
Level3 is without peer, now what to do? - mortimerwax
http://www.cringely.com/2014/05/06/14890/
======
ChuckMcM
There is an interesting unbalance because Comcast has so much leverage by
owning the last mile, they can push around Tier 1 providers. I'd like to fix
that, mostly by creating a public policy around municipally owned _Layer 1_
infrastructure between customers in their cities and a city exchange building.
Conceptually it would be no different than the city owning the sewers and
outsourcing the water treatment plant to a contractor (or two). Creating a new
"ISP" would involve installing equipment in the City Exchange(s), providing
compatible customer premises equipment to subscribers, and then patching their
'port' at the City Exchange to the ISP's gear.

Its going to be a long conversation :-)

~~~
exelius
This is how it should probably be done if we were starting from scratch. A
system like the one you describe would cost somewhere in the neighborhood of
$300-500 billion; which isn't _completely_ insane as far as national
infrastructure projects go.

The problem is that we're not starting from scratch. It's a lot harder for the
government to justify that expense when there are a number of viable
privately-owned alternatives. Or to put it another way: if you had $500
billion to spend and you had to choose between overhauling the nation's
education system (which desperately needs it) and providing better Internet
access to people, which would you choose?

Furthermore, do you trust your city to properly maintain said infrastructure?
Because I sure as hell don't. All I have to do is look at the pothole-strewn
roads outside my house to know that. Fiber optics are awesome now; but what
happens in 10 years when we need a new type of quantum fiber made from carbon
nanotubes to go faster? Will the cities be able to make the investments? I
have my doubts given the overall poor state of municipal infrastructure around
the country for things like water and sewage.

The system we have now is far from perfect, but we're going to need to figure
out how to make something work within the confines of what we have today: a
privately owned and operated physical infrastructure controlled by a small
number of companies. How do we craft regulation such that those companies are
more profitable when they do what we want them to do?

~~~
ChuckMcM
Good points, allow me to share with you a bit of my strategy.

There is a case to be made that much of the tearing up of the streets is a
function of people laying down multiple communication infrastructures along
side each other. We looked though the permits for the last 12 months and
compared that activity to a on-going repaving and road maintenance work. There
are several interesting variables at play in that, cost to maintain (tax
based), property tax (revenue), new permits (revenue). If you consider
switching the physical layer to an infrastructure basis you eliminate multiple
fiber/copper paths under the street, multiple fiber/copper vaults in sidewalks
and on street corners, and replace them with a common set of conduits. That
helps a number of costs, site surveys for digs, delays for city work, and
multiple trenching/paving jobs with different standards of integrity. My city,
Sunnyvale, is dealing with ways to make maintaining the city more efficient.
This sort of change helps that in ways that are not immediately obvious to
folks because they happen with dozens of different actors across dozens of
different departments.

My goal is to get the city thinking differently about communications (more
like roads and sewers than 'optional thing some folks have') so that we can
move past the current hodgepodge into a more efficient and maintainable
system. If I can get my city to change, then other cities can see the change
and see how it helps or hurts and decide independently to change. As a
particularly tech savvy city we have a strong alignment with citizens who want
better communications, and we've seen from places like Kansas with Google
fiber that such communications upgrades increase property values, which
increases property tax revenues. My hope is we can get everyone (communication
providers, city, citizens) all aligned on this idea. If so it will get done.

~~~
exelius
This is all well and good if you're talking about relatively wealthy cities
like Sunnyvale with a good tax base, but many cities like Detroit, Pittsburgh
and Philadelphia are literally crumbling. They operate much more in a "try to
keep the lights on" capacity because they just don't have the money to do
anything else. The roads are constantly torn up from traffic and just never
get fixed, water and sewer don't always function properly and the schools are
an utter disaster.

Basically, many cities have much more pressing problems than telecom
infrastructure. Not to mention that federally, the FCC holds jurisdiction and
thus final say over what cities can and can't do. What may look like
standardization to you in Sunnyvale starts to look like a hodgepodge of
municipal implementations at a federal level, and the FCC may stop you from
standardizing at the local level until they've developed standards at the
federal level. It's bureaucracy at its finest; but it does serve a purpose.

~~~
ChuckMcM
A couple of points, first I talked with a lawyer who works with/for the FCC
and established that if the city isn't involved in lighting up the pipes they
don't care what they do. The regulations would apply to ISPs _using_ those
pipes but it would not apply to the folks maintaining them. He used the
example that companies like the old AboveNet which ran dark fiber from place
to place and kept it maintained were not liable to FCC regulation.

The second thing that is interesting is that having a city maintained
connectivity infrastructure actually has some positive social justice aspects
as it starts to chip away at the digital divide. Once existing contracts have
expired and the city is in a position to change things (current single
provider contracts don't allow for this) a charitable organization could be an
"ISP" without the cost of maintaining the physical plant to/from the
subscribers. This greatly expands the available market and gives at risk
populations more accessibility. Currently kids study at the city library
(which has publicly accessible Internet) rather than at home.

Keep them coming folks, these are exactly the sorts of things we're trying to
surface and look at.

~~~
exelius
How do we know that wired broadband is even the answer? Wouldn't wireless
connectivity be more attractive if the goal is social justice? Many lower-
income homes don't own a PC, and at this point they probably never will. How
attractive is a home PC to you if all you've ever known are smartphones?

Wired broadband, to me, is more of an entertainment consumption platform.
Wireless serves the needs of low-bandwidth information consumption quite well
these days, and at a significantly lower cost and better market dynamics.
Wouldn't a city be better served by pushing Wi-Fi or 4G? Especially given the
mass adoption of smartphones by all segments of the economy.

~~~
wtallis
The laws of physics prohibit wireless from serving current needs in an urban
density. It's not a solution for the future.

~~~
fizx
The
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%E2%80%93Hartley_theorem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%E2%80%93Hartley_theorem)
limits the information that can be transmitted through a given channel. If you
want to send more wired data, you add more channels by adding more wires.
Wireless doesn't have that luxury.

~~~
Maakuth
Strictly speaking this is true, however you can add more base stations with
lower transmit power so the shared media is shared by lower number of clients.
This is what is already done in urban areas with smaller base stations.

------
mokus
> Nobody paid anybody for the service because it was assumed to be
> symmetrical: as many bits were going in one direction as in the other so any
> transaction fees would be a wash.

The justification for peering is not equal traffic, it's equal value - my
customer wants to communicate with your customer. Regardless of the direction
of traffic, the traffic is equally valuable to both of us because the traffic
is the primary thing our customers are paying us for.

Unless, of course, I can get you to pay me for it anyway because of some
unrelated advantage such as the fact that your customers can leave you more
easily than mine can leave me. Comcast and others are attempting to leverage
exactly that - in many regions they have no viable competition whereas Netflix
and L3 are much more replaceable in their respective markets. This is a prime
example of abuse of a monopoly.

