Netflix Blinks, Will Pay Comcast For Network Access 520
We've mentioned several times the tension between giant streaming sources (especially Netflix), and ISPs (especially Comcast, especially given that it may merge with Time-Warner). Now, Marketwatch reports that Netflix has agreed to pay Comcast (amount undisclosed) for continued smooth access to Comcast's network customers, "a landmark agreement that could set a precedent for Netflix's dealings with other broadband providers, people familiar with the situation said." From the article:
"In exchange for payment, Netflix will get direct access to Comcast's broadband network, the people said. The multiyear deal comes just 10 days after Comcast agreed to buy Time Warner Cable TWC -0.79% Inc., which if approved would establish Comcast as by far the dominant provider of broadband in the U.S., serving 30 million households" I wonder how soon until ISPs' tiered pricing packages will become indistinguishable from those for cable TV, with grouped together services that vary not just in throughput or quality guarantees, but in what sites you can reach at each service level, or which sports teams are subject to a local blackout order.
If Comcast were Exxon (Score:5, Insightful)
They'd be receiving money from Sears when I drove my car to the mall.
Why do people accept this?
Re:If Comcast were Exxon (Score:5, Funny)
I don't see an alternative other than regulation. And regulation reduces profits, so it's communism.
George Washington gave his life to fight against communism in 1776. If you don't believe in profits, you're literally pissing on GW's grave, you bastard!
Just pay up, and if you don't like it then move to North Korea.
Re:If Comcast were Exxon (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:If Comcast were Exxon (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:If Comcast were Exxon (Score:5, Insightful)
No, proper regulation avoids regulatory capture by enacting laws which forbid it. Other countries don't have a problem enacting and enforcing proper regulation while avoiding regulatory capture. It's just the US (along, probably, with various other corrupt third-world regimes) that has this problem.
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No, proper regulation avoids regulatory capture by enacting laws which forbid it. Other countries don't have a problem enacting and enforcing proper regulation while avoiding regulatory capture. It's just the US (along, probably, with various other corrupt third-world regimes) that has this problem.
That is an interesting view of regulatory capture, which basically states companies use regulations to limit competition and maintain higher pricing. If you look at Europe for example, companies were and no doubt still are quite good at it. Airlines for years enjoyed monopoly pricing and even now are trying to stop low cost carriers from invading lucrative routes via regulations. Laws enforcing minimum selling prices results in consumers paying higher prices since more efficinnt companies cannot charge les
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Regulation leads to regulatory capture, which leads not to communism, but to oligarchy. There has been no real implementation of "communism" anytime, anywhere.
Both of those are true. BUT... there is improper regulation and proper regulation.
In countries where backbone is (by government regulation) required to be shared (and NOT for free), it has actually led to greater competition and lower prices than in the United States.
Regulation may be a necessary evil. But incompetent or misguided regulation (as we have now in the U.S.) is just plain evil.
Re:If Comcast were Exxon (Score:5, Insightful)
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I believe you!
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Because internet, that's why. A person is smart, people are fucking retards (or something like that)
Somehow, wiring and routing equipment complicate simple principles like preventing monopolies from engaging in extortion.
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there are 8 bits to a byte and a spare byte in an IP packet is nothing, these days.
we should assign bit numbers to the ISPs. we could call them 'evil bits'. I think its a brand new idea! you could make policy routing decisions based on that.
Re:If Comcast were Exxon (Score:4, Insightful)
Simple Answer: Government Granted Monopolies.
People accept it because they have no other choice, in many cases. When laws exist prohibiting even cooperative ISP's forming to provide competition, you're kind of up shit creek, unless you want to go with much slower 56k/dsl/satellite service...
As for why they put up with the laws, well, there's this two party system we have...and corporations pay both parties...rarely is there much choice on matters such as this at the ballot box.
Re:If Comcast were Exxon (Score:4, Insightful)
It's called a kickback, the legal term is "franchise fees".
Re: (Score:3)
Even if the first mile market was fully open, infrastructure is almost always a natural monopoly: the fewer infrastructure providers of a given type there are, the higher the existing providers' network attach rates are and the lower total network maintenance costs per home passed become. That's why even the most "competitive" markets all around the world only have 1-3 wired communication infrastructure providers.
