8 ms·

You still haven't refuted the point. This isn't about the relationship between Verizon and its customers, at all. The agreement between Level3 and Verizon pro

by sheetjs 12y ago

You still haven't refuted the point. This isn't about the relationship between Verizon and its customers, at all. The agreement between Level3 and Verizon probably has some balanced traffic requirement, with penalties for asymmetry. If that is the case, then the nature of the imbalance would force Level3 to make payments to Verizon. Verizon gave a very clear suggestion for Netflix: work with other providers as well. If Netflix worked with the overwhelming majority of third party providers, then you could argue that Verizon is not playing fair. But I don't see any commentary that Netflix is actually working with most of the third party providers.

chrisBob 12y ago
I know the answer to this one! We need these guys to setup at the other end of a Level3 link, and then Verizon customers can push them one byte for each byte they get from Netflix: http://devnull-as-a-service.com http://devnull-as-a-service.com Imbalance fixed, but I don't think that is what Verizon wants.
- btown 12y ago
  Seriously though: what if Netflix worked with Level3 to set up an efficient Level3-owned /dev/null server in the carrier hotel AND have every Netflix client that connects over Verizon upload random bits to that IP address whenever buffering is complete or the movie is paused? Then the rates would balance out, and Verizon would no longer have a contractual excuse to NOT hook up those cables to the Level3 endpoint. The only way for Verizon to mitigate this would be to deny their end users the upstream bandwidth they've paid for but are not using (cue user outcry), or to smear Netflix even more so than they're already doing (cue more chances for the PR to backfire). Verizon would hate Level3 for this, but they already do, and they couldn't do anything about it without denying their end users Netflix access altogether! Of course, since the NSA would need to listen in on all that new random-bit traffic (since Netflix is obviously the new Skype in the terror playbook), taxes would need to rise significantly in order to pay for more NSA bulk-data-collection servers. But that's just the cost of living in America...
lstamour 12y ago
Then how would you explain Verizon's refusal to host Netflix content inside its network that's under-utilized? Seems to me it's a win-win for everyone, including poor border routers. Except Verizon then wouldn't make an extra penny from that efficiency, hmm?
moultano 12y ago
It is entirely about the relationship between Verizon and their customers. Verizon's customers want these interlinks, they just don't know it. This whole thing started when Netflix posted a message to their customers explaining it. Verizon is trying to defend themselves against the complaints of their customers.
msandford 12y ago
ISPs charge me primarily to download. Literally I can't upload as much as I download. My uploads are contractually limited to 20% of my downloads. So does that mean there's a downloader-pays rule? If so that means that Verizon should be paying Level3 because it consumes 3x the bandwidth that it provides. Verizon's needs Level3 3x as badly as Level3 needs Verizon on a bit-by-bit basis. So why isn't Verizon paying Level3 for the imbalance? There are actually two sides to the ISP game. There's the consumer ISP side and there's the commercial ISP side. Consumer ISPs are in business to get their customers hooked up to as much of the internet as possible to enable them to consume things. And they charge their customers (normal folk like us) for this service. Commercial ISPs are in business to get their customers hooked up to as much of the internet as possible to provide services. And they charge their customers (big companies) for it. When commerial ISPs meet consumer ISPs typically they say "let's trade traffic for free so that way we can both keep our money and not worry about accounting" What's happened is that a consumer ISP is trying to charge more than just it's last-mile normal customers for data that they use and which it is ostensibly contractually obliged to provide to them without further fees. What Verizon is saying is "look they need to pay us to upgrade this link" which on the surface doesn't sound too bad. It kinda makes sense. If I used more bandwidth they would charge me more. But the thing is that I am already paying them to make sure that the connection to the internet is uncongested. They are deliberately allowing it to get congested to try and bill both sides of the transit.
- neura 12y ago
  This. Completely this. They may have a peer balancing agreement, which is not being held up, but they're also still being payed by their customers to provide access to content outside of their own network and Verizon is enforcing a limitation from another agreement (the peering agreement) that is affecting their ability to provide the content their customers want to have access to. You can't have it both ways. Or... I guess you can, as Verizon has shown.