------
mhandley
Would be very interesting to see what happened if the big CDN providers just
depeered Comcast for 24 hours. Would certainly cost Comcast a fair amount in
customer support calls, bad publicity, and properly bring the debate to the
general public.

~~~
klodolph
It would also give the CDNs a fair amount in customer support calls, bad
publicity, and make their paying customers angry about lost business.

~~~
rhizome
Support calls from whom? CDNs effectively sit behind the Comcast site.

~~~
noselasd
From the CDN customers. They'll be annoyed if they find out the service they
paid money for isn't doing what it's supposed to do.

Since they've paid the CDN, they don't care what Comcast has done or is doing
- they paid the CDN, it's the problem of CDN.

~~~
rhizome
Those customers aren't getting depeered, only Comcast.

~~~
tonyarkles
I'm not sure of a more eloquent way to say this. Comcast's customers are the
CDN's customer's customers.

~~~
apetresc
To play devil's advocate, those CDN customers would also be unable to access
content if their power went out. But nobody would think to say the CDN isn't
doing their job if Texas had a blackout, because "I'm paying you to deliver my
content to Texas, dammit!"

It's a bit of a stretch, but I think that's the analogy they're going for.

------
signet
If a customer is paying for an internet connection, they are paying for access
the full internet, to the best of their ISP's abilities. This is the net
neutrality law we need: ISPs should be compelled to upgrade their backbone
links as they become congested, to satisfy their customer's demand. Congestion
can be easily monitored and often these peerings are "free". (Yes there is a
non-zero cost to increase switch and router capacity and to have someone plug
the cables in, but it's not like Level3 is charging for the bits exchanged.)
But the point is, since most ISPs are de-facto monopolies in this country, we
need rules telling them they have to upgrade their capacity to meet their
customers demand, if they are promising broadband speeds.

~~~
mattmcknight
We probably need pricing more directly based on bandwidth consumed, maybe with
peak hour pricing, as opposed to just based on "speed" with high bandwidth
caps.

~~~
danielweber
Like the water or electric company, users should pay according to usage. As
you say, this isn't on total bits pushed through, because the marginal costs
of sending bits at 3am is nil.

So the "usage" is based on the continued need to build out more equipment.
Usage at peak hours, as you say.

I'm concerned that the ISPs will simply charge "big users" and pocket the
extra fees, with "big users" moving from 1-in-a-thousand to 1-in-a-dozen as
more people want to use more bandwidth. I trust my ISPs as far as I can throw
them. (And I believe this distrust is at the heart of a lot of people's calls
for net neutrality; simply put, they don't trust their ISP to play fair. And I
don't fault them for that.)

But I don't mind something that targets the single biggest users and makes
them pay extra. The water and electric systems would fail without that, and
those are much simpler to model and plan for.

Thinking out loud, we need something that both

1) keeps pressure on the ISPs to keep on growing their pipes, and

2) puts pressure on the biggest users, which, again, needs to be a very small
subset of people putting the biggest strain on the system. I can't come up
with an exact number, but 20% of people being considered "big users" is too
much.

~~~
msandford
I'm willing to pay for usage, sure. And I'll pay for the physical plant to my
house too. BUT (and this is a big but) I'm only willing to do so at reasonable
prices.

You want me to pay for the physical plant? OK I can deal. The phone company
can provide me with a pair of wires from my house to their POP for about $15.
I might pay $20 since coax is different than UTP, but that's about it.

You want me to pay per bit? Great! Bill me at wholesale network rates. You
don't want to do that? Sorry, fuck off. I'm already paying for the last-mile
transport with the physical plant charges.

[https://josephscott.org/archives/2009/01/how-much-does-
one-t...](https://josephscott.org/archives/2009/01/how-much-does-one-terabyte-
of-bandwidth-cost/)

Here I can buy RETAIL 2TB of bandwidth for $120 WITH A SERVER INCLUDED. I
imagine that the wholesale is slightly (or much, much) cheaper than that. But
let's just go with it. At that kind of pricing I can get 1TB for $60, 500GB
for $30 and 250GB (the caps Comcast is talking about) for $15. If I need
another 50GB (their incremental unit of charge for "overage") I should be able
to get that for $3, not the $10 that they're charging.

[http://customer.comcast.com/help-and-
support/internet/data-u...](http://customer.comcast.com/help-and-
support/internet/data-usage-plans-expansion-exceed-allowance)

Now I think that a lot of the cost of that server is the actual machine, the
building, the air conditioning, etc. So maybe you should cut all those numbers
in half again meaning that 50GB should cost me about $1.50 and 1TB costs more
like $30. This is of course assuming you're not involved in a PEERING
AGREEMENT which as Comcast you are.

What about Comcast's costs for termination equipment I hear you say. Okay
let's talk about that. I bought my own cable modem so they're not paying for
that. They have to have another one on their side, sure. Assuming that it's
the same price as mine (it's almost certainly cheaper) that's $100 or less.
Considering that DOCSIS standards are usually a few years apart $100 / 4 years
= $2 per month. That's not too bad.

And what about the back-haul from their POP to the peering point? There's a
cost associated with that right? Yup, that's what I'm paying for when I buy
Internet access from an ISP since they're not paying for the peering
agreement.

Adding all this up: $20 (for the plant) + $15 (for the wholesale bandwidth
500GB ) + $2 (for the termination equipment ) = $37 per month with each
additional 50GB costing an extra $3

This seems reasonable to me and I would happily pay it, so long as the
wholesale price continues track the market. But with Comcast right now I'm
paying more like $65 rather than $37.

For reference 500GB/mo (if it's 100% evenly distributed) is about 5Mbps. If
you figure it's a bit bursty, say 50% on and 50% off that's 10Mbps. If it's
75/25 then it's 20Mbps. 88/12 brings it up to 40Mbps. So these are reasonable
numbers to expect given the service I've signed up for is advertised the way
it is.

------
pessimizer
This cable-menu style image from the comments is scary:
[http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1567010/original.jpg](http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1567010/original.jpg)

~~~
qnaal
Fearmongering- the internet is not going to be that easy to kill.

~~~
pessimizer
If they stop supplying it to us without discrimination it will. The internet
is made up of plastic and metal boxes that are under other people's control -
not magic.