The very high building costs make it impractical for extra players to enter the market, fight t
Re:If Comcast were Exxon (Score:5, Informative)
Because the finance of the internet is based on a sender pays model. Peering agreements only work when you actually have (roughly) equal traffic with another ISP. In this case, the ISP serving netflix has significantly higher data sent from it than Comcast's network, so they need to start paying comcast to transport that data.
This by the way, is at the same time, why bandwidth caps and metering on a home connection is bullshit –because what you're paying is paying only for the data you send, the data you receive is already payed for by the sender.
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ISPs are not peers though, they are endpoints. The "equal data" argument only works between two backbone/transit providers. ISPs are requesting that data be sent to them. they don't get to request the data be sent to them and request that they also be paid to receive it.
Also what makes you think you only pay for upload? That makes no sense. Though I agree in that bandwidth caps are bad -- though mostly because they are generally misleading advertising.
Re:If Comcast were Exxon (Score:4, Interesting)
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In this case, Sears intentionally blocked off their parking lots, forcing customers to drive over and park on long stretches of Exxon's roads... And Sears' solution to this is to ALLOW Exxon to host a free Sears kiosk in all their gas stations...
The analogy is straining... but that's about right.
Because Netflix's ISP (Cogent) is a douche bag of the highest order, who ALWAYS claims to be the
Re:If Comcast were Exxon (Score:5, Informative)
Now that is a horrible, horrible metaphor.
Almost from day one the internet was based on a user-pays model. ISPs A and B both have a lot of customers who want stuff from users on the other ISP. Data flows back and forth, and periodically the ISP who requested the most data paid the ISP who supplied that data, based on how many more bytes flowed A->B than B->A. It provided incentive for ISPs to seek out content-providers as customers, or to be better content providers themselves (remember, it was mostly universities to start). As the number of ISPs increased they often decided to decided to save bookkeeping headaches and enter into "nobody pays" peering agreements with other ISPs with whom they had roughly symmetric data flows, but consumer pays remained the norm in any asymmetric exchange.
Fast forward, and some ISPs are now trying to change the rules - rather than paying for the data their users consume and passing that cost on to the users, as has been done since day one, they now want to double-dip and charge the content providers as well, for the exact same data transfer they are already charging their users for I have already paid my ISP for a certain level of internet access, why should I be put up with them intentionally degrading my access to some services?
l As for the "kiosks" I'm assuming you're referring to the caching systems Netflix has offered. And again your metaphor is horrible. Under normal rules Comcast would be paying Netflix's ISP for every byte of data transferred, but Netflix offered them an optimized caching system so that instead of having to upgrade their systems to handle the load their customers demanded, as well as paying for the data itself, instead they could simply pay to transfer a single instance make all the free copies they wanted, saving them a bundle.
>Without in-depth details about the exact details of the Netflix disputes between Cogent and Comcast, Verizon, and others, I'm going to assume Cogent are acting like pricks, as usual, and give the other ISPs every benefit of the doubt.
Fair enough. But if it's a battle between ISPs, why are they dragging Netflix into it? Threaten to blacklist or throttle Cogent, and let Netflix either put a fire to their ass to shape up so other ISPs will continue doing business with them, or find another ISP who aren't pricks to begin with.
Re:If Comcast were Exxon (Score:5, Insightful)
It's user pays in the same sense as a grocery store is customer pays. In both cases the business pays for it's "imports", and then passes the costs on to their customers.
Cogent isn't dumping data onto Comcasts network, Comcast's customers are *requesting* that data - that data is part of why they're paying Comcast in the first place.
Again, if the issue is Cogent then Netflix should be left out of it. Once the precedent is established do you really think Comcast would *stop* charging Netflix if Cogent were to get their act together? Let the ISPs duke it out however they like, but leave the endpoints out of it. If Netflix doesn't like the result they can change ISPs - I hear Comcast's backbone can handle the traffic.
Re:If Comcast were Exxon (Score:5, Insightful)
There's so much spin and misinformation in above post.
No, the fees you pay are for your ISP to provide a service, i.e. the transmission and delivery of digital content you choose over their network. And if you request Netflix to stream movies to you, your ISP by golly is contractually obliged to deliver that data to you . When Netflix/Cogent sends that data which you requested to your ISP, calling that transmission "dumping" is clearly 1. untrue and 2. BS.
