Internet Transit Provider Claims ISPs Deliberately Allow Port Congestion

An anonymous reader writes "Level 3, an internet transit provider, claimed in a recent blog post that six ISPs that it regularly does business with have refused to de-congest most of their interconnect ports. 'Congestion that is permanent, has been in place for well over a year and where our peer refuses to augment capacity.' Five of the six ISPs that Level 3 refers to are in the U.S., and one is in Europe. Not surprisingly, 'the companies with the congested peering interconnects also happen to rank dead last in customer satisfaction across all industries in the U.S. Not only dead last, but by a massive statistical margin of almost three standard deviations.' Ars Technica reports that ISPs have also demanded that transit providers like Level 3 pay for access to their networks in the same manner as fringe service providers like Netflix."

Comments

What Level 3 can do

[Z00L00K]

Is just to cut the connection to those ISPs and see how long they will be around.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[jythie]

That would be terribly amusing. I can just imagine what a 'dark day' would do to those ISPs, though I suspect Level 3 has contracts that prevent it, which is sad.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[bill_mcgonigle]

Is just to cut the connection to those ISPs and see how long they will be around.

But why are they peering with them if there are better routes available?

The incentive structure on all these things is wrong. One neat thing the bitcoin network does is to attach a fee to each transaction that occurs (which is due to be reduced to reasonable levels soon - pay attention...).

There's too much turmoil going on in Internet routing with regard to pricing now. Some sort of BGP extension that includes transit cost has to come along to make it all automatic and lowest-cost. It's really not much different than how power producers will bring capacity online when the market demands or when they have excess capacity they need to get rid of. The dam near me has a realtime market price terminal they watch to see when to open the gates, but Internet providers would just automate the whole thing, and then the transit pricing wars would shake out. I wouldn't mind seeing it extended to the last mile either, though with monopoly protection in place there would need to be some very reasonable connection fee floor and controls on fees, since competition can't impose those controls. But one of the ways we encourage lowest-cost is with efficient protocols and there's very little incentive to demand that from the end user right now.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Bengie]

But why are they peering with them if there are better routes available?

ISPs hold a monopoly on their customers, there is no other way to get to their network.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[LifesABeach]

"...There's too much turmoil going on in Internet routing with regard to pricing now..."

I think I spotted the flaw in your logic, it is because of pricing that the rest of the internet must carry the burden. ISP's that Throttle, are the problem, and not in any solution.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Zocalo]

Or they could throttle back the traffic on behalf of the ISPs in question to just above the maximum point that they think the congested peer will support and/or start sending ICMP Source Quench packets to the ISP's end users. The ISPs would, in all likelihood, be none the wiser, and it would release Level 3's transit bandwidth for their customers that actually care about providing decent services to their end users. It's still extra load on L3's edge routers, but at least it alleviates any problems in their core and on other customer's edges.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[alen]

the largest senders of data on the internet, netflix and google already peer with the largest ISP's. if L3 de-peered from them what is that going to do?

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Demonantis]

Most tier 2 providers already engage in this activity. I feel like Level 3 thinks they are a tier 1 provider and are finding out they are actually tier 2.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[pla]

ISPs hold a monopoly on their customers, there is no other way to get to their network.

ISPs only have customers because of peerage agreements that let their customers get to the rest of the internet.

Any two-bit ISP (and in this context, that includes even the likes of Comcast) that thinks they can twist L3's arm has one hell of a nasty surprise waiting for them when their current contracts expire. This doesn't work quite the same as not getting to see this week's episode of Glee because of a pissing contest between cable companies and content providers - A week where Comcast customers can't get to Por... er... Google, means a week where Comcast loses half its customer base.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Bengie]

That ISP would suddenly find they can't talk to Europe or Japan or almost anything other than direct peers. Level 3 is about 20% of the world wide Internet traffic that isn't peered. Many gaming services use Level 3 exclusively because of their superior network that spans USA, Europe, and connects to nearly every country in the world.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Charliemopps]

Is just to cut the connection to those ISPs and see how long they will be around.

Level3 is not your friend. They are in contract negotiations with those 6 providers. This was a shot across the ISPs bow to try and get them to agree to Level3's terms. Level3 has been in bed with Netflix for years. There is no massive conspiracy to keep you from watching netflix. There is, however, a massive conspiracy to change whos pocket your money ends up in. This is a propaganda war between the ISPs, Level3 and Netflix and the ISPs are loosing.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Lumpy]

90% of comcast customers are held hostage, they CANT GO ANYWHERE ELSE for internet.
This is what happens when you have a government sponsored and allowed monopoly.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Archangel Michael]

ISPs think that they offer "high speed", and they do, but only on the "last mile". They think that last mile is the only thing that counts as a metric.

What good is a phone call if you are unable to speak?

Congestion has always been the bigger underlying issue, because Comcast customers are clueless about what "high speed" means. The best thing Level 3 (and other peering companies like them) could be doing is running national TV advertizements announcing (without naming) that "slow internet" may not be a last mile problem. I could design a 30 second commercial that describes the issue.

"Yes, you do have high speed internet, however your ISP may not be able to deliver the promised speed".

And trust me, congested pipes are worse issue than appears on the surface. Once you hit that max, you start compounding the problem with duplicate (and beyond) packets needing to be resent because the first packet never go there. Once you get to that point, the ONLY solution is more and bigger pipes(series of tubes???) .

Re:What Level 3 can do

[alen]

and how hard would it be to peer directly with verizon or comcast if they started to allow it? like they did with netflix?

Re:What Level 3 can do

[alen]

they are losing the blogging war but not the money war
netflix is peering with comcast and verizon
google is peering with ISP's
figure the ISP's will start to peer with other content providers as well

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry customers, you can only get to sites hosted by other home customers in your region. Which are of course not allowed to host websites on their home connections. Good day!

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Anonymous Coward]

This seems an awful lot like mutually assured destruction. How long will Level 3 maintain *its* customers after it willfully loses its connection to a huge swath of the American public? Its peerings with ISPs is its only source of value. Even if this disruption could be spun to force subscribers to ditch their ISPs, there are no other alternatives for them. And this is all contingent on Level 3 making this moral stand in the first place. When is the last time you saw a major publicly-traded company buck the shitty status quo in favor of a financially risky and potentially market-upsetting dispute?

Re:What Level 3 can do

[saleenS281]

Ya, you're forgetting the part where he who controls the eyeballs has all the power. Comcast, AT&T, and VZW all have long-haul networks of their own. This is simply their way of trying to either force companies like Netflix to dump Level3 and buy transit from them, or force Level3 to pay them for the transit someone like Netflix would as a direct customer. THIS is the problem with allowing ISPs to have monopolies. What is Level3 going to do? Consumers like myself who literally have no choice of ISP can't just up and pick a new one if Level3 were to "turn off the internet" tomorrow. Sure, I could call and complain, bitch to my local senator, but then what? The big ISPs have bought and paid for all our political representatives, so they don't have to worry about legislative repercussions. I can't switch ISPs, so they don't have to worry about losing me as a customer. Why would they ever change what they're doing?

Re:What Level 3 can do

[datapharmer]

Use OSPF and use pricing as one of the variables for cost calculation? Wouldn't take a rocket scientist and pretty sure any decent sized network does this already... We are't talking spot market here - most of these costs are negotiated in long-term contracts, but no reason we couldn't design it like the energy markets (though not sure you would want to).

Re:What Level 3 can do

[robot256]

Sounds to me like Level 3 does peer with ISPs, but the ISPs are failing to upgrade their side of the pipes so the peering suffers, just like it did with Netflix. But unlike the Netflix case, the ISP has no "asymmetric traffic" argument as to why Level 3 should pay disproportionately for peering.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't about peering in the strict sense of the word. Level 3 is a transit provider, a so-called tier 1 network. Colloquially Level 3 is an internet backbone operator. The end-user ISPs don't have global networks and need other networks to pass data through in order to reach the entire internet. These ISPs buy transit from backbone providers, i.e. their peering is not settlement free. For an end-user ISP to unclog their "connection to the internet", they have to buy more bandwidth from the backbone provider, so Level 3's "public service announcement" is a little self-serving. But of course they're right: What's happening is that last-mile providers are selling internet bandwidth that they in turn haven't bought from their upstream providers. If a last-mile ISP has oversold their access to the rest of the internet to the point where there's significant congestion, then it is that last-mile provider's job to buy a bigger pipe (or, if they feel ambitious, build a fast global network and become their own tier 1 network operator).

There is no need for a fragile real-time settlement protocol. The cost of bandwidth is determined by peak loads, so nothing needs to happen on a timescale smaller than typical demand cycles. Demand for network bandwidth can be planned, and links are not built at a touch of a button. There's nothing to be gained from opening this up to speculators.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[tlhIngan]

Any two-bit ISP (and in this context, that includes even the likes of Comcast) that thinks they can twist L3's arm has one hell of a nasty surprise waiting for them when their current contracts expire. This doesn't work quite the same as not getting to see this week's episode of Glee because of a pissing contest between cable companies and content providers - A week where Comcast customers can't get to Por... er... Google, means a week where Comcast loses half its customer base.

No, they just drop Level3. That's it.

Unless you're a tiny rural ISP, you're multi-homed. You peer with Tier 2 ISPs like Level3 and others to provide you service. Level3 peers with other Tier 2 ISPs as well as Tier 1 ISPs.

Typically, an ISP will pay for service from a higher tier ISP, and get paid for service from a lower one - i.e., Level3 gets paid from a last mile ISP, but Level3 has to pay a Tier 1 like Sprint. Other Tier 2's usually have an equal-sharing arrangement where it's free.

Naturally, everyone wants to keep traffic on the "free" peering (i.e., same level), which works when traffic is roughly equal. The problem occurs when it isn't, in which case one side or the other has to pay up for the differential traffic. (If the traffic was truly equal, then both would upgrade the ports together because both sides are dropping packets).

Of course, the Internet is supposed to route around congestion - the overloaded port means that instead of Level3 continuing to send data that way, they need to send data to another port, usually through another provider which can mean $$$ gets paid.

The fact that's not happening means either or both sides are playing shenanigans - it's a trick either side can use to force the other to comply. E.g., if Level3 has multiple ports with an ISP, they can easily force all traffic through one port, ignoring the other ports and force the ISP to upgrade that port. Then they send traffic to another port, to force that one to be upgraded as well until they're all upgraded.

It's a nasty trick, but it usually works. (A more relatable example would be if you paid for network access - you only use say, 250Mbps, so you buy three Fast Ethernet ports. But your provider wants you to buy Gigabit ports, so they basically strangle traffic through two ports, forcing it all on one port until you agree to upgrade that port to GigE. Then they send all the traffic through another port so you upgrade that, until you're paying for 3 GigE ports when 3 FE ones was sufficient).

Re:What Level 3 can do

[bill_mcgonigle]

Most tier 2 providers already engage in this activity. I feel like Level 3 thinks they are a tier 1 provider and are finding out they are actually tier 2.

Ah, thanks. Reading a few of Level 3's blog posts, it sounds like they want to have free peering with everybody because that's maybe how it was back when BBN and MCI were working things out. The trouble with that is that it only works when everybody plays nice. When you can't count on all players to be nice, you need markets and competition. It sounds like Level 3 is opting to go to the FCC, asking it to regulate them instead. There's no future where Level 3 will be better off being regulated by the FCC than if they regulated their peering agreements with a pricing mechanism.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Technician]

In my market, this is getting shaken up. Qwest is expanding and doing quite well. When they did my street, I dumped Comcast, tripled my speed, and reduced my cost. I found no throttling, or blocked ports. I did test Comcast for the torrent throttling. 1st minute fine, 2nd minute about 1/2 speed, etc to where a file was totally stalled on a Linux ISO by the end of the day. FTP of the same file from a mirror was a 20 minute download.

Same test on Qwest is functional. I am running SIP phone service for 2 additional lines from another provider. Qwest is not interfearing.

I get calls from time to time from Comcast salesmen pusing their high speed Xfinity branded product. I give them the info of how they treated me and I have zero interest in a repeat serving. Their reputation preceeds them. Customer retention may become a priority for them soon... I hope.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[davecb]

At the technical level, treat it as if it were "bufferboat", make sure your buffers are configured properly, and use an AQM algorithm like fq_codel. Doubly so if you're Level 3 or any other poor ISP connected to the culprits!

