Wonko, you raise a lot of good points. I don't think anybody actually bothered to read the one comment you linked to:
What happened here is that they moved traffic from Akamai, which was pulling private lines into and/or buying colo space with ISPs at their own expense (to avoid being charged for transport) and was billing that back to Netflix over to Level 3, which was not doing that. This "saved" Netflix lots of money as LVLT agreed to do the distribution for much less money than Akamai was charging.
Level 3 thought they would just shove the bits down a peering connection and force Comcast to carry it on their long haul and regional network at their expense. In short, Netflix tried to poach on Comcast's buildout and got caught.
So, Akamai delivered content to your home by paying big money to pull a private line into your ISP's local POP. From that point your ISP would transport the traffic on the local last mile to your house. Level 3's solution is to dump all of the traffic onto your ISP at a handful of peering points and ask the ISP to transport the traffic across the country for them at no cost.
I'm surprised that Comcast is the only ISP complaining about this. I'll have to do some traceroutes when I get home and see where my Netflix movies are coming from now. Wonder if Time Warner is running into the same issue now? I've looked at traceroutes for Netflix before and they always originated inside the TW network only 4 or 5 hops away from my me. Presumably this was the colo from Akamai. It'll be interesting to see how this has changed.
Thank you for raising this issue. It's my understanding from my days in the ISP business that settlement-free peering only happens when the traffic to be exchanged is roughly equal. If there is an imbalance in either direction then the carrier pushing the extra traffic is expected to pay for the privilege of having it delivered.
Of course, there is the annoying element of Iraq being an unprovoked war of aggression, and, hence, a war crime
This is absurd. I opposed the Iraq War too but it's not a "war crime". The previous regime was in violation of the ceasefire agreement that ended the Gulf War and numerous UN resolutions passed subsequent to that agreement. The Iraq War was perfectly legal under American and international law. It was a foolhardy adventure that distracted us from more pressing concerns but it was not illegal or a war crime.
The 3/5ths rule was a political compromise between the North and South, nothing more, nothing less. The South wanted full representation for their slaves to increase their representation in the Congress. The North wanted no representation. If the South had got it's way they would have had the votes to protect slavery through the Federal Government and would never have had to secede in the first place.
You may think that rule codified the notion that slaves were a "lesser sort" but the reality is that it helped to eventually free the slaves by watering down the political clout of the slaveholding states.
Frankly I don't know how realistic it is in the modern day world either but one can advocate that we don't need to spend billions of dollars defending countries that can defend themselves without becoming the second incarnation of Charles Lindbergh.
We station tens of thousands of GIs in the EU and South Korea. Both are quite capable of taking care of themselves these days. Hell, the EU has nuclear weapons, they don't need American GIs to deter aggression against themselves.
They should be charged, just not with treason. Treason is very clearly defined and unless Wikileaks is an enemy of the United States it would seem not to apply in this instance.
And they were never prosecuted, you think the wikileaks folks will get so lucky?
Yes, the wikileaks people will be just fine. They aren't breaking an American laws. We have no state secrets act. If you come into possession of classified material you can do whatever the hell you want with it. The crime is committed when the person with a security clearance leaks the documents, not when the person who receives those documents has them published.
The alliance with Stalin allowed an end to the war in three years
This. The US and UK got to fight a comparatively low casualty war (look at the % of pre-war population lost in the other Allied nations and then compare it to the US and UK) by working with the USSR. Yeah, it sucked that they went back on the Yalta agreements but it still worked out the best for us in the end.
Besides, my country (the US) made no promises to Eastern Europe that it couldn't keep. Western betrayal stems from the French and British. The only thing that could have saved Eastern Europe would have been French backbone in 1939. Instead of attacking and honoring her treaty commitments they hid behind their defenses and watched as Poland was crushed. After that the fate of Eastern Europe was sealed.
America sat on the sidelines until Germany declared war on them.
False. The US was waging an undeclared naval war against Germany months before Pearl Harbor and the German declaration of war. Google 'Reuben James' if you care to educate yourself.
