Net Neutrality
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This isn't that hard.
He's coming from a ideal demand pays cost scenario.
And not a realistic, cost goes to whoever is most willing to pay for it scenario. (What we call supply meets demand).
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I'm saying that Mafia-style extortion is bad. "Nice traffic to us from your site. Would be a shame if something ... happened to it."
But that doesn't describe the Netflix / Comcast interaction.
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He's coming from a ideal demand pays cost scenario.
And not a realistic, cost goes to whoever is most willing to pay for it scenario. (What we call supply meets demand).Whereas you're using the lolbertarian "market fixeth all, by glod!" assumption.
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Netflix: We need more bandwidth.
Comcast: Someone needs to pay for it.
Netflix: Ok!OMGWTFBBQ
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But that doesn't describe the Netflix / Comcast interaction.
Of course it does. Comcast is the cause of the traffic. And now they don't want to pay for their own traffic. What's so hard to understand about that?
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Well, over here we have different numbers for hard lines and for mobiles
That's retarded.
It's not my problem if your system is shitty all-around so that you have those asinine "solutions".
That's what I was thinking about your stuff, funnily enough.
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That's retarded.
Well, obviously you're not working with a full set of a brain here. But well, I'm done with you morons.
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Of course it does. Comcast is the cause of the traffic. And now they don't want to pay for their own traffic. What's so hard to understand about that?
Do you, or do you NOT pay for upload speed?
When you select your plan, does it not show you what upload speed you will get?
When you pay for the better plan, does it not increase your upload speed?
Therefore internet is like American style cell phone.
Both sides pay to connect to each other.
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Netflix: We need more bandwidth for the traffic you requested
Comcast: Someone needs to pay for it.
Netflix: Ok!OMGWTFBBQ
Fixed that for you.
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Well, obviously you're not working with a full set of a brain here.
True.
But well, I'm done with you morons.
Ah, well, we got a little bit closer, I guess.
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TDEMSYR
This is like the magical thinking in the welfare thread.
Well, GFY. I can do silly abbreviation, too.
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I can do silly abbreviation, too.
You should stick with that. You still haven't answered the question about paying for upload capacity, but think that because someone else requested it, it should be magically paid for or something.
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Well, GFY. I can do silly abbreviation, too.
@Boomzilla He's devolving.
We've made our point to third party, no need to throw pearls before swine.
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@Boomzilla He's devolving.
We've made our point to third party, no need to throw pearls before swine.Oh, please. You never evolved in the first place.
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You should stick with that. You still haven't answered the question about paying for upload capacity, but think that because someone else requested it, it should be magically paid for or something.
The problem is that an ISP is an endpoint. And someone, namely the customer, already paid for the traffic they requested. So why should the ISP collect money again for traffic their customers are the cause of?
"Hey guys, our customers think you're the best thing since sliced bread so you should pay us in order to ensure that our customers still can reach you!"
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I suppose you don't think you should have to pay your ISP for higher upload capacity?
Ignoring the fact that upload and download speeds are way lower than equivalent costs in other countries I agree with this point.
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And someone, namely the customer, already paid for the traffic they requested. So why should the ISP collect money again for traffic their customers are the cause of?
You haven't understood the problem. Netflix was shoving lots of data through Comcast. There was a bottleneck getting it all to get into Comcast stuff. New hardware arrangements (i.e., colocation) was needed in order to give that massive amount of traffic a better way to move.
The only way your comment makes sense is if Comcast were purposely slowing stuff down after it got into their network, but that's not what was going on.
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Ignoring the fact that upload and download speeds are way lower than equivalent costs in other countries I agree with this point.
Well, whatever...we're not talking about residential stuff here.
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The only way your comment makes sense is if Comcast were purposely slowing stuff down after it got into their network, but that's not what was going on.
Unfortunately as @izzion brought up that's how the story was sold to us, i.e. Comcast purposefully keeping Netflix speeds low instead of investing to get their own network up to speed.
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Yes, that was the initial panic. But the Truth has Been Out There for some time now. I mean, the deal was like a year ago, right? I think that's enough time to get rankled at people arguing a myth instead of what actually happened.
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Either I didn't realize it or forgot about reading that, so take that as you will
Mostly the fact that I'm a 20 something that probably says things that don't even make sense I'm retarded.
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Either I didn't realize it or forgot about reading that, so take that as you will
Fair enough.
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You should stick with that. You still haven't answered the question about paying for upload capacity, but think that because someone else requested it, it should be magically paid for or something.
