First Net Neutrality Lawsuit Will Target Time Warner Cable

An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. government's new net neutrality rules finally took effect last Friday, and a company is already using them to line up a lawsuit against Time Warner Cable. A firm called Commercial Network Services, which runs a bunch of webcams, says TWC is charging them unreasonable rates to stream video to their customers. "The [FCC's] regulations establish hard and fast rules against slowing or blocking Web traffic, as well as a ban on content companies paying for speedier service once their traffic enters a provider's network. But by design, they don't say nearly as much about how companies should negotiate the private agreements that ensure Web traffic flows smoothly into an Internet provider's network — and to your home." TWC has been arranging "settlement-free peering" with various companies, but refused such a deal with CNS. The complaint will ask the FCC to rule that ISPs must strike free peering deals with website operators.

Comments

Frivolous

[bhcompy]

This is a frivolous suit. The net neutrality rules have nothing to do with peering, they have everything to do with throttling. There is no throttling here, only a service provider that is hosted in low grade facilities with low grade connections because they won't pay to be on major network

Re:Frivolous

[Anonymous Coward]

And when Charter takes over Time Warner the lawsuit goes away anyway. It's a waste of time and money attacking a company that they read in an article was hated in America and decided to get a few free shots in.

Re:Frivolous

[Kjella]

Why can't peering be their way to implement throttling? Here's the good, bad and ugly peering point with high, medium and low prices respectively. Sure, we don't throttle the ugly hub but it's connected to the rest of our network by a dial-up via Uzbekistan, while the good hub got a 100Gbit fiber directly to our core network. If you don't have equal access to the network, you don't get equal access for the traffic. You just move the traffic discrimination to another tier.

Re:Frivolous

[nine-times]

Yeah, I think it should really boil down to a question of whether it can be shown that TWC is refusing the peering agreement as a method of throttling, or whether their refusal is justified. Unfortunately, I have doubts about the average person understanding the technology well enough to serve on a jury for this kind of thing.

Re:Frivolous

[Anonymous Coward]

FCC said anything that negatively affects customers and is deemed "unfair" is fair game.

Re:Frivolous

[Spazmania]

Peering IS an Internet "fast lane," at least in a coarse sense. Your paying customers have the most favorable data rates in to and out of your network. Next come your reciprocal peers. Finally, you keep the connections you have to pay for at the highest congestion levels in order to minimize your cost.

By refusing peering to a third party, you force them to either pay you or suffer degraded data rates through your paid channel. This is throttling.

Re:Frivolous

[known_coward_69]

settlement free peering implies that both parties send about the same amount of traffic to each other. at least google and MS can scan the traffic for analytics which is why they are peering with them. these idiots will lose. peering has been around since the baby bells

Re:Frivolous

[Austerity Empowers]

But they will need to show that it is TWC's fault, which isn't obvious from the article.

Re:Frivolous

[sabri]

Peering IS an Internet "fast lane," at least in a coarse sense. Your paying customers have the most favorable data rates in to and out of your network. Next come your reciprocal peers. Finally, you keep the connections you have to pay for at the highest congestion levels in order to minimize your cost.

You clearly don't understand the internet.

Peering (as opposed to transit) is two private networks deciding that they exchange enough traffic that it justifies the capex and opex of a dedicated network port or dedicated peering session between the two networks.

If large network A already sees small network B through peering with large network C (in which case usually B is a customer of C), there is little reason for A to peer with B unless bi-directional traffic reaches certain levels. Those levels are part of network A's peering policy.

This has nothing to do with net neutrality.

By refusing peering to a third party, you force them to either pay you or suffer degraded data rates through your paid channel. This is throttling.

Total and utter bullshit, and FUD originating from Netflix etc in their "peering dispute" with Comcast. Network B can purchase enough bandwidth from network C. If there is an issue with bandwidth between network B and network A, they will figure it out and add additional ports.

Re:Frivolous

[Spazmania]

I stand by my record. Better part of a decade as the technical lead of a regional Internet Service Provider. Frequent participant in the North American Network Operators Group. Participant in the Internet Research Task Force's Routing Research Group.

There are perhaps 100 people in the world who know these issues as well as or better than I do. You are not one of them.

Re:Frivolous

[CrimsonAvenger]

The net neutrality rules have nothing to do with peering, they have everything to do with throttling

I take it you didn't bother to read the FCC's rule? Charging more for higher bandwidth is against the FCC's rule.

