What Net Neutrality should and should not cover
Without the actual proposal being published for review its hard to know the specifics but it appears that it prohibits blocking and last mile tinkering of traffic (#1). What this means to me is ISP's can't block access to a specific website like alibaba and demand ransom from subscribers to access it again. I do not know if this provision would also include prohibiting intentionally throttling traffic on a home by home basis (#2) and holding services to the same kind of random is also prohibited but I think this too would be a far practice to prohibit. Bits are bits. From the routers article ( http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/23/us-usa-fcc-internet-idUSBREA3M1H020140423) and elsewhere it seems what the proposal does not outlaw is paid peering and perhaps use of QoS on networks. #3 On paid peering: I think this is where people start to disagree but I don't see what should be criminal about paid peering agreements. More specifically, I see serious problems once you outlaw paid peering and then look at the potential repercussions that would have. Clearly it would not be fair to for only the largest content providers to be legally mandated as settlement free peers because that would leave smaller competitors out in the cold. The only fair way to outlaw paid peering would be to do it across the board for all companies big and small. This would be everyone from major content providers to my uncle to sells hand runs a website to sell hand crafted chairs. This would have major sweeping repercussions for the Internet as we know it over night. I think it makes sense to allow companies to work it out as long as the prices charged aren't unreasonably high based on market prices for data. This means if 2 ISP's with similar networks want to be settlement free they can. If ISP's want to charge for transit they can, and if ISP's want to charge CDN's to deliver data they can. Typically the company with the disproportional amount of costs of carrying the traffic would charge the other company but really it should be up to the companies involved to decide. Based on the post by Tom Wheeler from the FCC ( http://www.fcc.gov/blog/setting-record-straight-fcc-s-open-internet-rules ) it sounds like if this pricing is commercially unreasonable (ie extortion) they will step in. Again I think this is fair. #4 On QoS (ie fast lane?): In some of the articles I skimmed there was a lot of talk about fast lane traffic but what this sounds like today would be known as QoS and classification marking that would really only become a factor under instances of congestion. The tech bloggers and journalists all seems to be unanimously opposed to this but I admit I am sort of scratching my head at the outrage over something that has been in prevalent use on many major networks for several years. I don't see this as the end of the Internet as we know it that now seems to essentially be popular opinion on the issue. Numerous businesses are using QoS to protect things like voice traffic and business critical or emergency traffic from being impacted in a failure scenario. In modern day hyper converged networks where pretty soon even mobile voice traffic could be VoIP over a data network prohibiting the use of all QoS seems irresponsible. The larger question is, is it fair for ISP's to charge people to be in a priority other than best effort? To answer a question with a question, if an ISP is using a priority other than best effort for some of its own traffic is it fair if a peer with a competing service is only best effort delivery? This is sort of akin to Comcast not counting its own video service against the ~250G/month cap of subscribers but counting off network traffic against it. In theory if some of an ISP's own services are able to use higher than best effort priority the same should be available to the business they are selling service to. If they go completely out of their way to intentionally congest the network to force people into needing a higher than best effort classification I would think it should fall into what the FCC calls commercially unreasonable and thus be considered a violation. So again, I think this is fair. I have numbered the items I mentioned from 1-4 being #1. Blocking #2. per household (last mile) rate limiting of a service (though rate limiting at all anywhere should probably be up for discussion so #2.5) #3. The legality of paid peering #4. The legality of QoS (unless fast lane is something else I don't understand). Feel free to augment the list.
Re: The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they could enshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post
How is this *not* Comcast's problem? If my users are requesting more traffic than I banked on, how is it not my responsibility to ensure I have capacity to handle that? I have gear; you have gear. I upgrade or add ports on my side; you upgrade or add ports on your side. Am I missing something? Sort of yes, it's Comcasts problem to upgrade subscriber lines but if that point of congestion is the links between Netflix and Comcast then Netflix would be on the hook to ensure they have enough capacity to Comcast to get the data at least gets TO the Comcast network. The argument at hand is if Comcast permitted to charge them for the links to get to their network or should they be free/settlement free. I think it should be OK to charge for those links as long as its a fair market rate and the price doesn't basically amount to extortion. Sadly the numbers are not public so I couldn't tell you one way or the other aside from I disagree with the position Netflix seems to be taking that they simply must be free. Once that traffic is given directly to comcast no other party receives payment for delivering it so there is no double billing. This diagram best describes the relationship (ignoring pricing): http://www.digitalsociety.org/files/gou/free-and-paid-peering.png Content provider would be Netflix and Comcast would be Broadband ISP 1. On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 1:56 AM, Hugo Slabbert hslabb...@stargate.cawrote: Okay, I'm not as seasoned as a big chunk of this list, but please correct me if I'm wrong in finding this article a crock of crap. With Comcast/Netflix being in the mix and by association Cogent in the background of that there's obviously room for some heated opinions, but here goes anyway... A long, long time ago when the Internet was young and few, if any had thought to make a profit off it, an unofficial system developed among the network providers who carried the traffic: You carry my traffic and I'll carry yours and we don't need money to change hands. This system has collapsed under modern realities. I wasn't aware that settlement-free peering had collapsed. Not saying it's the only way, but she ain't dead yet. Seltzer uses that to set up balanced ratios as the secret sauce that makes settlement-free peering viable: The old system made sense when the amount of traffic each network was sending to the other was roughly equivalent. ...and since Netflix sends Comcast more than it gets, therefor Netflix needs to buck up: Of course Netflix should pay network providers in order to get the huge amounts of bandwidth they require in order to reach their customers with sufficient quality. But this isn't talking about transit; this is about Comcast as an edge network in this context and Netflix as a content provider sending to Comcast users the traffic that they requested. Is there really anything more nuanced here than: 1. Comcast sells connectivity to their end users and sizes their network according to an oversubscription ratio they're happy with. (Nothing wrong here; oversubscription is a fact of life). 2. Bandwidth-heavy applications like Netflix enter the market. 3. Comcast's customers start using these bandwidth-heavy applications and suck in more data than Comcast was betting on. 4. Comcast has to upgrade connectivity, e.g. at peering points with the heavy inbound traffic sources, accordingly in order to satisfy their customers' usage. How is this *not* Comcast's problem? If my users are requesting more traffic than I banked on, how is it not my responsibility to ensure I have capacity to handle that? I have gear; you have gear. I upgrade or add ports on my side; you upgrade or add ports on your side. Am I missing something? Overall it seems like a bad (and very public) precedent shift towards double dipping, and the pay-for-play bits in the bastardized Open Internet rules don't help on that front. Now, Comcast is free to leverage their customers as bargaining chips to try to extract payments, and Randy's line of encouraging his competitors to do this sort thing seems fitting here. Basically this doesn't harm me directly at this point. Considering the lack of broadband options for large parts of the US, though, it seems that end users are getting the short end of the stick without any real recourse while that plays out. -- Hugo From: NANOG nanog-boun...@nanog.org on behalf of Larry Sheldon larryshel...@cox.net Sent: Saturday, April 26, 2014 4:58 PM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they could enshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post h/t Suresh Ramasubramanian FCC throws in the towel on net neutrality http://www.zdnet.com/fcc-throws-in-the-towel-on-net-neutrality-728770/ Forward! On to the next windmill, Sancho! -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics
RE: The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they could enshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post
...but if that point of congestion is the links between Netflix and Comcast... Which, from the outside, does appear to have been the case. ...then Netflix would be on the hook to ensure they have enough capacity to Comcast to get the data at least gets TO the Comcast network. Which I don't believe was a problem? Again, outside looking in, but the appearances seemed to indicate that Comcast was refusing to upgrade capacity/ports, whereas I didn't see anything indicating that Netflix was doing the same. So: I have gear; you have gear. I upgrade or add ports on my side; you upgrade or add ports on your side. The argument at hand is if Comcast permitted to charge them for the links to get to their network or should they be free/settlement free. I think it should be OK to charge for those links as long as its a fair market rate and the price doesn't basically amount to extortion. Are we talking here about transport between Netflix's POPs and Comcast's? I definitely don't expect Comcast to foot the bill for transport between the two, and if Netflix was asking for that I'm with you that would be out of line. If there are existing exchange points, though, would it not be reasonable to expect each side to up their capacity at those points? Once that traffic is given directly to comcast no other party receives payment for delivering it so there is no double billing. The double-dip reference was to charging both the content provider and the ISP's own customer to deliver the same bits. If the traffic from Netflix was via Netflix's transit provider and Comcast then again was looking to bill Netflix to accept the traffic, we'd hit double billing. I guess that's the question here: If additional transport directly been POPs of the two parties was needed, somebody has to pay for the links. Releases around the deal seemed to indicate that the peering was happening at IXs (haven't checked this thoroughly), so at that point it would seem reasonable for each party to handle their own capacity to the peering points and call it even. No? -- Hugo From: Rick Astley jna...@gmail.com Sent: Saturday, April 26, 2014 11:23 PM To: Hugo Slabbert Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they could enshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post How is this *not* Comcast's problem? If my users are requesting more traffic than I banked on, how is it not my responsibility to ensure I have capacity to handle that? I have gear; you have gear. I upgrade or add ports on my side; you upgrade or add ports on your side. Am I missing something? Sort of yes, it's Comcasts problem to upgrade subscriber lines but if that point of congestion is the links between Netflix and Comcast then Netflix would be on the hook to ensure they have enough capacity to Comcast to get the data at least gets TO the Comcast network. The argument at hand is if Comcast permitted to charge them for the links to get to their network or should they be free/settlement free. I think it should be OK to charge for those links as long as its a fair market rate and the price doesn't basically amount to extortion. Sadly the numbers are not public so I couldn't tell you one way or the other aside from I disagree with the position Netflix seems to be taking that they simply must be free. Once that traffic is given directly to comcast no other party receives payment for delivering it so there is no double billing. This diagram best describes the relationship (ignoring pricing): http://www.digitalsociety.org/files/gou/free-and-paid-peering.png Content provider would be Netflix and Comcast would be Broadband ISP 1. On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 1:56 AM, Hugo Slabbert hslabb...@stargate.camailto:hslabb...@stargate.ca wrote: Okay, I'm not as seasoned as a big chunk of this list, but please correct me if I'm wrong in finding this article a crock of crap. With Comcast/Netflix being in the mix and by association Cogent in the background of that there's obviously room for some heated opinions, but here goes anyway... A long, long time ago when the Internet was young and few, if any had thought to make a profit off it, an unofficial system developed among the network providers who carried the traffic: You carry my traffic and I'll carry yours and we don't need money to change hands. This system has collapsed under modern realities. I wasn't aware that settlement-free peering had collapsed. Not saying it's the only way, but she ain't dead yet. Seltzer uses that to set up balanced ratios as the secret sauce that makes settlement-free peering viable: The old system made sense when the amount of traffic each network was sending to the other was roughly equivalent. ...and since Netflix sends Comcast more than it gets, therefor Netflix needs to buck up: Of course Netflix should pay network providers in order to get the huge amounts of
Re: Phase 4.
