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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.
Once again, a call for net neutrality will ensue. All we really need is for the FCC to call them Common Carriers and apply the age old law.
It has already been applied to Telecoms and Utilities, just apply it to the ISP's and be done with this crap.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
This has absolutely nothing to do with Net Neutrality. The ongoing calls for it highlight how you and people who argue similarly do not understand how networking works.
Netflix moved all of their content to a tier1 peering service that these companies did not have large contracts with. Then demanded that they to move there. These companies run their own tier1 networks and have absolutely no reason to move to these other peers.
Netflix moved to a peer, then expected these networks to follow, they did not. The networks did not have to break net neutrality to throttle Netflix, Netflix did it to themselves and the linked story flat out states that, though trys to word it as if the ISPs had some obligation to comply. They treated the traffic "neutrally", Netflix did not have peering agreements with the correct Tier1 networks to support the amount of traffic they were attracting. Why is it Comcasts problem that Netflix peered with the wrong company?!?!
If you and this story are correct, and the ISPs have an obligation to connect to wherever their customers favorite destinations are... lets take that to it's logical extreme conclusion then. Lets say Netflix gets an awesome deal on storage space and bandwidth from Star Joint Venture Co. North Koreas premier ISP. Should comcast be required to then trunk all the way to North Korea to handle the traffic? Seriously? Because that's what you're arguing.
Since the dawn of the internet, ISPs have controlled how peering works. Netflix tried to change that, and lost. If you think peering agreements should change (I certainly do) that's fine. But Netflix's plan was even worse than what we already have.
But most importantly: This has nothing to do with Net Neutrality. So stop saying that it does!