See http://gettys.wordpress.com/20...

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what happens when you have people.

FTFY

FTFY

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Obfuscant]

90% of comcast customers are held hostage, they CANT GO ANYWHERE ELSE for internet. This is what happens when you have a government sponsored and allowed monopoly.

Except that Comcast has no monopoly -- government allowed, government sponsored, or otherwise -- on the Internet. The closest to "government sponsored" you get is the franchise agreement with the local government, and that isn't a de jure monopoly. The economics make cable into a de facto monopoly, but the government didn't have anything to do with it.

If you want Internet, you have plenty of choices depending on where you live. DSL from your telco. DSL on the telco wires from someone else, broadband wireless, 3G/4G via usually more than one cell carrier. Satellite. And if you live so far out in the sticks that there are none of those options, then it is doubtful that Comcast has wired your neighborhood anyway. But 90% of Comcast customers do NOT live in places without other internet options.

There are plenty of reasons to dislike Comcast, you don't have to make things up.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Well, it's a Government monopoly with no oversight.

Because practically speaking, you can't just let any yahoo with a garden trowel and some fiberoptic cables just start digging around everywhere, it's a freaking nightmare to do that.

If we had real oversight on telcos and cable cos, enforced fair sharing of infrastructure and had state and local Governments enforce rules that make sense... Then really, the problem goes away. Even better if the local municipalities installed the fiber and leased it out to the local markets, or treated it like a utility.

Again, practically speaking, a lot of rural and suburban markets would still be underserved, but, it wouldn't be so heavily one sided nor would the barrier to entry be so high.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Arker]

"Customer retention may become a priority for them soon... I hope."

I think it is already a priority. The trouble is they go about it in the wrong way. Instead of fixing the network, they pay more people to apologize for it and/or spin it to their benefit (as with Netflix.) A customer retention initiative from Comcast might get you a free month of service or the like, but who cares when the service itself is still broken?

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Obfuscant]

THIS is the problem with allowing ISPs to have monopolies.

I'm not sure how you'd solve that problem. Do you imagine that most home users would be able to configure an adaptive router that determines the best route for their packets and sends them to ISP A sometimes and ISP B other times? That would create havoc with routing since you're trying to change not just an address of an intermediate router, you're changing the destination address. And imagine the fun if someone actually did have service from two ISPs and they somehow became an advertised route between the two.

I suspect, however, that you're talking about a perceived monopoly on providing service to someone, not a monopoly on being the only route to a customer once they are one. Comcast doesn't have a monopoly on the internet, but once you have Comcast as an ISP then they have a monopoly on the routing. If you want to stop the latter, don't have Comcast as an ISP.

Consumers like myself who literally have no choice of ISP

Where do you live that you don't have another choice? If you're in a densely populated enough area to have Comcast, then certainly there is a telco that serves you, and probably cell.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh, just because you like your Comcast-sponsored assfucking does not mean everyone else does.

Let's break down your alternatives, shall we? None of what you mentioned happen to actually be broadband. DSL? By definition not a broadband service. Broadband wireless? Seriously? What, leech off of your neighbors' Comcast-connected wireless networks? 3G/4G can't even be in contention, since most service doesn't come close to broadband speed levels AND the cell companies typically cap your data. Satellite? Roughly the same cost as Comcast for slower speed and you're being held hostage to the dish. Plus it looks like HughesNet actually caps your goddamn data as well.

Sure you have other options, none of them really all that good.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Obfuscant]

Well, it's a Government monopoly with no oversight.

It's not a monopoly, and there is government oversight. At least my city was smart enough not to grant an exclusive franchise, and they do have a staff member that deals with franchise issues. We're on a first-name basis, I've called him about the shenanigans of a certain non-monopoly cable company so many times.

Because practically speaking, you can't just let any yahoo with a garden trowel and some fiberoptic cables just start digging around everywhere, it's a freaking nightmare to do that.

That's why you have franchise agreements that grant access to the rights of way for a fee. The fact that not just anybody can "start digging" doesn't mean there is a monopoly, it just means there is a legal process to go through to get the access.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Obfuscant]

Meh, just because you like your Comcast-sponsored assfucking does not mean everyone else does.

Meh, just because you see a statement that Comcast is not a monopoly doesn't mean it is loved. And thanks for expressing your opinion in a civil manner.

Let's break down your alternatives, shall we? None of what you mentioned happen to actually be broadband.

So, as I expected, the complaint is not that there is no other source of internet, it is there is no other source of internet that is as fast as you want it to be for a price that you want to pay. Sorry, that's not what "monopoly" means.

Sure you have other options, none of them really all that good.

So you admit that the monopoly on the internet is a fiction. Thanks.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Bengie]

Except that Comcast has no monopoly -- government allowed, government sponsored, or otherwise

They did in the very recent past. I'm not sure if they still have this, but in many areas, they had franchise agreements that allowed only one cable or telcom providers in an area for upwards of 10 years. Even without franchise agreements, around here, that have city ordinances that were voted on by the people to only allow one of each type of provider because people hate getting their lawns torn up every time a new provider wants to come in.

The problem with being a fixed line ISP, is you also need to get property rights for both public and private property. It's not like a normal business that can setup shop anywhere and just have store front or install a few wifi towers.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Obfuscant]

What's happening is that last-mile providers are selling internet bandwidth that they in turn haven't bought from their upstream providers.

This has been true from the early days of even just the simple telephone system. Capacity costs money, and providers build enough capacity to handle normal volumes.

Back when telephones were "spin the crank and ask Mabel to connect you", the capacity limits were "one Mabel" and "one patchboard". You want Mabel to do something for you, but she may be busy with someone else. Too many people want to talk to each other, you run out of patch cords. And if more than one or two people wanted to talk "long distance", well, the one or two trunk lines put a limit on that, too. But most of the time, one Mabel was enough. The telco could hire another one, but most of the time she'd be doing her knitting instead of having to work.

That was solved by dial phones, right? Except the local office only had a certain number of dialtone generators, so you could sometimes, in peak usage periods, pick up your phone and not get a dialtone for 30 seconds or so. And there were still a limited number of trunks. It used to be fun to try to make calls on Mother's Day -- one of the busiest days of the telephone year -- and see how the system failed. Sometimes you'd get random connections.

So we've got the same thing now. It's obvious when there's a major event that the cell system is designed for normal loads and not "every possible load". Our networks are the same. Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it, or to think they're seeing something that has never happened before.

The cost of bandwidth is determined by peak loads,

Nobody builds to peak loads because none of the customers want to pay what that would cost. A company that builds its systems for peak loads would have unused bandwidth most of the time, but someone has to pay for it.

The only real place for debate is to what level below peak do they build. If you think regulation would help here, then be prepared to pay for it in increased rates with no real increase in levels of service.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets see. Quite near San Francisco.
Comcast 60Mb/s down $85/mo
DSL 256Kb/s down long ago was $55/mo. 18000 feet from central office. price today?
Satellite provider: 2Mb/s down (maybe) with horrible response time. Cost $50+/month?
That is an effective monopoly, only one of them can
deliver Netflix. For all practical purposes.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Obfuscant]

They did in the very recent past. I'm not sure if they still have this, but in many areas, they had franchise agreements that allowed only one cable or telcom providers in an area for upwards of 10 years.

In none of the cities I've been in for the last thirty years has there been an exclusive franchise agreement. If you know of one I can see online, point me to it. Any city that made such an agreement was a fool, and if any of them did then the problem isn't the cable company it was the local government that did the stupid thing.

But you clipped the statement I made before it ended and changed the meaning significantly. I said they had no monopoly "on the internet". They did not have one, they do not have one, and nobody in the future will ever grant them one. Whether or not they have an exclusive franchise for cable in an area, they do not have a monopoly on the kinds of services that are carried on that cable. There are too many other internet providers for Comcast to get that kind of franchise agreement anywhere, and franchise agreements do not cover that to begin with.

Even without franchise agreements, around here, that have city ordinances that were voted on by the people

Wow. You have people who micromanage the local utilities to that level? How is this idiocy Comcast's fault? How is "government by the people" a bad thing?

The problem with being a fixed line ISP, is you also need to get property rights for both public and private property.

It's called an easement and the city or local government has already managed that. That's what the franchise agreement deals with. That's how the cable or telco or power company gets transit rights. For the drops, the customer has to grant access if they want service. This is not a new or unsolved problem, and it doesn't create a monopoly.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Shadow99_1]

They often do have a functional monopoly on 'broadband' as defined by the government. In my case I'm in a Time Warner area that may or may not become part of Comcast when they merge (and I have no doubt they will get the ok). My other options are 1mb/512k ADSL (which is internet access, but not 'broadband') from Verizon or 3G internet access from a number of cell providers (4G does not currently exist in this market of over 100,000 people) which all have considerably low caps that make them nonfunctional as primary internet sources. I probably could find satellite internet as well, but for extreme prices and limited capability that is even less 'broadband' than my other options..

So yes, I could have 'internet' from other people (most of whom are equally offensive)... But that is not a choice. I'm positive if Level 3 did shut the links to Comcast off that Verizon, AT&T, and at least three other providers would be turned off at the same time and that would cover 90% of my options.

I need internet for streaming media, general internet access, email, cloud storage, and gaming. Only one company allows me to do that effectively and even if I did switch to a worse service I'd lose the ability to do some of those.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[schnell]

I can just imagine what a 'dark day' would do to those ISPs

I'm not so sure about that. My guess is that the ISPs being referenced are themselves Tier 1 ISPs and don't rely on peering with Level(3) for anything other than connectivity to L3's own customers. They probably already peer with everyone else worth peering with, separately. So cutting that connection would probably hurt L3's customers far more than the other way around... which, I would guess, is the whole reason these ISPs aren't in a hurry to upgrade their connectivity to L3 in the first place: L3 has no leverage over them.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Anonymous Coward]

Capacity costs money, and providers build enough capacity to handle normal volumes.

Yes, normal (i.e. practically occurring and recurring) peak volumes. Well, bandwidth demand, not volume. Data volume accounting is what leads to uneven network loads and that makes it part of the problem, not the solution.

Nobody should build networks that they know aren't going to be utilized. That would just be wasteful. But on the other hand, if you sell "up to 16Mbps" to your customers, and then your network or your peerings limit them to a lower speed, you need to upgrade. Overprovisioning is fine as long as it doesn't have a negative impact on service quality. Recurring conditions with non-negligible packet loss are an error that needs to be fixed.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[schnell]

Nobody builds to peak loads because none of the customers want to pay what that would cost. A company that builds its systems for peak loads would have unused bandwidth most of the time, but someone has to pay for it.

Precisely this. I remember many Slashdot discussions of years past when people got all up in arms over the very concept of oversubscription. Networks - dating back to the PSTN as you point out - have never been built to address the peak capacity since most of the time that's a waste of everyone's money. It's like spending the money to build a 10-lane highway to solve for a two-lane road that has traffic jams only after the county fair and is fine the rest of the time. Or having enough food in your refrigerator year-round to cook for the family Thanksgiving dinner - most of it will just go to waste and you spent a lot of money unnecessarily.

That isn't to say that a lot of networks could and should be upgraded; if a network is not meeting daily average usage without packet loss, there is clearly a problem. But I don't think most people who should know better have not wrapped their heads around the idea that ISPs will always, always be selling downstream bandwidth unequal to their upstream capacity.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[sjames]

You do know that Level3 is far from a MonNPop, yes?

Re:What Level 3 can do

[sjames]

The solution to accountants over-accounting is not additional accounting. Do you really want to get an itemized bill from 3 providers when you watch 'cute kitten video'?

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Obfuscant]

Yes, normal (i.e. practically occurring and recurring) peak volumes.

No, peak is not normal. That's why they call it peak and not normal.

But on the other hand, if you sell "up to 16Mbps" to your customers, and then your network or your peerings limit them to a lower speed, you need to upgrade.

So you're a small ISP and have 1000 customers, all of whom you've sold 16Mbps service to. That's a sum of 16Gbps if my math is right. But that's only if they ALL put the same, maximum demand on the system at the same time. You can be a socially responsible scrupulously honest business person and try to find a 16Gbps upstream connection and pay the money for it, charging your customers a premium for never hitting a bottleneck on your network, or you can keep the costs to your customers lower by getting a connection that is maxed out 5% of the time. Or 10%.