Yeah, no doubt what they really meant was throttling. However, what they WROTE applies to pretty much any tiered service that your ISP provides ($50 for 5GB/sec, $100 for 8GB/sec - that's charging more for higher bandwidth!!!). Including this particular case....

Re:Frivolous

[known_coward_69]

it makes sense for small ISP's to peer with edge providers to save money. well known. different for larger ISP's

Re:Frivolous

[Spazmania]

They offered to peer. TWC refused. Game, set, match.

Re:Frivolous

[Spazmania]

Well, that's the big ISP's big lie anyway. In reality "traffic ratios" are an excuse for the "eyeball" networks (those serving consumers) to peer with each other while somehow justifying a refusal to peer with the "content" networks (those providing the movies, web pages and other content consumed).

Many networks do settlement-free peering with each other without any traffic ratios. Indeed, a shocking number of folks find it convenient to peer with google despite the lopsided ratio.

Re:Frivolous

[Spazmania]

Right. Regional monopoly/duopoly ISPs have the power to compel double-billing, in which they collect money from two different customers for each packet that transits their network. This "saves" them a considerable amount of money.

Re:Frivolous

[Anonymous Coward]

You can easily get full rate via transit, it just costs more, for both parties. The lawsuit in discussion may be an issue about peering, but in general, peering is not a "fast lane". The cheapest route is also the fastest. Of course a certain amount of business politics affect the decision making and there is also the issue that someone the management cost of yet another peer is greater than the money saved.

The long term issue that has happened many times is when an ISP holds it's customer hostage. The issue Netflix had was not only did Verizon demand an absurd amount of money, but Verizon purposefully forced Netflix traffic through certain peering ports. While technically you can't control ingress traffic, you can control business contracts.

If you don't like Verizon, too bad so sad, you have no options. You must pay the gatekeeper whatever ridiculous amount they ask for.

If you don't like paying Verizon for peering, then pay for transit to another company that already has peering with Verizon. Assuming that is even an option. For small networks it is, for larger network, Verizon will notice with 100Gb+ of traffic changes routes.

Re:Frivolous

[Spazmania]

Verizon doesn't have any paid transit at all. They have only peers and customers. They're one of a handful of "transit-free" backbone networks, sometimes mislabelled as "tier 1."

Verizon refused to upgrade the network ports with the peer serving Netflix. They let it congest until Netflix's service stopped working (along with everything else via that peer). They then kindly offered to let Netflix pay for a direct connection.

You don't think that's throttling and paid prioritization?

Re:Frivolous

[bhcompy]

Not really, settlement free peering has industry accepted practices.

Re:Frivolous

[bhcompy]

If I want to guarantee a level of service to a certain customer I buy space within the specific network's data center. If I want to guarantee general connectivity, I stick it in random data center built out of a former Sear's Auto Center hooked up to some commercial cable network

Re:Frivolous

[pr0fessor]

Well Google, Microsoft, and Cox already signed up so CNS expects the same kind of deal with TWC.

Re:Frivolous

[Spazmania]

That's the spin anyway. Ask any network cut out of the peering process (which is most of them) whether not they "accept" the practice.

Re:Frivolous

[bhcompy]

Netflix first offered to put a CDN within the Verizon network, at Verizon's cost. Saying "Here, take my rackmount server and stick it in your network, but I'm not going to pay you your rate for hosting a data intensive colocated server". Fuck that.

And, not, technically speaking, that is not throttling and paid prioritization. It may be in spirit, I don't deny that, but it's also something that you can't really police. You can't force companies to upgrade all of their peers to maximum incoming and outgoing bandwidth at their own cost. It's not an industry practice, it's not lawful, it's not reasonable.

Re:Frivolous

[Anonymous Coward]

The rules say "A person engaged in the provision of broadband Internet access service, insofar as such person is so engaged, shall not impair or degrade lawful Internet traffic on the basis of Internet content, application, or service, or use of a non-harmful device, subject to reasonable network management."

So now we just need the courts to tell us what "reasonable network management is." Good thing that Justice Alito is a CCIE!

Re:Frivolous

[bhcompy]

Not upgrading is not actively impairing or degrading lawful internet traffic. It's stagnating. It's a lack of action.

Re:Frivolous

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also worth pointing out that many/most of the biggest "eyeball" networks are themselves content providers. Traffic ratios are merely a bullshit excuse to throttle competition.

Re:Frivolous

[JoelKatz]

It's not "somehow justifying", the justification is quite clear. We presume the traffic benefits both parties equally, thus each party should be about half the cost. Content networks put their servers wherever it's cheapest to put traffic on the Internet while eyeball networks have to take their customers where they find them. Thus, without settlement, eyeball networks would pay more than half the cost of the traffic, which would be unfair. Settlement-based peering splits the costs to match the benefits.

