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elefante72
join:2010-12-03
East Amherst, NY

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elefante72 to battleop

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Re: Seems like a double standard to me....

That is their argument. Netflix may take up 40% of their bandwidth during prime, so if the exchanges get saturated it is up to the bandwidth providers to either pay for additional transit or for Netflix to look toward more direct jump points.

This board is littered with the bs that these arrangements are settlement-free peering. IT IS NOT. No f**king way. I haven't seen the contracts, but I know damn well this is not the case, and whomever propagates this stuff has little knowledge of transit cost structures.

It looks like Netflix is looking to more direct jump points which they can control more directly, and PAY for.

It is NOT clear that today Netflix is paying more for Comcast than to other providers (L3, Cogent, etc).

Most people on this board assume they are under balanced-trade peering which is simply NOT the case. They are most assuredly paying for transit bandwidth, plain and simple. It may be the case of L3 not wanting to add bandwidth to take away from their margin..

I think what will eventually happen is that Netflix starts adding their boxes in-net and then these connection issues mitigate OR they start doing direct deals w/ the operators. or both.

Netflix per se is a virtual CDN... They own no networks. All their services run on AWS and Openconnect CDN servers for providers that have the. So in a virtual world, you have to PAY for connectivity from AWS to the end user.

If you look at it these guys are consolidating so many are already tier1 providers with national networks, so it simply makes sense to have direct transit relationships with these guys and while we trumpet net neutrality the reality is that this is really the case if my operator (Verizon) is NOT traffic shaping my connection.

Now I DO think that these operators are acting like baby bells and letting these exchanges points explode, because they have the end-user advantage and are taking that to the max. Who wouldn't do that? You guys think CIX is still relevant, cmon. But a 10GB connection is a 10GB connection in one direction. If the 10GB downlink is saturated, and the uplink is at 5% (which it probably is) that is because video is a HIGHLY asymmetric profile.

Also the board is confusing net neutrality (which has to do with prioritization and traffic shaping -- that is in FULL force up in Canada) versus one single provider (Netflix) who is not managing their data needs correctly and is being pushed to the brink by the operators.

Long story short, eventually the end customer is going to have to pay for all these SuperHD streams and really pay for 4K. Ever notice how HD PAYG costs more than SD? Well it's partly profit, but it costs MORE to deliver.
Coolbrz
join:2002-12-16
Kane, PA

Coolbrz

Member

I agree pretty much with your explanation of it, but this again falls on the ISPs not being able to handle what they promise to their customers.

"Sure, we'll sell you 50meg DL at 60 bucks a month and you will see that speed all the time...as long as its on said ISPs network."

The ISP needs to cover the traffic that THEIR customers are requesting from netflix but they dont want to foot the bill to upgrade it. So you get what Comcast is doing, letting links saturate, moving traffic to overcongested links etc. then the customer is left in the middle.

Customer complains to Netflix, Netflix can upgrade all of their connections to any tier 1 provider or whatnot, but the issue remains getting onto Comcast network. Netflix tells the customers there isn't anything they can do (short of a direct connect to the ISP, which is where we are going now) and to contact Comcast.

Comcast tells the customer that they only can guarantee speed on their network, not out to the "internet", even if the problem lies with the connection between Comcast and Cogent/Tata/Level3

Comcast then turns around and when called out on it by Netflix they take the stand of Netflix is sending Comcast too much traffic? BS...Comcast customers are requesting it, its not like Netflix is dumping traffic onto Comcast to reach Verizon or something (this is why comparing this to cogent/L3 peering dispute that another poster did is idiotic, not referring to elefante72 at all).

While i disagree with this deal between Netflix and Comcast for the long haul of the internet, because the only people that are going to have to spend more money will be customers, it was really the only thing left for Netflix to succumb to.

battleop
join:2005-09-28
00000

1 recommendation

battleop

Member

"I agree pretty much with your explanation of it, but this again falls on the ISPs not being able to handle what they promise to their customers."

No, it falls on the ISP AND Netflix. They need to both work this problem out to take care of their mutual customer instead of pointing fingers back and fourth.
silbaco
Premium Member
join:2009-08-03
USA

1 recommendation

silbaco to Coolbrz

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to Coolbrz
Netflix had plenty of options, like using 3rd party CDNs as many of their competitors do. Netflix used to and things worked well. Then they went about this game of trying to do everything themselves and things broke down so they blamed everyone else.

swintec
Premium Member
join:2003-12-19
Alfred, ME

1 recommendation

swintec to elefante72

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to elefante72
said by elefante72:

I haven't seen the contracts, but I know damn well this is not the case...

So you have absolutely no idea but you know for certain?
Skippy25
join:2000-09-13
Hazelwood, MO

Skippy25 to battleop

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So according to you at what point does a website or service become popular enough that THEY then have to then work with every ISP to get prioritized traffic delivered in a manor that is not disruptive to their consumer base? 10GB, 50GB, 3TB a month?

Come on, lets get a specific amount of traffic that ALL companies large and small must abide by to start the Intertube process so it is black and white and we can all decide is fair and equal to all.
elefante72
join:2010-12-03
East Amherst, NY

elefante72 to swintec

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I can't say for certain but I have seen dozens of CDN contracts and none of them have been the settlement-free peering version that has been spewing about in the press.

I have walked into transit centers. It's pretty amusing. You may have Level 3, Cogent have a a switch or two sitting in a rack and in the same rack is a switch for Verizon, Comcast, etc and all it takes is a line card and a 2m optical cable and poof the issue goes away. Interestingly enough (and I didn't know this), lots of these links are non-redundant and if one port goes down or a switch some serious shit will start hitting the fan. It's not like the data has to go thousands of miles to get onto an operators network...It's like 2m

So the actual congestion is not an issue, it really boils down to (IMHO) the operators trying to slow the growth of their network UTILIZATION AND make money on both ends (caps on one end, transit on the other) to simply monetize it. And on the Netflix side, they just want to pay a flat rate, and then unleash SuperHD on the world and then expect the marginal cost to not go up. Well it does.

Plain and simple it's a balancing act, and this costs money. Even if it costs Netflix 1c to deliver SD and 2c to deliver SuperHD, multiply that by millions of videos a day and you can see how they are trying to minimize cost. When you get to that scale, fractions of a cent MATTER. If Netflix takes up 40% of Comcast prime traffic, do you not think they need to build infrastructure to keep up the pace? Even if transit handoffs aren't the bottleneck, they are still going to need to invest hundreds of millions in their infrastructure to expand intranet capacity.
Skippy25
join:2000-09-13
Hazelwood, MO

Skippy25 to silbaco

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You do realize that even using a 3rd party CDN does not resolve the issue unless that CDN is physically INSIDE of the ISP's network through physical server placement or direct peering right?

So netflix could have a 1 petabyte connection to the internet and be on a CDN that has a 1 server for every 100 people in every zipcode and that still will not resolve the peering problem if the ISP's don't let the traffic enter their network through a non-congested node.

You want to know when this is a Netflix issue? When their servers are constantly spiked at 100% and/or when their actual direct connection to the internet is constantly spiked at 100%. That is when Netflix needs to upgrade to improve their services to their customers. Anything in between falls on the ISP and their peers.
stridr69
join:2003-05-19
San Luis Obispo, CA

stridr69 to battleop

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I disagree. It's the ISP's issue. I'm a Charter customer and have NO problem receiving Netflix feeds in 1080P/5:1 surround 24/7/365 via PS3