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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."
So long as the majority of broadband is offered by corporations that have 'content generation' as a part of their business model, there will never be a real chance for net neutrality. The conflict of interest there is just too strong a force.
Back in the '90s, electricity deregulation was a big topic; I recall that the state of Maine ended up differentiating between the electricity providers and the electricity carriers--while before, there had been two monopolies (a biopoly?) serving different areas of the state, there was, afterwards, a number of smaller generating companies (content generation) and a couple of larger companies that provided and maintained the transmission and delivery equipment (broadband providers).
As my parenthetical notes indicate, I think that the same model could be effectively used--or, rather, ought to be enforced--for the current debate. Differentiate the providers of the connection from the providers of the content, and much of the impetus for the anti-neutrality standpoint will go away.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
Don't they have some sort of peering agreement that covers this? Aren't they supposed to charge their peers, and their customers, more when their bandwidth usage goes up? Or am I missing something here? Obviously telcoms are greedy and will try to take whatever they can, but isn't there already a channel established for that?
Nope. You've got the gist of it.
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.
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!"
Comcast has peering agreements with other CDN's, and Level3 wants to leverage their old peering agreement to bust into the CDN market here. They are trying to pass the cost of increasing their CDN presence off to Comcast and Comcast's customers rather than paying for it themselves.
If anything, consumers should be pissed at Level3, not Comcast, because this will directly increase Comcast's operating costs... and we all know those costs are passed on to the consumer.
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
It is double dipping, but not like you think.
I pay my ISP for bandwidth. ISPs want to charge Netflix for bandwidth too.
If i'm using more bandwidth now because of Netflix, that should be between me and my ISP, but ISPs don't want to mess with that relationship for fear of pissing off customers and spurring real competition in the marketplace. It's cheaper to buy legislation mandating your business model than to compete.
If we had real competition then net neutrality would be a non-issue because we could choose open networks over closed ones, but with the near-monopoly of the big operators in most markets, it's usually just a choice between their crappy service or another crappier, more expensive option.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
That's the closest someone has come so far in this discussion, but it's not quite accurate. Comcast and Level3 had an agreement where basically they just swapped traffic for free. Each side sent approximately the same amount of traffic, so an even exchange seemed fair. Now that agreement is about to expire, and at the same time the numbers have changed significantly. Now Level 3 is sending significantly more traffic to Comcast than Comcast is sending back, so the previous "even swap" agreement no longer makes sense, since it's not, you know, even. Netflix and net neutrality really have nothing to do with any of this, and as much as it pains me to say this, I agree with Comcast (though I'll continue to pray that they die a slow death and then rot in hell for all eternity).
Comcast sends way more traffic to my home network than my home network sends to Comcast. Clearly they should start paying me for using up my network bandwidth.
This isn't how it works.
Even if Comcast drops Level3 completely, you will still get Netflix - Level3 will just pass off the traffic to someone who does peer with Comcast. It'll be slower than if Level3 directly peered with Comcast, but it will still get there.
Netflix doesn't need to pay Comcast anything. Netflix is already paying Level3 to be their CDN. Level3 just now needs to pay for the bandwidth they're using.
Huh? Aren't Comcast's customers, the one's who are streaming Netflix, already paying for that bandwidth that they're using? This sounds like Comcast wanting to double-dip.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
No, Netflix does not pay Comcast. They used to, in a sort of indirect way. Netflix used to pay Akamai, a content delivery network, to deliver streaming video to customers. Akamai does this by having data centers all over the place that can serve up content faster than anything centralized. And Akamai pays to link their data centers to Comcast so they can do this.
Well, here comes Level 3. Traditionally a backbone provider, they go to Netflix with a sweetheart deal on delivering content. Netflix dumps Akamai for them, and Level 3 realizes they lack the bandwidth to Comcast needed to deliver Netflix's streaming video. So they want additional links to Comcast, like Akamai had, only they don't want to pay for them. And why? Because they're a backbone provider, peer links should be free.
So Level 3, not wanting to pay Comcast (probably because those costs were not factored into what they charged Netflix), is playing the Network Neutrality card to provide CDN services under the guise of a backbone provider. But in reality Comcast isn't saying they are going to degrade Netflix traffic. But that they won't provide additional bandwidth for one service for free.
At the end of the day the customer is going to pay Comcast to deliver that content one way or another. Whether it is directly in the form of higher internet prices, or indirectly through Netflix in the form of higher subscription fees; I see very little difference.
Anyway, Comcast's letter to the FCC is worth reading.
Except you're missing one thing here: the traffic isn't crossing Comcast's network on it's way to some other network, it's on it's way to Comcast subscribers and was requested by those subscribers. Backbone providers carry other people's traffic (eg. carrier X handling traffic originating on network A and destined for network B because A and B both have connections to X but don't have a direct connection with each other). Comcast doesn't connect other networks to the backbone, it only connects it's own subscribers. If those subscribers are incurring bandwidth costs, Comcast ought to be billing them for it. In fact it is, I'm fairly sure Comcast sends every subscriber a bill every month for their connection and turns that connection off if the bill isn't paid. If Comcast wants Level 3 to pay, then what's that bill to the subscribers for?
You need to ask your government why there is a lack of competition in the ISP market in your country.
Network Neutrality is a non-issue used to cover up the real problem. It is only an issue at all in the USA.
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The difference is that Cogent was sending traffic across Level 3's network, when in this case Level 3 is sending traffic to Comcast.
If Level 3 and Comcast were peers in between two other endpoints, I could understand this. But that's not the case, Comcast is one of the end points. Doesn't Comcast owe their customers the ability to receive the traffic they want?
Also, it's not like Level 3 is suddenly going to quintuple traffic to Comcast and everything else stays the same. The fact that Netflix movies are going to be served from Level 3 means they are not being served by someone else, which should free up some of the ports they are so worried about.
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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.
If Comcast doesn't like what Level3 is paying them to accept L3's traffic, they should renegotiate.
That is what this is about, Comcast is telling Level3 that they need to renegotiate their peering agreement because Level3 is about to significantly increase the amount of traffic they send over Comcast's network. Netflix used to use Akamai as one of their primary ISPs. Akamai paid Comcast for the traffic they sent to Comcast's network. Level3 had a peering agreement with Comcast whereby they didn't pay to send traffic to Comcast because Comcast sent as much traffic to Level3's network as Level3 sent to Comcast's. That is about to change with Netflix switching from Akamai to Level3. Level3 is screaming because they undercut Akamai's price to provide service to Netflix on the basis of not paying Comcast to send data to Comcast's customers.
This has nothing to do with Netflix competing with Comcast (at leat not that anyone has so far offered any evidence for), this is about Level3 increasing the amount of traffic they send over Comcast's network without a similar increase in the amount of traffic that Comcast sends over Level3's network.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
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.