Netflix CEO On Net Neutrality: Large ISPs Are the Problem

KindMind writes: At Wired, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has posted his take on net neutrality. He lays the problem at the feet of the large ISPs. Hastings says, "Consider this: A single fiber-optic strand the diameter of a human hair can carry 101.7 terabits of data per second, enough to support nearly every Netflix subscriber watching content in HD at the same time. And while technology has improved and capacity has increased, costs have continued to decline. A few more shelves of equipment might be needed in the buildings that house interconnection points, but broadband itself is as limitless as its uses. We'll never realize broadband's potential if large ISPs erect a pay-to-play system that charges both the sender and receiver for the same content. ... It's worth noting that Netflix connects directly with hundreds of ISPs globally, and 99 percent of those agreements don't involve access fees. It is only a handful of the largest U.S. ISPs, which control the majority of consumer connections, demanding this toll. Why would more profitable, larger companies charge for connections and capacity that smaller companies provide for free? Because they can."

Comments

Big Data

[AlecDalek]

It's extortion plain and simple. It's never been about actual capacity. Big Data is trying to squeeze as much revenue out of us as the can.

Re:Big Data

[sabri]

It's extortion plain and simple

Please show me the gun that's being used.

Netflix does not have to pay ATT/Comcast/Verizon a single dime. All it needs to do is hire a few clever network engineers that are capable of a little bit of traffic engineering, and buy proper transit. Oh, and it would be nice if the US government would not make it so damned difficult for me to start a proper ISP.

--
Sabri
JNCIE #261
ECE-IPN #2

Re:Big Data

[bistromath007]

"Oh, and it would be nice if the US government would not make it so damned difficult for me to start a proper ISP."

You just mentioned the gun that's being used.

Re:Big Data

[rahvin112]

The lie you have bought into is that destination traffic is the same as transit traffic.

The whole point of peering agreements is to stop one provider from piggybacking on another transit providers network to reduce their costs. The agreements are structured so that to reach various end points they transit the traffic as closely as possible to the destination then hand it off to the hosting network rather than hand it off at the first available point and allow it transit the other networks system.

This whole arrangement falls flat on it's face when one of those transit providers is also the major destination route for millions of customers. ISPs that provide residential service always have unbalanced traffic arrangement because the customer almost always requests more data then they send. As long as L3 and Cogent are handing this destination traffic off to Verizon at the closest possible peering point for their subscribers then Verizon shouldn't be able to request the the traffic be balanced.

The problem is that unregulated market forces have allowed monopoly providers in local markets to combine with the very limited number of Tier 1 network operators resulting in the almost immediate abuse of monopoly by the Tier 1 portion of the network leveraging the monopoly side of the residential ISP business. There is rather simple solution to this problem. Bar any ISP that offers services directly to residential customers from owning or operating long haul national networks. If Verizon was forced to separate their Tier 1 transit business from their Residential ISP business (as in either divesting the assets or separating the company into two distinct companies) the problem would be solved almost immediately.

Businesses with monopolies will abuse them, that's the whole point of regulating free markets, because without that regulation you will end almost immediately with companies abusing market position and breaking the free market. Free markets don't stay free without regulation, particularly businesses with massive capital start up costs such as residential ISPs. Without regulation you end up with Verizon's Tier 1 network business leveraging the monopoly residential ISP traffic to extract rent from competing providers. This is a rent the market would not support without the monopoly or with regulation to prevent it's abuse.

Re:Big Data

[mrcpu2009]

The level of ignorance in the above post pleases me.

Re:Big Data

[Khyber]

"netflix refuses to pay a commercial CDN"

Their contract with movie makers probably stipulates that they maintain full and sole control of the data and allow no other company to touch it.

Re:Big Data

[Anonymous Coward]

squeeze as much revenue out of us as the can.

And as a long time beer drinker, I can assure you that the can has squeezed considerable revenue out of me!

Re:Big Data

[Wesley Felter]

Nah, Netflix used to use other CDNs. But then they got big enough that it was cheaper to build their own.

That's orthogonal to the issue that (in most people's opinion) no CDN should have to pay broadband ISPs.

Re:Big Data

[Anonymous Coward]

Netflix said CDNs were not able to keep up with demand and all those peering issues, so Netflix decided to do it themselves. Commercial CDNs are great for small companies that can't afford to create contracts with every ISP out there. This is how those CDNs make money, by charging lots of relatively small data companies. Since these CDNs have SLAs to up hold, they are willing to pay ISPs to make sure their SLAs are met.

Modern SLAs are more about latency and jitter. Netflix doesn't care about this. Netflix also does not care about up time because their service can simply reroute to other data locations. All Netflix wants is bandwidth, and that's virtually free. No one pays for bandwidth anymore, they pay for SLAs or transit.

Re:Big Data

[Anonymous Coward]

The guns being used are Netflix's customers on these networks that will cancel subscriptions en mass if the service is not available because they get basically cut off by the ISPs.

Re:Big Data

[Smerta]

I have heard rumors at least twice, from two different people that I trust (sorry for the "cloak and dagger" bullshit) that Hastings has investigated creating an ISP, but that the hurdles and bullshit threshold is just too high. That makes me sad. There is so much opportunity for innovation, so much potential to move away from the shitty 6Mbps "broadband" in most of America, but the Verizons & Comcasts buy their way out of the problem every time. And yes, the government (both parties, I'm looking at you) is complicit.

Re:Big Data

[AK Marc]

Netflix does not have to pay ATT/Comcast/Verizon a single dime. All it needs to do is [...] buy proper transit

So they don't need to pay those three, but they must pay someone, for what amounts to transit to themselves. Transit was a concept when a small ISP bought from a large ISP to get the small number of users to The Internet across unequal networks. Peers are when the networks were more even.

It was always from the consumer point of view. Only recently did the concept of charging content for content transit. If my ISP is charging for content transit, I want my rebate/discount. They are getting paid twice for the same thing.

Re:Big Data

[DamnOregonian]

An interesting gun... Here in People-Who-Are-Actually-Professional-Network-EngineersVille, we'd simply accept that our current cheapest-available-transit-provider has shitty connectivity (really? Cogent? really really? Well done, Netflix. Not pinching any pennies, at all) and get a provider that didn't offer bargain bin connectivity and shitty routes to just about everyone. But hey. It's entirely the receiving network's fault.

Re:Big Data

[DamnOregonian]

CDNs cost too much. It's hard to compete with 2 cents/megabit Cogent upstream pricing. Of course it will suck. That's why you're paying 2 cents/megabit for it. It's no damn wonder Netflix is pushing so damn hard for peering arrangements. They don't want to pay for bandwidth anymore. It's a sound business model. They're also being dishonest as all fuck about it, and trying to turn it into a net neutrality issue, when it isn't.

Re:Big Data

[ultranova]

Please show me the gun that's being used.

This delusional refusal to acknowledge that anything but outright violence could ever be coercive is the acid that's quickly dissolving whatever credibility capitalism still has left and exposing the grinning skull of feudalism beneath the mask of prosperity. I wonder what economic system will replace it, once people finally get tired of having structural flaws treated as unchangeable laws of nature or blamed on their victim's personal weaknesses?

The current climate is just like that which preceded the collapse of the Soviet Union: the prevailing myths are so much out of sync with reality people are running out of willing suspension of disbelief and losing their faith. No one believes anymore that hard work will be repaid with anything but layoffs, or that business success comes with a superior product rather than gaming the system, or that the rules are the same for everyone. The system has already lost its beating heart of credible mythology that can organize behaviour, it's just a matter of time before the necrosis of anarchy spreads everywhere.

Re:Big Data

[Charliemopps]

you've no idea what you're talking about. This is a contract dispute between the ISPs, Netflix and the peers (mainly Level3) They all get this hairy, and there's always a lot of bullying going on. The difference here, and what's new is that Netflix has gone full retard, gotten the public and the government involved. If they continue, this will not turn out well for them, the ISPs or us.

You want government enforced net neutrality? Do you think they'll be neutral about porn? "Terrorist" activity? Anti-government sentiment? Once the governments fingers are in your business, they never, ever, come back out. Poison is the cure.

Re:Big Data

[JWSmythe]

So?

I used to run a big adult site. We wanted servers closer to the customers for speed. We made enough that we didn't really care about the connection costs. We'd put up server farms around the world where it suited our customers best.

We owned every piece of equipment in our cabinet or cage (depending on the location). The provider equipment ended at the fiber they dropped to us, and the power outlets.

Netflix was hosted with Amazon for a while. A couple years ago, they claimed to have started their own CDN.

Their own CDN site talks about putting Netflix gear out for free. So they are basically saying they want the free ride. No one gets rack space, power, and connections for free. The right thing to do would be to lease the space like everyone else does.

But hey, they're loving to cry about being treated unfairly. They are the loudest ones about it. Honestly, other than speed complaints that are usually a fault, not a conspiracy, I don't know of anyone else talking about the same thing.

It is possible that the world is ganging up on Netflix. It happened to Cogent, more than once. That was mostly they refused to pay on their contractual obligations.

Re:Big Data

[Wycliffe]

They don't want to pay for bandwidth anymore.

What's so unreasonable about this? Netflix isn't wanting this for free, they are wanting peering agreements.
Basically, they are saying, let us run fiber directly to you so that:
      1) Our customers get a faster connection
      2) Your customers get a faster connection to us.
      3) Your customers are no longer bogging down your internet connection with traffic to us
      4) Your customers get a faster connections to the rest of the internet
      5) You don't have to buy bigger pipes to the rest of the internet therefore saving money.
etc...

It's a win/win for all involved. There is no reason money needs to be continually exchanged as it's now a private
lan between the two companies and I'm sure Netflix would gladly pay for the hardware.
The only reason they don't want to peer with netflix is because they feel like they own the customers and
are willing to hold their own customers hostage in the hopes that netflix will cave.
Netflix unfortunately is not critical enough to do the opposite. (i.e. peer with us or your customers
can't use netflix) as netflix actually has competition unlike the people they are trying to peer with.

