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> all because the VPN bypasses the ISP's domain based throttling. Small but important detail - ISPs don't do "domain based throttling" - but it's entirely poss

> all because the VPN bypasses the ISP's domain based throttling. Small but important detail - ISPs don't do "domain based throttling" - but it's entirely possible (and was well detailed fact in the case of Netflix/Cogent/Comcast) that your content provider (Netflix) has purchased transit from a provider (Cogent) that is unable to deliver the service they contracted to because they don't have large enough circuits open to the last mile (Comcast) The real question is whether the last-mile providers such as comcast should be obliged to provide settlement free peering at unlimited data rates with all transit providers is the real question. "Strong" network neutrality would say that they do, and, if Strong network neutrality turns out to be the law of the land, the implication will be that all ISP will transition to volume based pricing for their customers in order to make up for the loss in income that they got from selling transit rights. A somewhat weaker version of network neutrality, but still useful, would suggest that comcast can charge for transit peering onto its network, but must do so on a non-discriminatory rate as established by regulators. I.E. Perhaps Comcast can charge 1$ /mbit/second charged @95th percentile, if they are determined to be a common carrier / title II applicable. Then providers like Netflix (or anyone, for that matter) that fulfilled the minimum operational requires (NOC, peering points, etc...) could purchase transit directly from Comcast. Alternatively, if they don't fulfill those technical requirements, or just don't want to bother, they can purchase transit from providers like Cogent/Level 3, who would resell at a bit of a markup. That's the future I envision being the happy medium for consumers, last mile providers, transit providers, and content providers.

nitrogen 12y ago
The problem with your proposal is that consumers already pay far more than $1/mbit/s to Comcast unless they are still in the introductory pricing period, or are lucky enough to live where Comcast has competition. What's worse, if the consumer actually uses all of that bandwidth (or even their proportional share of a shared last mile link), they will reach their download cap before the end of the month. The exact thing I pay an ISP to do is to provide unlimited (up to my bandwidth plan) transit to the peering points of the services I want to use. They have no ethical or moral right to turn around and charge Netflix, Google, Crunchyroll, Vimeo, or anybody else for the thing I'm already paying for.
- ericd 12y ago
  Anecdotal data point, but as soon as Mountain View made it onto the list of possible Google Fiber deployments, we suddenly got bumped to 120mbit+ from Comcast, up from 60ish, all without any increase in price. Given that that's the only time I've ever experienced Comcast doing something for us that wasn't rage-inducing, I'm pretty sure it wasn't just a coincidence.
- ghshephard 12y ago
  So - here is my opportunity to share with you some information about how the "Internet / Transit" works, versus what you purchase from your ISP (either at home, or in your colo). On the internet backbone, anybody who is purchasing "Transit" - that is, the ability to send data anywhere on the internet, pays for it per megabit/second, billed at the 95th percentile. What this means, is transit provider monitors an interface, and samples the data used every five minutes. (I.E. If at time n the interface indicated that 135 gigabits had been transferred, and at time n+ 5 minutes the interface showed that 145 gigabits had been transferred, then the 5 minute average would be 10 gigabits / 300 seconds or 33 megabits/second. These samples are taken for an entire month - 8640 of them in a 30 day month. Then, the provider sorts them in order, and removes the top 5% or 432 of those samples. They then charge the customer at the speed of sample # 433. This is what's known as "billing at 95th percentile". Note, that if sample 434 through 8640 had 0 usage, it would not matter - they still pay at sample #434. Also, note that if sample 431 through 432 were all at 10 gigabits/second, and sample #433 was 0 gigabits/second - the customer pays at 0 gigabits/second. (The transit provider protects themselves from that monkey business by also charging a fixed rate for the "Port Cost", which is unrelated to actual usage) Now - we get back to what joe average customer does - let's say they download an average of 500 gigabytes of movies/itunes/etc... If they had been downloading that smoothly, over the entire month, that would be 1.5 megabits/second. Their ISP, if they didn't have settlement free peering, would have to pay for 1.5 megabits/second of transit. When I was last purchasing transit a while ago, "High" quality transit (Internap) costs about $3-$4/megabit/second, lower cost (like cogent), costs around $1/megabit/second. In the case of Comcast, they have settlement free pairing with a number of providers, including cogent - but, Netflix decided to purchase their transit to Comcast from Cogent (because they were cheap) - and maxed out all the circuits between cogent and Comcast. Cogent was willing to add more interface - but, and here is where things get interesting - Comcast did not increase their capacity to Cogent. At no point did Comcast ever preferentially de-prioritize Netflix traffic, nor did they de-prioritize Cogent traffic - they just didn't increase their capacity. What's ironic, is that as soon as Netflix just decided to purchase directly from Comcast (at a rate that is rumored to be LESS than what they were paying cogent) then those cogent interfaces to comcast likely dropped down to much less utilization. So - net-net, is that if comcast became a title II common carrier, and were restricted to charging a reasonable rate of return on their invested capital on their circuits (limiting their profit, but, oh well, such is the nature of government regulation in this situation) - then they should charge their ISP customers a markup on that rate of return, based on usage. A typical case might be charging $20/month for the circuit, but $2/100 gigabytes. This aligns everyones incentives. Comcast is highly incented to provide you REALLY fast circuits so you can download a lot. Comcast is also highly incented to provide GREAT transit access to their customers, so content providers can send a lot of data. The Mom/Dad home user comes out great - because they probably are only downloading a few hundred gigabytes of iTunes TV (that will go up as HD and streaming TV become more common) - so their initial cost drops down to around $25/month. The Heavy users, that comcast was previously rate limitting because of violating the "Reasonable Use" clause, is now considered to be a premium customer - who might even get a (negotiated with the regulator) break based on their high volume. In this new world - if you want to download 5 terabytes of data - go for it. It will just cost you a $100 + $20. Everyone comes out ahead except for Comcast shareholders and executives, who won't be able to profit on their monopoly rents any more. Anyways - if I was the regulator with a magical wand - that's the system I would be setting up.

