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I don't want to be a bummer, but video streaming might stress the hell out of the internet infrastructure. Before YouTube and Netflix, video broadcasting meant

by jokoon 9y ago

I don't want to be a bummer, but video streaming might stress the hell out of the internet infrastructure. Before YouTube and Netflix, video broadcasting meant that you send data once, but a per view service sends a copy each time. I'm all for net neutrality, but to be honest I think that some use cases might add a little pressure to the whole network when you compare them to more classic uses (HTML, images). I don't think that Snapchat, YouTube and Netflix can really be sustainable models if they keep growing and growing forever. At some point, transmitting video online, on a large scale, at a good resolution, at peak hours, is going to be expensive. Netflix is popular because the real cost is on the ISP, and there never are any guarantee of quality of service, it's not up to Netflix.

Analemma_ 9y ago
Netflix is already paying their fair share of bandwidth usage and infrastructure upgrade costs via their peering agreements. Ending net neutrality is double-dipping.
- DrScump 9y ago
  Where they are paying for peering agreements, aren't they already assured of equivalent performance regardless of any neutrality rules expiring?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
ploxiln 9y ago
If you pay for 250 GB of data from your ISP, then they're on the hook for the cost of delivering that 250 GB. That's what they sold you - or actually what you should be able to buy. The problem is when they'll deliver 250 GB of $PARTNER_SERVICE but not 250 GB of Netflix or YouTube, and none of the 1 or 2 ISPs in your area will give you a reasonable deal on your GBs from Netflix. (And to be clear, Netflix is not charging them anything.) (The other problem is when they say "unlimited" but of course it's never really unlimited.)
- shard972 9y ago
  I agree with you but then I believe that with the recent developments in video streaming (becoming mainstream) it would then be totally reasonable for ISP's to start charging a lot more for packages that give you the data to stream that much video. It just seems like underlying the whole NN debate is the very large uptake in the average user's data usage over the last 10 years that is just sort of ignored when it comes to how do such upgrades get paid for and before such upgrades take place, who or what gets slowed down in the case of congestion?
  - revelation 9y ago
    Moore pays for that. My internet hasn't gotten 10 times as fast, but networking equipment did. So much exponential growth and here you are discussing if we can really deliver 10 Mbit to the population? ISPs want to pay so little industry is still spending R&D money on how to make that fucking copper cable go all the way to Shannon capacity. G.fast is now doing over 100 Mbps on 500m copper.
    - toomuchtodo 9y ago
      Radio spectrum does not follow Moore’s Law. It is finite.
      - TheCoelacanth 9y ago
        The radio spectrum isn't the bottleneck for wired Internet. The bottleneck is in the routers, switches, etc. that sit in between the pieces of wire. Moore's law is highly relevant to how much bandwidth they can handle.
  - ploxiln 9y ago
    I agree that ISP's may need to charge a lot for a lot of data. Like say $200 for 1TB if you really need that much (made-up numbers for sake of argument). But the fact that you use it for Netflix vs any other service or reason should not affect the price. There's also the issue mentioned in the sibling comment of the fact that internet use is naturally over-sold to consumers - the cost to guarantee a speed "at any time" is way higher than offering that speed "most of the time". I think that's also fair: if everyone in a city starts streaming a few different 4k shows at the same time one evening, it's fair if service slows down, as long as the advertised speed really is available the rest of the time. SLA (service-level agreement) is just another orthogonal aspect of the service that is sold (and businesses are generally willing to pay a lot more for consistent speed than a consumer, and this is also fair). It just comes down to unfair treatment of competing services/uses by a monopoly or duopoly ISP. Bytes should be bytes. Like the electrons you get from your electricity provider.