Wow, I wish I could incoherent this typely! Andrew Sent from my iPad On Apr 24, 2014, at 1:54 AM, Bryan Socha br...@digitalocean.com wrote: Whats the big deal If your just arin, dont panic. Akamai and digitalocean has been the only people aquire fair priced v4 putside arin.So arin is ending. It doesnt stop anything. be smart 3 usd per ip is fair if dirty. F the auct8ons they are fake and we get the ips lower than op3ning. Icann is the mast 8 class as real?Distribute them , - No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2014.0.4569 / Virus Database: 3882/7361 - Release Date: 04/18/14
Re: Phase 4.
On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 03:21:50AM -0400, Andrew D Kirch wrote: On Apr 24, 2014, at 1:54 AM, Bryan Socha br...@digitalocean.com wrote: Whats the big deal If your just arin, dont panic. Akamai and digitalocean has been the only people aquire fair priced v4 putside arin.So arin is ending. It doesnt stop anything. be smart 3 usd per ip is fair if dirty. F the auct8ons they are fake and we get the ips lower than op3ning. Icann is the mast 8 class as real?Distribute them Wow, I wish I could incoherent this typely! Keep drinking. You'll get there eventually. - Matt (who recommends *not* posting drunk from a work e-mail address)
Re: The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they could enshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post
On 4/26/14, Larry Sheldon larryshel...@cox.net wrote: h/t Suresh Ramasubramanian FCC throws in the towel on net neutrality http://www.zdnet.com/fcc-throws-in-the-towel-on-net-neutrality-728770/ Why isn't it as simple as I'm paying my ISP to deliver the bits to me and Netflix is paying their [cdn?] provider to deliver the bits to me. Netflix is already paying their provider to deliver the bits to me, so why do they have to also pay my ISP to deliver the bits to me? It seems the FCC is on a roll - not only giving up on net neutrality but building up the local monopoly: http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2014/db0423/DOC-326703A1.txt The concept of targeting subsidies for broadband and voice service to pockets of rural America where they are needed most is central to the FCC's 2011 reforms. Later this year, price cap carriers will be given the opportunity to accept Connect America Fund support in high cost areas based on detailed local cost estimates, calculated by a cost model. Incumbent carriers must choose to accept or decline the offer of support for all entire high-cost locations they serve in a given state; if they decline, the subsidies will be made available to other providers, awarded through a Phase II competitive bidding process. Why do the incumbent carriers get the right of first refusal for subsidies? They're the ones that haven't served their local population so it seems like they should be the *last* to be offered subsidies. Lee Forward! On to the next windmill, Sancho! -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker)
Re: What Net Neutrality should and should not cover
The current scandal is not about peering, it is last mile ISP double dipping. Nick On Apr 27, 2014 2:05 AM, Rick Astley jna...@gmail.com wrote: Without the actual proposal being published for review its hard to know the specifics but it appears that it prohibits blocking and last mile tinkering of traffic (#1). What this means to me is ISP's can't block access to a specific website like alibaba and demand ransom from subscribers to access it again. I do not know if this provision would also include prohibiting intentionally throttling traffic on a home by home basis (#2) and holding services to the same kind of random is also prohibited but I think this too would be a far practice to prohibit. Bits are bits. From the routers article ( http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/23/us-usa-fcc-internet-idUSBREA3M1H020140423 ) and elsewhere it seems what the proposal does not outlaw is paid peering and perhaps use of QoS on networks. #3 On paid peering: I think this is where people start to disagree but I don't see what should be criminal about paid peering agreements. More specifically, I see serious problems once you outlaw paid peering and then look at the potential repercussions that would have. Clearly it would not be fair to for only the largest content providers to be legally mandated as settlement free peers because that would leave smaller competitors out in the cold. The only fair way to outlaw paid peering would be to do it across the board for all companies big and small. This would be everyone from major content providers to my uncle to sells hand runs a website to sell hand crafted chairs. This would have major sweeping repercussions for the Internet as we know it over night. I think it makes sense to allow companies to work it out as long as the prices charged aren't unreasonably high based on market prices for data. This means if 2 ISP's with similar networks want to be settlement free they can. If ISP's want to charge for transit they can, and if ISP's want to charge CDN's to deliver data they can. Typically the company with the disproportional amount of costs of carrying the traffic would charge the other company but really it should be up to the companies involved to decide. Based on the post by Tom Wheeler from the FCC ( http://www.fcc.gov/blog/setting-record-straight-fcc-s-open-internet-rules) it sounds like if this pricing is commercially unreasonable (ie extortion) they will step in. Again I think this is fair. #4 On QoS (ie fast lane?): In some of the articles I skimmed there was a lot of talk about fast lane traffic but what this sounds like today would be known as QoS and classification marking that would really only become a factor under instances of congestion. The tech bloggers and journalists all seems to be unanimously opposed to this but I admit I am sort of scratching my head at the outrage over something that has been in prevalent use on many major networks for several years. I don't see this as the end of the Internet as we know it that now seems to essentially be popular opinion on the issue. Numerous businesses are using QoS to protect things like voice traffic and business critical or emergency traffic from being impacted in a failure scenario. In modern day hyper converged networks where pretty soon even mobile voice traffic could be VoIP over a data network prohibiting the use of all QoS seems irresponsible. The larger question is, is it fair for ISP's to charge people to be in a priority other than best effort? To answer a question with a question, if an ISP is using a priority other than best effort for some of its own traffic is it fair if a peer with a competing service is only best effort delivery? This is sort of akin to Comcast not counting its own video service against the ~250G/month cap of subscribers but counting off network traffic against it. In theory if some of an ISP's own services are able to use higher than best effort priority the same should be available to the business they are selling service to. If they go completely out of their way to intentionally congest the network to force people into needing a higher than best effort classification I would think it should fall into what the FCC calls commercially unreasonable and thus be considered a violation. So again, I think this is fair. I have numbered the items I mentioned from 1-4 being #1. Blocking #2. per household (last mile) rate limiting of a service (though rate limiting at all anywhere should probably be up for discussion so #2.5) #3. The legality of paid peering #4. The legality of QoS (unless fast lane is something else I don't understand). Feel free to augment the list.
