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That's funny, why does verizon call their service "high speed internet service", when the is no thing as the internet. And if you go to the landing page for hig

That's funny, why does verizon call their service "high speed internet service", when the is no thing as the internet. And if you go to the landing page for high speed internet access on the verizon homepage, it becomes immediately obvious that they are selling it as a internet service. Should we now start talking about there is no such thing as a video, just 1's and zero's, or, there is no such thing as 1's and 0's, just timed voltage oscillations. Or perhaps in verizon's case, there is no such thing as customer service, just opportunistic moneymaking leveraging monopoly and an army of lobbyists.

rayiner 12y ago
I mean to say that there is no such thing as what software folks think of as the "internet": the sort of idealized network that you think of when you're dealing with sockets instead of edge routers. Obviously "internet" exists as a marketing term, but it refers to what's described in the Cisco article, not to the idealization. Do you get upset when you sign up for a United flight and one of the legs is operated by a codeshare partner? It's the same thing: there's an idealized abstraction of a "flight from New York to Burkina Faso" and the actual reality that the underlying physical service is a distributed one.
- Alupis 12y ago
  Abstraction or not, you are missing the bigger picture. 1) Level3 has offered to split the cost with the Big5 ISP's of upgrading their infrastructure.[1] * This would increase throughput and capacity for both Level3 and the consumer networks. 2) Netflix has offered free Open Connect Appliances to all major ISP's.[2] * This would allow consumer networks to only download a video once, then serve it up locally within their network to all their customers. In-network traffic is almost free for the ISP's. 3) Netflix has offered to change their entire distribution model into a P2P model.[3] * This would allow consumer networks to only download a video once, then serve it up locally within their network to all customers. In-network traffic is almost free for ISP's. . All of these options have been flat-out refused. The Big5 ISP's are purely after the money. There is no other compromise for them. [1] http://blog.level3.com/global-connectivity/chicken-game-played-child-isps-internet/ http://blog.level3.com/global-connectivity/chicken-game-play... [2] https://www.netflix.com/openconnect/hardware https://www.netflix.com/openconnect/hardware [3] http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/netflix-researching-large-scale-peer-to-peer-technology-for-streaming/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/netfli...
  - rayiner 12y ago
    In a world where everyone watches Netflix, the traditional peering arrangements dramatically favor companies like Verizon. Unsurprisingly, they're fine with the existing peering arrangements. Companies like Level 3 are offering to "share the cost" of upgrading the networks, because under the traditional arrangements, they would have to bear the full cost of the upgrades. Everyone in this discussion is just looking out for their own bottom lines.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
      - rayiner 12y ago
        There is this tendency to paint any dispute between established companies and new internet companies as "old-world archaic business models" holding up progress, but it's inane. There's nothing obsolete about selling bandwidth for money. Indeed, in a "modern data-driven society" building and owning the pipes is more relevant and important than ever!
      - danielweber 12y ago
        We heard this excuse from Blockbuster and Hollywood Video when RedBox and Netflix ate their lunch This comment is a complete non sequitur in an otherwise good exchange. Blockbuster and Netflix weren't in dispute over who should pay for sharing an infrastructure node shared between them. Instead it's a generic "popular Internet company good, other company bad" argument.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
- mcphage 12y ago
  > I mean to say that there is no such thing as what software folks think of as the "internet": the sort of idealized network that you think of when you're dealing with sockets instead of edge routers. Obviously "internet" exists as a marketing term So what you're saying is, Verizon's selling a product ("internet access") that doesn't exist—and that it's not their fault that they can't provide it, since it doesn't actually exist? Maybe they shouldn't be selling it, then.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    The product ("internet access") is the same thing that everyone sells under that label: access to a private network that's connected to all the other private networks that are sold under the same label. That's what the "internet" has always meant. What doesn't exist is what software folks and net neutrality proponents think of as the "internet": this idealized homogenous network where every path between any two TCP/IP sockets is equally good. But you don't get to take a well-understood label, apply your own idealized definition to it, then attack companies that are using that label consistently with its traditional definition.
    - mcphage 12y ago
      > But you don't get to take a well-understood label, apply your own idealized definition to it, then attack companies that are using that label consistently with its traditional definition. If someone were to talk to Verizon's sales people, and watch their commercial, and read their sales copy—and then be presented with those two definitions, which do you expect they would believe Verizon is using?

