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Summary: The bottleneck is the the interconnection point. Netflix is saturating the interconnection point, and Verizon wants them or their transit provider to p

by abalone 12y ago

Summary: The bottleneck is the the interconnection point. Netflix is saturating the interconnection point, and Verizon wants them or their transit provider to pay more to "ensure a level of capacity that accommodates their volume of traffic". But Level 3 claims it would be very inexpensive for Verizon to increase capacity there. Just a few port cards and a few thousand bucks for a major city like L.A. They even offered to pay Verizon's costs.

msandford 12y ago
Nope, Verizon's customers are causing the interconnection point to be saturated. Netflix doesn't send data unless Netflix's customers request it. If they sent data without requests Verizon could (and probably would) interpret that as some kind of a network attack. This is Verizon wanting to double-bill for traffic. Plain and simple. > Verizon wants them or their transit provider to pay more to "ensure a level of capacity that accommodates their volume of traffic". That's Verizon's job. To go out and get by any and all means necessary enough bandwidth to satisfy their customers, namely the residential customers who seem intent on using Netflix. At no point do they have a moral imperative to hold their customers hostage to extort money out of someone else that their customers are trying to access. It's already been paid for!
- res0nat0r 12y ago
  > Nope, Verizon's customers are causing the interconnection point to be saturated. Netflix doesn't send data unless Netflix's customers request it. If they sent data without requests Verizon could (and probably would) interpret that as some kind of a network attack. All of your comments keep ignoring or misunderstanding what peering is. It is supposed to be roughly equal data traffic for both sides. Once it is lopsided in one direction, it is no longer peering. It doesn't matter who requested what, the fact that L3 traffic is consuming a majority of the bandwidth now is the issue, and Verizon wants L3 to pay to fix that.
  - gergles 12y ago
    You don't peer with residential ISPs, because they aren't backbone ISPs. Residential ISPs need to buy transit from Level 3. If anything, Verizon should be L3s customer, and L3 giving them SFP is doing Verizon a favor.
    - res0nat0r 12y ago
      This doesn't really have anything to do with ISP's. Verizon is a Tier 1 provider: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network Yes much of the traffic ends up at end user destinations, but this doesn't negate the fact that the peering arrangement is no longer roughly equal.
      - msandford 12y ago
        Verizon Business is NOT Verizon Residential. Those companies couldn't be more different.
        res0nat0r 12y ago
        It really doesn't matter what the company name is. At the peering point the arrangement is no longer mutually beneficial for both parties due to one side of the peering arrangement now using more than its fair share or traffic. This is what Verizon has issues with.
  - thezilch 12y ago
    All of your comments ignore that L3 will pay for any parts and labor costs to get the bandwidth onto Verizon's network where peering is gone. As well, Netflix will do the same -- literally stick a disk array of videos inside Verizon's network.
  - msandford 12y ago
    You continue to miss the point that L3 doesn't consume bandwidth. The people that consume bandwidth are Verizon's customers. And Verizon is failing to procure sufficient peering to satisfy their customer's demands. You can start talking about peering and Tier 1 ISPs but Verizon Residential is not the same company as Verizon Business. Verizon Business is a Tier 1 ISP, Residential is not. L3 can't consume any bandwidth on Verizon's network because their customers don't unilaterally push data to Verizon customers. If there is any traffic from L3 to Verizon it's because Verizon's customers have requested it. That means Verizon should make a good-faith effort to acquire sufficient bandwidth to sate their customers requests all the way up to their theoretical contractual obligations. Only once the bottleneck is COMPLETELY out of Verizon's control do they have any room to suggest that "well our service is only up to X Mbps and in this case it's out of our hands" In this case they have the power to fix the problem and they are choosing not to, to the detriment of their customers. It's shameful. EDIT: If the link were 100% saturated in the other direction then you could potentially make the argument that L3 is causing the problems. In that case their customers are requesting so much data from Verizon's customers that the link gets congested. And in that case it would be paramount for L3 to figure out a way to get Verizon to upgrade their side of the peering agreement. But that's not the situation here.
abalone 12y ago
What's up with the downvote? Is that not a fair summary? The haggling over semantics here doesn't really change the substance. Ok, "Netflix" isn't saturating the interconnection.. "customers using Netflix" are saturating the interconnection. And it would still reportedly cost Verizon very little to fix it. I think that points the finger pretty strongly at Verizon.

