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Verizon Accused of Intentionally Slowing Netflix Video Streaming
colinneagle writes "A recent GigaOm report discusses Verizon's 'peering' practices, which involves the exchange of traffic between two bandwidth providers. When peering with bandwidth provider Cogent starts to reach capacity, Verizon reportedly isn't adding any ports to meet the demand, Cogent CEO Dave Schaffer told GigaOm. 'They are allowing the peer connections to degrade,' Schaffer said. 'Today some of the ports are at 100 percent capacity.' Why would Verizon intentionally disrupt Netflix video streaming for its customers? One possible reason is that Verizon owns a 50% stake in Redbox, the video rental service that contributed to the demise of Blockbuster (and more recently, a direct competitor to Netflix in online streaming). If anything threatens the future of Redbox, whose business model requires customers to visit its vending machines to rent and return DVDs, it's Netflix's instant streaming service, which delivers the same content directly to their screens."
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
This wouldn't be the first time people have had issues with Cogent having saturated peering links. A common complaint among Cox customers is that latency is high to certain WoW servers, and saturated Cogent links has been found to be the cause - and they don't seem particularly interested in fixing it.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
I know when my Netflix stuff starts throttling (not saying it's intentional by my cable co) I just sit and watch slightly more pixelated versions of whatever I was watching at the time. My last reaction is "Dammit, gotta get my ass off the couch, pants on, get in car, drive to Redbox, get disc, watch disc, remember to go back to Redbox and return disc because that's a lot less hassle."
http://bigrab.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/tin-foil-hat.jpg
My provider solved the fairness problem by making everything slow and spotty.
Table-ized A.I.
BLAMEFIGHT!
(hand waving and excuses)
Altho we already know it's likely true. Since you DON'T have the same slowdown problem with the redbox video steaming service... That verizon owns a chunk of...
...or does that not apply to internet service providers?
In Canada it does, back a few years ago Rogers was involved in throttling everything, even though they said they weren't. Took the work of a few very determined people who brought it before the CRTC, and were told to stop or face fines. As a fun note, Rogers and Bell Canada were two of the greatest throttlers in the world back then.
Om, nomnomnom...
Cogent has been undercutting the market for a long time. So much that folks do not want to peer with them.
If anything threatens the future of Redbox, whose business model requires customers to visit its vending machines to rent and return DVDs, it's Netflix's instant streaming service, which delivers the same content directly to their screens.
FTFY
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
Bitches constantly on NANOG and to customers about bandwidth being filled to Level3. ... while Verizon peering refuses to turn up any more peering to Level3 even though it's the biggest internet backbone in the world.
Whenever I get issues with content delivery, I call the tech dept of my ISP. If they fail to fix it, I become part of the churn data. This is why I am no longer a Comcast customer. They were caught dropping connections and bringing some services to a standstill.
My last slowdown with my current provider wasn't their fault. A neighbor cracked my older weak encryption and saturated my connection. It pays to check your router's lights. Changed SSID, encryption, and password and the problem was fixed on the spot.
The truth shall set you free!
...or does that not apply to internet service providers?
Nothing prevents Cogent from purchasing access to Verizon network. What Cogent expects instead, is for Verizon to purchase more network ports so Cogent can offload their traffic for free. "Peering" is usually mutally beneficial, meaning traffic ingress and egress is balanced. If it is not, it does not make sense to provide free access and it is fair to expect on of the parties to pay.
Essentially, Netflix pays Cogent as their "ISP". Cogent probably won that deal with their ridiculously low pricing. And now Cogent expects Verizon to invest in their network so that they can act as an extension of the Cogent network, through a "peering" agreement.
Probably necessary disclaimer: I am not in any way affiliated with Cogent nor Verizon. I do, however, work for a vendor of high quality networking equipment.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
um that is the entire point of the internet.
I pay an ISP, you pay an ISP, Company A, B and C all pay different ISP's.
It is the 5 different ISP's job to share the data load between them. Once you start having ISP's charge different rates to other ISP's the entire network collapses into AOLhell. Once ISP's stop working together to connect each other entire value of all ISP's fails. ISP's solely exist to connect tiny communities to larger ones.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Well, depends what you mean by "internet service". In this case, the basic problem is that Netflix streaming accounts for 1/3 of all the traffic on the internet, and "peering" assumes roughly equal sharing in both directions. The whole peering issues with Netflix has been going on for years... it's too bad the article doesn't put it in context and oversimplifies.
E pluribus unum
I wouldn't put it past Verizon to do that but one of my colo's peers primarily with Cogent and Cogent blows up internet connectivity from that colo all the time, an issue I just don't have in my other colo. Honestly I don't think Cogent has the moral authority to be able to assert anything.
-Matt
The way internet works is 'uploader pays'. Netflix pays Cogent, Verizon is being paid by their CUSTOMERS to provide those customers with access to the internet (specifically netflix). The only reason that consumer ISPs get to charge at all, is the amount of upstream they provider their customers, and the infrastructure to deliver the connection to the users' home.
Verizon already got paid, by their customers, the ones who are requesting to stream from Netflix.
Verizon already got paid, by their customers, the ones who are requesting to stream from Netflix.
More importantly, Verizon's paying customers -- the ones who are requesting to stream from Netflix -- are expecting Verizon to invest in their network so that they can deliver the contracted-for services. The fact that Netflix uses Cogent versus Billy Bob's Bass Boat, Bait Barn, and Content Distribution Network does not really play a role here.
The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development
It's partly because they're big, but it's also because they're cheap.
Silly pleb, laws don't apply to corporations
Cogent vs. Verizon is like the Iran/Iraq war. There are no good guys in this fight, and you kind of wish both of them could lose.
It's possible that Verizon is holding back on bandwidth to make Netflex look bad. Verizon is certainly sleazy enough to do that.
Having said that, my money is on Cogent. They're notorious for these disputes. They think peering rules don't apply to them, and are quite willing to hang their customers out to dry rather than pay for bandwidth like everybody else. When their customers cry and complain, Cogent tries to spin it as the other ISP's fault. Somehow they've managed to win several of these pissing contests, and it's only emboldened them.
Gee, that like, never happens!
Cogent is well known for undercutting the market to acquire another networks eyeballs, and then sending all that traffic into the networks they have settlement free peering agreements with. That kind of dick move means nobody wants to turn up settlement free links with you. Verizon's no angel either, but they're merely the latest to disagree with Cogent about what constitutes polite use of the access to their network.
This is no different than the Comcast/Level3/Netflix peering dispute, except for the fact that this time Netflix is using Cogent as it's beater instead of Level3... which from a respectability standpoint is just about as bad that money grab snafu they made that cost them a whole lot of customers.
With peering to ISPs it isn't about equal traffic in both directions, that is more when Tier 1 companies peer.
ISPs usually peer because it is cheaper and/or faster than paying to send the same traffic over the regular internet.
Over here in Australia most ISPs peer with PIPE. PIPE does not provide any internet access, just traffic between peers.