Re: The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they could enshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post
If it were through a switch at the exchange it would be on each of them to individually upgrade their capacity to it but at the capacities they are at it they are beyond what would make sense financially to go over an exchange switch so they would connect directly instead. It's likely more along the lines of needing several 100G ports as Netflix is over 30% of peak usage traffic in North America: Netflix (31.6%) holds its ground as the leading downstream application in North America and together with YouTube (18.6%) accounts for over 50% of downstream traffic on fixed networks. (source https://www.sandvine.com/trends/global-internet-phenomena/ ) That amount of data is massive scale. I don't see it as double dipping because each party is buying the pipe they are using. I am buying a 15Mbps pipe to my home but just because we are communicating over the Internet doesn't mean the money I am paying covers the cost of your connection too. You must still buy your own pipe in the same way Netflix would. I covered this scenario in more detail in my post What Net Neutrality should and should not cover but if you expand on the assumption that paying for an internet connection also pays for the direct connection of every party who you exchange traffic with then you have a scenario where only half the people connected to the Internet should have to pay at all for their connection because any scenario where people simply buy their own pipe would be considered double billing. The cost for residential broadband is high enough in the US without a policy like that in place. If there is one policy that would keep poor families from being able to afford broadband it would be that one. On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 2:58 AM, Hugo Slabbert hslabb...@stargate.cawrote: ...but if that point of congestion is the links between Netflix and Comcast... Which, from the outside, does appear to have been the case. ...then Netflix would be on the hook to ensure they have enough capacity to Comcast to get the data at least gets TO the Comcast network. Which I don't believe was a problem? Again, outside looking in, but the appearances seemed to indicate that Comcast was refusing to upgrade capacity/ports, whereas I didn't see anything indicating that Netflix was doing the same. So: I have gear; you have gear. I upgrade or add ports on my side; you upgrade or add ports on your side. The argument at hand is if Comcast permitted to charge them for the links to get to their network or should they be free/settlement free. I think it should be OK to charge for those links as long as its a fair market rate and the price doesn't basically amount to extortion. Are we talking here about transport between Netflix's POPs and Comcast's? I definitely don't expect Comcast to foot the bill for transport between the two, and if Netflix was asking for that I'm with you that would be out of line. If there are existing exchange points, though, would it not be reasonable to expect each side to up their capacity at those points? Once that traffic is given directly to comcast no other party receives payment for delivering it so there is no double billing. The double-dip reference was to charging both the content provider and the ISP's own customer to deliver the same bits. If the traffic from Netflix was via Netflix's transit provider and Comcast then again was looking to bill Netflix to accept the traffic, we'd hit double billing. I guess that's the question here: If additional transport directly been POPs of the two parties was needed, somebody has to pay for the links. Releases around the deal seemed to indicate that the peering was happening at IXs (haven't checked this thoroughly), so at that point it would seem reasonable for each party to handle their own capacity to the peering points and call it even. No? -- Hugo From: Rick Astley jna...@gmail.com Sent: Saturday, April 26, 2014 11:23 PM To: Hugo Slabbert Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they could enshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post How is this *not* Comcast's problem? If my users are requesting more traffic than I banked on, how is it not my responsibility to ensure I have capacity to handle that? I have gear; you have gear. I upgrade or add ports on my side; you upgrade or add ports on your side. Am I missing something? Sort of yes, it's Comcasts problem to upgrade subscriber lines but if that point of congestion is the links between Netflix and Comcast then Netflix would be on the hook to ensure they have enough capacity to Comcast to get the data at least gets TO the Comcast network. The argument at hand is if Comcast permitted to charge them for the links to get to their network or should they be free/settlement free. I think it should be OK to charge for those links as long as its a fair market rate and the price doesn't
Re: Phase 4.
I can has test fore able two post too this list ?? On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 12:54 AM, Bryan Socha br...@digitalocean.com wrote: Whats the big deal If your just arin, dont panic. Akamai and digitalocean has been the only people aquire fair priced v4 putside arin.So arin is ending. It doesnt stop anything. be smart 3 usd per ip is fair if dirty. F the auct8ons they are fake and we get the ips lower than op3ning. Icann is the mast 8 class as real?Distribute them , -- jamie rishaw // .com.arpa@j - reverse it. ish. Reality defeats prejudice. - Rep. Barney Frank
Re: What Net Neutrality should and should not cover
I wish you would expand on that to help me understand where you are coming from but what I pay my ISP for is simply a pipe, I don't know how it would make sense logically to assume that every entity I communicate with on the Internet must be able to connect for free because I am covering the tab as a subscriber. I am not talking about JUST Netflix here as they are a large company more capable than some smaller ones at buying their own pipes out to the world. It would be sort of the same concept of my grandmother calling my cell phone yet we both need to pay for our individual phone lines to at least reach the carrier tasked with connecting our call. Even if my grandmother calls a business, that business have phone lines they pay for. Technically this would be double dipping but it's been the norm for a very long time. Now if we will lets talk about where this concept falls apart. Pretend I run a lemonade stand and my ISP offers to give it free Internet access, how generous of them! I then meet a businessman from town who is complaining about what it costs him to connect to the Internet because he has a lot of equipment that serves data to people all over the place. I see this as an opportunity to make more money and I say hey, they don't charge me at all for Internet access I will make you a deal, I will connect your equipment to them for 1/3 what you are paying today. Good deal says the businessman. I eagerly ride my bicycle home, pick up my phone, call my ISP and tell them the news Hey, thanks for the free service but I need you to upgrade my connection x5 because I decided to do content delivery for the businesses in town. Oh hell no says my ISP, that was not at all the agreement, your lemonade stand is still free but if you want us to carry the extra traffic you have to buy more ports the same as everyone else. I didn't build a successful lemonade stand because I take being treated like this sitting down! Our now much larger volume of traffic is slow to the ISP and they are refusing to upgrade it for free, so I call up the media and have them run a story about how the ISP is intentionally limiting our traffic and they simply need to upgrade it for free. People are already paying for the Internet, if they don't give me my free ride they are double dipping! Public opinion is in, that mean ISP should be giving me my free access but the reality of the situation is perhaps a bit different. My lemonade stand pulled a coup when it became a content provider and demanded a free ride, and railroading my ISP for it in the media was probably a dishonest thing to do. I reluctantly agree to pay them for ports for content I am delivering but local businessman from my town has tasted blood and he's not done yet Who else has a lemonade stand with free Internet?! he proclaims. I changed some names to protect the Innocent :) On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 10:04 AM, Nick B n...@pelagiris.org wrote: The current scandal is not about peering, it is last mile ISP double dipping. Nick On Apr 27, 2014 2:05 AM, Rick Astley jna...@gmail.com wrote: Without the actual proposal being published for review its hard to know the specifics but it appears that it prohibits blocking and last mile tinkering of traffic (#1). What this means to me is ISP's can't block access to a specific website like alibaba and demand ransom from subscribers to access it again. I do not know if this provision would also include prohibiting intentionally throttling traffic on a home by home basis (#2) and holding services to the same kind of random is also prohibited but I think this too would be a far practice to prohibit. Bits are bits. From the routers article ( http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/23/us-usa-fcc-internet-idUSBREA3M1H020140423 ) and elsewhere it seems what the proposal does not outlaw is paid peering and perhaps use of QoS on networks. #3 On paid peering: I think this is where people start to disagree but I don't see what should be criminal about paid peering agreements. More specifically, I see serious problems once you outlaw paid peering and then look at the potential repercussions that would have. Clearly it would not be fair to for only the largest content providers to be legally mandated as settlement free peers because that would leave smaller competitors out in the cold. The only fair way to outlaw paid peering would be to do it across the board for all companies big and small. This would be everyone from major content providers to my uncle to sells hand runs a website to sell hand crafted chairs. This would have major sweeping repercussions for the Internet as we know it over night. I think it makes sense to allow companies to work it out as long as the prices charged aren't unreasonably high based on market prices for data. This means if 2 ISP's with similar networks want to be settlement free they can. If ISP's want to charge for transit they can, and if ISP's want to charge
Re: The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they could enshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post
What are any of you talking about? Have you even bothered to read for example the wikipedia article on monopoly or are you so solipsistic that you just make up the entire universe in your head? Do you also pontificate on quantum physics and neurosurgery when the urge strikes you??? Sorry but this discussion is so, uneducated, usage of terms which are not as they are defined in the English or any other language, etc. BOLD But what do you think about the FCC's efforts in regard to net neutrality? /BOLD Do you agree with CNBC's assessment that the internet has a fast lane and up until now FCC regulations prevented consumers and content providers from using it under the guise of net neutrality. Do you believe there's anything at stake here for you beyond just nattering about your own personal and peculiar notion of what a monopoly is? Does that really matter to any of this? I almost believe that this entire flame war on the definition of monopoly is being fanned by sockpuppets whose job it is to make sure no one here talks about net neutrality in any effective or at least meaningful way. http://www.cnbc.com/id/101607254 F.C.C., in 'Net Neutrality' Turnaround, Plans to Allow Fast Lane The Federal Communications Commission will propose new rules that allow Internet service providers to offer a faster lane through which to send video and other content to consumers, as long as a content company is willing to pay for it, according to people briefed on the proposals. ... Would someone please define this fast lane for me? That would be a really good start. Preferably the managers of that fast lane because they surely must be on this list...no? P.S. CNBC is owned by Comcast (or more specifically NBC Universal, which is owned by Comcast.) -- -Barry Shein The World | b...@theworld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD| Dial-Up: US, PR, Canada Software Tool Die| Public Access Internet | SINCE 1989 *oo*
Re: What Net Neutrality should and should not cover
On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 2:05 AM, Rick Astley jna...@gmail.com wrote: #3 On paid peering: I think this is where people start to disagree but I don't see what should be criminal about paid peering agreements. More specifically, I see serious problems once you outlaw paid peering and then look at the potential repercussions that would have. Double-billing Rick. It's just that simple. Paid peering means you're deliberately billing two customers for the same byte -- the peer and the downstream. And not merely incidental to ordinary service - the peer specifically connects to gain access to customers who already pay you and no one else. Where those two customers have divergent interests, you have to pick which one you'll serve even as you continue to bill both. That's a corrupt practice. What sort of corrupt practice? You might, for example, degrade your residential customers' speed to the part of the Internet housing a company you think should pay you for peering. Or permit the link to deteriorate while energetically upgrading others to keep pace with the times. Same difference. This doesn't have to be true. You could bill downstreams for consumption and exclude the paid peering from that calculation. But you don't do that. And you aren't planning to. #4 On QoS (ie fast lane?): In some of the articles I skimmed there was a lot of talk about fast lane traffic but what this sounds like today would be known as QoS and classification marking that would really only become a factor under instances of congestion. The tech bloggers and journalists all seems to be unanimously opposed to this but I admit I am sort of scratching my head at the outrage over something that has been in prevalent use on many major networks for several years. It's prevalent on private work networks and users hate it. It generally disables activities the network owners don't approve of while engaging in doubletalk about how they're OK with it. Users don't want to see this migrate outward. Regards, Bill Herrin -- William D. Herrin her...@dirtside.com b...@herrin.us 3005 Crane Dr. .. Web: http://bill.herrin.us/ Falls Church, VA 22042-3004