~~~
sliverstorm
Things that cannot be simply cut off:

    
    
        - populist revolutions
    

Things that can:

    
    
        - electricity
    
        - the internet

------
brokenparser
This wouldn't happen if those ISPs didn't have local monopolies. Networks
should be opened by selling traffic wholesale to other companies so that they
can compete for subscribers on those networks. The network owners would have
more than enough money for upgrades and if they don't, downlevel ISPs will sue
them.

~~~
kasey_junk
I'm not making a claim about the veracity of the counter argument to this, but
it is easy to state. If network providers had to sell traffic wholesale to
other companies, they would have less incentive to upgrade them as those
networks then become pure commodities. Right now the local monopolies can use
their networks to sell high margin services (cable) bundled with low margin
services (internet traffic). If they had to compete with other companies,
namely bargain ISP offerings, the cost of ownership of the network would be
non-profitable.

I've heard some argue that this is precisely why DSL has lagged so far behind
cable in upgrades.

~~~
rlpb
> they would have less incentive to upgrade them as those networks then become
> pure commodities

Pit DSL against cable, as has happened in the UK. The POTS network is owned by
one company (BT) and the cable network by others. Retail customers generally
have a choice of connecting to the Internet by either. BT (POTS network owner)
are required to sell traffic wholesale to competitor ISPs (who then buy their
own transit). This seems to work very well here, and DSL upgrades continue.

~~~
robk
British DSL is far worse than cable in my experience. Virgin's cable & fiber
offering is massively faster and has a wider footprint than DSL products I've
seen.

~~~
rlpb
> British DSL is far worse than cable in my experience.

Define "worse". What ISP were you using?

From a peering point of view as described in the article, there are a large
number of ISPs buying transit and then selling Internet connections through
BT-provided last mile DSL lines. I never suffer from peering congestion, since
my (DSL) ISP pride themselves on not having any.

For the link from my local exchange to my ISP, there are multiple options,
too, and my ISP monitors congestion on my line closely. I currently have no
congestion there, either, and if I did, there are multiple providers available
(thanks to LLU): [http://revk.www.me.uk/2014/02/bt-21cn-not-fit-for-
purpose.ht...](http://revk.www.me.uk/2014/02/bt-21cn-not-fit-for-purpose.html)

The only issue with DSL in the UK is the (mostly analogue) quality of the DSL
line itself, and the way that BT (the company with the monopoly on POTS lines)
manages them. And perhaps the pace of upgrades (eg. to fibre to a street
cabinet and copper from there, instead of copper all the way from the
exchange), but upgrade rollouts are happening (and fibre to the cabinet is
already available to me).

------
JoshTriplett
Somebody has to pay the money to upgrade the equipment and bandwidth available
at these exchange points. The very reasonable argument in this article is that
the ISPs should pay that cost, which seems reasonable given that their
customers are demanding it. It sounds like the ISPs are playing a game of
chicken, trying to see if their peers like Level3 will throw money in to pay
for the ISP to upgrade its equipment and bandwidth. That's certainly something
the ISPs can try to do; on the other hand, what are their customers going to
do, _not_ use Netflix and YouTube? If a pile of customers of one ISP start
reporting that they're all having a poor experience with high-bandwidth video,
and there are a pile of well-publicized press releases blaming the ISP,
customers will start complaining to the ISP, and they'll have to upgrade their
infrastructure eventually. (And in areas where they have competition, there's
an incentive to upgrade before the competitors, to avoid losing customers;
while there isn't such competition in every locale, there are enough locales
with more than one ISP choice to make those customers painful to lose.)

But what does any of that have to do with mandated peering requirements at the
NSFnet exchanges? Who would enforce that, and why, when any two major networks
can set up peering at any number of meet-me rooms? Requiring that an ISP peer
as much traffic as is available or not peer any at all seems ridiculous; some
ISPs will suck more than others, but that's the problem of them and their
customers, not a problem for the entire Internet.

Meanwhile, I'm surprised there aren't more startups and VCs looking to bet
that "new ISP that doesn't suck" is a viable business model. People are
chomping at the bit for Google Fiber, which seems unlikely to grow to a
national level without developing competitors. This is a space with very few
competitors, and there hasn't been serious competition in that space since DSL
stopped being a viable option.

~~~
diminoten
The ISPs aren't dropping the packets, Level3 is. From the article linked to in
the blog: "A port that is on average utilised at 90 percent will be saturated,
dropping packets, for several hours a day. We have congested ports saturated
to those levels with 12 of our 51 peers." "We"in the quote is Level3. They're
dropping the packets.

Why do the ISPs have to pay for Level3's dropping of packets? Shouldn't the
ISPs replace Level3 if they keep dropping packets?

Also, dropped packets isn't the end of the world. In TCP at least, the packets
just get resent.

The language that gets used in all of these talks ("deliberately harming",
"American business", "It's insulting") just makes me want to tune out
entirely. I don't have time for chicken littles.

~~~
jfoutz
Dropping packets makes load problems worse, because failing users start to
send even more traffic.

~~~
Nacraile
This is not true. TCP will retransmit, yes, but TCP congestion control will
also reduce the transmit rate in response to lost packets. Overall, proper TCP
implementations will back off to approximately their fair share of a contended
bottleneck. The application layer sees reduced throughput, not message loss.
New TCP connections start with very conservative transmit rates, so an
application which is overly aggressive in abandoning slow connections and
retrying will not add substantially to congestion.

UDP doesn't necessarily have these properties, but anyone who implements a
high-bandwidth UDP protocol which isn't TCP congestion control friendly
deserves public shaming.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
Except between buffer bloat[1] and users spamming the reload button, TCP's
congestion control is not going to solve the problem.

1\.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bufferbloat](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bufferbloat)

------
jrochkind1
You would think, okay, if Comcast is terrible at maintaining sufficient
peering for it's customers needs -- and if the OP proposal to throw Comcast
out of peering exchange points happened, that would certainly lead to
increased terribleness for it's customers -- then eventually it's customers
would choose a different ISP. The market would solve it.

The problem is that in many many markets, Comcast (or another ISP) are pretty
much the only choice. Customers don't have another option, no matter how much
Comcast underfunds it's peering infrastructure or gets thrown out of peering
exchange points.

So what is the consequence to Comcat for underfunding? What is the consequence
to Comcast for even such a disastrous outcome as getting kicked out of the
peering exchange point? Not a lot.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but 'regulate them as a common carrier' is
certainly part of it, since they are a monopoly, and the common carrier
regulatory regime was invented for exactly such a monopoly.