Should it matter if that 5% is at the same time every day? Well, how much is it worth spending to have a network that is mostly idle for half the day and maybe half capacity for another 45%, to solve the 100% capacity for 5% of the time problem? Would your customers want to pay what it would cost? I suspect not, based on the claims here that Comcast is the only ISP because it is the only cheap fast ISP available, not because it truly is the only ISP available. People seem to care about prices a lot.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

The post I was replying to was swinging towards the Libertarian side of things with no care for the nuance of why in some markets, the barrier to entry is really high if not impossible to break into.

With most markets, they are exclusive rights areas.

But, yes, your local municipality is also doing it right.

Probably better than the way I outlined it.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[sjames]

3G/4G is outrageously expensive and slow. The resellers aren't really competition since they are all reselling the very same service. All they can possibly do is add overhead and offer you more email accounts. Sattelite does OK for bulk download, but terrible for uplink and latency.

Many places have exactly 1 option that provides reasonable service. Many more have 2, but that's about it.

Meanwhile, the sort of competition that actually makes a market work calls for more than a dozen independent sellers.

Keep in mind, coverage maps are generally lies. There are plenty of people who are clearly shown to be covered in a map who cannot get that service.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Anonymous Coward]

English isn't my native language, so maybe I'm not saying this right, but what do you think "practically occurring and recurring peak volumes" means? Overprovisioning works because not everybody is using the maximum bandwidth at the same time. When was the last time you picked up a landline phone and heard the channel-busy tone (aka fast busy or congestion tone? Perhaps during a wide-scale crisis or other unforeseeable event, but certainly not every day during peak phone usage (9am?). Does that mean the phone network is built to the maximum theoretically possible capacity? No. The phone network is heavily overprovisioned. Many more connections are sold than can be active at any given moment. But only to a point where this causes no service degradation under normal circumstances. People are not used to hearing channel-busy tones. Internet providers are also overprovisioning, but they're selling so much more bandwidth than they are buying that congestion is a regular occurrence. People are regularly "hearing channel-busy tones" on the internet, and that is unacceptable. Network bandwidth is incredibly regular on a big scale. Its peaks are very predictable, much like phone usage on normal days is very predictable. ISPs need to build their networks and buy transit or establish peerings to handle that practically occurring and recurring peak bandwidth.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[sjames]

For most, there is no longer a monopoly (though that is a fairly new development), but it's hardly a vibrant market.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Bengie]

You peer with Tier 2 ISPs like Level3

Level 3 is the single largest Tier 1 in the world, several factors larger than the 2nd largest, which is several factors larger than the 3rd largest. Level 3 is crazy big, but owning a multi-billion dollar backbone with razor thin low single digit margins means nothing compared to the trillion dollar last mile owned by incumbent ISPs who get large double digit margins on magnitudes larger revenues.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[sjames]

Naturally, everyone wants to keep traffic on the "free" peering (i.e., same level), which works when traffic is roughly equal. The problem occurs when it isn't, in which case one side or the other has to pay up for the differential traffic. (If the traffic was truly equal, then both would upgrade the ports together because both sides are dropping packets).

Unless the peering includes transit, the whole balance thing is an entirely fabricated necessity made by business people who don't actually know how networking works.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[schnell]

Thanks, I am aware that Level(3) is not a mom-and-pop shop. But their market clout is still nothing compared to the largest consumer broadband ISPs and traditional Tier 1 networks, which in many cases globally are one and the same.

Think about it: the big guys have their own peering relationships that go around L3, and most L3 customers (unless they are mom-and-pops themselves) get transit from more than one provider. So let's say Webhost X buys transit from L3 and Sprint. $BIGISP already peers with both L3 and Sprint. So if the L3 relationship goes away, Webhost X will use Sprint for transit to $BIGISP. The only ones who really stand to lose are the companies who only get transit from L3. And if L3 has no peering with $BIGISP, they become far less valuable to their customers.

Level 3 does not have the leverage in the situation, the big ISPs do. Otherwise they wouldn't be complaining, they would be trying to force the ISPs to increase their peering capacities. I'm guessing this comes down to the same core issue as the recent Cogent hullaballoo... Tier 2 ISP wants more free peering, Tier 1/ISP wants them to buy transit. You may recall that Cogent and Level 3 had this same argument before - but in that case, it was L3 trying to get Cogent to pay up to increase the interconnection! Almost seems a bit karmic to me...

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Bengie]

Level 3 does provide the highest quality service for a competitive price, but it doesn't matter because most ISPs have a monopoly. The big player ISPs have no interest in quality, which means Level 3 needs to create motivation for peering, which means lining the golden pockets of the incumbent ISPs even more than they already are.

If changing your ISP involved nothing more than making a 5 minute phone call and getting your VLAN changed from Comcast to someone else, then there would be a reason to keep the customers happy. As it stands right now, getting top notch speed to a colo'd speed test server is about the only amount of quality one can expect. Actually getting out to the Internet is an exercise of patience.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[sjames]

The cost of good networking hardware has fallen considerably over the years. Meanwhile, the ISPs marketing depts sure do like to hype all the things you can do with your 30 bazillion megabits unlimited connection. Alas, they sure do resent it when customers sign up and actually expect to get 10% of what marketing promised. They actually could afford the necessary build-out to provide what was promised an the price they charge, but then they wouldn't be able to afford to buy up multi-national content producers.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[sjames]

Practically nothing actually honors source quench anymore. It was too easy to use it for DOS.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[saleenS281]

Ahh yes, 768k DSL because Centurylink hasn't upgraded the lines since the 80's. That's absolutely a legitimate alternative to 50mbit cable. Why not just go for AOL dial-up? Other than the fact I can't actually USE a connection that slow for anything beyond email and text based websites... good suggestion. Work from home and hop on a webex? Nope. VOIP softphone while doing ANYTHING online? Nope. And if you really just suggested that 3g cellular based internet that's capped at ridiculously low levels is a legitimate alternative to a wired connection, you're either an industry shill, or borderline insane.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Anonymous Coward]

...and that legal process can be pressured with the right connections by the incumbent.

so while theoretically there is oversight, when it can be trumped by the local council saying to the oversight person, "you have better things to concern yourself with", well...

Re:What Level 3 can do

[schnell]

This is what happens when you have a government sponsored and allowed monopoly

I always wondered about the decision-making that went into the FCC's rules on this topic. NPR's Planet Money actually did a really interesting podcast on this topic that explains precisely why the choices in the US are far more limited elsewhere. tl;dr version: the FCC had to make a choice between two (at the time) equally competing visions of the broadband market, and they picked the wrong one.

When the FCC was considering these rules, they had a choice between going with "telephone"-style rules that would emulate the 1996 Telecom Act requirement of unbundled elements (e.g. the phone company had to let 3rd parties wholesale their DSL and resell it), vs. setting up new broadband technologies as "you build it, you keep it." At the time, new broadband technologies kept popping all over the place - broadband over cable, fiber to the home, satellite, terrestrial wireless, broadband over power lines, etc. The FCC realized that all these new ventures probably wouldn't get built unless they allowed the companies that invested in them to have a monopoly on services over the infrastructure they built. So they bet that consumers would get "choice" by having multiple different last mile technologies, which seemed reasonable at the time.

In the end, all these alternative last mile technologies petered out except cable and fiber, and only cable was near-ubiquitous in its deployment. So that's how we got stuck with the situation that we're in, and it's very difficult to go back and change it now since the companies that built out their infrastructure did so with an understanding of monopoly usage of that investment they made. So it was a bad bet and didn't help US consumers... but at least there was some actual thinking that went into it at the time.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[sjames]

It is a bit karmic. I'm not claiming that L3 are just a great bunch of guys fighting the man or anything.

However, L3 is a Tier 1. They have many massive datacenters for colo as well as an international network. The only thing they don't have is last mile networking.

A fair bit of the internet would either go away or get much more expensive to reach if L3 cut off peering.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Fnord666]

I need internet for streaming media, general internet access, email, cloud storage, and gaming. Only one company allows me to do that effectively and even if I did switch to a worse service I'd lose the ability to do some of those.

Oh noes! Whatever will you do? How would you survive?
No, you don't need those things. You would like to have them. You need air to breathe, water to drink, food to eat and shelter from the elements. You apparently already have the things that you need which allows you to worry about the things that you want.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Anonymous Coward]

...but these business people (MBAs, probably) do know how to create artificial scarcity of resources in order to make money for themselves, regardless of the effects on the ecosystem they're part of.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Bengie]

A lot of companies build for peak loads. Level 3 does because they sell all of their bandwidth as congestion free in their network. There is a difference between theoretical peak and practical peak. theoretical peak is like flipping a coin 100 times and getting heads, while practical peak is based on just staying ahead of current usage.

Actually, Level 3 claims to maintain 2x peak. If the peak is 1gb, they will make sure they have 2gb.

As for last mile ISPs, terabit backplanes are the norm with any fiber purchased in the past 5 years. We now have access to multi-terabit consolidators with 100gb uplinks that will soon be 1tb uplinks when the standard comes out in 2015. Don't forget about the petabit routers they now have.

With residential affordable, one could build a network to handle all of New York city with 1gb connections to every house/apartment, and allow full non-blocking connections at full-duplex 1gb speeds in a full-mesh design, including routing. Complete overkill, but it can be done.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[HiThere]

Idiot. Monopoly doesn't MEAN death threat. It doesn't even mean there's no other provider. It means that there's one provider that controls the market. (It also doesn't mean illegal. Only an abusive monopoly is illegal. Unfortunately, if a monopoly shows up, it will, over time, become abusive. And that can be quite difficult and expensive to prove.)

E.g., I've been using one particular ISP for over a decade, but not because it's good or fast. It's because they own a particular e-mail address. My wife uses that e-mail address for her business. So the ISP has a monoply over her business communications. Yes, there are ways around it, but there aren't any reliable ways to permanently solve the problem, because forwarding of e-mail is not guaranteed. Please note, I doubt that the ISP is even aware that the monopoly over her e-mail address is the reason that we remain a customer. This doesn't keep it from being a monopoly.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Obfuscant]

(though that is a fairly new development),

Hardly. I had internet access long before cable internet became a reality. Not through the educational institution, but as a private user.

I don't know what you call "a vibrant market", so I can't comment on that. It seems pretty active, however.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[dkf]

But why are they peering with them if there are better routes available?

ISPs hold a monopoly on their customers, there is no other way to get to their network.

This. It should be noted that TFA (yes, I did look through it!) stated that countries with proper competition between ISPs, such as the UK, don't have the port congestion problem. The ISPs might be trying to squeeze every last bit of bandwidth out, that's reasonable business, but the result is to keep service pretty reasonable. (That can manifest in several ways, such as low prices or good connectivity: you pays your money, you takes your pick.)

By contrast, the monopolists give shit service, know they're giving shit service, intend to continue to give shit service, and don't care what you think about it. After all, what you going to do? Switch to someone else??? Ho ho ho...

Monopolies suck. You guys need to break them up. One way would be to make it so that it's not legal for anyone owning network infrastructure to sell at anything less than wholesale type pricing for access to the infrastructure itself: it's another company that has to then sell it on to consumers as well as sorting out the peering agreements. The infrastructure owner can be highly regulated; the virtual ISPs don't need nearly so much regulation, as they're much more substitutable (lower barrier to entry without all that infrastructure), and so you can let the free market reign there just fine.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[sjames]

Sure, before you burst too much with pride, we all did the dial-up thing at one time. It sucked and you know it.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Nexzus]

Perhaps someone knowledgeable will see this and answer:

With all the peered Content Delivery Networks such as Akamai, AWS and OpenConnect, how much subscriber traffic actually leaves an ISPs own network?

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Rich0]

If you want Internet, you have plenty of choices depending on where you live. DSL from your telco. DSL on the telco wires from someone else, broadband wireless, 3G/4G via usually more than one cell carrier. Satellite. And if you live so far out in the sticks that there are none of those options, then it is doubtful that Comcast has wired your neighborhood anyway.

I live in the outskirts of a major US city, and I have exactly two choices for broadband - Comcast and Verizon. Well, that is unless I want to pay somebody to run a wire to my house for heavens-knows how much. Satellite and 4G really aren't in the same realm - the cost of both are orders of magnitude higher for the same level of service.

