4 ms·

Like the tango, it takes two to interconnect. It's a bit biased to say ISPs fail to provide broadband speeds. You could easily say L3 or Cogent fails to provide

Like the tango, it takes two to interconnect. It's a bit biased to say ISPs fail to provide broadband speeds. You could easily say L3 or Cogent fails to provide it's subscribers the transit service they are paying for. ISPs are rightly a little pissed that Cogent, for example, takes Netflix's money for transit service then hot potatoes the data right onto the ISP for the ISP to transit to the end customer. Remember, Cogent is being paid to deliver the content, but they are contracting to carry more data that the interconnect can hold. Now you could say the ISP should just let them expand the interconnect, but that is no excuse for Cogent overselling their own capacity. Interconnects have always been a wild west.

pmb 12y ago
It certainly could be either side of the interconnect that's causing the problem. The important insight is that no ISP is uniformly bad at either end, which means that the problem is not at either end, but in the middle. So this study has found congestion in the core (at the interconnects), precisely where it is not supposed to be, and has found that congestion to be so bad that it drives performance to sub-broadband levels. Cogent and L3 are ISPs as well, so I think saying "ISPs are failing to provide broadband speeds" is fair. However, to add context, L3 had a blog post a while back explaining that they are standing ready to add more capacity for cheap and that the congestion is, in at least one instance (in LA), Verizon's fault. http://blog.level3.com/open-internet/verizons-accidental-mea-culpa/ http://blog.level3.com/open-internet/verizons-accidental-mea...
msandford 12y ago
You could argue that, but Cogent is willing to provide the interconnect to its customer, Netflix. But what we're seeing is that the ISP that is selling internet to its customer isn't willing to provide sufficient bandwidth to meet their expected-but-not-contractually-obliged obligations. They can do this because they have a monopoly on their customers. Not just a "Microsoft monopoly" where there are plenty of alternatives but network effects that keep people using Windows, but honest-to-god monopolies not just granted but ENFORCED by the government. What we have here is a failure of the government to break the monopolies, revoke the monopolies, or police the monopolies. A little legislation that said "you can't oversell your bandwidth by more than X amount" would go a long way towards giving consumers an effective stick to beat their ISP with for over-promising* and under-delivering. Note: The * is there to denote that they've written the contracts such that basically no matter what happens they're not in violation of them. We're only entering those contracts willingly in the sense that it's an abusive contracts from one of two or three vendors, or no contract at all. It's kind of like asking someone if they'd rather be beaten or stabbed. Given the choice; neither. If I have to pick one, how big is the knife?
- rhino369 12y ago
  1) The ISPs are willing to interconnect, they just aren't willing to interconnect in an unbalanced fashion without being compensated. Settlement free peering is free because the two sides transfer the same amount so it's a net of roughly zero. In these cases, the net is heavily on the Cogent or L3 side. Now I think there is a decent argument that ISPs should have to have free peering available at their local loop level. If congent wants to peer at the CO office of the local telecom, it should be able to do it. The issue is that Verizon is not just a local ISP, it's a nationwide T1 provider. It sells transit service. It should be allowed to charge for transit to it's own local loop networks. 2) There are no enforced monopolies anymore, and haven't been for a long time. Damn near all profitable areas have a telecom and a cable provider. Congress banned monopoly franchise agreements for cable and fiber in 1992. Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992, Pub. L. No. 102-385, 106 Stat. 1460 (1992). 3) I believe ISPs should have to meet some benchmarks for speed compared what they advertise, but you can't force them to maintain speed on specific interconnects. If Cogent has a shitty network that isn't on Verizon.
  - dublinben 12y ago
    Have residential ISPs selling heavily asymmetrical connections (25:1 ratios aren't uncommon) ever had roughly equal in/out traffic with Tier 1 providers? Haven't they been the party to buy transit in the past? Aren't Comcast and Verizon just taking advantage of their size and monopoly position to play hardball with the Tier 1 providers?
    - rhino369 12y ago
      1) Probably not but it is much more one sided with media streaming. This is why I said that ISPs should be forced to peer for free at the local loop level. But outside of that, they are acting as a transit network. 2) Small ISPs buy transit if they need it. Comcast and Verizon don't because their larger networks acts as a transit for them. 3) Yes they are taking advantage of their size, but they are performing the same service as a transit provider. If Verizon spun off their local ISP network, Cogent would have to pay VerizonT1 to transit to the local ISP. Why does Verizon owning the transit and local somehow make it unreasonable to ask for payment? Verizon and Comcast aren't asking for money to accept data, they are asking for money to transit the data for Cogent and L3.

