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This double dipping by ISPs annoys the hell out of me. Who should pay for bandwidth: the ISPs or content producers? How about--oh I don't know--the ISPs' custom

by cletus 14y ago

This double dipping by ISPs annoys the hell out of me. Who should pay for bandwidth: the ISPs or content producers? How about--oh I don't know--the ISPs' customers who are already paying for bandwidth? If there is any compelling argument for net neutrality it's this: don't let regional monopolies decide what sites their customers can access based on what kickbacks the ISP receives. Widespread opt-out ad blocking will likely end in content producers blocking offending ISPs. As for the particular case mentioned (YouTube bandwidth for Free) I would like to know if the take advantage of the edge caching available. All in a this reads as a pro-ISP fluff piece.

andrewescott 14y ago
This doesn't appear to be the case in question. Based on my reading of the article, it seems that the network link between Free and YouTube is becoming congested at peak times. Free doesn't want to pay to make it any larger, and neither does Google. Hence the escalation. It's not to do with network links between end customers and Free.
- AnthonyMouse 14y ago
  >Free doesn't want to pay to make it any larger, and neither does Google. My understanding is that when these things happen, the content provider is virtually always willing to make the link bigger (because congestion causes lag for their customers, which they don't want). The problem is that ISPs have started leveraging the hard monopoly they have over the ability to send packets to their own customers. So instead of just paying to upgrade the link between the two networks, they want content providers to pay in effect to upgrade the ISP's own internal network -- which their own customers already paid them to do, but if they double dip then it's pure profit. And the content providers (or their own network provider) will have no choice but to pay whatever is asked or lose access to many thousands of customers. The real problem with all of this is what it's going to do to the marketplace. Because the only way to push back against that sort of extortion is to have sufficiently compelling content that the ISP can't risk losing it, in effect having your own monopoly to counter the ISP's. So YouTube is fine, Netflix is probably fine (but see spat with Comcast a while back), and what happens to the little guy? Screwed. Which is why the people saying this is about Google have it totally wrong. Did you catch the "no comment" from the article? You would think they might have something to say if it actually affected them, right? Condemn the ISPs acting unreasonably? But Google is fine. They're the ones with leverage -- they're the ones the ISPs are complaining about because they can't push them around. The problem is the ISPs can and do push everybody else around. And that has to stop, or we'll be left with the core of the network owned exclusively by a tight cartel of the likes of Google and Amazon because they're the only ones with enough clout to push back against every regional monopoly ISP in the world.
  - tonfa 14y ago
    In that particular case, they're also very good, since the ISP picked a moment where actors like Amazon, Google are getting a lot of heat about their tax rate in France. It's likely that the government will like that argument (let's help french business over US companies who don't pay much taxes).
  - onetwothreefour 14y ago
    I've read your other comments, but I'm kind of replying to all of them. Most companies are already paying a premium to get content directly to users by way of CDNs. This already happens, has happened for years, and will continue to happen. When someone pays Akamai, it's because Akamai has negotiated directly with every ISP in the world to put some boxes on their network so bits get to the ISPs users faster. I think people who think this doesn't already happen are kind of missing the point. In the case of Youtube, this is a totally different issue, IMHO, because it's not really about content producers. It's about a shitload of bandwidth that an ISP has to build their network to handle. And that's their job right? Except Google runs ads on Youtube, and makes money from the end user this way. The ISP is just a "dumb pipe" to you and me, but they have serious outlay to provide a lag-free Youtube experience to their customers for which they get nothing back. Now, I'm sure the smarter ISPs have negotiated some sort of revenue share with Google as part of peering agreements, but maybe the contract terms in this case weren't to Free's liking. How would we know? IMHO there's not enough information in the article to blame either party one way or the other, but I think that most people on HN are treating this more as a net neutrality thing and not as a contract dispute. :)
    - AnthonyMouse 14y ago