Both Verizon and Comcast probably pull these kinds of stunts, so I don't really have any choice in the matter.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Anonymous Coward]

Go away shill. Cable is a monopoly granted by the government, you don't have to make up excuses to make it a monopoly. I'm quite sure if it wasn't that the 'cost of cable' would NOT be an encumbering factor in any other provider of cable services coming along...of course given the current monopoly position to make it a free market again would require the government requiring current cable providers to provide guaranteed 'last mile access' fairly...but that's hardly a big issue for companies that have enjoyed a monopoly position for 10's of years.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Anonymous Coward]

+1

Also, cancel the contracts.
Where can I sign up for Level 3 to be my ISP instead of Comcrap?

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Anonymous Coward]

Satellite - 2000ms pings on a good day
DSL - good ping, but say hello to 128kbit upstream
3G/4G - 0.01 Mbit during peak hours 160ms ping
Dialup - 180ms ping 3kbytes/sec, 16ms on ISDN if you want to pay $150/mo
Comcast - 40 ms ping, 1.9Mbit upstream, 4.8Mbit downstream

Even though they don't deliver their promises, they're the best of the 5 common possibilities.
Save us! Google, you're our only hope.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[ewieling]

Verizon has a public peering policy. https://business.verizon.com/MyBusinessAccount/one.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=gb_policy&page_id=peering_policy

I've not read through it carefully.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[antdude]

It's not just Comcast. TWC too, but then TWC is being taken over by them. Bah. We seriously need competitions in each area. :(

Re:What Level 3 can do

[jonwil]

Comcast is the largest TV company in America. (they certainly have more subscribers for Pay TV than any other provider in the US including Dish and DirecTV) In their eyes their network is doing exactly what it should be, namely keeping people from being able to replace TV with Internet content.

Their ownership of so much content through NBC, Universal and all their various subsidiaries is another reason Comcast is fighting so hard.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[wierd_w]

This isn't that hard at all. In fact, it's been solved for years. Many different approaches exist for multiplexed TCP.

Having multiple addresses on the same physical interface is also a surprisingly commonplace thing.

All you need is a software agent monitoring the flow of TCP packets back and forth through a gateway, and when a programmable threshold of failed ACKs happen (timeouts, dropped packets requiring resends, etc.), demote the current gateway from the routing table, and promote the secondary. (or tertiary-- on and on.)

Alternatively, one could simply configure the node to multiplex all outbound packets across both edge networks, then shift the decision bias one way or the other based on number of failed ACKs, or even on total number of packets being sent per second.

Your typical home router is already powerful/intelligent enough to do this kind of thing.

It typically just does not have enough interfaces to operate in such a fashion. Put more WAN ports on, and you would be surprised at what a little ARM based toaster can do with network routing.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Anonymous Coward]

They still have those franchise agreements in 99% of the country. your little 1% corner of the world does not equal the rest of it.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Anonymous Coward]

s/overprovisioned/oversubscribed/g

Re:What Level 3 can do

[cthulhu11]

If they're somewhere that Comcast has bothered to run coax, chances are that they could get *DSL, which often sucks even harder.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[cthulhu11]

I'm guessing that you cheaped out on Comcast and went with residential service. With Qwest, I'm also guessing that you happen to be close to their site/CO, not 11000 feet away like I am.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Baki]

Millions of customers being out of internet, might wake up some politicians.
Would be interesting in the light of the net neutrality discussions.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[Shadow99_1]

I need Internet access to pay my taxes (my state no longer makes a physical tax form you can mail in) which certainly is a need as the alternative (not filling taxes) is illegal. It's also the means of communication with my current employer (who rarely calls me) and most potential employers. Having internet access in general is very much a need and not simply a want as I would not be a functional member of society without it.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[jbo5112]

I think the problem that people are really complaining about is ISP not having capacity for recurring, daily/weekly peaks. For example, my parents cannot stream Netflix on Sunday afternoons. For a while, I could barely run ssh to my data center 3 miles away, with few second delays and dropped packets. This was definitely a different problem than L3 described, as both computers used Time Warner for an ISP.

Re:What Level 3 can do

[romiir]

The two comments above were exactly my thought on the subject. Level 3 has responded in the comments (on the blog in the second link of the news article) that many of their peering agreements do not have many of the contractual restrictions we assume they do. A bunch of cable tv channels were dropped from directv a few times. If level 1 providers take a card from big cables deck; by offering offending ISPs just had a taste of dark fiber and all customers jumping ship they might change their tune. I'm sure other ISPs could build a decent network with all those new customers. If you hold their customers hostage and they will definitely come to the table or go out of business, either would be good. We can not allow money hungry last mile monopoly to continue to drive internet speeds downward while erasing net neutrality.

If you are a netflix customer I urge you to please: CALL THEM AND DEMAND THEY CANCEL THE COMCAST AND OTHER ISP DEALS. WE CAN NOT STAND FOR THEM HURTING NET NEUTRALITY NOR CAN WE AFFORD TO PAY THEM TO PUT SERVERS IN EVERY SINGLE ISPs DATACENTER. I CALLED AND DEMANDED THAT THEY SEND A MESSAGE TO THEIR CEO TO GOOGLE LEVEL3 http://blog.level3.com/global-... and COGENTs http://www.cnet.com/news/cogen... STANCE ON THE SITUATION.

Spread the word, please, I beg you as a longterm netflix customer and fan who loves this (normally) innovative and forward thinking company.

Re:Ads

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like its an ad targeted just at you. There isn't anyone else here gets their jollies from that sort of thing.

Besides..who see's ads on this site anyways?

What a surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

In modern times you can't make a business case for capital improvements without getting someone else to pay for it.

Re:Ads

[Anonymous Coward]

That ad is targeted to you. I get a asian women dating site like the rest of us.

trip the light fantastico prologue

[Anonymous Coward]

we can rest assured something else even more distraction based will happen http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=wmd+cabal+media as usual http://youtu.be/N_z1thIRcRA rock on /. the S&M media mongrel burlesque deception will fade much more quickly than it appeared

Slashdot only allows anonymous users to post +- 1 times per day (more or less, depending on if it's you again).

NO COMPETITION -- NO INCENTIVE

[AnontheDestroyer]

Why would the ISPs do this? They have no incentive. The correlation with customer service is a good thing to note, too. The American people are being bent over a barrel on this.

Re:NO COMPETITION -- NO INCENTIVE

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would the ISPs do this? They have no incentive. The correlation with customer service is a good thing to note, too. The American people are being bent over a barrel on this.

They can do this because they are granted monopolies.

Re:NO COMPETITION -- NO INCENTIVE

[alen]

take over their business?
20 years ago we had dozens of small ISP's and large backbone networks were needed to connect them
today we have a few huge ISP's. two of them are national wireless carriers with huge fiber backbone networks of their own to every corner of the USA. one of them is about to be a national network once they buy a competitor

5 years ago netflix had to peer with third party peering companies to distribute content. now Comcast and Verizon are connecting directly to Netflix at cheaper rates than L3 and Cogent and taking away their business. figure all big senders of data to follow soon

Re:NO COMPETITION -- NO INCENTIVE

[Anonymous Coward]

They can do this because they are granted monopolies.

...by politicians the people keep voting in, time and again...

Re:NO COMPETITION -- NO INCENTIVE

[davecb]

They're not granted monopolies unless they are telcos owning poles. The non-telephone companies typically bought up the space on hydro poles. Poles are a regulated monopoly, people using them are an unregulated monopoly.

Re:NO COMPETITION -- NO INCENTIVE

[Anonymous Coward]

And they love it. You Americans wouldnt know what to do with yourselves if someone like your government or business didnt bend you over and shaft you. All while you sing Land of the free and the home of the brave.

Re:NO COMPETITION -- NO INCENTIVE

[__aanhjr1420]

There is a terrific incentive. Take a look at the ads in your ISP's bill and in the junk mail they send you every other week. Remember the last time you talked to customer service? What did they try to sell you during the call? An up-sell to a faster connection. Most people can't tell the difference between their local connection being saturated and the data getting clogged further down the line. When their 15/5 service no longer cuts the mustard, the more savvy users will bring up speedtest.net and see that they're getting the speed they paid for. So they think, "Gee, if my Netflix and YouTube are too slow, I must need more bandwidth!" The rest probably think the Internet is like a computer and you need to upgrade every few years to keep the same relative speed.

Re:NO COMPETITION -- NO INCENTIVE

[cusco]

Don't confuse the Libertardians with facts. Five or six decades ago municipal monopolies were granted to cable companies because it was the only way to guarantee that local taxpayers could get the service installed (competition existed then, no one was going to install expensive infrastructure that took 20 years to amortize any other way). Either they haven't figured out that those monopolies went away decades ago, or else it just makes too good a sound bite to abandon just because it's wrong.

Fuck 'em

[Anonymous Coward]

Teach them to get into bed with the NSA...

Re:Ads

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean there are supposed to be ads on web sites?

Dead last in customer satisfaction

[Anonymous Coward]

*cough* Comcast *cough*

Mathematical Certainty

[globaljustin]

ISP's like Comcast will do this with mathematical certainty....unless we regulate it.

They barely attempt to cover it up now...this is due to the fact that they are a publicly held corporation

Re:Mathematical Certainty

[silas_moeckel]

We should not even have to regulate this, the FTC needs to sue for not providing access to the internet as advertised.

Re:Mathematical Certainty

[Anonymous Coward]

Err, no, Comcast can do what it does because it IS "regulated"... government has issued them a de facto monopoly. If they actually had to compete on a free market, the shenanigans would stop.

Re:Ads

[NotDrWho]

Doesn't appeal to me. I only get off on Ewok porn.

NO INCENTIVE -- NO VISION

[globaljustin]

You're giving ISP's a pass.

I agree, that yes, ISP's are so anti-user that they will do everything to nickel and dime them

However, it's wrong to just abdicate any notion of a public company having ***VISION*** to be a better/different company

Your comment is true, but it doesn't **have** to be...that's what you miss

Re:NO INCENTIVE -- NO VISION

[AnontheDestroyer]

Without any market incentive, they would have to have vision, is that what you're saying? It sounds like you're advocating for some sense of social responsibility outside the market.

That's basically a non-starter in today's capitalism. I agree that they SHOULD have a sense of responsibility outside what gets them money, but they won't.

IF these corporations were actually people, they'd get the shit beat out of them every day on the streets.

Re:NO INCENTIVE -- NO VISION

[Anonymous Coward]

uhh, regulated utilities don't exist inside of capitalism. That's well understood by the pretty much everybody through the political spectrum except retarded shills. The reason they're regulated is because they're goverment enforced monopolies.

Re:NO INCENTIVE -- NO VISION

[AnontheDestroyer]

If you're talking about laissez faire capitalism when you say regulated utilities don't exist, then fine. Nobody wants to talk to you, but fine. Regulation can either create monopolies or destroy them, you're just a shill who is locked into one direction of thinking.

Re:NO INCENTIVE -- NO VISION

[Anonymous Coward]

However, it's wrong to just abdicate any notion of a public company having ***VISION*** to be a better/different company

Are you trying to suggest that companies have some kind of social obligation beyond just making as much money for their investors as possible? That's crazy talk, man. A corporation is simply a legal structure for extracting dollars by any means necessary. The only thing that stops them from literally holding you at gunpoint is that corporations don't have hands, and their employees are still subject to human law.

cry of a dying business

[alen]

Level 3 has been awesome, but the ISP's now have national footprints and transit prices are dropping fast. Verizon and AT&T have it because of the wireless business. Comcast will be a national network once they buy time warner.

  figure that as transit prices drop L3 and Cogent have to carry more and more data to pay the bills but they don't have enough money left to upgrade the links and want the ISP's to upgrade them. maybe the ISP's are being dicks and trying to run L3 and Cogent out of business by denying them more links and then taking their business like what happened with netflix

at this level there is no more need of transit providers as more and more content sellers will connect directly to the ISP's. so L3 and Cogent are crying network neutrality to save their business

Re:cry of a dying business

[Bengie]

Transit prices are dropping because the hardware is getting cheaper. They're still making a profit, upgrades are part of the pricing. Even if you combined Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon, you still couldn't touch the amount of transit Level 3 handles. The only thing those ISPs have going for them is having effective monopolies on the last mile.