The ISPs consequently get nearly free data from Google, Akamai, etc... just by setting up the one peering connection which is unlimited.
Yeah, 'cause the rest of the country doesn't hate those with Google fiber enough yet.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
There are but they were pretty well gutted back in the days of the Reagan Administration. Now, the ones that are left are mainly ignored. The big exceptions, like the Microsoft case, usually come as political punishment or when the infraction is so blatant that it cannot be ignored.
If we had a Justice Department that was more than a bunch of cronies and amateurs, there wouldn't be a single telecom with any interest in content providers, and there certainly would not have been any of the mega-mergers in the airline industry and others.
We haven't had a real Justice Department since before the days of Ed Meese. Meese is really the very model of the modern attorney general, who believes his main job is to make sure no rich people get in any trouble and to find ways to subvert the Constitution.
You are welcome on my lawn.
since I was a netflix customer, but when I did have it, it was rare that I watched much on the streaming content, and none of it was new, which means your stuck waiting a couple days for the mail, meanwhile passing a dozen redbox's on the way home
now are they serving the same thing as redbox online? fuck if I know, you cant even look at movies on either site without signing up, but to me it sounds like the whambulance is firing up over a betea service. I would actually take it seriously if apple, amazon, hulu, comcast, or any other service was also making the same claims, but it just seems like netflix's piggy streaming service is just cloggin up the pipes.
More likely YouTube, too, is being throttled or at least left in a state of benign neglect. Verizon FiOS, supposedly to be the fastest anywhere, consistently has trouble delivering YouTube videos. I work on many different networks and peering points but the only one that has trouble with YouTube is Verizon FiOS. Even if the YouTube video is serving from a local edge server (Ashburn) it will pause within the first twenty seconds each and every time.
Oddly enough, and likely because we are only down the road from AWS-East, we never have trouble with Netflix or Amazon Instant Video on our FiOS connection.
Cox never had any sort of problem but that might be a lack of customers since FiOS came into town.
Kriston
Redbox and Verivon has seen the writing on the wall. They right now have a project running to build their own Redbox branded streaming service using Verizons' netowrk for delivery. The project is based in Dallas and the servers are in a Verizon data center in Tampa. Why would Verizon spend their own money to help a competing service?
"Hey, we're not throttling. It is just that our peering is maxed out. Use this other service, it works better for our customers."
Totally legit way of doing this. I haven't seen any Net Neutrality discussions cover this possibility.
This is an example of a "natural monopoly", where a limited community resource is owned as property by a corporation. In this case it's the easements and permission needed to run the phone lines, and the RF spectrum for cell-phone service.
If you treat the resource as property, you get the situation we have now: high fees for access and discouraged use. Phone service has high monthly fees (access) as well as data caps, fixed monthly "minutes", and roaming charges (discouraged use). Similarly for internet: high monthly fees (access), data caps, throttling, kicking off high-usage users, and so on (discouraged use).
As an alternative, take the revenues from the carriers and divide by the total minutes of service. I don't know what that figure actually is, but for purposes of discussion let's say it's 5 cents a minute. A similar calculation can be done per gigabyte of internet data.
Suppose the government mandated that carriers could only charge that amount or less, with no other restrictions. Any phone could be used with any carrier, and you choose a carrier at call time by scanning the available carriers like we scan wireless access points. (You wouldn't explicitly scan for each call. Most likely you choose one carrier as default, like we now do with wireless access points.)
Now instead of making money by getting people to sign up and not use the service, carriers make money the more people use the service. They have to encourage more people to use it, and for longer periods. They have an interest in putting unused capacity to work, and promoting innovative new uses. If a channel is overallocated, they have an interest in building out more capacity.
The reasoning can be applied to cable TV, internet, and phone service. If the cable company can only charge 15 cents per hour of viewing/downloading (whatever the fee structure works out as), then they will encourage more usage rather than throttling.
If this change is made, the existing players will make the same profit as now: initially the profits are the same, and no workers need be laid off. Their bottom line doesn't change, only their focus of service.
It's game theory: change the rules so that the outcome is more desirable.
Sure they do! A few years ago, Microsoft was found guilty of violating the laws, and received a harsh sentence. They had to give people coupons or something...
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Yeah, 'cause the rest of the world doesn't hate those with Google fiber enough yet.
FTFY
Nothing prevents Cogent from purchasing access to Verizon network.
Verizon is a Tier1. Tier 1 providers do not buy transit, period.
"Peering" is usually mutally beneficial, meaning traffic ingress and egress is balanced. I
No: settlement-free peering is usually mutually beneficial, meaning the benefit to both parties of the relationship is larger than the cost.
Traffic ratios are almost irrelevent. Although, they are commonly used for negotiation purposes.
Pushing more traffic into Verizon's network than you pull, means that Verizon's users are requesting data from you.
If Verizon were not a monopoly; there is no question that this would be mutually beneficial --- if there is poor connectivity to Netflix, or greater latency / worse performance, then competing providers would be favorable for subscribers.
Better connectivity to Netflix is beneficial for an ISP; moreso, than the cost of some extra ports.
Verizon own a 50% stake in redbox because of the Redbox Instant service that also allows streaming of movies.
FFS, do your homework before making yourself look like an ass.
If anything threatens the future of Redbox, whose business model requires customers to visit its vending machines to rent and return DVDs, its Netflix's instant streaming service, which delivers the same content directly to their screens.
Except the instant streaming selection is horrible if you want anything recent. I signed up for the trial of Netflix only to cancel it because there wasn't enough selection to make it worth $8/month.
Centurylink slows down YouTube. This is not at all new.
Verizon already got paid, by their customers, the ones who are requesting to stream from Netflix.
Not only that... if you are ISP, and you have enough traffic to Netflix; Netflix will provide a 'local cache box' to install on your network. OpenConnect hardware appliance.
Netflix pays for the hardware and such.
Large ISPs such as Verizon, can potentially put multiple boxes on their network, so they save cost and do not transport large amounts of Netflix traffic long distances.
Verizon chooses not too. Obviously, they cannot think their customers do not value Netflix. Clearly, they don't care much about their customers -- or there's an alterior motive; or just plain ignorance, blindness, and stupidity.
And peering is like agreeing to allow guests to use your toilet as long as you are allowed to use theirs.
Okay. Fine.
But what Cogent does after making this agreement with its neighbors is open up a buffet next door with a big sign directing its customers to your bathroom. Then when their customers complain about the backups and stink, Cogent demands you build more toilets.
I don't need no stinking net neutrality!
[BEGIN ISP REASONING MODE] Of course, it does. You see, Netflix makes lots of money. Partly, they make that money in a method involving Verizon's network. Verizon doesn't get any of that money. Therefore, it deserves lots of money from Netflix. What's that you say? Verizon gets paid by their customers and Netflix pays their ISP? *sticks fingers in ears* LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!! LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA GIVE ME MORE MONEY!!!! LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA [/END ISP REASONING MODE]
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
What you are describing is the classic Cogent peering dispute
Specifically, the deal here is that we are contrasting one of the oldest and highest priced providers vs. one of the lowest priced.
