Two Major ISPs Are Suffering Outages, Making the Internet Really Slow Right Now (slate.com)

Freshly Exhumed writes: Two major backbone internet service providers -- Level 3 and Cogent -- appear to be suffering from massive outages and downgraded service, according to ISP monitoring service Downdetector. Users in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Dallas, Atlanta, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. are apparently being hit the hardest. Comcast is also said to be affected to a lesser degree. "Backbone internet service providers work directly with large internet platforms like Netflix to deliver large amounts of data across networks, and also work behind the scenes of consumer-facing ISPs," reports Slate. "Since the internet is an interconnected mess of wires, disruptions with Level 3 and Cogent could impact service for Comcast and Verizon users in turn."

Comments

This is why we need net neutrality!

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn it! This is exactly why we need net neutrality. Here we are now living in a world without net neutrality, and this happens so soon. Damn it, people, we need net neutrality!

Re:This is why we need net neutrality!

[NicknameUnavailable]

Damn it! This is exactly why we need net neutrality. Here we are now living in a world without net neutrality, and this happens so soon. Damn it, people, we need net neutrality!

No, both reasons are why we need mesh nets. Moreover, lack of net neutrality will bring about mesh nets, the death of Silicon Valley marketing mega corps (e.g. Silicon Valley corporations,) the end of monopolistic control over the content people share online, etc. The death of net neutrality will be the greatest thing to happen on the internet since before the start of The Eternal Summer, by ending The Eternal Summer.

Re: This is why we need net neutrality!

[Anonymous Coward]

This. A million times, this. Iâ(TM)ve believed for a long time that mesh nets are the only way forward. Messy, and maybe a little scary, a lot harder for corporations to control, but theyâ(TM)ll be robust and effective.

Re:This is why we need net neutrality!

[Anonymous Coward]

More likely that Cogent was playing games trying to hot-potato route onto the Level(3) network and Level(3) once again decided to shut them down route onto

This happened in 2005, and Cogent still continues to think this dick move is a great idea

http://www.lightreading.com/cable-video/ott/cogent-gearing-for-another-peering-battle/d/d-id/707831

Re:This is why we need net neutrality!

[Rockoon]

Is it any surprise that both these backbones had each been NetFlix's ISP, and whichever one had NetFlix at the time also publicly demanded settlement free peering with added propaganda from the other when the traffic ratio no longer warranted settlement free peering?

Re:This is why we need net neutrality!

[DaMattster]

No, both reasons are why we need mesh nets. Moreover, lack of net neutrality will bring about mesh nets, the death of Silicon Valley marketing mega corps (e.g. Silicon Valley corporations,) the end of monopolistic control over the content people share online, etc. The death of net neutrality will be the greatest thing to happen on the internet since before the start of The Eternal Summer, by ending The Eternal Summer.

So by your arguments, the death of net neutrality will spur community-based wireless mesh networks? Okay, I will buy that. However, at some point the users of the mesh network will want to get access to Facebook and Twitter. Thus, there has to be access to the internet at large.

Re: This is why we need net neutrality!

[DaMattster]

This. A million times, this. Iâ(TM)ve believed for a long time that mesh nets are the only way forward. Messy, and maybe a little scary, a lot harder for corporations to control, but theyâ(TM)ll be robust and effective.

Okay, but these mesh networks still need access to the internet at large. I am sure users will want to be able to do something useful. A mesh network is nothing more than an interesting curiosity if it cannot reach the internet.

Re: This is why we need net neutrality!

[hackwrench]

Just what do you think the internet is? I guess the potential for problems with mesh networks comes in when you try to get them to do the job of the backbones as well as the local hops, but they can. Those big empty rural spaces between cities and towns - scary, no?

Re:This is why we need net neutrality!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care, my ISP is awesome and has always been awesome even before the introduction of the 2016 net neutrality restrictions.

I don't know what the article is on about, I had zero problems doing anything online today. I bought a bunch of stuff from Amazon, bought and download some games on Steam, watched some YouTube and I'm streaming a movie now.

Too bad for the suckers who have crap ISPs.

Re:This is why we need net neutrality!

[Anonymous Coward]

ISP == Internet Service Provider

In MOST cases this ISP does not own a global network, so they lease from a larger "Tier 1" backbone provider. In the olden days, these would have been MA Bell, or British Telecom.

Around the Millennium we saw Level(3) start to build out a next-gen global network. This was rapidly followed by many different business-plans. Some, like Enron, just leased from Level(3) and then sold at a loss to claim higher high sales numbers, others built out regional networks like Broadwing, which were bought up by level(3) once they went bust, and others like Cogent bout every single outdated POS network they could get their hands on and cobbled together the cheapest possible solution with the goal of starving Level(3) and owning the market

So, maybe you are just using local data, or you are not trying to access a region that would rely on a network that is bridged across the two warring parties

Re:This is why we need net neutrality!

[Anonymous Coward]

Or there's a replacement, or they have points of presence (like anyone else running a node, or in fact, how PoPs and peering on the Internet itself works), or you have bridges where it's a lot harder to single out ALL the encrypted traffic, or *insert yet another solution*.

