The thing that gets me most is.
Don't these students have any idea how diff works??
No. That kind of stuff isn't part of the coursework anymore. Not even for the graduate level.
We had a CS grad student working in our lab for a while. He would bring in the qualifying exams and we'd have good discussions about the solutions to the problems they proposed.
Yes, personal tax rates would lower as tax corporations are meant to pay replaces that revenue.
If they were meant to pay it, the law would require it. If the law doesn't require it, then it is what you think they should pay, not what they are meant to pay.
And using the IRS to get companies to pay what you think they should pay is a bad precedent and bad law. It won't reduce personal income taxes because taxation is not and will never be a zero sum game. There are too many examples of this to believe that you've never seen it yourself, but here's two just from the city level here: we're still paying a "transportation maintenance fee" on our water bills to fix a stretch of road that the contractor screwed up, long after that stretch of road has been fixed. We're also paying a fee (in name only, really a tax) to fund the bus system, and our other taxes did not go down when this cost was moved from the general fund, they simply found other things to spend the money on.
Sorry if this doesn't fit in with your nebulous threat.
Yes, the fiction you propose doesn't fit with my "nebulous" threat. Have you not seen the use of the IRS as a political tool already? Why do you imagine a task force with the intent of getting companies to pay what they "should", instead of what they are legally obligated to, pay would do to the private sector? You think it would be good for them because of trickle down. Or trickle around, so to speak.
Like all new ideas, it will be a huge shock when implemented, then settle down to lower levels as the new status quo.
Yes, and like all bad ideas, the new status quo would be much worse than the existing status quo. You think companies have incentive now to move foreign operations out to foreign countries? Wait until you sic the IRS on them because you don't they are paying what they should, even if what they are paying is the legally required amount.
If you want to stomp out cheaters, come up with problem domains with very unique and strange processes that wouldn't be found in the wild.
And then everyone complains that they're being taught stuff that they'll never see in real life. The classwork isn't "relevant".
Why should anyone have to leap through hoops to "stamp out cheaters"? Why shouldn't simply expelling cheaters be good enough?
If you want to bust someone for leveraging a well known, legally OK use of a tool,
Except 1) they're not there to demonstrate that they can "leverage" the tool "google", they're there to learn algorithms and how to code in a certain programming language, and 2) it isn't legally ok in the context of doing classwork. "I want to see you select the right algorithm and then produce a working piece of code that implements it" isn't "find something someone else has done on the net and turn it in." Yes, sometimes there are more rules involved in life than just those found in the code of federal regulations or state ordinances or municipal code.
3) a corporation is a legal person, with all of the rights but none of the moral compunctions
Hyperbole much? No, not even hyperbole. There is a huge body of corporate law. Worrying that the people in a corporation have the same rights they have without one, and then claiming that they have none of the "moral compunctions" (I assume you mean "legal responsibility", since "moral compunction" isn't a mandate for anyone) is just silly.
They will act as unlawfully as they are permitted to.
Just as you will find people who do the same thing. It is not a requirement for either.
Let me tell you about the last interview I had for a chemist opening. I went to the main conference in the world for these kinds of chemists (Pittsburgh Conf., analytical). Met with an interviewer, they liked me, wanted me to fly out for an interview.
Seven AM I get to the airport, the ticket has been cancelled. They had cancelled the interview without even bothering to tell me.
It must have been racism. That's the only reason I can imagine they wouldn't want to hire me.
The problem is in the tax laws have more loopholes than shotgunned swiss cheese. That is the fault of Congress and no one else.
That's the fault of congress and the people who elected them. If you want to talk about eliminating all the "loopholes" that the current income tax laws have built in, you'll need to survive the onslaught from just about every person in the US, from those who are taking the mortgage exemption, all the way down to those who get earned income credit.
