Google Fiber: No Charge For Peering, No Fast Lanes

An anonymous reader writes "Addressing the recent controversy over Netflix paying ISPs directly for better data transfer speeds, Google's Director of Network Engineering explains how their Fiber server handles peering. He says, 'Bringing fiber all the way to your home is only one piece of the puzzle. We also partner with content providers (like YouTube, Netflix, and Akamai) to make the rest of your video's journey shorter and faster. (This doesn't involve any deals to prioritize their video 'packets' over others or otherwise discriminate among Internet traffic — we don't do that.) Like other Internet providers, Google Fiber provides the 'last-mile' Internet connection to your home. ... So that your video doesn't get caught up in this possible congestion, we invite content providers to hook up their networks directly to ours. This is called 'peering,' and it gives you a more direct connection to the content that you want. ... We don't make money from peering or colocation; since people usually only stream one video at a time, video traffic doesn't bog down or change the way we manage our network in any meaningful way — so why not help enable it?'"

Comments

terminology

[Eyezen]

Fiber server? huh?

I realize that it's all marketing hooey, but I wish that the director of network engineering for google wouldn't mish mash terminology like that. Keep that for the marketing droids.

Re: terminology

[Anonymous Coward]

He didn't. Blame Soulskill for that one.

Re:terminology

[geekoid]

The phrase 'Fiber Server' does not appear in the article.
Blame the submitter.

Re:terminology

[borcharc]

They list their peering policy as Selective in their peeringdb entry https://www.peeringdb.com/priv.... They should have an open peering policy. Or is only open if you are a interesting content provider?

Re:terminology

[thule]

They list their peering policy as Selective in their peeringdb entry https://www.peeringdb.com/priv.... They should have an open peering policy. Or is only open if you are a interesting content provider?

Probably. So what is wrong with that? "Interesting" to Google Fiber would be a content provider that is starting to use up enough transit bandwidth that it makes sense to move them to a peering port. That is always how things have worked on the Internet.

Re:terminology

[Jawnn]

Fiber server? huh?

I realize that it's all marketing hooey, but I wish that the director of network engineering for google wouldn't mish mash terminology like that. Keep that for the marketing droids.

Well, we could get all wrapped up in semantics, but let's not, m'kay? The real message is that Google gets it when it comes to making networks run efficiently. They aren't deliberately introducing an artificial scarcity in order to squeeze more revenue out of their "investement". They're selling a service using a 21st century business model, unlike the LEC's who still long for the days when a T1 would fetch $1,200 per month.

Re:terminology

[BitZtream]

The price of a T1 hasn't really changed all that much. Due to LEGAL requirements for the SLA associated with a T1, its unlikely to change for the foreseeable future.

Now getting far more than a T1's worth of bandwidth for far less is easy, but thats not a T1 nor does it come with the SLA that will have the provider working at 3am on a Sunday morning to get it back on line as required BY LAW.

Just because you get 1.5mbit of data doesn't mean you're getting an actual T1.

LECs are still the only ones who can offer a T1 for the most part.

If you knew what the terminology you are using actually meant you wouldn't have made such statements.

Re:terminology

[amorsen]

The price of a T1 has not changed because it is entirely obsolete. No one sane would want one, and specialty items are expensive.

In places with competitive markets, you can get the SLA you want with the technology you want.

Re:terminology

[amorsen]

Who runs their own radio network with multiple towers instead of cell phones?

I cannot think of anyone. Even police and emergency services have switched to cell phones, albeit on a dedicated network. A network where 1.5Mbps per tower is woefully insufficient, of course.

Modern cell towers use SyncE.

Re:terminology

[Darinbob]

More fiber for better colon health.

Re:terminology

[Austrian Anarchy]

They list their peering policy as Selective in their peeringdb entry https://www.peeringdb.com/priv.... They should have an open peering policy. Or is only open if you are a interesting content provider?

