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

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91–100 of 225 posts

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

#91
post #75

This isn't unique to Vodafone. Google has also been slowly withdrawing from IXes globally in favor of PNIs and "VPPs" (verified peering providers). This only makes it harder for smaller networks to establish presence on the internet and feels pretty anti-competitive. On the flip side, IXes are becoming harder and less desirable to participate in: port fees are going up, useful networks are withdrawing, low quality ne…

Google gave a presentation on this that I think is helpful context for "why": https://nanog.org/events/nanog-94/content/5452/

Direct YouTube link: https://youtu.be/Yg-qV6Fktjw

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

#92
post #5

New selling point for all the VPN sponsored segments... "if you're on Vodafone Germany, make your connection speeds faster with YetAnotherVPN!"

I'm not sure that will not speed anything up, since you face the same peering issue with connecting to XYZ vpn's server

The VPN will be fast if they pay the extortion. It's basically a paid fast lane.

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

#93

I'm surprised to read an obviously AI written article ("This isn't about efficiency—it's about extraction") from a tech/news site. Does anyone else find this weird? It make me question the editors note about how much background research was actually done.

It looks like the website was founded not so long ago, and I guess AI-generated slop is the only way to make a profitable web media nowadays.

[deleted]

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

#94
post #48

I recently moved to a Dutch municipality that runs its own non-profit ISP. They installed a symmetric 1 Gbps fiber connection with a static IP at my house for 40 euros per month. The service is solid, there’s no upselling or throttling, and hosting things from home just works. I bring this up because when we talk about “open”, “fair” and “monopolies” the model of a local, non-profit ISP backed by the municipality cou…

While this is great when it works it does raise some interesting challenges, what happens if the ISP loses money, should taxes be used to cover the cost since this is a public service? Is it reasonable for this ISP to undercut commercial offerings? Internet is in a weird grey zone where it's almost a utility but not on the same level as water or sewage. I'm glad this non-profit ISP exists but on a national level I wo…

There's voting with your wallet and voting with your, well, vote.

In some sense a democracy is also a market and can lead to efficient allocation of resources, particularly common resources for common good.

This is why public utilities tend to work so well in practice. People, especially in the US, don't seem to realise that such services are also subject to strong market forces, just a different kind of market.

Voters care a lot about good public services, and they also care a lot about not getting taxed much. This can lead to very efficient outcomes in well functioning democracies, often more efficient than those that come out of private enterprise, when it comes to services that most of the population needs.

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

#95
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blocking seems overkill. Just put up a banner explaining why the service is slow, warning customers about their ISPs.

Because a banner is ignorable. A block will actually spur action.

A banner by itself is very ignorable, but in this case the website is going to be annoyingly slow, and people are gonna notice that and be thinking a little about why. In that scenario, they're much more likely to notice and pay attention to something like a banner.

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

#96

I'm surprised to read an obviously AI written article ("This isn't about efficiency—it's about extraction") from a tech/news site. Does anyone else find this weird? It make me question the editors note about how much background research was actually done.

Also, am I going crazy or do the "comment" and "share" buttons under the header just tick up but don't allow you to actually do anything? This feels like a vibe-coded website but it could be Firefox being weird.

HeyHey. The website uses Ghost right now, and a lit based web components catalogue. Some features are not yet entirely carved out. The commenting system being one of them. Components are ready, but some integration work has to be done. We also want to enable highlighting stuff directly, so people can comment on specific referenced stuff...

The commenting APIs in ghost are a little obscure.

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

#97

This isn't unique to Vodafone. Google has also been slowly withdrawing from IXes globally in favor of PNIs and "VPPs" (verified peering providers). This only makes it harder for smaller networks to establish presence on the internet and feels pretty anti-competitive. On the flip side, IXes are becoming harder and less desirable to participate in: port fees are going up, useful networks are withdrawing, low quality ne…

> low quality network participants are joining

(Genuinely curious because I truly don't know in this context) What is a low quality network participant? One of the "bulletproof" hosts?

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

#98
post #85
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

There are two issues here.

If the CDN is so poorly interconnected with Vodafone that there's one bottlenecked link, then it's not really accomplishing its job, at least as far as "inside of Germany" is concerned. It might have reduced pressure on another bottleneck, like links between the US and the EU, but it still needs to spread out more. If Vodafone is blocking that, then pressure should be applied to force them to open up more connections. I'm assuming this CDN serves more than just Netflix, mind you.

Secondly, the question of responsibility cannot be answered the same way today that it was answered in the Internet of universities. Netflix and Vodafone are not peers. The bandwidth ratio between them is incredibly lopsided. This will never change, there is no foreseeable scenario under which Vodafone has a reason to send anywhere near the same amount of data to Netflix as it gets back. This asymmetrical relationship inherently implies a different kind of business arrangement than traditional peering.

What Vodafone (any ISP) provides to Netflix (any content provider) is access to consumers. This is a service, and services are not free. The natural monopoly ISPs enjoy implies some degree of regulatory restraint must be applied on them, but it does not mean they bear all the costs of all the infrastructure either.

However, my bigger point is that this cannot constantly be reduced to these two-party analyses. Netflix is waning, others are rising, this problem needs to be solved in a scalable way.

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

#100

The disclaimer at the top of the article is really mind blowing: > We may have failed in some areas to grasp the issue entirely. The reader is advised that not everything might be correct and you should follow the sources and conduct your own research to get an adequate understanding of the subject at hand.

it sounded to me like an AI generated article covering it's ass, or at least written by someone who did naught but AI generated research as their own 'research'.
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