Many networks do not have 1:1 peering relationships. That's reality.
The fact that Verizon has agreed to peer, but won't properly expand and add ports when they are hitting capacity means that I really don't want to be using Verizon or Cogent's fucking networks!!!
With peering to ISPs it isn't about equal traffic in both directions, that is more when Tier 1 companies peer.
Actually... "traffic ratios" are more about what large ISPs use as a tool to prevent smaller ISPs from peering with them settlement-free, as a substitute from purchasing transit.
Other than traffic ratios are an illustrative tool, that beancounters can understand. They kind of fall apart in a sense, when there are "one of a kind" destinations that aren't on your network -- that your own subscribers demand access to. Whatever ISPs have the best connectivity to Netflix, Google, and the top CDNs, have a sizable advantage, in terms of their end users' perception of performance.
Verizon (Formerly UUnet) is Tier1. Cogent is a "wannabe" Tier1; that likes to get into 'peering disputes' with other providers, as a way of strong-arming in attempt to claw its way from transit-free to Tier1 status.
So "Verizon vs Cogent" is a Tier1 matter.
Cogent's transit-free status, does prevent them from paying, by the way.
Exactly. Netflix is simply one highly visible service affected by factors that may trigger a peering dispute between Verizon and Cogent. Any number of lesser known online services using Cogent are experiencing the same symptoms, but the only reason we are not reading about them is that reality no longer makes for a headline that draws in readers.
The real problem is that someone did not practice capacity management because they felt it was the other party's responsibility. This is yet another example of why big business only plays well within contractual sandboxes with financial terms. "Free" always ends with somebody crying foul and calling their attorney.
More perspectives can be found here: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Cogent-Verizon-Peering-Dispute-Leads-to-Netflix-Issues-124709
You do have mod points...it's just taking time for them to show up because you're throttled...
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
tell everyone to not use redbx driving it out of business. I know its a dream, and I wouldn't say say it except Verizon's response seemed arrogant.
There are reasons for throttling bandwidth. Entirely reasonable and practical reasons for it... and I wouldn't get in the way of ISPs from doing that. But they can't take advantage of that understanding to exploit people or undermine services using their bandwidth.
Please... do not make us take your flexibility away ISPs. Because if you start messing with this we will do it.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
You really have no idea how this works. What kills me is Netflix is the problem. If Netflix cared about its customers it would make sure it had the best possible access to those eyeballs, instead they bought the cheapest network access they could get knowing that Cogent runs hot everywhere.
In the US:
Sherman Act (1890)
1 prohibits agreements/conspiracies in restraint of trade -- could qualify
2 prohibits monopolization, attempts to monopolize, and conspiracies to monopolize -- depends on how you define the relevant product market and relevant geographic market
Clayton Act (1914)
3 prohibits potentially anticompetitive acquisitions, exclusive dealings, tie-ins, and interlocking directorates
partly taken from the first antitrust outline I found with google http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:xXme4TnJ4yUJ:www.law.nyu.edu/idcplg%3FIdcService%3DGET_FILE%26RevisionSelectionMethod%3DLatestReleased%26dDocName%3DECM_DLV_012183+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
There's absolutely no reason I should be footing the bill for a service I have no intention of using.
You realize that a caching appliance for a heavily-used service like Netflix could save an ISP bandwidth costs, right? Presumably more than enough to offset the cost of switch ports, rack space and electricity.
Or they'd simply rather not spend time and money to solve someone else's problem?
You're looking at this the wrong way. The problem is their customer not being able to access the services they wish to in a reasonable manner.
It's not like rack space is free, or electricity is free, or ensuring that someone else's hardware isn't going to harm your network is free. If I were an ISP, Netflix would "get" to install hardware in my network over my dead body - simply because I DO NOT TRUST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE I HAVEN'T VERIFIED.
You do realize that the whole point of the internet is to connect to servers, clients, and peers of an unverified nature, right? And if they co-locate for any of their clients, they already deal with this issue on a daily basis? Go ahead and google Verizon colocation services, just for fun.
What about the people who AREN'T Netflix customers and DON'T want to pay for someone else's service? Why should my ISP fees be used to help someone else stream movies I can't access?!
Well, the benefit to their other customers would be that their connection to other servers outside of Verizon's network wouldn't be impeded by the congestion of their customers who would like to stream said movies. Keep in mind, the customer who wants to watch movies on Netflix have exactly as many rights as the customer who wants to play MMOs, or the one who wants to send emails. This benefits all their customers - just not their RedBox business.
If Netflix wants to solve this, they can talk to Cogent and help Cogent come up with a solution that isn't making Verizon and their non-Netflix subscribing customers foot the bill. There's absolutely no reason I should be footing the bill for a service I have no intention of using.
It must be a source of relief to you to know that all those services that you use are vitally important to all the other Verizon customers. Or just maybe those other customers' service fees pay for those services they use, on average.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
Prepare to meet thy maker as Netflix takes you in the joust, and in the Duel with Sword and Shield, and if there's anything left, the dog boy will be eating it for supper.
In other words, you shouldn't have fucked with the tubes man, you're gonna get reamed, hard sans lube.
Or they'd simply rather not spend time and money to solve someone else's problem?
Verizon's bandwidth is indeed Verizon's problem.
It's not like rack space is free, or electricity is free...
The backspace and electricity demands of an OpenConnect box are likely negligible in comparison to the overall strain placed on the network by Verizon customers using Netflix en masse.
...or ensuring that someone else's hardware isn't going to harm your network is free. If I were an ISP, Netflix would "get" to install hardware in my network over my dead body - simply because I DO NOT TRUST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE I HAVEN'T VERIFIED.
Good. You sound like a capable admin. Now, what's to say you cannot verify the box?
What about the people who AREN'T Netflix customers and DON'T want to pay for someone else's service? Why should my ISP fees be used to help someone else stream movies I can't access?!
By having an ISP you are splitting the cost of using the network among X number of people. Since the cost of an OpenConnect box is rackspace + electricity + verification / customer base, the cost to you alone is exceedingly low.
There's absolutely no reason I should be footing the bill for a service I have no intention of using.
This mentality is destroying the country.
"It is the 5 different ISP's job to share the data load between them."
No, it is not. The job of an ISP is to deliver traffic from their paying customers to other paying customers, or hand off the traffic to another ISP to deliver to their own customers. In this case, one ISP (Cogent) expects another ISP (Verizon) to absorb infrastructure costs because they failed to plan for external capacity requirements of their customers. Feel free to name your own guilty party here - I am feeling generous at the moment. Either way, the modern Internet is not the same "for the benefit of all mankind" research network it was years ago and ISPs are not sugar daddies. We are talking about for-profit companies making and spending real money in the name of making more money for their shareholders. Your comments do bring a twinge of nostalgia for the old days, but they are wrong today.