Re:Frivolous

[JoelKatz]

Outbound traffic is much cheaper than inbound traffic. You can dump outbound traffic off at the nearest meeting point with its destination network. But you have to carry inbound traffic from wherever the source network gives it to you.

With a typical traffic imbalance, when a server on the West Coast is talking to a client on the East Coast, the client's network is carrying much more of the traffic across the country.

Think about it like the US post office and the German post office agreeing to exchange packages with each other. They might agree to not exchange any money so long as each of them carries about 50% of the packages across the ocean. But if the US post office carries 80% of the packages across the ocean, some money is going to have to change hands to keep it fair.

Re:Frivolous

[JoelKatz]

Sure, folks like Google and Netflix who are trying to shift their share of the costs of their traffic onto companies like Time Warner and Comcast are unhappy about the practice. That's why they want the government to "fix" a functional free market that has been working amazingly well for decades.

Re:Frivolous

[JoelKatz]

Well, the packet benefits both the sender and the recipient. It makes sense that each of them should bear about half the costs.

When Google sends a packet to a Comcast customer, we presume that packet benefits both Google and Comcast equally. So Google should pay half the cost and Comcast should pay half the cost. With no settlement, Google will pay much less than half the cost, because Google can put their servers where it's cheapest and Comcast has to take their customers where they find them. So Comcast collects a settlement from Google to cover the balance of Google's half of the cost.

Re:Frivolous

[Anonymous Coward]

settlement free peering implies that both parties send about the same amount of traffic to each other

I wish this bullshit fact would die already. It has nothing to do with equal amounts of traffic traveling both ways over the connection.

It doesn't matter whether I upload 1 GB/month to my ISP, or download 1 GB/month from my ISP, I have to pay either way. Teason is simple: I carry the traffic no further than three feet to the cable modem, and my ISP sees that it travels the rest of the way around the world. I need them far more than they need me, so there's no settlement-free peering available for me.

On the other hand, backbone providers actually do carry the traffic half of the distance between source and destination, then they pass it to a peer who carries it the remaining distance. The result is that each peer needs the other peer as much as the other peer needs them. Thus, paying each other for access to the others network would be ridiculous.

If everyone would just understand this, a lot of these articles would make a lot more sense. For example, in this one (and keep in mind I didn't RTFA, since this is Slashdot) we have some douche who isn't carrying the traffic any further than to his ISP's cable modem, but he wants to pretend he has a significant worldwide network and so he should be able to get settlement-free peering. It simply isn't going to happen. Similarly, consider the peering issues with Netflix's backbone provider: No one ever talks about whether their backbone provider is actually carrying all of the netflix data half-way to its customers, or whether it is dumping it all onto other backbone providers before it even leaves the city in which it originates. If they're doing the former, then they should get settlement-free peering, but if they're doing the latter, then they should pay for internet access since they're not acting as a peer but are instead using the other backbone providers as an ISP.

Re:Frivolous

[Spazmania]

Outbound traffic is much cheaper than inbound traffic. You can dump outbound traffic off at the nearest meeting point with its destination network. But you have to carry inbound traffic from wherever the source network gives it to you.

That's a half-truth.

At any connection with the source network, you advertise the destinations you're willing to accept traffic for. Nothing requires you to accept packets for your entire global network at every location where you interconnect; that's something you choose (or choose not) to do.

Sending packets for destinations you did not advertise has long been deemed a violation of any peering agreement, subjecting the transgressor to disconnection.

Likewise, most service providers respect the destination network's advertised priority for each of its destinations. If the "AS path" is "shorter" at the distant connection point, packets are sent to the distant interconnection, not the nearby one. When offered at the same priority from each interconnection point, the packets do of course travel to the nearer one.

The few networks who disregard these advertised priorities and just send to the nearest interconnect tend to suffer from greater malfunction and customer ire.

They might agree to not exchange any money so long as each of them carries about 50% of the packages across the ocean. But if the US post office carries 80% of the packages across the ocean, some money is going to have to change hands to keep it fair.

That's totally disingenuous. The postal systems are sender-pays systems. Of course a portion of that payment must be passed forward to each of the postal systems in the delivery chain.

The Internet is a meet-in-the-middle system in which both sender and receiver pay to reach any of the midpoints where packets are exchanged. Regardless of any ratios, the packets transiting those interconnects have already been paid for in both directions.