Those "loopholes" exist because the government thought it should use taxes as a way of social engineering. That means if someone thinks that solar energy needs a helping hand in the market but doesn't want to hand over a few billion to a company that will go bankrupt in a year, they enact a tax credit for people who buy solar stuff. Or trade in a "clunker". Or do any of a number of things they wouldn't otherwise do. And yes, sometime in the distant past, someone in congress decided it was good to help people who otherwise couldn't afford it to buy a house, so they added mortgage payments to the list of deductions.
... but I'm pretty sure the IRS doesn't have the authority to do what you propose either.
They don't, and I don't want them to have it. Can you imagine the "social engineering" if the IRS had the authority to determine what someone "should" be paying in taxes and could go after them for that amount? Can you imagine the effect on business if they had the authority, on a whim, to go through every account in a company to decide what the company "should" be paying? It would certainly take more than a "someone", it would take an army of them.
Further, NPR former President Kevin Klose $1.2 million, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting CEO Patricia de Stacy Harrison earned $298,884, plus $70,630 in additional compensation.
Now, the link downplays those numbers because other CEOs are paid a lot more, but we're still talking about three non-profit organizations.
What we have now is an unscrupulous diner's dilemma situation where people who maximize their street frontage in order to give themselves more places to park
It doesn't matter how much frontage you have, the street is still the same length and there are still the same number of parking spaces. In fact, the fewer the driveways, the MORE spaces to park there are. How much space you have to park depends on the area of your property, not the frontage. A dual driveway and a two car garage gives four spaces no matter how much frontage that property has.
You're confusing "public on-street parking" with "private parking". Those spaces on the street are intended for transients, not residential parking. That's why it is called "public on-street parking."
"financially worthless subjects" . . . because I sure think that the MBA's and spreadsheet jockeys of the world are best qualified to determine what is and is not good for all of human civilization.
"Financially" is a modifier to "worthless", which makes specific the reason why it is a "worthless subject". Not because the subject isn't "good for all of human kind", but because you won't make a living at it. It won't pay. Financially, it is a loser.
...but refuse to divulge the knowledge of whose fingerprint!
well, you're kinda going to give it away when they say you can make your one phone call and you say "bring me George Frinkle".
Now, what you should do is make it your lawyer's finger so it won't be so obvious when you say "I need to talk to my lawyer". Why do you need to talk to your lawyer? You don't have to tell them that. And your lawyer's finger may be covered under attorney-client privilege!
I agree that it would be a problem, but so would taking out a large loan to get a philosophy degree.
The problem with closing the department is that nobody gets the choice to get a degree from that school in that topic anymore. Maybe another university will still have a philosophy dept, but if they're facing the same budget cuts because their graduates in that program don't get good jobs, how long will that last? Unfortunately, the electives that the department offers will go away with the people who teach there, so even non-philosophy majors will lose out.
The problem with a large loan is... well, that's a choice the student gets to make. Nobody holds a gun to their heads to take out a loan. As you point out, nobody is holding a gun to anyone's head to get a philosophy degree, either. If you like that topic, you should have the choice.
So, removing choices in fields of study and removing choices in getting money for college, both are bad. But both are a result of "protecting" the students from their own choices.
If they are going to apply it private colleges they should also apply to state colleges as well.
That puts state schools in a bit of a bind, because many of them are required by their states to accept in-state applicants with low qualifications as part of their existing state funding. Now you want those same schools to lose funding if the unqualified applicant you forced them to accept doesn't work out well in the labor force after graduating (or dropping out.) Lose-lose for the state schools.
It doesn't make sense to give $120K in loans to someone taking Medieval Lesbian Literature studies as a major, does it?
It makes even less sense to take out $120k in loans to study Medieval Lesbian Literature. Let's put some of the blame where it belongs -- on the students who take out ridiculous loans to study financially worthless subjects.
If you tie government funding of colleges to the salaries of the graduates, you pretty much eliminate the option for someone to take Medieval yada yada because the college won't be able to afford to offer it. This will be just one more step into turning colleges and Universities into trade schools.
How the hell will they ever pay that back with their glorious career as a burger flipper at McD's?
By arbitrarily raising the minimum wage, of course.
It makes sense to loan out in amounts equitable to what they likely will make at the end of their degree run.
