
Why Your Netflix Traffic Is Slow and Why the FCC Won’t Necessarily Make It Fast - dajobe
https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/feamster/why-your-netflix-traffic-is-slow-and-why-the-open-internet-order-wont-necessarily-make-it-faster/
======
dpark
Cogent publicly offered to pay for _both sides_ of the peering upgrades in
order to fix their congestion problem.

[http://www.cogentco.com/en/news/press-releases/631-cogent-
of...](http://www.cogentco.com/en/news/press-releases/631-cogent-offers-to-
pay-capital-costs-incurred-by-major-telephone-and-cable-companies-necessary-
to-ensure-adequate-capacity)

Pretty sure Comcast didn't take them up on the offer. Doing so would have
fixed the issue and Netflix wouldn't be writing checks to Comcast now.

~~~
higherpurpose
You mean _this check_ handed right here?

[http://knowmore.washingtonpost.com/2014/04/25/this-
hilarious...](http://knowmore.washingtonpost.com/2014/04/25/this-hilarious-
graph-of-netflix-speeds-shows-the-importance-of-net-neutrality/)

~~~
msandford
That's Netflix paying Comcast directly, not Cogent giving Comcast the few
grand to upgrade the link that they were purposefully not upgrading to force
Netflix into paying.

EDIT: Also worth noting that Netflix has to pay every month (which is what
Comcast wants) rather than Cogent just giving them $10k once for new hardware
(not as delicious as lots more money!)

~~~
ikeboy
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 hardware upgrades. Is anyone
disagreeing with that?

~~~
chimeracoder
> 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 highway has
divergence of 0, meaning that if you draw a closed loop of any shape, over the
course of a day/week, the number of cars crossing that loop in both directions
(in/out) will be the same.[0][1] Internet traffic does not have zero
divergence, because bits are interchangeable and easy to create, destroy, and
copy (whereas cars and humans are not).

Comcast isn't dumb. They know this is the way the Internet works. They just
also know that it's more profitable to pretend they don't and extort money
based on a false definition of "equality".

[0] [https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/just-what-does-it-
mean...](https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/just-what-does-it-mean-when-a-
vector-field-has-0-divergence.497174/)

[1] It's not _exactly_ the same, due to births, deaths, and migration, but you
get the idea.

~~~
ikeboy
>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.

~~~
msandford
> 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...](http://business.comcast.com/internet/business-
internet/plans-pricing)

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?

~~~
ikeboy
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...](http://business.comcast.com/internet/business-internet/web-
hosting) 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 companies. If the problem only affects
them or other large companies (like Youtube, Apple, Microsoft, etc, which all
pay for direct connections), but not small websites, then I think that would
support my argument.

~~~
msandford
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](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](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.

~~~
ikeboy
>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?

~~~
msandford
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.

------
DubiousPusher
> And, while it is also worth considering whether the impending merger between
> Comcast and Time Warner cable might exacerbate the current situation, I
> predict that this is unlikely. In general, as one access ISP gains more
> market share, a content provider such as Netflix depends on connectivity to
> that ISP even more, potentially extracting increasingly higher prices for
> interconnection. In the specific case of Comcast and Time Warner, it is
> difficult to predict exactly how much additional leverage this will create,
> but as it turns out, these two ISPs are already in markets where they are
> not competing with one another, so this specific merger is unlikely to
> dramatically change the current situation.

I'm having trouble with this logic. Increased leverage over content providers
seems like it would exactly exacerbate this situation.

------
PaulHoule
This is why the Net Neutrality ruling was not a big step forward.

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. If Comcast customers were getting a bad netflix
experience they could switch to an ISP that gives a good one.

~~~
phkahler
>> 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 that gives a good one.

This is called competition. It's what you get with net neutrality. Since every
ISP has to give you everything equally, the only way they can compete is by
building better infrastructure and compete on ping time and bandwidth. This is
how it should be. Allowing them to prioritize certain services for a fee
(regardless of who pays) means allowing them to stagnate - in fact paying them
to stagnate - which is bad for everyone.

~~~
pyre
> 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 <Cable Company> and <DSL Company> 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
investment hurdles to setting up a new ISP.

What you're missing is the "unbundling" is talking about forcing (e.g.)
Comcast to lease it's "last-mile" lines out to competing ISPs. This means that
competing ISPs don't need to invest in "last-mile" infrastructure. (If you
don't understand what "last-mile" means, it would behoove you to look it up).