      >Most companies are already paying a premium to get content directly to users by way of CDNs. This already happens, has happened for years, and will continue to happen. I don't recall objecting to that. If ISPs want to run a telco hotel at their central office and rent space for people to run a CDN, that's not a problem. The problem comes when they subsequently leverage their monopoly over access to their own ISP customers to try to force content distributors to pay them for rack space, by refusing to accept free peering. If you don't actually need a presence at every ISP, the ISP shouldn't be able to force you to buy it from them just because they have a monopoly on those customers and can raise the price of peering so high that paying them for rack space becomes cheaper than buying it from anyone else. If you're a network provider and you pay to bring your fiber to the demarc at another ISP's facility, that ISP should be required to accept the traffic. Because the alternative is blatant monopoly abuse. >In the case of Youtube, this is a totally different issue, IMHO, because it's not really about content producers. It's about a shitload of bandwidth that an ISP has to build their network to handle. How is that not about content producers? Content producers post content on YouTube. It has to get where it's going at a price that makes operating YouTube viable (and operating its smaller competitors viable, lest YouTube become an abusive monopoly too) or they won't be able to do that anymore. And the ISPs have big, bad reasons to try to make YouTube-like services unviable: It requires a lot of bandwidth and it competes for viewer attention with their own TV offerings. >The ISP is just a "dumb pipe" to you and me, but they have serious outlay to provide a lag-free Youtube experience to their customers for which they get nothing back. Where does "they get nothing back" come from? They get back the very substantial monthly fees that all of their end customers pay to have access to YouTube. That is what that money is for -- to bring packets from YouTube and all rest of the internet to and from those customers. And every video YouTube serves has been requested by one of those paying customers. ISPs who expect customers to do nothing more than check their email are quite capable of offering a barebones plan that allows no more than 128kbps sustained download speeds and is incapable of streaming video. But they shouldn't be allowed to charge $60 and $100 a month for multi-megabit residential connections and then be heard to complain about it when the service they advertised is the one their customers want to use. I should point out that these ISPs are a) massively profitable and b) have been dragging their feet over network upgrades for about as long as they've existed. I have little sympathy for complaints about network upgrades when I go outside and see the same piece of copper coming into my house that has been there for half a century instead of the shiny fiber they've been promising for what seems like decades. >IMHO there's not enough information in the article to blame either party one way or the other, but I think that most people on HN are treating this more as a net neutrality thing and not as a contract dispute. I think the mistake you're making is in assuming that those are two different things. What do you think network neutrality is about other than preventing ISPs from leveraging their monopolies into abusive contracts with other parties? Can you see how raising the price of reaching an ISP's customers for all of the entities that compete with the ISP's pay TV content, but not raising the price for the ISP's own content, is bad for everyone including the ISP's customers?
onetwothreefour 14y ago
This is just a peering spat. These happen every single day, but rarely become public. In this case, the ISP kicked things up a notch. If their users don't like it, they can always switch providers. You also underestimate the amount of bandwidth Youtube "freeloads" off ISPs all over the world. This is a very common "problem".
- zem 14y ago
  > In this case, the ISP kicked things up a notch. If their users don't like it, they can always switch providers. this is often not an option, thanks to governmentshaving granted isps and telcos local monopolies in return for their laying the physical cable.
  - bjelkeman-again 14y ago
    You really need to work on fixing that. Which I know is not trivial, but I predict it is going to be a serious or at least costly problem until you and your compatriots do. Where I live in a suburb of Stockholm, Sweden, we have six ISPs offering 100 Mbps in the fibre to the front door ($34/month). The local fibre network is owned and managed by the community through a wholly owned infrastructure company (water, sewage, waste, roads, heating and internet).
  - boq 14y ago
    There is no local monopoly France. (for ADSL, not speaking about fiber here). All of the "last-kilometer" connectivity is owned by the historical telephony operator France Telecom (also known as Orange after its privatization), which has the obligation to rent it to other providers. You can switch between all country-wide ISPs as you wish.
AnthonyMouse 14y ago
>Widespread opt-out ad blocking will likely end in content producers blocking offending ISPs. It's even easier than that. If this becomes a widespread practice, content providers just switch to HTTPS and then serve the ads from the same server as the content. But the ISPs know that sort of thing doesn't happen everywhere overnight, and it isn't worth defending against like that until the practice is sufficiently widespread. So now the ISPs are abusing their regional monopolies in the short term for negotiating leverage to try to collect undue rents from content providers who want to reach their customers. And if you're one of the paid content folks then I certainly wouldn't be getting out the champagne, because if ISPs can use this to extort a toll out of ad-supported content providers, all it's doing for you is setting a bad precedent, and you're next.