It makes more sense to take out loans only "equitable" to what you expect to make in income.
Well, if someone comes from a wealthy family and can afford it, sure they can take nothing but philosophy and underwater basket weaving all they want.
"I'm sorry, but the philosophy and basket weaving departments are being eliminated because there is insufficient funding to hire the professors that teach those topics."
To be clear, Cogent is not offering to enter into paid peering arrangements with these or any other networks. Rather, Cogent is simply willing, at this time, to incur the capital costs associated with augmenting its interconnections with these networks to address the current level of traffic congestion.
So Cogent isn't offering peering to anyone that doesn't have it, and is paying only the capital costs, not the ongoing fees. It's also only covering the "current level" of congestion.
To use an amazingly appropriate analogy, that would be like Comcast offering to provide you free installation and a free digital decoder so it could charge you another $40/month for enhanced television service. Sounds like a great deal, Comcast paying the capital costs of your upgrade, huh?
What you say is nice and logical, as long as you leave out the part where Netflix's alternatives (such as dropping a content box inside Comcast's network to solve the problem) were ignored by Comcast.
Well, I see this claim here a lot, but I also see things from other people that say that Comcast didn't ignore the offer, it was that Netflix wanted hosting without paying for it like the other CDNs do. And I'm not sure why Netflix should get hosted on Comcast's network without paying for it... after all, Netflix is making a profit selling the data and they'd have to pay any other network provider for the connection.
Because when peering agreements were created, the assumption was that trying to keep track of how much data you wanted us to carry and you keeping track of how much we gave you to carry was not necessary because we'd be charging each other the same amount if we did keep track.
Large amounts of data going one way breaks that basic tenet of peering. Now it makes sense to charge the other guy for data they want you to handle.
But this view ignores the most important point, that Comcast has explicitly promised its customers "internet access" at an advertised speed.
Performance Starter: Offer ends 01/04/15. Restrictions apply. Not available in all areas. Limited to new residential customers. Requires subscription to Performance Starter Internet service. Equipment, installation, taxes and fees, including regulatory recovery fees, Broadcast TV Fee (up to $3.50/mo.), Regional Sports Fee (up to $1/mo.) and other applicable charges extra, and subject to change during and after the promotion. After applicable promotional period, regular rates apply. Comcastâ(TM)s current monthly service charge for Performance Starter Internet is $49.95 (pricing subject to change). Service limited to a single outlet. May not be combined with other offers. Actual speeds vary and are not guaranteed.
Emphasis mine. The same emphasized text appears in the details for all three residential service levels. My statement stands: they did not promise you 24/7 full-rate access to anyplace off their net.
There are no pharmaceutical-like disclaimers during those commercials
There are when you actually go to sign up. And common sense tells you that they cannot guarantee those speeds to every site on the planet. They can't even guarantee those speeds to every site on the Comcast network. That's why they don't.
If Comcast says you're paying for "10Mbps internet", the assumption is that you get the advertised speed to the entire internet, provided there are no technical limitations outside of Comcast's control.
That's what some people assume, but that's not backed up by the service agreement.
It's not even backed up by common sense. Suppose you buy the Blast service and get 105Mbps download. You want to connect to my system and I've got Performance Starter (6 Mbps down, God knows what it is up). You ain't getting anywhere near 105Mbps from my stream. Even trying to connect to your next door neighbor who has the same service, you ain't getting faster than his upload allows. If you think Comcast could promise anything faster, then you must think they'll upgrade MY service to Blast for free because they promised YOU that you'd get data from me that fast, and you're paying them for my data at that speed.
Oh wait, every one of those streams were requested from users of Comcast's network who thought that those awesome 150mbit internet speeds comcast advertised were real.
150mbps isn't very fast. Did you mean 150Mbps?
The issue is that people think the 150Mbps "last mile" speed was some kind of promise of speed to every other site on the planet. I can request a data stream from a service that needs 100Mbps to function reliably, but that doesn't mean I'm guaranteed 100Mbps from end to end. If an ISP promises you that, you know they're lying. If you assume the last mile speed applies to every connection you make anywhere, then you're the one who's being foolish, not the ISP being dishonest.