~~~
sadris
> Comcast (or another ISP) are pretty much the only choice. Customers don't
> have another option

If an entire town is angry, their city councilors will very quickly utilize
eminent domain on the fiber in the ground and sell it to a competitor.

~~~
kej
But not before the ISP lobbies the state legislature to decree that cities
can't annex fiber.

------
cobookman
I've previously interned at one of the mentioned Cable Companies, and I see
both sides.

The solution is to make it 'capitalistic'. Change all of our internet
contracts from Unlimited (up to 'x' GB/month), to a simple $/gb cost.

It would be in the ISPs best interest to provide their customers the fastest
internet connection as possible. E.g, if a customer can stream a 4k video vs
SD then the ISP would make more money per unit time.

Think of it this way, if comcast charges $0.25/GB, and a netflix SD show is
say 1GB and HD is 4GB, then comcast grosses $1 for HD and $.25 for SD for the
same customer streaming request.

Over time its likely the price per GB would decrease, just like it has for
cellular.

On a more evil side, this would also stop chord cutters. Pirating content is
no longer 'free', and Netflix would cost significantly more than $10/month
($10/month + 'x'GB * $/GB).

As for what rates to expect, if comcast charges in ATL $30-55 for 300GB,
that'd be about $.10/GB to $.20/GB. As for speed tiers in a $/gb system, your
guess is as good as mine.

~~~
runeks
Interesting suggestion.

I've often thought about this. What I hear (I'm not very knowledgeable in this
field) is that somewhere up the chain, someone has to pay for bandwidth (per
GB) (can anyone confirm this?). But consumers prefer to know how much they
will pay each month, and so they get that -- a flat rate service.

So now we have a situation where a company's expenses are measured in GB of
data transferred, and their customers pay proportional to their maximum
transfer rate. This means the incentives of this company and its customers are
not aligned.

It's a bit like if you rent a car and the price you pay is proportional to the
top speed of the car, but the expenses of the car hire company is proportional
to how many miles you drive.

Where I live, we're currently in the process of wiring up the apartment
complex to FTTP (fiber to the buildings and copper from the basement up to the
apartments). I'm in charge of the process, and I've thought about asking
whether I can get an unlimited connection speed, but pay per GB. I haven't
asked yet, but I think I might prefer this over a flat rate price per month.
When I use the connection I pay, and it's blazingly fast, and when I don't use
it it's free. Contrasted with being slow when I use it, and also paying when I
don't use it.

~~~
wmf
_somewhere up the chain, someone has to pay for bandwidth (per GB) (can anyone
confirm this?)_

No, wholesale transit is sold by bandwidth; e.g. a 10 Gbps pipe costs around
$5,000/month regardless of usage.

 _So now we have a situation where a company 's expenses are measured in GB of
data transferred, and their customers pay proportional to their maximum
transfer rate. This means the incentives of this company and its customers are
not aligned._

More like the ISP's expenses are proportional to aggregate peak demand, but
yeah, it's not aligned.

~~~
runeks
> No, wholesale transit is sold by bandwidth; e.g. a 10 Gbps pipe costs around
> $5,000/month regardless of usage.

When I went around asking for a price for a shared connection to out apartment
complex, I was asked how many tenants we had. And the reason -- I was told --
that they asked for this, was that the more tenants the more traffic consumed.

So it seems to me that _somewhere_ , someone is paying for traffic. Or else I
don't understand.

~~~
vidarh
End user ISPs often charge by traffic. But buying transit from larger ISP for
colocation or to operate your own ISP for example, is typically done based on
some combination of port speed, committed information rate (CIR) and _peak
usage_ within a defined interval (burst).

For example, at work we pay abour $6 per Mbps 95th percentile use averaged per
5 minutes, with a 10Mbps CIR and 100Mbps port speed at one of our data
centres. This means we always pay for at least 10Mbps. Our ISP then measures
our traffic and averages it over 5 minute intervals. They then throw away the
top 5% of samples (so we can have short traffic spikes up to our port speed
without paying extra), and we pay for the higher of 10Mbps and the next
sample.

Any bandwidth above the CIR is entirely dependent on whether or not our ISP
has spare capacity. The higher your requested port speed, the less likely you
are of being able to burst much more than your CIR - any halfway decent
provider will have 90Mbps excess capacity much of the time, so paying for
10Mbps CIR and bursting to 100Mbps is not unlikely, but paying for 1Gbps and
being able to burst to 10Gbps gets far more dicy.

At some higher speeds some providers will only offer links where CIR == port
speed - effectively a "unlimited" connection. If you know your bandwidth
exceeds the CIR a lot of the time, you will typically want to pay for a higher
CIR for the reason that you otherwise risk getting throttled even if your port
speed is higher and your connection in theory is burstable.

Effectively the sum of the CIR of their customers + some margin is what the
ISP will turn around and contract with their transit providers and peering
partners for. If other customers don't use their CIR, and your CIR is lower
than your port speed, your ISP is likely to let you burst (at a cost) that
moment, but traffic within the CIR (should) always have priority.

------
api
While I agree with the general thrust of the article, there is one fallacious
argument here.

Cringely argues that cable breaks even and money is made on the net, but
that's an artificial distinction. What if cable disappeared? Would they still
make money if they had to pay for the upkeep of the network with only Internet
fees? The desperation and risk of this game of chicken convinces me that the
answer might be "not much." The loss of cable might very well be apocalyptic
for these companies, at least from a shareholder value and quarterly growth
point of view.

What's happening is very clear to me: the ISPs are trying to either harm the
Internet to defend cable or collect tolls on streaming to attempt to replace
cable revenue. That's because cable is dying a slow death. This is all about
saving cable.

The fundamental problem is that cable ISPs have an economic conflict of
interest. They are horse equipment vendors that got into the gas station
business, but now the car is driving out the horse and their bread and butter
is at stake.

~~~
zanny
The problem with your later analogy is that there was minimal gating to
opening a gas station if the local tack vendor started trying to extort the
local populace to maintain a dying business model.

That is why, usually, capitalism works in these situations - if the status quo
is exploiting its customers, you can create a competitor because there is
profit between the extortion and the break even.

With ISPs, or any general infrastructure, it is a hugely inefficient usage of
resources to duplicate the work - good analogies would be how dumb it would be
to have multiple sewer systems, with only one attached to the house at a time,
or multiple voltages of electric lines where only your choice electric company
is hooked up.