If you want to convert to a sender-pays system where everybody gets free gigabit fiber in their homes but Netflix has to pay for access then sure, your example would make sense.

Re:Frivolous

[Spazmania]

That sounds so reasonable. Just one problem: those customers you took where you found them paid you to take them where you found them and connect them to the Content networks. Refusing to provide that paid-for service (or throttling it) until the Content networks _also_ pay you is fraudulent double-billing.

Re:Frivolous

[Spazmania]

In a functional free market, Time Warner and Comcast would be paying Netflix the same way they pay ABC and CBS. Let's not have any delusions about the current monopoly/duopoly state of affairs being a functional free market.

Re:Frivolous

[Spazmania]

Your reasoning does not make sense. If each packet benefits each side equally then the benefit from all of the packets is exactly equal. Direction ratios, length of travel and phase of the moon are all irrelevant bits of information that don't apply to the question.

Re:Frivolous

[JoelKatz]

I agree, the benefit of all the packets is exactly equal.

I'm saying that because the benefits are equal, the costs should be equal too.

For example, say two national networks peer and there's much more outbound traffic from A to B than from B to A. That means that even though the benefits to both networks are equal the costs will be much higher to B because it has a larger length of travel. So thus it makes sense to equalize the costs by having A pay B.

Or say Google is going to exchange traffic with Comcast. The benefits are equal. But Google has lower costs because it puts its computers in well-connected datacenters while Comcast has to take its customers where they live. So Google should be Comcast to equalize the costs to match the benefits.

Re:Frivolous

[JoelKatz]

They are providing the service the customers paid for -- half the work in exchanging their traffic with the rest of the Internet, with the other half to be covered by the other network.

Re:Frivolous

[JoelKatz]

That is dumb beyond words. Netflix charges the customers directly. ABC and CBS don't. They're completely different business models by the content providers.

Re:Frivolous

[JoelKatz]

"The Internet is a meet-in-the-middle system in which both sender and receiver pay to reach any of the midpoints where packets are exchanged. Regardless of any ratios, the packets transiting those interconnects have already been paid for in both directions."

No, it's not. That's what some people want it to be, but that's not what it is, nor has it been that way for many decades. A free market did *not* build a meet-in-the-middle system because that unfairly advantages business that can choose their endpoints over businesses that can't. The free market built an even cost split model.

If you want to argue that the Internet should be fundamentally changed to a meet-in-the-middle system, then do so honestly. But don't lie about what the Internet actually is. I know you know better.

Re:Frivolous

[sabri]

I stand by my record. Better part of a decade as the technical lead of a regional Internet Service Provider. Frequent participant in the North American Network Operators Group. Participant in the Internet Research Task Force's Routing Research Group.

Bill, you should know that peering has nothing to do with CoS (fast lanes). Peering is about two networks agreeing to directly exchange traffic when that makes operational and business sense. When Snake Oil Inc with a /19 and 5000 dsl subs wants to peer with Cogent, I will guarantee you that they will be redirected to the sales department. And justly so.

If you're advocating that unless one peers with everyone who sends a peering request, one is violating "net neutrality", you really need to go back to networking school.

I totally understand your point that refusal to peer can be construed as willingly disrupt the shortest path between two networks, but that is an operational decision left to the owner of the network, and does not imply a lower priority on the network. If the FCC would mandate all networks to have a public and open peering policy, I will guarantee you that they will lose every single lawsuit as the government does not need to dictate how someone routes their traffic.

Sabri
JNCIE-M #261, JNCIE-SP #261, JNCSP-SP, ECE-IPN #2, ECP-FB

Re:Frivolous

[Bengie]

At any connection with the source network, you advertise the destinations you're willing to accept traffic for. Nothing requires you to accept packets for your entire global network at every location where you interconnect; that's something you choose (or choose not) to do.

Nothing requires you to, but it is best practice to do so. Hard for a route to fail over if you don't preemptively advertise your network everywhere.

Re:Frivolous

[Bengie]

You're conflating Verizon Business and Verizon Residential. But you are correct that those two entities work together to abuse power.

Re: First post?

[Anonymous Coward]

you asked for it, you got it, net neutered-unilaterally

Webcams?

[Anonymous Coward]

adult webcams?

Re:Webcams?

[SeaFox]

adult webcams?