Other issue is that it's always the pioneers that are clever and aggressive at learning the new technology and developing it, then the majority it turns out don't want to micromanage everything (not 'power users') in other words, so eventually the next generation of networking gets commercialized, repeat ad nauseum. TL;DR September happens once per evolution.

Re: This is why we need net neutrality!

[Anonymous Coward]

You got that backwards. The side receiving more than sending is the one that should be paying

Re: This is why we need net neutrality!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just an excuse for the future to release "better internet." They're doing it on purpose for those that don't know anything about this stuff.

Re: This is why we need net neutrality!

[Anonymous Coward]

By this logic, Comcast should be paying Netflix. Because Netflix sends a hell of a lot more traffic into Comcast's network than the other way around.

Re: This is why we need net neutrality!

[i286NiNJA]

They'll still have access to the internet but it will be through commercial links. The mesh network is about providing options at the last mile. Even if you only get a trickle at 100kbps that's 1gB of content a day. Then once you add store and forward support on portable devices and local p2p on the mesh.

For the poor or basic user: This extra capacity would be enough for some users to drop their internet package and do their regular web browsing over their cellular connection. Pretty sure that the major ISPs would have liked to sell that guy a barebones email and social media account with a cable television package. Now he might even be pirating his television.

For the advanced user this means all this and more.

I should remind you that that tiny 100kbps could be squeezed out of a IP-over-DNS tunnel and this is common in the 3rd world. Here in the USA nobody bothers with shit like that. Once the ISPs start offering network access bundles it will create a huge circumvention community where none existed before.

People have been itching to do this for 10 years and the end of net neutrality will be the catalyst that makes it happen.

Re: This is why we need net neutrality!

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly but not quite.
Comcast's customers pay Comcast to access internet. In part, some Comcast's customers are particularly interested to access Netflix. Comcast's top order of business as an ISP should be to deliver the traffic requested (Netflix or otherwise), and already paid for, by their customers in the fastest way possible. Whether Comcast would buy bandwidth from a Tier 1 network that will transit Netflix traffic to them, build private peering with Netflix and pay for the dark fiber themselves (from their customer's subscription fees) and even provide Netflix with hardware (e.g. SFPs switches and routers that will be in the Netflix data center) or host Netflix server locally in the Comcast's data centers, free of charge to Netflix, thus effectively paying Netlifx in covering the tab for power, rackspace and cooling from the subscription fees of Comcast's customers, an ISP (Comcast) has the obligation to deliver the traffic its subscribers have already paid for. Otherwise, in a free market customers will switch to an ISP that have properly assured that the traffic their customers request is delivered with the proper quality.

  Sadly, US is not a free market. It' funny the best internet service these days can be found in Eastern Europe.

  Netflix on their end collect subscription fees from the ISPs customers. Netflix should use these fees to cover their server and content cost and make every effort possible to deliver the traffic originating in their servers to the nearest peering/border point in the direction of the customer who has asked for it. The ISP on the other end of said peering should make every possible effort to deliver that traffic to the subscriber who requested it and paid for, by maintaining the necessary peering/upsteam connections and paying the associated fees for those (e.g. dark fiber, routers, switches, datacenter interconnects, etc).

Re: This is why we need net neutrality!

[NicknameUnavailable]

They'll still have access to the internet but it will be through commercial links. The mesh network is about providing options at the last mile.

That's an application of it but that's not what it's about. It's about replacing ISPs, centralized websites, the ability to spy passively across large swaths of the population, cheaper network costs, faster speeds, etc. They tend to be wireless, they also tend to have 1gbps up/down speeds. When you're talking about connecting your entire town at the rate of a LAN you are necessarily talking about a distributed P2P network over which you can share videos, host your own local sites, etc. Combine that with the cost (a one-time purchase of a meshnet router about the same price of a cable modem) and you have a recipe for everything to change for the better - sites designed more like wordpress packages (e.g. if you want a search engine you install the software yourself, people locally subscribe, maybe network to the neighboring towns to share indexes, in the meantime you cut out the large corporations bent on political domination of the world like Google.) There's virtually nothing without the potential to get better on meshnets save for connecting science research centers with enormous amounts of data, but those are already special cases for networking.

Re:This is why we need net neutrality!

[NicknameUnavailable]

Facebook, Twitter, and the other Silicon Valley marketing/spy tools dying is one of the positives to come out of this.

Re: This is why we need net neutrality!

[i286NiNJA]

I like you! Still, unless you know something that I don't. Setting up usable mesh networks is hard and there'll be challenges. I don't think it's anything that would keep them from popping up in downtown tech hubs quickly and then people will work on lowering the barrier to entry. Then it will move to the general nerd population until finally it's included in off the shelf soho products.

By that time there will be a bunch of sweet protocols. Like you said there will be a ton of cheap to run community stuff too. I know if I could expose some services only a hop or two from my home, well that sounds cool downtown. What if I was in the suburbs? 3 hops? I could query local stores for inventory.. or they could broadcast it. I could call people in my town lag free, in perfect HD! I could share some movies with my neighbor, I doubt it will happen but I could even rent them from a local store and avoid using up my internet data cap. What about when the neighborhood radio personality is so good he gets syndicated, just cause he's funny and someone thinks it's cool?