Re: The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they could enshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post
The Fast Lane perhaps starts as not counting traffic against metered byte caps, similar to what ATT did on their mobile network. If the content/service provider is willing to pay the provider, then the users may not pay overage fees or get nasty letters anymore when they exceed data caps. The second and more contentious part of it is using QoS to guarantee the content/service provider's traffic is delivered, at the expense of traffic from those who aren't paying. So if Netflix decides to pay and Amazon Prime doesn't, well Netflix will make it to your house and Prime might not. Right now everyone's traffic gets dropped equally. :) (Well more Netflix because there is a lot more of it). -Phil (all opinions are my personal opinions) On 4/27/14, 1:44 PM, Barry Shein b...@world.std.com wrote: What are any of you talking about? Have you even bothered to read for example the wikipedia article on monopoly or are you so solipsistic that you just make up the entire universe in your head? Do you also pontificate on quantum physics and neurosurgery when the urge strikes you??? Sorry but this discussion is so, uneducated, usage of terms which are not as they are defined in the English or any other language, etc. BOLD But what do you think about the FCC's efforts in regard to net neutrality? /BOLD Do you agree with CNBC's assessment that the internet has a fast lane and up until now FCC regulations prevented consumers and content providers from using it under the guise of net neutrality. Do you believe there's anything at stake here for you beyond just nattering about your own personal and peculiar notion of what a monopoly is? Does that really matter to any of this? I almost believe that this entire flame war on the definition of monopoly is being fanned by sockpuppets whose job it is to make sure no one here talks about net neutrality in any effective or at least meaningful way. http://www.cnbc.com/id/101607254 F.C.C., in 'Net Neutrality' Turnaround, Plans to Allow Fast Lane The Federal Communications Commission will propose new rules that allow Internet service providers to offer a faster lane through which to send video and other content to consumers, as long as a content company is willing to pay for it, according to people briefed on the proposals. ... Would someone please define this fast lane for me? That would be a really good start. Preferably the managers of that fast lane because they surely must be on this list...no? P.S. CNBC is owned by Comcast (or more specifically NBC Universal, which is owned by Comcast.) -- -Barry Shein The World | b...@theworld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD| Dial-Up: US, PR, Canada Software Tool Die| Public Access Internet | SINCE 1989 *oo*
Re: The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they could enshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post
Everyone interested in how this plays out today, can read Bill Norton's Internet Peering book. While some say situations didn't happen this way or it happened that way doesn't really matter. What is clear and matters is the tactics/leverage backbones and networks use against each other in trading traffic are very real and explained well. These situations are one of the reasons I helped Coresite (AKA old CRGwest) build Any2 Peering. Amazon now has a kindle edition of the latest for just $10. Paper version is like $50-$100. The 2014 Internet Peering Playbook: Connecting to the Core of the Internet [Kindle Edition] William B. Norton (Author). Bob Evans CTO Fiber Internet Center Fiber International MTI Corporation The Fast Lane perhaps starts as not counting traffic against metered byte caps, similar to what ATT did on their mobile network. If the content/service provider is willing to pay the provider, then the users may not pay overage fees or get nasty letters anymore when they exceed data caps. The second and more contentious part of it is using QoS to guarantee the content/service provider's traffic is delivered, at the expense of traffic from those who aren't paying. So if Netflix decides to pay and Amazon Prime doesn't, well Netflix will make it to your house and Prime might not. Right now everyone's traffic gets dropped equally. :) (Well more Netflix because there is a lot more of it). -Phil (all opinions are my personal opinions) On 4/27/14, 1:44 PM, Barry Shein b...@world.std.com wrote: What are any of you talking about? Have you even bothered to read for example the wikipedia article on monopoly or are you so solipsistic that you just make up the entire universe in your head? Do you also pontificate on quantum physics and neurosurgery when the urge strikes you??? Sorry but this discussion is so, uneducated, usage of terms which are not as they are defined in the English or any other language, etc. BOLD But what do you think about the FCC's efforts in regard to net neutrality? /BOLD Do you agree with CNBC's assessment that the internet has a fast lane and up until now FCC regulations prevented consumers and content providers from using it under the guise of net neutrality. Do you believe there's anything at stake here for you beyond just nattering about your own personal and peculiar notion of what a monopoly is? Does that really matter to any of this? I almost believe that this entire flame war on the definition of monopoly is being fanned by sockpuppets whose job it is to make sure no one here talks about net neutrality in any effective or at least meaningful way. http://www.cnbc.com/id/101607254 F.C.C., in 'Net Neutrality' Turnaround, Plans to Allow Fast Lane The Federal Communications Commission will propose new rules that allow Internet service providers to offer a faster lane through which to send video and other content to consumers, as long as a content company is willing to pay for it, according to people briefed on the proposals. ... Would someone please define this fast lane for me? That would be a really good start. Preferably the managers of that fast lane because they surely must be on this list...no? P.S. CNBC is owned by Comcast (or more specifically NBC Universal, which is owned by Comcast.) -- -Barry Shein The World | b...@theworld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD| Dial-Up: US, PR, Canada Software Tool Die| Public Access Internet | SINCE 1989 *oo*
Re: What Net Neutrality should and should not cover
* William Herrin On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 2:05 AM, Rick Astley jna...@gmail.com wrote: #3 On paid peering: I think this is where people start to disagree but I don't see what should be criminal about paid peering agreements. More specifically, I see serious problems once you outlaw paid peering and then look at the potential repercussions that would have. Double-billing Rick. It's just that simple. Paid peering means you're deliberately billing two customers for the same byte -- the peer and the downstream. And not merely incidental to ordinary service - the peer specifically connects to gain access to customers who already pay you and no one else. Where those two customers have divergent interests, you have to pick which one you'll serve even as you continue to bill both. That's a corrupt practice. It's not just that simple. If for example you asks for a peering with me, the first thing I'll do is to take a close look at how the traffic between our two networks is currently being routed. If I see that I have no monetary or technical gain from setting up that peering with you, perhaps because the traffic is currently flowing via an already existing peering of mine (with your upstream, say), or via a transit port of mine that's not exceeding its CDR, then I'd probably want you to at cover my costs of setting up that peering before accepting, at the very least. Even if I was exceeding the CDR on my transit ports, it's not at all certain that accepting a peering with you would even be a break-even proposition for me. Keep in mind that unlike routers and line cards, IP transit service *is* dirt cheap these days. So no, refusing a peering or requiring the would-be peer to pay for the privilege isn't *necessarily* corrupt practice. It Depends. Tore
Re: The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they could enshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post
On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 5:15 AM, Patrick W. Gilmore patr...@ianai.netwrote: Anyone afraid what will happen when companies which have monopolies can charge content providers or guarantee packet loss? In a normal free market, if two companies with a mutual consumer have a tiff, the consumer decides which to support. Where I live, I have one broadband provider. If they get upset with, say, a streaming provider, I cannot choose another BB company because I like the streaming company. I MUST pick another streaming company, as that is the only thing I can choose. [I speak only for myself here; any use of the word we should be taken to represent only my sense of inclusion with the rest of humanity, and not with any commercial entity or organization. Any other characterization of the following words is patently incorrect, and grounds for possible actions, up to and including litigation. Please don't be an ass, and quote me out of context, or as representing something I'm not. Original post edited slightly, with specific entity names replaced with variables; you may do your own substitution back into the variables as you feel appropriate. --MNP] What if we turn the picture around slightly, and look at it like the negotiations between broadcast networks and cable companies? 2010's battle between Fox television and cablevision comes to mind, where the content holder blacked out access to their content for specific cable companies unless they agree to pay the demanded fees. It would be interesting to have seen $content_CEO take a hard line stance; it wouldn't be hard to send a BGP feed to video streaming servers, and if the requestor's IP was from a prefix seen behind AS$foo, put up a message informing the subscriber that their access to $company's content would cease on such-and-such a date, due to $BB_provider's unwillingness to agree to increase interconnect capacity, and that if subscribers wished to continue to see $company's content, they should consider switching to a different network provider. Basically, follow the same model News Corp used against Cablevision, Viacom used against Time Warner, or Disney used against Cablevision. How long would $BB_provider be able to hold out against the howls of its users, if there was a scrolling banner across the top of the screen during their favorite show, or favorite movie alerting them that they would soon be unable to see that content unless they switched to a different service provider? It's easy to forget that the sword can be swung both ways. Right now, $BB_provider is swinging the sharp edge at $content; but $content is not without its own influence in the market, and could swing the sword the other way, cutting back at $BB_provider. Yes, it comes at some great risk to $content, in terms of potential customer loss; but no great wins come without great risks (unless you cheat, and use the government to get you a big win at no risk--but none of us like that model). I think it's high time for content players to flex their power, and push back on the eyeball networks that attempt to use their customer base as hostages to extract additional revenue from the content being requested by their users. If the content providers simply make it clearly visible to the end users that they cannot watch the requested content on that network, or that they can only watch in reduced resolution from that network, it will have a two-fold effect: a) traffic volume from the content provider to the contentious network will be reduced, limiting the need for the upgrades in the first place, and b) customers of the provider will be informed of their status as hostage cannon fodder on the battlefield, allowing them to vote with their wallets. One could potentially even insert suggestions for alternate connectivity options they might consider into the content feed, to help the users vote with their wallets more easily. Or, provide the phone number of the local municipal office that granted the franchise rights to the BB provider, along with instructions on what to say when calling (Hi--I'm a registered voter in your district. If you'd like to get re-elected next term, you need to repeal the cable franchise agreement with broadband provider such-and-so, as their monopolistic practices are hampering my ability to freely choose what content I can consume.) We're not powerless in this fight. We often take a victim mindset, and look for some other entity to rescue us; but that's not the right way to thrive. Instead of thinking that we're weak, we're victims, and can't protect ourselves, or that we need some other big, strong entity to shelter and protect us, we need to realize that we *are* strong. We *are* capable of standing up and fighting back. We *do* have power, and can say no to the bullies. They want us to feel we have no say in the matter, that we cannot survive without protection. But they are wrong. We are strong. We are capable. We *can* fight back.