Not only Cogent customers. The customers of that ISP will also notice the slowdown [netflix.com] . Take Verizon for instance. When/if Verizon refuses to upgrade peering points, all of Verizon's paying customers who use Netflix will be affected. So, what do you call failing to deliver a paid for service to your own customers?
Stop taking the ISP's side and look at the average consumer's point of view for once.
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If there were no "daddy government", there wouldn't be a ComCast. Corporations exist because of government-made laws; in an anarchy, there are no corporations.
The problem is that our government is totally corrrupt and inept. What we need is a different government, which enacts and enforces proper regulation, like every decent industrialized country in the world.
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Corporations exist because of government-made laws; in an anarchy, there are no corporations.
False. The only difference is they are then called gangs.
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Oh please; the only reason corporations exist is because the government allows them to exist by legal charter, and because they pay their employees money, which again is created and distributed by the government. With no government, paper money has no value, and corporations have nothing to pay employees. The root of it all is money, and that's a creation of the government. If the government went away, everything would fall apart because of that simple fact; people would have to move to some other form o
Re:If Comcast were Exxon (Score:5, Insightful)
and what makes you think the corporations wouldn't employ their own militia in the absence of that govt protection?
heck even now many large corporations already employ their own security personnel.
Oh shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Well there goes the Internet
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1969-2014
RIP, Old friend - It was fun.
Re:Oh shit (Score:5, Insightful)
All too true.
The net we knew is truly dying. It goes beyond the death of Net Neutrality and the resulting birth of Net Extortion exemplified by this deal. More and more we see people moving away from rich client browsers and other programs into simpler, disconnected, atomic apps, connecting to restricted, walled garden, internet services. Such services can more easily transition into a pay per-view web, whereas free-visit-traffic websites with no method of charging/locking-in users will find the going difficult. Many are already consciously damaging the usability of their own websites in an attempt to transition them toward a restricted "app"-like format-- the new Slashdot Beta being a prime example.
The internet could be moving towards an earlier proposed vision of it, from the 1980s, when it was proposed that people be nickel and dimed for each additional service they required. Every new service would require -- not a website-- but a new client program, which could naturally be regulated and charged on an individual basis. Somehow,, this outdated model the past is slowly becoming the future of our Internet.
This didn't have to happen. No technological development lead us to this point. This outcome was decided most firmly in the realm of the Law, by the Court system, and with not one pip of say-so from the programming or engineering community which actually runs and maintains the web.
If the internet genie is put back in the box, it will be the result of entirely socially/legally constructed forces.
Not long (Score:5, Interesting)
Not long. The cable guys are, in this way, just like the Bellheads. They see their real moneymaker as these blasted tiered services (never mind their historical roots in equipment limitations). Soon you will probably have to buy the Disney package to be able to get the Google package to be able to get slashdot.
What I think of the judges that thought this was a good idea is not fit for slashdot, much less polite company.
Re:Not long (Score:4, Insightful)
But you're supposing that you're paying for consumption. That's a very reasonable ideal.
Netflix is paying for content, which is one step towards turning them into any other "content provider," which is exactly where telcos want them to be. They want to be in between us and Netflix so that Netflix will scratch their beak.
The end game is not you or I paying for tiers of "bandwidth," it's getting us to pay for tiers of "content" -- we should resist this rather forcefully.
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Re:Not long (Score:4, Insightful)
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Not true. If you're willing to reduce your usage from a few hundred gigs a month to just 5 gigs a month, you can save $5 in some markets.
http://customer.comcast.com/he... [comcast.com]
If you go over that pathetic amount, you end up paying $1 a gig. /snark
I wonder if anyone actually thinks this is a good deal.
Re:Not long (Score:5, Insightful)
Bandwidth is neither unlimited or free.
I fully understand this. That is why i am paying my ISP a premium for 100Mb access.
It's rather fun to see people who wand to have those with high income pay more tax, but not having big bandwidth consumer pay more for the pipe access.
What are you on about? I do pay more for 100mbit bandwidth than my brother pays for 10mbit. I am not complaining about this, nobody is.
I, for one, would be happy to subscribe to a cheaper basic service I don't mind to have youtube (or youporn) in 144p if at the end that saves me money.
