Comcast, Level 3 Still Negotiating

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Comcast says Level3 walked away from negotiations and claims the company "effectively demanded unlimited capacity at our cost." Level3 hasn't fired back yet, as they've been busy demanding NBC/Comcast merger conditions.

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We proposed a mutual and relatively modest investment that would allow us both to better understand the traffic, routing, and economic considerations. We also offered to keep the economics of the existing newly executed agreement at "no cost" until we mutually learned the actual costs of the new approach during this trial.

Additionally, we began some initial discussions about other solutions (including structural and technology approaches) to ensure we were thoughtfully evaluating a full set of potential solutions.

Level 3 chose to leave the meeting when we wouldn't agree to a "zero cost" outcome without the benefit of a trial and the opportunity to understand -- with Level 3 -- the full implications of the new approach, including the impact on our mutual customers.

Just like meter billing will never work in this country. Been all you can eat for way to long.

Why will prices go up and why will speeds go down? Is it because these ISP's are money hungry ^%$#@&^&. They don't have these issues in .eu .jp or .kr. But they sure have faster speeds and cheaper prices with NO CAPS.

Why will prices go up and why will speeds go down? Is it because these ISP's are money hungry ^%$#@&^&. They don't have these issues in .eu .jp or .kr. But they sure have faster speeds and cheaper prices with NO CAPS.

Coming from someone who runs (2) Independent ISP myself, that's so wrong. Bandwidth on the whole is so cheap, you only use metered billing to squeeze more money out of customers.

Yes, why don't we ignore the fact that every 9 months the bandwidth prices for backbones drops 50%. Making moore's law look obsolete. The fact is, speeds haven't been going up nearly as much as the wholesale prices have gone down.

This isn't a natural resource that is going to get depleted if we keep using more and more of it.

But what about cities? there's plenty of big cities in the US that don't fit your description at all. And yet they still have mediocre bandwidth and very limited options. These aren't small cities either, they are at least 1,000,000+ (El Paso, TX is a very good example)

Comcast needs to screw off

In the context of the parties' discussions, Comcast engineers made an initial assessment of Level 3's request, outlined some of the required engineering steps, began to think through alternative architectures that might better serve both parties, and did an initial estimate of costs as best they can be understood at this stage. On December 16, after two days of in-person discussions with Level 3, Comcast presented Level 3 with a highly responsive, good faith offer to run a trial that would (1) provide a real world assessment of Level 3's proposal; (2) be fair to both parties and respect Level 3's immediate business concerns; and (3) ensure that network performance and services were not degraded or artificially manipulated.

Specifically, Comcast presented Level 3 with the following oral proposal, which we proposed would be documented in a written agreement that would resolve remaining details:

* The parties' existing paid peering agreement, signed in November 2010, which provides for Comcast to provision up to twenty ports, would be implemented per the existing commitments, except that Comcast would waive monthly fees through the date that is 45 days after the start of the new Internet architecture trial described here (target trial turn-up in January, 2011).

* Comcast and Level 3 would trial metro interconnect solutions to understand the traffic patterns, routing, costs, and performance of this new approach. Both parties would fund their respective, modest capital costs for the trial, and the parties would agree on a reasonable duration for the trial (e.g., several months).

* In parallel, Comcast and Level 3 would continue developing long term solutions for Internet traffic capacity, and discussions would continue in good faith to explore other architecture and technology solutions to improve overall economics.

Additional details, such as appropriate metrics for the assessment, an agreed-upon path for the existing peering agreement after the 45-day period, and possible next steps after the trial, were open for discussion. However, rather than engage in any discussion, Level 3's response to this offer was to terminate the meeting and file its December 16 letter with the FCC and the Department of Justice -- with no reference to Comcast's good faith offer.

quote:

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Comcast says Level3 walked away from negotiations and claims the company "effectively demanded unlimited capacity at our cost." Level3 hasn't fired back yet, as they've been busy demanding NBC/Comcast merger conditions.

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Are you actually going to claim that every CDN out there has to sign and pay every ISP out there to reach their customers as Comcast is trying to get L3 to do?

This is an ISP trying to charge a CDN to reach it's customers. Are you actually going to claim that every CDN out there has to sign and pay every ISP out there to reach their customers as Comcast is trying to get L3 to do?

that is whre the peering agreement comes into play. Comcast is giving L3 LESS data THAN L3 is giving Comcast. so that doesn't work.

And actually L3 should be paying their peers instead of doing this same thing to them like they have in the past.

comcast is not a tier 1 peer, with comcasts asymmetric connections it is impossible for comcast customers to push more traffic than they request

there is NO traffic dumping, the only reason L3 will be sending this traffic to comcast is cause comcast customers are requesting it

By your logic nobody will ever pay anything to send traffic on the internet. It can't work that way. Bandwidth is not free.

it doesn't matter a flying fuck what level3's terms are with netflix, comcast is where the traffic is terminating if anything comcast should be paying level3 to route the traffic their customers are requesting.

it doesn't matter a flying fuck what level3's terms are with netflix, comcast is where the traffic is terminating if anything comcast should be paying level3 to route the traffic their customers are requesting.

once again there is NO traffic dumping, all traffic is traveling to comcasts networks cause comcasts fucking customers are requesting it

comcasts customers are already footing the bill via monthly charges and 250gig cap

All I know is that I very seldom had a buffering issue with Netflix streaming until the day I found out about the Level3/Comcast dispute. Since the day Netflix switched over to Level 3, we now have constant problems trying to watch content through our Wii. Who is to blame for that? Level 3 or Comcast?