Net neutrality _does_ play a part here in that if Comcast partners with
Netflix, they could provide a better Netflix experience than a smaller ISP
without bargaining power, but the lack of ISP competition is arguably a bigger
problem and calling out "Net Neutrality" as the solution to all Internet
connectivity woes doesn't help.

~~~
phkahler
>> 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.

------
pedrocr
> _Thus, we will certainly see ISPs continue to use prioritization to manage
> congestion—prioritization is, in fact, a necessary tool for managing limited
> resources such as bandwidth._

Bandwidth may very well be a limited resource in some cases but the dispute
between Comcast and Netflix is not one of them. The Comcast network has the
bandwidth available to serve the customers (since not all sites are congested)
and Netflix is willing to peer for free wherever they want them to, so the
slowdown is completely artificial and Comcast generated.

------
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.

~~~
jmccree
Just as few as 5 years ago 50-100x over-subscription rates were common for
ISPs. For example 100 homes with 10mb connections would be fed by 10-20mbps.
The reality was much closer to 48 port 100mbps switches having 100mb uplinks.
Netflix (and other streaming services) have been a huge shock to their
business models.

------
Afforess
> _In the specific case of Comcast and Time Warner, it is difficult to predict
> exactly how much additional leverage this will create, but as it turns out,
> these two ISPs are already in markets where they are not competing with one
> another, so this specific merger is unlikely to dramatically change the
> current situation._

This does not follow. A larger ISP with more market share, regardless of the
state of the competition, can extract larger peering agreements. So this merge
would absolutely make the current situation for Netflix worse and other
peering agreements more expensive.

------
kokey
It's refreshing to see more writing popping up from people that 'get' it. It's
a shame that most of it is after people spent a decade campaigning for the
wrong thing.

~~~
01Michael10
Wrong, preserving Net Neutrality was very important but it's just not the
whole solution and no one ever said it was... It's called taking the first
step.

The next step is stopping the TWC/Comcast merger.

------
GhotiFish

      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 traffic down a 
      different path, congesting that, and forcing an upgrade.
    

>Resolving the dispute: Paid peering (March 2014). Both sides of this argument
are reasonable and plausible—this is a classic “peering dispute”

Both sides of this argument are reasonable and plausible?

Are you kidding me? If Netflix was intentionally shaping their traffic to
disrupt Comcast, how is that not a denial of service attack? That sounds like
a criminal accusation more than a bargaining position.

If Netflix actually was doing that, shouldn't comcast be sueing rather than
asking for money for a peering arrangement?

also, and this is more to my own ignorance than it is to a counterpoint. I
thought peering arrangements were things that happened between ISPs. Netflix
is a customer of an ISP.

------
icehawk
Last I checked it was the consumer ISPs that were stalling with peering
upgrades according to multiple transit providers

[http://blog.level3.com/open-internet/verizons-accidental-
mea...](http://blog.level3.com/open-internet/verizons-accidental-mea-culpa/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9264381](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9264381)

~~~
ikeboy
Verizon responded to that post.

[http://publicpolicy.verizon.com/blog/entry/level-3s-selectiv...](http://publicpolicy.verizon.com/blog/entry/level-3s-selective-
amnesia-on-peering)

~~~
pedrocr
It's a pretty poor response. They're using the fact that Level3 had a dispute
with Cogent over unbalanced traffic to say the traffic between Level3 and
Verizon should also be balanced. Verizon is not in that condition, it's not a
transit provider.

Basically there are 4 different situations:

1) _ContentProvider_ <->Level3<->Cogent<->ISP<-> _User_

2) _ContentProvider_ <->Cogent<->Level3<->ISP<-> _User_

3) _ContentProvider_ <->Level3->ISP<-> _User_

4) _ContentProvider_ <->Cogent->ISP<-> _User_

In all cases the first network gets a payment by the content provider and the
last network a payment by the user. In cases 1 and 2 the middle network is not
getting a payment because neither side is their direct client. So the
Cogent/Level3 dispute is about there being the same number of 1 and 2 cases so
that it all evens out and no compensating payment is necessary. Cases 3 and 4
require no additional payments no matter the upload/download ratio because
both network links have been paid for, one by the user the other by the
content provider.

This whole thing is about the ISPs noticing that the content providers are
making money offering content over the internet (shocking I know) and trying
to reach across the network and grab some of that revenue, even though
everyone has already been compensated for the actual transfer of bits.