I work for a telco, and not too long ago I got to chat with one of our VPs about why this happens. I'm a total net neutrality guy, but after talking to him I understood his point of view a bit better.
With most large content providers, like google for example, ISPs can go to them and say "hey, we're getting a lot of traffic from you. It's cheaper for us if we can make arrangements that are beneficial to the both of us." and then the ISP and the content provider enter into an agreement where the ISP pays a bulk rate for trunks to a network, and the content provider remains on that network and gives plenty of warning before switching so the ISP can make sure that they have enough capacity in that direction.
Netflix however, doesn't make these kind of agreements. The switch providers and hosting at will. The ISP will pay for large trunks leading to where the majority of netflix traffic is coming from and then Netflix will suddenly drop that host and switch to another. Suddenly 20% of the ISPs traffic is coming from an entirely new network. But they are still locked into a contract with that other network.
Also, Netflix has no interest in the health of the ISPs network. If Netflix had a financial interest in the health of the network they could do some rather simple things to help the isp, like encourage users to queue up movies ahead of time, have them download at off peak times and then play when they wanted to watch them. This is was cable companies do after all... but netflix has no interest in this sort of thing and as far as the ISP is concerned is doing is best to be as damaging to the network as possible.
I'm still all for net neutrality, but its good to understand the ISPs concerns. They aren't just out to thwart Netflix. But Netflix is digging their own grave on this one.
Yes, it is. The job of the ISP is to provide their paying customers access to 'TheInternet'. That is still the promise they make, and still their obligation. If they can't meet that obligation they should go do something else.
They are using publicly subsidized infrastructure on publicly owned land to seek rent on a network they are not investing in or improving. So fuck them.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
NetFlix traffic makes up an extraordinarily large proportion of the evening Internet traffic, thanks to their adaptive bit rate streaming (The Atlantic Wire recently reported NetFlix alone as 32.3% of Internet traffic, and growing at 35% y/y). I'm sure every provider would love to rate-limit their traffic, assuming it were legal and possible (since it's usually just hidden as port 80 traffic). The peering points are the next best place, if you know from which peering partner is a heavy carrier of NetFlix traffic. Even then, you're probably affecting other types of traffic since it uses the common HTTP port. NetFlix traffic comes in from multiple sources (transit providers), and it's unlikely that Cogent (in this case) is the only source of said NetFlix traffic.
As for the 'local cache box', it's a great idea, but my customer (large cable provider in the US) had to say no to this solution due to legal issues. Their point: if they allow NetFlix to put a caching box on their network, they may set precedent that they have to allow any other over-the-top provider to put a cache box on their network, in the interest of fairness. Right now, they're not willing to go that route. With that said, I'm sure some providers are already doing it, but it's not as simple as just slapping the caching box into their network, sadly.
The dramatic growth of "smart" phones, and their always-growing bandwidth utilization (like those of us who stream NetFlix on our smart phone), is another source of huge pressure on the ISPs to meet bandwidth demands. And that's not just limited to the cell providers, like AT&T and Verizon; they often use other companies, including other ISPs that have a footprint in the area of their tower, to "backhaul" their traffic back to the cell provider's network. Kind of a random thought, but there it is.
I do not work for an ISP or NetFlix. I work for a large networking company, and my customer is a large cable company in the US that has often faced the question of what to do with NetFlix.
apparently the OP doesn't realize Redbox now has a streaming service.
They're using their grammar skills there.
"Peering" is usually mutally beneficial, meaning traffic ingress and egress is balanced.
Your conclusion is wrong. Mutually beneficial has no relationship with in/out ratio. That was an old way to determining benefits, but turned out to be bad in practice.
The general rule is that peering is always beneficial as long as it doesn't involve handing out free bandwidth to potential customers. So, as long as the peer is not a potential customer, it is beneficial. Rule of thumb, not always true.
you're missing the point.
Other ISPs have already setup their own CDNs for netflix because it's simply cheaper. Verizon is in direct competition with netflix now with Redbox's streaming service.
I have comcast. Trying using netflix on your cable modem with and without comcast DNS servers. When using OpenDNS, the streams are stalled for minutes. Using comcasts own DNS servers, the streams start quickly.
They're using their grammar skills there.
That is the heart of the matter. They're so used to huge profits for next to no effort that the notion of giving customers value for their money never enters their mind. And they'd laugh at the suggestion of "invest in your own network".
There really needs to be some anti-trust cases brought against the biggest telecoms. Threaten to do to them what was done to AT&T decades ago. You'd see service improve everywhere in a big hurry.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The job of an ISP is to deliver traffic from their paying customers to other paying customers
What? The job of the ISP is to purchase bandwidth and resell it to customers. Peering makes purchasing bandwidth cheaper. For an ISP, peering is always a good thing.
But wait... Verizon isn't just an ISP, they're also a content distributer and being neutral about enhancing their network would not be good for their investments in the competition.
No, I as the customer pay the ISP to provide me access to these services. They are no longer providing me the access I am paying for and abusing their government established monopoly position in ways to stifle competition. These practices are anti-competitive. Either the government needs to stop limiting competition or they need to step in and regulate these companies to provide better service.
It's sad that in America we pay higher prices for worse Internet services and we, the customers, are then subject to anti-competitive behaviors all because ISP's have bought our politicians.
This behavior is inevitable. Content providers that are *also* carriers will inevitably lead to this. The FCC should have stopped this in its tracks years ago but now it's too late. Feckless anti-trust enforcement for a generation doesn't help either.
they do this with youtube.com as well..
We haven't had a real Justice Department since before the days of Ed Meese. Meese is really the very model of the modern attorney general, who believes his main job is to make sure no rich people get in any trouble and to find ways to subvert the Constitution.
The current DOJ is good at making sure that no rich people get in trouble---after all, the Feds are the ones who decide what trouble is.
That said, I think you meant to say something regarding morality and ethics---don't worry, I would have made the same mistake.
Please. Monopolistic practices don't apply period. Don't give me this bullshit about case X or ruling Y either, because I've yet to see a ruling that actually stopped monopolies from their continued domination. And fines turn into nothing more than a tax write off. They are as much of a joke as levying them against "too big to fail".
Are you sure? Why is the traffic being routed to Verizon? Because Verizon is the optimal path for that traffic. The bulk of that traffic is gong to Verizon's customers or the customer of Verizon's customers. No one is asking Verizon to do anything for free. There may be some case where Verizon has a shorter path to another provider than Cogent, but that will be a small fraction of the traffic.
lf l were an ISP, Netflix would "get" to install hardware in my network over my dead body - simply because l DO NOT TRUST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE l HAVEN'T VERIFIED.
lF YOU'RE AN lSP THEN lNSTALLlNG RANDOM SHlT ONTO YOUR NETWORK lS WHAT YOU GET PAlD TO DO. SUCK lT UP AND DO YOUR FUCKING JOB.