Re:Big Data

[JWSmythe]

(really? Cogent? really really? Well done, Netflix. Not pinching any pennies, at all)

It seems most people either don't know about who's service is how good, or they ignore it.

But hey, they could have gone with Internap. Did they ever lay any of their own fiber, or are they still pushing traffic over the cheapest possible transit?

Re:Big Data

[Kethinov]

Not that I disagree, but right now I'm just finding it funny how Hastings can complain about ISPs doing bad things while he remains conspicuously silent about Hollywood forcing draconian DRM into Netflix and, indirectly, into the HTML5 spec itself. Maybe the major ISPs should look into buying Hastings' silence too. It would help with their PR.

Re:Big Data

[lgw]

They used Akamai for several years for the majority of their streaming traffic, but then they outgrew Akamai. Netflix is, what, 1/3 of all internet traffic now? They are the biggest CDN.

Re:Big Data

[Anonymous Coward]

As well they should. The ISPs are being paid for the bandwidth. They're being paid by the subscriber for the data to be delivered. The ISPs are also being paid the Netflix's provider for bandwidth. I fail to see why the ISPs should expect to triple dip.

Re:Big Data

[lgw]

Hastings, Netflix, and 99.999999% of all streaming customers give approximately 0 fucks about DRM. They pay Netflix, they see the content, there's simply no problem. And they're right. Technology makes life better by working. If it "just works", then it's fine. This ISP-throttling-Netflix BS, OTOH, is punishing customers until Netflix caves. That's not fine.

Re:Big Data

[Anonymous Coward]

What's stopping Netflix from passing this on to those customers connected under that ISP? That way Netflix doesn't have the burden and those users will realise the true cost of the ISP they are using. I'm sure a lot of them are clueless about this but say a $.30 fee will make then ask WTF?

Re:Big Data

[Anonymous Coward]

CDNs cost too much. It's hard to compete with 2 cents/megabit Cogent upstream pricing. Of course it will suck. That's why you're paying 2 cents/megabit for it. It's no damn wonder Netflix is pushing so damn hard for peering arrangements. They don't want to pay for bandwidth anymore. It's a sound business model. They're also being dishonest as all fuck about it, and trying to turn it into a net neutrality issue, when it isn't.

Why the hell would Netflix want to use a CDN when they're big enough and have their own CDN?

Netflix PAYS FOR BANDWIDTH all the figgin way to the doorstep to the major ISPs.

You're an idiot or a shill.

Re:Big Data

[Anonymous Coward]

Sabri
JNCIE #261
ECE-IPN #2

If you're a JNCIE I'm a Star Lord.

Re:Big Data

[Anonymous Coward]

Their own CDN site [netflix.com] talks about putting Netflix gear out for free. So they are basically saying they want the free ride. No one gets rack space, power, and connections for free. The right thing to do would be to lease the space like everyone else does.

And exactly how much of Comcast's revenue is directly attributable to Netflix? I'm betting it's a lot more than 4U of space, a 5 amp power drop, and 10 gigs of connectivity, which for all intents and purposes is unlimited once you get onto the local net. Comcast was among those that bitched and moaned about how much transit Netflix was incurring, and Netflix offered a solution that dropped that transit cost to ZERO.

Re:Big Data

[Kethinov]

Both issues punish customers, as anyone who's ever wanted to save a Netflix movie for offline viewing on a flight can attest to.

Re:Big Data

[lgw]

as anyone who's ever wanted to save a Netflix movie for offline viewing on a flight

They offer that service separately, and I use it all the time: DVDs - but for most people that's a corner case. The problem most people have with Netflix (myself included) is the tiny amount of streaming content in the first place. Even with the DRM they can barely get any content owners contracted. The studios just have recto-cranial inversion over streaming in the first place - the DRM is just a distraction from the real issue.

In both cases - content owners and big ISPs, you've got abuse of government-granted monopolies. The real issue is our alleged democracy selling monopolies in the first place!

Re:Big Data

[Anonymous Coward]

... running out of willing suspension of disbelief and losing their faith ...

The soviet government was unable to keep the lie going. The USA government does not have that problem: They are funded by biased taxation and trade agreements, a monopoly on many forms of intellectual property, a monopoly on 'world police' duties, and sale of most of the international currency. When all that fails, they simply invent 1/3rd of their federal revenue from thin air. All the people provide is disposable labour and babies for future labour markets.

Re:Big Data

[Anonymous Coward]

Their demand is not to allow them to put their gear on your DC. It is more like "don't throttle us down". I work for a medium-sized ISP in Norway and Netflix had the intentions to peer with us(along other ISPs), which I think it would be cool for our customers to get their content with less latency.

I think you would do the same if your site was being throttle down to 2 Mbps.

In the other hand the biggest ISP in Norway Telenor, is clearly abusing its position by not allowing peering with anyone inside of Norway(no matter your size), instead you have to buy transit from them. They are using their leverage as the biggest residential customer in Norway.

Re:Big Data

[Anonymous Coward]

Once the governments fingers are in your business, they never, ever, come back out.

If that were true then how did you lose network neutrality in the first place?

Re:Big Data

[squiggleslash]

You're supposing that the DRM is there merely to appease Hollywood. Ever consider the possibility that Hastings might not want their customers downloading movies for watching two years after their subscriptions have expired?

As for offline viewing (something others are mentioning in response as a thing-you-can't-do-because-DRM), Amazon has that. Rhapsody too (albeit for music.) The files are DRM'd too. Netflix can implement offline viewing with the DRM being used to restrict the timeframe used to view the files. Hollywood is probably the reason they don't, but not because of the insistence on DRM.

Re:Big Data

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the can just takes the piss

Re: Big Data

[Anonymous Coward]

They did not outgrow Akamai. I'm not going to try and educate you on the market, but I will let you in on one little bit: almost all large VoD providers use multiple CDNs. Often for cost, often for reliability. Many times one of those cdns is in-house for the cheap/well connected customers.

They decided to use their cheaper CDN options more, eventually using the cheapest one entirely.

This is a lot of work, and of course largely a business challenge rather than a technical one.

Re:Big Data

[Anonymous Coward]

Netflix are sending traffic that Verizon's PAYING customers have requested. Complicated, I know, but try really hard.

Re:Big Data

[mcrbids]

Their own CDN site talks about putting Netflix gear out for free. So they are basically saying they want the free ride. No one gets rack space, power, and connections for free.

I know a guy who is a network engineer at a regional ISP. They are ecstatic about hosting Netflix gear "for free" because of all the money they save! Despite the consensus here, bandwidth isn't free, it's a huge expense. And their largest use case is Netflix. By hosting the Netflix servers at the data center, they cut their network traffic by something like half.

It's a pretty big deal for them.

Re:Big Data

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't and don't peer with Netflix. They do not have circuits and do not do transit.

Re:Big Data

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL these last two comments really hit home. But I also deal with the physical properties of fiber every day, so I already know this. I just find it funny that people are complaining about costs going up when (1) the USG subsidized broadband deployments in the 90s , those subsidies have long ended, (2) inflation is very real, but let's ignore that when it comes to anything dealing with magical internet packets, (3) our consumption of network bandwidth is still rising with 4k and other fat media formats coming to market

Re:Big Data

[Anonymous Coward]

It was always from the consumer point of view. Only recently did the concept of charging content for content transit. If my ISP is charging for content transit, I want my rebate/discount. They are getting paid twice for the same thing.

The flipside to this is for your ISP to charge you real-world bandwidth rates and allow netflix to peer for free.

PS In bulk, the it costs me slightly under $1.00/ft to backhaul fiber from local dwellings in my office. I'm sure you would love to pay the true cost of a $900 installation fee rather than a $40 "technician" fee

Re:Big Data

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not modded "troll" or "flamebait" why?

Re:Big Data

[Shatrat]

No one gets rack space, power, and connections for free.

It's not for free. The ISP gets a serious reduction in network congestion as a result. I'm a network planner for a national ISP in the US and deploying these caches has seriously cut down on our network load. For the cost of space and power for this cache I regained capacity on the network which would have cost 100s of thousands of dollars to build. You've fundamentally misunderstood the benefit to the ISP of deploying these. The only ISPs that don't deploy these are the ones that also get a lot of revenue from video such as Cable and FTTH providers. They don't WANT to reduce the congestion because it boosts their IPTV revenue.

Re:Big Data

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why they're legitimately bitching about all of this. Like a poster above this said...all they want is peering agreements like Akamai had with the Big ISPs so that they can serve their customers better and not tie up their backbones as badly as they are right now. But the Big ISPs are bitching about charging both ends of that equation equally (money grubbing, really) instead of making it lucrative for all parties involved...including the customers after a fashion. And, it's not really about money...it's all about control. They see us as *THEIR* customers and if they could get away with an AOL-ish walled garden system, they WOULD.

Re:Big Data

[ArhcAngel]

I'm not sure if you are unfamiliar with the situation or just have a portfolio full of ComCast stock but There is some very insightful material over at Level 3 that paints a clear picture of just who is ganging up on who. And Netflix isn't the only Internet site that suffers from these ISP's greed. They just happen to be the largest. And as far as their CDN how is relieving the congestion on your network not a payment in and of itself? Netflix traffic from the backbone would decrease 90% once they are allowed to put their CDN inside your network leaving you free to use it for other traffic. If Netflix is causing the congestion then allowing them to put their CDN in is a win/win but ISPs want Netflix to lose so their on demand service can pick up those customers. If you truly want the truth then read the articles in the link.

Re:Big Data

[Type44Q]

Bingo.Break them the fuck up.

Re:Big Data

[bigpat]

Funny.... My Netflix was actually throttled pretty badly last night by Verizon and I was wondering what Netflix did to piss off Verizon. Now I guess I have the answer.

Re:Big Data

[bigpat]

You forgot the most important reason. They are trying to degrade a competitor's service in order to promote their own. Both Comcast and Verizon compete directly with Netflix. Last night I was able to watch Verizon channels on my tablet just fine, but Netflix wasn't working at all.

Re:Big Data

[Anonymous Coward]

If my ISP is charging for content transit, I want my rebate/discount. They are getting paid twice for the same thing.