Be my guest, pay the ISP less for less speed. Lots of people do that.
What does that have to do with the ISP deciding to charge netflix to provide me the high speed access to the content that I am paying them to provide me high speed access to?
This is the equivalent of me going into a restaurant with a bottle of wine. (The wine is netflix, the restaurant is my ISP.)
Now, the rules here are that I can do this, I can bring in my own bottle of wine, but have to pay a corking fee for them to serve it to me in the restaurant. I am fine with this. So I've paid for the wine (netflix), and I've paid for the corking (ISP). So that's all there is too it.
Suddenly the restaurant phones the liquor store and demands money from THEM to serve me the wine. The wine that I've already paid for myself, and which I've already paid the restaurant to serve me.
WTF
I am the ISPs customer. I am already paying the ISP a lot of money to transmit data over their network to me, from any source on the internet at high speed. Why on EARTH should netflix have to pay them as well for what I am already paying them for?
Re:Not long (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the better analogy is the post office.
You pay shipping to receive packages (to the post office). You also pay for the content of those packages (to whoever you bought the item(s) from).
Now more and more people start ordering stuff from Amazon. The local post office realizes that their mail trucks are filling up and they're unable to pick up all the packages they need. Some of the packages get left behind, some get crammed into the truck (and end up damaged), some make it through.
They also notice that a third of all packages have Amazon logos.
Does the post office:
A) Use the extra money it has been receiving from postage fees to upgrade it's fleet, buy more trucks, hire more drivers, etc.
B) Pick up on Amazon's generous offer to have some items already stocked, packaged, and automatically labeled next to the Post office so that commonly ordered items can be transferred locally instead of going through the USPS's now heavily taxed fleet?
C) Extort money from Amazon in exchange for their customers receiving their packages in a timely and undamaged fashion (which their customers are already paying for).
Now you can say the main difference is that the post office is charging per package vs selling a service to its customers where they can receive a certain amount of mail (say in pounds) per day. Either way though a service is being promised, paid for, but not fully delivered.
And now to add self interest:
What if you got an ad flyer from your local post office with "Now you can order movies and books from the USPS!" while at the same time movies and books that you are paying shipping to receive from Amazon are getting delayed, crushed, or lost.
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Re:Not long (Score:5, Informative)
And there was me thinking that Comcast agreed not to do this very thing when it bought NBC:
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When it acquired NBC Universal in 2011, Comcast agreed to "net neutrality" conditions that prevent it from prioritizing its online content over a competitor such as Netflix. Comcast is expected to offer similar restrictions in its proposed merger with Time Warner Cable.
Were there any penalties for failing to uphold that agreement? No? It was a gentleman's agreement? And they're no gentlemen.
Who's going to lift a finger to penalize them? No one. The members of the FCC want to pass back through that revolving door into a nice cushy position when their commission terms are up.
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You've never managed a network, have you?
Internet access should be a socialized service (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no reason for private companies to profit off the basic requirements of a functioning society.
Communications is so critical that the US Constitution writes in the Postal service as part of it.
Internet communications should be treated as a basic service.
Once this happens, we can restructure more government services to be properly internet enabled.
Really, private companies do not serve the interests of the public. They never have. They never will.
Private companies are great at the luxuries of life, not the basics.
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I don't understand why we don't just restrict companies to do the thing they're supposed to do. You're a cable company? Ok, you're allowed to sell cable connections into people's homes. You want to say what traffic flows on your cable? Sorry, not in your charter.
Are you a movie company that wants to put in cable that carries only your movies? Sorry, not in your charter.
Of course this means that a company couldn't really own another company.
Re:Internet access should be a socialized service (Score:5, Insightful)
Vertical integration (i.e., both manufacturing the product and delivering it) is not necessarily a problem. Vertical integration where any part is a monopoly or oliopoly, however, is against the public interest and should not be allowed.
Re:Internet access should be a socialized service (Score:5, Insightful)
"We" is the people of the United State of America. What makes us special is that we've granted to ourselves the power to govern the country. There is no question that we ought to govern the country, the only question is how. You'd give unrestricted rights to businesses to do what they want. Id restrict businesses from acting in ways detrimental to their customers or to the economy as a whole. This means forcing competitors to compete and not collude, and forcing businesses to avoid conflicts of interest.
