There is that, but if that were trustworthy you wouldn't need encryption. I assume, I think rightly, that any forensic app installed by Apple or a letter agency will have no trouble bypassing the sandbox. I've yet to see any sandbox model, on any OS, that didn't leak like a sieve. See Java and Flash for well-known examples of that approach.
I think you may have missed GP's point. The key protects the data. When the user enters the passphrase, the data is decrypted and apps can access all the data. Therefore, you don't NEED the key if you can put an app on the phone, then the user uses their phone. The encryption is useful only on a stolen or seized phone.
Citation as to the fact that both companies are big boys who can make business deals without our help, or as to Level3 saying the traditional "sender pays" rule is proper? For the latter, here are a few thousand references:
> Verizon decided they wanted a piece of the action, and degraded service. It's been shown that it was intentional, and not the result of insufficient hardware.
Level3 and Verizon both disagree with you. They both agree that the 7 interconnect routers became saturated as the Netflix traffic increased, and both have published diagrams explaining it for laymen. Links are below. Anyone,who knows how to use traceroute can confirm that fact. The only question is whether Netflix or Level3 will pay to upgrade that connection.
Whether Netflix is using Verizon as an ISP or if they are peers is of course the crux of their dispute. Looking at the definition of "peer" in the dictionary, they don't seem to meet the definition.
Fyi both companies have posts on their blogs where they identify the seven interconnects that are saturated both agree that it's those links that are the problem. The one in Los Angeles is a pair of 10,000Gbps links. The point is, they both say the problem is that those links are saturated, there's no throttling or anything on Verizon's network. Netflix argues that Verizon should upgrade their connection for free. Verizon says they should pay, just like Level3 said about Cogent.
> Yes, that would work if Netflix were a Verizon customer who had only paid for a 5mbps connection, but they're not.
They are. They are a Verizon customer, and they are complaining that they're connection is only as good as what they paid for. It sounds stupid, I know. It sounds stupid because it is stupid. That's why the other 4,999,999,999 web sites on the planet aren't whining about paying their bills.
Before signing up with Verizon, Netflix was a Level3 customer. Level3 said that Verizon should take all of the packets from Netflix at no charge (settlement free peering) despite the large imbalance. If you agree with Level3, I wonder if you'll also agree with what Level3 said a couple of years before, when Cogent wanted LEvel3 to accept imbalanced peering without settlement:
"It is important to keep in mind that traffic received by Level 3 in a peering relationship must be moved across Level 3's network at considerable expense. Simply put, this means that, without paying, Cogent was using far more of Level 3's network, far more of the time, than the reverse. Following our review, we decided that it was unfair for us to be subsidizing Cogent's business."
When Level3 was receiving more of traffic, they said that the sender should pay. As soon as they started sending more of the traffic, all of the sudden it's immoral to make the sender pay. Hmm.
Ultimately, these peering contracts are business deals between billion dollar companies. They're all big boys, and neither getting bullied to the point they need my help or yours. When we fall for the spin that these business deals between billionaires are moral crusdes that need our help, we're being used as pawns.
> You just pointed out earlier that Level3 was their ISP, not Verizon.
WAS. Was until they cancelled their service with Level3 because Level3 didn't have sufficient peering.
> Again, Netflix is not asking Verizon for service.
Yes, they are. Netflix buys service from Verizon. First, they asked Verizon for free service. Then, they bought low-quality, cheap service. Now, they are complaining that their low-quality cheap service is low quality. Which is funny, because it's right there in the SLA. If Verizon wasn't providing the level of service specified in the SLA, Netflix would just sue for breach of contract. Netflix isn't suing, because they're getting the service they paid for. They want better service, and instead of buying better service they began libeling Verizon in an attempt to bully them. When Verizon prepared to file suit, Netflix stopped putting up those messages (on June 26th).
> If they were willing to move to Verizon as their ISP, Verizon would probably be happy.
Again, Verizon IS their ISP. They do buy service from Verizon. And then complain that they got what they paid for.
> And now you're setting up a very dumb system, where every time you want to set up a website, you have to go around to each ISP and negotiate terms to have them carry your content on their private network
Yes, it's stupid, which is why nobody else does that. Everybody else just uses a good backbone provider who already has contracts in place with all of the major ISPs. Netflix wanted to cheap out because they use a metric shit ton of bandwidth.
> And none of this has anything to do with what we were talking about. You changes the subject from you wanting a cheap/crappy connection for your business, which you no net neutrality rule would prevent.
Where it all comes together is that Netflix bought cheap/crappy, then tried to change the law to require that Verizon provide premium/expensive service at the cheap/crappy price, saying that all connections should be treated the same. NETFLIX calls that network neutrality. They define it as "every packet should be treated the same". There is another, different concept that can also be called network neutrality, but the draft rule was "all packets must be treated the same", meaning the end of the choice between cheap/crappy and premium/expensive.
Netflix has a crappy connection and they refuse to buy a better one. There's nothing Verizon can do to change that, other than give Netflix free internet service.
> I pay Verizon for access to Netflix. That's what I'm paying for when I pay for my Verizon connection. A connection to Netflix, and any other site or service that I want to access.
For that $50 you pay or whatever, do you expect you'll be able to transfer files at 50 Mbps to a guy in Uganda who has 56K dial up? One side of the connection is on 56K dial up, the other side is 50 Mbps. How fast will a file transfer?
The answer, of course, is 56K, and that's physics. Verizon can't change that. Verizon can provide you a 50 Mbps connection to THEIR network. If your Ugandan friend also has a 50 Mbps connection to Verizon's network, you can transfer files at 50 Mbps. If your Ugandan friend has a 56K connection to his ISP, who in turn has a 1 Kbps connection to Afriphone, who in turn has a 1,000Gbps connection to Verizon, the transfer will flow at 1 Kbps- and there's nothing Verizon can do to change that. If your Ugandan friend calls up Verizon and says "hey, will you give me free internet so I can exchange files with your other customers? By the way, I want a 1,0000 Gbps connection so I can exchange files with all of your customers at once." What would you expect Verizon to say?