Re:cry of a dying business

[silas_moeckel]

There networks are fine (well at least lets not get into an engineering debate) they increase internal bandwidth as needed. I say this as a customer of them with multiple 10ge ports on a half dozen providers. Comcast etc are not increasing capacity at there peering points or paid transit, they are pretty much saying we have the eyeballs and your going to pay us to reach them. They are intentionally not upgrading to force more netflix type deals while screwing over there customer base by not giving them what they paid for.

Re:cry of a dying business

[Anonymous Coward]

The future you're painting is a bit disturbing, because the service incombents are neither ISPs nor large content providers with POP networks inside the ISP networks.

New P2P applications could potentially save the day by forcing ISPISP connectivity and disrupting the payment structure.

Re:cry of a dying business

[alen]

why? there are dozens of streaming services out there that compete with pay TV and the ISP's all give them access to their network and data centers via third party CDN's at reasonable prices

Re:cry of a dying business

[alen]

so?
netflix is now sending directly to comcast and verizon and that's a huge piece of revenue lost for L3 and Cogent
figure MLB, NBA, NHL and other big video providers will jump ship as well if they get cheaper rates from verizon and comcast

Re:cry of a dying business

[alen]

the point is that comcast is doing this not to kill netflix, but to kill L3 and Cogent to grab their business.
comcast and verizon want the transit business as well. ISP's used to do hosting until amazon took it away. taking the transit business is a way to get hosting back as well

Re:cry of a dying business

[CKW]

Sounds like Amazon and Netflix and Apple and others need to get together in a joint venture with Google to really go to town with Google Fiber. Imagine if all the big BIG tech vendors threw together, AND did an IPO to get enough funding to actually do it, AND did pre-sign-ups to get average people to scream blue murder to their elected representatives demanding that the TechFiber Alliance be given the same statutory access to run and bury fiber cables across people's streets and yards like the cable co's were given 50 years ago.

Re:cry of a dying business

[alen]

yes, long line of businesses out there willing to spend thousands of $$$ per customer to run fiber in places where there already is a network run just to capture at best a 50% ratio of a $50 per month revenue business

Re:cry of a dying business

[some1into_ISP]

Level3 and Cogent won't die anytime soon just because they're international companies running inter-continental.links, providing service for a pile of financial institutions directly. On the other side, If something like Verizon, AT&T or even Comcast will drop itself into the void, the rest or the world won't suffer anyhow. The real reason behing the show is that Verizon, AT&T and Comcast doesn't want to be "the pipe". They'll rather provide the service themselves, but sloppy management doing the worse. I'd recommend Level3 and Cogent to excommunicate those "5 out of 6" without hesitating.

Re:cry of a dying business

[Areyoukiddingme]

yes, long line of businesses out there willing to spend thousands of $$$ per customer to run fiber in places where there already is a network run just to capture at best a 50% ratio of a $50 per month revenue business

No, it's not a long line. It's a very short line, but yes, they do have very good reason to do it. Google needs to do it because they own YouTube. They're in exactly the same position NetFlix was in. Comcast will be knocking at their door with their hand out any day now, if they haven't already. Google Fiber is about spending hundreds of dollars (not thousands) per customer to run fiber so they don't have to pay billions to Comcast over the next 10-20 years.

If Google doesn't choose 38 of 38 cities to roll out Google Fiber, instead of 9, they're fools. The Dane is going to come calling. They'd better have a convincing answer. 38 of 38 is about the right answer.

Re:cry of a dying business

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a very USA centric view, who cares about a national network when you can connect to a global one? And in the global space you can't do much better than Level 3.

Netflix, Google, etc are just optimizing around the cases where congestion is allowed to happen. Otherwise you can just connect to whatever provider you like, get a backup for redundancy and it just works... everywhere else but the US. Netflix upstream provider list is quite small (http://www.cidr-report.org/cgi-bin/as-report?as=AS2906&view=2.0&v=4), there are 2 in South America (where Level 3 only has one ring of fiber according to their coverage map), one in Europe but the rest are Tier 1s which give them global coverage.

The logical conclusion I see to all of this is Google who is doing which is cutting out the middleman, difference is that middleman is those "national networks" like AT&T & Comcast (see Google Fiber).

Re:cry of a dying business

[jbo5112]

ISP's have been hounding Google to pay for bandwidth at least as far back as when they bought YouTube, and even some countries (e.g. France) are trying to put pressure on them. Their policy has always been to fight difficult and expensive battles to set a favorable precedent. So far, only one company (Orange) has been successful at making Google pay for peering. In 2010 there was a study showing Google's network was the 2nd largest, only out sized by Level 3, and I think I read in a financial report that Google's network is now larger than Level 3's (article here). Google's private network to connect all their data centers operates at near 100% capacity all of the time (via OpenFlow), which was upgraded when it was considered really good to only waste 60-70% of the bandwidth. Google even builds their own network equipment because no one makes anything that will meet their needs. People were acting like Google was new to this networking game when they started to roll out Google Fiber. In reality, Google has a huge network that they manage and on the order of $10 billion in profit every year that will just rot (thanks to the Federal Reserve's inflation policies), unless Google finds ways to reinvest it. It's 3x the profit (and growing) of AT&T and Time Warner Cable combined, which are the two ISP's in my part of Kansas City.

I would guess it costs Google $300 per customer to run fiber, since that's what they charge for installation (waived with 1/yr Gigabit service), but that may not include everything Google pays for. I know they're paying $5 each for utility pole access and charge customers $100 for a replacement fiber jack and $200 for a replacement network box, which I assume includes some overhead in the price. They also do bulk installs by neighborhood instead of going all over to individual houses.

I expect they will roll out service to all 34 of the new cities in 9 metro areas ASAP, as long as the cities cooperative enough. Overland Park, a suburb of KC, had their offer revoked for asking questions. Their council was supposed to be approving the offer at a meeting, but instead decided to wait for clarification of one of the terms of the contract. I guess Google is too busy with people that are begging for service and offering their first born child for them to deal with questions at this point. They have a backlog through 2015 in the Kansas City area (city limits should be complete this year), and they still haven't announced anything for where I live, which is a painful 1/4 mile outside of a service area and less than 4 miles in any direction from Google Fiber. I'm stuck working from home with Time Warner, who also runs the connection at my data center 3 miles away, and requires me to tunnel my ssh session inside another TCP stream to avoid massive packet loss thanks to "upgrades". I never expected to lament losing the speed and reliability of dial up.

Biased

[Charliemopps]

So, just to make it clear up front... Level3 is a Tier1 provider. Basically they are an ISP to the consumer ISPs. This is how your ISP connects to the internet (that's an over simplification but it will serve our purposes here) There are other Tier1 networks that the ISPs can connect to.

The point to these peering agreements is that Netflix and other companies like them make agreements with the ISPs to elevate congestion. So Google (random example) goes to AT&T (another random example) and says "We want to sign a peering agreement with you. We'd like to use Level3 for 2 years." and if AT&T agrees they do the same. So now both companies know there will be 10gig of traffic coming at them for 2 years and they can sign a reciprocal contract with Level3. This is standard

What Netflix does that angers pretty much every ISP on the planet is that they refuse to negotiate on these agreements at all. Instead they show up and say "We're going to use Level3, and we're not going to tell you for how long. Here's a long list of conditions that may cause us to switch without notice" so the ISP is stuck not knowing how long of a contract to sign and end up losing a lot of money when Netflix switches without notice.

The Tier1 providers love this. There's nothing better if you're a network provider than a customer locked into a contract they can't get out of stuck paying for bandwidth they aren't using.

The ISPs in question are likely in negotiation with Level3 on contracts. Level3 has been using the Netflix situation to their advantage. I suspect that this blog post by their VP is just an attempt to push the issue and get them to sign deals more lucrative for level3.

Not saying the ISPs aren't sucking. But this guys words need to be taken with a grain of salt. He's not out trying to help the consumer.

Re:Biased

[Anonymous Coward]

So okay, here's what I don't get. If Level 3 (and Cogent, and others) are the ones providing the bandwidth to the consumer ISPs, and the consumer ISPs are trying to screw them, what's stopping L3/Cogent from simply telling them, "You have two options. Either you go neutral and stop screwing everyone, us included, or we pull the plug on you until you are forced to sell control of the last mile to someone who will. If you don't like it, feel free to make the huge infrastructure investments we have and provide your own transit."

Re:Biased

[Bengie]

You could always peer with Netflix. Going colo or nearest IX is an option that is relatively cheap.

Re:Biased

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm curious as to where you got info about these locked in contracts? It shows you haven't read the article, as the entire post is about peerings where no money is exchanged (links between Tier 1s). Also I'm not following why in your example Google would be going to AT&T and telling them they want to use Level3, they will just go to level 3 setup a peering with them and that's should be it.

I'm also not following your statement of

The point to these peering agreements is that Netflix and other companies like them make agreements with the ISPs to elevate congestion.

I understand this might be a bit hard to prove but I highly doubt anyone has agreements to elevate congestion. The consumer ISPs have congestion because allot of their customers want the service provided by Netflix (which last I checked they are paying for, if the customers are getting more than they are paying for then its the ISPs job to throttle them accordingly).

You are pretty much raising the base problem anyone pushing net neutrality has with leaving this to the free market, lets replace netflix with any other service (lets say the next google launches tomorrow) and you are saying they can't just buy bandwidth to the internet and be even remotely confident their service will just work without sorting out agreements with every ISP between them and their customers (which only the big boys will be capable of).

Re:Biased

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would Google want to go through Level 3 to set up a connection to an ISP (other than avoiding peering fees)? Reports are that Level 3's network is smaller than Google's. Google would, however, peer with Level 3 to gain access to a lot of individual companies who are too small and numerous to deal with directly.

Three Weeks in ISP Hell

[fullback]

I just spent three weeks in the U.S.

The internet service was like being in a third-world country, but no one would believe it if you told them.

Re:Three Weeks in ISP Hell

[Lumpy]

You are correct. Our internet here is an utter joke from end to end.

Re:Three Weeks in ISP Hell

[kamapuaa]

The US is a big country. Maybe you were in the countryside for some reason. In the Bay Area I get 50Mbps/s for cheap, my 4G is fast & cheap. I can download "Game of Thrones" in just a couple minutes. I don't really see much room for improvement.

Re:Three Weeks in ISP Hell

[operagost]

^ This post is certified 100% content free.

Re:Three Weeks in ISP Hell

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah nobody in cities in the US has issues with shitty internet. You may want to try opening your eyes from time to time.

Re:Three Weeks in ISP Hell

[dave420]

The size of the US matters not, as even in densely-populated areas internet access can suck terribly. The "oh but it's so biiiig!" argument just doesn't hold water, and the longer people keep using it to justify their terrible internet service, the longer they will have terrible internet service. I'm happy you can get 50Mbp/s, but that's hardly something to boast about. - there definitely *is* room for improvement.

Re:Three Weeks in ISP Hell

[Anonymous Coward]

Kamapuaa, go read about consumer access speeds in s. Korea or China or many of the European countries. Those countries have millions upon millions of people living on top of each other in tiny little countries. This makes it super easy to interconnect the whole country and all of its infrastructure at high speeds for cheap.

Here in the USA we are extremely spread out, especially when you leave the eastern seaboard. In theory out east coast, especially the northeast should have amazing Internet access for cheap. Everyone is really pushed together and the cities continue to grow toward the sky because that's the only way to go.

Out in the midwest and Pacific coast we have a lot more land and are quite spread out. With that said, SF and LA should have significantly better options for Internet access at cheaper prices then they do.

But hey, this is the USA where we have "capitalism" and its the companies rights to "earn" as much money as the market will allow them. As long as they make money, there is nothing to worry about. Need to break a law or two, just make sure you make more money then the courts and fees will take and its just a part of doing business.

Re:Three Weeks in ISP Hell

[Anonymous Coward]

Having been to a number of third-world (and second-world, in both political and developmental sense) countries, and I don't believe you, mostly because you aren't right.

Re:Three Weeks in ISP Hell

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you judging your Internet experience in the US based on your hotel's Internet, by chance? My experience with hotel Internet has, generally, been very poor -- especially as compared to my home and work Internet. Hotel Internet is usually suitable for email and very light browsing, but little more. Don't expect to game or watch streaming video of any quality. However, I understand some hotels are offering a more premium Internet experience for an additional free.