- chii 14y ago
  > content providers just switch to HTTPS and then serve the ads from the same server as the content. i dont think this would work for syndicated ads, because theres no way for the ad company to verify that the ad was actually displayed, or that the X impressions the webmaster claims is actually true.
  - tonfa 14y ago
    They could ask people to have ads.mywebsite.com direct to the ad company server, no? (same as mail.mywebsite.com directing to gmail).
    - chii 14y ago
      > use ads.mywebsite.com then add that domain to the list to block! The only way to prevent adblocking is to serve the content and the ad from the same server, in which case you got the problem i mentioned in my reply above...
  - AnthonyMouse 14y ago
    >i dont think this would work for syndicated ads, because theres no way for the ad company to verify that the ad was actually displayed, or that the X impressions the webmaster claims is actually true. You're thinking about this the wrong way around. Google provides web hosting services, right? So now they can offer the feature that if you use their hosting services and use HTTPS, you can have the ads get served from the same place as the content. And if ISPs are blocking the ads that the person buying the hosting service wants their customers to see, that becomes a huge feature. Meanwhile because it's in their cloud, the ad provider / hosting provider can do any verification they need to.
OGinparadise 14y ago
The problem is that the web went from few images and html to 90min videos. If they upgrade their network they'd have to lower their profits and raise prices. In a few words, it's just business and they'd like Google to share the wealth. Google cares about net neutrality only when it's beneficial to their bottom line https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/08/google-verizon-netneutrality https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/08/google-verizon-netneut...
rogerbinns 14y ago
I'm in favour of a more market based solution. If an ISP can show that there is meaningful competition for a customer then they can do whatever they want right up to charging more for access to particular content/services. This will encourage experimentation with pricing and access and would be very helpful. But where there is no meaningful competition the ISP does not get to pick winners and losers - they should be a dumb pipe that does not discriminate. Of course there isn't meaningful competition in most of the US.
- AnthonyMouse 14y ago
  >If an ISP can show that there is meaningful competition for a customer then they can do whatever they want right up to charging more for access to particular content/services. This would be one thing if you're talking about them charging their own customers for such things. Though the idea that any ISP that actually tried this in a competitive market would still have any customers left by the end of the week seems mighty suspicious. But there is another point if we're talking about peering. Each consumer-level ISP has a hard monopoly over its own customers. There is no competition for access to those customers. If you want to reach them all, you (or your network provider) has got to come to terms with each and every one of those ISPs. And the only way you have any leverage is if you're a big fish whose services are too important for the ISP not to provide its customers high speed access to. The little fish need network neutrality or they're screwed. Regional competition between ISPs wouldn't even fix it if we had any plausible way to bring it about.
  - rogerbinns 14y ago
    > Though the idea that any ISP that actually tried this in a competitive market would still have any customers left by the end of the week seems mighty suspicious. I'm fine with letting them try because meaningful competition means consumers can go elsewhere. I hope there are some interesting business models to discover such as ISP side security filtering, ISP prioritisation of traffic, cheaper prices for consumer concessions, allowing content providers to pay for priority etc.
    - 14y ago
tonfa 14y ago
> As for the particular case mentioned (YouTube bandwidth for Free) I would like to know if the take advantage of the edge caching available. They don't have edge caching, but they have a (satured) private peering. I can't believe upgrading this peering would cost any significant amount of money to either of them, the issue is that Free would like to be paid for access to their customers.
bambax 14y ago
Yes, it's weird that content producers should pay for delivery of their content to customers that already pay an ISP to do exactly that. It would be like asking the most popular restaurants to pay for road maintenance. If anything, users who use the network the most could be asked to pay more. It's not Google who "clogs the tubes", it's users!! But in this case what's interesting is that we hear very little complaints from users or users-advocacy groups. Were I a Free customer I would be extremely upset to see that my ISP would decide to filter content without warning (I do hate ads and have installed an ad-blocking solution at the router level, but it's my decision, not my ISP's). What would be cool would be for more users to use VPNs to hide their traffic from their ISP or the regulators; if this kind of incident repeats itself too often, it might become more common place...