Probably. So what is wrong with that? "Interesting" to Google Fiber would be a content provider that is starting to use up enough transit bandwidth that it makes sense to move them to a peering port. That is always how things have worked on the Internet.

Exactly. And it sounds like a beautiful market solution without any ugly bureaucrats mucking up the works, yet.

We don't make money from peering or colocation

[c0d3g33k]

So what do you make money from if I become a Google Fiber customer? That's what I'm concerned about. If it's just the fair-market cost of the service I'm paying for, then that's fine. If your noble stance hides the fact that you attach yourself to the fiber like a tick to suck value by monitoring my use of the service and selling that information to the highest bidder, then we have a problem.

Re:We don't make money from peering or colocation

[Anonymous Coward]

Google makes its money by surfing the wave of new technology with advertisements on its wetsuit. If they roll out better internet access they can roll out better services which they can then stick ads on. You don't think they directly make any real amount of money from maintaining Chrome, do you? But they certainly have pushed what they can do through web technologies which in turn allows them to offer more or better services, and that ends up affecting their bottom line.

Re:We don't make money from peering or colocation

[Anonymous Coward]

Google fiber charges a bit more than my previous fiber ISP, so I'd wager they are making money from their subscriptions.

Oh, and they absolutely do monitor your usage, and keep a 72 hour history of all your connections--it's on your profile page and you can view it and add in ip addresses into your firewall rules with a single click. I'd wager google is using that data internally to generate usage reports, which is probably what led them to provide co-location services free of charge to their highest-use entities. They mentioned in the email/blog post that this comes from that doing so saves them money.

Re:We don't make money from peering or colocation

[dagamer34]

It's pretty simple. Since this is Google, the less time waiting for webpages or video to load, the more pages you visit and the more ads you see/watch.

Re:We don't make money from peering or colocation

[guruevi]

They make money from your monthly subscription fees etc.

The other companies do the same things, TWC, AT&T, Comcast all make money through your monthly internet bill and have been VERY profitable in doing so. The problem is that they want to keep their customers and make MORE money without spending any of their profits on upgrades or peering/colocation.

It's not like TWC/Comcast has to rip out and replace any cabling, the existing infrastructure (yes, copper) works well for speeds up to what Google Fiber is offering and more (100Mbps - 1Gbps). Even at current speeds (1-10Mbps), there is PLENTY of headroom for most people, Netflix doesn't take more than a few hundred kbps per stream. They just don't want to invest in a bigger link to Netflix/YouTube or letting them colocate in their spaces, they think that they can switch their customers who are paying for Internet into connecting to their private network (MSN/AOL style) and if anyone wants to go outside their private network, they should pay extra. And they can do this because they have been granted a monopoly by the government (by splitting up Ma Bell, they no longer needed to be regulated, the FCC has been paid for to not interfere and they have no-compete clauses with each other).

Thankfully there are plenty of startups starting to eat their market share (be it Google, Greenlight, ...) because they are offering better service than the incumbents for a heck of a lot cheaper. Now (at least in those areas) they have to start being competitive and suddenly, speeds CAN go up and prices CAN drop; the prices are not tied to actual value, they are tied to what the market will bear and since Internet has become a necessary utility for most people, the market has to bear a lot.

Re:We don't make money from peering or colocation

[Areyoukiddingme]

...and they have no-compete clauses with each other

No they don't. That would be an illegal cartel, and they know it. No, they have "gentleman's agreements" with each other not to compete. Which amounts to the same thing, but the only proof is the indirect evidence that they never actually compete, and so it's not particularly actionable in court.

And don't look now, but Ma Bell is very nearly completely reconstituted. The only piece missing is Pac Bell. Of course the FCC and FTC will remain determinedly oblivious to that fact.

Re:We don't make money from peering or colocation

[melchoir55]

If you use gmail and google search then you are splitting some pretty fine hairs. Ya they would have a more complete picture if they were your isp but... they know a whole hell of a lot without that (which you are willingly providing). I'd argue they already know the most sensitive information.

Who is "we"?

