

Level 3’s Selective Amnesia on Peering - lovelettr
http://publicpolicy.verizon.com/blog/entry/level-3s-selective-amnesia-on-peering
This is a rebuttal by David Young, Vice President, Verizon Regulatory Affairs to Level 3&#x27;s blog regarding peering and bottlenecks [1].<p>[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8048997
======
jimrandomh
Two companies, A and B, have a network connection between them. Packets
flowing through this wire fall into three categories:

    
    
       * Traffic for which both A and B are being paid by their respective customers
       * Traffic for which A is being paid by the sender or recipient, but B is not paid
       * Traffic for which B is being paid by the sender or recipient, but A is not paid
    

The latter two categories are called "transit"; that's when you carry packets
between two parties, neither of which is directly your customer. There is an
established tradition which says that if two companies set up a connection
which carries transit, the flow of traffic across it should be balanced.

Currently, there is controversy over a large amount of traffic flowing like
this:

    
    
        Netflix -> Level 3 -> Verizon -> Consumers
    

For which the corresponding flow of dollars looks like this:

    
    
        Netflix -> Level 3    Verizon <- Consumers
    

In the past, it has sometimes been difficult to frame peering in terms of
who's paying who, so it was instead framed in terms of senders and recipients,
rather than in terms of who's paying who. Verizon is trying to use this
framing to say that Level 3 should pay them. But looking at the economics,
it's clear that neither Level 3 nor Verizon should be paying the other,
because each of them is already being paid for the traffic by their respective
customers.

------
nwmcsween
This argument is regurgitated ad-nauseam and is selective ignorance. Let me
repeat what has been repeated literally thousands of times: A ISP will not
have the same ingress and egress traffic due to two reasons: 1. Download speed
is usually more than upload speed, 2. There is nothing to peer with due to TOS
/ customers not running services.

Verizon just wants to double dip and get more money, as a business with
commitments to shareholders this is a reasonable argument, as a person that
can reason it is very ignorant.

~~~
pktgen
> Verizon just wants to double dip and get more money, as a business with
> commitments to shareholders this is a reasonable argument, as a person that
> can reason it is very ignorant.

Fuck the cunts with their "commitment to shareholders" at the cost of society.
The subhuman imbeciles running this show deserve nothing more than to be taken
into an alley and shot. The same goes for the lobbyist cunts that make it all
happen, since their entire business is "enrich myself at the cost of EVERYONE
else."

------
viraptor
I don't get this response.

> Rather than buy the capacity they need, Level 3 insists that Verizon should
> add capacity to the existing peering link for additional downstream traffic
> even though the traffic is already wildly out of balance.

So... Verizon doesn't even claim it's impossible, or the wrong solution. L3
says they need additional peering links and is willing to pay for the cards.
Both companies have spare capacity on both sides of that link. The complaint
is weird too "the traffic is already wildly out of balance" \- of course it is
- they're an ISP! Of course the customers will download more than upload.

What's wrong with that? Could someone explain why it isn't an accepted
solution?

~~~
waterlooalex
I think Level 3 is saying they'd be willing to pay for the cards, but not
bandwidth, eg continue using the free peering agreement.

Verizon is saying that Level 3 should pay for the bandwidth (probably way more
costly than the cards), since they are already getting more than they are owed
in the free peering agreement.

~~~
jlgaddis
There is no bandwidth to pay for. This is settlement-free peering. Once you
have the line cards, it's simply a matter of adding the physical cross-
connects.

~~~
berkay
Settlement free peering only happens if the traffic is balanced. In the case
of Level3 and Verizon, it's not, hence Verizon's point (and apparently it was
Level3's point when dealing with Cogent) is that the settlement free peering
is not appropriate for such lop sided traffic and Level 3 needs to pay via
alternative arrangement with Verizon.

~~~
jlgaddis
It happens when it's mutually beneficial, regardless of whether the traffic is
balanced. I have (free) peering w/ a few networks that are wildly off-balanced
(on the order of 5:1 at times) simply because "free" is still cheaper than
what I'd pay to send it to them over another (paid) transit link.

------
lovelettr
This is a rebuttal by David Young, Vice President, Verizon Regulatory Affairs
to Level 3's blog regarding peering and bottlenecks [1].

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8048997](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8048997)

~~~
peapicker
The thing is, Mr Young, Cogent wasn't an ISP. Verizon is. Verizon will never
have equal peering with any backbone.

~~~
lovelettr
When you start looking into the relationship between Cogent and Level 3. One
starts to wonder if all this is not a straw-man argument anyways. It seems to
me that both Cogent and Level 3 are both united in their stance against
Verizon regarding these sorts of tactics [1].

There are some interesting points in that Ars article that I think are worth
noting. For one, what is being discussed in that article is case in point what
Verizon is admitting they are doing. They have the head-room to handle the
bandwidth that Cogent and Level 3 could send in their direction [2]. However
are specifically not adding any more interconnections and asking for someone
to pay for more interconnections. Sounds like a "toll" to me.

The other point that is interesting to me is in some of the debate about net
neutrality people specifically state that what they what is for ISPs to not
purposely throttle traffic on their network. However, this tactic seems to be
the loop-hole in that request. Meaning if Verizon never properly peers with
Level 3 then they have no reason to throttle the Level 3 traffic. It is
already made scarce, and throttled, by the arbitrary scarcity of the limited
traffic that is allowed through the peers. Thus Verizon and all ISPs can
adhere to the letter of the law. While probably ignoring the spirit of it.

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/03/level-3-and-
cogent-a...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/03/level-3-and-cogent-ask-
fcc-for-protection-against-isp-tolls/)

[2] [http://publicpolicy.verizon.com/blog/entry/why-is-netflix-
bu...](http://publicpolicy.verizon.com/blog/entry/why-is-netflix-buffering-
dispelling-the-congestion-myth)

------
trothamel
The absurdity of this become apparent when you realize that Netflix has code
running on both sides of the connection. Netflix could easily modify its
client-side code to upload random data of the same size as the content it's
downloading, or whatever size is necessary to ensure settlement-free peering.

Verizon is in the process of switching to all-symmetric connections, so this
is a little less absurd than it was a week ago.

------
ahfttrader
My main question is this: have other CDNs been paying ISPs like Verizon for a
while for additional peering?

------
Jemaclus
Jesus Christ. This whole thing reminds me of when I was a kid and my divorced
parents were having a legal battle over child support payments, and each one
was telling me their version of how horrible the other parent was, and why
they should get more money (like I had any say in the matter). It was
transparently manipulative then, and it's transparently manipulative now.

Can't anyone act like adults these days? Or is this just how adults behave?

~~~
Eleopteryx
>Or is this just how adults behave?

I'm going to go with this.