by cletus 14y ago

andrewescott 14y ago

This doesn't appear to be the case in question. Based on my reading of the article, it seems that the network link between Free and YouTube is becoming congested at peak times. Free doesn't want to pay to make it any larger, and neither does Google. Hence the escalation. It's not to do with network links between end customers and Free.

AnthonyMouse 14y ago
>Free doesn't want to pay to make it any larger, and neither does Google. My understanding is that when these things happen, the content provider is virtually always willing to make the link bigger (because congestion causes lag for their customers, which they don't want). The problem is that ISPs have started leveraging the hard monopoly they have over the ability to send packets to their own customers. So instead of just paying to upgrade the link between the two networks, they want content providers to pay in effect to upgrade the ISP's own internal network -- which their own customers already paid them to do, but if they double dip then it's pure profit. And the content providers (or their own network provider) will have no choice but to pay whatever is asked or lose access to many thousands of customers. The real problem with all of this is what it's going to do to the marketplace. Because the only way to push back against that sort of extortion is to have sufficiently compelling content that the ISP can't risk losing it, in effect having your own monopoly to counter the ISP's. So YouTube is fine, Netflix is probably fine (but see spat with Comcast a while back), and what happens to the little guy? Screwed. Which is why the people saying this is about Google have it totally wrong. Did you catch the "no comment" from the article? You would think they might have something to say if it actually affected them, right? Condemn the ISPs acting unreasonably? But Google is fine. They're the ones with leverage -- they're the ones the ISPs are complaining about because they can't push them around. The problem is the ISPs can and do push everybody else around. And that has to stop, or we'll be left with the core of the network owned exclusively by a tight cartel of the likes of Google and Amazon because they're the only ones with enough clout to push back against every regional monopoly ISP in the world.
- tonfa 14y ago
  In that particular case, they're also very good, since the ISP picked a moment where actors like Amazon, Google are getting a lot of heat about their tax rate in France. It's likely that the government will like that argument (let's help french business over US companies who don't pay much taxes).
- onetwothreefour 14y ago
  I've read your other comments, but I'm kind of replying to all of them. Most companies are already paying a premium to get content directly to users by way of CDNs. This already happens, has happened for years, and will continue to happen. When someone pays Akamai, it's because Akamai has negotiated directly with every ISP in the world to put some boxes on their network so bits get to the ISPs users faster. I think people who think this doesn't already happen are kind of missing the point. In the case of Youtube, this is a totally different issue, IMHO, because it's not really about content producers. It's about a shitload of bandwidth that an ISP has to build their network to handle. And that's their job right? Except Google runs ads on Youtube, and makes money from the end user this way. The ISP is just a "dumb pipe" to you and me, but they have serious outlay to provide a lag-free Youtube experience to their customers for which they get nothing back. Now, I'm sure the smarter ISPs have negotiated some sort of revenue share with Google as part of peering agreements, but maybe the contract terms in this case weren't to Free's liking. How would we know? IMHO there's not enough information in the article to blame either party one way or the other, but I think that most people on HN are treating this more as a net neutrality thing and not as a contract dispute. :)
  - AnthonyMouse 14y ago
    >Most companies are already paying a premium to get content directly to users by way of CDNs. This already happens, has happened for years, and will continue to happen. I don't recall objecting to that. If ISPs want to run a telco hotel at their central office and rent space for people to run a CDN, that's not a problem. The problem comes when they subsequently leverage their monopoly over access to their own ISP customers to try to force content distributors to pay them for rack space, by refusing to accept free peering. If you don't actually need a presence at every ISP, the ISP shouldn't be able to force you to buy it from them just because they have a monopoly on those customers and can raise the price of peering so high that paying them for rack space becomes cheaper than buying it from anyone else. If you're a network provider and you pay to bring your fiber to the demarc at another ISP's facility, that ISP should be required to accept the traffic. Because the alternative is blatant monopoly abuse. >In the case of Youtube, this is a totally different issue, IMHO, because it's not really about content producers. It's about a shitload of bandwidth that an ISP has to build their network to handle. How is that not about content producers? Content producers post content on YouTube. It has to get where it's going at a price that makes operating YouTube viable (and operating its smaller competitors viable, lest YouTube become an abusive monopoly too) or they won't be able to do that anymore. And the ISPs have big, bad reasons to try to make YouTube-like services unviable: It requires a lot of bandwidth and it competes for viewer attention with their own TV offerings. >The ISP is just a "dumb pipe" to you and me, but they have serious outlay to provide a lag-free Youtube experience to their customers for which they get nothing back. Where does "they get nothing back" come from? They get back the very substantial monthly fees that all of their end customers pay to have access to YouTube. That is what that money is for -- to bring packets from YouTube and all rest of the internet to and from those customers. And every video YouTube serves has been requested by one of those paying customers. ISPs who expect customers to do nothing more than check their email are quite capable of offering a barebones plan that allows no more than 128kbps sustained download speeds and is incapable of streaming video. But they shouldn't be allowed to charge $60 and $100 a month for multi-megabit residential connections and then be heard to complain about it when the service they advertised is the one their customers want to use. I should point out that these ISPs are a) massively profitable and b) have been dragging their feet over network upgrades for about as long as they've existed. I have little sympathy for complaints about network upgrades when I go outside and see the same piece of copper coming into my house that has been there for half a century instead of the shiny fiber they've been promising for what seems like decades. >IMHO there's not enough information in the article to blame either party one way or the other, but I think that most people on HN are treating this more as a net neutrality thing and not as a contract dispute. I think the mistake you're making is in assuming that those are two different things. What do you think network neutrality is about other than preventing ISPs from leveraging their monopolies into abusive contracts with other parties? Can you see how raising the price of reaching an ISP's customers for all of the entities that compete with the ISP's pay TV content, but not raising the price for the ISP's own content, is bad for everyone including the ISP's customers?