[SuperKendall]

If your noble stance hides the fact that you attach yourself to the fiber like a tick to suck value by monitoring my use of the service and selling that information to the highest bidder, then we have a problem.

Why do "we" have a problem?

There are plenty of people (including myself) that would happily trade the devil we know (Comcast/Quest/etc) for the unknown of reasonably priced much faster connection speed, which just happens to also give Google some aggregate data.

I'm not really a fan of Google collections - I use their services sparingly for just that reason. But I think the value tradeoff in that case is pretty decent and only Google really has the power to break through local connection monopolies.

Re:Who is "we"?

[MightyYar]

Plus it is beyond naive to assume that Comcast/Verizon/etc are not "attaching themselves to the fiber like a tick" to sell your usage stats.

Re: Who is "we"?

[jd2112]

In addition to being another line item to gouge you on your monthly bill.

Hedge

[ADRA]

This is Google's hedge against increasingly higher costs for peering and neutrality breaking ISP's, so why would they then turn around and be hypocrites by ruining the very reason they're moving intro infrastucture to begin with?

That said, an affirmation that they're peering neutral just seems like a puff piece for what anyone should already assume.

Does anyone have thoughts on Google spinning this out as a not for profit and make public backbones that are truly ubiquitous and marginalized?

Re:Hedge

[davecb]

Someone had to bootstrap it, and Google stepped up, for their own normal benefit. In other locations, and after some years in the current ones, Google can offer to hand the physical fibre and the things it hooks to, to the local utility company. That moves the fibre itself into a being a common carrier, and probably a regulated monopoly if the local laws require.

Re:Hedge

[MtHuurne]

This is Google's hedge against increasingly higher costs for peering and neutrality breaking ISP's, so why would they then turn around and be hypocrites by ruining the very reason they're moving intro infrastucture to begin with?

Android started in much the same way, to avoid telcos getting control over the content people access on their phones. While the base OS of Android is still free, a lot of the standard applications are now licensed from Google and the terms for licensing them are becoming more strict. Google's fiber is neutral today, but that doesn't mean it will stay neutral forever.

Re:Hedge

[Zelig]

why would they then turn around and be hypocrites by ruining the very reason they're moving intro infrastucture to begin with?

Run like a reformer. Rule like an incumbent.

Not saying that's what they've got in mind, but that's why you'd betray the principles you espoused while trying to gain power.

Re:Hedge

[Rich0]

Critical API like the new sensor agnostic Location API in android 4.4 is not open anymore. It's part of the closed source Google Play services. They even changed the sdk licence a while back.

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of that trend.

On the one hand I like the fact that they can update play services even if the base OS isn't being updated, which means more updated APIs for everybody to use. On the other hand, I wish that this could be done via an open-source layer that does the same thing. That said, if it were open source nothing would prevent everybody and their uncle from forking it and preventing updates, which is what happened with the base APIs.

Re:Why?

[Nexus7]

'Cos is about the "do no evil, baby" thingie, not about the service?

One person a bottleneck doesn't create...

[Obfuscant]

We don't make money from peering or colocation; since people usually only stream one video at a time, video traffic doesn't bog down or change the way we manage our network in any meaningful way

"One person" may only stream one video at a time, but "people" as a whole may stream thousands or tens of thousands of videos all at the same time, and that's what creates the bottleneck in the peering connection. These same "people" are the "people" who currently stream videos over Comcast et.al. and create the peering bottleneck between Comcast and Level 3.

What keeps the same thing from happening to your gateways? And what keeps the price for your service from going up as you have to add more bandwidth to your peering arrangement to deal with ever-increased levels of streaming? Or will you try charging the data source for the extra bandwidth so you don't have to charge your customers directly?

You say you don't want to make money from the peering, but you also don't want to lose money. The costs have to go somewhere, and the customer is the most likely recipient.

Re:One person a bottleneck doesn't create...

