6 ms·

Why shouldn't Verizon and Google split the bill?

jmuguy 9y ago
My understanding is that its not an issue of the cost to "upgrade" the interconnection infrastructure. That cost is likely negligible. What's happening is that VZ is refusing to do it, and allowing service to degrade, unless Google pays X. So yeah, basically extortion. Google has already paid for bandwidth, and this is traffic that VZ's paying customers are requesting.
- mrkrabo 9y ago
  That's what splitting the bill means. You don't pay "for the bandwidth", you pay for a link between two ISPs (Google and Verizon). The bill between then should be split, otherwise the traffic will have to pass through somewhere else, and that will cause congestion problems.
  - jmuguy 9y ago
    Google has most certainly paid for bandwidth/traffic from their end. Whether that's to a CDN or some other arrangement, and there's likely already peering agreements in place. In these cases what Verizon is doing is asking for money above and beyond what it actually costs to handle the interconnection. They use declining service to their own customers as leverage. Its ridiculous, and even more worrying when you see ISPs and content providers merging as is the case with VZ buying Yahoo and AOL, Comcast and NBC merger, etc.
- jerkstate 9y ago
  let's do a little math.. the router ports on both sides, let's say you are using 4 ports across 4 fully loaded nexus 9508 (let's call those $500k per incl. optics, so $2M / 384 x 4 ports / 36 months = $600/port/month x 4 = $2400/4-ports/month) Depending on how the connection between the two worked or was paid for, it could be $1000-$20000 for 2 pairs of fiber per month depending on distance. Let's take a middle of the road $10k average cost. So for 10Gbps peak redundant capacity, you are at $12,400 per month. Netflix 4k stream is about 16 megabits, so you can fit 625 4k streams in $12,400 of cross-connect capacity. If you don't share costs, that's about $20 per user to support Netflix's business model that people seem to think it's Comcast's responsibility to pay. That's not even considering Comcast's last mile distribution cost or paying any salaries. Streaming video services soak up a lot of network resources and putting all of the cost on ISPs is going to increase your ISP's cost and price. How many low-income families do you think would lose broadband if it went from $50/mo to $100/mo?
  - Karunamon 9y ago
    That's assuming that we're talking a connection streaming a video from Netflix's CDN to the customer's device. When in reality, Netflix offered to put a CDN cache box in Comcast's DC which would largely reduce the problem, Comcast turned them down. That, alone, tells me that this is not a congestion or a cost problem, it is a bull-headedness for the purpose of rent seeking problem. And as to the "last mile" costs, those are what Comcast subscribers are paying Comcast for. They act like this traffic is unsolicited noise, when in reality it's why they're being paid anything by anyone. I say don't charge people for x megabits down if you don't intend on them using it.
    - jerkstate 9y ago
      My understanding is that Comcast offered Netflix commercially reasonable terms for colo and cross-connect and Netflix opted for public interconnect via an exchange, which alleviated the bandwidth constraints caused by Cogent taking Netflix's money and then refusing to comply with their cost-sharing peering agreement with Comcast. Calling the Netflix CDN boxes "free" is totally misleading because Comcast would still need to pay for the router ports to carry the traffic internally, space & power, and management assistance. That deal works for a small ISP that pays for most of its bandwidth but not a large ISP that uses significant amounts of shared-cost peering. If Comcast is required to host those boxes "for free" what of every other CDN that they previously had agreements with? I agree that Comcast marketing "up to X megabits" is misleading and those chickens have come home to roost with people thinking that their last mile means they should get that speed to every point on the Internet 24 hours a day. I have been negotiating commercial bandwidth agreements for years and even from a tier 1 you can't get that guarantee in a contract.
      - Karunamon 9y ago
        Calling the Netflix CDN boxes "free" is totally misleading because Comcast would still need to pay for the router ports to carry the traffic internally, space & power, and management assistance. Which is still less than the cost of doing a proper interconnect - they chose instead to let it degrade and play semantic games instead. It also puts the lie to their complaint that it was ever about congestion. The correct response to people requesting a lot of traffic from X is to ensure that traffic is delivered efficiently. That is why their customers pay them.
raisedbyninjas 9y ago
