

ISP Interconnection and its Impact on Consumer Internet Performance - pmb
http://www.measurementlab.net/blog?date=october%202014&page_number=1

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pmb
Original title was something like: US ISPs are failing to provide broadband
speeds during peak hours.

If I could make it longer, I might have said "Due to neglect of relatively
cheap interconnects, US ISPs are and were measured to be providing sub-
broadband connections to many portions of the Internet".

The title "ISP Interconnection and its Impact on Consumer Internet
Performance" just says that there was a study and says nothing about its
results, but it's the results that are interesting. It was kind of a surprise
to see the title changed out from underneath me. I did not know HN titles were
edited in that way.

~~~
rhino369
Like the tango, it takes two to interconnect. It's a bit biased to say ISPs
fail to provide broadband speeds. You could easily say L3 or Cogent fails to
provide it's subscribers the transit service they are paying for.

ISPs are rightly a little pissed that Cogent, for example, takes Netflix's
money for transit service then hot potatoes the data right onto the ISP for
the ISP to transit to the end customer.

Remember, Cogent is being paid to deliver the content, but they are
contracting to carry more data that the interconnect can hold. Now you could
say the ISP should just let them expand the interconnect, but that is no
excuse for Cogent overselling their own capacity.

Interconnects have always been a wild west.

~~~
msandford
You could argue that, but Cogent is willing to provide the interconnect to its
customer, Netflix. But what we're seeing is that the ISP that is selling
internet to its customer isn't willing to provide sufficient bandwidth to meet
their expected-but-not-contractually-obliged obligations.

They can do this because they have a monopoly on their customers. Not just a
"Microsoft monopoly" where there are plenty of alternatives but network
effects that keep people using Windows, but honest-to-god monopolies not just
granted but ENFORCED by the government.

What we have here is a failure of the government to break the monopolies,
revoke the monopolies, or police the monopolies. A little legislation that
said "you can't oversell your bandwidth by more than X amount" would go a long
way towards giving consumers an effective stick to beat their ISP with for
over-promising* and under-delivering.

Note: The * is there to denote that they've written the contracts such that
basically no matter what happens they're not in violation of them. We're only
entering those contracts willingly in the sense that it's an abusive contracts
from one of two or three vendors, or no contract at all. It's kind of like
asking someone if they'd rather be beaten or stabbed. Given the choice;
neither. If I have to pick one, how big is the knife?

~~~
rhino369
1) The ISPs are willing to interconnect, they just aren't willing to
interconnect in an unbalanced fashion without being compensated. Settlement
free peering is free because the two sides transfer the same amount so it's a
net of roughly zero. In these cases, the net is heavily on the Cogent or L3
side.

Now I think there is a decent argument that ISPs should have to have free
peering available at their local loop level. If congent wants to peer at the
CO office of the local telecom, it should be able to do it.

The issue is that Verizon is not just a local ISP, it's a nationwide T1
provider. It sells transit service. It should be allowed to charge for transit
to it's own local loop networks.

2) There are no enforced monopolies anymore, and haven't been for a long time.
Damn near all profitable areas have a telecom and a cable provider. Congress
banned monopoly franchise agreements for cable and fiber in 1992. Cable
Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992, Pub. L. No.
102-385, 106 Stat. 1460 (1992).

3) I believe ISPs should have to meet some benchmarks for speed compared what
they advertise, but you can't force them to maintain speed on specific
interconnects. If Cogent has a shitty network that isn't on Verizon.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> Now I think there is a decent argument that ISPs should have to have free
> peering available at their local loop level. If congent wants to peer at the
> CO office of the local telecom, it should be able to do it.

That's what the whole dispute is about. "Verizon is a Tier 1 provider" is some
kind of meaningless talking point with no relevance to anything. Cogent and
Level 3 are already transit providers with national networks, they don't need
to use Verizon's transit network because they have their own. The problem is
that they have traffic they want to pass to Verizon in LA for Verizon's LA
customers and Verizon won't give them access without paying a toll. The fact
that Verizon also has fiber going from LA to Houston and San Francisco has no
effect on any part of that.

~~~
rhino369
No it's not what the dispute is about. The Verizon/Cogent or L3 peering points
are nowhere near the local loop.

Verizon isn't a fake T1, it's a real honest to goodness T1.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> The Verizon/Cogent or L3 peering points are nowhere near the local loop.

Do you have some kind of cite for this? If it didn't already matter which
Verizon peering point they were using then it wouldn't matter if any
particular one was congested because Cogent could just dump the traffic on a
different one in a different city.

Is your point that Level 3 isn't a _Tier 2_ network but Verizon is? Obviously
Level 3 is going to peer with Verizon somewhere in Greater Los Angeles and
Verizon would carry the traffic from there to Long Beach or whatever. But then
you would seem to be suggesting that the Tier 1 network should be paying the
Tier 2 network.

> Verizon isn't a fake T1, it's a real honest to goodness T1.

The Tier 1 network they own is not fictional, it is only not relevant. The
traffic for Verizon's customers in Los Angeles is not delivered to Verizon in
New York.