[ArhcAngel]

"One person" may only stream one video at a time, but "people" as a whole may stream thousands or tens of thousands of videos all at the same time, and that's what creates the bottleneck in the peering connection. These same "people" are the "people" who currently stream videos over Comcast et.al. and create the peering bottleneck between Comcast and Level 3.

It is Comcast creating the bottleneck and it is done deliberately. They want you to believe it is Netflix that has the problem but they could have solved it for their entire customer base for ~$30K according to Level 3. And Netflix offered to host their own servers inside of Comcast's network which would eliminate the bottleneck altogether but Comcast refused instead demanding tribute before allowing more Netflix traffic.

Re:One person a bottleneck doesn't create...

[thaylin]

So you are saying you did not setup your network to handle the capacity you promised your users? The case you have to make is *why* it is the companies fault, and not yours as an extension of your users.

Notice I used users, not user, as in the plural, not singular

Re:One person a bottleneck doesn't create...

[ArhcAngel]

But Comcast has oversold its actual capacity creating the disparity and thus responsible for its occurrence. Then going to its customer's other vendors and insisting they pay extra to provide the bandwidth their customers have already paid for.

Re:One person a bottleneck doesn't create...

[Em Adespoton]

Theoretically, you are correct.

In practice, "people" as a whole are mostly streaming the same videos -- it's the herd mentality. So if Google peers directly to the data provider, the data crosses the switch once, and then gan be cached locally to serve the streamers.

When done correctly, streaming raraely causes a bottleneck. The problem between Comcast and L3 is that Comcast's peering switches haven't been upgraded in a decade or so, so ANY meaningful amount of traffic traversing these switches will cause a bottleneck. Streaming, torrenting, playing online games, downloading every linux distro known to man, etc. How Comcast gets around this is that they have other "special" peering agreements with the most common providers of high bandwidth material. So SOME streaming movies, games, etc. will now be zippy on their network, but the stuff going through L3 will still be bottlenecked.

And yes, they have to do continual upgrades to the peering equipment and not just to the last mile -- but this is what the customer subscription increases are already going towards, isn't it? The peering switches just need ONE upgrade for all the subscribers in the area; the costs to keeping these pipes as current as their other "special" ones are pretty minimal, and are part of the costs of doing business. But Comcast has decided they can charge their peers, their peers' customers, AND their customers for the same thing. Makes me wonder where the money is actually going, as it doesn't appear to be going into infrastructure.

Conversely, Google is writing down the infrastructure costs as basic costs to absorb in order to grow their market -- advertising and data metrics. They see that every time they invest in improving the infrastructure, they end up taking in more money.

So maybe the problem is with Comcast's business model? They have the money coming in based on the size of their target market; maybe they're trying to get around the saturated market segment they're stuck with by marketing their customers as a service.... Wal Mart style.

Re:One person a bottleneck doesn't create...

[melchoir55]

The user does not get a guaranteed bandwidth through the peering connection. That's absurd. And it's not a single user we're talking about, it is the aggregate of all the users who may be streaming one video each, but all together managing to overload the peering connection.

The problem with assuming something is obvious when your interlocutor points out it isn't is that when you are wrong and/or ignorant, you don't discover it. You are experiencing that in this situation.

If you set up a peering connection for a certain amount of bandwidth, and then have to install new hardware to increase the bandwidth because more people are trying to use high-bandwidth low-latency services through that gateway, there is a cost. I shouldn't have to "make a case" for something so obvious.

Even with the bandwidth offered by comcast/tw, one user streaming video does not tax the bandwidth that user is paying for. It might seem like it does, but only because it is being actively throttled by the ISP. The amount of bandwidth provided by a google fiber connection is over one order of magnitude greater than the bandwidth being offered by comcast/tw. You are correct that users doing more things requires more bandwidth. You are *greatly* underestimating the amount of bandwidth which is actually available. Given the amount of bandwidth provided by google, every user could simultaneously stream 10 high quality videos and have plenty of bandwidth remaining.

