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ISPs like Comcast have metered caps (1TB for our home). So now it will require ~2x bandwidth (down/up) to watch the same content. Basically shifting the conten

ISPs like Comcast have metered caps (1TB for our home). So now it will require ~2x bandwidth (down/up) to watch the same content. Basically shifting the content provider's CDN costs (which we pay subscription for) on the backs of consumer's metered internet? Seems like a triple whammy for consumers. Is your expectation/hope that they will share some of their cost savings?

shacharz 10y ago
No, we're not expecting the consumer to pay for the upload bandwidth. We're working with ISPs to not charge consumer for Peer5's upload traffic.
- snug 10y ago
  So you're against, net neutrality? All traffic should be treated equally, no one, or company should be able to have a "free lane" as you're suggesting. Cool concept, but I agree with the rest of the criticism here.
- sudosteph 10y ago
  How does that work? ISPs will charge for other traffic but not yours? Isn't that the definition of anti-net neutrality?
- camus2 10y ago
  > No, we're not expecting the consumer to pay for the upload bandwidth. We're working with ISPs to not charge consumer for Peer5's upload traffic. A bit hard to believe. Do you have any agreements with ISP already?
developer2 10y ago
From their FAQ[1]: Q: Can Peer5 ever harm user experience? A: No. Peer5 can never deteriorate user experience. Q: How does Peer5 impact a user's upstream bandwidth? A: Peer5 works with whatever bandwidth is free for upstream use and will not impact other applications that require uploads at the same time as Peer5. Changes to upstream bandwidth are unnoticeable to the end user. --- The concept is great, but until every consumer internet service comes with unmetered bandwidth, this kind of peer-to-peer CDN must be treated as what it is: a dark pattern from content providers who are looking to save their own bottom line while directly harming their customers in the process. For every $1 a content provider saves by using this service, their users who happen to not have unmetered bandwidth will collectively pay dozens or hundreds of times that cost in overage fees to their ISPs. The fact that any business would use this technology and shrug their users' suffering off as an externality is disgusting to me. [1] https://www.peer5.com/faq https://www.peer5.com/faq
- detaro 10y ago
  > A: Peer5 works with whatever bandwidth is free for upstream use and will not impact other applications that require uploads at the same time as Peer5. That would also require WebRTC traffic to be properly tagged as low-priority and general consumer gear being any good at QoS, neither of which is the case. Of course parallel uploads can and will have a negative effect.
  - shacharz 10y ago
    Part of WebRTC's requirements [1] is to be fair on competing TCP connections. This is a very good point, because I agree with you that in general parallel connections cause each connection to have less throughput, but if those connections have a mutual goal to download the same content it can actually increase the overall throughput than downloading that content via a single TCP connection. That's especially true when those connections are to different sources which can workaround specific network issues you might have in a single connection. Actually the value proposition for our customers is to improve the QoS. And we've shown that's the case in customer case studies. [1] https://wiki.tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-rtcweb-data-channel-10#page-4 https://wiki.tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-rtcweb-data-chan...
- whadar 10y ago
  This is what we're trying to do now: 1. Make ISPs zero-rate any upstream p2p bandwidth. Most of that bandwidth is anyway inside their network, so it's good for them. Until that happens: 2. Avoid the usage of upstream bandwidth when we detect it's metered.
  - lazaroclapp 10y ago
    Yeah, I was about to say that the GP is overly pessimistic on the technology, since you could always detect metered ISPs and do something different for those (no upstream but lower priority downstream in exchange, for example). In the end, consumers of this CDN also don't want to be known as "that website which caused a 4x internet bill".
Andrenid 10y ago
Rural Australia here. 40gb satellite limit each month, uploads are counted. Everything we do has to be decided to be "worth it" when you have ~1Gb/day. No YouTube (no video in general unless really needed), no big images. Data is precious and expensive here. I really doubt these guys are doing any effort in working with my tiny rural ISP. Nor would my or any satellite ISP ignore uploads because some US startup asked them to (they won't even unmeter any content for us like bigger ISPs do). Something like this would destroy my quota, and I'd treat it as hostile like malware running background torrents or background software updates that don't prompt you (PS4 used my entire quota in one day once, while it was turned off.. that's how I learnt about PS4 standby mode updates! We had no net for nearly a month after that).