Fundamentally, it is that all and _any_ future goods that require transport to
the home over infrastructure need to be public services, and the maintainers
be common carriers. Because creating the pipes (the water, the subway, the
electric, the networking) are all prohibitively expensive to try to compete
in, require deep intervention of states (which rarely doesn't result in market
dilution) and are naturally a common good because unused bandwidth - in roads,
in power line voltage, in pipe flow - are wasted potential, and duplicating
the effort and having all the lost potential as a result can be, and _is_
devastating to economies.

~~~
api
You're referring to the concept of a natural monopoly, which is problematic
for anarchist and libertarian versions of capitalism. There are certain
markets that inherently favor monopoly for physical constraint reasons.
Utilities are the classic example.

------
fragsworth
The proposed solution is at the bottom of the article (which is why everyone
seems to have ignored it):

> The solution to this problem is simple: peering at the original NSFnet
> exchange points should be forever free and if one participant starts to
> consistently clip data and doesn’t do anything about it, they should be
> thrown out of the exchange point.

I do have a couple questions though - who is in charge of the original NSFnet
exchange points, and do they have this authority?

------
guardiangod
I don't know why everyone is up in arm over this. Here is reverse thinking and
a perfect oppoturnity for everyone.

The current situation is that Comcast doesn't have the equipment/resources to
handle extra internet traffic at its peers. Most people want Comcast to buy
more stuff to handle it, why don't we think the opposite way- get Comcast to
decrease its amount of traffic?

If we can get Comcast to consume less traffic, they wouldn't have to complain
to other peers about load asymmetry.

The best way to decrease traffic? Make Comcast has less customers.

Why does Comcast has so many customers, even though their resources cannot
handle it? Because they have a government mandated monopoly in the last mile,
so they are forced to have more customers than what they can handle.

We can come to a conclusion that last-mile monopoly -> network congestion ->
forcing L3 to pay for peer.

If Comcast has to compete with other ISPs for last miles, the traffic load
would shift from 1 single entity (Comcast) to 10+ smaller ISPs. In such case
the traffic load problem would not exist.

Another solution is to breakup Comcast.

See? This is a perfect opportunity. Comcast can has its multi-tier network,
but at the price of the last mile monoploy. After all, if they want to have
the right to choose peers, we customers should also have the right to choose
ISPs.

------
jamesbrownuhh
The UK experience is, broadly speaking, that any ISP who is sufficiently tall
to have the appropriate interconnects can offer a service to a customer via
the incumbent's last-mile infrastructure. (This is for telephone-based ADSL
broadband - the UK's only cable operator is not bound by this.) But,
furthermore, competitor ISPs are enabled to install their own equipment and
backhaul directly into local exchanges, known as LLU - local loop unbundling.
LLU allows competitor companies to provide just your broadband, or your voice
telephone service, or both.

There is one further step, whereby the prices of the incumbent monopoly are
regulated in areas where no competition exists. Ironically this works in the
opposite way to how you'd think, as it forces the incumbent NOT to offer their
lowest prices in that market - the intention being to make monopoly areas
prime targets for competition and to ensure that potential competitors aren't
scared out of the area by predatory pricing.

It's an odd system with good and bad on both sides, but it seems a lot better
than being stuck with a single source of Internet access.

------
timr
People keep claiming that there should be a "free market" for bandwidth...but
then they say that the ISPs should have to absorb the costs of peering (which
can be significant -- the hardware isn't free) without passing the costs on to
_anyone_. The backbone providers complain when the cost is passed to them; the
consumers scream bloody murder when the costs are passed to them in the form
of a bill.

Obviously, there's no free market in the status quo: we (consumers) basically
expect to pay a low, ever-declining price for bandwidth, while someone else
eats the costs of a growing network infrastructure. There's an economic
disconnect, and legislating that it shouldn't exist seems worse than futile.

I say: pass the costs on to the consumer, and break down the monopolies on
last-mile cable service. If the cable companies had to compete for
subscribers, they could still pass on the costs of improving their
infrastructure, but they'd have to compete with everyone else to do it.

In other words, the problem here isn't "net neutrality" \-- it's that we've
got a monopoly at the last mile that we need to destroy.

~~~
gph
>basically expect to pay a low, ever-declining price for bandwidth, while
someone else eats the costs of a growing network infrastructure

Are we though? Our bills have only been increasing. The amount of money they
put into infrastructure has decreased[1].

The Telecoms did have to put a lot of initial investment into infrastructure,
but that was largely from laying the wires. Most of them are already starting
to see positive returns on those investments [2]. They already have the
infrastructure to support traffic to consumers in the last mile. The peering
infrastructure being upgraded shouldn't cost them even 1/10th as much.

So why should they get to pass their peering infrastructure costs on to the
content providers? They should pass it on to the consumer if they must, after
all it's us trying to get the content. But really they are going to be making
such a large profit off us over the coming decades it's ridiculous for them to
cry poor.

Net neutrality is fairly meaningless when it comes to the last mile. I doubt
hardly anyone is saturating their last mile worth of bandwidth. I regularly
have three streams going in my household and it doesn't saturate my bandwidth.
That part isn't what needs upgrading.

[1][http://www.vox.com/2014/5/12/5711082/big-cable-says-
broadban...](http://www.vox.com/2014/5/12/5711082/big-cable-says-broadband-
investment-is-flourishing-but-their-own-data)

[2][http://dailycaller.com/2013/02/15/does-cable-really-
have-a-9...](http://dailycaller.com/2013/02/15/does-cable-really-
have-a-97-profit-margin/)

~~~
runeks
> Are we though? Our bills have only been increasing.

I would venture the guess that the price you pay per megabit has decreased.
The problem is that the number of megabits you demand has increased faster
than the price per megabit has decreased.

~~~
gph
>I would venture the guess that the price you pay per megabit has decreased.

For me personally or on average? I'm a heavy usage user, but most my neighbors
pay the same as me for using a lot less. My grandparents have basically the
same service as me and all they use it for is email, some web games, and the
occasional VOIP call and video.

Considering that nowadays almost everyone has high-speed unlimited plans for
the same price I might question whether the net per megabit price for ISPs has
really gone up. At the very least I'd gamble to say that it hasn't been
anywhere close to exponential or unsustainable for them to keep up with.

~~~
runeks
I can't speak for you, of course, but 10 years ago my parents paid more for a
256kbit/256kbit DSL connection than I pay now for a 35mbit/5mbit connection
now.

My (parents') connection back in 2003 (256/256 Kbit/s for 395 DKK per month):
[http://web.archive.org/web/20040604100538/http://www.cyberci...](http://web.archive.org/web/20040604100538/http://www.cybercity.dk/privat/produkter/adsl/priser_og_produkter/)

My connection now (35/5 Mbit for 279 DKK per month):
[http://www.fullrate.dk/privat/bredbaand/priser](http://www.fullrate.dk/privat/bredbaand/priser)

That's 7.97 DKK per downstream megabit in 2014 versus 1580 DKK per downstream
megabit in 2004.

I very much doubt it has become 200 times cheaper per megabit/s in Denmark and
actually more expensive in the US (or wherever you live).

~~~
gph
That's all bandwidth, not total data usage. I'm talking about price per actual
megabit transmitted by the ISPs. It's not like you actually do 35/5 mbps every
second of the day for the entire month.

I'm in an east coast city in the US. I remember having had maybe 5/1 mbps 10
years ago. I wasn't paying the bills but I'm pretty sure it was like $50 per
month from the TV commercials. Now I've got 25/10 for closer to $70 per month.
Bandwidth wise it's risen a bit, but not really that much. Course I'm pulling
down a lot more megabits per month in streaming content (though I was big into
Napster/Torrents back then).