onetwothreefour 14y ago

This is just a peering spat. These happen every single day, but rarely become public. In this case, the ISP kicked things up a notch. If their users don't like it, they can always switch providers. You also underestimate the amount of bandwidth Youtube "freeloads" off ISPs all over the world. This is a very common "problem".

zem 14y ago
> In this case, the ISP kicked things up a notch. If their users don't like it, they can always switch providers. this is often not an option, thanks to governmentshaving granted isps and telcos local monopolies in return for their laying the physical cable.
- bjelkeman-again 14y ago
  You really need to work on fixing that. Which I know is not trivial, but I predict it is going to be a serious or at least costly problem until you and your compatriots do. Where I live in a suburb of Stockholm, Sweden, we have six ISPs offering 100 Mbps in the fibre to the front door ($34/month). The local fibre network is owned and managed by the community through a wholly owned infrastructure company (water, sewage, waste, roads, heating and internet).
- boq 14y ago
  There is no local monopoly France. (for ADSL, not speaking about fiber here). All of the "last-kilometer" connectivity is owned by the historical telephony operator France Telecom (also known as Orange after its privatization), which has the obligation to rent it to other providers. You can switch between all country-wide ISPs as you wish.

AnthonyMouse 14y ago

>Widespread opt-out ad blocking will likely end in content producers blocking offending ISPs. It's even easier than that. If this becomes a widespread practice, content providers just switch to HTTPS and then serve the ads from the same server as the content. But the ISPs know that sort of thing doesn't happen everywhere overnight, and it isn't worth defending against like that until the practice is sufficiently widespread. So now the ISPs are abusing their regional monopolies in the short term for negotiating leverage to try to collect undue rents from content providers who want to reach their customers. And if you're one of the paid content folks then I certainly wouldn't be getting out the champagne, because if ISPs can use this to extort a toll out of ad-supported content providers, all it's doing for you is setting a bad precedent, and you're next.

