5 ms·

Your ISP would disagree about streaming for the entire month, they bear that cost.

skrebbel 8y ago
They bear no more cost for that than Netflix. A connection has two ends.
ahmedalsudani 8y ago
The customers are paying for the service. They bear the cost. The idea that ISPs bear the cost of Internet traffic which benefits tech companies is at the centre of their agreement against net neutrality, and it's a fallacious argument. The ISP is free to decide the price and the quality of the service offered. That's how they recoup their costs, by charging their customers the correct price for the service.
- samsonradu 8y ago
  Maybe I was not clear enough, I was not defending ISPs. What I meant was that they will bear the extra cost if every subscriber maxes out their bandwidth usage so the cost (and prices therefore) will go up. What customers pay is an averaged out bandwidth usage from my understanding.
  - hnnh44 8y ago
    The customer has already paid for a dedicated bandwidth. If the ISP has used an outdated model that doesn't account for current usage, that's their problem. That's how business risk and models work. They can, and should, respond by modifying their plans accordingly. Once the consumer's contract is up, renew them with a more modern usage model. Until then, you eat the cost for not doing your only job. The theory that "we didn't build in a margin of error and therefore someone else is responsible" is dangerous to society. ISPs SHOULD see losses. Their investors aren't entitled to guaranteed profits.
    - ghaff 8y ago
      But if everyone uses their connection in inefficient ways (such as letting their video streaming run for hours unwatched) everyone will simply end up paying more at some point.
      - jedberg 8y ago
        Only in the United States, because of the lack of ISP competition. In Europe, as usage goes up, prices stays flat, because ISPs there know that the cost of a marginal bit of data is almost nothing, and they actually have to compete with each other on customer service and price.
        treis 8y ago
        >know that the cost of a marginal bit of data is almost nothing Until you get to that last bit that your wires and equipment can handle. Then it costs a bunch of money to upgrade those to handle the extra traffic.
      - hnnh44 8y ago
        The idea that everyone should simply pay the same regardless of use is wrong. Cell phone plans have data tiers and pay-per-use. There's no reason cable companies can't do this either, except it prevents them from fudging costs. I probably use as much bandwidth as anybody else, and I'd prefer to be accurately charged for it rather than have my provider pull shady net neutrality things or try to become an ad network or buy a media company to "bundle" their services or sell my data to third parties to juice their income.
        ghaff 8y ago
        I don't necessarily disagree but go back to any of the discussions on here about data caps and read all the screams about stifling innovation, etc., etc. I see both sides. Honestly, I think there was a better argument for it when the heavy users were a small percentage of users downloading a bunch of "Linux distributions" on bittorrent. Today, it's more likely to be a family that uses Netflix a lot. Metering would change usage for better or worse and the fact is that a lot of domestic phone plans don't have caps, or at least meaningful ones any longer, although they may throttle data at some point.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
sascha_sl 8y ago
Well, about that... https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/ https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/ It's a smart move really. Netflix saves bandwidth and ISPs save transit capacity. Might also be the reason Netflix is so good at detecting if you're connecting from a "residential" IP block.
- miguelrochefort 8y ago
  How is that compatible with Net Neutrality? Can an ISP subsidize access to Netflix because they save on transit?
  - usrusr 8y ago
    It's only incompatible when ISPs actually act on their natural preference for consumption to go towards in-house edge caches. It's not that much different from the ancient art of configuring http servers and caching proxies to get along well (back even caching proxies were still a thing).
- cbzoiav 8y ago
  CDNs have been doing this for years. It's nothing new!
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    Which other websites (or consumer media companies) have cabinets in ISPs arrive the globe; honestly I've only heard of Netflix doing it. So, are there CDNs without their own racks anywhere?
    - cobookman 8y ago
      Some of Google's services. See "Edge nodes": https://peering.google.com/#/infrastructure https://peering.google.com/#/infrastructure
    - jedberg 8y ago
      YouTube does, and a bunch of other sites do it by using Akamai, CloudFlare, Fastly, etc.
mavhc 8y ago
There's basically 2 costs to running a network, buying routers/switches/laying cable, and electricity. The only thing that matters is peak usage because then you have to buy faster network equipment. If I buy 100MBit internet from my ISP, they basically need to spend, once, whatever 100Mbit of a port looks like, 1/10th of a gigabit port, 1/100th of a 10G port etc. They only have to do that once, yet I pay them every month, they're fine.
- quickthrower2 8y ago
  Does international traffic and satellites factor in to this? Or is very little traffic (by number of bits) international due to CDNs these days?
- jon-wood 8y ago
  You’re only seeing part of the picture there. Hardware is approximately a one time cost, if you ignore upgrades and maintenance, and electricity is a consideration, but the other part is bandwidth to get data to that port. ISPs also need a way to get your packets off their network and across to other people’s networks, which are possibly on the other side of the globe. A lot of this is done via peering agreements with other providers, where both parties will agree to connect their networks at a common data centre without charging for data going across that link, but there will still be some data that needs to go across transit providers - these are the companies providing things like transatlantic fibre, or interconnects between different parts of the US. They charge for a pre-agreed amount of bandwidth, and when you burst above that it gets expensive. These agreements are the core of the net neutrality debate. Traditionally peering agreements would see both parties having a roughly equal amount of traffic going back and forth, however in a world with services like Netflix what you see is a huge amount of bandwidth being used on side of the link. This is why ISPs think Netflix and co should have to pick up the cost of those links. I don’t agree with that stance since the reason ISPs have customers is often the ability to access those services. However, it’s not quite as clear cut as people make out.
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    >They charge for a pre-agreed amount of bandwidth, and when you burst above that it gets expensive. // That's price led though, not cost led.
jedberg 8y ago
Which I pay them for. If it costs too much, then they need to charge me more.
Mikeb85 8y ago
They bear the cost to build the infrastructure, but their cost to deliver data is negligible. As long as their infrastructure can handle the maximum capacity spikes, they're basically printing money.