That's how I read it.
  - Non-descriptive, generic company name -- check.
  - Hosts lots of cameras for outside access -- check.
  - Viewers are paying customers -- check

PEERING is for PEERS

[Anonymous Coward]

Some terms:
CUSTOMER - the entity that wants to be connected to the Internet
TRANSIT provider - connects the Customer to the Internet
PEER - two transit providers who connect to each other (they are peers in the industry)

SETTLEMENT-FREE peering (also "free peering") is when two (or more) transit porivders exchange a similar amount of ingress/egress traffic. It benefits both to do so at private peering points vs transitting their own long-haul networks.

CUSTOMERS are not PEERS of their TRANSIT PROVIDER. (To put in English: an end-user is not on the same level as their ISP!)
It is *never* the case that a CUSTOMER gets peering. If you're an "edge provider" you're a customer of a transit provider.

This is not a net neutrality issue... just an attempt for a company to get some free publicity. They won't win this against TW.

Ehud

Re:PEERING is for PEERS

[Anonymous Coward]

FCC claims the ISP has a responsibility to it's residential customers to provide what they're paying for. If TWC can be shown to be limiting customer choice by purposefully restricting other networks from access, then there may be hell to pay.

A single company should be be allowed to be both a transit provider and a residential ISP. A residential ISP should NEVER charge for profit another network to access their customers, it should always be the responsibility for the ISP to make sure they have access to the entire internet and not do any artificial limits. The rule of thumb should be, if it's cheaper for the ISP to peer than to pay a 3rd party for transit, then the ISP should be forced to peer or face being sued for malicious intent. That does assume you can prove it would be cheaper. An ISP that has congested peering links should be forced to use transit or upgrade the link.

Re:PEERING is for PEERS

[dgatwood]

CUSTOMERS are not PEERS of their TRANSIT PROVIDER. (To put in English: an end-user is not on the same level as their ISP!)

While true, that's a bit misleading. A company that buys multiple pipes to multiple ISPs and has the ability to transport data across their own internal links for the benefit of their ISPs can potentially become a peer of their ISPs. The ISP is not legally obligated to grant them that status, however, and at such a point as they do so, that customer ceases to be a customer of the ISP, by definition.

Of course, a customer is only a candidate for becoming a peer of an ISP if that customer also has connections to other ISPs, and if that customer's ISP does not already have more direct peering arrangements with those other ISPs that fully meet their bandwidth needs.

And as I've said many times before, what made the Netflix deal problematic was that the ISPs provided competing services that avoided the public Internet, thus giving them an unfair competitive advantage when combined with throttling. It wasn't the throttling, nor the refusal to peer for free with Netflix that caused the problem from a legal perspective, but rather the unfair competition. Unless Commercial Network Services (AFAIK, primarily a colo/hosting provider) is similarly a competitor of TWC in some other space, this strikes me as a frivolous lawsuit that is unlikely to succeed.

Re:PEERING is for PEERS

[Spazmania]

Close but not quite.

Internet customer: someone who pays me to connect them to "the Internet"

Transit provider: Someone I pay to connect me to "the Internet"

Peer: Any network with whom I agree to trade packets from my own network and my Internet customers, to his network and Internet customers, and vice versa. Put another way: we agree to trade packets only for which our respective customers have paid us to transmit or receive them. Sometimes called "settlement free peering."

You'll sometimes hear the term "paid peering" but that's actually Transit above that the Internet customer chooses to use a particular way.

BGP peer: any connection between Internet networks which uses BGP, whether customer, transit or "peer." Not relevant to this discussion, but I call it out to keep the term from creeping in as if it was the same thing as "peering."

Peering is most definitely a net neutrality issue. When one network refuses to peer with another, they force the other network to either take the long way around (throttling) or to pay for transit service (paid prioritization).

There's room for nuance here. There's no suggestion that one network must peer in exactly the manner another wants to. Or that one network must pay the direct costs of connecting with another just because the other wants to. But a flat refusal to peer based on some arbitrary and capricious measurement of the other network's nature is most emphatically a net neutrality violation.

Re:PEERING is for PEERS

[petermgreen]

PEER - two transit providers who connect to each other (they are peers in the industry)

No,

PEER - two networks who connect to each other to provide themselves and their customers (if any) with access to each other and each others customers (if any). Those networks may or may not be in the buisness of selling transit on the open market. Google, netflix, the BBC and so-on all have plenty of peers.

ISPs who are in the buisness of providing high quality service to their customers (as many smaller providers are) and/or who have to buy transit to reach large parts of the internet (again as many smaller providers are) are motivated to peer as widely as reasonablly possible (obviously there has to be some threshold below which the administative cost of setting up the peering aren't worth it). Content providers are also generally motivated to peer as widely as possible.