But my point was that most people have upgraded to broadband from dial-up even
if they don't really use it that much. Only the ISPs would really have the
data, but I'd be surprised if the cost per megabit transmitted for them has
gone up dramatically.

------
rrggrr
Godaddy, Rackspace, Google, Amazon, etc. have skin in this game. With multiple
redundant network connections they could, for a day or a week, defend
neutrality by shaping their traffic to the lowest common denominator or
routing their traffic to avoid the peer's punitive bottlenecks. Today its
Level 3 and Netflix, but tomorrow it could easily be them.

------
ry0ohki
"and make their profit on the Internet because it costs so little to provide
once the basic cable plant is built."

That's some big hand waving, because laying the cable costs a fortune, and
takes many years to recoup the cost which is why there is so few are competing
for this "super profitable" business.

~~~
danielweber
It's not even a one-time cost.

Without knowing the specific numbers, I'm pretty comfortable saying that the
costs to an ISP to get the bits all the way until they reach the peering point
is much less than the costs to an ISP to continually upgrade their network.

------
guelo
If the peering ports are congested that means that either the ISP needs to add
more ports, or they are oversubscribing their capacity. Just make it illegal
to sell more capacity than you have and the problem is solved.

~~~
runeks
> Just make it illegal to sell more capacity than you have and the problem is
> solved.

No. The result would be that you would pay 100 times more for your Internet
connection. Or, alternatively, that you cannot get a guaranteed bandwidth, but
you pay per GB.

This article: [http://blog.level3.com/global-connectivity/observations-
inte...](http://blog.level3.com/global-connectivity/observations-internet-
middleman/) states that Level3 has 13,600 Gbps of capacity with its peers.

Your solution would mean that Level3's peers can only sell 13.6 million 1 Mbps
connections without overselling their bandwidth. Even if Level3's peers have
several other Internet wholesale agreements -- let's say they actually have 5
times that capacity (most likely an overstatement) -- _all_ Level3's peers
would only be able to sell 68 million 1 Mbps connections. That would be some
expensive 1 Mbps connections!

------
xhrpost
I like the article overall but I don't understand the author's proposed
solution. The issue as it stands is apparently a lack of peering, in that big
ISPs are using transit to reach large content providers rather than directly
peering to those networks. So how would "kicking them out" for a maxed out
connection work? If I buy transit from Level3 and my connection maxes out, I'm
no longer allowed to be a customer of Level3?

~~~
joshstrange
I think he is saying that companies like Level3 should kill all peering with
Comcast if they refuse to upgrade to more peering. At least temporally to get
their attention and that of their customers that is.

~~~
Jtsummers
Not all peering, just peering at certain key sites (12 specific sites).

------
Rezo
The extreme download vs upload traffic asymmetry between Comcast and
L3/Netflix has been mentioned several times as a straw man argument for why
Comcast is justified in charging Netflix directly.

Maybe Netflix could find some creative uses for all that idle viewer upload
capacity to reduce the deficit ;)

\- Have every Netflix client cache and serve chunks of the most popular
streams P2P-style. You could have a DHT algorithm for discovering chunks or
have Netflix's own servers orchestrate peer discovery in a clever way, for
example by only connecting Comcast customers to peers physically outside of
Comcast's own network. This would reduce Netflix's downstream traffic and
increase viewer uploads.

\- Introduce the Netflix-Feline-Image-KeepAlive-Protocol, whereby every
Netflix client on detecting a Comcast network uploads a 5MB PNG of a cat to
Netflix's servers over and over again while you're watching a video. Strictly
for connection quality control purposes of course.

------
eb0la
The problem is not to peer or not to peer. The problem is WHERE to peer.

I work for a european ISP and the problem we have is the location of the
peering. Big content providers will happilly peer with you in, say, Palo Alto
or Miami; but they will refuse to add a peering connection in Europe. Why?
because today the problem is about WHO pays the Intercontinental route (which
limited and is expensive bandwidth).

Level3 is known in the industry as a pioneer for bit-mile-peering agreements.
This means you have to sample the origin and destination of the IP packets and
make some calculations to know how many miles the packet has traveled and pay
/ get paid if someone dumps long haul traffic to a peer. Getting to this is
complicated with current tecnhology and many companies are refusing to peer
with Level3 because they don't know what will happen with their business with
bit-mile-peering agreements.

------
tom_jones
Along these lines, can someone ask whether net neutrality ever existed at all?
Akamai and F5 have been helping big corporations like Disney circumvent
internet bottlenecks for over a decade now. Those who have had the money have
managed to purchase faster delivery schemes for over a decade. Could it be,
then, that telecommunications companies are consolidating so that they can
extort money not from the small guys, but from the big guys? Are Hulu, Netflix
and others willingly submitting to the extortion because they see no other way
out? To be sure, the telecommunications industry is in desperate need of
regulation because providing good service at a reasonable price for a
reasonable profit is not good enough for them.

------
neil_s
Since everyone is pitching their own solutions, how about I post mine. Let's
take the example of Netflix and Comcast. Instead of no deal with Comcast, and
thus giving Comcast Netflix users really slow or no service, Netflix should
make the deal for now, and tell subscribers that if you use Comcast the
Netflix rental is higher. By passing off the higher costs to the users,
Comcast customers are given the incentive to switch ISPs.

Everyone shows loss aversion, and so will be determined to find out why being
on Comcast gets them penalised. They will learn about its dick moves, and
complain to Comcast to make them remove these fees so they can access Netflix,
which they have already paid for access to.

~~~
Jtsummers
Netflix would lose, they have competitors and Comcast (and potentially, in the
future, ComcastTWC) has too many customers. Increasing the costs to all of
them would result in the loss of too many customers before the dust settled.

------
sbierwagen
Regulate ISPs as utilities.

~~~
hga
Common carriers are the words of art for these sorts of utilities. And Comcast
and company are in steadily increasing danger of this as they piss off more
and more voters (at a certain point, all the money in the world is of no
interest to a politician who perceives himself in danger of having to spend
more time with his family after the next election; gun owners have
demonstrated this many times).

------
Havoc
> It’s about money and American business, because this is a peculiarly
> American problem.

Hardly. We've experienced the whole interconnect brinkmanship locally too
(South Africa). Its actually quite the opposite - the interconnect things are
a lot nastier in other countries because it tends to be paid for (powerful co
vs underdog) whilst the bigger US setups seem to run mostly open peering.

------
mncolinlee
I can't help but wonder if the RICO Act applies to this sort of extortion. My
first thought was FCPA, but none of the ISPs involved can likely be construed
as "foreign officials." The behavior can be described as demanding kickbacks,
however.

------
jvdh
Just for scale, backbone links these days are not 10 gigabits/sec, more in the
order of 40-100 gigabits/sec.

The Amsterdam Internet Exchange is the largest and most important exchange in
Europe, and it's peak traffic each day reaches 3 terabits/sec.