They bear no more cost for that than Netflix. A connection has two ends.

The customers are paying for the service. They bear the cost. The idea that ISPs bear the cost of Internet traffic which benefits tech companies is at the centre of their agreement against net neutrality, and it's a fallacious argument. The ISP is free to decide the price and the quality of the service offered. That's how they recoup their costs, by charging their customers the correct price for the service.

samsonradu 8y ago
Maybe I was not clear enough, I was not defending ISPs. What I meant was that they will bear the extra cost if every subscriber maxes out their bandwidth usage so the cost (and prices therefore) will go up. What customers pay is an averaged out bandwidth usage from my understanding.
- hnnh44 8y ago
  The customer has already paid for a dedicated bandwidth. If the ISP has used an outdated model that doesn't account for current usage, that's their problem. That's how business risk and models work. They can, and should, respond by modifying their plans accordingly. Once the consumer's contract is up, renew them with a more modern usage model. Until then, you eat the cost for not doing your only job. The theory that "we didn't build in a margin of error and therefore someone else is responsible" is dangerous to society. ISPs SHOULD see losses. Their investors aren't entitled to guaranteed profits.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    But if everyone uses their connection in inefficient ways (such as letting their video streaming run for hours unwatched) everyone will simply end up paying more at some point.
    - jedberg 8y ago
      Only in the United States, because of the lack of ISP competition. In Europe, as usage goes up, prices stays flat, because ISPs there know that the cost of a marginal bit of data is almost nothing, and they actually have to compete with each other on customer service and price.
      - treis 8y ago
        >know that the cost of a marginal bit of data is almost nothing Until you get to that last bit that your wires and equipment can handle. Then it costs a bunch of money to upgrade those to handle the extra traffic.
    - hnnh44 8y ago
      The idea that everyone should simply pay the same regardless of use is wrong. Cell phone plans have data tiers and pay-per-use. There's no reason cable companies can't do this either, except it prevents them from fudging costs. I probably use as much bandwidth as anybody else, and I'd prefer to be accurately charged for it rather than have my provider pull shady net neutrality things or try to become an ad network or buy a media company to "bundle" their services or sell my data to third parties to juice their income.
      - ghaff 8y ago
        I don't necessarily disagree but go back to any of the discussions on here about data caps and read all the screams about stifling innovation, etc., etc. I see both sides. Honestly, I think there was a better argument for it when the heavy users were a small percentage of users downloading a bunch of "Linux distributions" on bittorrent. Today, it's more likely to be a family that uses Netflix a lot. Metering would change usage for better or worse and the fact is that a lot of domestic phone plans don't have caps, or at least meaningful ones any longer, although they may throttle data at some point.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