Re:Three Weeks in ISP Hell

[alen]

all you have to do is get off wifi and get your modem switched out to a DOCISS 3 modem

i'm in a city and being on wifi is a path to shitty internet with 20 people around me streaming netflix at the same time. went to ethernet and everything works with no more disconnects

Re:Three Weeks in ISP Hell

[Anonymous Coward]

Symmetric gigabit Ethernet in the Tokyo apartment and symmetric 100Mb/s in the countryside - and the telco guy (in a physical store no less!) was ashamedly apologetic (in that suicidally Japanese fashion) about the fact they could provide only 100Mb/s in the countryside.

Japan rocks.

Re:Three Weeks in ISP Hell

[Anonymous Coward]

Speak for yourself. In the heart of Atlanta, I get 25 Mbps for $70/month.

Re:Three Weeks in ISP Hell

[Anonymous Coward]

There is certainly room for improvement everywhere, but the complaint was about how internet sucks in "the US". The US is a big place with lots of variation.

It's like saying that I just spent three weeks in the eastern hemisphere and it was too cold for my tastes. Without any sort of context, it's a meaningless statement.

Re:Three Weeks in ISP Hell

[wilson_c]

I spend about $2k/month in a dense Los Angeles business area for a symmetric 50Mbps fibre ethernet connection from AT&T.

My father-in-law pays about $65/month for symmetric 1Gbps+ fiber (we were unable to get a max number on the connection since his router was limited to 1Gbps max port speed) to his house in a remote rural Norwegian mountain town. His prices will be going down in a couple years after the town co-op behind his connection has paid off their initial infrastructure investments, which they managed without government subsidy or corporate investment. They delivered buried fibre to the exterior of every single house in the town whether the resident had committed to being a subscriber or not.

I'd say there's plenty of room for improvement in the US. We have a handful of providers who deliver overpriced, bad service with even worse support. They are allowed to do this with almost no regulation because it has been decreed that an unfettered free market will deliver the best product for the lowest cost and that is why the US is the greatest something or other. We will not let clear evidence to the contrary sway our opinion.

USA=Third World Internet

[hackus]

I do lots of different work on different AT&T networks.

1) Equipment is ancient. Most of the AT&T network is FAST Ethernet, some switches I have worked on are from 2001. Upgrade times for these pieces of gear, incluidng one ancient 2948G distribution switch for AT&T's Uverse concentrator point?

Never.

2) IPv6. Should be upgraded already. Really. My own house network, my lab all of it runs IPv6. Throughput gains on IPv6 vs IPv4 is impressive.

Really, like 20% performance upgrade running the exact same protocols on a IPv6 stack.

When will IPv6 come to the USA?

Exactly when the upgrade approval process clears the NSA and they have the budget and the time, to rewrite all of thier spy crap to work with IPv6.

Otherwise providers are FORBIDDEN to upgrade any portion of their networks to IPv6 without NSA direct approval.

Sounds kinda crappy eh

Sorta sucks I know, but you didn't think consolidation of internet service in the United States into one company is being driven by market forces do you?

No, it is being driven by the NSA who doesn't want to work with a myriad of companies to do their dirty work.

Much easier to conduct financial and industrial espionage on companies to fund your latest terrorist group off the books if you can just control ONE company.

3) Don't expect management to get any better either. With all of the lawlessness with regards to Anti Trust acts just about being violated everyday, the law has been tossed out the window along with customer service, any possible equipment upgrades.

Just not going to happen with 1 or two companies around who secretly meet anyway and rigg everything from the stock offerings, to workers salaries...etc.

Re:USA=Third World Internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a very good ad for IPv6:
- better performance
- reduced NSA surveillance (and therefore I expect reduced surveillance from everybody else as the NSA is most likely to upgrade their spy gear first given their ginormous oversize budget...).

Re:USA=Third World Internet

[wiggles]

>providers are FORBIDDEN to upgrade any portion of their networks to IPv6 without NSA direct approval.

Source? The signal you're picking up through your tinfoil hat doesn't count.

Re:USA=Third World Internet

[Bill_the_Engineer]

When will IPv6 come to the USA?

I've had IPv6 provided by Comcast (yea Comcast) for about a year now. Maybe you should find a different ISP.

Re: USA=Third World Internet

[Anonymous Coward]

He probably can't.

Re:USA=Third World Internet

[BitZtream]

2) IPv6. Should be upgraded already. Really. My own house network, my lab all of it runs IPv6. Throughput gains on IPv6 vs IPv4 is impressive.

Really, like 20% performance upgrade running the exact same protocols on a IPv6 stack.

Either your full of shit or theres some traffic control going on the ipv4 network that isn't on the ipv6 network packets.

IPv6 by design will always be slower over the same wire, it has more packet overhead

the rest of your post is just you talking out your ass about things you don't understand

Re:USA=Third World Internet

[Anonymous Coward]

IPv6 by design will always be slower over the same wire, it has more packet overhead

1. IPv6 doesn't recalculate its checksum on every TTL hop.

2. No packet fragmentation at router level.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...

the rest of your post is just you talking out your ass about things you don't understand

No empty quoting.

Re:USA=Third World Internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Throughput gains on IPv6 vs IPv4 is impressive.

Really, like 20% performance upgrade running the exact same protocols on a IPv6 stack.

That's interesting. What's the reason?

I thought there wasn't much difference: http://www.computer.org/csdl/p...

Re:USA=Third World Internet

[WaffleMonster]

IPv6 by design will always be slower over the same wire, it has more packet overhead

I think in principal there should not be (much of) a difference yet wouldn't discount those who report otherwise in specific deployments. I've heard the 20% figure tossed around at IETF meetings with major vendors and operators in the room but it is only applicable to some Internet latency measurements not LANs.

There is some small performance benefit in IPv6 in form of removal of IP layer checksums and per-hop fragmentation having effect of reduced per-hop processing overhead.

While additional IPv6 header overhead is non-existant (~1%) at full MTU it can be significant (~20%) for realtime VoIP and games where per-packet payloads often 100 bytes.

Have a feeling there are more interesting factors involved with people seeing IPv6 to be faster for them. On LANs some offload features (e.g. large send offload) are notorious for creating odd performance issues ... and such features may have different behavior or simply be unavailable for IPv6 having effect of significantly reducing latency. There may be ICMP filtering in place different from IPv4 providing active port availability feedback rather than timing out connection and naming resources. On IPv6 name resolution might leverage LLMNR over a slower option.

Over Internet it could be different routing or simply relatively less resource utilization across IPv6 specific elements.

Parents NSA garbage is particularly amusing considering biggest media and biggest ISPs whom we all assume to be most in-bed with NSA were the *first* to deploy IPv6. Not to mention significant effect on IPv6 ecosystem due to administrative mandate forcing all US government sites to be IPv6 accessible.

Re:USA=Third World Internet

[Bengie]

IPv6 is faster, but with my limit background but decent understanding, am going to say it's only slightly faster in the way of computation, but could have minor benefits now and biggest benefits in the future because of much smaller routing tables. I wouldn't say "20%" faster, because most hardware does IPv4 at line rate, so you can't get any faster, but IPv6 is technically simpler, so it should have a minor benefit.

My guess is the only major benefit is smaller routing tables, so unless that's a limit factor, there should be almost no difference. Mind oyu, fragmentation is on the rise, so the routing tables are growing fast for IPv4.

Re:USA=Third World Internet

[Anonymous Coward]

IPv6 by design will always be slower over the same wire, it has more packet overhead

There's actually one scenario where it can be true. IPv6 supports jumbograms which can archive higher throughput (assuming you have no packet drops). Of course, the support for it is pretty shitty currently, so it's pretty unlikely that OP would be talking about it.

Level 3 to pay?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't that be the other way around?

L3, Cogent and Others Crying Wolf

[jchawk]

Peering agreements are established between different networks to further the common interests of both network providers.

For example - Cogent and Verizon reach a peering agreement of 100 megabit. This is a dedicated symmetrical connection between the two companies. They do this because in theory it is cheaper to swap data directly rather then pay a 3rd party to transmit the data between the two networks.

Now what happens when Cogent goes and sells a bunch of cheap bandwidth to various providers like Netflix and begins flooding relatively one way traffic onto Verizon's network? Well they saturated the 100 megabit connection in one direction. Verizon who isn't anywhere close to the saturation point on their side says hey if you want more bandwidth you have to pay for it because we're not using anywhere near what you are and these agreements are supposed to be fairly equal with respect to traffic flows.

Level 3 and Cogent are both guilty of selling cheap bandwidth to internet companies who mostly only send traffic one way. Video, Music, etc... You can't expect the other side of the peer to just keep expanding the circuit to accommodate your horrible business model.

I'm not a huge fan of any of these companies Verizon, Comcast, Level 3 or Cogent but Level 3 and Cogent are both in the wrong given their current agreements and since they can't reach a deal in private they are parading this out in public and trying to make a spectacle.

Re:L3, Cogent and Others Crying Wolf

[Cyberax]

That might matter if we're talking about transit networks where reciprocity makes sense (i.e. "I'll forward your traffic if you forward mine").

However, Comcast is overwhelmingly an 'eyeball' network - its customers PAY to get access to this music/video. By refusing to setup additional peering interconnects Comcast hurts its own customers. If there was some real competition then they'll be under pressure to optimize their infrastructure and reach an agreement with transit providers on fair and equitable grounds.

Some people also mix an issue of transit there. For example, if L3 and Comcast have a peering interconnect in Dallas, for example, and L3 wants to use it to send traffic to Comcast customers in San Francisco then it _might_ make sense to ask L3 to pay fair price for long-distance transit.

Re:L3, Cogent and Others Crying Wolf

[Anonymous Coward]

And why is Verizon suddenly getting all this traffic? Because their customers, who already pay them, have requested it. Cogent isn't some malicious entity out to get Verizon, it is giving Verizon data that Verizon requested.

Re:L3, Cogent and Others Crying Wolf

[king neckbeard]

Your argument might be more compelling if there was a reason for these connections to need to be symmetrical, but there's not. Comcast customers want the Netflix data to flow to them, and Netflix wants the data to flow to them.

Re:L3, Cogent and Others Crying Wolf

[Ryanrule]

shill harder bro

Re:L3, Cogent and Others Crying Wolf

[alen]

and now verizon and comcast are going to take a lot of Level 3's business along with Cogent's because they refused to upgrade their part of the network and ran to the blogs

Re:L3, Cogent and Others Crying Wolf

[Bengie]

Let me get this strait, Level 3 sells bandwidth of the highest quality to a company, routes it around the world with nearly no congestion, then offers to peer with an ISP for free, meaning that ISP doesn't need to route the data around the world themselves, the ISP refuses because they think the data should be not only handed to them on a silver platter, but also get paid; and you think Level 3 has a "horrible" business model?

Re:L3, Cogent and Others Crying Wolf

[Xylantiel]

Exactly. The ISPs are holding their subscribers hostage. i.e. abusing their monopoly power to get paid twice for the same service.

Re:L3, Cogent and Others Crying Wolf

[nine-times]

However, Comcast is overwhelmingly an 'eyeball' network

It's worth noting, however, that Comcast (and others) try to make sure they're "eyeball" networks. For many years, ISPs have been offering things like "20 mbps downloads, 1 mbps upload." You make it sound a little too much like, "Poor Comcast. They only get the 'eyeball' business, while Cogent and Level 3 go around courting customers looking for mass distribution!" Really, these ISPs have been trying to turn the Internet into more of a broadcast model for years, specifically in the hopes of capitalizing on continued control of the distribution channels to consumers.

Comcast is being paid by their users specifically so that they can access the content that's coming into their network through Level 3. Being able to provide that content quickly is exactly what they're being paid to do, but they refuse to spend their profits to build the infrastructure to provide fast access. Meanwhile, if they want a piece of the action in selling the "cheap bandwidth to internet companies who mostly only send traffic one way", then all they have to do is provide a reliable connection with a decent upload rate.

Re:L3, Cogent and Others Crying Wolf

[Anonymous Coward]

Netflix only sends traffic that an ISP's customer requests. In your example you imply that content providers like Netflix flood data to the ISP's network, but all of that data was explicitly requested by an ISP customer who is paying that ISP to deliver the data they requested.