Re: What Net Neutrality should and should not cover
On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 9:57 AM, Rick Astley jna...@gmail.com wrote: [...] It would be sort of the same concept of my grandmother calling my cell phone yet we both need to pay for our individual phone lines to at least reach the carrier tasked with connecting our call. Even if my grandmother calls a business, that business have phone lines they pay for. Technically this would be double dipping but it's been the norm for a very long time. Hi Rick, It's slightly worse than that. Allow me to expand your metaphor just a little bit. You pay for a phone connection to provider X. Your grandmother pays for a connection to provider Y. The connection between provider X and provider Y is handled by long-distance carrier Z. Provider X decides they don't like carrier Z, and won't add more capacity with carrier Z. Your grandmother tries to call you; but due to the lack of capacity between carrier Z and provider X, she gets an all circuits are busy message over and over again. Provider X tells provider Y that if wants to get its calls through, it will have to pay additional $$s *beyond* what it already pays to carrier Z, in order to connect to provider X so that those calls can go through. Provider Y is concerned that your poor grandmother may have a stroke due to all the stress and worry that she is undergoing, due to not being able to reach you on the telephone. So, with a heavy heart, they agree to pay provider X to connect additional circuits to provider Y, at a much higher cost. To avoid having to go bankrupt paying those additional costs, provider Y has to raise the cost for your poor grandmother's phone service. In order to pay the increased costs, she is forced to go without afternoon tea on weekends. And there is much sadness in the universe. That's where we are today. The content providers and the eyeball networks used to be just fine being connected through intermediate carriers. But now the eyeball networks are refusing to increase capacity with the intermediate carriers, telling content providers that they either need to pay additional money to connect directly to the eyeball networks, or deal with congestion (all circuits busy recordings for their customers). Nobody's asking for a free ride (well, other than $low_cost_transit_carrier, but I'm leaving them out of this discussion)--what they're objecting to is having to pay for their upstream transit circuits, and then *also pay additional money to bypass congestion, and talk to specific eyeball networks.* Hopefully that clarifies the situation a bit more. ^_^ Thanks! Matt
Re: The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they could enshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post
On Sun, 27 Apr 2014, Rick Astley wrote: That amount of data is massive scale. I don't see it as double dipping because each party is buying the pipe they are using. I am buying a 15Mbps pipe to my home but just because we are communicating over the Internet doesn't mean the money I am paying covers the cost of your connection too. You must still buy your own pipe in the same way Netflix would. I covered this scenario in more detail in my post What Net Neutrality should and should not cover but if you expand on the assumption that paying for an internet connection also pays for the direct connection of every party who you exchange traffic with then you have a scenario where only half the people connected to the Internet should have to pay at all for their connection because any scenario where people simply buy their own pipe would be considered double billing. The size of the pipes involved doesn't change the fundamental premise that double-dipping is involved. Comcast, et al want to be paid twice for the same traffic. The money I pay Verizon every month for my Fios connection, by itself, doesn't pay for the rest of their network, but take the millions of Fios customers as a whole, and the revenue stream is significant. We'll leave the government-mandated revenue stream out of the equation for now. Just about every ISP, and certainly all of the big ones, practice statistical multiplexing - there is always some amount of oversubscription at play. Add up the subscription speeds of every Fios customer, and the total ingress/egress capacity of Verizon's network, and the two numbers will not be equal - not by a long shot. While 100G linecards and optics are still very expensive, those costs will come down over time. Even at that, the cost of adding a 100G link between Big Network A and Big Network B is at most pennies per customer. jms
Re: The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they could enshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post
On Apr 26, 2014, at 4:08 PM, Larry Sheldon larryshel...@cox.net wrote: On 4/26/2014 3:01 PM, Owen DeLong wrote: On Apr 24, 2014, at 8:38 PM, Larry Sheldon larryshel...@cox.net wrote: Monopolies can not persist without regulation. This is absolutely false. Regulating monopolies CAN protect monopolies, but that’s not always the outcome. Monopolies absolutely can persist without regulation. Except in the most highly dense population areas, there is not a sufficient market to support the deployment of more than one copy of a given media type to that population. As a result, there is, in most places, a natural monopoly in each media type, whether that’s electrical, water, cable, twisted pair, fiber, etc. Sounds like the market at work, not monopoly power..I've never heard the term monopoly used where the market contains all the players that want to play. It doesn’t. What it contains is all the players that can afford to play. When the number of players that can afford to play==1 that’s pretty much the definition of monopoly. If you want to try and pervert the term to meet your previous (bizarre) claims, then I’m sure you can do enough dancing around the dictionary to eventually arrive at your chosen destination. However, Patrick and I are more concerned with the actual outcome for consumers (including ourselves) than with the sophistry required to engage in the discussion you appear to want to have. Owen
Re: The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they could enshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post
The comments on the article are FAR more useful than the article itself. Owen On Apr 26, 2014, at 4:58 PM, Larry Sheldon larryshel...@cox.net wrote: h/t Suresh Ramasubramanian FCC throws in the towel on net neutrality http://www.zdnet.com/fcc-throws-in-the-towel-on-net-neutrality-728770/ Forward! On to the next windmill, Sancho! -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker)
Re: What Net Neutrality should and should not cover
That is, with CATV companies like HBO have to pay companies like Comcast for access to their cable subscribers. Well, no. According to Time-Warner's 2013 annual report, cable companies paid T-W $4.89 billion for access to HBO and Cinemax. No video provider pays for access to cable. The cruddy ones like home shopping and 24/7 religion have small over the air stations and use the must-carry rule, everyone else gets paid something, in the case of ESPN quite a lot. There's a reason that T-W bought HBO and Comcast bought NBC, to capture all that money they'd been paying out. There's two separate issues here: one is that the Internet is a terrible way to deliver video. The Internet part of your cable connection is about 4 channels out of 500, and each of the other 496 is streaming high quality video. That little bit of Internet is designed for transactions (DNS, IM) and file transfer (mail and web), not streaming, so when you do stream it is jittery and lossy. Furthermore, nobody uses multicasting, if 400 customers on the same cable system are watching Game of Thrones, there's 400 copies of it cluttering up the tubes. In a non-stupid world, the cable companies would do video on demand through some combination of content caches at the head end or, for popular stuff, encrypted midnight downloads to your DVR, and the cablecos would split the revenue with content backends like Netflix. But this world is mostly stupid, the cable companies never got VOD, so you have companies like Netflix filling the gap with pessimized technology. (I do see that starting tomorrow, there will be a Netflix channel on three small cablecos including RCN, delivered via TiVo, although it's not clear if the delivery channel will change.) The other issue is that due to regulatory failure, cable companies are an oligopoly, and in most areas a local monopoly, so Comcast has the muscle to shake down Internet video providers. That's not a technical problem, it's a political one. In Europe, where DSL is a lot faster than here, carriage and content are separate and there are a zillion DSL providers. We could do that here if the FCC weren't so spineless. R's, John
RE: What Net Neutrality should and should not cover
At some point some the MSOs and telcos tried selling CDN to the streaming video people and they didn't want to partake. It was cheaper for them to keep streaming it off 3rd party CDNs. There are also some weird (dumb) legal/contractual issues around Netflix (or some other video provider) negotiated content residing on a box or even within a datacenter of another company who also has contracts with the content owner. All cable VOD for some time has been a distributed CDN albeit proprietary and ultimately delivered via QAMs, and still unicast. There are caches in headends and even further down in the access networks. The next generation of that is HTTP based though so any normal HTTP cache can be used. Comcast has contributed a bit to Apache Traffic Server as it plays a part in their next-gen video service delivery. I'd love to see wholesale networks. We saw that with DSL in the US quite a bit but eventually it all died out, and I highly doubt the ones running the networks would have allowed video services. All IP will happen on cable and once that happens most of the barriers to wholesale go away. So in 15 years things may be different. :) Phil -Original Message- From: John Levine jo...@iecc.com Sent: 4/27/2014 4:33 PM To: nanog@nanog.org nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: What Net Neutrality should and should not cover That is, with CATV companies like HBO have to pay companies like Comcast for access to their cable subscribers. Well, no. According to Time-Warner's 2013 annual report, cable companies paid T-W $4.89 billion for access to HBO and Cinemax. No video provider pays for access to cable. The cruddy ones like home shopping and 24/7 religion have small over the air stations and use the must-carry rule, everyone else gets paid something, in the case of ESPN quite a lot. There's a reason that T-W bought HBO and Comcast bought NBC, to capture all that money they'd been paying out. There's two separate issues here: one is that the Internet is a terrible way to deliver video. The Internet part of your cable connection is about 4 channels out of 500, and each of the other 496 is streaming high quality video. That little bit of Internet is designed for transactions (DNS, IM) and file transfer (mail and web), not streaming, so when you do stream it is jittery and lossy. Furthermore, nobody uses multicasting, if 400 customers on the same cable system are watching Game of Thrones, there's 400 copies of it cluttering up the tubes. In a non-stupid world, the cable companies would do video on demand through some combination of content caches at the head end or, for popular stuff, encrypted midnight downloads to your DVR, and the cablecos would split the revenue with content backends like Netflix. But this world is mostly stupid, the cable companies never got VOD, so you have companies like Netflix filling the gap with pessimized technology. (I do see that starting tomorrow, there will be a Netflix channel on three small cablecos including RCN, delivered via TiVo, although it's not clear if the delivery channel will change.) The other issue is that due to regulatory failure, cable companies are an oligopoly, and in most areas a local monopoly, so Comcast has the muscle to shake down Internet video providers. That's not a technical problem, it's a political one. In Europe, where DSL is a lot faster than here, carriage and content are separate and there are a zillion DSL providers. We could do that here if the FCC weren't so spineless. R's, John