sascha_sl 8y ago

Well, about that... https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/ https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/ It's a smart move really. Netflix saves bandwidth and ISPs save transit capacity. Might also be the reason Netflix is so good at detecting if you're connecting from a "residential" IP block.

miguelrochefort 8y ago
How is that compatible with Net Neutrality? Can an ISP subsidize access to Netflix because they save on transit?
- usrusr 8y ago
  It's only incompatible when ISPs actually act on their natural preference for consumption to go towards in-house edge caches. It's not that much different from the ancient art of configuring http servers and caching proxies to get along well (back even caching proxies were still a thing).
cbzoiav 8y ago
CDNs have been doing this for years. It's nothing new!
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  Which other websites (or consumer media companies) have cabinets in ISPs arrive the globe; honestly I've only heard of Netflix doing it. So, are there CDNs without their own racks anywhere?
  - cobookman 8y ago
    Some of Google's services. See "Edge nodes": https://peering.google.com/#/infrastructure https://peering.google.com/#/infrastructure
  - jedberg 8y ago
    YouTube does, and a bunch of other sites do it by using Akamai, CloudFlare, Fastly, etc.

mavhc 8y ago

There's basically 2 costs to running a network, buying routers/switches/laying cable, and electricity. The only thing that matters is peak usage because then you have to buy faster network equipment. If I buy 100MBit internet from my ISP, they basically need to spend, once, whatever 100Mbit of a port looks like, 1/10th of a gigabit port, 1/100th of a 10G port etc. They only have to do that once, yet I pay them every month, they're fine.

quickthrower2 8y ago
Does international traffic and satellites factor in to this? Or is very little traffic (by number of bits) international due to CDNs these days?
jon-wood 8y ago
You’re only seeing part of the picture there. Hardware is approximately a one time cost, if you ignore upgrades and maintenance, and electricity is a consideration, but the other part is bandwidth to get data to that port. ISPs also need a way to get your packets off their network and across to other people’s networks, which are possibly on the other side of the globe. A lot of this is done via peering agreements with other providers, where both parties will agree to connect their networks at a common data centre without charging for data going across that link, but there will still be some data that needs to go across transit providers - these are the companies providing things like transatlantic fibre, or interconnects between different parts of the US. They charge for a pre-agreed amount of bandwidth, and when you burst above that it gets expensive. These agreements are the core of the net neutrality debate. Traditionally peering agreements would see both parties having a roughly equal amount of traffic going back and forth, however in a world with services like Netflix what you see is a huge amount of bandwidth being used on side of the link. This is why ISPs think Netflix and co should have to pick up the cost of those links. I don’t agree with that stance since the reason ISPs have customers is often the ability to access those services. However, it’s not quite as clear cut as people make out.
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  >They charge for a pre-agreed amount of bandwidth, and when you burst above that it gets expensive. // That's price led though, not cost led.

jedberg 8y ago

Which I pay them for. If it costs too much, then they need to charge me more.

Mikeb85 8y ago

They bear the cost to build the infrastructure, but their cost to deliver data is negligible. As long as their infrastructure can handle the maximum capacity spikes, they're basically printing money.