------
keehun
Maybe I'm naïve beyond any recognition, but shouldn't the ISP's or whoever is
peering charge based on the bandwidth amounts? It sounds like they have a
flat-rate contract with each other and now they're charging more?

~~~
awor
From the article, it seems like the "flat-rate contract" the ISPs have for
peering with L3 is $0.

The issue that L3 is raising, is that the equipment/appliances that the ISP
has installed in these peering arrangements are insufficient to keep up with
the amount of traffic which the ISP's customers are requesting, and L3 is
attempting to provide.

If the ISPs were to upgrade their peering equipment to handle their customer's
requests, there would be no issue.

~~~
keehun
So by Netflix making a deal with Comcast, did L3 effectively get cut out of
the picture?

Also, isn't increasing equipment/bandwidth part of the business? It seems so
ridiculously absurd that Comcast is balking to increasing its bandwidth...

------
rossjudson
Level3 should drop the same percentage of outbound packets from Comcast, that
Comcast drops on the inbound. If every tier 1 did, Comcast's internet service
wouldn't look all that good any more, would it?

------
swillis16
It will be interesting to see how gaming download services such as Xbox Live,
PSN, Steam, etc would be affected as there as the file size of video games
gets larger due to advances in the video game industry.

------
GregFoley
The problem would disappear if ISPs used metered pricing. Why do we have
unlimited commercial broadband?

------
Eye_of_Mordor
Lack of competition all around - just break up the big boys and everything
will be fine...

------
snambi
why there are no last mile providers like comcast and ATT?

~~~
jagger27
Local governments grant monopolies to Comcast or AT&T.

~~~
Jtsummers
And some state governments force it on the local governments (see NC and TWC
versus Wilson, NC).

------
droopybuns
So on the one side is the fat-cat ISP who doesn't want to make expensive
capital investments ih their transport.

And on the other side is the fat-cat vc funded video content providers, who
don't want to pay for the their mp4-based saturation of all the pipes.

This is a negotiation. There are two active media campaigns that are trying to
gin up our anger against The Other Guy (tm) as part of their negotiations. I
just can't get invested in this nonsense.

~~~
burke
I find it a bit offensive that this can be accurately viewed as a negotiation.

This is like demanding the supermarket buy your grocery delivery business a
larger van when the toilet paper manufacturer starts selling larger packs.

It's arrogant, and violates the proper division of responsibilities. It only
might work because of local monopolies. Netflix is already paying for traffic
to Level3. ISPs need to upgrade their infrastructure and increase prices if
it's too expensive.

~~~
diminoten
L3 isn't the only content provider, and the 5 UNNAMED ISPs (Comcast isn't
necessarily the culprit here) can still provide content to their customers.
Netflix is free to hire one of the many CDNs which _do_ play ball with these
ISPs.

------
lifeisstillgood
1\. Peering is based on equal traffic both ways. At the moment we tend to
download gigabytes with a few bytes of request. As video-communications really
takes off (yes chicken and egg - see below) this will get lost in the noise

2\. rise of ad-hoc local networks This might come out of mobiles, this might
be me dreaming, and it might come with sensible home router designs, but
ultimately most of the traffic I care about probably originates within 2 miles
of my house - my kids school, traffic news, friends etc

A local network based on video comms - that will never happen. just like
mobile phones.

3\. electricity and investment In the end this is down to government
investment. Let's not kid ourselves, gas, water, electricity, railroads, once
they passed some threshold of nice to have into competitive disadvantage not
to have, governments step in with either the cash or the big sticks.

Fibre to the home, massive investment in software engineering as a form of
literacy, these are the keys to the infrastructure of the 21C and it's a must
have for the big economies, and it's a force multiplier for the small.

~~~
ep103
The problem is your point #3 has never been true, though. In each case, in
American history (though I don't know about water), the utility was privatized
for _years_, became local monopolies, and used that monopolistic advantage to
become one of the most major Washington lobbying industries of the time, often
to the massive detriment to specific sections of the economy. In each case it
was only _after_ an alternative industry rose in lobbying prominence in
washington (often, the next one on your list) that the previous utility lost
their position as #1 lobbying firm in Washington, that their competitors were
able to then force anti-trust lawsuits, and or get fair government regulation.

The railroads were monopolized until the late 1800s, the original American
idea of a fat cat comes from railroad owners who made profits at the expense
of midwestern farmers. That was eventually regulated when oil became a major
lobbying industry, whereupon oil and gas subsidies became the new norm and we
regulated the railroads. Electricity is a general complex area, but outside of
domestic coal-based electricity production, my understanding is that the
majority(?) of American electricity comes from nuclear power, which in turn is
a regulated monopoly. That industry is so locked that Northern America imports
much of its electricity from nuclear plants in Canada, and Texas is actually
on Mexico's electricity grid.

I was somewhat hopeful that as Wallstreet rose to replace other industries as
one of the top lobbying firms in America that they would end up pushing for
net neutrality so as to commoditize their network costs, but instead they
simply pushed for B2B fiber to be regulated completely differently (and more
sanely) than consumer networks.

I don't want to wait for something better than the internet to come around,
before we get net neutrality back.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
interesting. Is there a constant contraction in the time between monopoly and
regulation (ie decades for rail, years for electricity?)

------
spindritf
_Except it’s actually right (not wrong) because those bits are only coming
because customers of the ISPs — you and me, the folks who have already paid
for every one of those bits — are the ones who want them._

What is the source of the notion that, because you paid for your consumer
broadband, all bits are paid for and the charge for carrying them cannot be
split with the other side of the connection? Why is it so bizarre that both
sides of the connection have to pay for it? Because you're used to your phone
working differently?

As an analogy, you know how you used to pay for a subscription to a magazine
and there were ads inside which advertisers (the other side of the connection
via the magazine in this case) also paid for? The magazine split its fee in
two: you paid part of it, and the advertisers paid the other part. It's the
same here.

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with charging both sides. You may prefer
a different fee structure but a better argument than "I already paid for it!"
is necessary.

~~~
spankalee
No, it's not, because the other side also paid for it to their ISP, CDN, or
the build-out and operation of their own CDN.

What Comcast and friends are asking for is a _third_ payment, just because.
And don't be mistaken, if they win this battle they will start looking for the
fourth payment, which is from their customers for faster service to "premium"
sites like Netflix, HBO, iTunes, etc.

~~~
spindritf
_because the other side also paid for it to their ISP, CDN, or the build-out
and operation of their own CDN._

That's like saying that you should be able to park for free because you paid
for your car, all the taxes on it, and the fee for issuing a driving license.
Paying your ISP doesn't necessarily grant you unlimited access to every other
network on the Internet.

There is no God-ordained fee structure here. It can be split between you,
Comcast, Netflix, your landlord (many will pay for laying fibre and then for
servicing it), local government... Some may be better than others but there's
definitely no moral highground.