In a way, they used to. Peering agreements between large networks allow unbilled traffic from either party with the understanding that both would be serving and consuming similar amounts of traffic. With the emergence of the network neutrality debate ISPs have claimed that peering agreements are not appropriate because content providers "send" more traffic than they receive. This of course ignores the fact that their customers are requesting the traffic and their whole business model is designed on asymetric traffic.
- toast0 9y ago
  Peering disputes have always been when the party wanting to peer had an unbalanced traffic ratio, and the other party didn't want to peer (possibly for other reasons), and they started much earlier than the network neutrality debates. The recent changes are more around who is involved in the peering disputes. It used to be smaller ISPs trying to get peering with larger ISPs, such as Cogent trying to get peering with [name your favorite, or PSINet vs Cable and Wireless; and most often the ISP refusing to peer didn't have residential customers themselves. Now it's more often the content providers themselves trying to peer with the residential isps directly. A major factor here is the huge consolidation of residential ISPs, but also the consolidation of content providers. Consolidation of residential ISPs means each ISP is big enough to run their own backbone, and as a result they can credibly have strict peering requirements. Smaller, regional ISPs will tend to want to peer, because otherwise the traffic will come through on paid transit connections. Large ISPs may not care; because of their size, they may not be paying anyone for transit, and because of the common asymmetric nature of residential connections, there's not likely to be many networks where the large ISP is on the wrong side of the ratio. If I were one of these content providers, I would spend a lot more time messing with the large ISPs. Figure out how to make the traffic cost them money, so they'll want to peer. Provide transit to data backup services to try to make the ratios less unbalanced. Run campaigns suggesting that residential ISPs should be paying their customers, given that the traffic is unbalanced. Etc.
  - thanksgiving 9y ago
    > Peering disputes have always been when the party wanting to peer had an unbalanced traffic ratio, and the other party didn't want to peer (possibly for other reasons), and they started much earlier than the network neutrality debates. The recent changes are more around who is involved in the peering disputes. It used to be smaller ISPs trying to get peering with larger ISPs, such as Cogent trying to get peering with [name your favorite, or PSINet vs Cable and Wireless; and most often the ISP refusing to peer didn't have residential customers themselves. Now it's more often the content providers themselves trying to peer with the residential isps directly. A major factor here is the huge consolidation of residential ISPs, but also the consolidation of content providers. > Consolidation of residential ISPs means each ISP is big enough to run their own backbone, and as a result they can credibly have strict peering requirements. Smaller, regional ISPs will tend to want to peer, because otherwise the traffic will come through on paid transit connections. Large ISPs may not care; because of their size, they may not be paying anyone for transit, and because of the common asymmetric nature of residential connections, there's not likely to be many networks where the large ISP is on the wrong side of the ratio. > If I were one of these content providers, I would spend a lot more time messing with the large ISPs. Figure out how to make the traffic cost them money, so they'll want to peer. Provide transit to data backup services to try to make the ratios less unbalanced. Run campaigns suggesting that residential ISPs should be paying their customers, given that the traffic is unbalanced. Etc. I can upload all my files to Google Drive and all my photos and videos to Google Photos if you think it helps the ratio...
mrighele 9y ago
Because Verizon's users are already footing the whole bill. If anything, the bill should be split between the end user and Google.
michaelmrose 9y ago
Google pays for their own network services. Whomever google pays for network services pays pays if applicable to connect to Verizon's network. The sole and only thing they are being paid for on the ISP side of Verizon's operation is to quickly and reliably deliver the content people want to consume over the pipe people have paid to have installed. YouTube by hosting content people want to consume is driving demand for Verizon's services. Pretending that this is a cost is a bazaar inversion of reality.
- criddell 9y ago
  > Google pays for their own network services. Do they? Who do they pay? I thought that maybe one of the reasons Google got into the ISP business was to be a peer with the other big networks and not pay any peerage fees. Does Verizon pay for network services?
- jessaustin 9y ago
  s/bazaar/bizarre/
mtgx 9y ago
Only Google and Verizon? Top 10 content providers? Top 50? top 100? Who would set the rankings? Should everyone split the bill with Verizon?