On the other hand large monpolistic ISPs see a refusal to peer or deliberately shitty peering as a means to force content providers to become customers.

Which brings us to the root of the problem, the US has let ISPs get far too large through allowing vertical integration of last mile infrastructure with ISP service and through allowing cable companies in different areas to merge into a handful of monoliths. The FCC is trying to paper over the consequences without solving the real problem.

Re:PEERING is for PEERS

[Spazmania]

It's always cheaper for the ISP to send and receive a third party's packets via a network that's paying them than via a network which isn't. Indeed, it has a -negative- cost.

Here's where the line should be drawn: if I'm willing to pay your direct costs for establishing a peering connection to me, that is I bring a line to a location you find convenient, pay reasonable equipment costs and pay for a couple of hours of your engineers' time, and you still say no peering then you've breached network neutrality.

There's a couple nuances to that which I'm skipping for the sake of clarity, but in large there it is.

Kinda on the fence about this

[T.E.D.]

Technically, this has nothing to do with throttling traffic. Instead it is about TW not going out of their way to help speed up a company's traffic by providing peering.

I could see the FCC arguing that is covered too, if the ISP is providing it to anybody. I don't think the world would come crashing down if that was the ruling.

OTOH, this takes extra effort on the ISP's side, and they can't do it with everyone. If everybody is made a peer, then they'd have to put in some extra structure to handle all the peers, and eventually everybody would be right back where they started from. Either way, its certain if I started an online video business tomorrow (TEDTube), I couldn't reasonably demand TW peer me with my $0 to invest in the effort. So I'm not rich enough to demand what CNS is demanding, no matter what.

So there is going to be a limit somewhere, and it looks like CNS is trying to argue that that Net Neutrality somehow demands that the limit be moved just far enough for them to get in. There's no principle here.

Re:Kinda on the fence about this

[Anonymous Coward]

And so it begins. Except a lot of crap like this to happen, and expect your costs to rise in response. Lawsuits are expensive. Being forced to offer agreements to anyone who comes along is expensive. Being unable to throttle traffic, especially abusive traffic, means that either they spend a ton of money to upgrade everything (they won't) or your service will suffer.

All of you people who thought this was such a great idea, rainbows and unicorns, you just wait.

Re:Kinda on the fence about this

[Anonymous Coward]

They can peer with anyone and everyone at public peering points. Sign the MLPA, add the route server and done. They can add ports as needed but the cost is very low and fair for all involved.

Re:Kinda on the fence about this

[Anonymous Coward]

Lawsuits are expensive.

Not this one. Commercial Network Services is an edge provider, not a peer. Their complaint is going to land in file 13 pretty quickly.

Being forced to offer agreements to anyone who comes along is expensive. Being unable to throttle traffic, especially abusive traffic, means that either they spend a ton of money to upgrade everything (they won't) or your service will suffer.

Oooops! I just realized you have no idea what you're talking about. Shame on me for feeding the troll.

Re:Kinda on the fence about this

[Anonymous Coward]

TFA is about peering at public interconnection points so cost should be minimal. Whats interesting is Charters peering policy is very open and allows even for regional peering at public points, hopefully that will continue be the case if the TWC merger happens.

Re:Kinda on the fence about this

[Anonymous Coward]

And so it begins. Except a lot of crap like this to happen, and expect your costs to rise in response.

Nope. I expect my costs will go down, just as soon as I can convince the FCC that my home network should be eligible for a settlement-free peering arrangement with my local ISP. ;-P

Captcha: directly

Re:Kinda on the fence about this

[Spazmania]

Instead it is about TW not going out of their way to help speed up a company's traffic by providing peering.

While at the same time going out of their way to speed up any company's traffic who pays them (including offering to speed up this company's for the right fee). Paid prioritization and throttling are two sides of the same coin. Either violates net neutrality.

Re:Kinda on the fence about this

[Spazmania]

Peering only connects you to the other network's customers, not to the Internet at large.

You'd still have to pay someone to connect you to the other 99% of the Internet.

You'd still have to pay for the network line that connects your house to the location where your ISP does its peering.

Compulsory peering just means that when your ISP's customers have paid for access to "the Internet" and you offer to provide the ISP a direct connection to your part of "the Internet," the ISP has an obligation to service its paid customers in the best way possible: by accepting your offer to directly connect.

And before you ask what's to stop everybody from declaring themselves a peer, think about it for a minute. The ISP's peers can't talk to each other via the ISP. They're not paying customers. Peering requires one of the endpoints in any packet flow to have paid the ISP for access to the Internet.