Is this the point where I remind you that the US Constitution was completely silent on the issue of slavery (it did not support it nor oppose it) and the 3/5 clause actually made it EASIER to get rid of slavery in the end because it reduced the political power of the slaveholding states?
this idea that the US should stay away from foreign attachments, and just sort of drift along as a nice neutral state, but it's quite frankly impossible
Seems to have worked well enough for the Swiss and Swedes and they managed to do it without a nuclear deterrent.
If you are smart enough to quote Jefferson you should be smart enough to know how the US defines treason and why it wouldn't apply in this particular case....
Law-enforcement officials are also allowed to skip the invasive screening after filling out some paperwork."
Can I skip them on the basis of having a concealed weapons permit? There are statistics that say citizens with CCW's commit less crimes than law enforcement officers. If they are willing to trust LEOs they should be willing to trust me.....
Panama would still be a part of Columbia if it wasn't for "US Imperialism". We gave them their independence in exchange for the right to build a canal. Seems like a fair trade to me.
The war in Afghanistan has nothing to do with oil supplies. It has everything to do with that hole in the financial district of Manhattan. If a similar hole had been made in Beijing you can bet your ass the Chinese would have invaded.
Add to this the fact that they're allowed to lock you into 2-year contracts
If you don't like 2 year contracts why would you sign one? There are alternatives you know. T-Mobile will even give you a break on the monthly service if you bring your own equipment.
No, it's not. There are two parties that happen to be more effective than anybody else at getting votes but there is nothing in the US Constitution or Federal/State laws that define this country as a two-party state.
So, yeah, the ballot had other names, but, really, there were only two options.
False. You could have voted for any one of those "other names". You decided not to. Whose fault is that?
I'll pull this out of my ass but most of us are lucky to get above 3mbit.
You are pulling that out of your ass. Most cable providers would laugh at that speed. Granted, not everyone can get cable, but MOST people can. Around these parts the only people who are limited to DSL are those out in the rural sticks and they are frankly happy to have access to that comparatively slow DSL because it beats dial-up and satellite.
Here in Seattle, I can't get more though DSL.
Switch to cable then. A properly designed DOCSIS network is always going to be able to provide more bandwidth than DSL, unless you are lucky enough to live across the street from the DSLAM.
better VPN into work. It would be quicker to check the source code repository out.
If you need a 150mbit/s VPN then your employer should be paying for your connection.
The rest of your points are actually valid, but still not worth $200/mo, at least IMHO. If you want to blow that much money on an internet connection be my guest but I'm not seeing the value there. To each their own I suppose:)
Yes. Because investing in your nations infrastructure is a form if socialism.
Verizon was investing billions in their infrastructure using private sector money until the FCC started talking about a nationwide fiber rollout. Then Verizon halted new FiOS deployments. Why spend your own money when the Government is thinking about doing it for you with the taxpayers money? I don't blame them a bit, I'd do the exact same thing if I was in their shoes.
As usual, Government involvement in the marketplace distorts said marketplace to the detriment of consumers.
But when we do use it (say to watch an HD Netflix movie) we want it delivered fast.
You don't need a 150mbit/s connection to watch Netflix in HD. I watch it just fine on my 10mbit/s cable connection. The HD streams from Netflix run around 5-6mbit/s in my experience.
I can't think of any reason that someone would need this much bandwidth at home, other than geek bragging rights or a heavy porn/bittorrent fetish. Perhaps one day there will be a killer app that needs this much bandwidth but as it stands right now I'm not sure why anybody would pay for it. Must be nice to have that kind of disposable income lying around.
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For instance, in Hawaii it's just about impossible to own a handgun legally.
Huh? Did you mean to say "carry" instead of "own"?
Hmm..how about some type of official licensing required to sell scrap copper and/or other metals.
It'll probably be at least as effective as gun licensing has been at reducing gun violence.
