Netflix and Google Make Land Grab On Edge of Internet

An anonymous reader writes "In an end-run around slow Internet backbone providers, Netflix and Google (plus a dozen more large content giants) are in a bitter fight to deploy servers and dominate the consumer edge of the Internet. This Wired article provides some of the first graphics of this fight and how it is changing the underlying Internet infrastructure. The source of the article (DeepField blog post) also has some pretty interesting commentary."

Comments

basically vertical integration with CDNs

[Trepidity]

As the article notes, from an internet-topology standpoint this isn't that new, dating back to Akamai-type CDNs starting in the 1990s. The idea is that you mirror your content inside several of the major edge networks, so e.g. Comcast users get served from the Comcast-local mirror. You then update the mirror whenever there's new content, but every single user doesn't have to re-fetch that video over the public internet to Comcast's network.

The main difference is that some of the large content providers are building out their own private CDNs, so Google is setting up its own edge-network mirrors instead of contracting out to Akamai. That's not a major technical change, but could have some important implications for competition.

Re:basically vertical integration with CDNs

[Anonymous Coward]

There could be some implications, but I don't think it's that bad. Akamai isn't going anywhere, they actually never delivered Netflix, and have had only limited business with Google, so it's not like they're "losing" anything. So if a competitor to any Google or Netflix comes along, they'll have the option of using Akamai until they're big enough for their own CDN, if that's actually the direction things are headed. On top of that, I would not be surprised if the day comes when Google starts offering its CDN as a service, which will actually add competition for Akamai.

Re:basically vertical integration with CDNs

[symbolset]

You can look up peering details at peeringdb. It's kind of neat.

"changing the underlying Internet infrastructure"

[asshole felcher]

Seems a bit dramatic. Google and Netflix use enough bandwidth that they can set up their own CDN. End of Story. If a small competitor comes along, they won't have the money to set up their own CDN, but LLNW, Akamai, and Level3 won't turn them down.

This metric saddens me

[Anonymous Coward]

From the blog:

Our most recent data finds that more than 70% of all Internet traffic (on average) comes from just 150 CDN, hosting, cloud and content companies.

For many Internet users it is essentially now Television Mark 2.

The case for net neutrality

[girlintraining]

That's not a major technical change, but could have some important implications for competition.

Yes, specifically that it'll fragment the entire network and potentially destroy interoperability across it. The internet would no longer be a unified global network. Network neutrality is the key to preventing this, but as we've seen, corporations don't want that: They want to turn the internet into a largely read-only media... just a better version of television.

A classic example of how this is shaping up is with Comcast, the Great Evil of the USA internet: They recently instituted a 250GB transfer limit, and then exempted Hulu from it, which they bought out. Netflix, a competing service at a lower price is now sitting out in the cold. Let's run some numbers and see how much of a problem this is. The average person watches 2.7 hours of TV per day; and it remains the single largest leisure activity in the United States. The average Netflix stream (based on my experience), is about 350KB/s. So that comes out to about 3.24GB per person, per day -- or 98.82 per month (the average length of a month). Now the number of people per household is a bit shaky, since there aren't any current numbers, but it's around 2.6 people per. So the average household will consume 257 GB per month if they used Netflix.

How strange that the bandwith cap is almost exactly the same number eh? Make no mistake -- this is a war between big business, and the only losers will be you and me. This is what happens when you let people into public positions who entertain the notion that capitalism runs best when it isn't regulated. Every infrastructure service in this country runs better with regulation, and the internet (telecommunications) is not an exception. Every time we let the private sector take over, we get crap like Standard Oil, AT&T (pre-breakup), Microsoft, etc. And now we have Montsano eating up our food supply (literally).

If network neutrality isn't given the force of law in the next two years, then two things are going to happen: Either we start building tunneled networks so all traffic through the last mile ISPs is encrypted and cannot be shaped, modified, or tampered with except in terms of bandwidth and latency as a whole... or we abandon the internet and start a new network that has no last mile restrictions (read: wireless, read: pirate radio).