pmb 12y ago

It certainly could be either side of the interconnect that's causing the problem. The important insight is that no ISP is uniformly bad at either end, which means that the problem is not at either end, but in the middle. So this study has found congestion in the core (at the interconnects), precisely where it is not supposed to be, and has found that congestion to be so bad that it drives performance to sub-broadband levels. Cogent and L3 are ISPs as well, so I think saying "ISPs are failing to provide broadband speeds" is fair. However, to add context, L3 had a blog post a while back explaining that they are standing ready to add more capacity for cheap and that the congestion is, in at least one instance (in LA), Verizon's fault. http://blog.level3.com/open-internet/verizons-accidental-mea-culpa/ http://blog.level3.com/open-internet/verizons-accidental-mea...

msandford 12y ago

You could argue that, but Cogent is willing to provide the interconnect to its customer, Netflix. But what we're seeing is that the ISP that is selling internet to its customer isn't willing to provide sufficient bandwidth to meet their expected-but-not-contractually-obliged obligations. They can do this because they have a monopoly on their customers. Not just a "Microsoft monopoly" where there are plenty of alternatives but network effects that keep people using Windows, but honest-to-god monopolies not just granted but ENFORCED by the government. What we have here is a failure of the government to break the monopolies, revoke the monopolies, or police the monopolies. A little legislation that said "you can't oversell your bandwidth by more than X amount" would go a long way towards giving consumers an effective stick to beat their ISP with for over-promising* and under-delivering. Note: The * is there to denote that they've written the contracts such that basically no matter what happens they're not in violation of them. We're only entering those contracts willingly in the sense that it's an abusive contracts from one of two or three vendors, or no contract at all. It's kind of like asking someone if they'd rather be beaten or stabbed. Given the choice; neither. If I have to pick one, how big is the knife?

rhino369 12y ago
1) The ISPs are willing to interconnect, they just aren't willing to interconnect in an unbalanced fashion without being compensated. Settlement free peering is free because the two sides transfer the same amount so it's a net of roughly zero. In these cases, the net is heavily on the Cogent or L3 side. Now I think there is a decent argument that ISPs should have to have free peering available at their local loop level. If congent wants to peer at the CO office of the local telecom, it should be able to do it. The issue is that Verizon is not just a local ISP, it's a nationwide T1 provider. It sells transit service. It should be allowed to charge for transit to it's own local loop networks. 2) There are no enforced monopolies anymore, and haven't been for a long time. Damn near all profitable areas have a telecom and a cable provider. Congress banned monopoly franchise agreements for cable and fiber in 1992. Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992, Pub. L. No. 102-385, 106 Stat. 1460 (1992). 3) I believe ISPs should have to meet some benchmarks for speed compared what they advertise, but you can't force them to maintain speed on specific interconnects. If Cogent has a shitty network that isn't on Verizon.
- dublinben 12y ago
  Have residential ISPs selling heavily asymmetrical connections (25:1 ratios aren't uncommon) ever had roughly equal in/out traffic with Tier 1 providers? Haven't they been the party to buy transit in the past? Aren't Comcast and Verizon just taking advantage of their size and monopoly position to play hardball with the Tier 1 providers?
  - rhino369 12y ago
    1) Probably not but it is much more one sided with media streaming. This is why I said that ISPs should be forced to peer for free at the local loop level. But outside of that, they are acting as a transit network. 2) Small ISPs buy transit if they need it. Comcast and Verizon don't because their larger networks acts as a transit for them. 3) Yes they are taking advantage of their size, but they are performing the same service as a transit provider. If Verizon spun off their local ISP network, Cogent would have to pay VerizonT1 to transit to the local ISP. Why does Verizon owning the transit and local somehow make it unreasonable to ask for payment? Verizon and Comcast aren't asking for money to accept data, they are asking for money to transit the data for Cogent and L3.