An analogy with a comcast connection would be having a router in your house letting two people browse the internet at once. Does this double the amount of bandwidth used? Yes. Is the amount of bandwidth used still trivial? Yes. Does this doubling of bandwidth use require comcast upgrade their infrastructure? No, because it was expected and accounted for in the initial deployment of said infrastructure.

Re:One person a bottleneck doesn't create...

[amorsen]

Often last-mile lines are less than 0.1 percent utilized, measured as aggregate 95% peak. No ISP sets up their network to handle a thousand times more traffic than actually exists. That would be entirely uneconomical.

Proper providers make sure that lines get upgraded when there is a risk of congestion. If traffic patterns change significantly, such as with the advent of Netflix, backbone links must be upgraded. Luckily Netflix also made a number of people upgrade their last mile, so the 0.1 percent figure did not really budge all that much.

There IS an expectation that users do not use 100% of their bandwidth to get to the most expensive transit partner all the time. Hopefully some of that traffic stays local or goes via unpaid peering or at least through one of the dirt cheap transits like Cogent.

Re:One person a bottleneck doesn't create...

[sabri]

For providers and data demanded by Comcast customers. I also complain about that, but I'm not in a position to get quoted for it. Does that make it less valid a complaint? Keep in mind, every bit Netflix ever sent me was at my request. I am responsible for that traffic. Why is Comcast trying to charge someone else for my choice?

That is a very valid comment, from a consumer's point of view. The answer is not simple, but let me try and simplify it.

Consumer broadband connections are always oversubscribed. This means that for every 100Mbps customer, an ISP will have an X amount of actual bandwidth available. For example, an oversubscribtion rate of 1:25 means that for every 25 100Mbps subscribers, only one 100Mbps link will be provisioned. The reason for this is that building a network is ridiculously expensive, and this is the only way to make it affordable for consumers. Another reason is that very few consumers will actually use the bandwidth. For example, I have a 25Mbps link from Charter. If I look at my stats, I barely used 512kbps on average over a month. However, when I do actually download something, I see that my link is more than what I pay for; I usually get over 30Mbps.

Further down the road, that oversubscription becomes a bit blurred. Most large ISPs have big networks, with multiple entry and exit points. In short, there are two ways in which traffic flows from one network to another: via direct peering, or via a paid transit provider. Direct peering is most of the time handled at an Internet Exchange point. Members will all connect to each other, and peer whenever they come to an agreement. Transit is when I pay a third party to transport my packets to someone else. So, let's say I am Comcast, and I need to transport packets to and from AT&T. If I do not have a peering with AT&T, I will find someone who does. Let's say Level 3 Communications does have a peering agreement with AT&T. I can then pay Level 3 Communications to transport my traffic to AT&T. The path will then become: Comcast Level 3 AT&T.

In this example, interconnect 1 is paid, and interconnect 2 may be paid transit or free peering (from Comcast's perspective, that is irrelevant).

There will be many of these entry and exit points. Today, most of these interconnects are at 10 Gigabit Ethernet speeds. This does mean, that in a lot of cases. the aggregate bandwidth between two networks on the internet is 10Gb. Let's turn back to our example. In this case, it is actually reversed. Comcast has a peering agreement with Level 3, and Netflix pays Level 3 for transit traffic. So what ends up happening is:

Comcast Level 3 Netflix

While "peering" sounds free, it is in fact not. Peering requires network ports and backhaul capacity. If Comcast has 1 10G peering port with Level 3, they only need to haul back 10G to the rest of the network. If Comcast upgrades that to 10G, then not only do they need an additional 10G port, but also the capacity to transport that traffic further downstream. This is regardless of the rest of Comcast's network. They may have (and probably will) have hundreds of other 10G peering points elsewhere, with tons of capacity. That is useless here, since all of a sudden all traffic is centralized to 1 entry point.

Now, from Comcast's point of view, I totally understand their reluctance to invest significantly only to haul back the traffic of Netflix, which then makes a profit off of it. Is it the right thing to do? That's debatable. But to bluntly say that all of a sudden Comcast is the root of all evil, that's a bit too far.