~~~
jmccree
Verizon acquired the Tier 1 transit network of UUNet/Worldcom. It has a _huge_
transit/datacenter business. ATT(SBC+BellSouth) has Tier 1 transit network of
the old ATT long distance. Centurylink has the old Qwest Tier 1 network. One
of the things overlooked in the peering disputes is that many of the ISPs
ended up merging/buying Tier 1 transit networks.

Netflix is one of the first ContentProviders to be pumping so much traffic
that they will imbalance the peering traffic ratios of any almost any Tier 1
they buy transit/CDN from, except for probably Google, which ended up doing
what Netflix is doing now: paid peering.

~~~
pedrocr
> Netflix is one of the first ContentProviders to be pumping so much traffic
> that they will imbalance the peering traffic ratios of any almost any Tier 1
> they buy transit/CDN from

That's only relevant if the transit/CDN is actually peering with another Tier
1 provider to deliver the Netflix traffic (cases 1/2). What's been in the news
has been cases 3/4 where there's a single transit provider in the picture and
there's no reason for the ISP not to accept the content with no compensation
for the asymmetry as it has a client paying him for that service.

> except for probably Google, which ended up doing what Netflix is doing now:
> paid peering.

Do you mean Google is also paying ISPs for access to users like Netflix has
had to? Because if you mean Google is having to do paid peering with transit
providers because their traffic is asymmetric that would just be normal
payment for transit, as if Level3/Cogent/etc where providing transit to them.

~~~
jmccree
Verizon (and ATT, and CenturyLink) are Tier 1 transit networks for peering
operations. If Level3s peering traffic ratio are off balanced by netflix's
traffic, I see no reason why Verizon shouldn't do the exact thing Level3 did
to Cogent back in the day. Also, keep in mind Netflix is using Level3's CDN
service, so you have a scenario on the flipside where Level3 has become a
transit network and ContentProvider also.

The issue is really that the idea of transit providers in general are becoming
obsolete. So much fiber was laid, with DWDM and further subdivision abilities,
it costs comparatively nothing to get a nationwide network these days. That
was Cogent's entire business model, buy cheap fiber, sell transit for almost
nothing to content providers, practically (in some cases, actually) give away
transit to ISPs/businesses to keep their traffic ratios as balanced as
possible.

Now, we're in a situation where it's not technically or financially hard to
have a presence in every regional peering point. The major content providers
don't need transit providers (or in the case of Level3's CDN, are already
provider) except out of convenience and their access to settlement free
peering. The major ISPs have no need for transit providers(or are already
providers), as all the content providers wants to peer with them, and most of
them have nationwide networks to do so. (see comcast:
[http://business.comcast.com/images/default-source/about-
us/t...](http://business.comcast.com/images/default-source/about-
us/the_comcast_network.jpg?sfvrsn=0) )

Unregulated peering has lead to the cost of transit plummeting to almost
nothing. ( [http://drpeering.net/white-papers/Internet-Transit-
Pricing-H...](http://drpeering.net/white-papers/Internet-Transit-Pricing-
Historical-And-Projected.php) ) We've just hit an interesting point where 2
contentproviders (Netflix and Youtube) are half of all internet traffic, and
the eyeball networks are all basically tier 1 transit providers. There's
basically unlimited choice for transit providers for ContentProviders, but
each eyeball only has 1-3 ISPs to choose from.

My thoughts are rather than attempting to regulate transit/peering, regulate
that last mile network and let people choose their own transit provider. Back
in the DSL days, I used a local ISP that provided cheaper/better service than
our telco. If I could pay a flat $x/mo for 1gb connection to a transit
provider of my choice, I'm sure Google or Level3 would offer cheap uncongested
access.

------
DannoHung
The transit providers have pretty much all agreed with Netflix's side of the
story to the best of my knowledge. For example:

[http://blog.level3.com/open-internet/observations-
internet-m...](http://blog.level3.com/open-internet/observations-internet-
middleman)

~~~
ikeboy
That post doesn't mention Netflix at all?

------
tzs
With Comcast, it's almost obvious that the net neutrality won't change this
because Comcast was _already_ operating under net neutrality requirements. To
win approval of its NBC merger, Comcast agreed to be bound by net neutrality
requirements until 2018. When Verizon won its lawsuit to strike down the FCC's
2010 rules that did not change this. Comcast remained bound by its agreement.

------
chrisBob
If your ISP wanted to give you good service they could also add a few Netflix
OCAs to their rack[1]. Opening up the last mile could allow the competition to
use this technique to improve service while using Comcast's (or Verizon's...)
network for all of the data.

[1][http://gizmodo.com/this-box-can-hold-an-entire-
netflix-15925...](http://gizmodo.com/this-box-can-hold-an-entire-
netflix-1592590450)

------
ikeboy
I tried explaining this to people before the FCC stuff passed, but they just
insisted that evil comcast was slowing down netflix streams.