As for asymmetry, of course it's asymmetric! The ISP provides asymmetric links to all residential customers becuase it is expected that these customers are primarily content consumers.

Re:L3, Cogent and Others Crying Wolf

[alen]

while true, L3 and Cogent both knew the maximum bandwidth of their settlement free peering connections and still took on the netflix business. against their existing contacts. if they didn't have the ability to deliver the traffic they should have bought the special ports on the ISP's side like they were supposed to

back in the day they would make you pay up if you sent too much traffic to them against the settlement agreement

Re:L3, Cogent and Others Crying Wolf

[ChrisSlicks]

ISP traffic has always been asymmetrical, 90% down, 10% up. It wasn't until peer-to-peer networking took off that the balance started to swing a little, and then the ISP's were complaining because their up-link bandwidth was getting saturated over the coax nodes.

Now that streaming video is becoming a common place thing the percentage has swung back up and we are probably 95% down, 5% up on the ISP network. They're all upgrading their last mile connections so you can have 50Mbit+ to the home, but if you're streaming from Netflix you're lucky if you get 2Mbit due to congestion at the inter-connects. We're paying these ISP's a shit-ton of money (comparatively), they should be able to maintain a respectable level of service. They've upgraded every part of their network except the part that is really important, because they think they can make a buck. And since they effectively have a monopoly the customer is being held hostage.

Bottom line is the ISP is responsible for getting the customer's traffic from point A to point B, that's what we pay for. It doesn't matter where it comes from, they should be able to adapt their network to suit the customer's needs.

Re:L3, Cogent and Others Crying Wolf

[phorm]

Level 3 and Cogent are both guilty of selling cheap bandwidth to internet companies who mostly only send traffic one way

OK... but, WHO CARES.
They're sending the traffic one-way because the CUSTOMERS of Verizon, Comcast, etc are REQUESTING the traffic. What is the internet without content?

Re:L3, Cogent and Others Crying Wolf

[Anonymous Coward]

Peering agrements call for balance, yes. But they ALSO have provisions for *im*balance, where one of the parties will PAY as TRANSIT for the excess imbalance.

Although this is level3 we're talking about: they will only peer with other tier-1 and quasi-tier1 (Congent :p), that's about 13 intercontinental ISPs with dark fiber on submarine cables across most oceans and continents.

Everyone else is just a transit client (not a peer) for level3. Saturated connections might just mean they are not paying for a large enough connection to level3, and are huge bandwidth SINKS (i.e.these are clearly end-user internet access sleazeball providers like Comcast). Because you can actually properly control outgoing traffic, and if you don't want to increase your level3 transit bill, you just divert more traffic to someone else with a cheaper link (and to peering links)).

So, yes, level3 is just telling you that sleazeball internet access providers are not buying enough level3 transit to properly serve their internet connection end-users. I call them sleazeballs, because on top of not paying for enough transit to actually serve their clients well, these assholes will also brownbeat content providers into paying to peer with them (which *decreases* the amount of transit they'd have to pay for).

A depeering punition would cause these internet access providers billions on loses. That's unfortunately not something you can do for several reasons, and which you will avoid like all heck even if the contracts say that you can do it.

Search for "on the economics of internet peering" (also published in ACM), so that you can actually learn about what you're talking about. And read the CAIDA findings as well.

Re:L3, Cogent and Others Crying Wolf

[Anonymous Coward]

Level3 never peers with ISPs for "free". Ever. They might peer with you if you can prove you'll have a balanced connection (less than 5% difference between incoming and outgoing), but you'd need to have a HUGE traffic potential, well above 10Gbps. You need to be a very large tier-2 or tier-1 ISP-of-ISPs to manage that.

Normal ISPs (either content providers or internet access providers) have to buy transit from level3, beause the peering point would always be skewed too far to one of the sides.

Re:L3, Cogent and Others Crying Wolf

[thejynxed]

Not only that, but it's rather hilarious to hear Verizon and Comcast complain about Level 3, considering Level 3 is how -any- of their customers even contact servers and other infrastructure on the AT&T backbones, Europe, Canada, and South America for that matter. And by customers, I mean also their own various corporate campuses, some of which hilariously enough, lie right in the middle of AT&T territory.

Re:L3, Cogent and Others Crying Wolf

[Rich0]

Now what happens when Cogent goes and sells a bunch of cheap bandwidth to various providers like Netflix and begins flooding relatively one way traffic onto Verizon's network? Well they saturated the 100 megabit connection in one direction. Verizon who isn't anywhere close to the saturation point on their side says hey if you want more bandwidth you have to pay for it because we're not using anywhere near what you are and these agreements are supposed to be fairly equal with respect to traffic flows.

So, if I go download 47 movies from Netflix can I point out to Verizon that they're dumping 50Mbps of data onto my LAN with nothing but ACKs going in the other direction? How much is Verizon supposed to pay me for my FIOS connection, since I'm doing them the favor of taking all that video traffic off of their network?

Of course the ISPs have more data going in than out - they are full of customers who only download data. Their customers have already paid for the expense of transferring all that data.

Paying to transmit packets made more sense for Tier-1 networks that only route between other networks, since they don't actually create demand for traffic. That model doesn't make sense for networks that actually contain clients that create demand for data - they wouldn't be receiving data if they didn't ask for it.

Much as I suspected

[kheldan]

The ISPs are creating a false scarcity in order to try to improve their profits. At the same time they're saving money by refusing to improve capacity. It's time for this bullshit to end.

Re:Much as I suspected

[Lumpy]

MOST ISP's are running on gear that is over 12 years old or older. they refuse to upgrade it even by extreme 10 year standards.

Dead Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Peering agreements are between two organizations, not between two organizations with a tier-1 between them. Netflix's peering agreement was not through level-1, it was direct between comcast and netflix. Tier-1 providers are the intermediary between non-peering entities, and tier-1 providers peer with those entities.

Re:Dead Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. @Charliemopps, that is not how the internet works.

As AC tries to explain:

Netflix _pays_ Level3 for internet access (Level3 is a tier1 so has connectivity to the whole internet). _Pays_ being the important word here
You _pay_ your ISP for internet, and they _pay_ a tier1 for access. From the money you pay. No reason to ask Netflix for money.

The actual situation is more difficult because ISPs and content providers also peer. That is, they connect to each other, and pay each other nothing for the privilege. This makes sense because both parties pay less to their tier1 or transit provider.

Nationalize the Internet in America

[fallen1]

First, let me be clear -- I'm not a big fan of this idea, but after looking at the problem from multiple angles this idea keeps coming up as the best way to spur competition and end the debate on network neutrality.

A few steps to stop this greed from happening, hopefully:

a) A clear, concise Bill of Internet Rights.
-- This must be done in order to alleviate a lot of the crap going on now. There should be terms that explicitly disallow government agencies from piping internet traffic through their data centers for "analysis" of anything WITHOUT A NON-SECRET COURT ORDER. If it can't stand up the light of day, it doesn't fit with principles this country was founded upon and which hundreds of thousands of men and women have died to uphold. Stop being assholes and running roughshod over the Constitution.
-- This must be done to guarantee privacy. As much as can be, anyway.
-- This must be done to guarantee that all data is treated equally with the obvious need for quality assurance. No more congesting nodes, no more content owner also owns the delivery network so it can shutout competition, no more "you pay us, again, for the bandwidth that our customer who requested your info has already paid for."

b) Nationalize the Distribution Lines
-- All copper, fiber, interconnects, and so on are nationalized.
-- A plan is put into place to guarantee (almost) everyone in the United States good data speeds (10mb/s up and down - minimum) by adding more and more fiber. I say (almost) because there are some VERY remote places where people live and it will take time (plus more money) to reach them. If 90% of the population can be served, including rural areas, then that would be great.
-- Everyone who wishes to be an ISP pays THE SAME per connection. Yes, that would mean someone in Small Town, Iowa costs the same as someone in New York to connect to the internet. The overhead of the ISP will determine what $XX.xx is added to the government mandated $YY.yy and here's the rub - customer service comes back to the forefront and actually means something because the Public will know what the $YY.yy is. Competition to gain and keep customers based on price alone should vanish as value-added services and real customer service return to the industry.
-- We have a glut of workers needing work. Teach them to lay fiber optic cable and copper if needed. Put them to work moving the United States back to the top of the chart in broadband/internet access. In this day and age it is a necessity, not a luxury. Easily as ubiquitous today as the telephone and mail were in their days.

I'm probably missing a massive hole in my theory (greed being at the top of that list), but if this was done it would foster intense competition and new ideas as one would not be held back by thinking "I will get blocked out by Company A because they have a grip on distribution of a similar idea." Freedom from the so-called content creators of today locking down sections of the internet or using their power to double and triple-dip the pockets of consumers and competitors.

Re:Nationalize the Internet in America

[rhodie]

Want to see the least efficient way to do just about anything? Look at the federal government...

Re:Nationalize the Internet in America

[eudaemon]

So true! That REA was a complete waste of money (for instance).

Re:Nationalize the Internet in America

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't have an Internet Bill of Rights if you do not intend to guarantee them for 100% of the population.

But, for those 10% rural customers, the government could also take over the TV satellites that are currently being used to reach them. Of course, they'll have to launch a few THOUSAND more to "guarantee" 10Mb/s for EVERYONE who wishes to use them.

You also can't teach someone to lay fiber in a day.

Re:Nationalize the Internet in America

[Anonymous Coward]

No internet connection left behind. You're a fucking genius. Bush are you there?

Re:Nationalize the Internet in America

[volmtech]

My God! Someone on the internet has a plan to fix the Internet congestion problem instead of just bitching. Good work.

The Internet is Becoming a Network of...

[EmagGeek]

... walled gardens.

Verizon will have an Internet for its customers, that everyone outside will have to pay to access. Verizon is basically trying to create a model where the Internet at large must pay for access to its customers eyeballs.

Other ISPs are following suit.

In competitive markets there isn't a problem

[Bruce66423]

As the article makes clear, where ISPs are liable to be left by consumers who are unimpressed with their service, there isn't an issue. It's only because these ISPs can't be avoided that they have the clout to pull this stunt. Markets are good - Americans don't have a free market in ISP provision, a true irony!

short-term pass agreement

[globaljustin]

maybe i'm just arguing semantics, but here is where you give them a pass:

That's basically a non-starter in today's capitalism

says who?

that's an honest question...how could we test the falsifiablility of your statement that "having vision is basically a non-starter"?

how can we know that is true? what conditions would have to be present?

is there something systemic that physically prevents a company from having vision and, as you say:

It sounds like you're advocating for some sense of social responsibility outside the market.

My answer is that only by looking purely at the short-term outcome could you arrive at their business model. So it does make sense to have "no vision" if you only look at short-term consequences.

We know that there are more than short-term consequences, so **on a long enough timeline** every short-sighted company will adapt or fail.

but to be honest, I think we agree...so maybe my comment is entirely semantic

Keep Pressing The Public Comment Channels

[Bob9113]

Yesterday, the net neutrality petition passed the halfway mark, with 18 days left to go. The FCC request for comments is still live and looking for your feedback, and Mozilla has an alternative in the offing.

Keep the pressure on, keep posting these things on your social networks, keep telling your friends. The only thing less effective than telling the government what we want is not telling them what we want. It is a double edged sword; either they do as we say, or we get one more bit of documentation to support reforming the government.

Re:Keep Pressing The Public Comment Channels

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, so the petition gets the required signatures. Then they've said they have to...comment on the petition. Congratulations, nothing changes.

Cut the connection

[Anonymous Coward]

Level 3 should just cut the connection for a day

Re:Ads

[Richy_T]

This is why Chewbacca lives on Endor.

Time for IPv6 Mesh networks

[Anonymous Coward]

IF the big boys can't play nice, it's time for us to engineer a simple SOHO based solution that uses WIFI, Infrared, UV and Visible light to build and maintain regional Mesh networks. Partner with loon and put them all out of business.

Re:Ads

[Anonymous Coward]

Who knew Chewbacca was an original Furry? Does that violate Rule 34?

Would you like to know more?

[ArhcAngel]

For anyone who actually wants to know as much as possible about the situation before they defend their position to the death Dr. Peering has a somewhat unbiased writeup about the arguments from both sides of the Netflix/Comcast debate.

