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It costs them both money though. I doubt L3 gets a significantly better price on switch gear than Comcast does. Let's be serious though... peering itself is dir

It costs them both money though. I doubt L3 gets a significantly better price on switch gear than Comcast does. Let's be serious though... peering itself is dirt ass cheap. Comcast's attitude should be to deliver the best experience to their users whom are the reason they can even turn the lights on. Peering with L3 ensures Netflix streams are delivered with decent service levels, which satisfies their customers. If Comcast has to build out extra capacity to shuttle Netflix streams from the network borders to their customers' homes, that's Comcast's problem, not L3s. The same rules should apply to L3 though, if indeed they are screwing Cogent on the other end. Everyone has cooperated amazingly well thus far, and these few greedy fucks are starting to turn something that has never been an issue before into a big deal. Ultimately it will probably culminate in fucking us all with some kind of draconian FCC regulation and/or ridiculous network issues that will drive prices up.

tptacek 16y ago
Doesn't this ultimately mean that bandwidth for content providers should be free? After all, the reason Comcast "should" add this capacity is to satisfy demand for Netflix content. L3 is just acting as their agent. Is it the case that then that the next Netflix should just be able to demand bandwidth directly from Comcast?
- wmf 16y ago
  Supposedly Google is already there, although I suspect it's more like offering than demanding. 6% of Internet traffic is from Google, and you can either pay someone to send that to you or you can receive it directly from Google without payment. Note that Google is not really getting anything for free since they have to carry the traffic over the GBone to each ISP.
- rbranson 16y ago
  It's not "free" though. It's just a switch port to Comcast. It costs Comcast almost nothing. They still have to deliver the content anyway. At the tier 1 level, the Internet has always worked as a "you pay the cost for transferring packets on your own network" basis. It'd be one thing if Comcast was trying to charge L3 for carrying traffic to other networks, but Comcast is trying to extort fees for carrying packets on it's own network to it's own customers. That's messed up. Comcast's customers already pay AT LEAST $0.18/GB, but it's more around _NINETY CENTS_ a gigabyte, considering most of their customers pay around $45/mo and use less than 50GB of bandwidth per month.
  - tptacek 16y ago
    Comcast disagrees on how much that port costs. I haven't done anything close to backbone-y stuff since 1996, but back then, the equivalent port wasn't cheap. But that's besides the point. I keep asking this question: Stipulate that L3 isn't actually an ISP in this scenario (whether you agree or not). They're instead an agent for Netflix; they are literally Netflix's outsourced network infrastructure. If it is the case that Comcast should reasonably be expected to give L3/Netflix a free interconnect... ... then for whom shouldn't that be expected? Why are YC companies paying for bandwidth? Because, as I understand it, they do pay for bandwidth; significantly.
    - wmf 16y ago
      I think it's more about costs than expectations. Peering has high fixed costs (for both sides) — with transit one contract gets you access to the whole Internet but for peering you have to negotiate and configure stuff for each peer. If one content provider is sending gigabits of traffic to one ISP, they can probably both save money by connecting directly. Besides Justin.tv, I don't know of any YC companies that are that large. Here's a detailed analysis of the business case: http://drpeering.net/white-papers/A-Business-Case-For-Peering.php http://drpeering.net/white-papers/A-Business-Case-For-Peerin... I just discovered a similar old discussion about YouTube: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=573281 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=573281
    - rbranson 16y ago
      A gigabit ethernet switch port in even the most expensive scenario I can think of would be about $1000. In 1996 it was all FDDI and HSSI ports, which were an order of magnitude more expensive than GigE equipment is these days. There is very much a precedent for the scenario you describe: Comcast has direct peering agreements with Google. While I can't presume to know if it's settlement-free, I'm almost certain it is. Google's business model, especially YouTube, depends on it. Your conclusion is a little off kilter. Peering is cheap because they do these types of interconnects in these carrier hotels, and as we all know, running a Cat5 cable through a building is cheap. However, space in these carrier hotels is absurdly expensive because of the demand. This is fine if you just have a few racks of equipment and ship all the packets out over WAN links to your datacenters, which is pretty much the status quo. Not just any average joe is going to be able to setup shop in these places. YC companies pay for bandwidth because it's cheaper to do that then it is to build out a network. It's the same reason they don't build datacenters, own office space, etc. Most don't even own or operate dedicated servers anymore. Peering works at certain levels of network scale, but below that, somewhat pointless from a business/financial perspective. Check out SoftLayer's peering page: http://www.softlayer.com/network/peering http://www.softlayer.com/network/peering If peering was as expensive and as uncommon as Comcast claims, why would SoftLayer need a special page for it?