Wonko, you raise a lot of good points. I don't think anybody actually bothered to read the one comment you linked to:
What happened here is that they moved traffic from Akamai, which was pulling private lines into and/or buying colo space with ISPs at their own expense (to avoid being charged for transport) and was billing that back to Netflix over to Level 3, which was not doing that. This "saved" Netflix lots of money as LVLT agreed to do the distribution for much less money than Akamai was charging.
Level 3 thought they would just shove the bits down a peering connection and force Comcast to carry it on their long haul and regional network at their expense. In short, Netflix tried to poach on Comcast's buildout and got caught.
So, Akamai delivered content to your home by paying big money to pull a private line into your ISP's local POP. From that point your ISP would transport the traffic on the local last mile to your house. Level 3's solution is to dump all of the traffic onto your ISP at a handful of peering points and ask the ISP to transport the traffic across the country for them at no cost.
I'm surprised that Comcast is the only ISP complaining about this. I'll have to do some traceroutes when I get home and see where my Netflix movies are coming from now. Wonder if Time Warner is running into the same issue now? I've looked at traceroutes for Netflix before and they always originated inside the TW network only 4 or 5 hops away from my me. Presumably this was the colo from Akamai. It'll be interesting to see how this has changed.
Why exactly shouldn't level3 pay to comcast ?
Thank you for raising this issue. It's my understanding from my days in the ISP business that settlement-free peering only happens when the traffic to be exchanged is roughly equal. If there is an imbalance in either direction then the carrier pushing the extra traffic is expected to pay for the privilege of having it delivered.
Of course, there is the annoying element of Iraq being an unprovoked war of aggression, and, hence, a war crime
This is absurd. I opposed the Iraq War too but it's not a "war crime". The previous regime was in violation of the ceasefire agreement that ended the Gulf War and numerous UN resolutions passed subsequent to that agreement. The Iraq War was perfectly legal under American and international law. It was a foolhardy adventure that distracted us from more pressing concerns but it was not illegal or a war crime.
The 3/5ths rule was a political compromise between the North and South, nothing more, nothing less. The South wanted full representation for their slaves to increase their representation in the Congress. The North wanted no representation. If the South had got it's way they would have had the votes to protect slavery through the Federal Government and would never have had to secede in the first place.
You may think that rule codified the notion that slaves were a "lesser sort" but the reality is that it helped to eventually free the slaves by watering down the political clout of the slaveholding states.
Frankly I don't know how realistic it is in the modern day world either but one can advocate that we don't need to spend billions of dollars defending countries that can defend themselves without becoming the second incarnation of Charles Lindbergh.
We station tens of thousands of GIs in the EU and South Korea. Both are quite capable of taking care of themselves these days. Hell, the EU has nuclear weapons, they don't need American GIs to deter aggression against themselves.
They should be charged, just not with treason. Treason is very clearly defined and unless Wikileaks is an enemy of the United States it would seem not to apply in this instance.
And they were never prosecuted, you think the wikileaks folks will get so lucky?
Yes, the wikileaks people will be just fine. They aren't breaking an American laws. We have no state secrets act. If you come into possession of classified material you can do whatever the hell you want with it. The crime is committed when the person with a security clearance leaks the documents, not when the person who receives those documents has them published.
The alliance with Stalin allowed an end to the war in three years
This. The US and UK got to fight a comparatively low casualty war (look at the % of pre-war population lost in the other Allied nations and then compare it to the US and UK) by working with the USSR. Yeah, it sucked that they went back on the Yalta agreements but it still worked out the best for us in the end.
Besides, my country (the US) made no promises to Eastern Europe that it couldn't keep. Western betrayal stems from the French and British. The only thing that could have saved Eastern Europe would have been French backbone in 1939. Instead of attacking and honoring her treaty commitments they hid behind their defenses and watched as Poland was crushed. After that the fate of Eastern Europe was sealed.
America sat on the sidelines until Germany declared war on them.
False. The US was waging an undeclared naval war against Germany months before Pearl Harbor and the German declaration of war. Google 'Reuben James' if you care to educate yourself.