The ISPs charge for and outline the service they provide for that charge. If every paying customer decides to watch a streaming service from any provider and the ISP has to throttle it's outbound connections below the outlined service specs then it is the ISPs responsibility to upgrade their infrastructure to compensate.
Ok, so all Netflix users switch to Redbox streaming. So, wtf are you trying to say wrt network bandwidth and everyone else? Verizon is trying to create its own netflix and engineer scarcity into it at the same time as part of vertical integration. No worse here than comcast buying nbc-universal and coincidentally doing the same shit with netflix streaming.
At the rate my mod points show up, I must be using a 2400 baud modem. What year is it? :D
Essentially, Netflix pays Cogent as their "ISP". Cogent probably won that deal with their ridiculously low pricing. And now Cogent expects Verizon to invest in their network so that they can act as an extension of the Cogent network, through a "peering" agreement.
And there is a whole lot of individuals who pay Verizon for internet access including access to Netflix. That traffic is going over Verizon's network because Verizon customers who are paying Verizon for that network traffic are requesting it.
The part you seem to be missing here is that Netflix is eating into Verizon's ability to charge obscene rates of $100 a month just to watch movies. Cause, you see, it use to be paying customers had very limited options for accessing video therefore allowing cable TV companies to charge those obscene rates due to a lack of a competitive market. So now that Verizon is facing some competition for their cash cow video market they're going to dictate what they allow their customers to access on the internet to eliminate that competition.
So lets sum up. Verizon is getting paid for that bandwidth from the other direction. They want to restrict certain uses uses of that bandwidth to maintain their monopoly control over another market.
Who is John Galt?
No, it is not. The job of an ISP is to deliver traffic from their paying customers to other paying customers, or hand off the traffic to another ISP to deliver to their own customers. In this case, one ISP (Cogent) expects another ISP (Verizon) to absorb infrastructure costs because they failed to plan for external capacity requirements of their customers.
No. You're wrong. Verizon is getting paid by all their customers who are the ones requesting the Netflix traffic. By your logic Cogent should be getting paid by Verizon for delivering Netflix traffic to all those Verizon customers. This is the whole point of peering agreements.
The reason Verizon wants to throttle video traffic to their internet customers is because it's forcing competition in their market for cable video. Verizon can only charge $100 a month for cable video if there is no competition.
Who is John Galt?
Verizon chooses not too. Obviously, they cannot think their customers do not value Netflix. Clearly, they don't care much about their customers -- or there's an alterior motive; or just plain ignorance, blindness, and stupidity.
No Verizon chooses not to because they can't charge $100 a month for cable video in a free market with actual competition. Thus they stop delivering other video service over the internet eliminating the competition.
Who is John Galt?
God I wish I had mod points. Tonight I have a short fuse and loved your brevity, Pseudonym Authority! Sock it to that bitch!
http://internethealthreport.com/
Packet loss over a 24-hour period seems to support the claims, but barely.
They have bought and paid for political cover or are owned by the politician.
Even if it is managed by another they know what they own.
And how to give it advantage.
Rocks are smarter than a citizen.
There is a good chance it's more complicated than just this. Remember this is Cogent we are taking about here and they are famous for trying to get downstream isps to pay the entire cost of peering upgrades and have also been known to actively cut back on peering points with other providers.
They are also famous for causing most of the IPv6 routing problems that affect day to day useage.
Capitalism. There are a pile of ISPs. If one sucks, vote with your dollars. Drop em and get a real ISP. Simple, done.
Nothing prevents Cogent from purchasing access to Verizon network. What Cogent expects instead, is for Verizon to purchase more network ports so Cogent can offload their traffic for free.
So what am I, as a Verizon DSL subscriber, buying? In the old days, the subscriber fees paid for peering, and peers were bought based on demand, not punishing companies who do business with competitors.
Learn to love Alaska
You're assuming Verizon has viable competition to fear. Alas, there is really no competition for FiOS, at least in this area, so they have no fear. Where are we going to go, the cable company? Like they're any happier about Netflix eating their lunch.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
I upload almost nothing, but my bits downloaded are much much more expensive than Netflix's uploaded. Your argument doesn't pass the most basic logic.
Learn to love Alaska
There's absolutely no reason I should be footing the bill for a service I have no intention of using.
So if you don't go to Google, they shouldn't have Google or YouTube caches? I'm guessing they already do. If Verizon wasn't also a content provider, they'd have installed the boxes long ago to keep costs down, instead, they are charging you more in order to harm Netflix users. If you wanted the cheapest service, you should be demanding caches for all the popular services, even the ones you don't use. That frees up more bits for your use.
Learn to love Alaska
No. Verizon customers want to download content from Cogent's network. Nobody but Verizon should be shelling out cash for that unless Verizon wants to start sharing subscriber fees with all of its peers.
lf l were an ISP, Netflix would "get" to install hardware in my network over my dead body - simply because l DO NOT TRUST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE l HAVEN'T VERIFIED.
lF YOU'RE AN lSP THEN lNSTALLlNG RANDOM SHlT ONTO YOUR NETWORK lS WHAT YOU GET PAlD TO DO. SUCK lT UP AND DO YOUR FUCKING JOB.
NO IT ISNT.
An ISP's job is to provide internet services. Hence we call them a Internet Service Provider.
As such, it is their duty to provide a stable, reliable network and INSTALLING RANDOM SHIT is the antithesis of this. Please consult a sysadmin before making such asinine statements in the future. Conversely you can save time on asking this question to a sysadmin by forcibly removing 3 of your teeth and inflicting severe blunt force trauma to the forward left side of your skull.
Further to my first sentence, an ISP's only job is to provide internet service, not to decide how their customers utilise that service.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
My ISP also did that to youtube ... though by accident (they claim)
It is unconstitutional for federal government to manipulate businesses, to regulate businesses, to get involved in disputes between private parties, to create so called 'anti-trust', to print fiat currency and call it money, to manipulate interest rates, to steal income via taxes, to get involved in medical care or insurance or banking or education or agriculture or transport and many many other things that are not listed as specific powers authorised to the feds. Government creates monopolies, that was also the case with AT&T when USA gov't destroyed over 3000 private competitors and declared AT&T to be a monopoly "for the common good".
roman_mir
"...or does that not apply to internet service providers?"
It used to be that the FCC strictly forbid the content CARRIERS (telephone, cable, satellite) from being content PROVIDERS, too. But not very long ago they seem to have dropped that regulation.
And look at the results. We are already seeing some pretty terrible negative effects. Carriers should never be allowed to be in the business of providing content. It's just plain a bad idea, and the consequences are pretty easy to predict. Hell, we don't even have to predict. It's already hindsight.
If Verizon and other companies are throttling certain services for commercial gain then I'd say it's about time they lost the common carrier-like* protections they enjoy. Hold them liable for third party legal infringements perpetrated using the Verizon network and services. If the fuckers want to shape traffic then let them police it while they're at it and enjoy the liability nightmare.
Carriers who don't discriminate against third party service should enjoy the protections of common carrier status.
