Comments on news posted 2014-02-20 09:37:16: As we've been discussing, there's a lot of claims being made about why exactly Netflix streaming is suffering for customers of major ISPs like Comcast, Verizon and AT&T, but there hasn't been much hard data. ..
A Senator or Congressman should ask the Comcast rep at the hearing over the merger whether this is taking place. The person will be under oath so it's the best chance right now to get a truthful answer about what's going on.
ISPs have always let their peering link degrade on services that do not benefit them, meaning, its not the same legal definition, but the same end effect, which means a degraded experience for the end user, who has already paid for the traffic from netflix to come to them.
Level 3, NTT, XO, Zayo, CenturyLink, and I'm sure more. I routinely see congestion with those Tier 1 providers between them and Verizon that I don't see on many other providers.
Netflix and Amazon Instant are threats to Verizon's television and Redbox Instant business model.
"... Executives at major broadband providers, meanwhile, privately blame the traffic jam on Netflix's refusal to distribute its traffic more efficiently...."
I wonder what it means for Netflix to distribute its traffic more efficiently?
I have to wonder if that means that Netflix needs to pay the ISPs to open up the peering bottlenecks?
A Senator or Congressman should ask the Comcast rep at the hearing over the merger whether this is taking place. The person will be under oath so it's the best chance right now to get a truthful answer about what's going on.
"i neither confirm nor deny the allegations.." "i reserve the right to plead the fifth..."
But Hulu is an even bigger threat to Verizon TV and it works perfectly fine for most people. Amazon instant works perfectly fine for most people as well.
Comcast should be broken up, not allowed to get bigger. I am opposed to the merger but if it goes through I'll be able to keep my E-mail addresses if I move up to Maine.
Their responsibility for internet should begin at the ground block and end at the CMTS. That's it.
If Judge Harold Greene was still alive, the Comcast-Time Warner merger would not happen. He would break up Comcast like he broke up Ma' Bell.
Look at who owns Hulu. I can't speak for the streaming quality of it though as I'm not interested in watching commercials on a streaming service. In regards to Amazon Instant, I have just as many problems with their streaming as I do with Netflix. It's all relevant to the time of day, too.
I think overall, Netflix is perceived as the biggest threat out of those three video services.
or is it Karl speculating about the WSJ's speculation based on a rumor heard from a friend of a friend who knows a guy who used to date a girl who might have been related to someone who thinks they know what's going on.
A Senator or Congressman should ask the Comcast rep at the hearing over the merger whether this is taking place. The person will be under oath so it's the best chance right now to get a truthful answer about what's going on.
Congress doesn't get to the truth. It just gives the liar a podium and political cover. None of these "truths" has made anyone get fired or sanctioned. Why do you think it'd be different with Comcast?
Senator Charles Schumer (NY) recused himself from reviewing the Comcast deal, but only after the revelation that his brother, the lawyer Robert Schumer, worked on the deal. »dealbook.nytimes.com/201 ··· st-deal/
"Mr. Schumer, who sits on the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, praised the merger of the countrys two largest cable giants in a statement on his website on Thursday. On Friday, the magazine American Lawyer named Robert Schumer of the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison its dealmaker of the week for his work on the transaction."
.... and I download far more than I upload. Why would Verizon be surprised when there's a similar imbalance upstream?
But, what I really can't figure out: Verizon wouldn't have a product to sell if there weren't content providers "out there" on the 'Net, producing data that their customers want to download. If the Internet was still just email, then everyone would still be using dial-up modems.
Verizon specifically promotes higher bandwidth connections, at a higher price, telling customers they can download large amounts of data, faster. Netflix provides HD video that can't be downloaded reliably on slower connections, and Netflix customers are more likely to pay Verizon for a faster connection.
If Verizon is really throttling Netflix, intentionally or by benign neglect, it would seem they are cutting off their nose to spite their face.
They want to sell you a service you won't use. They don't want you downloading data. They want you to use only a small percentage of your theoretical bandwidth capability per month.
Guessing here but I suspect it means they each want Netflix to pay for a direct link to each of them. They don't want Netflix using competitive means to control their costs by paying ONCE for their bandwidth needs to the cheapest provider and allowing that provider to peer with them. They each want to be paid. They want it one of two ways:
1) Netflix pays each provider (Verizon, ATT, Comcast, etc.) for separate dedicated links
2) Netflix's single-source ISP pays peering fees to each provider (Verizon, ATT, Comcast, etc.) which is then passed on to Netflix. This means Netflix cannot shop for the best connectivity rates to control their costs because the peering fees will act as an equalizer so that #2 is the same cost as #1.
Netflix offers free on-premises equipment in an effort to remove traffic from provider backbones. Of course this assumes the motivation of providers is driven by capacity vs. money. If it's driven by the latter, they don't want Netflix's free equipment. They want Netflix to pay them for access to what they perceive as "their" customers. These thoughts are not new. This is old- school telco thinking.
or is it Karl speculating about the WSJ's speculation based on a rumor heard from a friend of a friend who knows a guy who used to date a girl who might have been related to someone who thinks they know what's going on.
I think Karl is doing a great job at saying it is all speculation, I don't see any thing that he is not. Feel free to show proof if you have it as you are just speculating as well.
The title implies a source with inside ISP knowledge, the actual article says "People familiar with Cogent's and Netflix's thinking say ..." A}that isn't a Verizon insider saying "I'm the guy those job is to cause the slow down (or anything similar)" B} Netflix(on the other side) has already made it clear they would like people to believe they are entitled to settlement free transit
The speculation in this article and the underlying WSJ one Karl references provide NO proof, or even new information any better than Gossip on a bus (or forum)
quote:Cogent Communications, one of Netflixs largest bandwidth vendors, said last summer that Verizon had previously opened up new ports to ease or prevent congestion when traffic hit around 50% capacity, but that the telecom giant had recently begun letting some ports reach 100% capacity without acting.
I don't know their sources, but they are speaking as if it were fact.
Re: Is that just the Wall Street Journal speculating?
I'm not attacking Karl (he does do a great job) but the response in this thread by people who obviously didn't need to see more then the title( which I do think is misleading) to declare it to be FACT/absolute truth, when in actual FACT it is nothing of the kind. The business haters still hate all businesses (not sure who they work for, if at all) and the Comcast haters still blame comcast even when the effects are being felt across a number of ISP's and the article is specific to Verizon.
All this aggravation over putting a couple of $5k boxes in a Terremark datacenter? It's not like Verizon doesn't own a major backbone either (UUNET).
The only reason can be politics, not reality. And for large corporations, politics are reality, so we think the result is strange.
Redbox Instant, who cares. If Verizon bundled it w/ my FiOS I may look at it. Netflix is just too ubiquitous at this point for me to care, unless they have some unique value prop (and going to a Redbox kiosk) is not one of them for the streaming service. This project will be dead by the end of the year. I hear outerwall wants to deepsix the project. Verizon could turn this into a OTT cable-killing product, but Verizon's software history is D- at best, and follow through even worse. I wouldn't put a byte in their cloud.
Also as of October, Netflix started rating on PRIME (eve) not 24h so the results for NON OpenCDN ISPs naturally go down as there is more CDN/peering contention during that time. This was happening all along, it just wasn't showing up. Also Jan/Feb really sucked weather-wise so I'm sure networks were sucking more wind than usual.
I am also not seeing issues (nor really ever have), so IMHO I don't think it's simply peering issues, it may be network/DNS management in play as well.