Re: The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they could enshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post
- Original Message - From: Chris Boyd cb...@gizmopartners.com I'd like to propose a new ICMP message type 3 code -- Communication with Destination Network is Financially Prohibited There is a SIP error that amounts to this; 480, I think. Though, of course, when I had a carrier who wouldn't complete calls cause they didn't like my balance, did they *use* that code? No, of course not. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink j...@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth Associates http://www.bcp38.info 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA BCP38: Ask For It By Name! +1 727 647 1274
Re: The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they could enshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post
- Original Message - From: Owen DeLong o...@delong.com In my neighborhood, Comcast has a monopoly on coax cable tv and HFC internet services. There are no regulations that support that monopoly. Another company could, theoretically, apply, receive permits, and build out a second cable system if they wanted to. However, the population density is such that even if that company captured 50% of the market, it would merely make the market economically unviable for both companies. In such instances, you do indeed have “natural monopolies” which are an economic construct, not a regulatory artifact. And if this were not true, Verizon wouldn't have agitated to get it made illegal in 19 states for the local municipality to be the owner of that natural monopoly transport network; see also my month long thread on that topic and it's second and third order resultants in late 2012. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink j...@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth Associates http://www.bcp38.info 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA BCP38: Ask For It By Name! +1 727 647 1274
Re: The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they could enshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post
- Original Message - From: Hugo Slabbert hslabb...@stargate.ca But this isn't talking about transit; this is about Comcast as an edge network in this context and Netflix as a content provider sending to Comcast users the traffic that they requested. Is there really anything more nuanced here than: 1. Comcast sells connectivity to their end users and sizes their network according to an oversubscription ratio they're happy with. (Nothing wrong here; oversubscription is a fact of life). 2. Bandwidth-heavy applications like Netflix enter the market. 3. Comcast's customers start using these bandwidth-heavy applications and suck in more data than Comcast was betting on. 4. Comcast has to upgrade connectivity, e.g. at peering points with the heavy inbound traffic sources, accordingly in order to satisfy their customers' usage. You may be new here, but I'm not, and I read it exactly the same way. How is this *not* Comcast's problem? If my users are requesting more traffic than I banked on, how is it not my responsibility to ensure I have capacity to handle that? I have gear; you have gear. I upgrade or add ports on my side; you upgrade or add ports on your side. Am I missing something? It is absolutely the problem of the eyeball carrier who gambled on a given oversubscription ratio and discovered that it's called gambling because sometimes, you lose. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink j...@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth Associates http://www.bcp38.info 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA BCP38: Ask For It By Name! +1 727 647 1274
Re: The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they could enshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post
- Original Message - From: Hugo Slabbert hslabb...@stargate.ca I guess that's the question here: If additional transport directly been POPs of the two parties was needed, somebody has to pay for the links. Releases around the deal seemed to indicate that the peering was happening at IXs (haven't checked this thoroughly), so at that point it would seem reasonable for each party to handle their own capacity to the peering points and call it even. No? And the answer is: at whose instance (to use an old Bell term) is that traffic moving. The answer is at the instance of the eyeball's customers. So there's no call for the eyeball to charge the provider for it. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink j...@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth Associates http://www.bcp38.info 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA BCP38: Ask For It By Name! +1 727 647 1274
Re: The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they could enshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post
On Apr 26, 2014, at 11:23 PM, Rick Astley jna...@gmail.com wrote: How is this *not* Comcast's problem? If my users are requesting more traffic than I banked on, how is it not my responsibility to ensure I have capacity to handle that? I have gear; you have gear. I upgrade or add ports on my side; you upgrade or add ports on your side. Am I missing something? Sort of yes, it's Comcasts problem to upgrade subscriber lines but if that point of congestion is the links between Netflix and Comcast then Netflix would be on the hook to ensure they have enough capacity to Comcast to get the data at least gets TO the Comcast network. The argument at hand is if Comcast permitted to charge them for the links to get to their network or should they be free/settlement free. I think it should be OK to charge for those links as long as its a fair market rate and the price doesn't basically amount to extortion. Sadly the numbers are not public so I couldn't tell you one way or the other aside from I disagree with the position Netflix seems to be taking that they simply must be free. Once that traffic is given directly to comcast no other party receives payment for delivering it so there is no double billing. Beyond that, there’s a more subtle argument also going on about whether $EYEBALL_PROVIDER can provide favorable network access to $CONTENT_A and less favorable network access to $CONTENT_B as a method for encouraging subscribers to select $CONTENT_A over $CONTENT_B by affecting the relative performance. This becomes much stickier when you face the reality that in many places, $EYEBALL_PROVIDER has an effective monopoly as the only player choosing to offer services at a useful level of bandwidth/etc. (If that). Owen
Re: The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they could enshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post
Well, that's a metaphorical use of fast lane which is fine but I think the PR spin by CNBC was to actually give listeners the impression that they'd get faster service (e.g., on streaming video) now that this nasty FCC rule was out of the way. On April 27, 2014 at 14:07 bedard.p...@gmail.com (Phil Bedard) wrote: The Fast Lane perhaps starts as not counting traffic against metered byte caps, similar to what ATT did on their mobile network. If the content/service provider is willing to pay the provider, then the users may not pay overage fees or get nasty letters anymore when they exceed data caps. The second and more contentious part of it is using QoS to guarantee the content/service provider's traffic is delivered, at the expense of traffic from those who aren't paying. So if Netflix decides to pay and Amazon Prime doesn't, well Netflix will make it to your house and Prime might not. Right now everyone's traffic gets dropped equally. :) (Well more Netflix because there is a lot more of it). -Phil (all opinions are my personal opinions) On 4/27/14, 1:44 PM, Barry Shein b...@world.std.com wrote: What are any of you talking about? Have you even bothered to read for example the wikipedia article on monopoly or are you so solipsistic that you just make up the entire universe in your head? Do you also pontificate on quantum physics and neurosurgery when the urge strikes you??? Sorry but this discussion is so, uneducated, usage of terms which are not as they are defined in the English or any other language, etc. BOLD But what do you think about the FCC's efforts in regard to net neutrality? /BOLD Do you agree with CNBC's assessment that the internet has a fast lane and up until now FCC regulations prevented consumers and content providers from using it under the guise of net neutrality. Do you believe there's anything at stake here for you beyond just nattering about your own personal and peculiar notion of what a monopoly is? Does that really matter to any of this? I almost believe that this entire flame war on the definition of monopoly is being fanned by sockpuppets whose job it is to make sure no one here talks about net neutrality in any effective or at least meaningful way. http://www.cnbc.com/id/101607254 F.C.C., in 'Net Neutrality' Turnaround, Plans to Allow Fast Lane The Federal Communications Commission will propose new rules that allow Internet service providers to offer a faster lane through which to send video and other content to consumers, as long as a content company is willing to pay for it, according to people briefed on the proposals. ... Would someone please define this fast lane for me? That would be a really good start. Preferably the managers of that fast lane because they surely must be on this list...no? P.S. CNBC is owned by Comcast (or more specifically NBC Universal, which is owned by Comcast.) -- -Barry Shein The World | b...@theworld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD| Dial-Up: US, PR, Canada Software Tool Die| Public Access Internet | SINCE 1989 *oo* -- -Barry Shein The World | b...@theworld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD| Dial-Up: US, PR, Canada Software Tool Die| Public Access Internet | SINCE 1989 *oo*
Re: What Net Neutrality should and should not cover
I agree with all this, even the parts that disagree with me. -b On April 27, 2014 at 20:30 jo...@iecc.com (John Levine) wrote: That is, with CATV companies like HBO have to pay companies like Comcast for access to their cable subscribers. Well, no. According to Time-Warner's 2013 annual report, cable companies paid T-W $4.89 billion for access to HBO and Cinemax. No video provider pays for access to cable. The cruddy ones like home shopping and 24/7 religion have small over the air stations and use the must-carry rule, everyone else gets paid something, in the case of ESPN quite a lot. There's a reason that T-W bought HBO and Comcast bought NBC, to capture all that money they'd been paying out. There's two separate issues here: one is that the Internet is a terrible way to deliver video. The Internet part of your cable connection is about 4 channels out of 500, and each of the other 496 is streaming high quality video. That little bit of Internet is designed for transactions (DNS, IM) and file transfer (mail and web), not streaming, so when you do stream it is jittery and lossy. Furthermore, nobody uses multicasting, if 400 customers on the same cable system are watching Game of Thrones, there's 400 copies of it cluttering up the tubes. In a non-stupid world, the cable companies would do video on demand through some combination of content caches at the head end or, for popular stuff, encrypted midnight downloads to your DVR, and the cablecos would split the revenue with content backends like Netflix. But this world is mostly stupid, the cable companies never got VOD, so you have companies like Netflix filling the gap with pessimized technology. (I do see that starting tomorrow, there will be a Netflix channel on three small cablecos including RCN, delivered via TiVo, although it's not clear if the delivery channel will change.) The other issue is that due to regulatory failure, cable companies are an oligopoly, and in most areas a local monopoly, so Comcast has the muscle to shake down Internet video providers. That's not a technical problem, it's a political one. In Europe, where DSL is a lot faster than here, carriage and content are separate and there are a zillion DSL providers. We could do that here if the FCC weren't so spineless. R's, John