My understanding is that its not an issue of the cost to "upgrade" the interconnection infrastructure. That cost is likely negligible. What's happening is that VZ is refusing to do it, and allowing service to degrade, unless Google pays X. So yeah, basically extortion. Google has already paid for bandwidth, and this is traffic that VZ's paying customers are requesting.

mrkrabo 9y ago
That's what splitting the bill means. You don't pay "for the bandwidth", you pay for a link between two ISPs (Google and Verizon). The bill between then should be split, otherwise the traffic will have to pass through somewhere else, and that will cause congestion problems.
- jmuguy 9y ago
  Google has most certainly paid for bandwidth/traffic from their end. Whether that's to a CDN or some other arrangement, and there's likely already peering agreements in place. In these cases what Verizon is doing is asking for money above and beyond what it actually costs to handle the interconnection. They use declining service to their own customers as leverage. Its ridiculous, and even more worrying when you see ISPs and content providers merging as is the case with VZ buying Yahoo and AOL, Comcast and NBC merger, etc.
jerkstate 9y ago
let's do a little math.. the router ports on both sides, let's say you are using 4 ports across 4 fully loaded nexus 9508 (let's call those $500k per incl. optics, so $2M / 384 x 4 ports / 36 months = $600/port/month x 4 = $2400/4-ports/month) Depending on how the connection between the two worked or was paid for, it could be $1000-$20000 for 2 pairs of fiber per month depending on distance. Let's take a middle of the road $10k average cost. So for 10Gbps peak redundant capacity, you are at $12,400 per month. Netflix 4k stream is about 16 megabits, so you can fit 625 4k streams in $12,400 of cross-connect capacity. If you don't share costs, that's about $20 per user to support Netflix's business model that people seem to think it's Comcast's responsibility to pay. That's not even considering Comcast's last mile distribution cost or paying any salaries. Streaming video services soak up a lot of network resources and putting all of the cost on ISPs is going to increase your ISP's cost and price. How many low-income families do you think would lose broadband if it went from $50/mo to $100/mo?
- Karunamon 9y ago
  That's assuming that we're talking a connection streaming a video from Netflix's CDN to the customer's device. When in reality, Netflix offered to put a CDN cache box in Comcast's DC which would largely reduce the problem, Comcast turned them down. That, alone, tells me that this is not a congestion or a cost problem, it is a bull-headedness for the purpose of rent seeking problem. And as to the "last mile" costs, those are what Comcast subscribers are paying Comcast for. They act like this traffic is unsolicited noise, when in reality it's why they're being paid anything by anyone. I say don't charge people for x megabits down if you don't intend on them using it.
  - jerkstate 9y ago
    My understanding is that Comcast offered Netflix commercially reasonable terms for colo and cross-connect and Netflix opted for public interconnect via an exchange, which alleviated the bandwidth constraints caused by Cogent taking Netflix's money and then refusing to comply with their cost-sharing peering agreement with Comcast. Calling the Netflix CDN boxes "free" is totally misleading because Comcast would still need to pay for the router ports to carry the traffic internally, space & power, and management assistance. That deal works for a small ISP that pays for most of its bandwidth but not a large ISP that uses significant amounts of shared-cost peering. If Comcast is required to host those boxes "for free" what of every other CDN that they previously had agreements with? I agree that Comcast marketing "up to X megabits" is misleading and those chickens have come home to roost with people thinking that their last mile means they should get that speed to every point on the Internet 24 hours a day. I have been negotiating commercial bandwidth agreements for years and even from a tier 1 you can't get that guarantee in a contract.
    - Karunamon 9y ago
      Calling the Netflix CDN boxes "free" is totally misleading because Comcast would still need to pay for the router ports to carry the traffic internally, space & power, and management assistance. Which is still less than the cost of doing a proper interconnect - they chose instead to let it degrade and play semantic games instead. It also puts the lie to their complaint that it was ever about congestion. The correct response to people requesting a lot of traffic from X is to ensure that traffic is delivered efficiently. That is why their customers pay them.