It would revolutionize things the way the internet did.

Re: This is why we need net neutrality!

[NicknameUnavailable]

I base most of my predictions of future tech on the John Titor conspiracy story, he predicted mesh nets would take over within a few decades back in the late 90's. We're about there.

Re:This is why we need net neutrality!

[Anonymous Coward]

My ISP didn't need any of the backbones that went down today because they have their own backbone. I didn't experience one drop out at all during the supposed "bad times".

Re:This is why we need net neutrality!

[Anonymous Coward]

Where are they? They don't exist. Rubbish.

Re:This is why we need net neutrality!

[Anonymous Coward]

The Eternal Summer? Isn't that a Dr. Who fanfic?

Did you mean The Eternal September, which began in 1993 when AOL began offering Usenet access?

Re: This is why we need net neutrality!

[Anonymous Coward]

That is just stupid

Cogent is getting paid to handle traffic for their customers, but they put that traffic onto competitors networks who do not receive any money for carrying that traffic

In other words, Cogent is taking a free ride on Level(3), how could that be good for Level(3) ?

Re:This is why we need net neutrality!

[Anonymous Coward]

Try this, open a command prompt and type in tracert and a url that you frequent

Chances are about 50/50 that level3.net will be in there somewhere particularly if you are taking a log hop across country

Re: This is why we need net neutrality!

[Anonymous Coward]

Explain to me again how the direction a bit travels determines the cost?

Re:This is why we need net neutrality!

[scdeimos]

People that think ICMP traffic has to be routed the same as tcp traffic are so cute.

Nuclear grade.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whew! Sure glad the internet can survive a nuclear strike. Just not an economic bomb.

Re:Nuclear grade.

[fisted]

Still works, no? Or how were you able to post this?

Not Outages, it's neutrality freedom blackouts

[ruddk]

It is not outages, it is neutrality freedom blackouts to ensure quality service. They need to add the Freedom package for full access.

Re:Not Outages, it's neutrality freedom blackouts

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't help that the Slate article misleads readers by conflating the current problem with Comcast not buying enough transit, throttling Netflix and thereby forcing Netflix into a paid direct agreement with Comcast. That was what net neutrality was designed to avoid. The current situation is not about net neutrality, but the timing is of course pertinent: Whoever started this is certainly counting on people mistaking this for a net neutrality issue. Cogent and Level 3 have done this before, and not just once. It's like going on strike to get a better deal. Neither of them is or was required by net neutrality to have a peering agreement with the other one. It's cheaper for both, so they do it, but sometimes they disagree who gets more out of it than the other.

Re:Not Outages, it's neutrality freedom blackouts

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this was due to a botched change in preparation for more specific traffic filtering across their networks. After all, providers like Comcast aren't going to be the only ones charging for fast lanes when that shoe drops.

Backbone Internet providers

[chrylis]

I want to thank Beau for including the explanation of backbone providers for all of us who would have been scratching our heads about how a tier 1 outage could possibly be affecting us personally.

Re:Backbone Internet providers

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to thank Beau for including the explanation of backbone providers for all of us who would have been scratching our heads about how a tier 1 outage could possibly be affecting us personally.

Candidly, I'm kind of glad he added it. I'm a seasoned electrical/electronics engineer with ~20 years in the industry. And while I can describe the in's and out's of op-amps, DACs/ADCs, and switching power supplies; I just haven't had the time to research internet backbone/networking and how they're all related. Such is my silo'd area of expertise.

Re:Backbone Internet providers

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's good that such information was included. While the readership of the early-2000s era Slashdot probably knows what a backbone provider is, there's a good portion of the late-2017 Slashdot readership that probably is not aware.

Thanks to the rise of the cloud, as well as a decrease in the running of personal/independent web sites thanks to consolidation around platforms like Facebook and Twitter, many computer professionals today don't know much about network architecture, or even what in the past we would have considered to be the most basic elements of computer networking.

While 15 years ago it was routine for us to set up our own routers, even to the point of stringing and crimping our own cables, there's a whole generation of professionals who doesn't have that experience. All they've ever known is wireless networking. Cloud platforms like AWS completely insulate them from anything more complex than whitelisting a TCP or UDP port.

A good example of this lack of understanding with regards to networking is visible in much of the net neutrality discussion here. There are unfortunately too many people who don't understand the 7 layer OSI model of networking. They say that net neutrality is important for levels 1 to 3, but then don't think that it should apply to levels 4 through 7.

These people with limited knowledge of networking think it's wrong when telecom providers handle IP packets differently based on the content, but they refuse to apply that same standard to higher-level networking concepts like social media comments or social media accounts. They cry foul when telecom providers treat packets differently, but these same people are perfectly fine with anti-neutral actions like comments being hidden/deleted, or worse, users being banned, even when these comments or users are perfectly legal.

Instead of supporting net neutrality, these people with limited understanding of networking actually support net partiality! They only want 43% of the OSI layers to be treated with neutrality, instead of 100% of the layers like true supporters of net neutrality want.

So it's good when the editors here explain basic concepts. There are a lot of people here who have severely limited understanding of even the most basic aspects of computer networking.