Re:One person a bottleneck doesn't create...

[suutar]

I can understand why Comcast might prefer not to upgrade just because of Netflix traffic; it costs them money. But if that's what their customers want (and apparently, that's what we want, because we keep causing Netflix to send us data), that's what they're supposed to do. That's their job, transport the bits I ask for to me.
If they have to charge me more to cover the expenses, I can understand that (though looking at their profits, I'm not sure they really have to). But I consider it duplicitous for them to charge Netflix, who then has to charge me; I get charged either way, so Comcast isn't doing it for my benefit, they're just trying to deflect blame to Netflix. And in the process, now all of Netflix's other customers who aren't on Comcast get to subsidize their Comcast customers.

Re:One person a bottleneck doesn't create...

[sabri]

10gb ports for backhaul? What century are you in? We can now DWDM over 1,000 10gb links over a a single industry standard fiber and without signal regeneration or repeaters with about 700km ranges. Keep up with the tech.

Yes, read again. 10GB ports for backhaul. As you are saying yourself:

100gb and 400gb ports are now entering telcoms and 1tb is slated for next year.

Exactly right. So at this time, most equipment will be limited to multiple 10G links in a LAG-group. No matter how great your 1Tb DWDM device is, your layer 3 router (and by that I mean Cisco CRS or Juniper MX960) will still be limited to multiple 10G ports. And yes, I am aware that there are 100G ports, but they are not nearly as common as 10G ports. On top of that, Netflix telling Comcast via a Level 3 proxy to upgrade their 10G LAG to multiple 100G ports because Netflix wants to send their traffic to Comcast customers is exactly my point. I'm not arguing who is right or wrong, but I am saying that this is basically what is going on.

--
Sabri
JNCIE #261

Is it sad that--

[satsuke]

Is it sad that we've come so far as to have a company make a press release assuring customers and peering partners, that they will continue to abide by industry practices that have existed for decades?

Re:Is it sad that--

[thule]

Paying for peering *never* ever happened before Netflix? Really?

Re:Is it sad that--

[T.E.D.]

Is it sad that we've come so far as to have a company make a press release assuring customers and peering partners, that they will continue to abide by industry practices

Not assuring so much as adversiting. Like our old industry practices are now a great new differentiator between Google and their competitors.

This is precisely how Google kicked their search engine competitors to the curb 15 years ago; by treating their users as their customers who have choice, rather than as sheep to be sheared. The sad thing is that this is apparently some amazingly complex business concept that is far too exotic for typical companies to wrap their greedy little minds around.

Peering is good...

[thule]

...even if some party has to pay for it. Google is an ISP so their peering traffic is not equal. It is good for them and their customers to peer with as many popular content providers as possible. Connect eyeballs to content. I keep pointing out that Yahoo! did this years ago with huge success. It was reported that Yahoo! only payed for half of their total bandwidth requirements. That is, only half of their total bandwidth requirements were going over transit. This was years ago. "Fast lanes" are not new.

The difference with Netflix is that they had to pay the ISP for their peering. This is new. Even so, it still may work out for them. The the peering costs may still be cheaper than their transit or using a third party CDN. Like Google Fiber pointed out, peering does not prioritize traffic, it just makes links to networks. If peering is an unfair fastlane, then the Internet has always been "unfair" since peering is an integral part of the Internet.

So why does Netflix have to pay? It is called supply and demand. The market pressures are such that Netflix *wants* to pay to get their data delivered directly. I suppose they could have backed off and stopped using any sort of CDN with peering to ISPs. But then their transit costs would have gone up. I suppose Netflix could have done this and really slammed the ISP's transit connections until *every* customer was complaining about terrible performance. Netflix decided it was less expensive and better for their customers to pay ISP's for peering. Is this fair? As the saying goes, "Life is not fair." Deal with it.