rayiner 12y ago

I mean to say that there is no such thing as what software folks think of as the "internet": the sort of idealized network that you think of when you're dealing with sockets instead of edge routers. Obviously "internet" exists as a marketing term, but it refers to what's described in the Cisco article, not to the idealization. Do you get upset when you sign up for a United flight and one of the legs is operated by a codeshare partner? It's the same thing: there's an idealized abstraction of a "flight from New York to Burkina Faso" and the actual reality that the underlying physical service is a distributed one.

Alupis 12y ago
Abstraction or not, you are missing the bigger picture. 1) Level3 has offered to split the cost with the Big5 ISP's of upgrading their infrastructure.[1] * This would increase throughput and capacity for both Level3 and the consumer networks. 2) Netflix has offered free Open Connect Appliances to all major ISP's.[2] * This would allow consumer networks to only download a video once, then serve it up locally within their network to all their customers. In-network traffic is almost free for the ISP's. 3) Netflix has offered to change their entire distribution model into a P2P model.[3] * This would allow consumer networks to only download a video once, then serve it up locally within their network to all customers. In-network traffic is almost free for ISP's. . All of these options have been flat-out refused. The Big5 ISP's are purely after the money. There is no other compromise for them. [1] http://blog.level3.com/global-connectivity/chicken-game-played-child-isps-internet/ http://blog.level3.com/global-connectivity/chicken-game-play... [2] https://www.netflix.com/openconnect/hardware https://www.netflix.com/openconnect/hardware [3] http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/netflix-researching-large-scale-peer-to-peer-technology-for-streaming/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/netfli...
- rayiner 12y ago
  In a world where everyone watches Netflix, the traditional peering arrangements dramatically favor companies like Verizon. Unsurprisingly, they're fine with the existing peering arrangements. Companies like Level 3 are offering to "share the cost" of upgrading the networks, because under the traditional arrangements, they would have to bear the full cost of the upgrades. Everyone in this discussion is just looking out for their own bottom lines.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
    - rayiner 12y ago
      There is this tendency to paint any dispute between established companies and new internet companies as "old-world archaic business models" holding up progress, but it's inane. There's nothing obsolete about selling bandwidth for money. Indeed, in a "modern data-driven society" building and owning the pipes is more relevant and important than ever!
    - danielweber 12y ago
      We heard this excuse from Blockbuster and Hollywood Video when RedBox and Netflix ate their lunch This comment is a complete non sequitur in an otherwise good exchange. Blockbuster and Netflix weren't in dispute over who should pay for sharing an infrastructure node shared between them. Instead it's a generic "popular Internet company good, other company bad" argument.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
mcphage 12y ago
> I mean to say that there is no such thing as what software folks think of as the "internet": the sort of idealized network that you think of when you're dealing with sockets instead of edge routers. Obviously "internet" exists as a marketing term So what you're saying is, Verizon's selling a product ("internet access") that doesn't exist—and that it's not their fault that they can't provide it, since it doesn't actually exist? Maybe they shouldn't be selling it, then.
- rayiner 12y ago
  The product ("internet access") is the same thing that everyone sells under that label: access to a private network that's connected to all the other private networks that are sold under the same label. That's what the "internet" has always meant. What doesn't exist is what software folks and net neutrality proponents think of as the "internet": this idealized homogenous network where every path between any two TCP/IP sockets is equally good. But you don't get to take a well-understood label, apply your own idealized definition to it, then attack companies that are using that label consistently with its traditional definition.
  - mcphage 12y ago
    > But you don't get to take a well-understood label, apply your own idealized definition to it, then attack companies that are using that label consistently with its traditional definition. If someone were to talk to Verizon's sales people, and watch their commercial, and read their sales copy—and then be presented with those two definitions, which do you expect they would believe Verizon is using?