Netflix has a crappy connection and they refuse to buy a better one. There's nothing Netflix can do to change that, other than give Netflix free internet service.
Maybe a different approach will move this discussion along better. Suppose you have a friend in New York. Your New Yorkhas a 5 Mbps connection. You have a 50 Mbps connection. You use P2P software to send your friend a 5MB file. How fast do you think the file will be transferred?
Only 5Mbps?!?!? But you paid for 50 Mbps! You're getting ripped off! Of course, it's transferred at the speed of the slowest connection. That's obvious when you think in terms of peer-to-peer.
Netflix didn't buy a 5Mbps connection, of course. The problem is, they stopped buying the connection from Level3 - their position is that they shouldn't have to buy ANY connection. Well, I suppose they don't HAVE to. If their connection is zero Mbps, transfers between them and you will move at the speed of the slowest connection - zero. Instead of buying a faster connection, Netflix is trying a scam where they claim that the reason they have to pay for a connection is because Verizon is being anti-competitive. Notice that if that were happening, or when it does happen*, Netflix could sue for restraint of trade. Netflix didn't sue, because they knew there was no restraint of trade. Instead, after huffing and puffing for a bit they bought connections from Verizon and Comcast just like everybody else does. They didn't buy very good connections, and now are complaining that their connection aren't better than what they paid for.
* I have no doubt one of the ISPs will do something that at least appears to be unlawful restraint of trade, but that's not what the whole Netflix thing was about. Netflix wanted free connections, then wanted their cheap connections to be treated the same as expensive, premium quality connections.
> Netflix has good Internet connections, and I'm sure they pay a lot for it. The question is, what happens between Netflix's ISP and my ISP when I try to watch a Netflix movie?
All other web sites do, but not Netflix. That's why Netflix is having this problem. Netflix had an ISP , Level3. Level3 couldn't provide the connection Netflix needed because they hadn't paid for good connections - they mostly relied on free connections based,on an even trade of traffic. Adding Netflix made it no longer an even trade. That's when Netflix started demanding that the consumer- facing ISPs provide free connections to Netflix directly. They're complaining that they're being asked to pay for their connection just like every other web site on the planet.
> my point is, at a certain point, it doesn't make sense to complain, "I can't get a shitty enough connection!" Getting a $50 FIOS connection is shitty enough.
If I want a connection that's worth $50 ($1/mbps) and Netflix wants a connection that's higher quality and therefore worth $4/mbps, should Verizon be allowed to sell us those, as they do today?
Right now, I buy both. I have a cheap, crappy connection at one location and an expensive, quality connection at another location, based on the importance of those two locations. They are roughly the same amount of bandwidth, but one is much higher quality, with a guarantee. Do you want to make that illegal? If "all packets must be treated the same" the services I currently buy (and like) become illegal.
I mixed and matched Verizon vs Comcast in the post above, but you get the point. It Netflix (only) complaining that the ISPs wouldn't upgrade their connection for free. It's not about the connection from your house to Comcast.
Did you ever notice that there are 5 billion web pages, yet Netflix is the only website complaining? Everybody else just pays their hosting bill. Netflix thinks they should get free hosting, on the ISP premises to boot.
We're not talking about YOUR connection to Comcast being cheap. NETFLIX wants their cheap connection to be treated the same as an expensive connection.
Netflix is the Verizon customer who is complaining. Realizing that it's Netflix complaining about the connection they get to Comcast, we end up with:
>It does not specify the Verizon needs to provide the same level of service to all > It just specifies that Verizon should not be throttling some while prioritizing others.
> Many businesses (and probably most homes) use DSL or cable ISPs, which are often not symmetrical connections. Or did you mean something else?
I guarantee you Netflix doesn't operate through a cable modem. That's why I said "commercial grade connections". We're talking about The connection between Netflix and Comcast. Thousands of gigabits.
> What you're asking for, "I want to have a cheaper shittier connection," is a pointless thing to ask for. But still, net neutrality doesn't stop Verizon from offering that. Verizon doesn't offer that because it's a dumb thing to provide.
MOST of their customers buy the crappy one. Quoting myself: >> I can buy a poor quality connection from Verizon for $50/month, or I can buy a quality connection from Verizon for $1,200, at roughly the same bandwidth. For that extra $1,150, I expect an SLA.
Are you saying that Verizon doesn't offer a $50/month connection? In fact, most of their customers buy the crappiest, cheapest possible connection, which is DSL. A smaller number want and buy a slightly less cheap, crappy connection, business DSL. A smaller number buy an even less cheap connection, a T1 or DS1. A smaller number still buy a less cheap, crappy connection a shared, oversold OC-48 in Level3's DCs. Fewer still buy a top quality connection from Verizon, a dedicated OC-192.
Netflix complained that when they paid for the shared, oversold OC-48 via Level3, they didn't get the quality of a dedicated OC-192. Your solution is to make us all buy DS1.
I forgot to say this. When I talked about "If you replace all of the gas and diesel vehicles with electric, that triples the amount of electricity you need", and "you actually need solar to be 50 times more efficient" those are extremely rough guestimates based on numbers I looked at a year ago. When I said "triples" it might actually be five times as much electricity needed or twice as much, I don't recall offhand. You get the point though - a very common error made (and sometimes exploited) when talking about solar is to mismatch electricity usage and energy usage. If you're aiming to have mostly electric vehicles, you'll need a heck of a lot more electricity than we have now, so even if solar could meet 4% of our current electricity needs, that's only about 1% of our energy needs, and therefore the amount of electricity that would be needed to support electric vehicles, etc.
Welcome to last month's conversation. Yes, if solar electric could be efficiently stored, it would become much more economical. I've looked into it, and a lot of startups will be glad to sell you stock in their company which is just about to come out with a method of storage which makes sense. If you do the arithmetic on any of these ideas, they just don't come close to working.