  - joelhaus 12y ago
    Commercial ISPs vs. Consumer ISPs is a useful way to frame the issue. From an economic perspective, the big difference is that the Consumer ISPs generally have a monopoly over the Consumer endpoints, while the Commercial ISPs do not have a monopoly over Commercial endpoints and must negotiate a competitive market. This obviously gives the Consumer ISPs pricing power in all of their business dealings (including any peering contracts that they force the Commercial ISPs to sign). The fact that Verizon owns RedBox (a Netflix competitor) & sells TV packages is just further motivation for hampering the interconnection.
Alupis 12y ago
Verizon is charging me for access to the internet -- then charging the internet for access to me. That is double-billing, and it's egregious. Verizon is selling me a 50Mbps connection, but if I use it, for even a little, they get upset and say they are over capacity. This is the same company that over-subscribes their network on purpose, as most ISP's do. They will come into a neighborhood with a 1Gbps link, then sell 50Mbps to 100 homes, in hopes that not everyone uses the connection at the same time, nor for long duration.
- danielweber 12y ago
  Verizon is charging me for access to the internet -- then charging the internet for access to me. That is double-billing, and it's egregious. Both me and my brother get billed when we call each other on our cellular phones! Help me!
  - staunch 12y ago
    Which is not how it works in the rest of the world. Only U.S. consumers are so used to getting screwed that they would defend it as normal. Verizon loves double-billing so much for cell service that they want to do the same with the internet.
    - danielweber 12y ago
      U.S. consumers think it's extremely unfair that a poor guy with a landline should subsidize the rich guy with the cell phone or the satellite phone. It might cost me $1 a minute to call my neighbor? No thanks!
    - viraptor 12y ago
      There are other countries that bill for incoming calls. I know of at least Singapore that does it. Also, your phone provider does get charged for each incoming call. They just eat/redistribute that cost, since for normal phone user it's likely to be less than a penny per month. But try running a conference service and you're definitely going to get billed for incoming calls (apart from some weird force-subsidised areas where you can get paid to receive calls)
Zarel 12y ago
Netflix has actually addressed this in one of their blog posts: http://blog.netflix.com/2014/03/internet-tolls-and-case-for-strong-net.html http://blog.netflix.com/2014/03/internet-tolls-and-case-for-... > But when we ask them if we too would qualify for no-fee interconnect if we changed our service to upload as much data as we download -- thus filling their upstream networks and nearly doubling our total traffic -- there is an uncomfortable silence. That's because the ISP argument isn't sensible. Big ISPs aren't paying money to services like online backup that generate more upstream than downstream traffic. Data direction, in other words, has nothing to do with costs. > in other words, moving to peer-to-peer content delivery
- robterrell 12y ago
  I would love to see Netflix buy Backblaze and offer free computer backups to every customer, just to fuck with this specious argument.
  - wmf 12y ago
    Of course, it wouldn't fuck with anything since Verizon would just change their argument.
ansible 12y ago
Verizon gave a very clear suggestion for Netflix: work with other providers as well. Why should they have to do that? Level 3 has open ports now (so they claim). It doesn't matter which provider the traffic is coming from, either Verizon wants it or they don't (and apparently they don't, even though their core is no where close to saturated). The balanced traffic requirement is bogus anyway. Its not as if Verizon offers their own video streaming service that I can subscribe to as a Comcast or AT&T customer. So they're never going to see balanced traffic in the age of video streaming.
LandoCalrissian 12y ago
I don't think in the history of the internet there has ever been a "balanced" traffic arrangement. The majority of people are always going to be requesting more than they are uploading.
- jlujan 12y ago
  As a residential subscriber this is contractually the case. ISPs do not allow the operation of servers in residential contracts and they are almost always provisioned with asymmetric speed. 50 down, 5 up, etc.
mobiplayer 12y ago
The concept of asymmetry as you're using it doesn't make sense in this situation. - If you push traffic to my network it is because someone in my network requested it. - Incoming and outgoing traffic are technically no different. - It makes more sense to pay to receive traffic than get paid to receive traffic. That's actually what VZ customers pay for and that's why not many people complain about ADSL speeds. If I were Level3 I would actively partner with VZ alternatives in the US, announce it to VZ customers so they can move away and then proceed to remove any peering with VZ. Enough bullshit already.

