Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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.
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.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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?
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.