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Cloudflare Partners With Microsoft, Google and Others To Reduce Bandwidth Costs (techcrunch.com)
A group called the Bandwidth Alliance, being led by Cloudflare, promises to reduce the price of bandwidth for many cloud customers. "The overall idea here is that customers who use both Cloudflare, which is turning eight years old this week, and a cloud provider that's part of this alliance will get a significant discount on their egress traffic or won't have to pay for it at all," reports TechCrunch. From the report: The alliance is open, and others may join still, but right now it includes virtually every major and minor cloud provider you've ever heard of -- with one exception. Current members include Automattic, Backblaze, Digital Ocean, DreamHost, IBM Cloud, Linode, Google, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Packet, Scaleway and Vapor. Some of these will now offer free egress traffic to mutual customers with Cloudflare, while others will offer at least a 75 percent discount.
Why would these businesses choose to do away with what's a minor but high-margin business, though? "The argument that we made to them was a pretty simple argument: it makes sense for you to charge for transit when you are actually paying for it," [Cloudflare CEO and co-founder Matthew Prince] said. Most of the time, though, those costs are very minor and Cloudflare, thanks to his massive number of global peering locations, can ingest the traffic directly from the cloud provider with no middlemen involved.
Why would these businesses choose to do away with what's a minor but high-margin business, though? "The argument that we made to them was a pretty simple argument: it makes sense for you to charge for transit when you are actually paying for it," [Cloudflare CEO and co-founder Matthew Prince] said. Most of the time, though, those costs are very minor and Cloudflare, thanks to his massive number of global peering locations, can ingest the traffic directly from the cloud provider with no middlemen involved.
upvote
Google is NOT part of the alliance.
I'm guessing that, somewhere along the line, TFS (and presumably TFA) was translated from a romance language. English is prudish: words don't have sex the way they do in romance languages.
Amazon's AWS isn't participating in this. Because you should use whatever AWS service there is that competes with Cloudflare.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Or in other words, if you're using Cloudflare, but want to host on Sarten-X's Super-Awesome Web Service (or any of the tons of cheap host providers out there) instead of Azure, you'll have to pay more for bandwidth, and if you're trying to pitch a startup service like an API to clients, they'll want to have that free-bandwidth perk that your competitors offer.
I guess now to be competitive as a cloud provider, I have to go join this "Alliance", which I'm sure will involve a contract of some kind, and some terms... if they'll even talk to a bit player like me.
Thanks, FCC, for killing Net Neutrality! This is exactly the kind of shit that was predicted, and you said it wouldn't happen.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
More like a cartel to me.
Thanks FCC...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-...
Your DNS queries to the highest bidder.
"We will shift the cost to residential customers."
Just wondering, since it is practically a monopoly. Never been in the hosting business, but do know that it appears to have so much unencrypted traffic flowing through its systems (despite encrypted pipes) and they claim they are ultra secure. O rly? Is someone paying for the opportunity to sift through all that data? They have an awful lot of private signing keys in their possession... If this is not a scheme to sift through data (by a powerful part, a government?), then it's almost assuredly turning into a single point of failure.
Captcha: synergy (I don't think so)
Cloudfare is a pain in the ass. I don't need some shadow company becoming a middleman gateway to all the websites I visit. The Internet "works" without Cloudfare.
If Trump doesn't have to learn how to speak properly, then nobody does. Murica, land of sanctioned rape and sliding standards.
Oh noes!
Thanks FCC!
Tell me again how this is different from a peering agreement?
Egress is how you bandwidth limit a network so this seems very crappy
Just imagine how much bandwidth could be saved if Microsoft made a better Windows and did not need to send out updates multiple times a month to hundreds of thousands of devices?
Google will not support reducing the cost of anything. [...] They should be the ones to pay for upgrading to the internet fiber and 5G mobile network updates.
Then what are Google Fiber and Project Fi?
A city or state should not have to pay for fiber upgrades, 5G, and expanding internet access to the rural areas.
Nor should it obstruct when Google wants to come in and pay for fiber and 5G.
Level 3 was saying some years ago that bandwdith has become a commodity. Low margin and constantly changing. The only way to compete in the long run is with services. Even right now, we have a multi trillion dollar set of businesses running on top of a messily $150 bil worth of world wide network equipment. The value of the services running on top of the network is growing exponentially and the network itself is mostly a one-time sunk cost with some upkeep and maintenance.
Upgrading endpoints is easy and cheap, and most of the trenching has already been done. A small amount of physical growth. Most of the improvements in network speed are from an increase in technology, not capital expenditure.
It's not surprise that these service providers are wanting to just peer and have free bandwidth. The administrative overhead to manage the nickle-and-diming is more than the cost of the bandwidth. Not to mention the opportunity costs of long negotiations. Cut out the middle-man, make it free and compete with services.
Google AMP, cloudflare, etc.... We are moving into a world where the web can be easily censored.