I think the point is supposed to be that, when I paid for my internet connection, I paid my ISP to connect me to the internet. The ISP only offered me and every other consumer an asymmetric connection that guarantees that the data transfer between networks will be unequal.
Since I paid the ISP to maintain my side of the connection to the internet, the reasoning goes that the ISP should upgrade its side of the connections to the parts of the internet I and its other customers want to visit because we paid them to maintain our connection to the internet through our monthly service fees.
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Since I paid the ISP to maintain my side of the connection to the internet, the reasoning goes that the ISP should upgrade its side of the connections to the parts of the internet I and its other customers want to visit because we paid them to maintain our connection to the internet through our monthly service fees.
And other entities pay their ISP to send stuff out into the tubes. They pay money for that. Your download is worthless if no one else can upload. If someone wants to upload lots more stuff, they should (in a moral sense, at least) pay for that capability.
The reasoning you refer to assumes that what I wrote doesn't matter, because the downloader is a special snowflake and shouldn't have to think of other people.
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The problem is that an ISP is an endpoint. And someone, namely the customer, already paid for the traffic they requested. So why should the ISP collect money again for traffic their customers are the cause of?
That thought neglects to account for the fact that:
- Bandwidth isn't some infinite thing that Comcast pulls out of the sky and charges for the labor of pulling the bandwidth. Comcast is spreading the cost of infrastructure investment and maintenance over years of service provided.
- One particular supplier needed more bandwidth. You are confusing upload and download bandwidths. The end user paid for download bandwidth, but Netflix was asking for more upload bandwidth than Comcast could support with its infrastructure.
- Not every point of data transfer between me and the source are created equal.
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The problem is that an ISP is an endpoint.
Wat?
User
User's ISP Content provider's ISP Content providerHow is either ISP in any way an endpoint?
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I'm a bit weirded out by this: Isn't the traffic going to the ISPs caused by the ISP's customers?
In essence, you're stating that the ISPs customers caused the traffic (and paid for the traffic, by the way) which then made the ISPs say: "Hey, our customers request so much traffic from you, pay us for the traffic our customers are causing!"
The model of the Internet to this point has been a bit of "uploader pays" and a bit of "both parties pay". ISPs bill their customers for the last mile connection, and then purchase transport (or build connections to major interconnects). Small ISPs (like my company) purchase transport from larger carriers. Large ISPs usually ARE also the larger carriers that form the backbone (in a sense, they purchase transport from themselves).
When two large carriers meet, they exchange traffic via a peering agreement. These peering agreements usually result in the carrier with more OUTBOUND traffic paying the other carrier for transporting that traffic. If the two carriers have roughly the same traffic headed toward each other, they agree to settlement-free peering (no cost, other than both sides paying for their own hardware on the connections they make to each other).
I think the "Comcast/Verizon created a large number of asymmetric connections" argument is a bit of a red herring. Even if all of Comcast's residential customers were purchasing symmetric 15Mbps/15Mbps connections (which DSL & cable modem technology doesn't really support to begin with), they wouldn't actually be generating that much upload to begin with. One of our customers is a residential college. They purchase 100Mbps/100Mbps from us. But their traffic pattern is 10x more download than upload, even with the symmetric connection (and always will be).
Ultimately, a lot of the debate comes down to a difference between how "The Internet" is perceived to work (I pay you money, you bring me cat videos), and how the Internet has been constructed to work (many different carriers build networks and charge customers for access to that network, and then interconnect their networks to other carriers' networks so that their customers can access people on other networks). I'm not opposed to arguments that the current arrangement is confusing, unfair, or unjust. I'm just opposed to arguments that the government should regulate ISPs more so they can't block Netflix, when no ISP was ever blocking or otherwise slowing Netflix except for the ISP Netflix had selected to be their primary provider.
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And other entities pay their ISP to send stuff out into the tubes. They pay money for that. Your download is worthless if no one else can upload. If someone wants to upload lots more stuff, they should (in a moral sense, at least) pay for that capability.
The reasoning you refer to assumes that what I wrote doesn't matter, because the downloader is a special snowflake and shouldn't have to think of other people.
Which is what they pay their ISP for?
If the situation had been reversed - Comcast customers wanted Netflix data and Cogent refused to upgrade its side of the interconnect unless Comcast paid up, I would think Cogent was in the wrong.