by sheetjs 12y ago

chrisBob 12y ago

I know the answer to this one! We need these guys to setup at the other end of a Level3 link, and then Verizon customers can push them one byte for each byte they get from Netflix: http://devnull-as-a-service.com http://devnull-as-a-service.com Imbalance fixed, but I don't think that is what Verizon wants.

btown 12y ago
Seriously though: what if Netflix worked with Level3 to set up an efficient Level3-owned /dev/null server in the carrier hotel AND have every Netflix client that connects over Verizon upload random bits to that IP address whenever buffering is complete or the movie is paused? Then the rates would balance out, and Verizon would no longer have a contractual excuse to NOT hook up those cables to the Level3 endpoint. The only way for Verizon to mitigate this would be to deny their end users the upstream bandwidth they've paid for but are not using (cue user outcry), or to smear Netflix even more so than they're already doing (cue more chances for the PR to backfire). Verizon would hate Level3 for this, but they already do, and they couldn't do anything about it without denying their end users Netflix access altogether! Of course, since the NSA would need to listen in on all that new random-bit traffic (since Netflix is obviously the new Skype in the terror playbook), taxes would need to rise significantly in order to pay for more NSA bulk-data-collection servers. But that's just the cost of living in America...

lstamour 12y ago

Then how would you explain Verizon's refusal to host Netflix content inside its network that's under-utilized? Seems to me it's a win-win for everyone, including poor border routers. Except Verizon then wouldn't make an extra penny from that efficiency, hmm?

moultano 12y ago

It is entirely about the relationship between Verizon and their customers. Verizon's customers want these interlinks, they just don't know it. This whole thing started when Netflix posted a message to their customers explaining it. Verizon is trying to defend themselves against the complaints of their customers.

msandford 12y ago

ISPs charge me primarily to download. Literally I can't upload as much as I download. My uploads are contractually limited to 20% of my downloads. So does that mean there's a downloader-pays rule? If so that means that Verizon should be paying Level3 because it consumes 3x the bandwidth that it provides. Verizon's needs Level3 3x as badly as Level3 needs Verizon on a bit-by-bit basis. So why isn't Verizon paying Level3 for the imbalance? There are actually two sides to the ISP game. There's the consumer ISP side and there's the commercial ISP side. Consumer ISPs are in business to get their customers hooked up to as much of the internet as possible to enable them to consume things. And they charge their customers (normal folk like us) for this service. Commercial ISPs are in business to get their customers hooked up to as much of the internet as possible to provide services. And they charge their customers (big companies) for it. When commerial ISPs meet consumer ISPs typically they say "let's trade traffic for free so that way we can both keep our money and not worry about accounting" What's happened is that a consumer ISP is trying to charge more than just it's last-mile normal customers for data that they use and which it is ostensibly contractually obliged to provide to them without further fees. What Verizon is saying is "look they need to pay us to upgrade this link" which on the surface doesn't sound too bad. It kinda makes sense. If I used more bandwidth they would charge me more. But the thing is that I am already paying them to make sure that the connection to the internet is uncongested. They are deliberately allowing it to get congested to try and bill both sides of the transit.

neura 12y ago
This. Completely this. They may have a peer balancing agreement, which is not being held up, but they're also still being payed by their customers to provide access to content outside of their own network and Verizon is enforcing a limitation from another agreement (the peering agreement) that is affecting their ability to provide the content their customers want to have access to. You can't have it both ways. Or... I guess you can, as Verizon has shown.
- joelhaus 12y ago
  Commercial ISPs vs. Consumer ISPs is a useful way to frame the issue. From an economic perspective, the big difference is that the Consumer ISPs generally have a monopoly over the Consumer endpoints, while the Commercial ISPs do not have a monopoly over Commercial endpoints and must negotiate a competitive market. This obviously gives the Consumer ISPs pricing power in all of their business dealings (including any peering contracts that they force the Commercial ISPs to sign). The fact that Verizon owns RedBox (a Netflix competitor) & sells TV packages is just further motivation for hampering the interconnection.