~~~
skylan_q
They want someone to blame for not being able to watch Game of Thrones in HD
or for fear of having to pay extra to continue doing so. Providers who fell in
between the eyeballs and the content got in the crosshairs.

This is really "Game of Thrones" vs. "The Internet" and GoT won.

------
msandford
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 upgrades more
slowly than they normally would such that my Netflix experience is degraded.
They're not reducing capacity, they're just growing capacity in some areas
much, much more slowly than in the rest. To get extra cash.

~~~
toast0
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?

~~~
msandford
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.

~~~
ikeboy
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?

~~~
msandford
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...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816523032)

And here's a 10gig, 40km transceiver for $4k:
[http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816401...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816401562)

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.

~~~
ikeboy
My family's bill has gone down to around $35/mo.

Speedtest gives me around 50/10.

------
TranceMan
Meanwhile the community is trying to create a beneficial framework for all:

[http://www.open-ix.org/](http://www.open-ix.org/)

~~~
wmf
And then evil ISPs will just not join.

------
mcguire
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 traffic down a different path,
congesting that, and forcing an upgrade. Their position was that Netflix was
sending more traffic through these transit providers than the transit
providers could handle, and thus that Netflix or their transit providers
should pay to connect to Comcast directly. Comcast also implies that certain
transit providers such as Cogent are likely the source of congested paths, a
claim that has been explored but not yet conclusively proved one way or the
other, owing to the difficulty of locating these points of congestion (more on
that in a future post)._ "

Now, peering negotiations are an ugly, unpleasant activity that I'm quite
happy never to have been a part of. But I don't find this particular claim to
be "reasonable and plausible", in the author's words. Where is the congestion?

* Inside Netflix? Nope.

* Between Netflix and their transit providers? Seems unlikely; Netflix is paying them, after all. Such congestion would effect many of Netflix's customers and be against Netflix's interests.

* In the transit providers? Possibly, but again, Netflix is paying them. Further, Netflix connecting directly to Comcast is the first thing Netflix would do, if the transit providers were trying to squeeze more money out of them.

* Between the transit providers and Comcast? That seems to me to be the most likely interpretation of that paragraph. But if Netflix is doing this intentionally; say, by directing 90% of their traffic to Comcast customers through Tata, those customers are most likely to be unhappy with Netflix, not Comcast---any traffic from a customer out that doesn't go through Tata is fine, so they wouldn't likely perceive any problems with anything but Netflix. Further, that seems to contradict the statement that "[customers] routinely experienced high latency to _many Internet destinations_ every evening during 'prime time'". And if the congestion is not hitting one specific transit provider, then the idea that it is intentional on Netflix's part is silly and Comcast's peering relationships are simply inadequate for the traffic its customers are using.

* Inside Comcast? Well, I could see almost anyone wanting to have an unrelated third-party pay for their infrastructure upgrades, but....

Then, there's this: " _The best technical solution (and what ultimately
happened) is that Netflix and Comcast should interconnect directly._ " The
_best_ technical solution? The best _technical_ solution? (Here's a hint: a
fully-connected network is _not_ a good technical solution.)

But the ultimate problem here is: " _This is where market leverage comes into
play: Because most consumers do not have choice in broadband Internet
providers, Comcast arguably (and, empirically speaking, as well) has more
market leverage: They can afford to ask Netflix to pay for that direct link—a
common Internet business relationship called paid peering—because they have
more market power._ "

Comcast has more market power because it is a monopoly and the problem with
monopolies is _precisely_ that they use their market power to squeeze money
out of counter-parties.

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?

~~~
ikeboy
>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.

~~~
mcguire
I thought that was from his comment. Did I miss a later one?

It _was_ paid; it succeeded in getting Netflix to write them a check. And it
may not be strictly "prioritization", but to me the intent means more than the
letter.

~~~
ikeboy
[https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/feamster/why-your-
netflix...](https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/feamster/why-your-netflix-
traffic-is-slow-and-why-the-open-internet-order-wont-necessarily-make-it-
faster/#comment-22149)