* Yes I know ISPs in the U.S. don't currently have common carrier status
As such, it is their duty to provide a stable, reliable network and INSTALLING RANDOM SHIT is the antithesis of this.
You are paid to provide internet access TO WHATEVER RANDOM SHIT I CONNECT TO THE LINE I PAY YOU FOR.Your say in the matter stops at the wire coming into my premises. Whatever I connect, equipment wise, is NOYFB.
By the way, in this instance *I* am the sysadmin, even if I'm a home user. It's MY network inside my house, not yours.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
If that traffic is bound for Verizon customers, then no. It is not any sort of freeloading to hand a network traffic bound for one of it's customers. Why would Cogent want to pay to give Verizon's customers the packets that they requested and that Verizon has already been paid to deliver?
In a free and healthy market, Cogent would say "fine, no packets for you" and then laugh as Verizon's customers jumped ship. Alas, it is not a healthy free market and many of Verizon's customers have nowhere to jump to.
Balance in bandwidth is a fair metric for transit traffic. That is, where B agrees to carry C's traffic that is bound for A and C agrees to carry B's traffic that's bound for D.
If this pisses you off, thank a libertarian. This is the direct result of deregulation. Any half-decent system should have anti-monopoly laws, but the mouth breathing Randians are trying to push us into the place where a company can get on top and leverage its power in these ways.
Deregulation is like firing the police force - it might feel good, and even make some positive outcomes for you in the short run, but it won't make crime magically stop and you've now got nothing to fight it with.
Bingo, we have a winnar! This is just another case of a large corp fucking an audience that probably has NO say or choice in the matter (from what I've seen unless you live on the coasts you get one ISP with a useful speed and the other crap, in mine its 8-20Mbps for cable and 3Mbps for DSL) because God fucking forbid they actually provide what they were fricking PAID FOR by those customers instead of trying to fuck them for every cent they can squeeze!
What will happen is the vast majority, which don't read tech sites and most likely will never hear a word of this from their corporate kissing local MSM, will try to use netflix only to get a stuttering mess. They will say "Oh Netflix sucks" because they won't have any way of knowing its their ISP that is MAKING it suck so they will have to use the alternative...which is owned by Verizon who will make that much more money off all those people that have to use Redbox instead of the service they originally wanted to.
This is why we frankly shouldn't allow any company that owns ISPs to own content as they will always end up tilting things in favor of their content. Of course with our government being such corporate whores that every politician gets a free set of kneepads i doubt shit will be done, but that is why our prices put us in the top 5 but the quality and speed puts us behind countries like Romania.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
So if I go to a pizza place by taxi, and I pay the taxi driver, why should the pizza guy also have to pay the taxi driver?
Verizon chooses not too. Obviously, they cannot think their customers do not value Netflix. Clearly, they don't care much about their customers -- or there's an alterior motive; or just plain ignorance, blindness, and stupidity.
That's the question. We have a similar situation in the UK where YouTube and iPlayer are unusable on Virgin Media between about 3:30PM and 11PM in many areas. If you switch over to a VPN or proxy that blocks their internal CDN everything is fine, indicating that the CDN cache boxes installed by Google and the BBC are inadequate for the demand. As a result people go on BitTorrent instead, causing more degradation of the network.
There are only two reasons I can think of for this being the case:
1. Virgin Media is incompetent and there is some really lame reason like running out of physical rack space or network ports that prevents them getting more cache boxes in.
2. Virgin Media is trying to sabotage streaming video services in order to drive people to their cable TV products instead.
I don't know much about Verizon. Care to speculate?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Verizon and Cogent are most likely exchange a LOT of bandwidth. And the article says that there are 10 peering points. Cogent are at way more than 10 locations in the US alone. I've got no idea how many Verizon are at, but to me it seems reasonable to connect at more locations rather than push all the capacity at those locations. That then means Cogent needs to do some of the backhaul, or have Netflix boxes at more locations. I think this is a reasonable compromise, but I can't find any detailed summaries of the situation. It would also be advisible for Verizon to add Netflix boxes on-site.
I'm sorry, but you can't compare the recent releases on Redbox to the mostly C-grade cruft on Netflix Instant streaming.
I know it's all licensing issues, but to see it as a direct apples-to-apples threat at the moment is ludicrous. I use both; I stream most of the good stuff off Netflix and when I want a new release I go to the RedBox up the street.
"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder."
No, it is not. The job of an ISP is to deliver traffic from their paying customers to other paying customers...
That is not an internet. That is just a net.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
Well, aside from Chrétien.
All I know is Youtube on Verizon Fios where I am is basically unusable. I'll be lucky if I can watch a video to the end, and that includes many pauses while it rebuffers.
Verizon chooses not too. Obviously, they cannot think their customers do not value Netflix. Clearly, they don't care much about their customers -- or there's an alterior motive; or just plain ignorance, blindness, and stupidity.
No Verizon chooses not to because they can't charge $100 a month for cable video in a free market with actual competition. Thus they stop delivering other video service over the internet eliminating the competition.
GP's inability to spell should not have impeded your reading comprehension to this degree. We call that an ulterior motive.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Cogent isn't the problem. This is just reminiscent of the Comcast debacle. Verizon customers are streaming Netflix a lot and Verizon sees this as a direct challenge to the Redbox investment. If they do nothing, people will stop streaming Netflix due to the congestion and start visiting the Redbox in their local grocery store.
This is the EXACT reason we need net neutrality laws to prevent an ISP from reducing, or in this case, not increasing bandwidth to an external service.
Not necessarily, Optimum touts it as a feature that they have the best netflix speed
http://www.optimum.com/home-internet-service/features/
If memory serves, this is a typical pattern for Cogent. Rather than paying for additional bandwidth as they are contractually obligated to do, they complain loudly in the media and make wild accusations.
I suspect nothing is preventing Cogent from paying for the excess transit. They just don't wanna.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Ok, if Verizon is intentionally slowing down Netflix, something like putting a delay on the transmission of packets or throwing away a certain percent of them so that they have to be resent, etc... That would be an unfair practice and something to be pretty upset about.
But, what exactly are 'Peering Points'? Are they special Verizon to Cogent connections put in place specifically to help us use Netflix? If so then shouldn't we be thanking them for having any such connections at all? Do they for some reason have to add more just because we want to use them? I thought an internet connection was just a connection to the network 'cloud' and from the 'cloud' we just get what we get.
I can come at this from a slightly different angle. I'm very familiar with interconnect billing practices between ILECs/CLECs/CAPs/CMRS etc.
The issue here is purely Verizon's fault. Verizon's customers are wanting traffic off of Cogent's network. Verizon is obligated to buy ports (Internet Drains in LEC parlance) with a min commit (usually 5gb or so at 2-5 dollars per MB) and billing generally based on hourly samples of usage and then taking the 95th percentile band. There may or may not be a separate access charge. When I am the LEC and my ports to another provider are saturated my response should be to buy more ports with that provider. If I do not then I am doing a disservice to my customers.