This is the most important point. We the customers of Comcast and Verizon are requesting this content from netflix. It isn't Netflix just sending random unwanted data to Verizon and Comcast customers. We are already paying both providers and the only reason that Verizon and Comcast don't want to let the content through is because both Comcast and Verizon are competing with Netflix with their own paid video content. This is an antitrust issue.

Re:Big Data

[Anonymous Coward]

They cut their traffic over the likes of level3/sprint/etc. and so yes it does cut their costs by using their own network...

I at one time also worked at a regional isp, and adding another sprint connection was always a concern. IIRC l3 was our crappy backup connect, OTOH sprint was pretty much the only game in town for truly high cap at the time...

Either way I added the first line as it wasn't clear how they cut their bandwidth costs, and now that I think of it our sprint peering agreement only cost us for adding more drops(T3s at the time, 45Mbps), IOW a FIXED cost/m.

Re:Big Data

[sabri]

If you're a JNCIE I'm a Star Lord.

https://www.certmetrics.com/ju...

Re:Big Data

[rhazz]

Are there actually any ISPs refusing to peer who are NOT content providers? My understanding is that companies who are both ISPs and content providers want to cause trouble for Netflix on the ISP side so they don't have to compete on the content side. If there are ISPs refusing to peer who are not biased in this manner, I would assume they must have a more compelling argument?

Re:Big Data

[TemporalBeing]

An interesting gun... Here in People-Who-Are-Actually-Professional-Network-EngineersVille, we'd simply accept that our current cheapest-available-transit-provider has shitty connectivity (really? Cogent? really really? Well done, Netflix. Not pinching any pennies, at all) and get a provider that didn't offer bargain bin connectivity and shitty routes to just about everyone. But hey. It's entirely the receiving network's fault.

FTR, NetFlix uses a number of different transit providers, not just Cogent.

Re:Big Data

[JourneymanMereel]

In fairness, I was able to watch Amazon instant video just fine last night but Netflix wasn't working at all.

Re:Big Data

[ultranova]

The soviet government was unable to keep the lie going. The USA government does not have that problem: They are funded by biased taxation and trade agreements, a monopoly on many forms of intellectual property, a monopoly on 'world police' duties, and sale of most of the international currency. When all that fails, they simply invent 1/3rd of their federal revenue from thin air.

The US government is hardly synonymous with capitalism. Whether that's a good or bad thing I won't get into, but it's entirely possible that US might survive the fall of capitalism and recover. However, should this not be the case, it doesn't matter how much money it can print for itself. Money only has value within a functioning economic system; all the money in the world can't buy anything is no one is selling.

All the people provide is disposable labour and babies for future labour markets.

And they're starting to admit that, too. Once you consciously admit that the promises offered by some Power that Be are lies, it no longer has any power to compel your loyalty. It might try coercion, but as the Soviet coup demonstrated, that's a desperate gambit that has low chances of working, even if the people who make up the army still stay under its spell.

In short, capitalism is going to fall for failing the same test it judges people by: can you deliver? And it could had avoided its fate by showing mercy for those who can't. There is irony in that. But the stupid thing is that it already got a stay of execution back when communism first arose by becoming lighter and softer with unemployment benefits and keynesian stimulus economics, and is really only dying due to abandoning those - and could still repent a second time, it's just bloody unlikely to.

Re:Big Data

[sabri]

Netflix offered a solution that dropped that transit cost to ZERO

Blatantly not true. Comcast is not paying for transit, they are peering with the transit ISP that Netflix pays. Netflix tried to establish direct peering with Comcast. This means Comcast needs to pay for the operational and capital expense of a port and maintaining the peering relationship. So I'd say it's exactly reversed: Netflix want Comcast to pay for their transit reduction.

Re:Big Data

[AK Marc]

Oh, so it's for the ISP's broken business model that they are screwing everyone? Even with a monopoly guaranteed in law, and government funding, they are more expensive than municipal fiber.

Re:Big Data

[Anonymous Coward]

Netflix does not sell you content, and they're open about it. It's a pay-subscription service.

At no point should you be able to keep a working copy of the content should you terminate your service with them.

I'm all for DRM-Free stuff, but you have to look at it in context.

Re:Big Data

[Anonymous Coward]

He made a valid point, even if he did it with a strong sarcastic tone. He called it like it was.

Re:Big Data

[JWSmythe]

Technically, it's just where you're buying the connection. Netflix are already at a shitload of peerings.

AS2096 - 170 peers - http://bgp.he.net/AS2906
AS40027 - dead since Feb 23, 2012 - http://bgp.he.net/AS40027
AS55095 - 2 BGP peers - http://bgp.he.net/AS55095

So now I'm even more confused to WTF they're bitching about.

Re:Big Data

[Anonymous Coward]

I was getting 100mb/s, my line rate, from Netflix when buffering last night at 9pm, and my ISP doesn't even have a CDN. I get my Netflix from some datacenter out on the Internet quite a few hops away. Same thing with YouTube. Both buffer at 100mb/s and no CDNs, no peering, no IX.

Re: Big Data

[Anonymous Coward]

Netflix actually did state that between Akamai, LimeLight, Level 3, and Cogent, they were not able to purchase enough bandwidth. Netflix > (Akamai+LimeLight+L3+Cogent). We are talking about only the USA and only during peak hours. Those other CDNs are used throughout the day for much more than just streaming videos, but also business related things like patching. Netflix only cared about peak bandwidth, and those companies combined did not have enough.

Re:Big Data

[dgatwood]

This. And this is precisely the sort of monopoly abuse that let to the breakup of Ma Bell. The ISPs are offering non-connectivity services, then deliberately degrading service to companies that compete with those services. Monopolies like ISPs should absolutely not be allowed to do this. A company should either be an ISP or a content provider. As soon as you allow any company to be both, it pretty much guarantees abuse. The bigger the company, the bigger the abuse.

Re:Big Data

[DamnOregonian]

Netflix doesn't peer unconditionally unless it's at an IX.

We were pretty excited when they finally decided to become part of the SIX, as we didn't fit their bill for being cool enough to peer with prior to that. Net Neutrality, eh?

We're not a real big ISP, but we do have gigabit home customers, and around 15k customers total.

I can also tell you that we put off peering with them explicitly to wait to have enough cash to upgrade the entire infrastructure from our gig customers to our SIX edge (not cheap.) to handle the increased bandwidth direct peering allowed. Netflix customers really are just a really, really vocal minority of our actual customer base.

Re:Big Data

[DamnOregonian]

The latter. One of the ISP acquisitions my employer got their hands on recently had them as an upstream. They were promptly nuked.

Re:Big Data

[DamnOregonian]

Then I suggest they start routing their Comcast bound traffic out one of those other providers. I'd be happy to help them do it, but I have a sneaking suspicion technical capability isn't the hold-up. I certainly have had to do it many times for our content provider customers... Then again, we have 6 different upstreams, and we only use Cogent for the people who really, really don't care how bad their connectivity is. The pricing is good enough to leave the circuit their idle, not hitting commit, and not care.

Re:Big Data

[DamnOregonian]

*there.

I quit life :(

Re:Big Data

[TemporalBeing]

Then I suggest they start routing their Comcast bound traffic out one of those other providers. I'd be happy to help them do it, but I have a sneaking suspicion technical capability isn't the hold-up. I certainly have had to do it many times for our content provider customers... Then again, we have 6 different upstreams, and we only use Cogent for the people who really, really don't care how bad their connectivity is. The pricing is good enough to leave the circuit their idle, not hitting commit, and not care.

I don't know who they have with Comcast, but I wouldn't be surprised if they had multiple transit connections from multiple transit providers to Comcast already.

I also wouldn't be surprised to see Comcast and Verizon purposefully degrading Netflix in order to promote their own products (f.e Comcast's Xfinity) instead.

Re:Big Data

[lsatenstein]

It's extortion plain and simple. It's never been about actual capacity. Big Data is trying to squeeze as much revenue out of us as the can.

Yes, you are right.

This reminds me of Obamacare, which was implemented in the rest of the world in 1966. That said, When can you expect to have HS internet at $10/mo for 500megabits/sec as it is in other countries?

The Netflix guy is absolutely right. But the USA is owned by corporations, not by it's majority of taxpayers.

Re:Big Data

[DamnOregonian]

Except that if Comcast gets caught doing that, they'll be slapped as common carriers before they can take their next breath.

Now, that doesn't mean you're wrong. It just means there is incentive to not play too dirty (purposeful degradation)

Re:Big Data

[Anonymous Coward]

Netflix does, The links between Comcast and Level3, and Comcast and Cogent are both completely saturated. Same for Level3 to Verizon. See here: http://blog.level3.com/global-connectivity/verizons-accidental-mea-culpa/

Re:Big Data

[romons]

Remember that ATT didn't let other people connect to their lines until the 1960s. They have a shared monopoly. Business 101 suggests that they suck as much cash as they can while the government lets them get away with it. Their business isn't supplying you with netflix. It is picking your pocket in any way they can.

Re:Big Data

[DamnOregonian]

I run a network with pretty significant content provider traffic, as well as a whole ton of eyeball traffic.

I absolutely do have to troubleshoot path-to-comcast congestion issues frequently. However, across my 6 upstreams, I have been able to find paths that are not congested at any point in time. I will not sympathize with Netflix for refusing to invest a few of their zillions of dollars into some clever network engineers. This process is even easier when you're dealing with outbound content provider traffic. It's not even difficult until you're trying to figure out how to help service inbound toward your eyeballs.

The process of routing around congestion into eyeball networks is entirely automated for us now. It took some work, and it takes a few transit providers, but it's entirely doable. It never occurred to me to try to bring the government into the management of their network though... I know I'd love it if that happened to me. I believe there are also commercial products that can assist with this. Netflix, I'm sure knows this. This is just a squabble between 2 corporate giants, with a bunch of really gullible people fooled into cheerleading for them for lack of understanding of the actual issue, who are then posting PR blog posts from interested parties as evidence. It's like a fucking US political campaign.