One of the MOST reasonable ideas is pumped storage. If you take a look at current hydroelectric dams, how much power they produce, how much head they have and the area they cover, you can do some arithmetic to find out roughly what kind of hydroelectric dams we'd need to store a two days worth of energy, and how big the reservoirs need to be. I've posted the math here on Slashdot before, so I won't repeat it again, but it comes down to a reservoir 56 feet deep that covers the area from the Rockies to the Appalachians. That's one of the more reasonable approaches.
One thing that trips people up is that they want to get off of fossil fuels and replace them with things like electric vehicles, with the electricity provided by solar. They then do some math and figure out that solar only has to 10 ten times more efficient (and have magic storage) in order to provide all of our electricity. What they forget is that they're looking at electricity usage from 2012. If you replace all of the gas and diesel vehicles with electric, that triples the amount of electricity you need. Want to do all your smelting and other industry by electricity? You're going to need a lot more electricity. So you actually need solar to be 50 times more efficient (and have magic storage).
> You could complain, "But I don't need 25mbps. I want a connection with a 200 mbps download rate and a 1mbps upload rate, and I want to spend $2/month on that connection." And that's great, but it's not really Verizon's responsibility to offer that service to you.
What we have right now is that Verizon offers crappy service with up to 100 Mps for $100 / month, which is good for home users, and offers the same amount of bandwidth, guaranteed, with much higher quality for $600 / month. People running business servers want and get the $6/Mbps, home users want and get $1/Mbps service. The customer wants it, the service provider wants to sell it, and you want to make it illegal. You want to say everybody has to have $3/Mbps service, which meets nobody's needs.
It kind of sounds like you're thinking of internet connections as being one-way, as if there's a fundamental difference between oen end and the other, and information only flows one way. They're actually two way, packets travel both directions, and commercial grade connections are almost always synchronous- both directions flow at the same rate. (Except for peering major providers, which are priced based on net upstream).
> Net neutrality doesn't say that you can't make a deal with Verizon for a crappier connection. Verizon can sell you a connection with high-latency and high jitter, at a discounted price, and *that* doesn't violate net neutrality. The violation would come if Verizon provides low-jitter connections only to certain endpoints.
The way it works is that a quality connection to the next building over is pointless. For your SLA to be meaningful, the quality has to be end-to-end, for some defined endpoints. It's not uncommon to say that you should have a ___ connection to any of the upstreams POPs. So if I'm buying a connection from Verizon, I have a guaranteed quality to anywhere on Verizon's network, any of their POPs. That means I can infer a certain quality connection to any of their customers. Right now, I can buy a poor quality connection from Verizon for $50/month, or I can buy a quality connection from Verizon for $1,200, at roughly the same bandwidth. For that extra $1,150, I expect an SLA. The SLA doesn't say the connection between me and the end of the street will be good, it says I'll have a guaranteed quality across Verizon's network. So the idea that it would be legal to buy a quality connection between my DC and Verizon's suite next door, but illegal to have a quality guarantee to Verizon's other users is kind of silly.
What has always been done, what almost everyone did before Netflix and what Netflix used to do, is get a connection with a good SLA from a backbone provider like Level3. Level3 would make a contract with Verizon specifying that Verizon would provide X quality to all of Verizon's POPs, a deal with Comcast for Y quality to Comcast's network, etc. Level3 might have a dozen or so such deals with other major operators. If the traffic flow is about equal in each direction, neither pays each other - they just trade traffic equally. If Netflix is sending a lot more packets to Comcast than Comcast sends to Netflix, Netflix pays for that connection just like you pay for your home internet connection. Level3, specifically, has a bad reputation among network admins because they're cheapskates. They push the limits on those connections, and ask to "trade" traffic for free when the traffic isn't well balanced - they're really asking for a free gigabit internet connection.
Those deals allow Level3 to offer quality Z to Netflix for $xxx,000 / month. Level3 earns that $xxx,000/month by offering strong connections throughout the country, using the deals they made with the major ISPs. That's how it's worked, that's what Level3 offered me and they pitched it by physically pointing to the router connections they had with Comcast, etc. They pointed to the rack I'd be leasing, then walked me across the room and pointed to the Comcast connection, showing me that there's only 30 meters between my servers and Comcast.
Then Level3 made a deal to charge Netflix $xxx,000/month for the access they provided to Comcast etc, while paying Comcast $0 for the connection. Netflix pushes a lot of bandwidth, though, so that made the shared connection with Comcast very busy and extremely unbalanced. Netflix and Comcast weren't trading traffic anymore, Netflix was pushing 90% of the packets TO Comcast. Normally the pusher pays on wholesale bandwidth. Then asked Comcast to put in bigger pipe in order to accommodate Netflix's traffic. Comcast, predictably, said "fuck you, we're not providing you with $xx,000/month worth of extra bandwidth for free". So Level3 had sold more Comcast bandwidth then they had, and Netflix was slow. Netflix figures "Comcast was giving Level3 a s
It seems most likely either: a) Their contract said that if Apple backed out by date X, GT has to pay back $Y. b) More likely: GT was going to be a little late on delivering, or would deliver something not quite to spec.
> If I were to pay you $100 to build.. I don't know, a SIX FOOT kitchen table for me, and right as it comes time for you to deliver the table to me, I go "nope, that table is 5.99 feet", do you have to pay me back that $100?
> As for the requirements you describe, that they don't use it often, that you don't care much about jitter or latency, etc. That doesn't sound like a niche set of requirements. That sounds roughly like what most businesses want from a backup connection
Agreed, it's not a niche, many people want low price, and don't care about jitter and latency. They don't want a high quality SLA, and don't want to pay for what they don't need.
> What does that have to do with the topic at hand. We'd all like things to be cheap. I'm not even sure how net neutrality is related.