Prison companies shouldn't be able to lobby for tougher criminal laws.
Giant agribusinesses shouldn't get together to set grain prices.
Big finance shouldn't be able to recommend buying a security while they short the security.
A company that controls Aluminum transport shouldn't be able to place financial bets that the price of Aluminum will go up.
These are all happening right now, and if we let this continue and grow we'll turn into a corrupt third world hell hole.
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There's no reason for private companies to profit off the basic requirements of a functioning society
So there should be no private energy companies? No private guards / security companies? No private education and no private health care? What a crock of shit.
There's a pretty good reason (Score:2)
There's no reason for private companies to profit off the basic requirements of a functioning society.
Actually, there's a really good reason- because government mandated monopolies have ALWAYS been incredibly shittty. Shitty service, shitty customer service, shitty everything.
As SNL once said "We're the phone company. We don't care, we don't have to".
You want to totally kill what tiny competition is allowed in the ISP space by mandating everyone have to go with the cable provider they have? Well that onl
Re:Internet access should be a socialized service (Score:5, Insightful)
" I go out of my way to use private entities in lieu of the US Postal service."
Ass. The problem with government services is, wait for it, PEOPLE LIKE YOU, who warp reality to fit your propaganda derived ideology, and then sabotage things so that some fat cat can seek rent. A lot of really well run operations suck -because- they were privatized. The military commissary is one I remember well.
You are ignorant of the reality of why these private entities are able to thrive. It's *BECAUSE* they don't have to deliver every letter to every house and apartment in the country. They get to just do the high margin stuff.
And they absolutely know this, which is why they are meeting and discussing what they need to do to support the U.S. Postal service. 'Big bags of money' is a real option for them, because without the post office, *they* can't survive.
Could someone answer this? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm sure netflix has employees whose home internet is provided by Comcast. What would prevent them, or any other customer, from starting up a class action lawsuit (mandatory arbitration maybe) that Comcast isn't providing advertised bandwidth?
Re:Could someone answer this? (Score:4, Informative)
Two reasons.
1. Comcast advertises "up to" X bandwidth. But does not guarantee any specific speed.
2. Comcast can show that you can get "up to" X bandwidth on the local segment. Just not across peering points.
This is another reason that the Time Warner/Comcast merge cannot be allowed to happen.
Re:Could someone answer this? (Score:4, Informative)
fwiw, I have comcast and its been really fast. 50meg/sec download in real honest terms. hard to believe but its true.
even with a vpn and 'watching' (yeah...) movies from europe to the US, I still get 6MB/sec (yes, megabytes) over my VPN, over comcast. this is when I term my connection in a nice safe euro country.
what I hate about comcast is that they don't offer honest pricing. it starts low then climbs and you have to disconnect their service for 6mos before being allowed to renegotiate another 'special'.
still, after being stuck with dsl for over 10 yrs (at t1 speeds or less; usually much less) the 50meg 'blast' pkg is actually quite real and reliable in my area (bay area). I don't have issues with their connection; just their business practices.
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Comcast (and indeed other ISPs) doesn't guarantee speed. They are very clear to point that out in the teeny tiny fine print. They only real guarantee you get is a bill. Since there are no SLAs on home service, just be glad you get a connection at all. The "free" market says they have to make a reasonable effort to keep connections up and running, else they would lose customers. With Comcast 'growing' like they are, they have less incentive to keep the systems running.
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Comcast's binding arbitration, no class action allowed clause in their service agreement.
Illegal [wikipedia.org]
Nope. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Could someone answer this? (Score:4, Insightful)
I may not be a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure the Seventh Amendment trumps the Supreme Court [wikipedia.org]
Nope.
The US Constitution is a very old piece of paper sitting in a museum.
The Supreme Court is a group of people.
A piece of paper is an inanimate object - it can't do anything.
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What's tragic is that in the 21st century we still live in a world where people believe in fantasy.
That fact that you can say that some people derive power from a piece of paper in apparent seriousness is the tragedy.
I don't want to live on a planet where people believe in magic paper.
Common Carriers (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why the FCC should have classified ISPs as Common Carriers a long time ago and given themselves regulatory power over this aspect of these businesses. The FCC chose NOT to give themselves power to regulate ISPs and now we (the customers) are paying the consequences.