Re:Big Data

[DamnOregonian]

Which is weird as hell, because on Tuesday evening, like every evening, I didn't have any trouble at all on my FIOS connection. Does your internet perhaps suck ass?

Re:Big Data

[bigpat]

I didn't say I had any trouble with the Internet, just with Netflix. Did you try Netflix on Tuesday evening? Also, from your name it appears you are in Oregon and I am in Massachusetts.

Re:Big Data

[Anonymous Coward]

How can people in South Africa, Bolivia, Botswana, Argentina, and many other parts of the world connect to Netflix with no problems (using VPN and DNS services) but ISPs in the US have a problem with it?

Re:Big Data

[Anonymous Coward]

So what exactly am I buying with my monthly cable / DSL subscription if not access to services like Netflix? Should I get my service for free and the services I connect to be charged?

Re:Big Data

[DamnOregonian]

The subject of the conversation was Netflix and Verizon, so I was referring to Netflix on my FIOS. You are correct in that we are separated by quite a huge gap in locality. In a roundabout way, that's kind of my point. I don't think there was deliberate throttling occuring due to Netflix pissing off Verizon, or they forgot to throttle my locality while they were doing it.

Re:Big Data

[JWSmythe]

Well, both sides get charged. We're all either charged on capacity or 95th percentile throughput.

I've never known a residential provider to charge for used throuhgput, because people have a hard time understanding it. People would flip out if their bill was $20 one month, and $300 the next. Rather, residential providers do a bit of math. They look at their bill, the aggregate bandwidth used, and the total Mb/s available to customers. Of course, they tag on a nice profit. There are additional considerations, like what do they need to provide extra services like IPTV, how much does it cost to maintain existing circuits, add new circuits, keep employees paid, travel costs for technicians, etc, etc, etc...

So, you get a nice low flat rate, because consumers don't use 100% of their bandwidth 100% of the time. Basically, they oversubscribe. If they do it right, you never know. If they do it wrong, you have shitty service and everyone complains.

At the datacenter we have equipment, we pay for the rack, power, and on the 95th percentile utilization of that circuit. So if we idle everything for a month, we barely pay anything. If we dump all the load to that datacenter,

If you're running a business where you need to be in a datacenter, your business model better cover all your costs. Otherwise, you'll be out of business quick.

No one gets a free ride. You pay for your end-user line. I pay for the line my server is one. Everyone's paid, and everything works.

Re:Big Data

[TemporalBeing]

Except that if Comcast gets caught doing that, they'll be slapped as common carriers before they can take their next breath. Now, that doesn't mean you're wrong. It just means there is incentive to not play too dirty (purposeful degradation)

Except they have been kind-of caught doing just that; not blatantly. All they have to do is slow down any connection that goes outside of their network - they've already been caught throttling connections.

In Other News

[sexconker]

Cats on Dogs: Dogs are the problem.

Re:In Other News

[Z00L00K]

Well - if the content providers outright denied to provide content to ISPs that want money for the traffic it would hurt the content providers but it would hurt the ISPs more since the customers would look for other providers.

However as soon as a content provider starts to pay they will be part of the problem and not provide any solution.

Re:In Other News

[dryeo]

Thing is the other providers are the same companies as own the ISPs.

Re:In Other News

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol yeah I'll just move to a different provider, oh look, there isn't one available that isn't ALSO charging Netflix money.

I guess I'll switch to my mobile phone .. oh wait, data caps.

Well shit; I guess I could use dialup - that will solve my bandwidth-to-netflix issue!

Oh, I didn't see you there REALITY I heard the knocking but shit, I thought it was my fucking brain rolling around in my head, I guess i imagined that.

I'm shocked!

[Livius]

In the absence of governments preventing them quasi-monopolies will act like quasi-monopolies?

Re:I'm shocked!

[dpilot]

Now we need the quasi-obligatory response that this is really a government problem, and if government weren't in there mucking about with needless regulation the free market would address the problem and we'd all be in broadband utopia at reasonable prices.

Re:I'm shocked!

[s.petry]

Now we need the quasi-obligatory response that this is really a government problem, and if government weren't in there mucking about with needless regulation the free market would address the problem and we'd all be in broadband utopia at reasonable prices.

Perhaps I don't quite understand your wording and this is not double speak, but assuming you wrote correctly this is a Government problem. At least in the realm of what the Governments role is supposed to be in a Capitalist economy.

The majority of monopolization in the US is due exactly to monopolization by Government intervention. You may have to go deep to see it, and many people don't want to look that far, but it's all there. Start with Patent law and work your way out. Even if I could provide a better cheaper solution I could not implement it because I'd be stopped by the Government due to violating someone's patent.

And lets not bullshit each other, the majority of the millions of patents (I'd say 99.9%) approved every year do not deal with actual inventions, but ideas that someone now owns. Many of these are never implemented, because it would harm the patent owners market share and profit margins.

As I started with, it's possible that your statement is just worded in an obscure fashion and you would agree that this problem is due to the government.

Re:I'm shocked!

[Anonymous Coward]

But government is the problem, dumb-asses. The reason you only have one broadband provider in many areas is because local governments signed contracts with these corporations that allows them exclusive usage of communications infrastructure, state governments passed laws that prevent local municipalities from building their own infrastructure, and the federal government shields them from any sort of federal regulation through the FCC which now works for said companies due to regulatory capture.

Re:I'm shocked!

[Anonymous Coward]

Also the exorbitant cost of laying the last mile of copper/fiber making it extremely expensive to fight the incumbent ISP

Re:I'm shocked!

[dryeo]

.Perhaps I don't quite understand your wording and this is not double speak, but assuming you wrote correctly this is a Government problem.

That's true, the government has been implicit in enclosing the commons since 1235 and without common land to drag cable/fiber across you can't just start an ISP.

The majority of monopolization in the US is due exactly to monopolization by Government intervention.

Perhaps we need to stop the government from giving the aristocracy (the rich) the right to own the land and infrastructure built on our land. Traditionally there was private land, eg your house and immediate property and their was common land for the use of all. Government has removed the common part and given it to the lords and now naturally those who own the commons want to profit off it.

Re:I'm shocked!

[bill_mcgonigle]

I guess you've never personally worked on a community broadband project and learned what's involved with getting pole space (in the supposed 'public' right of way).

Give it a try - you'll learn something!

Re:I'm shocked!

[Anonymous Coward]

What you're ignoring with your implication that government is the problem is that the only solution if you're correct is no government at all, not even a weak one. You could take away the right to enter into exclusive contracts, but cities could still refuse to permit a new street digging every time an ISP wanted to start up. Would you take away a city's right to control when the roads are dug up and to what standards they are repaired afterward?

The real problem is unregulated business. Government is only their agent because it's the easiest agent. Removing governmental powers doesn't remove monopoly power, it just makes the exercise of monopoly power seek other avenues. We saw this in the 19th century when corporations hired mercenaries to attack union sympathizers and engage in all out war against communities.

You can take your dreams of Somalia in the United States and smoke'em. We don't want it.

Re:I'm shocked!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, comrade; the only options are overwhelming, crushingly corrupt government (what we have now and you want more of apparently) and no government.

If only there was some form of limited government; a government with strictly limited powers at different levels. We could have a list of things that the head government (federal?) could do and so on and so forth down to the local level. Nah, that'd never work, get back to licking those boots.

And to answer your dumb ass question; the people of the city should decide if the streets get dug up, and who is offered the contract, not some statist managerial scum like yourself.

Re:I'm shocked!

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporations were only able to terrorize local communities when given the full faith and blessing of *drum-roll please* the local or federal government authorities.

The Palmer Raids were attempts by the United States Department of Justice to arrest and deport radical leftists, especially anarchists, from the United States. The raids and arrests occurred in November 1919 and January 1920 under the leadership of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. Though more than 500 foreign citizens were deported, including a number of prominent leftist leaders, Palmer's efforts were largely frustrated by officials at the U.S. Department of Labor who had responsibility for deportations and who objected to Palmer's methods. The Palmer Raids occurred in the larger context of the Red Scare, the term given to fear of and reaction against political radicals in the U.S. in the years immediately following World War I.

For approximately 150 years, union organizing efforts and strikes have been periodically opposed by police, security forces, National Guard units, special police forces such as the Coal and Iron Police, and/or use of the United States Army. Significant incidents have included the Haymarket Riot and the Ludlow massacre. The Homestead struggle of 1892, the Pullman walkout of 1894, and the Colorado Labor Wars of 1903 are examples of unions destroyed or significantly damaged by the deployment of military force. In all three examples, a strike became the triggering event.
Pinkertons and militia at Homestead, 1892 - One of the first union busting agencies was the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, which came to public attention as the result of a shooting war between strikers and three hundred Pinkerton agents during the Homestead Strike of 1892. When the Pinkerton agents were withdrawn, militia forces were deployed. The decisive defeat of a powerful strike resulted in the destruction of the local union.
Federal troops crush the American Railway Union, 1894 - During the Pullman Strike, the American Railway Union (ARU) committed one of the first great acts of union solidarity by calling out its members according to the principle of industrial unionism. The action was very successful until twenty thousand federal troops were called out to crush the strike, and the national ARU was destroyed.
National Guard in the Colorado Labor Wars, 1903 - The Colorado National Guard, an employers' organization called the Citizens' Alliance, and the Mine Owners' Association teamed together to eject the Western Federation of Miners from mining camps throughout Colorado during the Colorado Labor Wars.

Re:I'm shocked!

[Thanshin]

In the presence of corrupt governments preventing them, they will too.

All current forms of government are corrupt.

Thus, both in the absence and presence of governments, quasi-monopolies will have great power.

Re:I'm shocked!

[dywolf]

Right on cue.

Re:I'm shocked!

[dywolf]

Because this, just like healthcare, gun control, and the environment, is an absolutely unheard of problem that no one else in the world has ever had to confront and solve ever before.

I mean just look at Europe and Australia and Canada and the rest of the developed world... ....shootings all the time cause they still havent solved gun crime yet either. ...And the internet....why they're just as bad off from monopolization sticking them with shoddy customer service, low speeds, high prices, and no consumer choice. ...And let's not forget healthcare...no one anywhere in the developed world can afford to even have children cause they cost an arm and a leg, everywhere.