Re: The Cidr Report
On 27 Apr 2014, at 5:19 am, Deepak Jain dee...@ai.net wrote: Historic event - 500K prefixes on the Internet. And now we wait for everything to fall over at 512k ;) Based on a quick plot graph on the CIDR report, it looks like we are adding 6,000 prefixes a month, or thereabouts. So platforms that break at 512K die in two months or less? Sup720s may need to be reconfigured/rebooted, etc. Does anyone have doomsday plots of IPv6 prefixes? We are already at something like 20,000 prefixes there, and a surprising number of deaggregates (like /64s) in the global table. IIRC, a bunch of platforms will fall over at 128K/256K IPv6 prefixes (but sooner, really, because of IPv4 dual stack). Check out pages 30 and 34 of http://www.potaroo.net/presentations/2014-02-09-bgp2013.pdf - a presentation I gave on predictions of BGP table size at NANOG 60 in February of this year. Geoff
Re: The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they could enshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post
On 04/27/2014 05:05 PM, Owen DeLong wrote: Beyond that, there’s a more subtle argument also going on about whether $EYEBALL_PROVIDER can provide favorable network access to $CONTENT_A and less favorable network access to $CONTENT_B as a method for encouraging subscribers to select $CONTENT_A over $CONTENT_B by affecting the relative performance. This becomes much stickier when you face the reality that in many places, $EYEBALL_PROVIDER has an effective monopoly as the only player choosing to offer services at a useful level of bandwidth/etc. (If that). Isn't this all predicated that our crappy last mile providers continue with their crappy last mile service that is shameful for a supposed first world country? Cue up Randy on why this is all such a painful joke. Mike
Re: The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they could enshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post
If the carriers now get to play packet favoritism and pay-for-play, they should lose common carrier protections. -Dan
Re: The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they could enshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post
On 4/27/2014 8:59 PM, goe...@anime.net wrote: If the carriers now get to play packet favoritism and pay-for-play, they should lose common carrier protections. I didn't think the Internet providers were common carriers. -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker)
Re: The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they could enshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post
And Carterphone should apply to cellular networks, but I am not holding my breath. Owen On Apr 27, 2014, at 6:59 PM, goe...@anime.net wrote: If the carriers now get to play packet favoritism and pay-for-play, they should lose common carrier protections. -Dan
Re: The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they could enshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post
Isn't this all predicated that our crappy last mile providers continue with their crappy last mile If you think prices for residential broadband are bad now if you passed a law that says all content providers big and small must have settlement free access to the Internet paid for by residential subscribers what do you think it would do to the price of broadband? On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 10:33 PM, Michael Thomas m...@mtcc.com wrote: On 04/27/2014 05:05 PM, Owen DeLong wrote: Beyond that, there’s a more subtle argument also going on about whether $EYEBALL_PROVIDER can provide favorable network access to $CONTENT_A and less favorable network access to $CONTENT_B as a method for encouraging subscribers to select $CONTENT_A over $CONTENT_B by affecting the relative performance. This becomes much stickier when you face the reality that in many places, $EYEBALL_PROVIDER has an effective monopoly as the only player choosing to offer services at a useful level of bandwidth/etc. (If that). Isn't this all predicated that our crappy last mile providers continue with their crappy last mile service that is shameful for a supposed first world country? Cue up Randy on why this is all such a painful joke. Mike
RE: The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they could enshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post
Apologies that I dropped offlist as I was out for the day. I think the bulk of my thoughts on this have already been covered by others since, including e.g. Matt's poor grandmother and her phone dilemma in the What Net Neutrality should and should not cover thread. Basically I think we're on the same page for the most part, with maybe some misunderstandings between us. I covered this scenario in more detail in my post What Net Neutrality should and should not cover but if you expand on the assumption that paying for an internet connection also pays for the direct connection of every party who you exchange traffic with then you have a scenario where only half the people connected to the Internet should have to pay at all for their connection because any scenario where people simply buy their own pipe would be considered double billing. I don't think anyone on the Netflix^H^H^H^H^H^H $ContentProvider side of this was saying that $ContentProvider should get everything handed to them on a silver platter. $ContentProvider pays for transit sufficient to handle the traffic that their customers request. $EyeballNetwork's customers pay it for internet access, i.e. to deliver the content that they request, e.g. from $ContentProvider. That covers both directions here. Links between $ContentProvider's transit provider and $EyeballNetwork were getting congested, and $EyeballNetwork refuses to upgrade capacity. Where we were getting into the double-dip was $EyeballNetwork saying to $ContentProvide: Hey, we know you already pay for transit, but you're gonna have to pay us as well if you want us to actually accept the traffic our customers requested. The alternate arrangement between $ContentProvider and $EyeballNetwork seems to be private peering, where again it would seem to be fair for each side to bring the needed transport and ports to peering points. In recent history, though, it seems that $EyeballNetwork came out ahead in that agreement somehow. Now, Tore brought up a good point on paid peering in cases where e.g. $EyeballNetwork is already exchanging traffic with $ContentProvider through existing peering or below their CDR on existing transit, and indeed it seems that was the case for $EyeballNetwork via peering with $CheapTransitProvider that $ContentProvider was using. But it seems that $EyeballNetwork was having a pissing match with $CheapTransitProvider and refusing to upgrade ports. Okay, says $ContentProvider. How about we just peer directly. Sounds great, says $EyeballNetwork. Since we have to allocate capacity for this discrete from our existing peering capacity, you'll need to foot the bill for that. Huh? says $ContentProvider. This could have been fixed by you increasing your peering capacity to match the traffic volume your users are requesting, but you didn't want to do that because of your tiff with $CheapTransitProvider. Tell me again why we're paying for your side of this *in addition* to our own when we're only going this route because of a decision *you* made? Because you need to reach our customers, and we're the only path to them, so we have leverage. *blank stare* So you're willing to give your customers crappy service because your customers don't have alternate options and you think we need this more than you do? That's a possibility. I hate you. I know; sign here please. But, again, this is outside looking in. For now, I'll pick up a copy of Bill Norton's Internet Peering book as per Bob's suggestion, for some light Sunday night reading. Cheers, -- Hugo From: Rick Astley jna...@gmail.com Sent: Sunday, April 27, 2014 8:45 AM To: Hugo Slabbert Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they could enshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post If it were through a switch at the exchange it would be on each of them to individually upgrade their capacity to it but at the capacities they are at it they are beyond what would make sense financially to go over an exchange switch so they would connect directly instead. It's likely more along the lines of needing several 100G ports as Netflix is over 30% of peak usage traffic in North America: Netflix (31.6%) holds its ground as the leading downstream application in North America and together with YouTube (18.6%) accounts for over 50% of downstream traffic on fixed networks. (source https://www.sandvine.com/trends/global-internet-phenomena/ ) That amount of data is massive scale. I don't see it as double dipping because each party is buying the pipe they are using. I am buying a 15Mbps pipe to my home but just because we are communicating over the Internet doesn't mean the money I am paying covers the cost of your connection too. You must still buy your own pipe in the same way Netflix would. I covered this scenario in more detail in my post What Net Neutrality should and should not cover but if
Re: What Net Neutrality should and should not cover
Double-billing Rick. It's just that simple. Paid peering means you're deliberately billing two customers for the same byte I think this statement is a little short sighted if not a bit naive. What both parties are sold is a pipe that carries data. A subscriber has one, Netflix has one. They are different bandwidths, at different locations, and have different costs. Where your statement is short sighted I already explained partly in saying its too difficult to decide who gets a free ride and who gets the bill so I challenge you to propose an actual policy that prohibits charging for peering that doesn't have major unintended consequences. All in all I am sort of disappointed to find so few rational opinions around here. One of the few decent articles I have read on it is here: http://blog.streamingmedia.com/2014/02/media-botching-coverage-netflix-comcast-deal-getting-basics-wrong.html I think if you make a law that says all content providers big and small get free pipes and the residential subscribers of broadband must pay the tab the cost of broadband in the US compared to the rest of the world skyrocket. I also think the practice of paying an intermediary ISP a per Mbps rate in order to get to a last mile ISP over a settlement free agreement is also a bit disingenuous in cases where the amount of traffic is sufficient enough to fill multiple links. Theoretically there are many times where the intermediary ISP can hand off the traffic to a last mile ISP in exactly the same building they received it in so they have very few of the costs of actually delivering the traffic yet are the only party receiving money from the content provider for delivery. This arrangement makes sense when the traffic to the last mile ISP is a percentage of one link but after enough links are involved the intermediary ISP is serving no real other purpose than as a loophole used to circumvent paid peering fees (right or wrong). I think if paid peering were made illegal overnight for companies big or small the landscape of the Internet would be completely redrawn and not for the better. I honestly think what last mile ISP's should do in this situation is to offer to provide transit for content delivery for a low cost. They generally have available outbound capacity to other networks and they can play the settlement free only card back at some of the companies they are in dispute with. If nothing else it would result in having similar traffic profiles and settlement free would start to make more sense so everybody wins. On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 1:56 PM, William Herrin b...