Re: Backbone Internet providers

[Anonymous Coward]

Seconded

Re:Backbone Internet providers

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI, like any old-hand knows, Cogent has repeatedly abused peering agreements and sought to hot-potato route (slam traffic onto a competitors network as fast as possible without allowing for similar use of their own network) since Level(3) slammed their dick in the cookie jar in 2005 and effectively broke the internet just to get Cogent to cool their jets

It never really stopped Cogent and they have played the same stupid game over and over again

Re:Backbone Internet providers

[Anonymous Coward]

The net neutrality debate is centered on ISPs because there's a lack of competition at that level.

Anyone is free to set up their own website and ban users on a whim because users can easily go elsewhere. But the same cannot always be said for their ISP.

The NN discussion is about neutrality of the parts which suffer from a lack of competition. For example it's much less of an issue outside the US where competition in the ISP space is generally more healthy.

Re:Backbone Internet providers

[petermgreen]

Indeed, the root problem is the lack of seperation between the natural monopoly (or duopoly if you are lucky) of "last mile" communications and the other parts of the buisness (internet service, TV serivice etc). This is compounded by the fact that some of the US providers are extremely large.

IIRC the US forced telcos to allow ISP competition on traditional exchange-based ADSL lines but never extended that to other types of communications service (FTTC, FTTP, cable etc). So as traditional DSL has become a less attractive option ISP competition has fallen off.

Here in the UK they did extend the ISP competition thing to BT Openreach FTTC and FTTP services. They didn't extend it to cable unfortunately but afaict cable is nowhere near as big a thing in the UK as it is in the US (our dominant pay TV provider is sattelite based).

Users in...

[Anonymous Coward]

every major metropolitan area in the US are impacted the most. Shocking.

Level 3 and CenturyTel

[Anonymous Coward]

Didnt CenturyTel buy Level 3?

Re:Level 3 and CenturyTel

[Anonymous Coward]

Yessir

Re:Level 3 and CenturyTel

[Streetlight]

CenturyLink, my former landline connection, bought Level 3, one of the major long line Internet back bone companies. Moved on to a VOIP service and not looking back.

They are rebooting their routers..

[Anonymous Coward]

to enable those new fancy QOS features not that NN is deader than chivalry.

Re:They are rebooting their routers..

[Anonymous Coward]

I LOL'd because I thought the same thing when I read the title.

Re:They are rebooting their routers..

[Anonymous Coward]

Except they wouldn't need a reboot, learn2troll

Highdude702

Re:They are rebooting their routers..

[InvalidsYnc]

Ditto

Re:They are rebooting their routers..

[HornWumpus]

NN never banned QoS. Banning QoS 'breaks the internet'.

But it put its definition into the hands of a group (uncle Charlie) that supporters of NN claim doesn't understand the internet. What could go wrong?

Re:They are rebooting their routers..

[Anonymous Coward]

Banning QoS 'breaks the internet'.

No, it doesn't. QoS is only "necessary" if there is congestion. If there is congestion, there need to be bandwidth upgrades, because you oversold your bandwidth too much. If you don't do the right thing, then that's going to be immediately apparent without QoS, and QoS can mask your cheapness for a while, but what 'breaks the internet' is not a lack of QoS but you not providing the bandwidth your customers use (and have a right to use!)

Re:They are rebooting their routers..

[Anonymous Coward]

The other AC is absolutely right. The old rules were not perfect, and should have banned all QoS as well. It doesn't even work, except as a means for artificial congestion. The very concept as applied to the Internet is broken, as there is no fair way to classify traffic. Any efforts to prioritize will disadvantage unknown traffic, which includes emerging protocols and otherwise opaque traffic. Not only does the practice harm innovation, it leads to excessive buffering in the network, which is damaging to all services.

The common excuse that we need QoS to do network management is bunk. Some narrow exceptions to allow dropping abusive traffic should be sufficient. The key is that such practices must only be applied to traffic that can be clearly identified.

Re:They are rebooting their routers..

[Anonymous Coward]

Setting up QoS on a router usually results in the said router rebooting by itself when it runs out of contiguous memory areas.

Re:They are rebooting their routers..

[HornWumpus]

At this point NN supporters have lost their feeble fucking minds. A law that was never implemented is _needed_ and a necessary practice should be banned because 'rights'.

QoS is needed, simple FIFOs at the routers will leave you gaming with terrible pings, even assuming infinite bandwidth. Ask someone to explain the words you don't understand.

Re:They are rebooting their routers..

[Anonymous Coward]

simple FIFOs at the routers will leave you gaming with terrible pings, even assuming infinite bandwidth.

I can explain why that is patently false, but you made the claim, so explain why you think you're right.

Sounds familiar

[nospam007]

"Making the Internet Really Slow Right Now "

Nice internet you had here, but if you'd pay us just 10 bucks more, nothing bad would ever happen to it, capisce?

Re:Sounds familiar

[H3lldr0p]

That was my thought entirely. Given that Level 3 was just acquired by CenturyLink it wouldn't surprise me in the least that this was them turning some new "traffic shaping experience" software on.