Yep.
We can't just look to other countries cause there are TOTALLY brand new unheard of problems that no one has ever faced or solved before, ever.

Re:I'm shocked!

[dywolf]

and the magical IHOTFM will fix it?
Yeah...no.

It's not "government" that is the problem.
It's "bad government".
Government that looks to the lobbyists first instead of its citizens.
Ie, corrupt public officials.

Because some officials are bad doesn't mean the solution is automatically "no government"...that solves nothing. Proper government is run in the interest of its constituents.

Proper government would have some simple and sane regulations to promote competition (no non-compete agreements, even force competition via EU style no exclusive access to the "last mile" rules), or work with companies that would increase access and reduce cost Like has happened in cities Google's gone.
Or even the government itself would create its own utility for internet access, like Chattanooga did, becoming one of the best wired cities in the country.

Re:I'm shocked!

[nolife]

The costs of laying wire/fiber are expensive but in the end, the people in the area can and do eventually pay for it regardless of who did it. It doesn't matter if Verizon, Comcast, Joe's Fiber Company, or the city of Whatever did the laying of the wire, the final cost for that wiring project would be the same. The problem with the franchise agreements is the people paid but they paid it to a single company that won't share it. People could have paid a third party or the local government the same amount of money in the end to run those lines and had an "open" line and then picked a carrier for their service on that line. The Verizons and Comcasts could still negotiate and run their own lines in the same area instead of providing service on the existing "public" lines but they won't. Why? Because of the competition and choice people have and they do not see money in doing it.

Re:I'm shocked!

[Anonymous Coward]

Solution to a quasi-monopoly - rely on a full-on monopoly. Brilliant.

Re:I'm shocked!

[DamnOregonian]

In order to accomplish that, we'd have to stop electing the aristocracy to positions of governance.

Poor argument

[Anonymous Coward]

While I agree that ISPs are a big part of the problem, the downside isn't that we don't get our utopia, the downside is that other countries are able to provide a more competitive near-utopia, locking us out of a leadership position on development of the Internet. That's the real fail, here. If we fail to lead, there will be others that are all too happy to fill our shoes and take our money to do so.

No, I didn't RTFA.

Re:Poor argument

[StormReaver]

While I agree that ISPs are a big part of the problem, the downside isn't that we don't get our utopia....

A bigger part of the problem lies with people who believe that paying a fair price for service, and then receiving the paid-for service, is some form of utopia rather than a requirement.

No, I didn't RTFA.

That was self-evident.

What it spells...

[Anonymous Coward]

It is spelled g-r-e-e-d. The only way to legitimately get back at the large ISPs is to buy shares from ones that pay hefty dividends (e.g., Verizon, AT&T).

Netflix should become an ISP and compete with them

[Anonymous Coward]

And i will be their first customer!

Says the guy who wants to charge you

[Anonymous Coward]

He's just mad the ISPs control access to his product. It's not like Netflix is out to give your their product for free....

Re:Netflix should become an ISP and compete with t

[ArcadeMan]

If media companies can become ISPs, why couldn't Netflix also become one?

Re:Netflix should become an ISP and compete with t

[alen]

they can, just borrow $100 billion to build out a network, negotiate with every redneck and podunk town to get franchise rights to run their cables and spend more money for marketing to get customers

A little naive perhaps?

[Anonymous Coward]

TFA sounds a little naive.

While I'm quite certain there's that "because they can" factor in there, and I've seen it first-hand when working for companies, it's just not as simple as how much data tan go through the fiber. There's lots of hidden costs that have nothing to do with interconnect bandwidth, like switching gear, power used by said gear, maintenance costs related to that, including salaries for qualified technicians spread all over the coverage area available to handle issues and outages (not that their crew is anywhere near "capable", but salaries are salaries even if they were monkeys).

So, yeah, they can. And there's probably a lot they do only because they can. But it's not that a single fiber would handle all the traffic, with zero cost. Bigger ISPs have bigger costs. They have more widespread coverage, which means their technicians have to travel more (or have to be more), they also need more switching gear, relays to amplify (well, re-create) the signal (which you do need every few km even with oh-so-state-of-the-art fiber, and they cost a crapload of money), routing, which is not the same for a huge ISP as it is for a town-wide ISP.

Scale doesn't necessarily decrease costs, and the nature of video streaming is that it's not perfectly balanced load either. With those ISPs, you need different co-location agreements.

Should they charge for it? Hell no! They should pay! Better netflix = more users, they're just too dumb to notice.

The gist of the matter is, that big ISPs are usually also big telecoms, and telecoms are used to operating with huge profit margins. Anything that pushes them into, not read, but less than obscene profit, they fight. Because they can. They don't really need to provide good service, their quasi-monopoly on the telecom side guarantees they won't die if suddenly people decide to switch ISPs (they won't switch cell companies as easily, because they probably all collude to fix prices - just speculation, but I wouldn't be surprised).

So, big ISPs need governmental incentives to do what small ISPs must do due to natural market forces (competition).

What does this tell you?

Telecoms shouldn't be allowed to act as ISPs. It creates market imbalance.

Generalize it a bit further: companies should be specialized. So they actually have to be good at what they do to prevail.

Re:A little naive perhaps?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ehm... (anonymous coward here)... notice that I meant that the ISPs should pay. It's them who benefit from a better interconnect to netflix. Netflix too, sure, but what netflix wants isn't a bigger pipe, but the ability to put servers closer to the last mile. They pay for the servers (as usual), but they shouldn't pay for the traffic, since it's a net win to the ISP anyway.

Re:A little naive perhaps?

[Wesley Felter]

run a business without paying the traditional costs in the field and socialize your costs. in this case he wants every internet customer to pay for his bandwidth whether they use netflix or not.

ISPs chose their flat-rate business model; Netflix didn't force it on them. If that business model no longer works, ISPs should switch to a different one.

Re:A little naive perhaps?

[Bengie]

Netflix's Beast box full of SSDs that can handle 50k customers streaming HD have a peak load of 150watts and takes up 2Us. 20gb of bandwidth for the cost of $20 of electricity per month is not a bad deal. Maybe the ISP would be more happy paying $40k/month of dedicated bandwidth from Level 3.

Re:A little naive perhaps?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it doesn't matter if Netflix offered to pay for the servers or not. I recall they did, but assume they didn't. Still, the ISP saves far more than what it costs to maintain a few caching servers, so it's still a net win for the ISP, especially if Netflix traffic is as significant as they claim (which I don't doubt).

So much so, that peering is a very common thing between heavy traffic endpoints (talking from personal experience in publicity here).

Re:A little naive perhaps?

[Anonymous Coward]

Troll for large ISP! Troll for large ISP! (Just in case nobody noticed)...go away you have no freakin' clue.

Re:A little naive perhaps?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know you end up blaming the ISP's but none of your arguments make sense....SIZE DOES MATTER! It's the ONLY thing that matters in this conversation...size of the 'pipe' that is. None of what you said applies more to fibre than it does to copper. I'm quite sure these large ISPs/Telecoms have the 'calculations down pat' as to how much it costs to service any given customer...there will be a baseline cost no matter the technology...but here's the thing, bigger pipes mean FEWER lines to run not more, fewer interconnects, fewer switches etc., etc.

Bloat matters to, but that's what 'downsizing' is all about...see for instance MS recently. But when's the last time you saw a telecom company 'downsize' other than when they merge...and why is that? Because they know they can service the same total amount of customers with fewer employees than 2 large companies can. These guys have this 'shit down pat'.

What's worse though is that they are trying to get the rest of us to believe this is 'hard', costly, etc...it's not...or at least no more so than copper...it's all about the laws NOT the technology at this point.

Re:A little naive perhaps?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know you end up blaming the ISP's but none of your arguments make sense....SIZE DOES MATTER! It's the ONLY thing that matters in this conversation...size of the 'pipe' that is. None of what you said applies more to fibre than it does to copper. I'm quite sure these large ISPs/Telecoms have the 'calculations down pat' as to how much it costs to service any given customer...there will be a baseline cost no matter the technology...but here's the thing, bigger pipes mean FEWER lines to run not more, fewer interconnects, fewer switches etc., etc.

No, not fewer switches. Those scale with traffic bandwidth, not pipe capacity. Switches need to process ARP and spanning tree protocols, so the processing power needed grows as the number of packets and devices connected grow.

Most high-end switches can aggregate several pipes anyway, so many low-capacity pipes more or less equal one high-capacity pipe. Except where the pipes have different costs of ownership.

But this is actually all in favor of colocation. Colocation removes that traffic from the bottleneck switches/routers, freeing them for the more useful traffic that's the one really going out. Last mile switches/routers tend to be free of congestion, so colocation is all about moving the traffic source closer to them, beyond the congestion points. It should be a win to all parties involved.

The problem is when there's an incentive to do the inefficient thing: congest the choke point. The incentive is many-fold, going from the desire to pretend supporting this traffic involves a huge investment and has no other solution (ie: pay me more, there's no other way, when there is), and also including the desire to stifle competition (ie: you're competing with me, why should I let you into my network?)

It's not about the technology. It's about corporate politics. That's where laws have to kick in.

moderating

[JeffElkins]

To remove accidental moderation.

Re:Netflix should become an ISP and compete with t

[houstonbofh]

they can, just borrow $100 billion to build out a network, negotiate with every redneck and podunk town to get franchise rights to run their cables and spend more money for marketing to get customers

Or, pull a Google, and do one town at a time and watch the incumbents suddenly offer free peerage and lower rates.

I can already hear the rebuttal by big ISP

[Anonymous Coward]

Netflix and American consumers, clearly don't 'understand' interconnects and peering agreements we have to agree to.
FCC regulation doesn't account fo rblah blah blah ...
Market forces and competition are causing buld out time tables and costs to ...

If there was EVER a time, for the FCC and US politicians to show it isn't 100% bought and paid for by Corporate America, and the media cartel specifically, this is it. Sadly, I fear they do have THAT much control within Government.

