Rebuttals and questions, below
On Sat, Nov 29, 2014 at 12:21 PM, Ken Norton <ken@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > Wrong how, Ken?
>
> Just a handful of points, which are not all-inclusive:
>
> 1. The Comcast throttling thing was proven to be a different issue.
> This happened, not on the ISP side, but on the transport network side.
> All wholesale customers were affected.
>
Is there some sort of reference in support of this claim? I've not seen
one, and I've been reading extensively on this issue for months.
> 2. To follow that "delivery truck" metaphor, the ISP is the delivery
> truck. What Netflix has done is load up the trucks with tons of
> packages and not pay a dime for any of it.
>
Except, of course, for whatever they're already paying to get their data
on-line via their own centers' network connections or agreements with other
providers of bandwidth and/or remote storage and network access. No one
gets network access without paying "a dime for any of it". One either pays
an ISP or one runs private cable to someplace where someone will let you
piggy-back on their existing connection.
Regardless, the idea of the Internet is that everyone pays some sort of fee
in order to be connected, and, perhaps, also pays for an maintains some of
the infrastructure. Perhaps if one or more of the biggies, like comcast and
verizon, want to whine about what their share is, as compared with their
revenue, then they ought to be willing to divest themselves of some of the
cable plant, or at least of those non-compete/monopoly agreements they have
with municipalities all over the country. At present they have monopoly
benefits, but without the requirements that used to be in place for the old
Ma Bell, for example. Back then, it was essentially required that Bell
connect everyone, no matter where located. The current cable carriers are
allowed to bypass anywhere and everywhere that doesn't meet their density
(i.e. revenue) requirements. But, that's a result of them managing to
convince technologically clueless legislators to support their bid to be
"Information Providers" instead of "Common Carriers". In truth, they're
BOTH, and the common carrier side should be handled as a common carrier.
> 3. Netflix has brokered a deal with the USPS to do exactly what they
> are complaining about with the ISPs. In fact, there is an on-going
> federal investigation into that one which may end up with criminal
> charges.
>
Reference?
>
> 4. Netflix is paying for the guerrilla marketing methods, such as
> these cutesy little videos. You've been had.
>
Do you allege that Verizon and Comcast and Time-Warner are not? If so, you
must be in a television market small enough to not be getting the ads. Or
the snail mail. And I'm not even gonna talk about how the big news
organizations have all of a sudden *changed their tune* about which side of
the debate they're supporting. And let's not forget who they rely on to get
their signal in most households.
> 5. To follow back on point #2, it costs the ISP about $10 a month PER
> USER to just deliver Netflix content alone. Netflix is not footing any
> of this bill at all. None.
>
No, the *end-user* is. Via the 100$+ per month fee that many of us, (most
of us) are paying. So where's the gripe? Are you suggesting that we should
pay even more, if we want Netflix, than we already do for our so-called
"guaranteed access at xxMB"? Why should it matter. Data is data is data,
and I can fill up my pipe however I want. Next, Comcast/Verizon/Time-Warner
are gonna be claiming we need to pay more for Gmail than Yahoo mail.
> 6. Broadband Internet is NOT a monopoly. Only in some areas, but not
> everywhere. There is plenty of competition.
>
Name that "competition in most areas". As far as most people are concerned,
Internet access is like the Highlander: "There can be only one!" And
competition between Verizon and Comcast or Verizon and Time-Warner doesn't
count, as those are the same people who used their status as "not common
carriers" to force out most of the other smaller ISPs who weren't allowed
to connect to their networks, while the (formerly independent) telephone
companies had no choice but to peer them.
> 7. Comparing broadband in the USA to highly concentrated places like
> Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, etc., is pretty wrong. What all of
> those locations have over the USA is a much higher percentage of the
> population that live in multi-tenent dwellings. Large apartment
> buildings are served by a single business-grade high-bandwidth fiber
> connection and the building is then one giant LAN. That's a much
> different situation than in the USA where the majority of the
> population lives in locations served by DSL or Cable-Modem
> technologies. And then the people who say that even Uganda is better
> connected than the USA are even more delusional.
>
And the reason for this lousy connectivity density and poor access methods
is not just multi-tenant dwellings vs dispersed population. It's the fact
that there's no regulation requiring the same sort of service levels as a
return for monopoly access to a given area as was required of the old baby
bells. The reason there is DSL most everywhere is that common carrier
status that the biggies want to avoid at all costs. As for cable modem, ask
some of the people in this area, arguably one of the most densely populated
in the US, why the Verizon/Comcast/Time-Warner/AT&T companies keep refusing
to run cable to whole subdivisions.
> 8. Netflix is paying for politicians to support Net Neutrality as
> Netflix wants it. Follow the money. They bought off Mr.
> Franken/Obama/Boener...
>
Are you seriously arguing that Netflix has more money throw at politicians
than Comcast or Time-Warner or Verizon? Really? Or might it be that the
FCC's current approach has more to do with having a former exec of one of
those companies at the helm?
> 9. The USA does NOT have the most expensive Internet access around.
> Far from it. Other than the wireless providers, you rarely have
> bandwidth caps, throttling, walled-gardens and per-bit tiered rates
> here. When comparing apples to apples, the USA's internet costs for
> the typical user is actually pretty good. And the limits on speeds as
> compared to the other countries is strictly a geography thing. I've
> even seen people state that China has Net Neutrality.
>
> Right.
>
You might actually be right here. But, realistically, one should be
comparing industrialized democracies.