tptacek 16y ago

Doesn't this ultimately mean that bandwidth for content providers should be free? After all, the reason Comcast "should" add this capacity is to satisfy demand for Netflix content. L3 is just acting as their agent. Is it the case that then that the next Netflix should just be able to demand bandwidth directly from Comcast?

wmf 16y ago
Supposedly Google is already there, although I suspect it's more like offering than demanding. 6% of Internet traffic is from Google, and you can either pay someone to send that to you or you can receive it directly from Google without payment. Note that Google is not really getting anything for free since they have to carry the traffic over the GBone to each ISP.
rbranson 16y ago
It's not "free" though. It's just a switch port to Comcast. It costs Comcast almost nothing. They still have to deliver the content anyway. At the tier 1 level, the Internet has always worked as a "you pay the cost for transferring packets on your own network" basis. It'd be one thing if Comcast was trying to charge L3 for carrying traffic to other networks, but Comcast is trying to extort fees for carrying packets on it's own network to it's own customers. That's messed up. Comcast's customers already pay AT LEAST $0.18/GB, but it's more around _NINETY CENTS_ a gigabyte, considering most of their customers pay around $45/mo and use less than 50GB of bandwidth per month.
- tptacek 16y ago
  Comcast disagrees on how much that port costs. I haven't done anything close to backbone-y stuff since 1996, but back then, the equivalent port wasn't cheap. But that's besides the point. I keep asking this question: Stipulate that L3 isn't actually an ISP in this scenario (whether you agree or not). They're instead an agent for Netflix; they are literally Netflix's outsourced network infrastructure. If it is the case that Comcast should reasonably be expected to give L3/Netflix a free interconnect... ... then for whom shouldn't that be expected? Why are YC companies paying for bandwidth? Because, as I understand it, they do pay for bandwidth; significantly.
  - wmf 16y ago
    I think it's more about costs than expectations. Peering has high fixed costs (for both sides) — with transit one contract gets you access to the whole Internet but for peering you have to negotiate and configure stuff for each peer. If one content provider is sending gigabits of traffic to one ISP, they can probably both save money by connecting directly. Besides Justin.tv, I don't know of any YC companies that are that large. Here's a detailed analysis of the business case: http://drpeering.net/white-papers/A-Business-Case-For-Peering.php http://drpeering.net/white-papers/A-Business-Case-For-Peerin... I just discovered a similar old discussion about YouTube: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=573281 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=573281
  - rbranson 16y ago
    A gigabit ethernet switch port in even the most expensive scenario I can think of would be about $1000. In 1996 it was all FDDI and HSSI ports, which were an order of magnitude more expensive than GigE equipment is these days. There is very much a precedent for the scenario you describe: Comcast has direct peering agreements with Google. While I can't presume to know if it's settlement-free, I'm almost certain it is. Google's business model, especially YouTube, depends on it. Your conclusion is a little off kilter. Peering is cheap because they do these types of interconnects in these carrier hotels, and as we all know, running a Cat5 cable through a building is cheap. However, space in these carrier hotels is absurdly expensive because of the demand. This is fine if you just have a few racks of equipment and ship all the packets out over WAN links to your datacenters, which is pretty much the status quo. Not just any average joe is going to be able to setup shop in these places. YC companies pay for bandwidth because it's cheaper to do that then it is to build out a network. It's the same reason they don't build datacenters, own office space, etc. Most don't even own or operate dedicated servers anymore. Peering works at certain levels of network scale, but below that, somewhat pointless from a business/financial perspective. Check out SoftLayer's peering page: http://www.softlayer.com/network/peering http://www.softlayer.com/network/peering If peering was as expensive and as uncommon as Comcast claims, why would SoftLayer need a special page for it?