My take is that the overselling of all-you-can-eat broadband will need to come to an end as Comcast (any ISP that employs the practice) simply cannot sustain an uncongested and reliable network as long as they rely on it. An unpopular idea but one that needs to be considered.

Not entirely true

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, the government "sponsors" these monopolies, but the corporations sponsor the government, so it's more an issue that the American electorate is lazy, stupid and apathetic. People take what they're given and keep their mouths shut--it's the American Way. If such monopolies are to be broken, and if consumers are to get the kind of super-fast, cheap internet that's available in Asia and parts of Europe, then we need to wrest the power away from the corporations by voting for politicians who are beholden to no one but the voters.

It just won't ever happen.

VERY slow page load...

[ilsaloving]

Perhaps they shouldn't be hosting their blog server on one of those 6 ISPs.

Details please

[Sycraft-fu]

Because I get real tired of hearing stuff like this completely context free.

Where were you? What kind of net connection did you have? Where are you from? What kind of net connection do you have there? What kind of latency do you see? What kind of download speeds do you get from large download providers? What is your packet loss like? Etc, etc.

Reason I say that is because I live in the US and if my Internet is "like being in a third-world country" then we've reached the point where the third-world is connected pretty well and I'd love to know what you think is good.

I have 150/20mbps cable Internet. Speedtests bear that out, the connection has the backhaul to support that speed. I get those kind of speeds to another ISP/server about 350 miles away, and get close to them (120ish) to one across the entire nation (1700 miles away). Steam downloads go at 17-18MBytes/sec. Latency is very low, the biggest part being the first hop going from Ethernet to HFC to the CMTS, which is like 6-8ms. My ISP is pretty well peered so latency stays low, around under 100ms to pretty much all of the US (remember the US is larger then western Europe) and usually 30ms or so to things in my geographic region. Packet loss is more or less non-existent, less than 0.01% normally.

Then of course there's work. Right now I see 338mbits down 429mbits up, again to a test server in another state (350 miles away or so) and on a different ISP. Even that is as much their limit as ours, realistically we have more speed.

So what, precisely, is third world about my connection? What am I lacking that is so much better in your country?

Because in general, I'm calling bullshit. I've actually traveled a fair bit, and I find that the Internet elsewhere is not nearly as amazing as advertised by uninformed geeks on Slashdot. I find I have it pretty good at home, that it is rare anyone can compete.

Of course the US is pretty big, and pretty varied. You could tuck all of western Europe inside it and still have room to spare for a number of other nations. So it might not be that huge a surprise to find out that it varies quite a bit, and what is true in one place is not true the whole country through.

Re:Details please

[Anonymous Coward]

I've lived in Chicago for the past 3 years. I lived in Portugal before that, and I still have a company there, with internet connection. I pay almost $90/month to Comcast (my only available choice) for 50/10 Mbps. I pay 36€ (around $50) in Portugal for a fiber (FTTH) connection of 100/10 Mbps (http://meo.pt/pacotes/mais-pacotes/todos-os-pacotes-meo/fibra/net-voz) guaranteed inside their network (and I always get 11MBytes/s from my German servers). Before that I had DSL with a different company, and before that cable with a third company. I had options. Both these prices (Comcast and Sapo) are with taxes, fees and after the initial promotional period ends. I connect to both using wired ethernet thru exactly the same model router running exactly the same version of OpenWRT.

On exactly the same laptop, the Comcast connection sometimes doesn't load pages and I have to hit refresh on the browser 3 or 4 times before I get to see the page. It happens a couple of times per day. I work with servers in Germany and France, and a couple of times per day the connection to France doubles the latency (from around 120ms to 260ms) and at the same time packet loss goes up to 70%. I've gone thru 3 modems and the problems persist. I've moved from a Chicago suburb (Oak Park) which has a different CMTS and the problems persist. Traceroute shows the problem on the US side.

On Comcast I completely lose my connection about 4/5 times a day. All active SSH connections stall, Skype calls, you name it. Port 25 is blocked on Comcast.

In the last 6 months alone I've called them 4 times with service outages of several hours. I won't go into the billing problems as i'll stick to technical issues only.

My fiber connection in Portugal has ONE problem, and i'd say it's minor: once every day it disconnects, exactly 24h to the second after it first connected.

I have also worked from a Cox cable connection in Phoenix, AZ: although more stable than my Comcast connection, it's still WAY overpriced. And it did fail once or twice in a week.

At a hackerspace here in Chicago we also had a microwave connection from Cogent. It was so unreliable and slow it was actually replaced for Comcast. Which just last week failed for 6 hours after a power outage lasting about a minute.

Would you also like to discuss wireless service and the utter crap it is? No SMS delivery notifications, lots of dropped calls, WAY overpriced, paying to receive spam texts, slow data, bringing in the phone from Europe and paying exactly the same as someone who has a subsidized phone... I could go on forever.

CONSUMER internet connections in Chicago are utter GARBAGE. I won't generalize to the whole US or business connections for which I have no data, but from what I can see online, at least the overpriced part is true around this whole country.

Re:Details please

[fullback]

Her are those details:

I live in Japan and not in the middle of a city. I'm in a suburban area and have lived in what would be considered almost rural at one time.

I've had fiber for over 13 years. The only time I've ever had a service interruption was during the major earthquake 3 years ago. Internet came back up within an hour, though. That was the only time I've had a power outage too, in over 22 years of living in Japan.

I was in several major cities the southeast U.S. - Orlando, Atlanta, Nashville, etc. I needed to ftp data to my servers and it was almost impossible. So slow that I had to give up and wait until I returned home. I was at a friend's house and he lost internet service at least once per week. He had to scream answers for 5 minutes through his phone to a silly automated service before he could talk to a person. He said he has to do it weekly...

I couldn't get any emails from Asia through his connection. They're all blocked, and those were from the major ISP's in Japan - NTT and Softbank. Blocked! Every foreign web server was like pulling teeth.

Public WiFi was, well, pathetic.

It has nothing to do with size of the country. I had faster, more reliable service in the middle of nowhere surrounded by rice paddies in Japan 10 years ago than exists in U.S. urban areas now.

The reason is that there is competition in Japan. No area franchises. It's a free country.

Re:Details please

[gmhowell]

You continue to make the mistake of conflating your minimal experience with that of the entire US. Not saying you didn't have issues. Not saying your friend's situation doesn't suck. Just saying it's not the whole picture.

Re:Details please

[Anonymous Coward]

Another 1 line fart reply from gmhowell!

No you don't

[Sycraft-fu]

Either you don't do what you say you do, or your AFDB is too tight and it is causing you to hallucinate.

The real solution...

[Antony T Curtis]

The real solution is that:
1. More content needs to be accessible via peer-to-peer.
2. ISPs need to have content proxies and encourage their users to use them.
3. Don't use "transparent proxies" because they're frequently worse than useless.
4. Static data shouldn't be served via HTTPS but instead by some kind of GPG content encoding via HTTP so that it may be cached.

Just my 2.

wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

If your government is so corrupt it can't manage a highway system or other transit systems then your citizens are unfit to deserve representative democracy and on their way to despotism; the last phase in the cycle of life for all democracies.

Internet as a transit system for packets to freely travel, should be no different and it costs orders of magnitude much less than roads. Government overhead (corruption and waste) is LESS than the profit margins in the private sector; now when you get too corrupt and the cost can be higher than the private sector it is only for a moment, because it's not long before that corruption spreads into contractor deals which provide a market of competing corrupting forces which further undermine results. Due to the fact a functioning government would realize the higher costs of properly supervised contractors (most the time) it's likely most the time a transition occurs it's a sign of increased corruption. I've witnessed this at the city level where they will smear and try to break government services with the goal of creating an excuse to help out a contractor friend; but other times it's already a legitimate mess or something that can't compete with the private sector without creating a federation of many cities to spread out the costs.

Sure there are beneficial situations on all sides but those conditions differ and even if you had everything in perfect balance, it wouldn't stay that way. It is foolish to just assume government always does things poorly just as it is to assume it always does things best.

I've worked in government. There are honest hard working people as well as dishonest and lazy people; it's not a much different ratio... although it seemed like there were more stupid people doing the easier jobs. Altruism and loyalty to the "company" in government workers (to gov, party, politician, and/or society) was extremely high and relatively dead in private sector (except for founders where the company is like their child - I don't think I met any gov worker who as attached.)

More choices than you would think

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what I tended to think, I live in a rural area and I thought I would have only one choice, DSL through the telco. It took a bit of looking around but there were several other completely viable options. First off we have several fixed wireless services available in our area all at quite reasonable prices. Secondly I've got a wireless access card that works off of cell networks, and it works reasonably well at my home though of course data rates & restrictions are problematic. Finally Hughes net service has come down quite a bit, 20 GB at 10/1 for $60 a month is on par with my local ISP (without the cap but less throughput (5/0.768)) Sure there are some areas where you don't have a choice, but its nowhere near 90%.

Same old, same old

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't this the same regulatory & legal framework that basically made it legal for ISPs to advertise one speed and provide a service that was NOWHERE NEAR THAT SPEED? Somehow I'm having trouble believing that a lawsuit will go anywhere.

So crazy it just might work

[giltwist]

You know how the US Postal Service is basically going bankrupt? The White House basically blames this on the shift to email. So, in an effort to continue its basic mission of enabling citizens to communicate quickly and reliably with each other, how about we make the USPS a nationalized internet common carrier at the Federal minimum definition of broadband? This will allow existing ISPs to continue to remain unregulated by the common carrier rules, but will provide a meaningful alternative to the (literally) entrenched monopolies? Comcast will be unable to reasonably argue that a 4/1 connection is unfair competition when their top tier services are more than 10 times that speed.

he can't possibly have a source

[Anonymous Coward]

he can't possibly have a source; this is the NSA we're talking about. So we need to go by actual facts and consequences, not what people say, because spooks like to lie, that's their job.

They could have 20% throughput gain if they switched, but the NSA won't let them? Sounds good.

But why hasn't China switched yet, to get that 20% gain?

FCC ECFS web got spammed

[Anonymous Coward]

The public comment section got spammed.
Many more than 10k similar comments per day.

Makes it impossible to see what folks actually think about the issue.
Not helpful for net neutrality, but helpful if you don't want the proceeding to do anything.

Anybody have any suggestions for how to read the proceedings without the spam.

Perhaps the FCC limiting comments to 10 per IP address per day would help.

Re:Ads

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm browsing on the mobile, and there's an ad clearly designed to appeal to the site's readership's sexuality. It shows an attractive woman dressed as a storm trooper holding a storm trooper helmet. Is this what you faggots get off on? Do you like women to dress as men in uniform and wear full face covering helmets while you fuck them? Curious minds want to know.

4chan down or something?

Cable company monopolies

[packrat0x]

They may not be de jure monopolies, but they are de facto monopolies. And it's for one simple reason: cable franchise fees. The county/parrish/city receives a percentage of the gross revenue collected within their borders. The more money people pay, the more revenue local government collects. An additional provider would only split the customer base, push prices lower, and lower total customer payments (at least in the eyes of government). There is no incentive for government to encourage another provider to enter the local market, and every incentive to discourage additional providers. And it doesn't matter if we consider this rational, it only matters if it's considered rational by local officials.

So let's see here

[Sycraft-fu]

You have one point, and you are overgeneralizing to the whole nation. Gotcha.

Your friend had Internet problem. Guess what? It happens. He should have worked on getting them fixed, you can do that. Mine doesn't have problems, I haven't talked to tech support for them in years.

As for the slow rates, ever consider maybe your server's connection was the issue? Where were those servers? If you were hosting them at home, well it may be your ISP isn't as great as you think. They may give you a big link, and they may get that data to a few areas, but they may have crap backhaul and thus be low speed to places like the US and Europe.

So ya, you had a bad experience, without much in the way of testing or diagnosis, and you now think an entire country of 350,000,000 people and 3.8 million square miles is the same... Project/overgeneralize much?

Backpressure

[CmdrTamale]

Tier 1 transit/backbone might want to consider charging 'peers' for dropped packets they tried to deliver. It is kind of a waste of effort to transit a packet and get it refused/wasted.

Does that make any sense at all?

As if anything in this money chasing, service denying, monopolising realm might.
--
If that's wireless ethernet, then I need a wireless cable. And BNC connectors.