>
> My own opinion on this one is that if Netflix is involved at all,
> you've been had. This whole Net Neutrality argument that they've been
> selling is based on lies and convenient misrepresentations of the
> truth. Fortunately, over the last two weeks, we've seen a little bit
> of a turn on this and the press is starting to figure out just what is
> going on. Netflix is one evil entity and having them define Net
> Neutrality laws is going to really be a problem. As I work for a major
> provider, who has interconnection agreements with every major Internet
> entity out there, I see the other side where Netflix has specifically
> chosen to hamstring the customer's experience by forcing us to carry
> their traffic from absolutely hideous locations through third-party
> providers just to make a point. This Comcast thing? That's exactly
> what I'm talking about. See below illustration.
>
> Our company has primary edge routers in Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta and
> New York City. (There are others that I'm not at liberty to talk
> about). At each of these locations, we hand off to Cogent, Level3 and
> others. In case you wonder "who owns the Internet", it's Cogent,
> Level3, Verizon, etc. Netflix pays for a connection to Cogent in, say,
> Dallas. Now, what happens with Google and other major players, is that
> they also hand off to Cogent, but also have interconnections with the
> major ISPs that also are present in these same locations. This means
> that, in the case of Google, not one bit of data flows from Google to
> our company through Cogent or Level3. In fact, we meet Google at all
> the major locations so we have lower latencies and better control over
> everything. Life is good. But not with Netflix. Netflix has chosen to
> go through one interconnection point and force all their traffic to
> flow over third-party providers and in many cases, clear across the
> country in order to meet the ISPs.
>
> OK, so back to point 1 above. Cogent was throttling wholesale
> customers in favor of their own traffic. This ended up being a setting
> error and not intentional. Regardless, it wasn't Cogent, the cable
> company, it was Cogent, the Tier-1 backbone provider. These are
> actually two entirely different business entities. The Cogent in
> question doesn't even do cable-tv.
>
> Netflix was in the process of continuing to establish interconnection
> agreements with more and more ISPs, but they saw an opportunity to
> seize upon a political issue and jumped right into it. Overnight, they
> ceased ALL additional interconnection agreements and then changed
> their own routing to move traffic around to bury Cogent's and
> Verizon's backbone and slow up the whole thing. They immediately
> started blaming everybody for this, when it was Netflix themselves
> that caused it. We saw a distinct point where Netflix changed their
> routing to move the data delivery to the worse possible point for
> everybody. In fact, even those of us who already had interconnects
> with Netflix saw the traffic through those interconnections cease
> entirely!!! Yes, you read that right. Netflix rerouted traffic AWAY
> FROM ALREADY ESTABLISHED INTERCONNECTIONS AND DETOURED THE TRAFFIC
> THROUGH LONGEST-PATH ROUTING just to make their point. In a
> conversation with one of my counterparts at a major Tier-1 provider,
> he said that Netflix literally tried to kill their network by force
> routing traffic through one location and then the next night through
> another. Of course, when this happens, it causes a cascading network
> failure through all the Tier-1s and in one instance they actually had
> to kill the connection with Netflix just to save the Internet from
> crashing.
>
> You may ask "why would Netflix want to hurt their own customers?" As
> long as Netflix is able to successfully blame others, they're doing
> just fine.
>
> Meanwhile, those of us major ISPs with established interconnections
> with Netflix just shake our heads because there is no traffic flowing
> through them. If you are wondering how much one of those
> interconnections cost? Oh, about $20,000 in parts and $600 per month
> in fiber cross-connect fees in the carrier-hotel. It's not about the
> money, it's all about the politics. We spend billions of dollars a
> year on our networks. I can approve a $20,000 expenditure myself with
> no additional approval.
>
> Can you now see why I'm so ticked at Netflix? They are lying bastards
> bent on destroying what works out of their own greed.
>
> A change in Net Neutrality laws, as Franken/Obama/Boener/Netflix wants
> it WILL result in a monthly increase of $10 in the USA for broadband
> within six months of the passing of any new laws. It must. Without
> content abusers, like Netflix, paying the freight, somebody has to and
> it will be the consumer. Don't think it will happen? It's already been
> planned. If Netflix gets its way, the average cost will go up $10 per
> month, either directly, or through tiered bandwidth offerings just
> like we have on the wireless side.
>
> Before anybody gets too excited about Mark Cuban's comments, the fact
> is that his Audionet/Broadcastdotcom entity did establish
> interconnection agreements with everybody possible back in the day, so
> he was paying for "fast lanes" as they so existed. I knew Mark back in
> those days and was very familiar with his operation before he sold it.
>
> Meanwhile, our existing multiple 10G interconnections with Netflix sit
> idle and we have no clue from one day to the next which Tier-1
> interconnection in which city is going to get hammered that night by
> Netflix traffic. They are playing games with the system and looking
> for any and every opportunity to bloody another nose.
>
> Absolute scumbags.
>
> There. I've vented my spleen enough for one day.
>
While I don't argue with your experience of conditions here, Ken, I wonder
why, if this is Netflix common practice, we're not hearing lots of
complaining from ALL of the backbone providers. Instead we hear only from
those companies in direct competition with Netflix for the provision of the
content. In fact, Level3 has published articles that definitely point to
Comcast, et al. See here, for links and an article:
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/03/level-3-blames-internet-slowdowns-on-isps-refusal-to-upgrade-networks/
The point, however, is that Comcast, et al are arguing to be placed in a
special status, where they get most of the benefits of being a common
carrier, and none of the down-sides. And they're arguing that Net
Neutrality is something "new" they're being required to do, rather than
something that already existed that they no longer care to do.
>
> AG
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