Re:Kinda on the fence about this

[Spazmania]

Almost none of the public peering points employ multilateral peering agreements (MPLAs). Instead, you sit on the same ethernet switch that they do but must then negotiate a unilateral peering agreement with each network willing to peer.

A few smaller networks have "open" peering agreements. This means they'll accept an offer to peer with anyone else connected to the switch. Most have closed peering agreements, which means that the peer must meet some arbitrary criteria or they won't talk with you via the peering switch.

There are a few MPLA peering points out there. For example, DR Fortress in Honolulu has a multilateral peering service where all participants agree to trade Hawaii-local traffic with all other participants.

Re:Kinda on the fence about this

[T.E.D.]

That's why I said I could be convinced. That would be line of logic it would take. However, unless the ruling is that TW has to do this for anyone who asks for no extra charge, we aren't talking true neutrality.

Re:Kinda on the fence about this

[Spazmania]

There's a little nuance, but that's basically correct: TWC should have to do this for anyone who asks.

Nuance:

Peer where? TWC gets to pick the location and it isn't fair to require TWC to pay to connect from that location to yours. That's an expense you either pay for or negotiate.

Peer with how much of TWC's network? We're not talking about a single city here, TWC serves many mainland communities and large swaths of Hawaii too. Even if you connect at their favored location, should they be required to shuttle your packets around the globe? Probably not. They can probably establish multiple peering points and decide that unless it benefits them to enlarge it, a connection at that peering point is only good for that portion of their network.

Who pays the setup costs? Core routers are expensive beasts. Some cost half a million dollars or more. Should TWC be compelled to eat the port cost for everybody who wants to peer? Probably not. It's probably appropriate to expect a would-be peer to reimburse TWC for reasonable, direct costs associated with the initial setup of a peering link.

Re:Kinda on the fence about this

[Spazmania]

That would be MLPA, not MPLA. Sometimes I wonder if I'm dyslexic.

Re:Kinda on the fence about this

[Anonymous Coward]

BTW, the FCC Net Neutrality rules say "We emphasize, however, that to be eligible for consideration under the reasonable network management exception, a network management practice that would otherwise violate the no-throttling rule must be used reasonably and primarily for network management purposes, and not for business purposes."

So price is no object...

WTF?

[afidel]

Individual end users have never received settlement free peering, only major networks. The big guys occasionally kicked L3 and Cogent because they tended to have more providers than consumers on their network since they weren't part of the last mile club, but otherwise things work fairly well. Demanding that every end network be able to perform settlement free peering is insane and will lead to nothing but trouble. The biggest problem is that this kind of thing fuels an appearance that the big telcos were right and that the FCC rules are overbearing, which is unfortunate since they're just trying to rein in the worst excesses and abuses of the companies that hold hostage the future of our information based economy.

Re:WTF?

[Spazmania]

Nonsense. Small networks frequently peer with each other, even as they're locked out of peering in the big boys' club. And for your information, the arbitrary and capricious standards for joining the boys' club IS one of the worst excesses and abuses of the companies that hold hostage the future of our information based economy.

The Real Winners...

[rjune]

The real winners with "Net Neutrality" is the lawyers. Always the lawyers.

Re:The Real Winners...

[Anonymous Coward]

Obscurity pays big.

They keep using that word...

[fahrbot-bot]

The complaint will ask the FCC to rule that ISPs must strike free peering deals with website operators.

... but I don't think CNS understands the meaning of the word "peer".

Big pockets? New law? I smell a class action...

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

I can't say that I'd be in favor of net neutrality if I knew it was going to lead to some large, meaningless-except-to-the-lawyers-who-collect-cash class action lawsuits. What I really want is federal, PMITA regulation beating the hell out of telecoms whenever they decide to promote this or that service over another.

Wah! They're charging us for access!

[msobkow]

Wah! They're charging us for a commercial uplink!

We should get it for free! Net neutrality and all that!

Plus they've got lots of money, so we're suing.

Oh thank goodness

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm 100% sure this will end up lowering my bill.

Re:Big pockets? New law? I smell a class action...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't say that I'd be in favor of net neutrality if I knew it was going to lead to some large, meaningless-except-to-the-lawyers-who-collect-cash class action lawsuits.

Well I guess it's a good thing that a complaint filed with the FCC isn't a class action lawsuit.

Missing Information

[Anonymous Coward]

Great an article detailing a webhosting company filing a net neutrality complaint. The article stunk. There was no information on who CNS transit provider is. Is it TWC, Level 3, Cogent, XO? Are they using multiple transit providers? How much bandwidth are they currently purchasing? Why aren't there transit providers involved? For the moment until there is more information, this reeks of someone trying to abuse the new rules to get free bandwidth.