by abalone 12y ago

msandford 12y ago

Nope, Verizon's customers are causing the interconnection point to be saturated. Netflix doesn't send data unless Netflix's customers request it. If they sent data without requests Verizon could (and probably would) interpret that as some kind of a network attack. This is Verizon wanting to double-bill for traffic. Plain and simple. > Verizon wants them or their transit provider to pay more to "ensure a level of capacity that accommodates their volume of traffic". That's Verizon's job. To go out and get by any and all means necessary enough bandwidth to satisfy their customers, namely the residential customers who seem intent on using Netflix. At no point do they have a moral imperative to hold their customers hostage to extort money out of someone else that their customers are trying to access. It's already been paid for!

res0nat0r 12y ago
> Nope, Verizon's customers are causing the interconnection point to be saturated. Netflix doesn't send data unless Netflix's customers request it. If they sent data without requests Verizon could (and probably would) interpret that as some kind of a network attack. All of your comments keep ignoring or misunderstanding what peering is. It is supposed to be roughly equal data traffic for both sides. Once it is lopsided in one direction, it is no longer peering. It doesn't matter who requested what, the fact that L3 traffic is consuming a majority of the bandwidth now is the issue, and Verizon wants L3 to pay to fix that.
- gergles 12y ago
  You don't peer with residential ISPs, because they aren't backbone ISPs. Residential ISPs need to buy transit from Level 3. If anything, Verizon should be L3s customer, and L3 giving them SFP is doing Verizon a favor.
  - res0nat0r 12y ago
    This doesn't really have anything to do with ISP's. Verizon is a Tier 1 provider: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network Yes much of the traffic ends up at end user destinations, but this doesn't negate the fact that the peering arrangement is no longer roughly equal.
    - msandford 12y ago
      Verizon Business is NOT Verizon Residential. Those companies couldn't be more different.
      - res0nat0r 12y ago
        It really doesn't matter what the company name is. At the peering point the arrangement is no longer mutually beneficial for both parties due to one side of the peering arrangement now using more than its fair share or traffic. This is what Verizon has issues with.
- thezilch 12y ago
  All of your comments ignore that L3 will pay for any parts and labor costs to get the bandwidth onto Verizon's network where peering is gone. As well, Netflix will do the same -- literally stick a disk array of videos inside Verizon's network.
- msandford 12y ago
  You continue to miss the point that L3 doesn't consume bandwidth. The people that consume bandwidth are Verizon's customers. And Verizon is failing to procure sufficient peering to satisfy their customer's demands. You can start talking about peering and Tier 1 ISPs but Verizon Residential is not the same company as Verizon Business. Verizon Business is a Tier 1 ISP, Residential is not. L3 can't consume any bandwidth on Verizon's network because their customers don't unilaterally push data to Verizon customers. If there is any traffic from L3 to Verizon it's because Verizon's customers have requested it. That means Verizon should make a good-faith effort to acquire sufficient bandwidth to sate their customers requests all the way up to their theoretical contractual obligations. Only once the bottleneck is COMPLETELY out of Verizon's control do they have any room to suggest that "well our service is only up to X Mbps and in this case it's out of our hands" In this case they have the power to fix the problem and they are choosing not to, to the detriment of their customers. It's shameful. EDIT: If the link were 100% saturated in the other direction then you could potentially make the argument that L3 is causing the problems. In that case their customers are requesting so much data from Verizon's customers that the link gets congested. And in that case it would be paramount for L3 to figure out a way to get Verizon to upgrade their side of the peering agreement. But that's not the situation here.

abalone 12y ago

What's up with the downvote? Is that not a fair summary? The haggling over semantics here doesn't really change the substance. Ok, "Netflix" isn't saturating the interconnection.. "customers using Netflix" are saturating the interconnection. And it would still reportedly cost Verizon very little to fix it. I think that points the finger pretty strongly at Verizon.