Having worked for Verizon for a few years in this capacity. I can also say that I bet this has a lot more to do with the cost of the ports than anything to do with Redbox. That would require too much communication between the right and left hands.
There really needs to be some anti-trust cases brought against the biggest telecoms.
There really needs to be a plan to shift Internet control from the private sector to the public sector over, say, the next 10 or 15 years. The Internet is now societal infrastructure and, like roads and water supplies, should no longer be privately owned. (If we'd done that with the telcos and the cell networks when we should have, things would be much better now). Private fortunes have been made on the backs of taxpayers while corporations enjoyed tax breaks, subsidies, favourable legislation, and access to public rights-of-way. That was legitimate when the Net was new and investing in it was risky, but it's past time for the gravy train to stop.
Corporations need to be disabused of the notion that putting capital at risk, and cajoling the government to grant them favours, gives them rights in perpetuity to the fruits of their efforts. Beyond a certain point in time and profit, anything that evolves into infrastructure needs to move into the public domain. If we don't start enforcing that idea, soon there will be no public sector at all. We'll lose what little freedom and autonomy we have left, and we'll all be feudal serfs in corporate fiefdoms. I figure we're already about 70% of the way there.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
That is fine so long as they then declare to the customers via a huge poster: We provide the internet, but netflix won't stream in any useful manner. They can watch the customers walk in and right out the door. If by some special business logic they decide not to share this information with their customers then they can wait until customers start posting reviews online and then canceling their subscription. Now if their price is reasonable for THIS particular service then some may be willing to accept that and the ISP can see how they fit into the market place.
A customers job is to decide if the service they pay for is worth the cost. The ISP, and really any business, needs to understand that relationship and not get all pedantic and bitchy about customers doing things that the provider doesn't like.
"but money is the God of Algiers & Mahomet their prophet." - Rich. O'Bryen June 8th 1786
There is little doubt in my mind that Comcast also sabotages Netflix to my home. Broken connections are practically non-existent on my cable modem. When the service is running I very rarely have any issues. However, fire up Netflix at night and connections are routinely lost 5 minutes into the show. Traditional downloading will simultaneously be fast as ever. Netflix has a lot of enemies. I mourn for their future loss to the megaton-hammer we know as "Fscking Comcast"
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
Verizon in this case is the physical plant provider, and, contrary to every notion about how markets work, governments enforce monopolies there. We have hundred-year-old cronyism still dragging us down today. Statists are then shocked to find the providers aren't competing on service quality when they have no competition.
In the not-too-distant future we'll have a majority of people happy to have both DSL and CableTV-derived pure-IP networks available to them and they'll still be arguing in support of 'natural monopolies' via whichever provider they can choose from that gives them the best service at the best price.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Umm, no it doesn't. We're not talking about last-mile links here, we're talking about backbone. If I'm Cogent, and I need to get traffic from San Francisco to New York, I can dump that on Verizon's network (or anyone else I'm peering with) and their network will dutifully forward the traffic all the way to NY. The end-point could be AT&T, Comcast, or even another Cogent customer, but dumping it on Verizon's network saves Cogent money, not having to utilize their own backbone.
And this is exactly what Cogent has been repeatedly accused of doing in the past, by pretty much EVERY TIER-1 ISP. Here's just a few examples:
https://secure.dslreports.com/shownews/92749
https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/10/31/peering-dispute-between-cogent-sprint/
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/level-3-issues-statement-concerning-internet-peering-and-cogent-communications-55014572.html
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/10/22/peering-disputes-migrate-to-ipv6/
http://www.cybertelecom.org/industry/cogent.htm
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
This is not a new situation with Cogent:
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/05/10/05/2247207/internet-partitioning---cogent-vs-level-3
https://www.infoworld.com/d/security-central/sprint-cogent-dispute-puts-small-rip-in-fabric-internet-474
http://www.infoblox.com/community/blog/bad-blood-and-world-ipv6-day
In situations like this, I always ask myself: what would it look like if X corporation were doing the best it could at its job? Without any anticompetitive monopoly interests?
In this case, it would be Verizon doing everything it can to ensure that its paying customers get as much bandwidth as they can at the lowest cost possible while still making a profit. You want your customers happy and paying you because you provide a good service at a good cost.
In this case, the problem is Verizon is letting an important service (in the sense of having lots of customer demand) degrade when it has the resources to prevent this. The question is, why would you essentally say *@#$*# off to a paying customer? Because you have a conflict of interest.
IT is full of this stuff, and it becomes obvious when I ask myself that first question. E.g., why doesn't Microsoft make Word for Linux? Why doesn't Apple allow you to install its OS on other hardware?
The answer is obvious: it's because these companies don't want to compete on quality, they want to manipulate you into lock-in.
IT (or at least neworking and software) is one of the most anti-competitive markets in existence. Add all the patent nonsense and it gets even worse.
If we'd done that with the telcos and the cell networks when we should have, things would be much better now
How old are you? I remember when the post office ran the phone system. You had to had their phone, pay rental for it, you only had a choice of colors unless you wanted to pay £400 for one of six speciality phones, service was crap, international calls were out of the stratosphere and many other things besides. Things are a long way from perfect but if you want to see bad, give it to the government.
Yes, because the NSA needs us to make their job easier...
Mods? oh, about 1963 in the UK.
In NSA America social networks join you!
Capitalism. There are a pile of ISPs. If one sucks, vote with your dollars. Drop em and get a real ISP. Simple, done.
I'd love to live in your magical land that has a pile of ISPs. I get a choice between ATT and TimeWarner, which both suck.
He effected a bored affect.
There are plenty of deep-packet-inspection appliances that can discern between one type of port-80 traffic and another.
But they brought service to the rural areas, which is something private industry would never have done. They created that network on which you could make calls and made sure it was universally available. You really don't have any evidence that the "special phones" would have been any cheaper back then if private industry was in charge.
Just be grateful that it was the government that created the Internet and not private industry, or it just would have been cable television from Day One.
You are welcome on my lawn.
There is a good chance it's more complicated than just this. Remember this is Cogent we are taking about here and they are famous for trying to get downstream isps to pay the entire cost of peering upgrades and have also been known to actively cut back on peering points with other providers.
Also remember that Netflix themselves tried to use their dominance of the market to bully ISPs- and ultimately that ISP's customers (whether or not they used Netflix or ever intended to ever use it) into subsidising the bandwidth required for *their* HD service.
It's very definitely true that two wrongs don't make a right, but let's not shed any tears for the other guys who are just as bad.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
streaming video i think shd be throttled in the case of long pieces like movies. it degrades service for the rest of us, including folks who are savvy enuf to download a whole movie before watching it. let netflix get into the 21st century and stop trying to control their users every movement. streaming is especially injurious in public wifi access points.
If Verizon cared about its customers it would make sure it had the best possible access to content, instead they built the cheapest network access they could get without investing in their infrastructure.
What exactly do you think the Internet is? It is a very large collection of untrusted nodes connected in a network.