Re:Big pockets? New law? I smell a class action...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who knew that incredibly vague rules about a non-problem could lead to exploitation by lawyers?

Re:Big pockets? New law? I smell a class action...

[Anonymous Coward]

You really couldn't see the lawyers grinning from ear to ear? Net neutrality will be good for the users but we can make a ton of money when someone says I am not getting what that person over there is getting.

Purpose slowing down of packets

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that the level of slime gets deeper. I am a cheap *^&%^ and I use the lowest level of service that I can get.

I do not know how many times a normal web site click seems to take forever to load, I get the famous server not found message. Strangely ping times are okay and when I check the net speed, I get close to what I pay for...

I think that certain traffic is slowed/delayed to give people the impression they need a faster link.

Re:Purpose slowing down of packets

[pfleming]

I think that certain traffic is slowed/delayed to give people the impression they need a faster link.

The traffic that takes the longest to get to me is the 47 pages of included javascript someone convinced a web site creator to use. My page load times would be greatly reduced without all that extra garbage.

TWC's Peering policy

[TheBrez]

http://help.twcable.com/twc_se...
I've read through a number of peering agreements over the last year, and this is one of the most onerous and one-sided that I've seen. Mandating minimum connection speeds that are out of the realm of all but probably the 20-30 largest carriers in the world, minimum of 8 POPs with 4 of them in distinct regions peering with TWC, must have at least 500 downstream AS's, and must be advertising 2000+ /24s of IPv4 space.
Definitely taking the stance of they have everything to gain from this relationship and any benefit to the peer is only if it benefits TWC more. The Google's and Facebooks of the world have fair and reasonable policies that most large enterprise customers can easily meet to benefit from peering. Maybe this is why peeringdb doesn't list many locations or peers for TWC. Glad Charter is buying them. Hopefully peering policies like this go away soon. For those interested, Charter's policy is here for those interested in how far apart they are from each other:
https://www.charter.com/browse...

Re:Wah! They're charging us for access!

[Spazmania]

Wah! I'm an idiot who doesn't understand the difference between Transit (uplink) and peering and can't be bothered to learn.

not a matter of law

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see a lawsuit related to breaking laws.

Laws are, you know, those things that come from law makers.

Net neutrality was never put into law by lawmakers.

Re:Wah! They're charging us for access!

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the FCC rules on Net Neutrality. They don't talk about peering or transit, they say "A person engaged in the provision of broadband Internet access service, insofar as such person is so engaged, shall not impair or degrade lawful Internet traffic on the basis of Internet content, application, or service, or use of a non-harmful device, subject to reasonable network management." The definition of "reasonable network management" will be largely up to the courts.

Re:Wah! They're charging us for access!

[msobkow]

Peering is nothing more than a dedicated uplink with higher bandwidth capacity than that normally provisioned, and private between two networks.

There is absolutely no reason some piddly little site should expect to be given a peering arrangement just because they think they're being charged too much for a commercial link. Bandwidth is bandwidth, and there is NOTHING about "net neutrality" thar forces ISPs to peer with anybody.

Re:Wah! They're charging us for access!

[msobkow]

And, by the way, this "idiot" wrote backbone internet and billing software for some small companies you may have heard of: Northern Telecom and AT&T. I've been around a long, long time and been the bowels of systems and corporations whose operations dwarf what most people have dealt with.

Re:Wah! They're charging us for access!

[msobkow]

*LOL* "been in the bowels"

Mind you, some of the jobs were pretty shitty. :P

Re:Wah! They're charging us for access!

[Spazmania]

Peering is not an uplink at all. It has different characteristics.

Internet Transit service (that uplink) connects you with the rest of the Internet. It's expansive. It connects you to "everything."

Peering connects you with your neighbor and his paying customers. Nothing else, just the folks who have paid your neighbor to connect them with "the Internet."

Are you comprehending the difference? One connects you with everything, even when the ISP has to pay for it. The other connects you only to folks who have already paid the ISP to connect them to you.

"Bandwidth is bandwidth." Sure, if you're ignorant about how networks actually work.

Re:Wah! They're charging us for access!

[Spazmania]

Which AT&T? The rebranded Cingular or the old one that collapsed to nothing allowing Cingular to buy them? Nortel, of course is in bankruptcy. And you wrote the software that managed their money you say? Did it round off the pennies?