So you're saying if Netflix downloaded more data from Comcast than they sent, that Comcast should pay them?
If Comcast was the source of the data that was creating congestion on a Netflix-to-peer link, I'd say yes, I think Comcast should have a part in paying for the increased bandwidth required to carry their data.
I have no problem uploading an amount equal to what I download from Netflix, or even more, if you really think that will solve the problem.
Who said that would solve the problem? All it would do is make Netflix less responsible for paying for the upgrade, not that the upgrade would happen.
There are two problems here. The first is a limited bandwidth connection is being congested (and all connections are limited in some way.) The second problem is figuring out who should pay for the upgrade -- the company who is profiting from sending the data, or the company whose customers are assuming that a maximum data rate through their "last mile" means they should get the same rate to any site anywhere on the planet?
Regardless of the mechanism for throttling traffic, Comcast's customers are being disallowed access to a certain network because Comcast allows congestion only for traffic to those sites.
You didn't even read the summary, did you?
And the effects victimize not only companies targeted but ALL incoming traffic from the affected transit network.
It isn't congestion only to Netflix sites, it's every site that routes through the congested peer connection. And it isn't "disallowed", it's only slowed down.
and a total spoon-fed excuse to rob paying customers of the service they deserve.
"Deserve" is a very subjective term. What did they pay for? And if you say "100MBps (or any specific number) from every service anywhere in the world to their client", you're wrong.
The fact that the issue is congestion at a peering point means it is a technical problem. Who pays to upgrade that connection is a business decision, and there is more than one party involved in that game. Should the service that is being paid for the content and sending large amounts of data pay, or should the company that hasn't promised full-time full-rate data anywhere off-net have to pay when their customers demand full-time full-rate data streams from off-net? Is that fair to the customers who haven't asked for that level of service?
Netflix does not "push data" to Comcast. Comcast customers "pull data from Netflix".
It doesn't matter. There is an imbalance of the data flow through the peering connection.
Comcast doesn't guarantee data rates to off-network content providers. It can't, or you'd be paying even more outrageous rates for service from them.
Here's why. Imagine Comcast has 2 million subs. I don't know the numbers, but let's use that for argument. They each have 50Mbps service. That means that EVERY PEER CONNECTION that Comcast has would have to be at least 100,000,000 Mbps to guarantee full rate to every sub. That's 100 TERAbps. Why? Because all 2 million might want to connect to the same data provider at the same time. Very slim chance, but a guarantee is a guarantee, and we see how loudly people complain when implied promises aren't kept.
Service providers have ALWAYS used statistical methods to determine the most cost effective amount of hardware to meet the anticipated demand for service. You don't think a phone company with 100 users had 100 long distance trunks running from the central office to the nearest long distance center, do you? (Mandatory auto analogy: a city with 1000 residents with one car each doesn't have 1000-lane roads everywhere, does it? And a restaurant with 100 seats doesn't have 100 valets parking cars, does it?)
So now ISPs are doing the same thing. And every one of them does it. Where I work, I have gigabit to the desktop. There's about 400 of us in this college alone. Do you think we have a 400Gb line to the Uni? And does the Uni multiply 1 gigabit times the number of employees/students to figure out how much bandwidth they have to buy from their provider? Of course not. We have a/16 address block, so ignoring the large number of unroutable addresses we already use, that's 64,000Gbps, if the Uni provided a full-time full-rate connection at 1Gbps to every address.
This article is FUD and nonsense. Comcast isn't jamming Netflix. In fact, this article pretty much proves that Comcast is doing nothing special to Netflix, they're just not upgrading their peer connection as fasts as people want them to. Why? Because it costs money to do that.
Should they upgrade? They can't make everyone happy. They didn't promise you 24/7 full-rate access to anyplace off their net, and I don't think they did that even ON their net. It's not illegal not to upgrade. It's not even a net neutrality issue, because, as this article proved, the congestion impacts EVERY service the same.
