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First Detailed Data Analysis Shows Exactly How Comcast Jammed Netflix
An anonymous reader writes John Oliver calls it "cable company f*ckery" and we've all suspected it happens. Now on Steven Levy's new Backchannel publication on Medium, Susan Crawford delivers decisive proof, expertly dissecting the Comcast-Netflix network congestion controversy. Her source material is a detailed traffic measurement report (.pdf) released this week by Google-backed M-Lab — the first of its kind — showing severe degradation of service at interconnection points between Comcast, Verizon and other monopoly "eyeball networks" and "transit networks" such as Cogent, which was contracted by Netflix to deliver its bits. The report shows that interconnection points give monopoly ISPs all the leverage they need to discriminate against companies like Netflix, which compete with them in video services, simply by refusing to relieve network congestion caused by external traffic requested by their very own ISP customers. And the effects victimize not only companies targeted but ALL incoming traffic from the affected transit network. The report proves the problem is not technical, but rather a result of business decisions. This is not technically a Net neutrality problem, but it creates the very same headaches for consumers, and unfair business advantages for ISPs. In an accompanying article, Crawford makes a compelling case for FCC intervention.
So the fix sounds easy, but gets complicated quickly. :|
Break them up. Don't think about it, threaten or consider it. To borrow a phrase from Nike: JUST DO IT
Force the companies who provide the bandwidth to split from the part of the company who sells content so there isn't any grey area issues. In order for the bandwidth side of the house to remain competitive, they'll need to upgrade their network to ensure they're delivering what their customers want. This also prevents the content folks from tweaking the network to ensure their own services get priority over competing ones. Taken to an extreme, and without some sort of oversight, the big players can absolutely destroy the competition in this manner.
They've already proven they can't be trusted to do the right thing themselves. Time to step in with a big stick and start swinging.
Of course, true competition needs to be in place to help fuel that fire otherwise we'll still end up with crappy throughput with no realistic choices of switching to another provider. We really need to end this whole regional mono / duopoly thing.
On top of this, we'll need to purge the Congressional votes-for-contributions types to make sure the legislation has a fair chance of happening.