We don't ALL want cheap things, some of us want a quality connection- ultra-reliable, low latency, low jitter, etc. Netflix wants low jitter. That's not cheap. When network neutrality is defined as "all http packets must be treated the same" that means my jitter, reliability etc has to be exactly the same as what Netflix gets, which has to be exactly the same as what the hospital gets.
Netflix is not allowed to pay more for lower jitter, the hospital is not allowed to pay more for higher reliability. That's network neutrality as originally proposed. If Netflix wants low jitter, we ALL have to pay for low jitter. You can't have Netflix paying more for better service. That's network neutrality as most people define it. Of course proponents say "Netflix can't be charged more" while those advocating freedom say "Netflix can't pay more", but it's exactly the same thing.
Not that I'm against the principle behind network neutrality, btw. I just see that there are complications that make it easy for bureaucrats to screw it up. It should be done very carefully.
> I assume that you think that search and rescue teams conduct their vital, time-sensitive field work over e-mail. > I invite you to examine the possibility that this might not be the case. In fact, emergency communications > (at least in the areas that the FCC controls) tend to use communications bands specially allocated to them by (tada) the FCC.... > There's no emergency traffic being slowed down by spammers, just entertainment being artificially throttled by competing entertainment companies.
Your first two words are correct, you do assume. I do IT for TEEX. Our departments include Texas Task Force One, one of the nations best search and rescue teams. Our team deployed at the world trade center, hurricane Katrina, hurricane Irene, the Joplin tornado, the Super Bowl... Another department here is a founding member of the National Cybersecurity Preparedness Consortium. Since you're into assuming, how do you assume the team at WTC communicated with headquarters here in Texas? Hint - we didn't run a dedicated line from here to NYC. Do you have any assumptions to make about what communications infrastructure was working between Texas in New Orleans during the aftermath of hurricane Katrina? NCPC is responsible for improving the security of the _internet_. Do you have a guess as to what medium the NCPC uses to communicate? Anything else you'd like to tell me about how we operate?
> If the hospital is working off the same kind of bandwidth as the dusty internet cafe from which the Nigerian Prince is running his scam, that's not the common carrier's problem, but it might be a good reason for someone competent to replace the hospital administrator.
Under the rules some propose, they HAVE to use the same kind of bandwidth. It would ILLEGAL for them to buy a more reliable connection with a better SLA. All packets MUST be treated equally, remember? Nobody is allowed to pay for higher quality bandwidth.
> I've got a hypothetical for you, then. Is it okay to deliver the ads of one political party with normal priority while throttling another?
Though that particular phrasing seems distasteful, let us look at how that works in the real world, where better service costs more money. If one party chooses to send a spam^H^H^H^H message to 10 million people, they'll probably not want to pay more than about one penny per message - it's not worth it to them to pay twice as much in order to increase the delivery rate by 2%. If another party is sending an urgent email to their 600 local campaign leaders, it's important to them that all of those messages to arrive, and arrive quickly. They'll gladly pay 10 cents per message if that's what needed to make sure all messages get through and get through quickly. The senders themselves have assigned a priority to their emails based on how important the message is and what resources should be used to deliver it, based on what resources they're willing to pay to use.
Each government department such as the fire department _might_ be able to be individually regulated, but the the general point remains. I offer I value-oriented service where our customers very much want cheap bandwidth, but they only need to use it for two days every three years. When they do need it, they may need a lot of bandwidth - several hundred megabit. Most of the time, it sits idle waiting until it's needed. We don't care at all about jitter, latency hardly matters, and 99% reliability is good enough. We just need a very low price since we're paying for it when when not even using it. The local for-profit hospital, or any general business, has very different needs. They want much higher quality, at a higher price. A VOIP user or provider cares very much about jitter, anyone not using VOIP doesn't want to pay for low jitter. Why should it be illegal for me to buy what I need?
> If that were really the problem, I'm sure someone could have simply added in something saying that emergency services' traffic can be prioritized. > Hell, I think it would be fair to say it *must* be prioritized, as long as you can determine which traffic is being used for emergency services. > > But part of the problem is, who decides what's spam? I'm sure that Time Warner, Comcast, and Verizon don't think their ads are spam.
There is one effective way to separate high-priority traffic from low-priority traffic. We already do it, on a huge scale, so we know how well it works. Spammers want to send a lot of email quickly, as cheaply as possible. Netflix wants to send a LOT of video quickly, and as cheaply as possible. High bandwidth is what is important to them. Neither cares whether a few packets are lost along the way - nobody will notice the loss of a a few pixels of video for 1/100th of a second or one spam message. Because they use so much bandwidth, they need to pay pennies per megabit in order to be profitable.
The emergency response people I work with don't need more than a couple of megabit, but they want it to be reliable. For an excellent SLA guaranteeing reliability, they don't mind paying $45, which is $15 per megabit.
In the real world, we can tell that Netflix and the spammer think they're traffic is low priority - it's only worth pennies per megabit to get it delivered, while the EMS traffic is worth dollars per megabit. The companies themselves put a priority or value on their own traffic. That metric actually works pretty well. It also means that if Netflix wanted their traffic to be delivered faster, they'd be the ones buying the new routers to make that happen.
Unfortunately, what you said is also true "They're looking for the right to charge Netflix extra money, to prevent competition with their own video services."
Charging more for a better connection with a better SLA works really well. I offer a value oriented hot spare service where we use the bandwidth we buy once only every few months. In the rare case that a customer needs 300 Mbps, we have it available, but it sits unused 99% of the time. To provide good value to our customers, we don't buy (and charge for) the most expensive premium bandwidth. I don't want to double our prices because we're forced to pay for higher quality bandwidth under a "every packet is treated the same" regime.
Reasonable rules can be figured out, but it's not easy because there is value in being able to choose whether your application needs inexpensive bandwidth or premium quality bandwidth. Which means that ISPs will charge more for better.