The point is that it's incumbent on the ISP to provide the necessary capacity for ingress and egress to their network endpoints. If Cogent needed to send more data but couldn't because they didn't upgrade their side of the interconnect, they need to be charging their customers more for their service. Same for the consumer ISP. If Comcast can't afford to upgrade the interconnects, they are charging to little for their service and need to increase prices.
The problem in the specific case (Netflix/Cogent/Comcast [et.al.]) noted is the special snowflake being targeted was Cogent. They were perfectly happy to improve their half of the interconnect, and Comcast refused unless they were compensated. Comcast should have passed the interconnect cost on to their customers. If the customers didn't like it, well it's not like they have a choice.
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This post is deleted!
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Comcast should have passed the interconnect cost on to their customers. If the customers didn't like it, well it's not like they have a choice.
This is not a choice that demands government regulation.
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Then again, I always forget that you US-Americans also have this weird system where you have to pay for incoming calls...
I haven't paid for incoming calls in years. Not since I had limited minutes. These days, I'd actually have to try to get a plan with limited minutes. Unless you mean landlines. But then, as @lolwhat said:
we pay for outgoing calls generally - not incoming.
The exception being collect calls. Even then, you have to accept the charges before they will connect the call.
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This is not a choice that demands government regulation.
I disagree, but only because I would have preferred local loop unbundling to have been part of the ruling. It's clear we won't get FBVNOs in the US without this kind of regulation.
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I disagree, but only because I would have preferred local loop unbundling to have been part of the ruling.
Um...what ruling? Was there some official ruling about that deal?
FBVNO
Get what now?
Though I suspect this attempt at a power grab by the FCC will get thrown out as unconstitutional like the others were.
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Ultimately, a lot of the interconnection problems come down to things like this:
"Until Level 3 fomented this dispute, Comcast and Level 3 exchanged Internet traffic as part of a commercial interconnection agreement, under which Comcast paid Level 3 for interconnection facilities. Although the parties exchanged traffic at a ratio of about 2:1, with Comcast terminating more of Level 3's traffic, this was well within the industry's established bounds for "roughly balanced" traffic, and they exchanged their on-net traffic on a settlement-free basis.
"Now, Level 3 has decided to reinvent itself as a major CDN, in competition with other commercial CDN players, all of whom pay for transmission of their traffic on Comcast's and others' networks. And in so doing, Level 3 would more than double the amount of traffic it sends to Comcast -- which would result in a traffic imbalance that could be in the range of about 5:1. The parties' current interconnection facilities could not begin to support that type of traffic flow."
So, Comcast's position is basically that Cogent / Level 3 tried to use their non-CDN interconnection agreement to do CDN business and make the money for that from Netflix, and Comcast argued they should pay the same fees that other CDN interconnects do.
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Um...what ruling? Was there some official ruling about that deal?
The ruling - on the 26th that reclassified broadband under Title II?
@boomzilla said:@rad131304 said:
FBVNO
Get what now?
Though I suspect this attempt at a power grab by the FCC will get thrown out as unconstitutional like the others were.
FBVNO - Fixed Broadband Virtual Network Operators; like MVNOs but for wired connections. I don't really know - the judges that threw out the last ruling basically said "well what you were doing was trying to do Title II". IANAL though so I have no idea what will happen.
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@Rhywden said:
Well, over here we have different numbers for hard lines and for mobiles
That's retarded.Well, technically, numbers get assigned out in chunks to different carriers here in the US as well. For carriers that have land line and mobile customers, they are supposed to specify if those chunks are for mobile or land line. But you can't reliably use these systems for determining if you are calling a mobile line or a land line for a couple reasons:
- The numbers are basically mixed up with no real pattern to the assignments. You'd need to do a lookup to determine if you were calling a mobile or land line. There are online services that will do the lookup for you[1], even telling you which carrier got the batch that number was part of. However, these results aren't 100% reliable because of #2.
- Number portability laws. The US has laws which allow users to transfer numbers between carriers, and even between line types. For example, my moms current mobile phone number is the same as the land line phone number that I grew up with. It has been transferred between multiple carriers and from land line to mobile. However, the lookup services still show it as a land line number.
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Wat?
User
User's ISP Content provider's ISP Content providerHow is either ISP in any way an endpoint?
Yes, @Rhywden, please enlighten us on this point.
<see what I did there?
