Net neutrality non-neutrality
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@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
@boomzilla Nope. It's the net neutrality opponents floating around the (false) claim that it's really about Netflix. I'm just pointing out that even if we take that claim at face value, the math says something other than what @izzion is trying to dismissively assert.
Parse better. You weren't even on the right continent.
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@boomzilla LOL, the downvotes are comical at this point.
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@boomzilla I think we need a tag system instead of a voting system. Attach arbitrary tags to posts, agree with arbitrary tags to increase the number next to them, tag shows all users who agreed with it.
Plus, would you rather have a badge that says "I got ten up arrows!" or a badge that says "I got ten TDEMSYRs and a Breast Programming!"
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@ben_lubar
I think we'll have to get @Perverted_Vixen to implement the system, so that the boobs can come out...
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@ben_lubar BRB, coding up an auto-tag bot to vote TDEMSYR on a few specific community members...
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@izzion said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Or the people advocating for Net Neutrality are being dishonest, and claiming it's about "not treating traffic differently" while it's really about "I don't want to pay extra because I use tens or hundreds of times more data than the average person on my package plan" (and the companies advocating for Net Neutrality are all about "I want to get free interconnection everywhere" instead of "I want my traffic treated by the same set of rules as all other traffic")
What's going to happen when "everybody" uses Netflix and similar virtually exclusively? What's going to happen when the average use goes up to similar levels to watching cable TV all day? (What is that, like 20GB of HDTV a day?) Cable companies already provision that much on the last mile. They have to to provide their own cable TV content. Is it in Comcast's interest to host a cheaper service that competes with theirs?
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@Captain
I would expect one of two things would happen:- Netflix et al completely kill standard cable, making Comcast et al just data ISPs. They would then retool their infrastructure to free up their copper lines to be able to use more "channels" for data (more frequency space, as you don't need as much for Cable TV channels) and thus provide more data over the same existing hardware, lowering their cost per capacity and making it so the current pricing model works with the level of concurrency that streaming requires.
- The data cap model becomes widely accepted, with content providers having the option to bear the cost of their data instead of the consumer bearing it (aka, Netflix paying Comcast et al to exempt Netflix traffic from data caps). The luddites who continue to use standard cable and just do Facebook/e-mail (low bandwidth) type traffic with their Internet wind up paying less than people who use high bandwidth streaming traffic (who either pay explicit data cap overages or have a hidden cost of delivering that data being bundled into their streaming service fees).
And, per the "treat all traffic equally" standard that I see as what Net Neutrality is "supposed" to be, I don't see any incompatibility between #2 and NN. All traffic is subject to the cap equally, and all content providers have the option to pay to bypass the cap according to the established schedule. #2 is what's already largely in play in the mobile world (where the data caps are much lower due to the technical limitations of mobile, which make it much more expensive or even in some cases technologically impossible to provide the same amount of data per customer per month compared to a terrestrial ISP).
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@Captain said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
What's going to happen when "everybody" uses Netflix and similar virtually exclusively? What's going to happen when the average use goes up to similar levels to watching cable TV all day? (What is that, like 20GB of HDTV a day?) Cable companies already provision that much on the last mile. They have to to provide their own cable TV content. Is it in Comcast's interest to host a cheaper service that competes with theirs?
It seems like the price of that service might need to rise, assuming that it's subsidized by people paying for the TV service. Obviously, the costs associated with acquiring the content complicate that equation.
I know people who have different TV and internet providers, such as DishTV (satellite based) and Verizon FiOS.
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Mobile data caps make sense because the last mile infrastructure is the bottleneck. That's not the bottleneck for a large cable carrier, who has to provision at least as much bandwidth to serve IPTV to all its customers simultaneously.
In fact, Netflix uses Level 3 as a CDN. So Netflix was already IN Comcast's network. Peering is a non-issue to the Netflix case. What is Comcast even asking Netflix for, then?
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@Captain
Comcast was asking Level 3 for paid settlement of their interconnection before Comcast would increase the (congested, bottlenecked) capacity between Comcast and Level 3, because the traffic pattern had changed to no longer meet the standard accepted pattern of a settlement free interconnection. Level 3 refused to pay the interconnection charge, and Netflix eventually asked for a direct connection because their customers were suffering from the congestion between Level 3 and Comcast. Comcast gave the same terms to Netflix - they weren't going to be a "equal amounts of traffic going both ways" connection that would qualify for settlement free interconnection, so Comcast required a paid settlement for the peering.
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Comcast charged Netflix in addition to charging Level3 for peering.
Edit: oops, wrong reply-to person. Paging @izzion
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@Captain said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Comcast charged Netflix in addition to charging Level3 for peering.
Yes, that seems to be what @izzion said.