shacharz 10y ago

No, we're not expecting the consumer to pay for the upload bandwidth. We're working with ISPs to not charge consumer for Peer5's upload traffic.

snug 10y ago
So you're against, net neutrality? All traffic should be treated equally, no one, or company should be able to have a "free lane" as you're suggesting. Cool concept, but I agree with the rest of the criticism here.
sudosteph 10y ago
How does that work? ISPs will charge for other traffic but not yours? Isn't that the definition of anti-net neutrality?
camus2 10y ago
> No, we're not expecting the consumer to pay for the upload bandwidth. We're working with ISPs to not charge consumer for Peer5's upload traffic. A bit hard to believe. Do you have any agreements with ISP already?

developer2 10y ago

From their FAQ[1]: Q: Can Peer5 ever harm user experience? A: No. Peer5 can never deteriorate user experience. Q: How does Peer5 impact a user's upstream bandwidth? A: Peer5 works with whatever bandwidth is free for upstream use and will not impact other applications that require uploads at the same time as Peer5. Changes to upstream bandwidth are unnoticeable to the end user. --- The concept is great, but until every consumer internet service comes with unmetered bandwidth, this kind of peer-to-peer CDN must be treated as what it is: a dark pattern from content providers who are looking to save their own bottom line while directly harming their customers in the process. For every $1 a content provider saves by using this service, their users who happen to not have unmetered bandwidth will collectively pay dozens or hundreds of times that cost in overage fees to their ISPs. The fact that any business would use this technology and shrug their users' suffering off as an externality is disgusting to me. [1] https://www.peer5.com/faq https://www.peer5.com/faq

detaro 10y ago
> A: Peer5 works with whatever bandwidth is free for upstream use and will not impact other applications that require uploads at the same time as Peer5. That would also require WebRTC traffic to be properly tagged as low-priority and general consumer gear being any good at QoS, neither of which is the case. Of course parallel uploads can and will have a negative effect.
- shacharz 10y ago
  Part of WebRTC's requirements [1] is to be fair on competing TCP connections. This is a very good point, because I agree with you that in general parallel connections cause each connection to have less throughput, but if those connections have a mutual goal to download the same content it can actually increase the overall throughput than downloading that content via a single TCP connection. That's especially true when those connections are to different sources which can workaround specific network issues you might have in a single connection. Actually the value proposition for our customers is to improve the QoS. And we've shown that's the case in customer case studies. [1] https://wiki.tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-rtcweb-data-channel-10#page-4 https://wiki.tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-rtcweb-data-chan...
whadar 10y ago
This is what we're trying to do now: 1. Make ISPs zero-rate any upstream p2p bandwidth. Most of that bandwidth is anyway inside their network, so it's good for them. Until that happens: 2. Avoid the usage of upstream bandwidth when we detect it's metered.
- lazaroclapp 10y ago
  Yeah, I was about to say that the GP is overly pessimistic on the technology, since you could always detect metered ISPs and do something different for those (no upstream but lower priority downstream in exchange, for example). In the end, consumers of this CDN also don't want to be known as "that website which caused a 4x internet bill".

Andrenid 10y ago

Rural Australia here. 40gb satellite limit each month, uploads are counted. Everything we do has to be decided to be "worth it" when you have ~1Gb/day. No YouTube (no video in general unless really needed), no big images. Data is precious and expensive here. I really doubt these guys are doing any effort in working with my tiny rural ISP. Nor would my or any satellite ISP ignore uploads because some US startup asked them to (they won't even unmeter any content for us like bigger ISPs do). Something like this would destroy my quota, and I'd treat it as hostile like malware running background torrents or background software updates that don't prompt you (PS4 used my entire quota in one day once, while it was turned off.. that's how I learnt about PS4 standby mode updates! We had no net for nearly a month after that).