maxsilver 9y ago
> I don't want to be a bummer, but video streaming might stress the hell out of the internet infrastructure. At some point, transmitting video online, on a large scale, at a good resolution, at peak hours, is going to be expensive. This is really frustrating, since Netflix is usually not served over the internet, but directly from the ISP's head end. Netflix usage largely has no major impact on the world wide internet. https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/ https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/ https://gizmodo.com/this-box-can-hold-an-entire-netflix-1592590450 https://gizmodo.com/this-box-can-hold-an-entire-netflix-1592... ISPs don't even have to serve you internet access for Netflix videos. Netflix already hand delivers the data to your town and then pays cash to Verizon and Comcast to serve their already-on-local-network videos to you. That's all on top of the money you are already paying the ISPs to receive that exact same traffic. All ISPs really do for Netflix is take traffic from a private local field office to your home. Frustratingly, they are often too cheap and lazy to even manage that.
- rayiner 9y ago
  > This is really frustrating, since Netflix is usually not served over the internet, but directly from the ISP's head end. Is that neutral?
  - harryh 9y ago
    It's definitely not. A fact which a lot of people tend to ignore when discussing net neutrality.
  - Obi_Juan_Kenobi 9y ago
    Yes, it's orthogonal to the issue of selling internet access.
revelation 9y ago
Netflix is already paying for a lot of infrastructure, local CDN boxes, to the point where ISPs only have to stick the fiber in - but they are unwilling, out of allegiance to their cable business or because they realize that if people start to use their 50 Mbit internet, it will become painfully obvious how oversubscribed, underdeveloped and underinvested their infrastructure is. The ISPs are not keeping up their part of the bargain.
thomastjeffery 9y ago
That's nonsense. Netflix using bandwidth doesn't harm anything. IPSs are free to offer users all the bandwidth they have available. Running out of bandwidth is not harmful to anyone. Putting pressure on the network is the only way infrastructure gets updated. We haven't reached the point where every user has the highest reasonable amount of bandwidth. I posit that we never will. ISPs want you to believe we have so you will believe people are using the internet "wrong" when the real problem is that ISPs don't want to invest in infrastructure. I won't hesitate to call them out in their BS.
fulafel 9y ago
I think you are overestimating the cost of bandwidth. Non-video web surfing as the bandwidth determining application has been surpassed a very long time ago. A prime reason broadband stopped getting faster after around ADSL2 is that nobody knew what to do with all that bandwidth, and that was 15 years ago. In fact you can watch today's Netflix 4k on 2003's 24 Mbps ADSL2+ connection, if you're reasonably close to the DSLAM. ISP backbone bandwith cost has continued dropping on that curve even if home broadband speeds have stagnated due to telcos investing all their chips into 4G coverage. (A silver lining is that 4G is symmetric so you can reasonably run video calls and home servers off it..)