That link you posted was about Netflix saving people money by offering free caching servers, which are much cheaper than the bandwidth.
Here's a free car, you just need to provide gas.. ZOMG, they're making me pay for the gas!
Except in a couple years they'd cancel it.
Stop! Dremel time!
ISPs get changed based on 95 percentile, regardless of the direction. The issue is you can supply a lot of people "the web" with a single 10Gb connection, but if only a few people can consume your upload, then you're paying for twice as much bandwidth. Customers who tend to upload, tend to upload a lot.
Cheapest and ironically, the best. They use Level 3 for most of their bandwidth as L3 runs Amazon AWS which runs Netflix. I have L3 as an upstream and I have yet to find any congestion of L3 links. I get a better ping to AT&T New York than AT&T customers in New York get. Figure that one out.
That link you posted was about Netflix saving people money by offering free caching servers, which are much cheaper than the bandwidth. Here's a free car, you just need to provide gas.. ZOMG, they're making me pay for the gas!
Oh, that's nice. They provide the servers (on *their* terms), which- as you say- are the cheap part, and want the ISP to bear all the bandwidth costs. One of the links in the Slashdot story is dead, but here's a currently working version.
Netflix- who have a position that is (at best) dominant and plenty of exclusive deals- were *choosing* to not provide access to customers whose ISPs hadn't signed up to conditions that suited *them*. Netflix say:-
Super HD requires that your Internet Provider is part of the Netflix Open Connect network. Please contact your Internet Provider to request that they join the Netflix Open Connect network so you can get Super HD.
But as the article points out
Neither my ISP nor the open Internet is preventing Netflix from allowing me to access its HD content. Netflix is choosing to block me from accessing its HD content because my ISP hasn’t agreed to host Netflix equipment for free and Netflix doesn’t want to pay another CDN to deliver HD content to my ISP.
In short, they were trying to leverage their dominant market position to make ISPs look bad and force them- and ultimately *all* that ISP's customers- to pay for the costs involved in supporting their *oh-so-generous* free caching servers under the terms of the agreement.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
The end-point could be AT&T, Comcast, or even another Cogent customer
Generally no. Backbone peering agreements generally say traffic destined to my customers only.
That is to say, on non-transit (settlement free) peering sessions between Tier1 providers, Verizon would advertise only Verizon's customers' IP space.
And the providers' peering agreements specifically include a rule that traffic may not be routed across the link, except according to the BGP advertisements.
So a packet destined from Cogent to an ATT destination, would not be eligible to be sent over the Verizon peering link (since advertisements for ATT and ATT customers' IP address space would not be propagated to the Cogent-Verizon bgp session).
Whether their terms are generous or not really depends on who you think is holding the cards. A company like Verizon expects to be paid for transit because historically they could demand it. A company wanting to interconnect didn't have a choice if they wanted to send data to them.
Verizon here is sort of a special case. They're an incredibly large ISP, and they own a Tier 1 network (though I wonder whether they exclusively use them). If they were a small ISP that had to pay to connect to a Tier 1 their perspective would be very different. But, Netflix is a special case too. They offer a service that's in high demand by Verizon customers. I suppose you're right that Netflix and Cogent are looking for special treatment, but that's because they think they are special. And they might be, at least from a negotiating perspective.
Now, apparently Netflix knows they're not powerful enough to demand agreements on their terms. I suppose too many people don't have more than one plausible option for an ISP, so taking a harder stance than what they've done with SuperHD would be dangerous. Still, I think they ought to do more. It seems silly for Netflix to directly or indirectly pay Verizon for the privilege of sending data to Verizon customers that requested it. If Netflix or Cogent wanted to send traffic *through* Verizon's network and onto another network that would be different. It seems like making the sender pay can really let the ISPs hide shady practices and put content providers in a difficult pricing situation. What if, for example, Comcast charged Netflix much cheaper rates to send data to their customers than Verizon? What can Netflix do? Do you expect Netflix to charge Verizon customers more for service than Comcast? Out of fairness I suppose they should, but that seems like a terrible outcome. It seems like it would be a much better outcome if Comcast/Verizon charged their customers based how much it actually cost them to deliver the data they requested. At least, I think that would clean up some of the perverse incentives that seem to exist in the current pricing structures.
Not sure what to make of this. Any thoughts other than hopelessness?
And, in fact, having done traffic analyisis on my own network at home, it appears that COX is doing a bit of this themselves as netflix streams are routinely interrupted on their network in my area. Not just at my house on my ring, but also on 5 other family member houses, in seperate areas of town, on different neighborhood rings. At the same time, access to COX's own services seems to have no problems whatsoever. This is just anecdotal at this point, but, I believe that I have seen enough to believe that its intentional, either through design or deliberately not fixing it.
captcha: obsolete
Sure, if you don't consider the long history of competition providing cheaper options "evidence". But FWIW anyway, you could buy phones ad-hoc in the US already and guess what? And a couple of years after GPO became BT, I picked up a privately produced phone for £10.
Oh, that's nice. They provide the servers (on *their* terms), which- as you say- are the cheap part, and want the ISP to bear all the bandwidth costs.
Hmmm, 10Gb of bandwidth or 100Mb of bandwidth.. omg, Netflix is trying to save me 900Mb of bandwidth!.. yeah.. boo-freaking-hoo. The caching server on average reduces Netflix bandwidth by 70%-90%. The point is it saves them more money than it costs. You know, like an "investment". You may of heard of these, they're things you put money into and you get more money back, or in this case, save more money than you spend.
If Netflix or Cogent wanted to send traffic *through* Verizon's network and onto another network that would be different.
This. You pay for transit, not peering. Typically peering is free, other than the cost of the ports/hardware.
you should be demanding caches for all the popular services, even the ones you don't use
Only when more money is saved than spent. It takes time and money to setup a caching server and if each random service on the Internet has its own DRM and its own way of caching, then it costs more to manage.
ISP will install caching servers as long as the time and money is worth the effort.
and my customer is a large cable company in the US that has often faced the question of what to do with NetFlix.
I don't see the issue. Netflix has it harder. They get paid $8/customer and have razor thing margins, Cable companies get paid $100/customer and have huge margins.
If Netflix can afford to push the bandwidth, then ISPs can afford to receive it. It's much harder to serve content than to receive it.
Such an agreement would be trivial to enforce as well. Just set a rule on the incoming router and all traffic destined for non-Verizon IPs coming in over the link gets dropped.
I work for an ISP with all the major caches in it. It takes almost no "setup" and the cost is racking them up, power and cooling. There is no DRM that the ISP has visibility of, and the caching is invisible to the ISP as well. It is 100% "managed" by the content provider, and Google even came in to rack them up and offered to make any necessary routing changes/cabling changes themselves, though the data center people wouldn't let them. There is zero management by the ISP for those boxes, unless the ISP has their own proxies in place that don't work well with them, but that's a separate issue. Your complaints bear no relation to reality.
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(Note; the above is apparently a reply to this comment, not mine).
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