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.

Comments

I'd like to hear Bennett Haselton's opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Sigh...

[MightyMartian]

"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.

Re:Sigh...

[Em Adespoton]

And that won't really work because an even larger check from the cable companies will always follow. Hell they most likely just give them a credit card with an unlimited balance that draws right from the cable companies' customers' bank accounts.

FTFY

Common Carrier

[Anon-Admin]

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...

Re:Common Carrier

[Jason Levine]

It's more like Phone Company A has 100 channels to Phone Company B. They notice that there is a constant level of 99 calls between A and B. They also see that 25 calls are constantly being made to Joe's Pizzeria who uses Phone Company B for phone service. Phone Company A gets upset that Joe's isn't paying them (Phone Company A) for this traffic, so they refuse to add more channels. (Even though doing so would be inexpensive to do.) So calls to Joe's Pizzeria begin being dropped and Joe's customers get mad that they can't get through. Joe's finally signs an agreement with Phone Company A paying them money and suddenly the calls go through just fine.

This is extortion plain and simple. Add in the fact that the ISPs doing this have an Internet monopoly/duopoly in their areas and also tend to provide video services - that Netflix competes against - and you have extortion plus the use of a monopoly to crush competition in another market. This deserves swift and severe action to show the ISPs that this is NOT to be tolerated. Unfortunately, at best we'll get a strongly worded statement and perhaps a fine that Comcast will make back in the time it took me to write this comment.

WHy net neutrality doesn't work

[lgw]

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.

Re:WHy net neutrality doesn't work

[nehumanuscrede]

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.

Net neutrality is a constituional right!

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:How many engineers does it take to screw netfli

[MozeeToby]

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!"

Re:Yes it is a peering problem ...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

They're not pushing the traffic - the other network is pulling it. Netflix's traffic is not unsolicited - every goddamned packet is being sent in response to a specific request from the other network's customers, and it's not fucking transit - the Netflix packets will terminate within the receiving network. Are you seriously arguing that Comcast should be paid by Netflix because they're carrying gigabytes of Netflix traffic their own fucking customers requested?

This is kind of relevant...

[Svartalf]

The Very First Honest Cable Internet Provider

Re: Multiple CDN contracts?

[bill_mcgonigle]

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.

Re: Multiple CDN contracts?

[killfixx]

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*

Re:How many engineers does it take to screw netfli

[torkus]

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.