Slashdot Mirror
There is that, but if that were trustworthy you wouldn't need encryption. I assume, I think rightly, that any forensic app installed by Apple or a letter agency will have no trouble bypassing the sandbox. I've yet to see any sandbox model, on any OS, that didn't leak like a sieve. See Java and Flash for well-known examples of that approach.
I think you may have missed GP's point. The key protects the data. When the user enters the passphrase, the data is decrypted and apps can access all the data. Therefore, you don't NEED the key if you can put an app on the phone, then the user uses their phone. The encryption is useful only on a stolen or seized phone.
The question mark was missing from the link.
https://www.google.com/search?...
Citation as to the fact that both companies are big boys who can make business deals without our help, or as to Level3 saying the traditional "sender pays" rule is proper? For the latter, here are a few thousand references:
https://www.google.com/searchq...
> Verizon decided they wanted a piece of the action, and degraded service. It's been shown that it was intentional, and not the result of insufficient hardware.
Level3 and Verizon both disagree with you. They both agree that the 7 interconnect routers became saturated as the Netflix traffic increased, and both have published diagrams explaining it for laymen. Links are below. Anyone,who knows how to use traceroute can confirm that fact. The only question is whether Netflix or Level3 will pay to upgrade that connection.
http://publicpolicy.verizon.co...
http://blog.level3.com/open-in...
Whether Netflix is using Verizon as an ISP or if they are peers is of course the crux of their dispute. Looking at the definition of "peer" in the dictionary, they don't seem to meet the definition.
Fyi both companies have posts on their blogs where they identify the seven interconnects that are saturated both agree that it's those links that are the problem. The one in Los Angeles is a pair of 10,000Gbps links. The point is, they both say the problem is that those links are saturated, there's no throttling or anything on Verizon's network. Netflix argues that Verizon should upgrade their connection for free. Verizon says they should pay, just like Level3 said about Cogent.
> Yes, that would work if Netflix were a Verizon customer who had only paid for a 5mbps connection, but they're not.
They are. They are a Verizon customer, and they are complaining that they're connection is only as good as what they paid for.
It sounds stupid, I know. It sounds stupid because it is stupid. That's why the other 4,999,999,999 web sites on the planet aren't whining about paying their bills.
Before signing up with Verizon, Netflix was a Level3 customer. Level3 said that Verizon should take all of the packets from Netflix at no charge (settlement free peering) despite the large imbalance. If you agree with Level3, I wonder if you'll also agree with what Level3 said a couple of years before, when Cogent wanted LEvel3 to accept imbalanced peering without settlement:
"It is important to keep in mind that traffic received by Level 3 in a peering relationship must be moved across Level 3's network at considerable expense. Simply put, this means that, without paying, Cogent was using far more of Level 3's network, far more of the time, than the reverse. Following our review, we decided that it was unfair for us to be subsidizing Cogent's business."
When Level3 was receiving more of traffic, they said that the sender should pay. As soon as they started sending more of the traffic, all of the sudden it's immoral to make the sender pay. Hmm.
Ultimately, these peering contracts are business deals between billion dollar companies. They're all big boys, and neither getting bullied to the point they need my help or yours. When we fall for the spin that these business deals between billionaires are moral crusdes that need our help, we're being used as pawns.
> You just pointed out earlier that Level3 was their ISP, not Verizon.
WAS. Was until they cancelled their service with Level3 because Level3 didn't have sufficient peering.
> Again, Netflix is not asking Verizon for service.
Yes, they are. Netflix buys service from Verizon. First, they asked Verizon for free service. Then, they bought low-quality, cheap service. Now, they are complaining that their low-quality cheap service is low quality. Which is funny, because it's right there in the SLA. If Verizon wasn't providing the level of service specified in the SLA, Netflix would just sue for breach of contract. Netflix isn't suing, because they're getting the service they paid for. They want better service, and instead of buying better service they began libeling Verizon in an attempt to bully them. When Verizon prepared to file suit, Netflix stopped putting up those messages (on June 26th).
> If they were willing to move to Verizon as their ISP, Verizon would probably be happy.
Again, Verizon IS their ISP. They do buy service from Verizon. And then complain that they got what they paid for.
> And now you're setting up a very dumb system, where every time you want to set up a website, you have to go around to each ISP and negotiate terms to have them carry your content on their private network
Yes, it's stupid, which is why nobody else does that. Everybody else just uses a good backbone provider who already has contracts in place with all of the major ISPs. Netflix wanted to cheap out because they use a metric shit ton of bandwidth.
> And none of this has anything to do with what we were talking about. You changes the subject from you wanting a cheap/crappy connection for your business, which you no net neutrality rule would prevent.
Where it all comes together is that Netflix bought cheap/crappy, then tried to change the law to require that Verizon provide premium/expensive service at the cheap/crappy price, saying that all connections should be treated the same. NETFLIX calls that network neutrality. They define it as "every packet should be treated the same". There is another, different concept that can also be called network neutrality, but the draft rule was "all packets must be treated the same", meaning the end of the choice between cheap/crappy and premium/expensive.
That last sentence should of corse read:
Netflix has a crappy connection and they refuse to buy a better one. There's nothing Verizon can do to change that, other than give Netflix free internet service.
> I pay Verizon for access to Netflix. That's what I'm paying for when I pay for my Verizon connection. A connection to Netflix, and any other site or service that I want to access.
For that $50 you pay or whatever, do you expect you'll be able to transfer files at 50 Mbps to a guy in Uganda who has 56K dial up?
One side of the connection is on 56K dial up, the other side is 50 Mbps. How fast will a file transfer?
The answer, of course, is 56K, and that's physics. Verizon can't change that. Verizon can provide you a 50 Mbps connection to THEIR network. If your Ugandan friend also has a 50 Mbps connection to Verizon's network, you can transfer files at 50 Mbps. If your Ugandan friend has a 56K connection to his ISP, who in turn has a 1 Kbps connection to Afriphone, who in turn has a 1,000Gbps connection to Verizon, the transfer will flow at 1 Kbps- and there's nothing Verizon can do to change that. If your Ugandan friend calls up Verizon and says "hey, will you give me free internet so I can exchange files with your other customers? By the way, I want a 1,0000 Gbps connection so I can exchange files with all of your customers at once." What would you expect Verizon to say?