Re: Sounds familiar

[mapkinase]

You don't want anything bad happenning to your mother's Internet, do you?

Re:Sounds familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

Paying for internet service is completely a voluntary transaction. You don't have to pay.

Re:Sounds familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

You people are turning manic.

Yeah, that's right Slate

[Anonymous Coward]

Slate sez: "Since the internet is an interconnected mess of wires,"

Next article on their website: Some dumass Trump supporter said the Internet has tubes! OMG don't we feel smug and superior!

Quick! Send in the

[Anonymous Coward]

inflatable creimers! They'll clean up that IT storage space and get the internet back up again!

Just wait, I have to inflate him manually....

AHHHHH WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH....

AHHHHHHHH WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!!!

AHHHHHHHH WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!!!

My head's spinning...

AHHHHHHHH WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH...

AHHHHHH WHOOOOOOOOOOSH

AHHH WHOOOOOOOOSH

Do they have to make them so big?

Re:Quick! Send in the

[Anonymous Coward]

You fool! You need to pack the body with lard. Only the head is inflatable!

See here:
http://ibb.co/mRVSaG

Re:Quick! Send in the

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey thanks for that! I just followed your advice and here is the result:

https://ibb.co/cc7Ddw

Re:Quick! Send in the

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey! Great picture! I can even see the crack in the middle of his forehead hiding the valve to inflate his head!

Thanks dude!

Wires? or Fiber-optic?

[Anonymous Coward]

More like a series of /tubes/.

oh, bs

[Trailer Trash]

Since the internet is an interconnected mess of wires

Bullshit. It's a series of tubes.

Re:oh, bs

[Anonymous Coward]

Technically glass rods, very tiny ones. Have you ever terminated fiber? Can be a pain in the ass..

Highdude702

Re:oh, bs

[Anonymous Coward]

These tubes appear to be blocked with bullshit at the moment. Most likely originating from the FCC......

(lol)

Which is the truth?

[franzrogar]

A) They were testing their "fast-access pay-only web filter" for rich people, and something went wrong; or

B) They purposely created this problem to later say: "The lines were so over-used that made everything fall, that's a problem of Net Neutrality; if we could adapt the bandwidth this would have not happened".

Re:Which is the truth?

[Anonymous Coward]

A) They were testing their "fast-access pay-only web filter" for rich people, and something went wrong; or

B) They purposely created this problem to later say: "The lines were so over-used that made everything fall, that's a problem of Net Neutrality; if we could adapt the bandwidth this would have not happened".

C) You went overboard on the tinfoil and covered your WAP along with your head.

Re:Which is the truth?

[AHuxley]

All the "Room 641A" got an upgrade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ?
The one link between the elite east and west coast monopolies needs an upgrade?
Recall https://yro.slashdot.org/story...

Under Net Neutrality this would never happen

[WillAffleckUW]

Welcome to the new world of Comcast and Verizon being really really really really really slow.

Re: Under Net Neutrality this would never happen

[Anonymous Coward]

All you dumb hippies predictions never come.true.

Re:Under Net Neutrality this would never happen

[Anonymous Coward]

I am as pro net neutrality as one could be, but this has nothing to do with net neutrality. Two Tier 1 providers decided to no longer have a peering agreement. Well, one of them decided they want something and the other didn't budge, so their interconnections have been shut down. That's like you switching from cable to DSL: You would expect to have a longer (and possibly congested) path to reach other cable customers. Traffic between Level3 customers and Cogent customers now takes a longer route, and since those two are some of the largest ISPs in the world, the other routes are probably not prepared to carry that much traffic. That's just how networking works. Net neutrality rules only affect what you can do on network links. It does not prescribe what links you must have.

Re:Under Net Neutrality this would never happen

[WillAffleckUW]

that is exactly what net neutrality stops.

but hey, I've been on the Net since it was ARPA and it was the 80s, so tell me how wrong I am, n00b

Re:Under Net Neutrality this would never happen

[Anonymous Coward]

Net neutrality does not require anyone to have a business relationship with anyone else. In fact, net neutrality is about the exact opposite: that nobody can extort a business relationship out of you. This is just one ISP deciding that the peering agreement it had with another ISP is no longer favorable, so they ended or suspended it. The traffic between customers of the two now takes longer and congested routes. Nobody is getting throttled and nobody is given fast lane access.

Re: Under Net Neutrality this would never happen

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah cap and trade would have been a horrible idea. Renewables will never be as cost effective as fossil fuels.

Re:Under Net Neutrality this would never happen

[diamondmagic]

No. Net Neutrality is about how you route and drop IP packets, and more specifically, not doing it based on source or destination.

Further, the FCC specifically declined to apply their rules to interconnects. From page 10 of the 2015 Open Internet Order:

30. But this Order does not apply the open Internet rules to interconnection. Three factors
are critical in informing this approach to interconnection. First, the nature of Internet traffic, driven by
massive consumption of video, has challenged traditional arrangements—placing more emphasis on the
use of CDNs or even direct connections between content providers (like Netflix or Google) and last-mile
broadband providers. Second, it is clear that consumers have been subject to degradation resulting from
commercial disagreements, perhaps most notably in a series of disputes between Netflix and large last
mile broadband providers. But, third, the causes of past disruption and—just as importantly—the
potential for future degradation through interconnection disputes—are reflected in very different
narratives in the record.