Is it still cynical, even if you're right?

Well, here's the solution...

[Obfuscant]

Hastings says, "Consider this: A single fiber-optic strand the diameter of a human hair can carry 101.7 terabits of data per second, enough to support nearly every Netflix subscriber watching content in HD at the same time.

Now, if we could only get every Netflix sub to connect to the same human-hair sized fiber, the problem would be solved. Netflix could even own that fiber and control their own destiny.

Of course, there might be other content providers who are then clamoring for legislative assistance to force Netflix to carry their content on the Netflix fiber...

Re:Well, here's the solution...

[AK Marc]

Direct point-to-point links have no demands for other content. It's when you buy from an ISP who determines that they will not deliver part of the Internet they don't like. I've bought leased fibre services in many places, and nobdy has ever asked to put their content on it. The users have already paid someone for access to that Netflix stream, but that access provider is trying to extort additional profit from content providers.

Re:Well, here's the solution...

[Obfuscant]

Direct point-to-point links have no demands for other content.

Netflix putting all subs on one fiber is not a "direct point to point link", any more than all of comcast's subs in a community being on one fiber is. If Netflix is running the backbone and doing the content they are, for all intents and purposes, acting as an ISP.

Re:Well, here's the solution...

[AK Marc]

If Netflix is running the backbone and doing the content they are, for all intents and purposes, acting as an ISP.

Why is the "I" in there? If Netflix is doing it, then it's a private network, not unlike an '80s frame relay network (just faster). They aren't providing "Internet". They are providing a video service.

By your logic, a cable TV network (with no data services) is an ISP because they are running a backbone and providing content.

Re:Well, here's the solution...

[Obfuscant]

Why is the "I" in there?

Because it is almost a certainty that were Netflix to manage to provide the fiber to send their data to their subs, it would be based on internet technologies and protocols. You know there is a small-i internet and large-I Internet, and you can have one that is limited in access while the other one is the worldwide interconnect of all the small-i versions, don't you? (And before you point out that ISP has a capital 'I', that's because it is an acronym, not necessarily because it is only talking about large-I internet services.)

The point is, anything that connects a million users together is not a "dedicated point-to-point link". It is more like an internet, and when one provides service over that internet, one is for all intents and purposes and ISP, or very much like one. Especially if one is doing all the last-mile connections and other companies want to get their data on your fiber. That is, after all, what people are trying to get cable companies to do -- open their pipes to other providers.

By your logic, a cable TV network (with no data services) is an ISP because they are running a backbone and providing content.

Yes, if a company is providing a service based on internet protocols and technology then they look very much like an ISP. You plug your internet connection into their hardware, access their servers, ditto.

Unfortunately for your argument here, cable TV networks are not distributing their standard video content using internet protocols, and one does not connect to a cable TV video server to get it. They use ATV standards to distribute their legacy products, which removes them from the ISP look-alike competition. Even for on-demand services where there may be an internet-based upstream connection to make the request for video, it is still delivered using ATV. At least that's how Comcast does it.

Re:Netflix should become an ISP and compete with t

[Obfuscant]

Or, pull a Google, and do one town at a time and watch the incumbents suddenly offer free peerage and lower rates.

"One town at a time" was pretty much how the incumbents got where they are. Yes, they bought out other companies to get to the size they are, but those companies did it one town at a time, for the most part. Nobody fell off the turnip truck with billions of dollars putting cable in a hundred cities at the same time. It's like nobody comes out of the womb weighing 600 pounds, it takes a lot of time to get there, and THEN you get your own TV show.

Anyone who thinks they'll get to be the next Comcast or TWC by a massive multi-city buildout is, well, I'd rather they not clutter up the neighborhood with their poorly planned systems. They'll only be in the way of, and muddy the waters for, the next real competitor.

Play hardball

[felixrising]

John Oliver really said it well, explained the nature of the shake-down... these ISPs are simply being greedy and not realising that providing a quality fast connection to their subscribers is in their own interest, providing poor quality connection to services that other ISPs are providing good quality to only serves to hurt their reputation and good will with their own subscribers. If was Netflix or any of these content providers that are providing great content for the ISPs, I'd play hardball.. it'd hurt their own bottom line for a while, but if they banded together with other content providers to enforce it, they would soon have the ISPs begging.... So what would I do? Notify customers of these big ISPs that within two months they will no longer be providing the full service via that ISP.. sit back and watch the ISPs customers leave in droves.. of course, this is just turning the tables on the ISP net neutrality rules, but when the ISPs are already playing hardball and have their own man in charge of the FCC, then it's time to give them a taste of their own medicine.

Re:Play hardball

[the_bard17]

That'd be true if we all had choice.

'Round here (Upstate NY), we're realistically limited to two ISPs. Verizon and Time Warner. Most of the area doesn't have access to FIOS, either... I'm talking about Verizon DSL. Neither seems to be looking to change the status quo. Sure, I'd be pissed if one or both were dropped by Netflix, but I can't switch to anyone else.

Re:Play hardball

[geekmux]

John Oliver really said it well, explained the nature of the shake-down... these ISPs are simply being greedy and not realising that providing a quality fast connection to their subscribers is in their own interest, providing poor quality connection to services that other ISPs are providing good quality to only serves to hurt their reputation and good will with their own subscribers. If was Netflix or any of these content providers that are providing great content for the ISPs, I'd play hardball.. it'd hurt their own bottom line for a while...

Uh, their bottom line? Have you not noticed that these companies are making not millions, but billions these days? You're going to get customers to leave in "droves"? Oh, that's a laugh. There's still "droves" of customers left. Think they care? No, not really. They still made a few hundred million this quarter.

Arrogance is the real problem with the companies that should have never been allowed to grow to the size they are today. We don't call them a monopoly because we're big fans of old board games. Threaten to leave? Meh, means nothing to them. They've bought and sold more customers than you could ever dream of amassing.

Go ahead. Try it. Then sit back and watch them laugh at your failed attempts to manipulate one of the most powerful entities on the planet.

Re:Play hardball

[Jason Levine]

In many cases, these big ISPs are also big Cable TV providers. Netflix (and Internet Video in general) threatens their Cable TV model and so must be dealt with. They can't simply block all access to Netflix. The FCC might be weak willed but it still has enough of a spine that it wouldn't ignore this. (Not to mention the lawsuits and bad press that the company would get.) Since they can't block it, they attack it with a two pronged attack:

1) Institute data caps and overage fees. This means there is no a hard limit on how much Internet Video you can watch. They might be forced to set them high at first, but that also means that they can leave them where they are and lock out HD streams. (Note that Time Warner Cable wanted to make a 5GB cap but was forced to back out of that plan due to bad press and customer outcry.) In the case of overage fees, this will direct money to the cable companies' pockets in case users still try to watch Internet TV. It also makes Internet TV more expensive so that Cable TV will look like a better deal by comparison (even though that "more expensive" is the result of the cable companies' overage fees).

2) Make fast-slow lanes. If Netflix doesn't pay up, their site will be slow and nearly unusable. Then the cable companies can tout how you won't need to wait for their video services to buffer. If Netflix does pay up then the cable companies make money off of Netflix. This will also force Netflix to raise their rates (to cover this new cost of doing business) resulting in a more favorable - to the cable companies - Netflix/Cable TV price comparison. (Just like the overage fees.)

So this isn't just the big ISPs not wanting to pay to upgrade their networks. It's also them protecting their old business models against these newfangled competitors.

Re:Play hardball

[Areyoukiddingme]

Notify customers of these big ISPs that within two months they will no longer be providing the full service via that ISP.. sit back and watch the ISPs customers leave in droves.. of course, this is just turning the tables on the ISP net neutrality rules, but when the ISPs are already playing hardball and have their own man in charge of the FCC, then it's time to give them a taste of their own medicine.

You forget who Comcast owns. They wholly own NBC and Universal Studios, two major sources of Netflix content. And they're already screwing with the availability of NBCUniversal content on Netflix. If Netflix tries to play hardball, a whole boatload of shows and movies will just vanish out of their catalog.

A media company that owns the last mile is an abomination, and the FTC should do something about it.

Re:Play hardball

[Kjella]

Overage fees are nothing but pure evil. They did use to offer capped DSL and my cell phone data usage is still capped, I ran into it this summer as I was watching videos at the cabin but it doesn't have overage. What happens is at 80% I got a text that I'm getting close on my cap. At 100% I got a new text saying my quota is now up, I'll now either get very, very slow internet connection the rest of the month like enough to check email and barely browse the web, or I can pay up for additional quotas. Back when they offered capped DSL it was the same there.

The biggest benefit to a flat rate connection is that it's flat rate. And particularly today when you got phones and tablets and laptops and consoles and smart TVs and whatnot that all like to go online keeping track of your aggregate data usage is not easy. Overage fees are like the credit card model offering you 30 days free credit. How to do they make money off giving people free money? Because people slip up, get unplanned or unwanted expenses and then they nail the suckers. It's just begging to exploit the people who think they can save a few bucks a month.

Re:Play hardball

[Anonymous Coward]

An abomination like studios owning theaters?

Re:Play hardball

[Anonymous Coward]

2) Make fast-slow lanes. If Netflix doesn't pay up, their site will be slow and nearly unusable. Then the cable companies can tout how you won't need to wait for their video services to buffer.

My experience with HD cable TV (especially on-demand) is that they also buffer, and a helluva slower than netflix.