Netflix has a crappy connection and they refuse to buy a better one. There's nothing Netflix can do to change that, other than give Netflix free internet service.
Maybe a different approach will move this discussion along better. Suppose you have a friend in New York. Your New Yorkhas a 5 Mbps connection. You have a 50 Mbps connection. You use P2P software to send your friend a 5MB file. How fast do you think the file will be transferred?
Only 5Mbps?!?!? But you paid for 50 Mbps! You're getting ripped off! Of course, it's transferred at the speed of the slowest connection. That's obvious when you think in terms of peer-to-peer.
Netflix didn't buy a 5Mbps connection, of course. The problem is, they stopped buying the connection from Level3 - their position is that they shouldn't have to buy ANY connection. Well, I suppose they don't HAVE to. If their connection is zero Mbps, transfers between them and you will move at the speed of the slowest connection - zero. Instead of buying a faster connection, Netflix is trying a scam where they claim that the reason they have to pay for a connection is because Verizon is being anti-competitive. Notice that if that were happening, or when it does happen*, Netflix could sue for restraint of trade. Netflix didn't sue, because they knew there was no restraint of trade. Instead, after huffing and puffing for a bit they bought connections from Verizon and Comcast just like everybody else does. They didn't buy very good connections, and now are complaining that their connection aren't better than what they paid for.
* I have no doubt one of the ISPs will do something that at least appears to be unlawful restraint of trade, but that's not what the whole Netflix thing was about. Netflix wanted free connections, then wanted their cheap connections to be treated the same as expensive, premium quality connections.
> Netflix has good Internet connections, and I'm sure they pay a lot for it. The question is, what happens between Netflix's ISP and my ISP when I try to watch a Netflix movie?
All other web sites do, but not Netflix. That's why Netflix is having this problem. Netflix had an ISP , Level3. Level3 couldn't provide the connection Netflix needed because they hadn't paid for good connections - they mostly relied on free connections based,on an even trade of traffic. Adding Netflix made it no longer an even trade. That's when Netflix started demanding that the consumer- facing ISPs provide free connections to Netflix directly. They're complaining that they're being asked to pay for their connection just like every other web site on the planet.
> my point is, at a certain point, it doesn't make sense to complain, "I can't get a shitty enough connection!" Getting a $50 FIOS connection is shitty enough.
If I want a connection that's worth $50 ($1/mbps) and Netflix wants a connection that's higher quality and therefore worth $4/mbps, should Verizon be allowed to sell us those, as they do today?
Right now, I buy both. I have a cheap, crappy connection at one location and an expensive, quality connection at another location, based on the importance of those two locations. They are roughly the same amount of bandwidth, but one is much higher quality, with a guarantee. Do you want to make that illegal? If "all packets must be treated the same" the services I currently buy (and like) become illegal.
I mixed and matched Verizon vs Comcast in the post above, but you get the point. It Netflix (only) complaining that the ISPs wouldn't upgrade their connection for free. It's not about the connection from your house to Comcast.
Did you ever notice that there are 5 billion web pages, yet Netflix is the only website complaining? Everybody else just pays their hosting bill. Netflix thinks they should get free hosting, on the ISP premises to boot.
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We're not talking about YOUR connection to Comcast being cheap. NETFLIX wants their cheap connection to be treated the same as an expensive connection.
Netflix is the Verizon customer who is complaining. Realizing that it's Netflix complaining about the connection they get to Comcast, we end up with:
>It does not specify the Verizon needs to provide the same level of service to all
> It just specifies that Verizon should not be throttling some while prioritizing others.
See the problem?
> Many businesses (and probably most homes) use DSL or cable ISPs, which are often not symmetrical connections. Or did you mean something else?
I guarantee you Netflix doesn't operate through a cable modem. That's why I said "commercial grade connections". We're talking about The connection between Netflix and Comcast. Thousands of gigabits.
> What you're asking for, "I want to have a cheaper shittier connection," is a pointless thing to ask for. But still, net neutrality doesn't stop Verizon from offering that. Verizon doesn't offer that because it's a dumb thing to provide.
MOST of their customers buy the crappy one. Quoting myself:
>> I can buy a poor quality connection from Verizon for $50/month, or I can buy a quality connection from Verizon for $1,200, at roughly the same bandwidth. For that extra $1,150, I expect an SLA.
Are you saying that Verizon doesn't offer a $50/month connection? In fact, most of their customers buy the crappiest, cheapest possible connection, which is DSL. A smaller number want and buy a slightly less cheap, crappy connection, business DSL. A smaller number buy an even less cheap connection, a T1 or DS1. A smaller number still buy a less cheap, crappy connection a shared, oversold OC-48 in Level3's DCs. Fewer still buy a top quality connection from Verizon, a dedicated OC-192.
Netflix complained that when they paid for the shared, oversold OC-48 via Level3, they didn't get the quality of a dedicated OC-192. Your solution is to make us all buy DS1.
I forgot to say this. When I talked about "If you replace all of the gas and diesel vehicles with electric, that triples the amount of electricity you need", and "you actually need solar to be 50 times more efficient" those are extremely rough guestimates based on numbers I looked at a year ago. When I said "triples" it might actually be five times as much electricity needed or twice as much, I don't recall offhand. You get the point though - a very common error made (and sometimes exploited) when talking about solar is to mismatch electricity usage and energy usage. If you're aiming to have mostly electric vehicles, you'll need a heck of a lot more electricity than we have now, so even if solar could meet 4% of our current electricity needs, that's only about 1% of our energy needs, and therefore the amount of electricity that would be needed to support electric vehicles, etc.