Some 90 pages into the 2015 Order it explained how the 2014 Netflix-Level 3-Verizon dispute was not a violation.

Nothing to see, move along

[Ol Olsoc]

This is just inpreparation for the new slow and fast lanes of the Republican internet.

Re:Nothing to see, move along

[Ol Olsoc]

You do know that Trolls guard bridges..

And it appears that given the length of your reply, I'm a master, AC

U mad Bro?

Re:Nothing to see, move along

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope.. just a realist trying to throw a couple facts onto your bonfire of blame to reduce it back to a slow smolder. Your post garnered a score of 3 with one sentence. No facts, no information.. just a passing thought that I'm guessing rang true with your constituents.

I'm not mad or angry as that is negativity and useless... I'm just a little bit frustrated when world+dog is continually focused on a knee jerk answer backed with nothing yet it garners read-worthy and news-worthy status.

As proven, you've skipped the information I've provided I'll guess you don't care about facts. Good for you I'm happy for you. Just don't let reality get in the way of your perception.. nothing good comes from that.

Merry Christmas and Happy New year to you.. (unless that offends you too)

Peace out.

Re:Nothing to see, move along

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.quora.com/What-do-you-think-of-ignorant-people-that-talk-about-things-like-they-are-fact

Don't mind the outage...

[Anonymous Coward]

We are just testing some... "upgrade" options. You might like our video streaming booster upgrade.

Nothing to worry about.

Re: Don't mind the outage...

[Anonymous Coward]

In Australia , you choose your speed of your connection. 1000mbit links should cost more than 5mbs links dumbass.

Re: Don't mind the outage...

[ls671]

In Australia , you choose your speed of your connection. 1000mbit links should cost more than 5mbs links dumbass.

Not if it is a 1000mbit by 200s link.

Unbalance Peering

[sdinfoserv]

I run a small ISP that uses Cogent as my primary upstream provider. Cogent and Verizon have been fighting literally for years over "unbalanced peering". Meaning, Verizon was throwing a fit because a majority of Cogent's traffic comes from Netflix and Verizon wanted some pay-ola to balance the peering. When Net Neutrality was in place, Verizon was forced to allow traffic.... but now that our friend Pai has removed that requirement, any upstream provider is free to extort any amount they want to restore traffic.

Re:Unbalance Peering

[Anonymous Coward]

Even with NN, if there's a large imbalance in peering data then some money should change hands. It's up to the peering contract the parties agreed to.

Re:Unbalance Peering

[DigiShaman]

Cogent was always bitching well into the 90s. Bulls have, and always will fight. You're just now seeing them lock horns like it's a new thing; and it's not.

This will go away. It's part of how the beast (internet) works. And it always works itself out.

Re: Unbalance Peering

[Anonymous Coward]

So yea... Follow the paper trail right?

Re:Unbalance Peering

[Anonymous Coward]

if it means less video on the internet I'm all for it. watch your tvs and leave our internets clog-free, fuckers.

Re:Unbalance Peering

[reg]

Definitely! Verizon should really be paying for their indiscriminate downloading!

Re:Unbalance Peering

[Anonymous Coward]

When Net Neutrality was in place, Verizon was forced to allow traffic.

No, that is not true. Nobody was forced to peer with anyone else. That was a bit of loophole in the net neutrality rules: You could just stall *everyone* by not buying enough transit, for example, or by not upgrading a peering with another Tier 1 provider, and then just tell people they should buy network access from you if they want to reach your customers without congestion. That is not and was not a net neutrality violation, just congestion. With net neutrality you couldn't selectively throttle someone's packets on a given link that others can use unthrottled (or differently throttled). Depeering other Tier 1 providers has always been a power play that global network operators have been using to rearrange their peering agreements. When Level 3 and Cogent battled it out, it even made the news.

Re:Unbalance Peering

[Anonymous Coward]

Fix your software noob.

Re:Unbalance Peering

[Burdell]

Any clueful Internet provider would know not to have Cogent as a single (or even one of two) upstream, and how to route around them when they get in their pissing matches. Cogent will beat anybody's price on bandwidth, because what they lose on each contract, they'll make up in quantity!

Re:Unbalance Peering

[Wrath0fb0b]

This is not what Net Neutrality means. Net Neutrality means that ISPs may not discriminate based on the origin/destination/contents of a packet. It does not mean that ISPs have to treat 1000GB the same as 1GB.

A byte is a byte is a byte, and Verizon ought to have the right to demand more money to transfer more bytes, so long as they do so in a neutral fashion. Cogent should pay the same rate to transfer a byte from Netflix as one from Hulu or iTunes or Amazon Streaming. That's neutrality over content.

Re:Unbalance Peering

[ortholattice]

"No, your slow internet connection isn't crippled. It's just differently throttled."

Re:Unbalance Peering

[Anonymous Coward]

Except Verizon were already paid to deliver the traffic by their subscribers. They have no right to double dip. In fact they have obligations to their customers to deliver the traffic requested so Verizon should bear the cost of upgrade of the peering connection, or have peering for the balanced part + subscribe to Cogent for the overage and pay Cogent from the fees already collected from Verizon's subscribers.