chii 14y ago
> content providers just switch to HTTPS and then serve the ads from the same server as the content. i dont think this would work for syndicated ads, because theres no way for the ad company to verify that the ad was actually displayed, or that the X impressions the webmaster claims is actually true.
- tonfa 14y ago
  They could ask people to have ads.mywebsite.com direct to the ad company server, no? (same as mail.mywebsite.com directing to gmail).
  - chii 14y ago
    > use ads.mywebsite.com then add that domain to the list to block! The only way to prevent adblocking is to serve the content and the ad from the same server, in which case you got the problem i mentioned in my reply above...
- AnthonyMouse 14y ago
  >i dont think this would work for syndicated ads, because theres no way for the ad company to verify that the ad was actually displayed, or that the X impressions the webmaster claims is actually true. You're thinking about this the wrong way around. Google provides web hosting services, right? So now they can offer the feature that if you use their hosting services and use HTTPS, you can have the ads get served from the same place as the content. And if ISPs are blocking the ads that the person buying the hosting service wants their customers to see, that becomes a huge feature. Meanwhile because it's in their cloud, the ad provider / hosting provider can do any verification they need to.

OGinparadise 14y ago

The problem is that the web went from few images and html to 90min videos. If they upgrade their network they'd have to lower their profits and raise prices. In a few words, it's just business and they'd like Google to share the wealth. Google cares about net neutrality only when it's beneficial to their bottom line https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/08/google-verizon-netneutrality https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/08/google-verizon-netneut...

rogerbinns 14y ago

I'm in favour of a more market based solution. If an ISP can show that there is meaningful competition for a customer then they can do whatever they want right up to charging more for access to particular content/services. This will encourage experimentation with pricing and access and would be very helpful. But where there is no meaningful competition the ISP does not get to pick winners and losers - they should be a dumb pipe that does not discriminate. Of course there isn't meaningful competition in most of the US.

AnthonyMouse 14y ago
>If an ISP can show that there is meaningful competition for a customer then they can do whatever they want right up to charging more for access to particular content/services. This would be one thing if you're talking about them charging their own customers for such things. Though the idea that any ISP that actually tried this in a competitive market would still have any customers left by the end of the week seems mighty suspicious. But there is another point if we're talking about peering. Each consumer-level ISP has a hard monopoly over its own customers. There is no competition for access to those customers. If you want to reach them all, you (or your network provider) has got to come to terms with each and every one of those ISPs. And the only way you have any leverage is if you're a big fish whose services are too important for the ISP not to provide its customers high speed access to. The little fish need network neutrality or they're screwed. Regional competition between ISPs wouldn't even fix it if we had any plausible way to bring it about.
- rogerbinns 14y ago
  > Though the idea that any ISP that actually tried this in a competitive market would still have any customers left by the end of the week seems mighty suspicious. I'm fine with letting them try because meaningful competition means consumers can go elsewhere. I hope there are some interesting business models to discover such as ISP side security filtering, ISP prioritisation of traffic, cheaper prices for consumer concessions, allowing content providers to pay for priority etc.
  - 14y ago

tonfa 14y ago

> As for the particular case mentioned (YouTube bandwidth for Free) I would like to know if the take advantage of the edge caching available. They don't have edge caching, but they have a (satured) private peering. I can't believe upgrading this peering would cost any significant amount of money to either of them, the issue is that Free would like to be paid for access to their customers.

bambax 14y ago

Yes, it's weird that content producers should pay for delivery of their content to customers that already pay an ISP to do exactly that. It would be like asking the most popular restaurants to pay for road maintenance. If anything, users who use the network the most could be asked to pay more. It's not Google who "clogs the tubes", it's users!! But in this case what's interesting is that we hear very little complaints from users or users-advocacy groups. Were I a Free customer I would be extremely upset to see that my ISP would decide to filter content without warning (I do hate ads and have installed an ad-blocking solution at the router level, but it's my decision, not my ISP's). What would be cool would be for more users to use VPNs to hide their traffic from their ISP or the regulators; if this kind of incident repeats itself too often, it might become more common place...