@herrin.us wrote: On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 2:05 AM, Rick Astley jna...@gmail.com wrote: #3 On paid peering: I think this is where people start to disagree but I don't see what should be criminal about paid peering agreements. More specifically, I see serious problems once you outlaw paid peering and then look at the potential repercussions that would have. Double-billing Rick. It's just that simple. Paid peering means you're deliberately billing two customers for the same byte -- the peer and the downstream. And not merely incidental to ordinary service - the peer specifically connects to gain access to customers who already pay you and no one else. Where those two customers have divergent interests, you have to pick which one you'll serve even as you continue to bill both. That's a corrupt practice. What sort of corrupt practice? You might, for example, degrade your residential customers' speed to the part of the Internet housing a company you think should pay you for peering. Or permit the link to deteriorate while energetically upgrading others to keep pace with the times. Same difference. This doesn't have to be true. You could bill downstreams for consumption and exclude the paid peering from that calculation. But you don't do that. And you aren't planning to. #4 On QoS (ie fast lane?): In some of the articles I skimmed there was a lot of talk about fast lane traffic but what this sounds like today would be known as QoS and classification marking that would really only become a factor under instances of congestion. The tech bloggers and journalists all seems to be unanimously opposed to this but I admit I am sort of scratching my head at the outrage over something that has been in prevalent use on many major networks for several years. It's prevalent on private work networks and users hate it. It generally disables activities the network owners don't approve of while engaging in doubletalk about how they're OK with it. Users don't want to see this migrate outward. Regards, Bill Herrin -- William D. Herrin her...@dirtside.com b...@herrin.us 3005 Crane Dr. .. Web: http://bill.herrin.us/ Falls Church, VA 22042-3004
RE: What Net Neutrality should and should not cover
#4 On QoS (ie fast lane?): In some of the articles I skimmed there was a lot of talk about fast lane traffic but what this sounds like today would be known as QoS and classification marking that would really only become a factor under instances of congestion. The tech bloggers and journalists all seems to be unanimously opposed to this but I admit I am sort of scratching my head at the outrage over something that has been in prevalent use on many major networks for several years. It's prevalent on private work networks and users hate it. It generally disables activities the network owners don't approve of while engaging in doubletalk about how they're OK with it. Users don't want to see this migrate outward. Regards, Bill Herrin A couple of things come into play here, I think: 1. Prevalence of congestion on shared-bandwidth media, e.g. cable. 2. Who controls the QoS? A thumbsuck seems to indicate that #1 is high or at least significant enough to cause user-visible impact in e.g. places where cable internet providers in the US don't face any real competition. So, QoS measures can come into play in those locales/situations. For #2: QoS is good. Deciding which traffic gets passed and which dropped in congestion is, in and of itself, a good ability to have and can be a great value-added service. You want to run VoIP on the same line as your regular data but want to ensure your VoIP traffic gets through? No problem: Here's our QoS-Extraordinaire service! The concern comes from the direction the rules seem to be taking on this in shifting control/input on how QoS is applied from (a) just ensuring network-control doesn't get drowned out and (b) a value-add service where the customer picks their traffic prioritization, to an external party paying for preferred access to the BB-provider's customers. As a customer of BB-provider, this means that someone else now has control over how my packets get delivered based on a deal they cut with BB-provider. It's not about helping the end-user: It's about enriching BB-provider. It's another situation of opening up a two-sided market and fostering a situation where established players on the content side who can afford to pay BB-providers A through ZZ get beneficial treatment and there can be a larger barrier to entry to the markets occupied by those players. Yes, QoS should only come into play where congestion is involved. But, from experience we can see there are ways to let BE traffic degrade to affect e.g. latency-sensitive traffic without having to actively throttle it. Sure: the commercially unreasonable clauses *should* protect against that to a degree, but that's a very vague definition that creates a lot more regulatory overhead. Rather than saying you're not allowed to accept payment to prioritize one content provider's traffic over another's, the FCC would now have to investigate this situations on a case by case basis to determine if a specific situation is commercially unreasonable. So; basically, how much confidence do we have in the FCC's capacity/competence in enforcement of those types of regulations? We could also tack on that this could create a barn door situation, where lax or vague rules go into effect, the market decides, and then we have a helluva time trying to stuff the cat back in the bag because at that point this type of preferential treatment would already be an established/common practice. -- Hugo Network Specialist Phone: 604.606.4448 Email: hslabb...@stargate.ca Stargate Connections Inc. http://www.stargate.ca From: NANOG nanog-boun...@nanog.org on behalf of William Herrin b...@herrin.us Sent: Sunday, April 27, 2014 10:56 AM To: Rick Astley Cc: NANOG Operators' Group Subject: Re: What Net Neutrality should and should not cover On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 2:05 AM, Rick Astley jna...@gmail.com wrote: #3 On paid peering: I think this is where people start to disagree but I don't see what should be criminal about paid peering agreements. More specifically, I see serious problems once you outlaw paid peering and then look at the potential repercussions that would have. Double-billing Rick. It's just that simple. Paid peering means you're deliberately billing two customers for the same byte -- the peer and the downstream. And not merely incidental to ordinary service - the peer specifically connects to gain access to customers who already pay you and no one else. Where those two customers have divergent interests, you have to pick which one you'll serve even as you continue to bill both. That's a corrupt practice. What sort of corrupt practice? You might, for example, degrade your residential customers' speed to the part of the Internet housing a company you think should pay you for peering. Or permit the link to deteriorate while energetically upgrading others to keep pace with the times. Same difference. This doesn't have to be true.
Re: The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they could enshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post
Here is a quote I made in the other thread around the same time you were sending this: I also think the practice of paying an intermediary ISP a per Mbps rate in order to get to a last mile ISP over a settlement free agreement is also a bit disingenuous in cases where the amount of traffic is sufficient enough to fill multiple links. Theoretically there are many times where the intermediary ISP can hand off the traffic to a last mile ISP in exactly the same building they received it in so they have very few of the costs of actually delivering the traffic yet are the only party receiving money from the content provider for delivery. This arrangement makes sense when the traffic to the last mile ISP is a percentage of one link but after enough links are involved the intermediary ISP is serving no real other purpose than as a loophole used to circumvent paid peering fees (right or wrong). I think we are in agreement that $EyeballNetwork's customers pay it for internet access and $ContentProvider should pay for their own pipes. But where we diverge is with $CheapTransitProvider. At least for the purpose of traffic following the path of $ContentProvider $CheapTransitProvider $EyeballNetwork's because there is so much traffic involved the only real purpose of the relationship with $CheapTransitProvider is a loophole to get around paying $EyeballNetwork. They are able to charge ridiculously low delivery prices because traffic is only on their network for just long enough to say it touched and should now be considered settlement free. It's little more than a cheap trick and it makes them sort of the Cash4Gold of the Internet. I can completely understand why $EyeballNetwork would tell $CheapTransitProvider they no longer choose to have a settlement free agreement and they must buy future ports. On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 11:52 PM, Hugo Slabbert hslabb...@stargate.cawrote: Apologies that I dropped offlist as I was out for the day. I think the bulk of my thoughts on this have already been covered by others since, including e.g. Matt's poor grandmother and her phone dilemma in the What Net Neutrality should and should not cover thread. Basically I think we're on the same page for the most part, with maybe some misunderstandings between us. I covered this scenario in more detail in my post What Net Neutrality should and should not cover but if you expand on the assumption that paying for an internet connection also pays for the direct connection of every party who you exchange traffic with then you have a scenario where only half the people connected to the Internet should have to pay at all for their connection because any scenario where people simply buy their own pipe would be considered double billing. I don't think anyone on the Netflix^H^H^H^H^H^H $ContentProvider side of this was saying that $ContentProvider should get everything handed to them on a silver platter. $ContentProvider pays for transit sufficient to handle the traffic that their customers request. $EyeballNetwork's customers pay it for internet access, i.e. to deliver the content that they request, e.g. from $ContentProvider. That covers both directions here. Links between $ContentProvider's transit provider and $EyeballNetwork were getting congested, and $EyeballNetwork refuses to upgrade capacity. Where we were getting into the double-dip was $EyeballNetwork saying to $ContentProvide: Hey, we know you already pay for transit, but you're gonna have to pay us as well if you want us to actually accept the traffic our customers requested. The alternate arrangement between $ContentProvider and $EyeballNetwork seems to be private peering, where again it would seem to be fair for each side to bring the needed transport and ports to peering points. In recent history, though, it seems that $EyeballNetwork came out ahead in that agreement somehow. Now, Tore brought up a good point on paid peering in cases where e.g. $EyeballNetwork is already exchanging traffic with $ContentProvider through existing peering or below their CDR on existing transit, and indeed it seems that was the case for $EyeballNetwork via peering with $CheapTransitProvider that $ContentProvider was using. But it seems that $EyeballNetwork was having a pissing match with $CheapTransitProvider and refusing to upgrade ports. Okay, says $ContentProvider. How about we just peer directly. Sounds great, says $EyeballNetwork. Since we have to allocate capacity for this discrete from our existing peering capacity, you'll need to foot the bill for that. Huh? says $ContentProvider. This could have been fixed by you increasing your peering capacity to match the traffic volume your users are requesting, but you didn't want to do that because of your tiff with $CheapTransitProvider. Tell me again why we're paying for your side of this *in addition* to our own when we're only going this route because of a decision *you* made?
