ISP Fights Causing Netflix Packet Drops

An anonymous reader writes "We've been hearing more and more reports of ISPs throttling Netflix and other high-bandwidth services lately. The ISPs have denied it, and even Netflix itself seems to believe them. If that's the case, what's going on? Well, according to this article, the blame still lies with the ISPs. While they may not be explicitly throttling connection speeds, they're refusing to upgrade network connections as they demand more money from content distributors. For example, Netflix pays Cogent to distribute their internet traffic. Cogent has an agreement with Verizon to exchange traffic — which works fine until the massive amount of traffic from Netflix makes it a lopsided arrangement. Verizon wants more money from Cogent, and one of their negotiating tactics is simply to stop upgrading their infrastructure so that service degrades. 'There are about 11 Cogent/Verizon peering connections in major cities around the country. When peering partners aren't fighting, they typically upgrade the connections (or "ports") when they're about 50 percent full, Cogent says. ... With Cogent and Verizon fighting, the upgrades are happening at a glacial pace, according to Schaeffer. "Once a port hits about 85 percent throughput, you're going to begin to start to drop packets," he said. "Clearly when a port is at 120 or 130 percent [as the Cogent/Verizon ones are] the packet loss is material."'"

Comments

Network vs Content providers

[future assassin]

If companies provide network access they should not be be allowed to be a content provider. Too much conflict of interest and they can concentrate on properly managing and not OVERselling their network.

Re:sell is the key word. Cogent not paying Verizon

[msauve]

Customers PAY for those connections. Verizon's customers are paying to receive traffic from the Internet. Whether that's slashdot or Netflix doesn't matter, it behooves Verizon to deliver the service their customers are PAYING for.