Extortion through lack of net neutrality (Score:5, Insightful)
Does this work two ways? (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe it is time for Google, Facebook, etc.. start charging Comcast for access to their networks?
What a shame Netflix took a step back on this and what a shame Netflix didn't get any support by the giants of the internet.
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Sadly, the reason is this: Netflix has competition. Comcast (for the most part) doesn't.
If Netflix is slow and they blame Comcast, some portion of their subscribers won't believe them and will switch to Amazon Prime, iTunes, or some other video service.
If Netflix is slow and the subscribers see that the blame lies with Comcast, they can protest, but for the most part can't get high speed Internet from any other company.
Comcast knows they have this power over people and won't hesitate to use it.
fuuuuuuck comcast (Score:2)
Is this quite the same? (Score:5, Informative)
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It's Cogent who screwed up.
Re:Is this quite the same? (Score:5, Informative)
That is no where near true, and shows you did not read the article.
I think you read the article, but didn't understand what was in front of you.
1. Netflix pays Cogent to be its ISP.
2. Cogent is a Tier 1 ISP, this means that they don't pay for transit or peering bandwidth.
3. Netflix traffic keeps increasing in leaps and bounds.
4. This is a problem for Cogent's peers, because they are receiving more (Netflix) traffic from Cogent than they are sending.
5. Because of 4, Comcast/Verizon/AT&T/TimeWarner have refused to increase peering bandwidth with Cogent unless they get paid for it.
6. Because of 5, all data through those peering points are subject to lag and dropped packets.
The degradation isn't selective, which is why the GP is correct that it isn't a Net Neutrality issue.
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They are degrading one service provider because of netflix, that is the very definition of selective
They are not degrading one service provider.
They are just not increasing the bandwidth available to one service provider, which is not what people mean when they talk about Net Neutrality and "selective"
If Comcast/Verizon/AT&T/TWC picked out Netflix traffic and throttled it, that would be the type of "selective" action we're discussing.
The problem isn't Netflix specifically, it's that the free peering agreements between Cogent and [everyone else] depend on equal amounts of traffic being exchanged.
The on
Might be a shrewd maneuver... (Score:2)
I think this would give the government decent reason to block the Time Warner merger - Lest Comcast become the 21st century version of Standard Oil.
(Or not... if Comcast has enough political leverage with the current administration and with them owning NBC...)
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Lest Comcast become the 21st century version of Standard Oil.
I hope so, because in 1865, kerosene cost fifty-eight cents a gallon; by 1880 it was just 9 cents a gallon.
But somehow I doubt that Comcast TWC NBCU will be able to reduce cable prices as much as Standard Oil reduced kerosene prices. After all, Standard Oil did not depend on local government monopoly franchises to achieve their monopoly, but instead only depended on the market.
[Read Vindicating Capitalism: The Real History of the Standard Oil Com [theobjectivestandard.com]
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That's how they destroyed their competition and established a monopoly - predatory pricing. Generally SO engaged in differential pricing - high where there was no competition and low where there was competition. This practice is currently illegal. See Jones, Eliot. The Trust Problem in the United States (1922).
SO also used their market power to engage in other corrupt business practices including forcing rail companies to grant rates not available to other companies.
Brilliant Move (Score:2)
Now Netflix has incontrovertible proof Comcast has been throttling their service.
Re:Brilliant Move (Score:4, Interesting)
No, not at all, and I'm fairly sure Comcast has not been.
Previously, Netflix had to go through a middleman to get to Comcast (Cogent, as well as Level 3 and others). They already had to pay those middlemen, and the connections they were getting to Comcast were increasingly congested, probably due to transit providers not wanting to pay for peering even if they were sending a lot more traffic in one direction than the other, and thus the other end not wanting to invest in additional infrastructure to handle that increased one-way traffic. This is typical, has been the standard practice for the life of the Internet, and has nothing to do with "Comcast vs Netflix" or "net neutrality" etc. Peering agreements are supposed to assume roughly equal traffic in both directions from both parties, otherwise the one causing the imbalance in traffic is expected to pay.
Now, Netflix are paying Comcast directly to cut out the middleman and get better, less-congested, direct connections. This means they don't have to pay the other transit providers for the traffic they'll now be sending directly to Comcast, AND it seems their payments to Comcast will be less than what they were paying Cogent et al for the same bandwidth.