The best way to deal with the situation is for cities to encourage new ISP's to build out last mile connections. Make it easy without a lot of red tape. Phone companies and cable companies will yell and scream, but there is nothing they can do legally. It is up to the city to manage right-of-way so that things don't get messy. So instead of complaining to the FCC, go to your city council and see what can be done to encourage Google Fiber to come to your city.

Re:Peering is good...

[Shatrat]

The the peering costs may still be cheaper than their transit

Comcast was also degrading Netflix's Transit providers, Cogent and L3.

So why does Netflix have to pay?

It is called extortion. Comcast was willing to impair their own customer service to make Netflix pay up.

Re:This is part of their job

[thule]

Netflix paying for peering is not ransom. Paying for peering is what happens all the time. Even if you have a "settlement-free" peering link, you will still have to pay if traffic going one direction goes outside what is considered acceptable in the contract. Netflix would rather pay for peering than increase their transit costs. Simple as that. It is a business decision. It would have been interesting if Netflix decided to cut all peering so that Netflix traffic would have flooded ISP's transit links. *Everyone* would have started to complain. What would the cable companies do in that situation? If they started to shape the traffic from Netflix, then things would get interesting. This "fast lane" talk is stupid.

Servers

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. They explicitly permit non-commercial servers. From the Fiber use policy: https://support.google.com/fiber/answer/2659981?hl=en&topic=2440874&ctx=topic:
"However, personal, non-commercial use of servers that complies with this AUP is acceptable, including using virtual private networks (VPN) to access services in your home and using hardware or applications that include server capabilities for uses like multi-player gaming, video-conferencing, and home security."

Muni Fiber

[PopeRatzo]

Municipal fiber is the way to go. It would change the world and give the US economy a badly needed shot in the arm.

ISP costs have risen four times faster than inflation. We're on the road to having just two national providers. When that happens, costs will go up even faster.

1) Designate ISPs as common carriers.
2) Break up any ISP that provides content.
3) Take a bow for having brought about the digital revolution part 2.

Unfortunately, our elected jackoffs are too beholden to corporate money to do anything like this. Obama, who was supposed to be the first president who "got" the Internet, turned out to be the worst of the bunch, appointing telecom lobbyist Tom Wheeler has head of the FCC, and they're not poised to put the last nail in the Net Neutrality coffin. Obama is a failed president on that count alone.

Because they compete

[Average]

"So why does Netflix have to pay?"

Because Netflix competes with Comcast/TWC/AT&T's ka-ching buckets-of-money-spinning video distribution platforms. If Netflix gets popular enough, Comcast is reduced to a dumb internet pipe for $50 a month (profit of $5), not a primarily a video provider ($100+ bills, profits of $20+).

Which is the problem. If Comcast *were* an internet-tube provider (only), they'd generally be pro-peering. They might try to charge Netflix some (they like money), if the market would bear it, but mostly it's to their advantage to peer. However, most of the ISPs in the US are not pure-internet providers, so if Comcast video can use Comcast internet to hamstring Netflix, that's a natural reaction.

Re:Because they compete

[Sheik Yerbouti]

You got the numbers wrong they make 97% profit on an Internet connection. People keep missing that point. Verizon/Comcast are already making money hand over fist with profit margins that would make most CEOs high five their finance guy. That means if you are paying $60.00 month their fixed cost for providing your connection is like $2.00 a month. That's just not enough for the greedy robber barons. Mind you while providing customer satisfaction that by all counts is below average. AND the best part is taking huge tax incentives in the 90s to build out the information super highway only to renege when it came time to do the work saying they could not do it because of the tech bubble pop of 1999.

Also they claim title 2 common carrier status when it is to their benefit to get right of ways and claim information service when they want to block any competition. It's far far far worse than anyone really sells it. Links in case you don't believe it.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/510176/when-will-the-rest-of-us-get-google-fiber/
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/30544
http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/14/5716802/game-of-phones-how-verizon-is-playing-the-fcc-and-its-customers
http://consumerist.com/2014/04/08/congratulations-to-comcast-your-2014-worst-company-in-america/

Re:Why?