Re:Unbalance Peering

[_Sharp'r_]

When Net Neutrality was in place, Verizon was forced to allow traffic.... but now that our friend Pai has removed that requirement, any upstream provider is free to extort any amount they want to restore traffic.

How does that fit in with the fact that the FCC change doesn't actually take effect for another couple of months?

Hmm.... unlikely that stuff now is being impacted by something which hasn't even happened yet, or did you get that arrow of time backward again in your causality equation?

Re:Unbalance Peering

[Anonymous Coward]

My Washington office has 2 links, although these are both single-homed (we provide diversity at an application level), one from Cogent, one from Level 3. We send traffic to and from our Europe office, which is a multi-homed network, peering directly with both Cogent and Level 3.

Looking at our traffic stats for our specific application, Monday was no different to the previous Monday (actually it was slightly better, with a 1 in 40 error rate rather than a 1 in 35 rate (error rate being something like packet loss > 0.01% in a 10 second period)

Re:Unbalance Peering

[Crypto Gnome]

Cogent should pay the same rate to transfer a byte from Netflix as one from Hulu or iTunes or Amazon Streaming.

NO! Cogent should pay the same rate to transfer a byte from Netflix as one from "some random browser sending a SYN" .... THAT is Net Neutrality.

Re:Unbalance Peering

[sdinfoserv]

That Verizon changed at will punishing user traffic- even though they're already making record profits.

The Internet is...

[cstacy]

"Since the internet is an interconnected mess of wires,

So now I'm confused. Did the dump truck overturn, or is a tube clogged up?

Re:The Internet is...

[k6mfw]

In another forum discussion about a power outage, someone to wrote this:

been on generator power for about 31 hours now (since early Saturday morning). About 900 PG&E customers are affected. The latest from PG&E is that they’re still “investigating”.

My own extensive “investigation” concludes the following: no missile from N. Korea, no Coronal Mass Ejection, no Sun Spots (boo, hoo!), no earthquake, no mud slide, no strong winds, no snow/ice.

So why? Who knows? Maybe vandalism. Maybe something failed.. Maybe someone screwed up.

Re:The Internet is...

[meglon]

Bigfoot, obviously.

Felt it

[Anonymous Coward]

I felt the disturbance in Youtube and brigthcove services cross the pond. As if thousands of network pathways had been suddenly silenced.

Now where did I leave the plunger..

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like there is a ton of crap blocking things up.

Re:Now where did I leave the plunger..

[meglon]

That's the internet on normal days though.

Where?

[jlgreer1]

Where is net (socialist) neutrality when you need it? There were outages during obumma's time, as well. How in the world did the internet work prior to 2015 without government control? Like your doctor? You can keep your doctor....

Couple weeks ago

[meglon]

Wasn't Level 3 having major issues just a couple weeks ago (ok, maybe it was 3-4 weeks ago...time flies when you don't pay attention)? I remember something was causing a shitstorm here on the west coast.

Situation normal

[mrbester]

"Comcast is also said to be affected to a lesser degree."

So, 33.6k instead of the usual 56k then.

Re:Situation normal

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah. That's AT&T. They turned off POP and broke my email - or was it just that things were so slow due to the backbone issues that they couldn't deliver anything (though IMAP works fine). Their so-called customer service (which they want you to pay $15/mo. extra for) figures that if anything works (like webmail) then it's all working (not true; different servers as a tech described for me many years ago). So was this failure caused by the upstream (Level 3 etc.) not delivering properly?

Comcast usually slows down to about the speed of DSL when hammered; AT&T goes for dialup.

..and of course...

[JustNiz]

shame on me for thinking that ISPs suddenly struggling to maintain service and net neutrality now going to a senate vote is anything but a complete coincidence.

Re:..and of course...

[Anonymous Coward]

There's ISPs and ISPs. The ones we all love to hate are the "local loop" or retail ISPs providing service to the mass of residences and small businesses out there - usually one of a handful of big companies like Comcast, TWC, Cox, AT&T, or Verizon for broadband, or a big cellular provider for phone. There are a bunch of smaller local ISPs, many with quite good service and policies, but they aren't available to most of us.

Then there are the "wholesale" ISPs like Level 3 and Cogent, that provide the "long lines" connecting the retail ISPs and various large commercial organizations (Netflix, various governments, big industrial companies, and the like) - they're the "backbone" of the modern internet.

The internet was originally designed to work around outages. The modern approach has backbones that work very efficiently, when they work. When they don't work, there's not enough capacity in the secondary links to replace them any more, so things degrade. Hopefully, today's issue isn't deliberate on the part of ISPs at some level, and instead is due to some general network issue or natural situation (recovery by the airlines from the power outage at KATL, perhaps?).

Prep for post net-neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

Just consider this preparation for post Net-Neutrality. This is what that fuck-wad Ajit Pai has given you.