Alupis 12y ago

Verizon is charging me for access to the internet -- then charging the internet for access to me. That is double-billing, and it's egregious. Verizon is selling me a 50Mbps connection, but if I use it, for even a little, they get upset and say they are over capacity. This is the same company that over-subscribes their network on purpose, as most ISP's do. They will come into a neighborhood with a 1Gbps link, then sell 50Mbps to 100 homes, in hopes that not everyone uses the connection at the same time, nor for long duration.

danielweber 12y ago
Verizon is charging me for access to the internet -- then charging the internet for access to me. That is double-billing, and it's egregious. Both me and my brother get billed when we call each other on our cellular phones! Help me!
- staunch 12y ago
  Which is not how it works in the rest of the world. Only U.S. consumers are so used to getting screwed that they would defend it as normal. Verizon loves double-billing so much for cell service that they want to do the same with the internet.
  - danielweber 12y ago
    U.S. consumers think it's extremely unfair that a poor guy with a landline should subsidize the rich guy with the cell phone or the satellite phone. It might cost me $1 a minute to call my neighbor? No thanks!
  - viraptor 12y ago
    There are other countries that bill for incoming calls. I know of at least Singapore that does it. Also, your phone provider does get charged for each incoming call. They just eat/redistribute that cost, since for normal phone user it's likely to be less than a penny per month. But try running a conference service and you're definitely going to get billed for incoming calls (apart from some weird force-subsidised areas where you can get paid to receive calls)

Zarel 12y ago

Netflix has actually addressed this in one of their blog posts: http://blog.netflix.com/2014/03/internet-tolls-and-case-for-strong-net.html http://blog.netflix.com/2014/03/internet-tolls-and-case-for-... > But when we ask them if we too would qualify for no-fee interconnect if we changed our service to upload as much data as we download -- thus filling their upstream networks and nearly doubling our total traffic -- there is an uncomfortable silence. That's because the ISP argument isn't sensible. Big ISPs aren't paying money to services like online backup that generate more upstream than downstream traffic. Data direction, in other words, has nothing to do with costs. > in other words, moving to peer-to-peer content delivery

robterrell 12y ago
I would love to see Netflix buy Backblaze and offer free computer backups to every customer, just to fuck with this specious argument.
- wmf 12y ago
  Of course, it wouldn't fuck with anything since Verizon would just change their argument.

ansible 12y ago

Verizon gave a very clear suggestion for Netflix: work with other providers as well. Why should they have to do that? Level 3 has open ports now (so they claim). It doesn't matter which provider the traffic is coming from, either Verizon wants it or they don't (and apparently they don't, even though their core is no where close to saturated). The balanced traffic requirement is bogus anyway. Its not as if Verizon offers their own video streaming service that I can subscribe to as a Comcast or AT&T customer. So they're never going to see balanced traffic in the age of video streaming.

LandoCalrissian 12y ago

I don't think in the history of the internet there has ever been a "balanced" traffic arrangement. The majority of people are always going to be requesting more than they are uploading.

jlujan 12y ago
As a residential subscriber this is contractually the case. ISPs do not allow the operation of servers in residential contracts and they are almost always provisioned with asymmetric speed. 50 down, 5 up, etc.

mobiplayer 12y ago

The concept of asymmetry as you're using it doesn't make sense in this situation. - If you push traffic to my network it is because someone in my network requested it. - Incoming and outgoing traffic are technically no different. - It makes more sense to pay to receive traffic than get paid to receive traffic. That's actually what VZ customers pay for and that's why not many people complain about ADSL speeds. If I were Level3 I would actively partner with VZ alternatives in the US, announce it to VZ customers so they can move away and then proceed to remove any peering with VZ. Enough bullshit already.