[gameboyhippo]

I don't know what you're talking about regarding .0031% of the United States. Google Fiber is available in 100% of the places where I live (a house in KC).

I support metering, with caveats

[Chirs]

I would support a model that actually reflects the real costs involved...that is a fixed monthly cost for the physical connection, and a variable per-GB charge.

The reason why most people don't like bandwidth metering is that the ISPs charge way too much per GB at the retail level. And if you lump the connection costs in with the bandwidth costs then the high-usage people end up subsidizing the low-usage people. It's much more fair to break out the fees separately (the way my gas/electrical/etc bills do it).

I think if end-users were charged a per-GB rate that was more in line with the wholesale rate plus a reasonable amount of profit then there would be minimal complaints.

Uverse is 45 Mbps over new(ish) wire

[raymorris]

Uverse maxes as 45 Mbps and requires a minimum of UTP drop. It does not work over "the existing infrastructure" (untwisted pair) unless that infrastructure has recently been upgraded.

Dear Google

[sudon't]

Dear Google,
If you're reading this, (haha, I know you are!), please, come save me from the Comcast-Time Warner monopoly and their slow as molasses high-speed internet.

Re:This is part of their job

[amorsen]

Just announce your BGP and automatically get peering. You don't even need to contact anyone about it.

You will only get access to smaller providers + some of he.net that way. Akamai or Google will not, AFAIK, talk to the IX route servers. I am not sure about Netflix; they offer a caching box for free anyway if you receive a reasonable amount of traffic from them.

Soul defect?

[Futurepower(R)]

What can you expect from someone whose soul has been killed?

Re:gigabit over cat3. Profit!

[Shadow99_1]

Well DOSCIS 3.0 supports up to 24x8 channel configuration which would max at 1029.12 (912) Mbit/s and an upstream of 245.76 (216) Mbit/s. Heck even a 4x4 config is 171.52 (152) Mbit/s down and 122.88 (108) Mbit/s up. I use a DOSCIS 3.0 modem for my connection, but I don't get anywhere near those kinds of speeds because my provider chooses not to offer them...

Re:traffic direction argument makes no sense

[thule]

If it was only about equal traffic in both directions netflix could just have all their clients send random data back to their servers and then just drop all the data. That would increase the overall network load, but it would be "balanced".

Seriously, it makes no sense that increasing the overall network load would reduce the fees being paid. That's ridiculous.

It is based on needs. A company needs to deliver their traffic to a network. That network also needs to deliver their traffic to the company. It would usually go over transit which can cost a lot of money. As a business decision, they decided to send each other's traffic and call it even. This is not rocket science people! It is business! Generating random data doesn't help, because it is not fulfilling the need of one of the networks to deliver their data. In a content to eyeballs situation it is pretty clear which way the demand is.

I read a article only recently that described Google's setup at their first colo. They needed to send data to their customers. That is what the colo normally does: host servers that send content to eyeballs. Google on the other hand needed send and receive so that they could connect to web servers around the world and index them. Google cut a deal with the colo to give them dedicated connections for their indexers at a reduced rate. Why? The colo had symmetrical links. Most content flowed out of them, with little flowing in. Google needed lots of *incoming* bandwidth. Simple supply and demand. The colo had a huge amount of incoming bandwidth that no one was using. That makes it cheap!

Does no one understand simple economics anymore?

Re:gigabit over cat3. Profit!

[guruevi]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...

Re:a ballsy prediction. 256k of RAM?

[amorsen]

Fibre optic technology will change in 50 years. However, I stand by my prediction that single mode fibre will be useful for the home connections of most people in 50 years. I am very certain of that.

High end connections will probably be better types of fibre or something else entirely, but tens of terabit really ought to be enough for a lot of people -- and the Shannon limit of single mode fibre is somewhere on the order of 1Pbps.

Hurry up and take my money!

[daninaustin]

Sounds great. Now hurry up and build it out.