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The thing that gets me most is. Don't these students have any idea how diff works??
No. That kind of stuff isn't part of the coursework anymore. Not even for the graduate level.
We had a CS grad student working in our lab for a while. He would bring in the qualifying exams and we'd have good discussions about the solutions to the problems they proposed.
And then he'd ask me "how do I rename a file?"
Yes, personal tax rates would lower as tax corporations are meant to pay replaces that revenue.
If they were meant to pay it, the law would require it. If the law doesn't require it, then it is what you think they should pay, not what they are meant to pay.
And using the IRS to get companies to pay what you think they should pay is a bad precedent and bad law. It won't reduce personal income taxes because taxation is not and will never be a zero sum game. There are too many examples of this to believe that you've never seen it yourself, but here's two just from the city level here: we're still paying a "transportation maintenance fee" on our water bills to fix a stretch of road that the contractor screwed up, long after that stretch of road has been fixed. We're also paying a fee (in name only, really a tax) to fund the bus system, and our other taxes did not go down when this cost was moved from the general fund, they simply found other things to spend the money on.
Sorry if this doesn't fit in with your nebulous threat.
Yes, the fiction you propose doesn't fit with my "nebulous" threat. Have you not seen the use of the IRS as a political tool already? Why do you imagine a task force with the intent of getting companies to pay what they "should", instead of what they are legally obligated to, pay would do to the private sector? You think it would be good for them because of trickle down. Or trickle around, so to speak.
Like all new ideas, it will be a huge shock when implemented, then settle down to lower levels as the new status quo.
Yes, and like all bad ideas, the new status quo would be much worse than the existing status quo. You think companies have incentive now to move foreign operations out to foreign countries? Wait until you sic the IRS on them because you don't they are paying what they should, even if what they are paying is the legally required amount.
If you want to stomp out cheaters, come up with problem domains with very unique and strange processes that wouldn't be found in the wild.
And then everyone complains that they're being taught stuff that they'll never see in real life. The classwork isn't "relevant".
Why should anyone have to leap through hoops to "stamp out cheaters"? Why shouldn't simply expelling cheaters be good enough?
If you want to bust someone for leveraging a well known, legally OK use of a tool,
Except 1) they're not there to demonstrate that they can "leverage" the tool "google", they're there to learn algorithms and how to code in a certain programming language, and 2) it isn't legally ok in the context of doing classwork. "I want to see you select the right algorithm and then produce a working piece of code that implements it" isn't "find something someone else has done on the net and turn it in." Yes, sometimes there are more rules involved in life than just those found in the code of federal regulations or state ordinances or municipal code.
3) a corporation is a legal person, with all of the rights but none of the moral compunctions
Hyperbole much? No, not even hyperbole. There is a huge body of corporate law. Worrying that the people in a corporation have the same rights they have without one, and then claiming that they have none of the "moral compunctions" (I assume you mean "legal responsibility", since "moral compunction" isn't a mandate for anyone) is just silly.
They will act as unlawfully as they are permitted to.
Just as you will find people who do the same thing. It is not a requirement for either.
Trust me, I had done plenty of interviews.
Let me tell you about the last interview I had for a chemist opening. I went to the main conference in the world for these kinds of chemists (Pittsburgh Conf., analytical). Met with an interviewer, they liked me, wanted me to fly out for an interview.
Seven AM I get to the airport, the ticket has been cancelled. They had cancelled the interview without even bothering to tell me.
It must have been racism. That's the only reason I can imagine they wouldn't want to hire me.
The problem is in the tax laws have more loopholes than shotgunned swiss cheese. That is the fault of Congress and no one else.
That's the fault of congress and the people who elected them. If you want to talk about eliminating all the "loopholes" that the current income tax laws have built in, you'll need to survive the onslaught from just about every person in the US, from those who are taking the mortgage exemption, all the way down to those who get earned income credit.
