4 ms·

I think your explanation does miss some additional nuance though. > The problem is that this arrangement would have businesses paying money to ISPs that they d

I think your explanation does miss some additional nuance though. > The problem is that this arrangement would have businesses paying money to ISPs that they didn't choose, and can't walk away from. From a consumer's perspective, if a web site is slow, it looks like the website's fault rather than their ISP's fault, which distorts the incentives. If a website is using significant resources, it shouldn't be on the ISP to subsidize their engineering. There have been plenty of websites throughout history that took up significant amounts of traffic relative to the total traffic. They always paid for leased lines (your third diagram) -- it's only recently that one very well liked company running almost entirely off Amazon decided that leased lines were extortion. If you compare the physical infrastructure of Google's YouTube or MLB.tv to Netflix, the difference is huge. Also, money doesn't always flow like that. If data is flowing equally (in bit-miles), there is generally no exchange of money. If it's not, money should flow the other way. Many of those backbone providers also were in the business-ISP market, and were leveraging their settlement free peering for more competitive pricing. When video streaming caused them to be pushing more data onto the networks than they were taking - the consumer ISPs wanted to be paid since it was no longer qualifying for settlement free.

pyvpx 10y ago
>If a website is using significant resources, it shouldn't be on the ISP to subsidize their engineering. There have been plenty of websites throughout history that took up significant amounts of traffic relative to the total traffic. They always paid for leased lines (your third diagram) -- it's only recently that one very well liked company running almost entirely off Amazon decided that leased lines were extortion. If you compare the physical infrastructure of Google's YouTube or MLB.tv to Netflix, the difference is huge. I don't follow. I am a consumer who has purchased an internet service package that advertises 100Mbps down, 10Mbps up, and 100GB of transfer every billable month. If I, the ISP, have 1000 customers fully utilizing that 100Mbps down between 6-11pm _it is my engineering problem_ Whether it is netflix, google, mlb, or literally anything else. _it is my engineering problem_ to provide the service I am charging for.
- thomaskcr 10y ago
  > I am a consumer who has purchased an internet service package that advertises 100Mbps down, 10Mbps up, You purchased a package that gives you access to your ISPs network at that rate. Not even the highest business packages will provide an end to end SLA unless you're paying for a leased line from your location to the location you want the SLA for. Once your packets leave their network they have no control. You're only purchasing access to their network, and their network happens to be attached to other ones. If they weren't connected to a network with Netflix, you wouldn't have any recourse because you're not buying a connection to every computer on the network. Of course, practically they provide access to every site. But that's not what you're actually paying for if you check your contract.
  - pyvpx 10y ago
    yes, I am purchasing a connection to every computer on the network. that is the internet. an _internet service provider_ is providing me a service that allows me to connect to the internet. and the internet is all the networks. they may not give me an SLA to each destination, but I am most certainly purchasing access to all the networks -- not just their own. no one is purchasing comcast service just to connect to other comcast customers.

pyvpx 10y ago

>If a website is using significant resources, it shouldn't be on the ISP to subsidize their engineering. There have been plenty of websites throughout history that took up significant amounts of traffic relative to the total traffic. They always paid for leased lines (your third diagram) -- it's only recently that one very well liked company running almost entirely off Amazon decided that leased lines were extortion. If you compare the physical infrastructure of Google's YouTube or MLB.tv to Netflix, the difference is huge. I don't follow. I am a consumer who has purchased an internet service package that advertises 100Mbps down, 10Mbps up, and 100GB of transfer every billable month. If I, the ISP, have 1000 customers fully utilizing that 100Mbps down between 6-11pm _it is my engineering problem_ Whether it is netflix, google, mlb, or literally anything else. _it is my engineering problem_ to provide the service I am charging for.

thomaskcr 10y ago
> I am a consumer who has purchased an internet service package that advertises 100Mbps down, 10Mbps up, You purchased a package that gives you access to your ISPs network at that rate. Not even the highest business packages will provide an end to end SLA unless you're paying for a leased line from your location to the location you want the SLA for. Once your packets leave their network they have no control. You're only purchasing access to their network, and their network happens to be attached to other ones. If they weren't connected to a network with Netflix, you wouldn't have any recourse because you're not buying a connection to every computer on the network. Of course, practically they provide access to every site. But that's not what you're actually paying for if you check your contract.
- pyvpx 10y ago
  yes, I am purchasing a connection to every computer on the network. that is the internet. an _internet service provider_ is providing me a service that allows me to connect to the internet. and the internet is all the networks. they may not give me an SLA to each destination, but I am most certainly purchasing access to all the networks -- not just their own. no one is purchasing comcast service just to connect to other comcast customers.