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Ultimately, a lot of the interconnection problems come down to things like <a href="http://www.cnet.com/news/level-3-accuses-six-broadband-providers-of-degrading-network-traffic/">this</a>:
> "Until Level 3 fomented this dispute, Comcast and Level 3 exchanged Internet traffic as part of a commercial interconnection agreement, under which Comcast paid Level 3 for interconnection facilities. Although the parties exchanged traffic at a ratio of about 2:1, with Comcast terminating more of Level 3's traffic, this was well within the industry's established bounds for "roughly balanced" traffic, and they exchanged their on-net traffic on a settlement-free basis.
> "Now, Level 3 has decided to reinvent itself as a major CDN, in competition with other commercial CDN players, all of whom pay for transmission of their traffic on Comcast's and others' networks. And in so doing, Level 3 would more than double the amount of traffic it sends to Comcast -- which would result in a traffic imbalance that could be in the range of about 5:1. The parties' current interconnection facilities could not begin to support that type of traffic flow."
So, Comcast's position is basically that Cogent / Level 3 tried to use their non-CDN interconnection agreement to do CDN business and make the money for that from Netflix, and Comcast argued they should pay the same fees that other CDN interconnects do.
That's not what I would have called a CDN; for me, a CDN requires hosting servers inside an interconnect border to improve content delivery speed. I'm not part of that industry, so that explains why I didn't understand that point. I thought a CDN involved hosting servers inside borders and paying for special interconnects to those servers to improve content delivery. Since, as far as I am aware, Comcast is not participating in whatever Netfilx calls their CDN service by hosting servers, I did not consider the data transit to be part of a CDN service.
I would agree that using peered routing for CDN should be discouraged. The fact that the data being delivered is content, does not strictly make Cogent a CDN in my option. If it did, then all networks are CDNs to me.
Again, these are my naive observations on that topic.
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As a practical manner, no it is not, for two reasons:
In which case, they're lying weasels and shouldn't be let near net neutrality for the same reason that we don't want the congresscritters who got us into the current healthcare mess implementing universal healthcare. I'm pretty sure that was @boomzilla's point.
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The ruling - on the 26th that reclassified broadband under Title II?
Ah, OK. You confused me by switching gears from the Netflix / Comcast thing.
the judges that threw out the last ruling basically said "well what you were doing was trying to do Title II". IANAL though so I have no idea what will happen.
Yeah, they like to rule as narrowly as possible. But that doesn't (shouldn't) mean that they can just magic the stuff to be Title II. I'm sure a lot of it will come down to some minutiae in the statute. Still, it doesn't seem right for an executive agency to make big policy like that.
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Well, technically, numbers get assigned out in chunks to different carriers here in the US as well.
Right, but for all intents and purposes:
you can't reliably use these systems for determining if you are calling a mobile line or a land line
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This doesn't seem quite so retarded now:
@boomzilla said:@Rhywden said:
Well, over here we have different numbers for hard lines and for mobiles
That's retarded.
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This doesn't seem quite so retarded now
Sez you. Obviously, anyone who has mobile and land lines has different numbers for them (though my Google void number rings to both of mine), but if there's no way to tell them apart, you really just have one set of numbers from the caller's perspective.
If we weren't the first mover on phone systems, we'd probably have a different system.
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Google void number
We have either Google Void nor Google Voice in the UK AFAIK.
Seriously though - if you need to tell if you're ringing a mobile vs a landline, which isn't such a necessity now but used to be when/if it cost(s) different amounts, it's a pretty straight forward way to tell.
In some cases/tariffs now, it's still necessary.
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Our long distance was handled by area codes and exchanges, when that was a thing. I'd guess that there are some super bare bones plans that only call 911 and local stuff, but I haven't heard about long distance charges since I exited my time pod.
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These days it seems to be the mobile carriers who care less about the whole local vs national vs mobile thing than the landline telcos.
It sounds like maybe things were different but are now a lot more similar?
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These days it seems to be the mobile carriers who care less about the whole local vs national vs mobile thing than the landline telcos.
In the UK? There's still a fair amount of preference by mobile carriers. They have various versions of preference. I have Verizon, and all calls to other mobile Verizon numbers don't count against my monthly minutes.
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In the UK?
Yeah. I get unlimited mobile to mobile or mobile to landline calls from my mobile carrier, but not the same from (the highest package available) my landline, for example. My landline tariff only allows me unlimited landline to landline calls.
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@blakeyrat said:
Once again: Government could not POSSIBLY get any shittier. I'm happy for anybody to grab power away from them.
FTFY
Anarchist!
:P