~~~
talmand
I'm sorry, your comparison doesn't work for me. I don't see how those even
remotely compare.

What I was actually sold from my ISP and I'm currently paying for was indeed
unlimited access to everything on the Internet. It's called an Internet
connection and that's how I interpret what I'm paying for.

If the bill can be split between me, my ISP, and Netflix then I want my bill
lowered if my ISP is going to charge Netflix to deliver bits I requested. But
I won't be holding my breath over that negotiation happening.

~~~
spindritf
_What I was actually sold from my ISP and I 'm currently paying for was indeed
unlimited access to everything on the Internet._

There is no such service. Not only does it not exist, it cannot exist. No ISP
can provide that. Any independent network on the Internet can start dropping
your packets tomorrow for any reason. Including a lazy admin filtering out
your entire country. Or due to a copyright agreement. Happens all the time.

If they really promised "unlimited access to everything on the Internet", then
you were misled but I doubt their lawyer would allow for it.

 _If the bill can be split between me, my ISP, and Netflix then I want my bill
lowered if my ISP is going to charge Netflix to deliver bits I requested_

Why? It may not be increased. Or it may be increased less than it otherwise
would. Or it may be jacked to whatever amount they can get out of you.

That's the whole point. There is no pre-ordained price for carrying bits.
There is no pre-ordained split between carriers and end points. There is no
pre-ordained service level. It's all just a matter of agreement between
parties. So now they're negotiating.

I don't understand however why some believe they have moral highground because
"they already paid." Everyone already paid something.

~~~
tjgq
> There is no such service. Not only does it not exist, it cannot exist. No
> ISP can provide that. Any independent network on the Internet can start
> dropping your packets tomorrow for any reason. Including a lazy admin
> filtering out your entire country. Or due to a copyright agreement. Happens
> all the time.

The point of net neutrality is that, while ISPs should not be held liable for
what other entities in the network do, they shouldn't engage in those
practices themselves. In logical terms, that's a perfectly reasonable goal.

~~~
spindritf
That's a nice goal but it doesn't answer the crucial question: who pays for
the expansion to accommodate traffic generated by Netflix?

Netflix? Comcast's subscribers? All of them or only the ones using Netflix?
Level3? Comcast's investors? Tax payers? Some combination of the above? And if
so, in what proportion?

This is completely impervious to "I already paid and I demand..." argument
because everyone listed there already paid and wants something. Preferably
cheaper or paid by someone else.

~~~
Karunamon
>who pays for the expansion to accommodate traffic generated by Netflix?

They are _already being paid_ \- that is the problem. They are trying to
double dip.

A visual aid (not the real arrangement, but good enough for discussion:

    
    
        Netflix <-> Level3 <-> Comcast <-> Me
    

Netflix pays money to Level3 for an internet connection.

I pay money to Comcast for an internet connection.

Leve3 and Comcast have an agreement to connect to each other for the purpose
of serving their respective customers.

The concept of "an internet connection", this thing that we're both paying
for, implies the interconnects working together to deliver, in good faith,
what their respective customers have paid for - i.e. access to arbitrary
services at best effort speeds.

The players have already been paid everything they deserve at this point. If
they feel they are not being paid enough, they should raise their prices.

Comcast, they decide they want to double dip and charge Netflix for something
_I am already paying for_. They are no longer playing in good faith, and I
argue not delivering what I pay them to do. Why? Comcast's argument carries
the sneaky assertion that they deserve money from Netflix since Netflix
consumes such a huge portion of their capacity.

Except that doesn't wash - it is _their customers_ requesting those resources
and consuming capacity.

They could throttle their customers instead of Netflix, and this would even be
defensible, but it would get them pilloried in the marketplace. But that
assumes it's a capacity issue in the first place..

But in the end, it isn't. That is a damn lie perpetrated by the ISPs. It is a
politics problem. Note how, when Netflix agreed to the demand for protection
money, their capacity problem with Comcast went away literally overnight?
Comcast either has an army of the best and fastest network engineers in the
entire world (and I invite you to speak to a Comcast user if you think _that
's_ true), or already have the gear and configurations in place and just won't
switch it on.

There is no cost for expansion here. It's money grubbing, pure and simple.
ISPs have always been expected to steadily grow their capacity and speeds over
time, and just now Comcast decides they have an issue with it? It's BS. It's a
business decision - some suit decided they could charge twice for the same
thing and do no extra work.

~~~
spindritf
They're not being paid already because the explosion of streaming video
traffic is a relatively new and ongoing process. They expect to be paid more
for moving more bits.

Now, you might expect the capacity of the network to simply increase as a
matter of technological progress. But it's not that crazy of a notion to
charge more for doing more. They could make their own customers pay but
they're trying to shift it to Netflix, and indirectly to Netflix users.
There's nothing fundamentally unfair about it.

The answer that they shouldn't charge anyone more amounts to financing the
expansion by their investors (in the form of lower returns). It's not a
political problem, it's an economic one. All of those companies are after
money, whether in additional fees or lower costs.

~~~
Karunamon
The fair and forthright thing to do, if that's really the case, is to charge
me more. I am their customer, Netflix is not. Comcast's job is to deliver what
content I ask for.

Except, they won't do that, because an ISP who will play in good faith will
come along and eat their lunch, and their plans are already absurdly
expensive.

It's not as if Netflix is blasting unsolicited traffic into Comcast's network
that they should somehow compensate them for the inconvenience. "Oh, So sorry!
That neighborhood scamp Netflix, blasting their packets all over the place".

The fact that it's Netflix is utterly irrelevant in truth. In the end,
_Comcast 's customers are the ones requesting the data_. It's just the simple
fact that it's all coming from one source starts the wheels turning, where if
it was more spread out, they couldn't come after any one person in particular
to seek rent.

>Now, you might expect the capacity of the network to simply increase as a
matter of technological progress.

As it has been for the past couple of decades? Yes, that is _exactly_ what I
expect.

I'm not saying they shouldn't charge more. I'm saying they shouldn't piss on
the internet's leg and tell them it's raining. Don't come to us with that 'But
but but capacity!' argument when their behavior with Netflix clearly indicates
the opposite, and less so when you're a monopolist with the second worst
customer satisfaction score in the entire country, and even more less so when
it's _their damn problem in the first place!_

On top of that, streaming video is a time-sensitive medium and others are not.
The sane thing to do (again, assuming this is really a capacity issue, which I
absolutely believe is 100% grade A horse manure) would be to throttle down the
other, non-time-sensitive packets like torrent, http, mail traffic. Basic QoS.

If you believe this company's stated reasons for anything, you are being
played for a fool. They can not be trusted.