By demanding soil for 100 years (lend-lease anyone?)
That was part of destroyers for bases, not lend-lease.
Learn your history bro if you want to discuss WW2 with me
Maybe you should learn your history before you start telling others to do the same?
Is this the point where I remind you that the US Constitution was completely silent on the issue of slavery (it did not support it nor oppose it) and the 3/5 clause actually made it EASIER to get rid of slavery in the end because it reduced the political power of the slaveholding states?
this idea that the US should stay away from foreign attachments, and just sort of drift along as a nice neutral state, but it's quite frankly impossible
Seems to have worked well enough for the Swiss and Swedes and they managed to do it without a nuclear deterrent.
If you are smart enough to quote Jefferson you should be smart enough to know how the US defines treason and why it wouldn't apply in this particular case....
Law-enforcement officials are also allowed to skip the invasive screening after filling out some paperwork."
Can I skip them on the basis of having a concealed weapons permit? There are statistics that say citizens with CCW's commit less crimes than law enforcement officers. If they are willing to trust LEOs they should be willing to trust me.....
Don't expect any sympathy from me when you willingly decide to go with a slower service and then complain about said service.
Panama would still be a part of Columbia if it wasn't for "US Imperialism". We gave them their independence in exchange for the right to build a canal. Seems like a fair trade to me.
The war in Afghanistan has nothing to do with oil supplies. It has everything to do with that hole in the financial district of Manhattan. If a similar hole had been made in Beijing you can bet your ass the Chinese would have invaded.
Add to this the fact that they're allowed to lock you into 2-year contracts
If you don't like 2 year contracts why would you sign one? There are alternatives you know. T-Mobile will even give you a break on the monthly service if you bring your own equipment.
but the US is a two party system
No, it's not. There are two parties that happen to be more effective than anybody else at getting votes but there is nothing in the US Constitution or Federal/State laws that define this country as a two-party state.
So, yeah, the ballot had other names, but, really, there were only two options.
False. You could have voted for any one of those "other names". You decided not to. Whose fault is that?
Armed citizens are a police state? I'm not sure I follow?
Now you are trolling
Disagreeing with you != trolling
I'll pull this out of my ass but most of us are lucky to get above 3mbit.
You are pulling that out of your ass. Most cable providers would laugh at that speed. Granted, not everyone can get cable, but MOST people can. Around these parts the only people who are limited to DSL are those out in the rural sticks and they are frankly happy to have access to that comparatively slow DSL because it beats dial-up and satellite.
Here in Seattle, I can't get more though DSL.
Switch to cable then. A properly designed DOCSIS network is always going to be able to provide more bandwidth than DSL, unless you are lucky enough to live across the street from the DSLAM.
better VPN into work. It would be quicker to check the source code repository out.
If you need a 150mbit/s VPN then your employer should be paying for your connection.
The rest of your points are actually valid, but still not worth $200/mo, at least IMHO. If you want to blow that much money on an internet connection be my guest but I'm not seeing the value there. To each their own I suppose :)
Yes. Because investing in your nations infrastructure is a form if socialism.
Verizon was investing billions in their infrastructure using private sector money until the FCC started talking about a nationwide fiber rollout. Then Verizon halted new FiOS deployments. Why spend your own money when the Government is thinking about doing it for you with the taxpayers money? I don't blame them a bit, I'd do the exact same thing if I was in their shoes.
As usual, Government involvement in the marketplace distorts said marketplace to the detriment of consumers.
But when we do use it (say to watch an HD Netflix movie) we want it delivered fast.
You don't need a 150mbit/s connection to watch Netflix in HD. I watch it just fine on my 10mbit/s cable connection. The HD streams from Netflix run around 5-6mbit/s in my experience.
I can't think of any reason that someone would need this much bandwidth at home, other than geek bragging rights or a heavy porn/bittorrent fetish. Perhaps one day there will be a killer app that needs this much bandwidth but as it stands right now I'm not sure why anybody would pay for it. Must be nice to have that kind of disposable income lying around.