He who owns the keys, owns the castle

[p51d007]

Same with the overpriced "contract" plans for wireless phones (at least in the USA, not familiar with anywhere else). They show a retail price at the store, for the phone, then the "bargain" 299 price...of course with a 2 year contract. Then, that plan that you need, minus all the stupid taxes, runs over 100 dollars, and then by the time you add the taxes, it's around 140 dollars per month, x 24 months and you end up paying way more than if you bought the phone, full retail, online somewhere like Amazon, e-bay, swappa and went with an MVNO on a month to month plan. Heck, I did that two years ago and save over 80 bucks a month than being on contract. When phones got popular, they overcharged for minutes, then, they dropped that to "unlimited" minutes, but do to the popularity of texting, they overcharge for texting, even though it DOESN'T COST THE CARRIER ANYTHING because the texting is piggybacked on the carrier signal. Now, they overcharge for data. With only 2 "big" carriers and a couple smaller ones, t-mobile, sprint...they pretty much can get away with anything they want. It's taken 30 years after the breakup of "Ma-Bell" for the mother ship to put itself back together, perhaps it needs to be spanked again, but, with the amount of money the carriers throw at the political idiots in DC, don't look for it to change anytime soon, sadly.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

I live very rural

[Anonymous Coward]

Our telco only has 5mbit service so i pay a whole pile of extra money for 12mbit radio service, but they are trenching fiber to my house for about the same as i pay (130/mo). its not a great price, but my town has like 1000 people so its not like we're getting 100mbit docsis any time soon. On my connection i get my stated 12mbit virtually 100% of the time. netflix works great, and i used to work for AT&T, and comcast. They dont need to trench fiber or coax or string a twisted pair local loop - thats already done. and they still demand additional charges to do what their company's job is? thats totes f'd. shipping a package in normal space is billed to either the shipper or the receiver. not to both. (domestic, no duty or brokerage fees)

Conduit lease

[tepples]

One problem leading to broadband monopoly is city ownership of city roads. What alternative would you recommend? The only one I can think of is burying a few conduits in advance when performing other utility maintenance, and then leasing each individual conduit to an ISP to blow its own fiber or copper.

Re:Conduit lease

[s.petry]

Zoning for the infrastructure is the smallest part of the problem and the easiest to solve. It does however require thinking differently. To be very clear, this is not how things are, but how they should be in concept. Additional comments at the end of this post are not directed at you, please take no offense (I try to warn trolls away).

The Government is not supposed to "own" any land. They are supposed to work with the citizens to zone it properly, but the citizens own the land because the Government is the people (that's the theory at any rate). Since the Government does not own land, they can't lease or rent it out. They can only enforce the zoning that the people agree to.

If that theory was the practice, you and I could both own ISPs and lay our own cables/wires in the zones we are allotted. If the government gives us 1/2" to work in and share, the Government failed to zone properly. You and I should ensure that we don't muck with each others cables when laying things out, and the Government's job is to ensure I am liable if I damage your stuff and visa versa. "Leasing" us space on land they don't own is impossible.

This puts more accountability at a lower level, and that's how it should be. It reduces the footprint for potential corruption, and again that's how it should be.

I'm not anti-government by any means. I believe that some Government is required for society to function and thrive. Government should be a very minimal part of our lives in my opinion, but necessary.

Someone may comment and claim "but water", or "but power lines" and my answer will be the same. The problems we see today are due to both corruption and business not being held accountable for wrong doing. People want to claim that the Government is protecting them, but look at how many monopolies we have today. Look how many accidents there are with this alleged protection (Bruno CA). We have seen costs increase drastically on basic services because of monopolization, and QOS go down the toilet. The fact is that while Government has increased massively in the last decade everything in the private sector has gotten worse, so more government can not be the answer.

Re:Conduit lease

[mirix]

Dream on. What do you do when someone doesn't want you pulling cable across their property? (You won't be able to get the government to force them.)

It's besides the point really. Without government you'd be pulling the cable down a road made of mud and shit anyway.

Re:Conduit lease

[Wycliffe]

What alternative would you recommend? The only one I can think of is burying a few conduits in advance when performing other utility maintenance, and then leasing each individual conduit to an ISP to blow its own fiber or copper.

This isn't as crazy as it sounds. If the city owns the conduit, let's say a 6 inch pvc conduit and then rents it out at a nominal fee to anyone and
everyone who wants to send fiber down it. You could literally send thousands of strands of fiber down a single 6 inch conduit. Plenty of room
for competition for anyone who wants to try to compete. Now the city only has to maintain a simple piece of plastic pipe and can distribute the cost
with dozens of companies and each company gets to maintain their own fiber inside of this conduit.

Re:Conduit lease

[wvmarle]

Solve it the same way the roads are solved.

The government builds the infrastructure (roads), then allows everyone to use this (bus companies, truck companies, private cars), as long as they follow the rules of the road (including safety requirements on the vehicles, size limitations, etc) and they pay a road tax (depending on vehicle size/type/weight).

It's not hard to translate this into network service. Don't say it can't be done, it's exactly how it works in many European countries - with great results. With the minor difference to the road part that the government does not own the infrastructure directly, instead it's owned by a heavily regulated private company that is responsible for the maintenance of this infrastructure.

Re:Conduit lease

[s.petry]

Is this an attempt at trolling, or demonstrating how poor your reading comprehension skills are? To be very clear, this is not how things are, but how they should be in concept.

Re:Conduit lease

[Anonymous Coward]

How about: But healthcare.

Don't give me crap about free market being right. In Australia we pay half the amount per capita you Americans do for the same level of service. And we don't even have a full-service government regulated health system.

Non-subscriber's gun

[tepples]

Please show me the gun that's being used.

The gun owned by a non-subscriber when a competitive ISP tries to pull copper or fiber across his land to reach a subscriber.

Because they can? Wrong.

[geekmux]

"Why would more profitable, larger companies charge for connections and capacity that smaller companies provide for free? Because they can."

Uh, because they "can" is not exactly the reason.

The only reason they "can" is because people are willing to pay it. At the end of the day, it is still a business that relies on revenue from customers.

And from the US perspective, we might as well re-label this argument Netflix Neutrality, since that's all I keep hearing and seeing out of every argument related to this. Apparently there are two kinds of data streams left in the world. Netflix, and all the other shit.

There are also two kinds of ISPs left in the world too. The greedy asshats running the ones in the US, and everyone else.

The Solution: project-byzantium.org

[Anonymous Coward]

http://project-byzantium.org/

Re:The Solution: project-byzantium.org

[tepples]

How would a wireless mesh network reach from, say, Arizona to Indiana?

Opposition to a penny more per year

[tepples]

most netflix customers use it as a secondary service. it's the tiny percentage of cord cutters

Among some members of my family, I've detected a Grover Norquist mentality against any increase in entertainment spending. To afford another $120 per year recurring fee, they'd have to cut out something else. Cord cutters in countries where over-the-top video on demand (OTT VOD) services such as Hulu and Netflix are available recognize that everything but the "festering pile of social ills" that is televised sports is available on OTT VOD.

Vote with your feet, literally

[tepples]

Sure, I'd be pissed if [TWC or Verizon DSL] or both were dropped by Netflix, but I can't switch to anyone else.

If the Internet connection where you live has become unusable, you could always switch to somewhere else. Compare this: I imagine a lot of people would like to move to a rural area, but they like the Internet more than they like the country.

Re:Vote with your feet, literally

[dbc]

Oddly, my cabin in the mountains has a fiber going through my meadow where bears are regularly seen, yet here in the middle of Sili Valley I can get either indifferent DSL speeds or unreliable cable connectivity supplied by idiots. Of course, I admit that having "fiber to the bear turd" is largely a matter of have a lucky rural location positioned between wireless operators that will pay for a carrier-grade fiber connection.

Sadly, moving to where you can get decent internet connectivity is not an option for most people -- I believe economists call that an "externality".

Re:Vote with your feet, literally

[dballanc]

I recently bought a saw off a fellow via an online ad - about 20 miles of travel from the 'big' town of 25,000 to a house in pretty much the middle of nowhere and accessible only by several miles on gravel roads. Lots of cows, hayfields, dense forest. Out of curiousity I ask him about the internet options - he was on 10mb dsl, as are most of the other people in that area. Similar story from friends who live out in the country about 8 miles from a town of a few thousand people in a different direction. There seems to be at least a few rural options these days, atleast here in Missouri. Don't write rural off completely... atleast due to internet...

Re:Vote with your feet, literally

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe anyone honestly considers this a realistic option. Where you live affects: school system, commute distance, property tax, mortgage/rent, crime rate, access to brick-and-mortar facilities like grocery and pub, fun people to bbq with, reliability of water, electricity, and -oh, yeah - internet. Only a raving lunatic would sell his house, pay the 5% commission to a real estate agent, closing costs on a new mortgage, and spend a week moving in order to get a 25Mbps faster internet connection. The ISPs know this and use this leverage to justify ever expanding rent-seeking.

It's not like ISPs can really increase their subscriber base: the same geographical constraints that keep you from moving out also keep other people from moving in. So they can browbeat you out of reducing or cutting service. So they can browbeat you with upsales. They can hold you hostage against other revenue streams. There is no downside to them for poor customer service. There is no downside to them for temporarily blacking out HBO, ESPN, or netflx while they 'negotiate' retransmission agreements.

Re:Vote with your feet, literally

[tepples]

Only a raving lunatic would sell his house, pay the 5% commission to a real estate agent, closing costs on a new mortgage, and spend a week moving in order to get a 25Mbps faster internet connection.

Even if it's an upgrade from 0.048 Mbps dial-up to 25.048 Mbps cable?

When I started

[Anonymous Coward]

When I started using the internet in 1993+-, it was a 'free' service, you simply paid for the line and the modems. You could arrange with a university to have your ISDN/T1 whatever connected to their system and the only fee was from the phone company. You also had the right then you share your internet with whoever you liked, I relayed email and usenet to all others in my community. Wouldn't it be interesting if that was legal these days? One customer in an apt building or on a block could buy the direct connection and relay with anyone within range, or run cables over private property etc.. .

Terms and conditions of most every ISP I've seen/used in the last decade or so forbid any sharing at the cost of disconnection... I'd like them not to be ABLE to forbid it. neighbors could chip-in together etc etc..

If not Netflix, torrents. be happy.

[bussdriver]

If not for Netflix taking on the fight, the ISPs would be attacking torrents as a huge problem along with propaganda ("OMG, think of the children!" or "OMG, terrorists use torrents!")

Torrents do not have protection like Netflix does. YouTube might also be a target, again be happy that torrents are not the #1 threat to ISP screwing their customers. When they were the #1 user, data caps, QoS games, tampering with packets and other schemes were developing. Thank you Netflix and YouTube for slowing the assault; ISPs had to give in a little due to customer demand for Netflix.

