at this as paying for that, and if CDNs can't pay, then end user prices will have to go up?

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

#84

Post by ikeboy »

mcguire wrote: post #62

I'm having significant difficulties with this paragraph: " 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 traff…

>As an aside, I find Feamster's comment reply, "What is false in Oliver’s presentation (and many of the claims in the popular press) is his claim about what causes* that slowdown. The cause of the slowdown is congestion, not intentional throttling,*" to be simply disingenuous. What exactly is the difference between intentional throttling and intentionally introducing congestion by not upgrading inadequate peering relationships?

He discusses that in a later comment. The point I think he's making is that it wouldn't qualify as "paid prioritization", and shouldn't be characterised as such.

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

#85

Post by dpark »

ikeboy wrote: post #64
msandford wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Let me ask you something else. How large should a company need to be to get free connections to last mile ISPs? If any company could do it, then instead of paying for hosting or internet, I'd just pay for one computer and hook it up directly to the ISP. That isn't possible for every website. Why should Netflix be able to do that and not smaller sites?

I think you've misunderstood the scenario at play. Netflix did not want to connect to Comcast for free. Netflix did not want to connect directly to Comcast at all. They wanted to connect to their own ISPs, and they were paying to do so. Comcast didn't want to upgrade the peering links to Netflix's ISPs, though, because they'd then lose their leverage over Netflix. Comcast's refusal to upgrade peering links effectively forced Netflix to connect directly to Comcast.

Comcast sells asymmetric connectivity that's skewed as far as 10:1 download vs upload. And then they claim that peering should be symmetric as if they aren't a huge contributor to the asymmetry.

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

#86

Post by dpark »

ikeboy wrote: post #81
tzs wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why should Comcast care whether Netflix pays their ISP or not? Either way, someone's trying to give them data for free. And Netflix has its own CDN, which wants to connect directly to last-mile ISPs. In that setup, they aren't paying anyone other than the end ISP. >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 Comca…

> Either way, someone's trying to give them data for free.

And why shouldn't it be free? I, the Comcast customer, requested this data. Why should Netflix have to pay for the last mile when that's what I pay for already?

Why does Comcast get to charge for both ends of the pipe when they only own one side?

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

#87

Post by msandford »

ikeboy wrote: post #79
msandford wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You've got me dead to rights on that one, of course, so I have no problems taking it back. I'm not going to change the above comment where I misspoke because I did write that, and I did think it was correct at the time.

I think it is telling, however, that Comcast's logo isn't anywhere on the bottom of the page with all their partner logos. And I think it is also telling that it's only Comcast and not all the consumer ISPs.

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

#88

Post by tzs »

ikeboy wrote: post #81
tzs wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why should Comcast care whether Netflix pays their ISP or not? Either way, someone's trying to give them data for free. And Netflix has its own CDN, which wants to connect directly to last-mile ISPs. In that setup, they aren't paying anyone other than the end ISP. >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 Comca…

> Why should Comcast care whether Netflix pays their ISP or not? Either way, someone's trying to give them data for free

The data was paid for by Comcast's customers. I pay Comcast for the service of transport of packets from my network to the internet, and from the internet to my network. That's the whole point of an ISP.

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

#89

Post by msandford »

ikeboy wrote: post #81
tzs wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why should Comcast care whether Netflix pays their ISP or not? Either way, someone's trying to give them data for free. And Netflix has its own CDN, which wants to connect directly to last-mile ISPs. In that setup, they aren't paying anyone other than the end ISP. >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 Comca…

> This is pointless semantics.

Not really. If I mail something to you, I pay the postage. That's how mail works.

When I connect to the internet, if I request something from you, we both pay our respective ISPs to make it happen. That's how the internet works. And the limit to connection speed has historically always been the last mile on one side or the other.

So what Comcast did is pushed the congestion from the last mile to a peering point by purposefully not upgrading the peering point. And predictably, what happened is that the last mile wasn't the limiting factor anymore. According to 20-30 years of internet history, that's breaking the internet. Maybe not Comcast's contract with their customers (since they can unilaterally change that at any time) but definitely in terms of expectations.

That would be like gas stations suddenly advertising the pre-tax price on their signs only once you're done pumping $30 worth of gas they charge your card for $40 because of the taxes. Might not be explicitly illegal since so many other products are advertised on the pre-tax price. But it would be breaking with decades of convention. People might get really pissed as a result.

Sadly few of us have options to get internet aside from Comcast, where as in the gas station scenario we could easily stop patronizing BP or Texaco or Shell or whoever. That also gets people riled up. And rightly so!

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

#90

Post by msandford »

ikeboy wrote: post #83
msandford wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Isn't the last mile getting used much more than previously, without prices going up? Is it valid to look at this as paying for that, and if CDNs can't pay, then end user prices will have to go up?

Where on earth are the prices not going up? I used to get cable internet for $40/mo and now it's more like $60/mo.

I had to buy the DOCSIS 3 modem for my house, so they're not paying for that. I suspect that they had to buy new modems on their end, but my modem was only about $100 so I can't imagine that theirs was more than $100 especially if they're buying millions of them.

They haven't upgraded the coax that runs to my house, or the pulls that run along the telephone poles. Those are all the same. So it's an equipment upgrade? $100 once so that they can charge $20/mo more forever? They made their money back on the last mile well inside of a year.

And they haven't had to put more fiber into the ground either. Fiber transceiver keep getting faster and cheaper every year. As slower ones break you can replace them with faster ones for less money. Even if you upgrade early, it's not as though it's hugely expensive.

Here's a 10gig, 10km transceiver for $400: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816523...

And here's a 10gig, 40km transceiver for $4k: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816401...

I pay for 50/5 but I suspect that Comcast only allocates 5/0.5 or so for me, since it can't manage to keep up with Netflix all that well. So that means that Comcast can do the last mile for $100 or less of new investment and the last 25 miles for $4 (2000 people per pair, $8k per pair) of incremental investment. This is not a lot of money relative to the $60/mo that I pay.

> Is it valid to look at this as paying for that, and if CDNs can't pay, then end user prices will have to go up?

So first I disagree that the CDN should have to pay anything, again since I'm paying Comcast to connect me to the CDN!!

But even if I admit your point (which again, I emphatically DO NOT!) the amount of money to make an upgrade happen is TRIVIAL relative to yearly revenues. $104 in one-time hardware versus $720 in yearly, recurring revenue.

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