So for Netflix, this is win-win: they can cut their bandwidth bill AND get better performance and less congestion streaming movies to Comcast customers. What's the problem?
Net neutrality is a real concern, but this particular case is not an example of it.
Comcast usually triple dips why is this a surprise (Score:2)
Comcast charges content providers to be on channel line up
Charges the customer to watch them
Overwrites the provided programming with their commercials.
If ever the was an exemplar of a gravy sucking pig comcast is it, and they are the prime exemplar of how crony capitalism is failure.
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I wonder if anyone under 50 still uses cable or POTS "phone" service anymore.
I'm under 50, but have a POTS line over cable provider so that when delivery people call us in our apartment we can "buzz them in" the door (would be annoying if they called to our cell phone, but it was on the other side of town or the planet, and we never know which one of us will be home to get the delivery).
Of course no manual shopping any more. It is all Amazon Prime and online grocery delivery.
Robber Barons (Score:2)
This is just the robber barons of old. The original robber barons where Knights who built castles on the bank of the Rhine river. Any boat traveling the river had to pay or face the cannons of the castle. There was a new castle around every bend of the river, so you can imagine how expensive it was to ship anything up and down the Rhine.
These same folks can be found today in the "Government" checkpoints that you'll find every few miles in certain parts of Africa, or the Thai cop who stops you and asks f
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Any boat traveling the river had to pay or face the cannons of the castle.
Only the Holy Roman Emperor could authorise the collection of tolls along the Rhine - which is just like local governments granting monopoly cable franchises.
[Technically only those requiring tolls outside the authority of the Holy Roman Emperor were known as robber barons (German: Raubritter).]
Let the market/customer decide is BOTH way (Score:2)
I will develop one of my previous comment.
The current one-size-fit-all billing scheme of the internet is utterly broken from my point of view. I do not have choice of the content's quality I watch. I used to watch youtube on a 5Mbps link, now, I do over a 25Mbps link, but I don't really care about watching HD videos, nor do I give a frack about 720p, 1080p video. Ever if I select youtube "I have a slow connection. Never play higher-quality video", I am always getting a better quality video than I need. The
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What are you talking about? The cost or speed of your internet connection has nothing to do with what's going on here. You pay for a connection to The Internet. You don't pay for a connection which gets you to Google quickly, but then only gets you to Netflix slowly or not
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Thank you Netflix for the long play (Score:3)
Cogent is 100% to blame... (Score:5, Interesting)
Netflix is having all these problems because they use Cogent, the cut-rate morons of the transit world...
This has happened hundreds of times, long before they carried Netflix streaming video:
http://www.pcworld.com/article... [pcworld.com]
https://secure.dslreports.com/... [dslreports.com]
https://secure.dslreports.com/... [dslreports.com]
https://secure.dslreports.com/... [dslreports.com]
http://www.complaints.com/2008... [complaints.com]
http://publicpolicy.verizon.co... [verizon.com]
http://www.prnewswire.com/news... [prnewswire.com]
http://www.fiercetelecom.com/s... [fiercetelecom.com]
https://www.datacenterknowledg... [datacenterknowledge.com]
etc., etc.
Internet Tier Packages (Score:4, Funny)
Someone came up with a nice prediction of things to come along those lines: http://i.imgur.com/5RrWm.png [imgur.com]
Maybe Netflix is too big for peering agreements (Score:5, Interesting)
Netflix is something like 30% of internet traffic and it's mostly one way. They are so big they produce more traffic than many entire ISPs.
They may be so big that no ISP can peer with Netflix's ISP without disturbing this balance.
Is it possible that the solution is that Netflix basically are forced to have multiple ISPs and connect directly to many networks?
I can see that this could lead to problems as has been mentioned elsewhere in this and many other threads, but maybe there have to be exceptions to the general rule.
Stop supporting the monopolies (Score:3)
Companies like comcast only exist because no one is allowed to compete with them. Remove the monopoly protection and let them get torn apart by competitors.
Tempest in a teapot (Score:5, Informative)
Net neutrality is a real issue, but this is not an example of it, it's just Internet infrastructure working as it always has and as it's intended to.
Previously, Netflix did not have a direct peering arrangement with Comcast, so they paid Cogent and others for transit to Comcast.