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@boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
It seems like the price of that service might need to rise, assuming that it's subsidized by people paying for the TV service. Obviously, the costs associated with acquiring the content complicate that equation.
Nobody is subsidizing anybody though. Level3 has peering agreements with Comcast, which effectively means that Level3 has servers in Comcast data centers. They pay rent (i.e., for floorspace) for them, too.
Given that Netflix has servers in Comcast datacenters (via their L3 CDN), what's the difference between watching Fox at 10MBps and watching Netflix using the same bandwidth? Especially when Comcast has to provide enough bandwidth so every customer can watch cable TV? Cable TV is IPTV these days.
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@boomzilla Right, but the point is that they went held Netflix for ransom after they charged L3.
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@Captain said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Nobody is subsidizing anybody though. Level3 has peering agreements with Comcast, which effectively means that Level3 has servers in Comcast data centers. They pay rent (i.e., for floorspace) for them, too.
This has absolutely nothing to do with what I was talking about in terms of subsidizing. I'm talking about, say, Comcast's revenue from TV vs Internet service. I have no idea how their financials shake out, and since it's using a lot of the same infrastructure, I'm sure it's not easy to separate the costs for that stuff.
@Captain said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Right, but the point is that they went held Netflix for ransom after they charged L3.
"Ransom." I guess that's one way you could describe the situation, but it doesn't strike me as accurate.
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@Captain said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Given that Netflix has servers in Comcast datacenters (via their L3 CDN), what's the difference between watching Fox at 10MBps and watching Netflix using the same bandwidth? Especially when Comcast has to provide enough bandwidth so every customer can watch cable TV? Cable TV is IPTV these days.
Eh...I guess I should address this, though. I guess the difference is that you should expect to pay something between the current cost of their internet service and the cost of having both cable TV and internet service.
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@boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
This has absolutely nothing to do with what I was talking about in terms of subsidizing. I'm talking about, say, Comcast's revenue from TV vs Internet service. I have no idea how their financials shake out, and since it's using a lot of the same infrastructure, I'm sure it's not easy to separate the costs for that stuff.
Considering that cable tv uses the same infrastructure as their network, in addition to more infrastructure; and considering that I pay more for internet alone than internet plus cable, I am subsidizing TV.
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@Captain
That is incorrect. Netflix eventually went around Level 3 and established direct interconnections to Comcast (and eventually Verizon).They were already working toward moving away from the reliance on Level 3 (via their Open Connect program) before the whole dust storm blew up, and if you trace from a Comcast ISP connection to Netflix at this point, there will not be any transit hops through Level 3.
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@Captain said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Considering that cable tv uses the same infrastructure as their network, in addition to more infrastructure; and considering that I pay more for internet alone than internet plus cable, I am subsidizing TV.
Seriously? So why aren't you buying the TV + Internet package?
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@izzion said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
That is incorrect. Netflix eventually went around Level 3 and established direct interconnections to Comcast (and eventually Verizon)
Netflix contracted all Tier 1 providers with access to Comcast, and they still managed to clog the tubes for it's users before that.
The inside story of how Netflix came to pay Comcast for internet traffic
Netflix hand-delivered 256 pages (pdf) to the US government this week arguing that Comcast shouldn’t be allowed to acquire Time Warner Cable. “The proposed merger puts at risk the end-to-end principle that has characterized the internet and been a key driver in the creation of the most important...
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@wharrgarbl
The linked article confirms that Netflix traffic sends a ton of traffic into an ISP, and receives very little back from the ISP. Whether or not one thinks it's just or proper that ISPs can charge Tier 1 providers or other ISPs an interconnect fee if there's a disparity in the net data flow (inbound - outbound), the fact is that is the standard practice and it's fairly well-known within the industry.Cogent and Level 3 obviously don't want to pay any more interconnection fees than they absolutely have to - it's their job to maximize their shareholder value just as much as it is Comcast's. But it doesn't change the fact that Comcast was "in the right" in terms of industry standard practice, and Netflix did eventually resolve the issue by paying for a direct connect themselves, rather than paying someone else to pay Comcast for an interconnect.
Interesting thought experiment: should the Government mandate "cable channel equality" whereby all Cable TV providers have to carry a cable channel at whatever subscriber fee the channel provider dictates, and create a regulation that prevents Cable TV providers from blacking out cable channels when there's a dispute between the Cable TV provider and the channel provider over cost? Or, to go one level further - should the regulation mandate that cable channel providers offer their channels to Cable TV providers at no cost -- after all, the channel provider is already getting paid for their content by the advertising on the channel, why should they get to charge a second time for the TV provider carrying their channel?