Those "loopholes" exist because the government thought it should use taxes as a way of social engineering. That means if someone thinks that solar energy needs a helping hand in the market but doesn't want to hand over a few billion to a company that will go bankrupt in a year, they enact a tax credit for people who buy solar stuff. Or trade in a "clunker". Or do any of a number of things they wouldn't otherwise do. And yes, sometime in the distant past, someone in congress decided it was good to help people who otherwise couldn't afford it to buy a house, so they added mortgage payments to the list of deductions.
... but I'm pretty sure the IRS doesn't have the authority to do what you propose either.
They don't, and I don't want them to have it. Can you imagine the "social engineering" if the IRS had the authority to determine what someone "should" be paying in taxes and could go after them for that amount? Can you imagine the effect on business if they had the authority, on a whim, to go through every account in a company to decide what the company "should" be paying? It would certainly take more than a "someone", it would take an army of them.
While there is no cat license, there is freedom-oppressing limitation of only 7 adult cats per household!
Yes, there is a cat license. I got one for my pet cat Eric from the man in the cat detector van from the Ministry of Housinge.
4) A Cat license.
5) A license for my pet fish, Eric.
In fact, the higher the pay the CEO receives, the worse [pbs.org] the company performs.
In 2010, PBS President Paula Kerger earned $632,233. I doubt that has decreased in the last four years. I'd call that rich.
Further, NPR former President Kevin Klose $1.2 million, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting CEO Patricia de Stacy Harrison earned $298,884, plus $70,630 in additional compensation.
Now, the link downplays those numbers because other CEOs are paid a lot more, but we're still talking about three non-profit organizations.
What we have now is an unscrupulous diner's dilemma situation where people who maximize their street frontage in order to give themselves more places to park
It doesn't matter how much frontage you have, the street is still the same length and there are still the same number of parking spaces. In fact, the fewer the driveways, the MORE spaces to park there are. How much space you have to park depends on the area of your property, not the frontage. A dual driveway and a two car garage gives four spaces no matter how much frontage that property has.
You're confusing "public on-street parking" with "private parking". Those spaces on the street are intended for transients, not residential parking. That's why it is called "public on-street parking."
"financially worthless subjects" . . . because I sure think that the MBA's and spreadsheet jockeys of the world are best qualified to determine what is and is not good for all of human civilization.
"Financially" is a modifier to "worthless", which makes specific the reason why it is a "worthless subject". Not because the subject isn't "good for all of human kind", but because you won't make a living at it. It won't pay. Financially, it is a loser.
There, did that clear things up for you?
You're either a troll, kidding, or just don't know what "operating expenses" are.
...but refuse to divulge the knowledge of whose fingerprint!
well, you're kinda going to give it away when they say you can make your one phone call and you say "bring me George Frinkle".
Now, what you should do is make it your lawyer's finger so it won't be so obvious when you say "I need to talk to my lawyer". Why do you need to talk to your lawyer? You don't have to tell them that. And your lawyer's finger may be covered under attorney-client privilege!
I agree that it would be a problem, but so would taking out a large loan to get a philosophy degree.
The problem with closing the department is that nobody gets the choice to get a degree from that school in that topic anymore. Maybe another university will still have a philosophy dept, but if they're facing the same budget cuts because their graduates in that program don't get good jobs, how long will that last? Unfortunately, the electives that the department offers will go away with the people who teach there, so even non-philosophy majors will lose out.
The problem with a large loan is ... well, that's a choice the student gets to make. Nobody holds a gun to their heads to take out a loan. As you point out, nobody is holding a gun to anyone's head to get a philosophy degree, either. If you like that topic, you should have the choice.
So, removing choices in fields of study and removing choices in getting money for college, both are bad. But both are a result of "protecting" the students from their own choices.
You say that like that's a problem?
Yes, when a University closes a philosophy department, it is a problem. You say that like you don't think it is.
If they are going to apply it private colleges they should also apply to state colleges as well.
That puts state schools in a bit of a bind, because many of them are required by their states to accept in-state applicants with low qualifications as part of their existing state funding. Now you want those same schools to lose funding if the unqualified applicant you forced them to accept doesn't work out well in the labor force after graduating (or dropping out.) Lose-lose for the state schools.