I am FLYING right now - how/why? apk

[Anonymous Coward]

I go direct & the inspiration? Charlie Chaplin of all people ("++") from his speech here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8HdOHrc3OQ/ :

"The power they took from the people WILL return TO THE PEOPLE - In the 17th chapter of St. Luke it is written 'The kingdom of God is within man, not 1 man, nor a group of men, but in ALL MEN, in you - YOU THE PEOPLE HAVE THE POWER! The power to create machine APK Hosts File Engine 10++ 32/64-bit https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=%22APK+Hosts+File+Engine%22+and+%22start64%22&btnG=Google+Search&gbv=1/ the power to create happiness - YOU THE PEOPLE HAVE THE POWER to make this life free & beautiful - to make this life a WONDERFUL ADVENTURE - so in the name of democracy, let us USE THAT POWER..."

APK

P.S.=> No slowdown here now, or ever - why? See above (you can do the same, apply yourselves)... apk

Care to clarify. I don't think this makes sense.

[i286NiNJA]

Netflix content comes down a CDN so each of it's edge nodes has a different ISP. Would you care to clarify your statement. I've had a few beers so maybe I'm missing something.

No wonder

[Tablizer]

All this time I thought it was the

Crying about stormfront.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the most intelligent whining I've ever heard about being banned from a website.
There is no layer 7 network neutrality and there should not be you cleverly disguised kookball.

Re:Care to clarify. I don't think this makes sense

[Rockoon]

Thats today. Thats not 10 years ago. Thats not 5 years ago.

NetFlix continually shopped around for the cheapest ISP and then had streaming issues which it pretender were not the result of going with the cheapest ISP. When Cogent was dumping more data on Level 3 due to NetFlix than vise-versa, a peering dispute ensued because Cogent no longer qualified for settlement free peering. Level 3 refused to upgrade the interlinks and occasionally shut them off entirely. Then NetFlix moved over to Level 3 and the shoe was on the other foot, now Level 3 was demanding settlement free peering. Cogent refused to upgrade the interlinks,

A few years later and Level 3 was again demanding settlement free peering, but from Comcast and Verizon and so on that time. Level didnt qualify for settlement free peering with ANYBODY any longer, so NOBODY was upgrading their interlinks with Level 3 because Level 3 was already taking advantage and would be taking even bigger advantage if the interlinks were upgraded.

Through all of this, the net neutrality fucks were crying that NetFlix was being "throttled" when the reality was that NetFlix went with the cheapest ISP, an ISP that wouldnt itself pay to deliver the data it promised to deliver (which explains why they were cheapest) at the rates that were necessary. The net neutrality fucks have been sheep for big corporations looking to fuck over their competitors this whole fucking time.

Re:Care to clarify. I don't think this makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you don't understand peering.

If the ISPs customers can't get to Netflix through the given ISP, then they should be able to change ISPs...

And the ISP loses customers. To keep those customers, it must use its peering.

Now peering requires its customers to be able to provide services to the network via its ISP....

Thus NAT kills peering, though NAT does create captive customers for an ISP.

Unfortunately, monopoly ISPs prevent customers from changing their ISP...

Neutrality won't fix this

[Anonymous Coward]

Net Neutrality has absolutely nothing to do with this issue. In fact this whole Chicken Little sort of fear mongering is just that.

Fee-based outage

[Anonymous Coward]

For only $17.99 a month you can restore speed.

APK proves he is a retard again

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like APK is proving he is a retard as always.

Apparently his hosts file bullshit is so magical it can resolve problems with internet backbone outages.

I'm sure he will go and and provide some BS proof that what I say is wrong but as always he will just make himself look ever more the fool. I mean look at how he writes English, a retarded kindergartner could do better, but he like to prove beyond any doubt he is a fool.

Re:Care to clarify. I don't think this makes sense

[i286NiNJA]

Thats today. Thats not 10 years ago. Thats not 5 years ago.

No 5 years ago netflix was moving from AWS and akamai to their own hosting and CDN. Since this doesn't make sense I decided to look for myself and it's now obvious that they're just a bunch of bloodsucking mba cocksuckers pointing the finger at each other. The whining between these providers is bullshit each and every one of them is a new set of excuses every year.

They simply want a check without providing service. Anyhow it turns out netflix went cdn'less for a short period of time. Fucking stupid idea that was no doubt the result of overeager salespeople working at the backbone provider.
  Fuck all of them.

Not my point & you're all talk

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: I'm trying to get "your kind" (do-nothings) to do the same as I have (a GOOD thing others like & use that works )

Nothing 'magical' about it other than the resulting output of my work giving you more speed, security, reliability & anonymity online that is... ... & that was the point of that speech in essence (not mere hotair blowhard wind you spout).

* ... & whatever this 'outage' is that isn't affecting me @ all whatsoever, I was & still AM sailing along fast as ever - certainly FASTER & SAFER vs. you using cookies, scripts, & ads - that's certain also.

Addtionally - As far as my writing style? I have a 1,000 or so upmods that prove you completely wrong as well!

(... but then, everything you DO is wrong you UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous trolling "ne'er-do-well" who stalks me nigh constantly like the skulking lurker you are..,.)

APK

P.S.=> See subject: The point of my post you replied to was that people ultimately have the power to affect change & change that's hopefully for the ABSOLUTE good... apk