Welcome to last month's conversation. Yes, if solar electric could be efficiently stored, it would become much more economical. I've looked into it, and a lot of startups will be glad to sell you stock in their company which is just about to come out with a method of storage which makes sense. If you do the arithmetic on any of these ideas, they just don't come close to working.
One of the MOST reasonable ideas is pumped storage. If you take a look at current hydroelectric dams, how much power they produce, how much head they have and the area they cover, you can do some arithmetic to find out roughly what kind of hydroelectric dams we'd need to store a two days worth of energy, and how big the reservoirs need to be. I've posted the math here on Slashdot before, so I won't repeat it again, but it comes down to a reservoir 56 feet deep that covers the area from the Rockies to the Appalachians. That's one of the more reasonable approaches.
One thing that trips people up is that they want to get off of fossil fuels and replace them with things like electric vehicles, with the electricity provided by solar. They then do some math and figure out that solar only has to 10 ten times more efficient (and have magic storage) in order to provide all of our electricity. What they forget is that they're looking at electricity usage from 2012. If you replace all of the gas and diesel vehicles with electric, that triples the amount of electricity you need. Want to do all your smelting and other industry by electricity? You're going to need a lot more electricity. So you actually need solar to be 50 times more efficient (and have magic storage).
> You could complain, "But I don't need 25mbps. I want a connection with a 200 mbps download rate and a 1mbps upload rate, and I want to spend $2/month on that connection." And that's great, but it's not really Verizon's responsibility to offer that service to you.
What we have right now is that Verizon offers crappy service with up to 100 Mps for $100 / month, which is good for home users, and offers the same amount of bandwidth, guaranteed, with much higher quality for $600 / month. People running business servers want and get the $6/Mbps, home users want and get $1/Mbps service. The customer wants it, the service provider wants to sell it, and you want to make it illegal. You want to say everybody has to have $3/Mbps service, which meets nobody's needs.
It kind of sounds like you're thinking of internet connections as being one-way, as if there's a fundamental difference between oen end and the other, and information only flows one way. They're actually two way, packets travel both directions, and commercial grade connections are almost always synchronous- both directions flow at the same rate. (Except for peering major providers, which are priced based on net upstream).
> Net neutrality doesn't say that you can't make a deal with Verizon for a crappier connection. Verizon can sell you a connection with high-latency and high jitter, at a discounted price, and *that* doesn't violate net neutrality. The violation would come if Verizon provides low-jitter connections only to certain endpoints.
The way it works is that a quality connection to the next building over is pointless. For your SLA to be meaningful, the quality has to be end-to-end, for some defined endpoints. It's not uncommon to say that you should have a ___ connection to any of the upstreams POPs. So if I'm buying a connection from Verizon, I have a guaranteed quality to anywhere on Verizon's network, any of their POPs. That means I can infer a certain quality connection to any of their customers. Right now, I can buy a poor quality connection from Verizon for $50/month, or I can buy a quality connection from Verizon for $1,200, at roughly the same bandwidth. For that extra $1,150, I expect an SLA. The SLA doesn't say the connection between me and the end of the street will be good, it says I'll have a guaranteed quality across Verizon's network. So the idea that it would be legal to buy a quality connection between my DC and Verizon's suite next door, but illegal to have a quality guarantee to Verizon's other users is kind of silly.
What has always been done, what almost everyone did before Netflix and what Netflix used to do, is get a connection with a good SLA from a backbone provider like Level3. Level3 would make a contract with Verizon specifying that Verizon would provide X quality to all of Verizon's POPs, a deal with Comcast for Y quality to Comcast's network, etc. Level3 might have a dozen or so such deals with other major operators. If the traffic flow is about equal in each direction, neither pays each other - they just trade traffic equally. If Netflix is sending a lot more packets to Comcast than Comcast sends to Netflix, Netflix pays for that connection just like you pay for your home internet connection. Level3, specifically, has a bad reputation among network admins because they're cheapskates. They push the limits on those connections, and ask to "trade" traffic for free when the traffic isn't well balanced - they're really asking for a free gigabit internet connection.
Those deals allow Level3 to offer quality Z to Netflix for $xxx,000 / month. Level3 earns that $xxx,000/month by offering strong connections throughout the country, using the deals they made with the major ISPs. That's how it's worked, that's what Level3 offered me and they pitched it by physically pointing to the router connections they had with Comcast, etc. They pointed to the rack I'd be leasing, then walked me across the room and pointed to the Comcast connection, showing me that there's only 30 meters between my servers and Comcast.
Then Level3 made a deal to charge Netflix $xxx,000/month for the access they provided to Comcast etc, while paying Comcast $0 for the connection. Netflix pushes a lot of bandwidth, though, so that made the shared connection with Comcast very busy and extremely unbalanced. Netflix and Comcast weren't trading traffic anymore, Netflix was pushing 90% of the packets TO Comcast. Normally the pusher pays on wholesale bandwidth. Then asked Comcast to put in bigger pipe in order to accommodate Netflix's traffic. Comcast, predictably, said "fuck you, we're not providing you with $xx,000/month worth of extra bandwidth for free". So Level3 had sold more Comcast bandwidth then they had, and Netflix was slow. Netflix figures "Comcast was giving Level3 a s
It seems most likely either:
a) Their contract said that if Apple backed out by date X, GT has to pay back $Y.
b) More likely: GT was going to be a little late on delivering, or would deliver something not quite to spec.
> If I were to pay you $100 to build.. I don't know, a SIX FOOT kitchen table for me, and right as it comes time for you to deliver the table to me, I go "nope, that table is 5.99 feet", do you have to pay me back that $100?
Did that report bug you?
> As for the requirements you describe, that they don't use it often, that you don't care much about jitter or latency, etc. That doesn't sound like a niche set of requirements. That sounds roughly like what most businesses want from a backup connection
Agreed, it's not a niche, many people want low price, and don't care about jitter and latency. They don't want a high quality SLA, and don't want to pay for what they don't need.
> What does that have to do with the topic at hand. We'd all like things to be cheap. I'm not even sure how net neutrality is related.