It doesn't make sense to give $120K in loans to someone taking Medieval Lesbian Literature studies as a major, does it?
It makes even less sense to take out $120k in loans to study Medieval Lesbian Literature. Let's put some of the blame where it belongs -- on the students who take out ridiculous loans to study financially worthless subjects.
If you tie government funding of colleges to the salaries of the graduates, you pretty much eliminate the option for someone to take Medieval yada yada because the college won't be able to afford to offer it. This will be just one more step into turning colleges and Universities into trade schools.
How the hell will they ever pay that back with their glorious career as a burger flipper at McD's?
By arbitrarily raising the minimum wage, of course.
It makes sense to loan out in amounts equitable to what they likely will make at the end of their degree run.
It makes more sense to take out loans only "equitable" to what you expect to make in income.
Well, if someone comes from a wealthy family and can afford it, sure they can take nothing but philosophy and underwater basket weaving all they want.
"I'm sorry, but the philosophy and basket weaving departments are being eliminated because there is insufficient funding to hire the professors that teach those topics."
So Cogent isn't offering peering to anyone that doesn't have it, and is paying only the capital costs, not the ongoing fees. It's also only covering the "current level" of congestion.
To use an amazingly appropriate analogy, that would be like Comcast offering to provide you free installation and a free digital decoder so it could charge you another $40/month for enhanced television service. Sounds like a great deal, Comcast paying the capital costs of your upgrade, huh?
In communist Russia, television watches YOU.
What you say is nice and logical, as long as you leave out the part where Netflix's alternatives (such as dropping a content box inside Comcast's network to solve the problem) were ignored by Comcast.
Well, I see this claim here a lot, but I also see things from other people that say that Comcast didn't ignore the offer, it was that Netflix wanted hosting without paying for it like the other CDNs do. And I'm not sure why Netflix should get hosted on Comcast's network without paying for it... after all, Netflix is making a profit selling the data and they'd have to pay any other network provider for the connection.
Why does imbalance matter?
Because when peering agreements were created, the assumption was that trying to keep track of how much data you wanted us to carry and you keeping track of how much we gave you to carry was not necessary because we'd be charging each other the same amount if we did keep track.
Large amounts of data going one way breaks that basic tenet of peering. Now it makes sense to charge the other guy for data they want you to handle.
But this view ignores the most important point, that Comcast has explicitly promised its customers "internet access" at an advertised speed.
No. From here:
Emphasis mine. The same emphasized text appears in the details for all three residential service levels. My statement stands: they did not promise you 24/7 full-rate access to anyplace off their net.
There are no pharmaceutical-like disclaimers during those commercials
There are when you actually go to sign up. And common sense tells you that they cannot guarantee those speeds to every site on the planet. They can't even guarantee those speeds to every site on the Comcast network. That's why they don't.
If Comcast says you're paying for "10Mbps internet", the assumption is that you get the advertised speed to the entire internet, provided there are no technical limitations outside of Comcast's control.
That's what some people assume, but that's not backed up by the service agreement.
It's not even backed up by common sense. Suppose you buy the Blast service and get 105Mbps download. You want to connect to my system and I've got Performance Starter (6 Mbps down, God knows what it is up). You ain't getting anywhere near 105Mbps from my stream. Even trying to connect to your next door neighbor who has the same service, you ain't getting faster than his upload allows. If you think Comcast could promise anything faster, then you must think they'll upgrade MY service to Blast for free because they promised YOU that you'd get data from me that fast, and you're paying them for my data at that speed.
Oh wait, every one of those streams were requested from users of Comcast's network who thought that those awesome 150mbit internet speeds comcast advertised were real.
150mbps isn't very fast. Did you mean 150Mbps?
The issue is that people think the 150Mbps "last mile" speed was some kind of promise of speed to every other site on the planet. I can request a data stream from a service that needs 100Mbps to function reliably, but that doesn't mean I'm guaranteed 100Mbps from end to end. If an ISP promises you that, you know they're lying. If you assume the last mile speed applies to every connection you make anywhere, then you're the one who's being foolish, not the ISP being dishonest.
