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Time Warner Defends Comcast In Level 3 Dispute
MojoKid writes "On December 21, the FCC will finally vote on adopting net neutrality rules. This may (or may not) have been caused by Comcast's spat with Level 3 after Level 3 won a big contract to handle Netflix's video streaming. Grind it all together, output it to Facebook and you get this campaign: 'Save the Internet: Stop Comcast from Blocking Netflix. Without strong net neutrality rules, companies like Comcast can demand fees from innovative companies like Netflix in an attempt to choke consumer freedom and coerce users to adopt its own video services instead.' Comcast insists that this has nothing to do with blocking the upstart Netflix's business but about how much of Level 3's traffic it must carry before they get to send Level 3 a bill. Level 3's traffic has greatly increased thanks to Netflix. On Thursday, Comcast's frienemy, Time Warner, issued a statement of support for Comcast that explained the pro-cable provider side of the fight."
Peering agreements are what we typically see at back bone and transport level connections.
The bandwidth going either way is roughly even.
For example, if Level 3 wanted to get packets to an AT&T customer, and Comcast owned a network between those two points, Level 3 and Charter could have a peering agreement so that Level 3 could send data over Comcast's network and vice-verse. If Comcast is sending a lot more data out for transport over Comcast's network than Comcast is sending back, then there may be a fee included.
That's all fine and good. But, in this case, Level 3 isn't sending data to AT&T customers. They are sending data to Comcast's customers. Customers that requested the data. Level 3, being proactive for Netflix, is trying to get a direct connection to Comcast's network to reduce backbone data transfers. Even if this agreement falls apart, Level 3 will still be routing the data to Netflix, but it will be coming over an existing back bone connection. It will offer worse performance for Comcast's customers, and it would waste more bandwidth on the back bone.
This is a pretty clear case of Comcast taking two dips from the coffers. Once from the users who are paying for data to be transferred to them via Comcast's network, and again from Level 3 that is providing the requested data to Comcast.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Comcast and Level3 had a settlement free peering agreement based on a roughly 1:1 traffic exchange. Level3 now wants to send 5:1 more traffic to Comcast, meaning their settlement free peering agreement is no longer valid. Comcast is just trying to negotiate a new peering agreement.
It's a little more complicated than that.
Here's what the dispute is really about: The way the Internet works (obviously) is that you buy access from your ISP (e.g. Comcast), they in turn (perhaps through some number of additional intermediaries) buy access to the backbone from a Tier 1 provider (like Level 3). If you were a big enough network, you could 'peer' without paying anything (since there was no particular reason for one network to pay the other vs. vice versa). The way it worked in the Old Days was that data centers would always be uploading more than they download, so the rule of thumb became that if you upload too much data without downloading, you can't peer for free -- a rule of thumb to distinguish data centers from ISPs and make them pay. But it is unheard of for a backbone provider to pay an ISP -- because it is inefficient. ISPs like Comcast always used to have approximately symmetrical load to their uplink providers: Their customers would download more than they upload, which means they would have "surplus" upload bandwidth "for free" which they could sell to local data centers. Selling to data centers like this is efficient because otherwise the surplus upload bandwidth is lost -- use it or lose it.
Some of these data centers in modern times turned into CDNs like Akamai. The CDNs kind of messed with the model. Instead of connecting Comcast's network to buy Comcast's surplus upload bandwidth to the backbone, they connected to Comcast networks to serve content only to Comcast's customers. In other words, they evened out Comcast's uplink to Level 3, not by increasing upload traffic as was the traditional model, but by decreasing download traffic from the backbone. But that still works.
So now what's happening with Level 3? Netflix is moving from Akamai to a data center operated by Level 3 which is only connected to Comcast through Level 3's backbone. What this does from Comcast's perspective is a) deprive them of the money Akamai was paying them, but b) give them a huge amount of "free" upload bandwidth. What Comcast is then supposed to do is the efficient thing: to shop this surplus bandwidth around to data centers. Or sell Comcast Business customers higher upload rates. Or whatever. They're supposed to sell it, because they can sell it most efficiently -- there is a pipe going into Comcast which is only full in one direction and the only way to fill it is to put something which uploads a lot on the Comcast side.
Comcast apparently doesn't want to do that. I can really only think of two possible reasons for this: First, there is so much upload bandwidth that no one would possibly want to buy it. (I find this to be pretty unfathomable. Supply and demand says that if the price is right, someone will pay.) And second, Comcast is double dipping and trying to sell access to their customers as a scarce resource; in other words, trying to force Level 3 to pay more for the bandwidth than it would sell for on the open market because buying it from Comcast is the only way to get access to Comcast's customers and they want to charge monopoly prices.
Funnily enough, Level3 was in Comcast's EXACT position back in 2005 with Cogent. Cogent wanted to send more traffic than Level3 was sending, and Level3 said "Nope, no more settlement free agreement. Get out your wallet!"
No, Cogent was sending traffic over Level 3's network to third party networks. In this case Level 3 is sending traffic to Comcast customers. Level 3 has no monopoly on access to third party networks. There are other backbone providers. Comcast has a monopoly over access to Comcast customers -- that's what makes it different.
Why will this increase Comcast's operating costs? It's not going to affect Comcast's customers Netflix usage, so their overall traffic won't go up, it'll just be coming from a different peer.
Akamai delivered Netflix (and other content) to Comcast's customers by buying colo rack space in Comcast's POPs and pulling in their own private lines. Level 3 is dumping the traffic onto Comcast at a much smaller number of peering points, thus Comcast has to use their long haul network to transport the traffic across the country instead of having it originate inside a POP nearer to it's final destination.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.