Re:If not Netflix, torrents. be happy.

[geekmux]

If not for Netflix taking on the fight, the ISPs would be attacking torrents as a huge problem along with propaganda ("OMG, think of the children!" or "OMG, terrorists use torrents!")

Torrents do not have protection like Netflix does. YouTube might also be a target, again be happy that torrents are not the #1 threat to ISP screwing their customers. When they were the #1 user, data caps, QoS games, tampering with packets and other schemes were developing. Thank you Netflix and YouTube for slowing the assault; ISPs had to give in a little due to customer demand for Netflix.

The only ISPs that are "screwing" their customers in this case are the ones in the US. The rest of the world doesn't seem to have an issue with Net(flix) Neutrality, and it's most likely because they have the infrastructure to handle it. The US Government gave the LECs money to do exactly that years ago; build out infrastructure. $200 fucking billion to be exact. That money was squandered and paid out in executive bonuses instead (as if we should be shocked).

US-based ISPs want to charge per content because they have rich internet addicts as customers who are apathetic and ignorant of how this works in the rest of the world. If US customers refused to put up with that, or remembered they paid for it already, ISPs would be forced to accomodate. Addicts don't tend to give up easily. Arrogant monopolies know this. That is why they are arrogant.

And torrents? Please. ISPs could have used that terrorist excuse years ago to get those quashed. They spent their time instead getting in bed with the MAFIAA and attacking their customers in a different, more profitable way.

Sorry, but given their history, It shouldn't take a Netflix to make them finally get off the shitter. They still owe us for the infrastructure that would make this issue go away. Now, this "issue" is seen as nothing more than another revenue stream, which ISPs will latch onto like a blood-sucking leech with the tenacity of a pit bull and not let go until they have it.

Business class

[tepples]

Terms and conditions of most every ISP I've seen/used in the last decade or so forbid any sharing at the cost of disconnection

I'd imagine that business-class plans are less likely to forbid this. A hotel, for instance, needs to share a connection with its guests.

Utter BS from Reed Hastings & Netflix

[musixman]

Reed & Netflix is FOS when it comes to Net Neutrality, when you truly don't believe in something, you don't compromise your values for cash like they did with Comcast.

http://online.wsj.com/news/art...

How can we have a world free from NN, when one of the worlds biggest websites by bandwidth usage, pay's off an ISP for "premium" access to their network.

How about you practice what you preach Netflix, instead of whining when the cost is to much for your shareholders to bear. Pussy's.

Terrible argument. Try this instead

[Anonymous Coward]

A single strand of fiber can provide permanent, full speed, 100mbit internet access for a QUARTER MILLION perma seeding torrenting people. It could easily provide comparable service to a million typical consumers. A length of cable thinner than my pinky finger can provide this service for THE ENTIRE COUNTRY. Yet for some reason, the average consumer gets less than a third of that speed, and even worse at "peak load".

The concept of peak internet load in general is a joke. The reason is not that high speed internet can't be done. The problem is that it WON'T be done.

Size Matters! (not 'speed')

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll continue to try to help change this conversation by focusing on the proper metric...there is NO 'internet fast lane'...people need to get over that 'meme'...all packets travel roughly the same speed...the problem isn't speed (while not unless someone wants to tackle the 'speed of light issue') it's size...1 fibre-optic strand can carry THAT much data? And I'm stuck with copper...nice...enough of this crap already. I'm tired of having my 'car' blocked in my driveway because of other cars in my way (for those not understanding this is a metaphor...think of the 'highway'/road as someone blocking you because there aren't enough lanes...not because someone is traveling faster than someone else)...fibre to the home...let's just get this party started in earnest already!

Duh

[PopeRatzo]

At Wired, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has posted his take on net neutrality. He lays the problem at the feet of the large ISPs.

File this one under, "No Shit Sherlock".

Re:people still watch TV

[AK Marc]

Old style TV takes about as much as a single Netflix stream. So for every channel canceled, they can support one more Netflix user. That doesn't sound like the channels are such a waste.

Re:Muslim dogs

[Skidborg]

People who live in a civilized nation where that is far from the population's most pressing concern.

Consider This...

[MathAndLove]

While it is true that a single fiber could theoretically server all 44 million Netflix customers, consider the cost of splitting that traffic out to them...even if they were sitting on top of each other in a skyscraper capable of housing 44 million people. Then consider the end to end cost of distributing that traffic to reality.

Netflix has a nationwide outage yesterday

[gelfling]

Why don't you attend to that, fuckhead?

Re:The Solution: www.toecdn.org

[fredan]

no, it will be The Open Edge Content Delivery Network.

http://www.toecdn.org/

Re:Netflix should become an ISP and compete with t

[ArcadeMan]

Just FYI, Netflix already has several TV shows of their own.

Re:Netflix should become an ISP and compete with t

[Anonymous Coward]

This discussion is about Netflix becoming an ISP, (ie, laying fiber to peoples homes), not a media producer.

Re:Netflix should become an ISP and compete with t

[ArcadeMan]

Obfuscant said in his comment that you need to be a 600 pounds media company to be able to get your own TV show, I was pointing out that Netflix was already big enough to have multiple shows of their own.

Ban those handful

[xushi]

Why don't they just ban those handful of ISPs until they stop their dirty tricks? A message to the user saying something like "you cannot access Netflix via this ISP due to x y z." and provide a list of good ISPs. That can force the customers/users to move away from these ISPs or complain, which puts more pressure onto them sorting their shit out.

Yes it's a hit to the number of Netflix customers but in the long run it should pay off..no ?

How is YouTube doing?

[Vegan Pagan]

Netflix has been getting troubled by the telecoms a lot, but how about YouTube? Are they less bothered by the telecoms? Do they just not complain publicly as much? How does being a part of Google make their situation different than Netflix's?

Gym Membership

[LessThanObvious]

Companies like Comcast only know how to make money when the relationship to customers is like that of a gym membership, that is where lots of people pay monthly for a service they rarely if ever really use. They need us all to pay high fees to have big data pipes, but if all we do is regular web surfing it's almost impossible to use much bandwidth. Bittorrent and streaming video are the common ways people can actually generate significant usage. Comcast knows people love television and it's clear society is going to try to make the internet the delivery system for the modern replacement for television. As streaming media grows many people will not be in the gym membership you pay for and never use category, we'll have average users that are actually trying to use a good portion of what they pay to use. TFA talks about congestion at the ISP hand-off between Comcast and Netflix. Ethically I think it's on Comcast to provide carrier services for the traffic generated by and sent to their subscribers even if that demand is concentrated among a few high bandwidth services. I'd be willing to by into forcing Netflix to spread out their ingress access points geographically to efficiently distribute load, but I suspect that already happens. I do have to wonder if an entire nation streaming broadcast quality media to their televisions is going to prove a prudent use of resources.

Comcast isn't an ISP

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't consider themselves one. Their primary market is selling television.

Netflix also sells television. That's why they were targeted.

Cable companies institute bandwidth limits and throttling to protect their primary business: selling television. Implement Net Neutrality and Comcast will immediately impose bandwidth caps. They don't want competition from internet television or a la carte purchasing (fought against for years). It's kind of like a movie theater's policy of no outside food or drink.

A truly neutral ISP wouldn't care what you did as long as you paid for bandwidth. One solution is to vertically separate the wired infrastructure from the service.

Toll Roads

[GPTurismo]

The big issue people aren't seeing is that that our infrastructure is much like Toll Roads. Private companies can charge as much as needed for a truck delivering a table as they see fit due to it being three axles. The biggest problem is most consumers don't have much choice into what services they have so they have to have their delivery truck go over that said toll road and that cost is either 1) factored into initial cost or 2) Required upon delivery. The issue itself isn't that the ISP's shouldn't throttle internet etc (which they need to be clear on with their customers which they are not and do secretly) it is most areas have Oligopolies where two to three ISPs are allowed to deploy in a specific area. Here in Montgomery the two companies discuss and split neighborhoods and all apartment complexes with a third option of ATT DSL (which is horrible in this area unless you have an office within 2500 feet of the ATT building.) Maybe if we could find better wireless solution, such as repeaters on the side of houses for phone, tv and internet and make it a requirement of the provider to keep the hardware up to date (one reason I rent my cable modem, it's been replaced three times with newer models over 2 1/2 years.) The only other solution would be like highways and the interstate, which are govt. controlled. With a congress that can't reform basic systems like Social Security and Taxes to today's standards and Judges who make insane decisions on technology they have no understanding of, I would hate to see the government step into an area like this at this point in time. So we're screwed.

Because they can?

[mgcarley]

You pretty much answered your own question in the summary.

That is the position the large ISPs are taking (on the surface, anyway): we have the only lines the customer can use because we "own" that area, they can't switch, it's us or nothing.

The way I look at it, however is that if I were to peer directly with Netflix and/or host a Netflix cache (even at my own expense in the data center), prospective subscribers (the ones who care, who are also most likely the ones will pay the most) are going to subscribe to my ISP over my competition because we can use it as a selling point: "Hey, your Netflix will never buffer and it will come through at HD quality" - and if we added the bonus that "Hey, Netflix traffic won't count towards your cap" (if a cap is imposed) the customer is going to think the service is the bees knees... then word of mouth happens.

And all of this I think makes yet another great case for open/common infrastructure (not even municipalities running their own ISPs but companies who own distribution networks simply making the infrastructure available and saying to ISPs "here it is, have at it").

Imagine if the existing providers were forced to split in to infra/retail divisions and sell access to the infra at fair and equal wholesale prices to any ISP, thus allowing companies like Google or Sonic.net or any of the other smaller ISPs all around the country to be able to offer services over any infrastructure they could get access to!

Imagine if Comcast, TWC, AT&T, Verizon and so on all of a sudden had to actually compete on quality/customer service etc?

The large ISPs would of course need to be really forced - kicking, screaming and probably throwing tantrums along the way - but I would love to see something like this in America.