nitrogen 12y ago

The problem with your proposal is that consumers already pay far more than $1/mbit/s to Comcast unless they are still in the introductory pricing period, or are lucky enough to live where Comcast has competition. What's worse, if the consumer actually uses all of that bandwidth (or even their proportional share of a shared last mile link), they will reach their download cap before the end of the month. The exact thing I pay an ISP to do is to provide unlimited (up to my bandwidth plan) transit to the peering points of the services I want to use. They have no ethical or moral right to turn around and charge Netflix, Google, Crunchyroll, Vimeo, or anybody else for the thing I'm already paying for.

ericd 12y ago
Anecdotal data point, but as soon as Mountain View made it onto the list of possible Google Fiber deployments, we suddenly got bumped to 120mbit+ from Comcast, up from 60ish, all without any increase in price. Given that that's the only time I've ever experienced Comcast doing something for us that wasn't rage-inducing, I'm pretty sure it wasn't just a coincidence.
ghshephard 12y ago
So - here is my opportunity to share with you some information about how the "Internet / Transit" works, versus what you purchase from your ISP (either at home, or in your colo). On the internet backbone, anybody who is purchasing "Transit" - that is, the ability to send data anywhere on the internet, pays for it per megabit/second, billed at the 95th percentile. What this means, is transit provider monitors an interface, and samples the data used every five minutes. (I.E. If at time n the interface indicated that 135 gigabits had been transferred, and at time n+ 5 minutes the interface showed that 145 gigabits had been transferred, then the 5 minute average would be 10 gigabits / 300 seconds or 33 megabits/second. These samples are taken for an entire month - 8640 of them in a 30 day month. Then, the provider sorts them in order, and removes the top 5% or 432 of those samples. They then charge the customer at the speed of sample # 433. This is what's known as "billing at 95th percentile". Note, that if sample 434 through 8640 had 0 usage, it would not matter - they still pay at sample #434. Also, note that if sample 431 through 432 were all at 10 gigabits/second, and sample #433 was 0 gigabits/second - the customer pays at 0 gigabits/second. (The transit provider protects themselves from that monkey business by also charging a fixed rate for the "Port Cost", which is unrelated to actual usage) Now - we get back to what joe average customer does - let's say they download an average of 500 gigabytes of movies/itunes/etc... If they had been downloading that smoothly, over the entire month, that would be 1.5 megabits/second. Their ISP, if they didn't have settlement free peering, would have to pay for 1.5 megabits/second of transit. When I was last purchasing transit a while ago, "High" quality transit (Internap) costs about $3-$4/megabit/second, lower cost (like cogent), costs around $1/megabit/second. In the case of Comcast, they have settlement free pairing with a number of providers, including cogent - but, Netflix decided to purchase their transit to Comcast from Cogent (because they were cheap) - and maxed out all the circuits between cogent and Comcast. Cogent was willing to add more interface - but, and here is where things get interesting - Comcast did not increase their capacity to Cogent. At no point did Comcast ever preferentially de-prioritize Netflix traffic, nor did they de-prioritize Cogent traffic - they just didn't increase their capacity. What's ironic, is that as soon as Netflix just decided to purchase directly from Comcast (at a rate that is rumored to be LESS than what they were paying cogent) then those cogent interfaces to comcast likely dropped down to much less utilization. So - net-net, is that if comcast became a title II common carrier, and were restricted to charging a reasonable rate of return on their invested capital on their circuits (limiting their profit, but, oh well, such is the nature of government regulation in this situation) - then they should charge their ISP customers a markup on that rate of return, based on usage. A typical case might be charging $20/month for the circuit, but $2/100 gigabytes. This aligns everyones incentives. Comcast is highly incented to provide you REALLY fast circuits so you can download a lot. Comcast is also highly incented to provide GREAT transit access to their customers, so content providers can send a lot of data. The Mom/Dad home user comes out great - because they probably are only downloading a few hundred gigabytes of iTunes TV (that will go up as HD and streaming TV become more common) - so their initial cost drops down to around $25/month. The Heavy users, that comcast was previously rate limitting because of violating the "Reasonable Use" clause, is now considered to be a premium customer - who might even get a (negotiated with the regulator) break based on their high volume. In this new world - if you want to download 5 terabytes of data - go for it. It will just cost you a $100 + $20. Everyone comes out ahead except for Comcast shareholders and executives, who won't be able to profit on their monopoly rents any more. Anyways - if I was the regulator with a magical wand - that's the system I would be setting up.