We don't ALL want cheap things, some of us want a quality connection- ultra-reliable, low latency, low jitter, etc. Netflix wants low jitter. That's not cheap. When network neutrality is defined as "all http packets must be treated the same" that means my jitter, reliability etc has to be exactly the same as what Netflix gets, which has to be exactly the same as what the hospital gets.
Netflix is not allowed to pay more for lower jitter, the hospital is not allowed to pay more for higher reliability. That's network neutrality as originally proposed. If Netflix wants low jitter, we ALL have to pay for low jitter. You can't have Netflix paying more for better service. That's network neutrality as most people define it. Of course proponents say "Netflix can't be charged more" while those advocating freedom say "Netflix can't pay more", but it's exactly the same thing.
Not that I'm against the principle behind network neutrality, btw. I just see that there are complications that make it easy for bureaucrats to screw it up. It should be done very carefully.
> I assume that you think that search and rescue teams conduct their vital, time-sensitive field work over e-mail. ...
> I invite you to examine the possibility that this might not be the case. In fact, emergency communications
> (at least in the areas that the FCC controls) tend to use communications bands specially allocated to them by (tada) the FCC.
> There's no emergency traffic being slowed down by spammers, just entertainment being artificially throttled by competing entertainment companies.
Your first two words are correct, you do assume. I do IT for TEEX. Our departments include Texas Task Force One, one of the nations best search and rescue teams. Our team deployed at the world trade center, hurricane Katrina, hurricane Irene, the Joplin tornado, the Super Bowl ...
Another department here is a founding member of the National Cybersecurity Preparedness Consortium. Since you're into assuming, how do you assume the team at WTC communicated with headquarters here in Texas? Hint - we didn't run a dedicated line from here to NYC. Do you have any assumptions to make about what communications infrastructure was working between Texas in New Orleans during the aftermath of hurricane Katrina? NCPC is responsible for improving the security of the _internet_. Do you have a guess as to what medium the NCPC uses to communicate? Anything else you'd like to tell me about how we operate?
> If the hospital is working off the same kind of bandwidth as the dusty internet cafe from which the Nigerian Prince is running his scam, that's not the common carrier's problem, but it might be a good reason for someone competent to replace the hospital administrator.
Under the rules some propose, they HAVE to use the same kind of bandwidth. It would ILLEGAL for them to buy a more reliable connection with a better SLA. All packets MUST be treated equally, remember? Nobody is allowed to pay for higher quality bandwidth.
> I've got a hypothetical for you, then. Is it okay to deliver the ads of one political party with normal priority while throttling another?
Though that particular phrasing seems distasteful, let us look at how that works in the real world, where better service costs more money.
If one party chooses to send a spam^H^H^H^H message to 10 million people, they'll probably not want to pay more than about one penny per message - it's not worth it to them to pay twice as much in order to increase the delivery rate by 2%. If another party is sending an urgent email to their 600 local campaign leaders, it's important to them that all of those messages to arrive, and arrive quickly. They'll gladly pay 10 cents per message if that's what needed to make sure all messages get through and get through quickly. The senders themselves have assigned a priority to their emails based on how important the message is and what resources should be used to deliver it, based on what resources they're willing to pay to use.
Each government department such as the fire department _might_ be able to be individually regulated, but the the general point remains. I offer I value-oriented service where our customers very much want cheap bandwidth, but they only need to use it for two days every three years. When they do need it, they may need a lot of bandwidth - several hundred megabit. Most of the time, it sits idle waiting until it's needed. We don't care at all about jitter, latency hardly matters, and 99% reliability is good enough. We just need a very low price since we're paying for it when when not even using it. The local for-profit hospital, or any general business, has very different needs. They want much higher quality, at a higher price. A VOIP user or provider cares very much about jitter, anyone not using VOIP doesn't want to pay for low jitter. Why should it be illegal for me to buy what I need?
> If that were really the problem, I'm sure someone could have simply added in something saying that emergency services' traffic can be prioritized.
> Hell, I think it would be fair to say it *must* be prioritized, as long as you can determine which traffic is being used for emergency services.
>
> But part of the problem is, who decides what's spam? I'm sure that Time Warner, Comcast, and Verizon don't think their ads are spam.
There is one effective way to separate high-priority traffic from low-priority traffic. We already do it, on a huge scale, so we know how well it works.
Spammers want to send a lot of email quickly, as cheaply as possible. Netflix wants to send a LOT of video quickly, and as cheaply as possible. High bandwidth is what is important to them. Neither cares whether a few packets are lost along the way - nobody will notice the loss of a a few pixels of video for 1/100th of a second or one spam message. Because they use so much bandwidth, they need to pay pennies per megabit in order to be profitable.
The emergency response people I work with don't need more than a couple of megabit, but they want it to be reliable. For an excellent SLA guaranteeing reliability, they don't mind paying $45, which is $15 per megabit.
In the real world, we can tell that Netflix and the spammer think they're traffic is low priority - it's only worth pennies per megabit to get it delivered, while the EMS traffic is worth dollars per megabit. The companies themselves put a priority or value on their own traffic. That metric actually works pretty well. It also means that if Netflix wanted their traffic to be delivered faster, they'd be the ones buying the new routers to make that happen.
Unfortunately, what you said is also true "They're looking for the right to charge Netflix extra money, to prevent competition with their own video services."
Charging more for a better connection with a better SLA works really well. I offer a value oriented hot spare service where we use the bandwidth we buy once only every few months. In the rare case that a customer needs 300 Mbps, we have it available, but it sits unused 99% of the time. To provide good value to our customers, we don't buy (and charge for) the most expensive premium bandwidth. I don't want to double our prices because we're forced to pay for higher quality bandwidth under a "every packet is treated the same" regime.
Reasonable rules can be figured out, but it's not easy because there is value in being able to choose whether your application needs inexpensive bandwidth or premium quality bandwidth. Which means that ISPs will charge more for better.