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@izzion said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
The linked article confirms that Netflix traffic sends a ton of traffic into an ISP, and receives very little back from the ISP.
Any tier 3 ISP like Comcast will have it's users downloading much more than uploading. And it has always been tier 3 ISPs like Comcast that paid for backbone tier 1 ISPs like Level 3 for acess.
A tier 3 ISP charging a backbone was unheard of before that, wasn't it?
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@wharrgarbl
The fact that Level 3 and Cogent had settlement-free peering with Comcast before the Netflix interconnection suggests to me that Comcast is not just a Tier 3 ISP. From the definitions on Wikipedia, it looks like Comcast is classified as a Tier 2 provider (some standard peering, some purchased transit) and that the Tier 1's they are buying transit from are Asian-based (Tata Communications in India and NTT America - a subsidiary of a Japanese company).My assumption (I don't have time to do further research at this point) is that Comcast is effectively a T1 for US traffic, and they purchase some transit for business clients that need to connect to Asian data centers (India, Japan, Hong Kong, etc). They're certainly big enough, with a wide enough geographical footprint in the US to be a Tier 1 provider.
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@boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
@Captain said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Considering that cable tv uses the same infrastructure as their network, in addition to more infrastructure; and considering that I pay more for internet alone than internet plus cable, I am subsidizing TV.
Seriously? So why aren't you buying the TV + Internet package?
Back when I was a subscriber it was because (fake numbers because I can't remember them):
internet only: 70
internet + tv: 40 (internet) + 100 (tv)
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@dcon said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
@boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
@Captain said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Considering that cable tv uses the same infrastructure as their network, in addition to more infrastructure; and considering that I pay more for internet alone than internet plus cable, I am subsidizing TV.
Seriously? So why aren't you buying the TV + Internet package?
Back when I was a subscriber it was because (fake numbers because I can't remember them):
internet only: 70
internet + tv: 40 (internet) + 100 (tv)Right. Internet + TV is double what Internet only costs. Who knows what the actual costs are for them, but presumably a lot of the basic infrastructure stuff has been moved into the TV allocation in the offer. Which is a marketing thing and maybe accounting shenanigans, so who knows (plus made up numbers, obviously).
But if it were actually only $50 for the TV + Internet package we'd all have to wonder why you were paying more for less, even if you didn't own a TV.
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Found a good, long, and relatively unbiased explanation of all this thing
Peering problems: digging into the Comcast/Level 3 grudgematch
Comcast and Level 3 have both been unusually open about their secretive …
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@wharrgarbl Interesting article.
But Level 3 says that the charges are a dangerous outlier. The company's backbone is one of the world's largest, so it connects to plenty of other networks; still, Level 3 tells me that this is the first time it has been charged simply to access another network—that is, charged to deliver the content requested by that network's users.
So much for @izzion's contention that this is a perfectly normal business transaction that Level 3 is trying to avoid playing by the well-established rules on...
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@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
So much for @izzion's contention that this is a perfectly normal business transaction that Level 3 is trying to avoid playing by the well-established rules on...
So why is Comcast the bad guy and not Level3?
Level 3 insists that CDNs who can bring their traffic to Comcast's virtual door shouldn't pay for mere network access. Comcast insists that they should, regardless of who requested that traffic or where it's going; if CDNs don't want to pay, they're welcome to use the "open Internet" by coming in through transit links.
Not coincidentally, each position would be financially good for the company making the argument.
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@boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Not coincidentally, each position would be financially good for the company making the argument.
So the two self-interests cancel each other out. What we're left with is credibility, an area in which Comcast is so far in the hole that by this point anyone arguing against them is most likely in the right by default.
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@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
@boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Not coincidentally, each position would be financially good for the company making the argument.
So the two self-interests cancel each other out. What we're left with is credibility, an area in which Comcast is so far in the hole that by this point anyone arguing against them is most likely in the right by default.
Yeah...no. The more I read this the less respect I have for people whining about "killing Netflix" or whatever. And then going the route of suggesting the government step in with a solution to a problem they don't understand because Something Must Be Done.
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@boomzilla Who doesn't understand the solution? What is there to not understand about "treat all traffic equally"?
It's the ISPs that are putting in place confusing systems that are hard to understand...
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@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Who doesn't understand the solution?
And you complain about other people's reading comprehension?
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@boomzilla Well, there's a persuasive argument! Nice solid line of reasoning!
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@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
@boomzilla Well, there's a persuasive argument! Nice solid line of reasoning!
Yes! Let's review:
@boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
a problem they don't understand
@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Who doesn't understand the solution?
Conclusion: @masonwheeler isn't reading very carefully.