raisedbyninjas 9y ago

In a way, they used to. Peering agreements between large networks allow unbilled traffic from either party with the understanding that both would be serving and consuming similar amounts of traffic. With the emergence of the network neutrality debate ISPs have claimed that peering agreements are not appropriate because content providers "send" more traffic than they receive. This of course ignores the fact that their customers are requesting the traffic and their whole business model is designed on asymetric traffic.

toast0 9y ago
Peering disputes have always been when the party wanting to peer had an unbalanced traffic ratio, and the other party didn't want to peer (possibly for other reasons), and they started much earlier than the network neutrality debates. The recent changes are more around who is involved in the peering disputes. It used to be smaller ISPs trying to get peering with larger ISPs, such as Cogent trying to get peering with [name your favorite, or PSINet vs Cable and Wireless; and most often the ISP refusing to peer didn't have residential customers themselves. Now it's more often the content providers themselves trying to peer with the residential isps directly. A major factor here is the huge consolidation of residential ISPs, but also the consolidation of content providers. Consolidation of residential ISPs means each ISP is big enough to run their own backbone, and as a result they can credibly have strict peering requirements. Smaller, regional ISPs will tend to want to peer, because otherwise the traffic will come through on paid transit connections. Large ISPs may not care; because of their size, they may not be paying anyone for transit, and because of the common asymmetric nature of residential connections, there's not likely to be many networks where the large ISP is on the wrong side of the ratio. If I were one of these content providers, I would spend a lot more time messing with the large ISPs. Figure out how to make the traffic cost them money, so they'll want to peer. Provide transit to data backup services to try to make the ratios less unbalanced. Run campaigns suggesting that residential ISPs should be paying their customers, given that the traffic is unbalanced. Etc.
- thanksgiving 9y ago
  > Peering disputes have always been when the party wanting to peer had an unbalanced traffic ratio, and the other party didn't want to peer (possibly for other reasons), and they started much earlier than the network neutrality debates. The recent changes are more around who is involved in the peering disputes. It used to be smaller ISPs trying to get peering with larger ISPs, such as Cogent trying to get peering with [name your favorite, or PSINet vs Cable and Wireless; and most often the ISP refusing to peer didn't have residential customers themselves. Now it's more often the content providers themselves trying to peer with the residential isps directly. A major factor here is the huge consolidation of residential ISPs, but also the consolidation of content providers. > Consolidation of residential ISPs means each ISP is big enough to run their own backbone, and as a result they can credibly have strict peering requirements. Smaller, regional ISPs will tend to want to peer, because otherwise the traffic will come through on paid transit connections. Large ISPs may not care; because of their size, they may not be paying anyone for transit, and because of the common asymmetric nature of residential connections, there's not likely to be many networks where the large ISP is on the wrong side of the ratio. > If I were one of these content providers, I would spend a lot more time messing with the large ISPs. Figure out how to make the traffic cost them money, so they'll want to peer. Provide transit to data backup services to try to make the ratios less unbalanced. Run campaigns suggesting that residential ISPs should be paying their customers, given that the traffic is unbalanced. Etc. I can upload all my files to Google Drive and all my photos and videos to Google Photos if you think it helps the ratio...

mrighele 9y ago

Because Verizon's users are already footing the whole bill. If anything, the bill should be split between the end user and Google.

michaelmrose 9y ago

Google pays for their own network services. Whomever google pays for network services pays pays if applicable to connect to Verizon's network. The sole and only thing they are being paid for on the ISP side of Verizon's operation is to quickly and reliably deliver the content people want to consume over the pipe people have paid to have installed. YouTube by hosting content people want to consume is driving demand for Verizon's services. Pretending that this is a cost is a bazaar inversion of reality.

criddell 9y ago
> Google pays for their own network services. Do they? Who do they pay? I thought that maybe one of the reasons Google got into the ISP business was to be a peer with the other big networks and not pay any peerage fees. Does Verizon pay for network services?
jessaustin 9y ago
s/bazaar/bizarre/

mtgx 9y ago

Only Google and Verizon? Top 10 content providers? Top 50? top 100? Who would set the rankings? Should everyone split the bill with Verizon?