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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.
Bennett Haselton is a frequent contributor, and I tend to hold-off judgement on these things until I read his fine points on the topic. I was recently particularly moved by his work on line queues at Burning Man. It changed my entire life. I now piss sitting down.
"In an accompanying article, Crawford makes a compelling case for FCC intervention."
That won't work unless it comes with a check with seven digits attached to it.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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...
Stuff like this is why I think Net Neutrality discussions miss the mark - you're not going to fix the problem that way, you're only going to cause the cable companies to achieve the same throttling through other technical means. Trying to close technical loopholes via the lawmaking process requires a body of law the size of the tax code.
The fundamental problem is that companies with a legally-granted monopoly for delivering high-speed internet are also allowed to sell content. In a free market, that wouldn't bother me - competition would sort it all out. But "last mile" is about as far from a free market as you can get in most of the country these days, and so we get this as a result.
Last mile needs to become a public utility. Let vendors compete for my business, and I'll pick "just a pipe" or a content company or whatever mix fits my needs.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
and not a net neutrality issue thankfully.
Settlement free peering between tier 1 carriers only happens when the flow of traffic is roughly balanced between the contracting peers.
When one peer is pushing a lot more traffic onto the other network, then that usually goes out the window and the pusher is required to pay the receiving network. Otherwise, networks would be monetarily incentivized to unload traffic they should carry on their own networks onto their peers' instead.
Yeah, I'm sure netflix just goes around dumping truckloads of data on the information superhighway just at random, and picked on Comcast like a bully.
Oh wait, every one of those streams were requested from users of Comcast's network who thought that those awesome 150mbit internet speeds comcast advertised were real.
I should be able to use my bandwidth any way I please! It's freedom of speech! They can't throttle netflix! George Bush would be rolling in his grave!
This is a ploy from Obama to help spread misinformation about ebola (Obola) on his path to further to destroy the country!!1!
Engineer - "Hey Boss, we need some cash to upgrade the connection to these networks."
Boss - "What?! We just upgraded those connections a couple years ago"
Engineer - *rolls eyes* "Well the link is saturated, looks like lots of people watching online video... Netflix comes in over this connection so it makes sense"
Boss - "First they take our subscribers now they're forcing us to upgrade our equipment... well fuck em!"
Engineer - "Waaah?"
Boss - "You heard me, fuck em!"
Engineer - "But... our customers will get terrible service when they try to watch Netflix, or do anything else on that network for that matter"
Boss - "Exactly!"
The Very First Honest Cable Internet Provider
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Netflix is its own CDN - they will give, for free, one or more caches to any ISP, causing any one movie to transit the ISP's nonfree network connections only once.
But this is about competition for video services, not caching.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
This is a very salient point. Netflix already has these arrangements with other ISPs. Only Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon (surprise surprise) refused to host local caching servers. Of course, this precedes their demands for more money because, "Waaaahhhh...they're stealing our customers, they need to pay!".
Netflix tried to be the better entity (within reason) and were told, in no uncertain terms, "Go fuck yourself."
Yay, free market!
*sigh*
"Helping to keep you two steps ahead of the Thought Police!"
Actually netflix offered to foot the bill for upgrading the bandwidth - it's literally a couple cross-connects in a datacenter, maybe a fiber card or two.
Oh, and netflix ALSO offers to drop a server in your datacenter *free* which caches all the common netflix streams. This reduces the internet bandwidth demands by something like 90+% since it lives within the ISP's datacenter and just needs to download each stream once.
But the last line is exactly the point. The ISPs are also TV providers and they don't want you to have a good netflix experience. If they can passively let that happen...well of course they will. No one can accuse them of taking any action to damage your netflix streaming...it's their complete inaction that's resulting in it.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
from wikipedia
Franchise fees are fixed at a maximum of 5% of gross revenues. So how do municipalities maximize revenues from franchise fees? By maximizing cable company gross revenues. And how do municipalities maximize cable company gross revenues? By creating monopolies! By awarding exclusive license to one provider to extract monopolist profits from the public.
Note that there is nothing inherently wrong with permitting local governments to charge cable companies fees. That is justifiable to the extent that local governments incur costs of infrastructure repair with damage from cable installation. All that is needed is a single addendum to the law, one prohibiting local governments from creating monopolies. The law could simply mandate that municipalities must offer franchise licenses to all ISPs if they offer licenses to one and that all licencees must be be charged at the same rate.
The only reason we have cable monopolies in the U.S. is because the Cable Communications Act of 1984 created that perverse incentive. Other countries without such laws have much faster service at much lower prices.
If federal law permitted local governments to do this sort of thing with groceries, computers and cars we would have regional monopolies for those products as well. Be grateful that your town council is not permitted to sell grocery, computer and car franchises.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Except you are confusing a transit and a consumer endpoint. Transit providers normally peer, but an endpoint is going to have more traffic coming in then going out because their consumers are requesting it, ALWAYS, but this is the first time they have been able to pressure people into these types of agreements.
Peering agreements between transit providers is fine, but not when an endpoint bullies a service providor.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
The problem is that the backbone provider they chose sends way more traffic than they accept.
And consumer ISPs give asymmetric speeds most of the time with EULAs that forbid running servers. It's pretty obvious that they'll accept more data than they send by design, so it's unreasonable for their peering agreements to assume symmetric transfers.