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@boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
a solution to a problem they don't understand
E_AMBIGUOUS_PARSE
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@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
@boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
a solution to a problem they don't understand
E_AMBIGUOUS_PARSEYeah, obviously you'd say that. But you also think "treat all traffic equally" is super simple. Which implies that you didn't read TFA, because ain't none of that simple. Which just further cements the impression that you are oversimplifying based on an emotional argument coming from your admitted dislike of Comcast and (presumably) warm feelings towards poor little Netflix.
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@boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
So why is Comcast the bad guy and not Level3?
Level3 should have to pay if it is "mere network access". Likewise, if the who/where is in the comcast network, than comcast is already getting paid by the end user so they are wrong to ask L3 to pay.
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@boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
(presumably) warm feelings towards poor little Netflix.
I have very little in the way of feelings towards Netflix either way. I don't have a Netflix account and I've seen a movie on there with a friend a grand total of once. I just figure that if Comcast is able to get away with screwing them over, sooner or later they're going to end up doing it to a site I do care about.
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@Dragoon said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Likewise, if the who/where is in the comcast network, than comcast is already getting paid by the end user so they are wrong to ask L3 to pay.
Exactly. This is the elephant in the room that the anti-Net Neutrality folks keep not acknowledging: Comcast is already being paid for that traffic, by its users. This is, in fact, the entire point of its users having a Comcast account.
Which means that this whole dispute is nothing more than a blatant double-dipping attempt on Comcast's part.
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@izzion said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Whether or not one thinks it's just or proper that ISPs can charge Tier 1 providers or other ISPs an interconnect fee if there's a disparity in the net data flow (inbound - outbound), the fact is that is the standard practice and it's fairly well-known within the industry.
There are no rules for peering, they do it whenever they agree on doing it. But it's fishy because in this case peering saves Comcast money:
But the odd thing about this statement is that, if Level 3 decided just to send all its traffic over transit instead, it would cost Comcast money. Peering is much cheaper than transit, which is a key reason peering arose in the first place.
Comcast would literally spend money to screw with Netflix. And if they had competition they would lose users for a provider better connected to the service.
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@Dragoon said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
@boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
So why is Comcast the bad guy and not Level3?
Level3 should have to pay if it is "mere network access". Likewise, if the who/where is in the comcast network, than comcast is already getting paid by the end user so they are wrong to ask L3 to pay.
RFTA. It's more complicated than that. Even as of 2009, they were doing a lot more than just the last mile of their own customers.
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@wharrgarbl said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Comcast would literally spend money to screw with Netflix.
I kind of want them to, now, just to fuck with you NN whiners.
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@boomzilla
I understand that they make it far more complicated than that. But that doesn't change the fundamentals of what is occurring.As I have stated before, they all entered into these peering deals long ago when traffic volumes where low so I understand why they are now complaining about the disparity in data transfers. But the fact of the matter is, they are still getting paid for that traffic if consumer or producer of that content is in their network. It is only when it is outside of their network that they have an argument about not getting paid fairly. An argument that I agree with.
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@Dragoon said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
But the fact of the matter is, they are still getting paid for that traffic if consumer or producer of that content is in their network. It is only when it is outside of their network that they have an argument about not getting paid fairly. An argument that I agree with.
And being a last-mile ISP, how many cases are there in which the consumer is not in their network?
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@Dragoon said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
But that doesn't change the fundamentals of what is occurring.
I think you're oversimplifying to much to say that. As @wharrgarbl 's article points out, Level3 was changing some fundamental aspects of their business and their relationships with other peers.
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@boomzilla
I am leaving out a lot of detail, largely because most of it doesn't matter in the end. At least not to me anyway.If the content starts or ends on your network, you got paid (twice if it was all in network). It is only when you are a pure middle man that it should ever matter on how you get paid.
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@Dragoon said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
If the content starts or ends on your network, you got paid (twice if it was all in network). It is only when you are a pure middle man that it should ever matter on how you get paid.
This all sounds nice but it seems to ignore the realities of how the sausage of network transport gets made.
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@boomzilla It's not about how the sausage gets made; it's about how it gets sold. When the grocery store starts charging me and the butcher for it, we have a problem!
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@boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
@Dragoon said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
If the content starts or ends on your network, you got paid (twice if it was all in network). It is only when you are a pure middle man that it should ever matter on how you get paid.
This all sounds nice but it seems to ignore the realities of how the sausage of network transport gets made.
No, it completely accepts that reality and enforces it on the people who don't like it. I as a consumer already pay my ISP for what I consume, so them demanding money from the producer is ridiculous. I understand that the peering deals from old will dissolve as they get more and more imbalanced. I am willing to accept that the cost of internet will likely increase as the peering deals start having a cost. But I do not accept the idea of letting them charge both sides full price for the privilege of using their network.