Now, they have arranged to directly connect their network to Comcast (which was NOT the case before), and, since they are not supplying the roughly equal traffic in both directions typical of "no-pay" peering agreements, they have agreed to pay Comcast for this arrangement.
What they are paying Comcast for direct peering appears to be LESS than what they were paying Cogent et al previously for transit to Comcast... And they have a more direct, and presumably better performing, set of connections now.
This is a win-win for everyone, and has nothing to do with net neutrality. It's a simple arrangement to implement more direct and lower-cost traffic relaying.
Re:How soon until... (Score:5, Insightful)
Regulatory burden? WTF? The only regs Comcast and its ilk adhere to are those that they purchase.
Here's what real regulation would look like -- no ISP may be a content provider of any type, nor can a parent company own both an ISP and a content provider/producer/etc. You can own one or the other, but not both.
The ONLY reason Comcast has a hardon for Netflix is because it is a content provider and Netflix threatens their model.
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Not enough upvotes.
As Lloyd Blankfein said to congress when they asked him if shorting the very securities you were recommending to your clients was a conflict of interest,
"When it comes to making a profit, there is no conflict of interest."
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If netflix is providing content to comcast users, then why is netflix paying comcast?
Because, as I understand it, Netflix is on a different ISP, and traffic from that ISP into Comcast is overwhelminging in the Neftlix to Comcast direction, so the usual peering arrangements based on similar levels of traffic in both directions make no financial sense.
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Re:Long-term loss (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Long-term loss (Score:5, Informative)
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How does moving 15Mbps of data across the internet fit in the open nature of the internet?
That's how it fits in the open internet.
Only in the Comcast(tm)-brand Comcastic(tm) Processed Internet Spread does it matter what's in those 15Mbps.
Why should Netflix free-ride
Since you think netflix is getting a free ride, you should have no problem agreeing to pay their bandwidth bill for them, after all it's free! Or are you knowingly lying?
Oh well, the argument is moot. Once AT&T, TWC, and all the other ISPs
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No no no... See you're competing with bandwidth for torrenters and pirate scammers who are downloading their movies for free which slows down your streaming so Netflix is paying to give you better service... which will be passed on to you as part of your support to legally enjoy and supports the arts communities.
So y'see, in the end it's actually better for you to pirate the movies for "free" with the Comcast service which will hurt Comcast in the end because they won't get their Two Dollars.
err...
Wait that
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I have no problem with my ISP "overselling" as long as it doesn't impact the end users. They know that if they have 10,000 customers with 100mbps connections, that doesn't mean they need to be able to provide 1tbps of bandwidth, but just because they used to be able to get away with only having a total of 1gbps and they now need 10gbps to handle the same load is just a cost of doing business. (numbers made up on the spot, and probably not accurate, but the principle still applies) They should be thankful th
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It's worst than that Netflix is more than happy to supply the gear to put a big hunk of there network close to there clients. Comcast gets fast access to what there customers want that's local to their pops. Comcast is unabashedly says we have the eyeballs and you will pay to access them, they also pay us to access you. Comcast's control of the last mile needs to go away. A passive (or pure optical) last mile is needed. One open to all comers at the same price. Ultimately owned by the people that live
Re:Let me get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
Bandwidth is not free. As such, either you want Netflix to free-ride over Comcast investment, or you agree for the asymmetry to be compensated to Comcast.
Comcast isn't free-riding over anyone. Netflix paid for their outbound bandwidth, and Comcast's customers are paying for the inbound. Everyone's getting paid, but Comcast wants to double-dip. In 2005 Ed Whitacre (then CEO of SBC) said of popular service providers:
"Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain't going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there's going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they're using. Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?"
There was a serious uproar about that, with people rightfully claiming that Ed had no leg to stand on since SBC's customers were already paying for their inbound bandwidth. Exactly what is different now that makes this argument more legitimate?
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Comcast isn't a peering middleman. They are an ISP serving whatever IP packets their paying customers request. They already get paid to connect their customers to the greater internet. It doesn't matter where Comcast's incoming traffic comes from so long as they provide the service they agreed to in the contract they have with their paying customers. It doesn't matter that a large portion of their inbound traffic comes from one source. If the same volume came from 1000 sources they'd still be obligated to d
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