by jokoon 9y ago

Analemma_ 9y ago

Netflix is already paying their fair share of bandwidth usage and infrastructure upgrade costs via their peering agreements. Ending net neutrality is double-dipping.

DrScump 9y ago
Where they are paying for peering agreements, aren't they already assured of equivalent performance regardless of any neutrality rules expiring?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

ploxiln 9y ago

If you pay for 250 GB of data from your ISP, then they're on the hook for the cost of delivering that 250 GB. That's what they sold you - or actually what you should be able to buy. The problem is when they'll deliver 250 GB of $PARTNER_SERVICE but not 250 GB of Netflix or YouTube, and none of the 1 or 2 ISPs in your area will give you a reasonable deal on your GBs from Netflix. (And to be clear, Netflix is not charging them anything.) (The other problem is when they say "unlimited" but of course it's never really unlimited.)

shard972 9y ago
I agree with you but then I believe that with the recent developments in video streaming (becoming mainstream) it would then be totally reasonable for ISP's to start charging a lot more for packages that give you the data to stream that much video. It just seems like underlying the whole NN debate is the very large uptake in the average user's data usage over the last 10 years that is just sort of ignored when it comes to how do such upgrades get paid for and before such upgrades take place, who or what gets slowed down in the case of congestion?
- revelation 9y ago
  Moore pays for that. My internet hasn't gotten 10 times as fast, but networking equipment did. So much exponential growth and here you are discussing if we can really deliver 10 Mbit to the population? ISPs want to pay so little industry is still spending R&D money on how to make that fucking copper cable go all the way to Shannon capacity. G.fast is now doing over 100 Mbps on 500m copper.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    Radio spectrum does not follow Moore’s Law. It is finite.
    - TheCoelacanth 9y ago
      The radio spectrum isn't the bottleneck for wired Internet. The bottleneck is in the routers, switches, etc. that sit in between the pieces of wire. Moore's law is highly relevant to how much bandwidth they can handle.
- ploxiln 9y ago
  I agree that ISP's may need to charge a lot for a lot of data. Like say $200 for 1TB if you really need that much (made-up numbers for sake of argument). But the fact that you use it for Netflix vs any other service or reason should not affect the price. There's also the issue mentioned in the sibling comment of the fact that internet use is naturally over-sold to consumers - the cost to guarantee a speed "at any time" is way higher than offering that speed "most of the time". I think that's also fair: if everyone in a city starts streaming a few different 4k shows at the same time one evening, it's fair if service slows down, as long as the advertised speed really is available the rest of the time. SLA (service-level agreement) is just another orthogonal aspect of the service that is sold (and businesses are generally willing to pay a lot more for consistent speed than a consumer, and this is also fair). It just comes down to unfair treatment of competing services/uses by a monopoly or duopoly ISP. Bytes should be bytes. Like the electrons you get from your electricity provider.

maxsilver 9y ago

> I don't want to be a bummer, but video streaming might stress the hell out of the internet infrastructure. At some point, transmitting video online, on a large scale, at a good resolution, at peak hours, is going to be expensive. This is really frustrating, since Netflix is usually not served over the internet, but directly from the ISP's head end. Netflix usage largely has no major impact on the world wide internet. https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/ https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/ https://gizmodo.com/this-box-can-hold-an-entire-netflix-1592590450 https://gizmodo.com/this-box-can-hold-an-entire-netflix-1592... ISPs don't even have to serve you internet access for Netflix videos. Netflix already hand delivers the data to your town and then pays cash to Verizon and Comcast to serve their already-on-local-network videos to you. That's all on top of the money you are already paying the ISPs to receive that exact same traffic. All ISPs really do for Netflix is take traffic from a private local field office to your home. Frustratingly, they are often too cheap and lazy to even manage that.

rayiner 9y ago
> This is really frustrating, since Netflix is usually not served over the internet, but directly from the ISP's head end. Is that neutral?
- harryh 9y ago
  It's definitely not. A fact which a lot of people tend to ignore when discussing net neutrality.
- Obi_Juan_Kenobi 9y ago
  Yes, it's orthogonal to the issue of selling internet access.

revelation 9y ago

Netflix is already paying for a lot of infrastructure, local CDN boxes, to the point where ISPs only have to stick the fiber in - but they are unwilling, out of allegiance to their cable business or because they realize that if people start to use their 50 Mbit internet, it will become painfully obvious how oversubscribed, underdeveloped and underinvested their infrastructure is. The ISPs are not keeping up their part of the bargain.

thomastjeffery 9y ago

That's nonsense. Netflix using bandwidth doesn't harm anything. IPSs are free to offer users all the bandwidth they have available. Running out of bandwidth is not harmful to anyone. Putting pressure on the network is the only way infrastructure gets updated. We haven't reached the point where every user has the highest reasonable amount of bandwidth. I posit that we never will. ISPs want you to believe we have so you will believe people are using the internet "wrong" when the real problem is that ISPs don't want to invest in infrastructure. I won't hesitate to call them out in their BS.

fulafel 9y ago

I think you are overestimating the cost of bandwidth. Non-video web surfing as the bandwidth determining application has been surpassed a very long time ago. A prime reason broadband stopped getting faster after around ADSL2 is that nobody knew what to do with all that bandwidth, and that was 15 years ago. In fact you can watch today's Netflix 4k on 2003's 24 Mbps ADSL2+ connection, if you're reasonably close to the DSLAM. ISP backbone bandwith cost has continued dropping on that curve even if home broadband speeds have stagnated due to telcos investing all their chips into 4G coverage. (A silver lining is that 4G is symmetric so you can reasonably run video calls and home servers off it..)