So you're saying if Netflix downloaded more data from Comcast than they sent, that Comcast should pay them?
If Comcast was the source of the data that was creating congestion on a Netflix-to-peer link, I'd say yes, I think Comcast should have a part in paying for the increased bandwidth required to carry their data.
I have no problem uploading an amount equal to what I download from Netflix, or even more, if you really think that will solve the problem.
Who said that would solve the problem? All it would do is make Netflix less responsible for paying for the upgrade, not that the upgrade would happen.
There are two problems here. The first is a limited bandwidth connection is being congested (and all connections are limited in some way.) The second problem is figuring out who should pay for the upgrade -- the company who is profiting from sending the data, or the company whose customers are assuming that a maximum data rate through their "last mile" means they should get the same rate to any site anywhere on the planet?
Regardless of the mechanism for throttling traffic, Comcast's customers are being disallowed access to a certain network because Comcast allows congestion only for traffic to those sites.
You didn't even read the summary, did you?
It isn't congestion only to Netflix sites, it's every site that routes through the congested peer connection. And it isn't "disallowed", it's only slowed down.
and a total spoon-fed excuse to rob paying customers of the service they deserve.
"Deserve" is a very subjective term. What did they pay for? And if you say "100MBps (or any specific number) from every service anywhere in the world to their client", you're wrong.
The fact that the issue is congestion at a peering point means it is a technical problem. Who pays to upgrade that connection is a business decision, and there is more than one party involved in that game. Should the service that is being paid for the content and sending large amounts of data pay, or should the company that hasn't promised full-time full-rate data anywhere off-net have to pay when their customers demand full-time full-rate data streams from off-net? Is that fair to the customers who haven't asked for that level of service?
Netflix does not "push data" to Comcast. Comcast customers "pull data from Netflix".
It doesn't matter. There is an imbalance of the data flow through the peering connection.
Comcast doesn't guarantee data rates to off-network content providers. It can't, or you'd be paying even more outrageous rates for service from them.
Here's why. Imagine Comcast has 2 million subs. I don't know the numbers, but let's use that for argument. They each have 50Mbps service. That means that EVERY PEER CONNECTION that Comcast has would have to be at least 100,000,000 Mbps to guarantee full rate to every sub. That's 100 TERAbps. Why? Because all 2 million might want to connect to the same data provider at the same time. Very slim chance, but a guarantee is a guarantee, and we see how loudly people complain when implied promises aren't kept.
Service providers have ALWAYS used statistical methods to determine the most cost effective amount of hardware to meet the anticipated demand for service. You don't think a phone company with 100 users had 100 long distance trunks running from the central office to the nearest long distance center, do you? (Mandatory auto analogy: a city with 1000 residents with one car each doesn't have 1000-lane roads everywhere, does it? And a restaurant with 100 seats doesn't have 100 valets parking cars, does it?)
So now ISPs are doing the same thing. And every one of them does it. Where I work, I have gigabit to the desktop. There's about 400 of us in this college alone. Do you think we have a 400Gb line to the Uni? And does the Uni multiply 1 gigabit times the number of employees/students to figure out how much bandwidth they have to buy from their provider? Of course not. We have a /16 address block, so ignoring the large number of unroutable addresses we already use, that's 64,000Gbps, if the Uni provided a full-time full-rate connection at 1Gbps to every address.
This article is FUD and nonsense. Comcast isn't jamming Netflix. In fact, this article pretty much proves that Comcast is doing nothing special to Netflix, they're just not upgrading their peer connection as fasts as people want them to. Why? Because it costs money to do that.
Should they upgrade? They can't make everyone happy. They didn't promise you 24/7 full-rate access to anyplace off their net, and I don't think they did that even ON their net. It's not illegal not to upgrade. It's not even a net neutrality issue, because, as this article proved, the congestion impacts EVERY service the same.