Comment by JoshTriplett | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JoshTriplett | Hacker News Reader

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> ...until the ISP decides to charge a large amount of money for the ability to do that, and then under-provision their peering links so that there is no other way to have adequate performance.

The latter is the primary problem here.

> Require last mile ISPs to do free peering with anyone who has traffic for their last mile customers.

What does "last mile ISP" mean here? DSL is no longer competitive, and most implementations of cable and fiber have no separation between "infrastructure provider" and "bandwidth provider".

> If you bring traffic directly to their local central office, they have to take it and deliver it up to the speed that they've sold to their customers.

What if their central office isn't connected to anyone else directly, because they get all their bandwidth and peering from one or more of the major backbones? Presumably they can say "go to those backbones", rather than having to start making peering arrangements with individual services.

> but decline and rely on peering (and install their CDN equipment across the street) if they try to charge monopoly prices

What if their central office doesn't have an "across the street" where you can put servers? Or what if they don't have a "central office", period?

I appreciate that you bring these questions up but your overall point seems to be "this is complicated and you can't provide logically / morally perfect arguments", which seems a little pointless.

All legal matters are complicated, but we're a modern society full of a lot of bright people and "free market lol ISPs get to be highway robbers now" doesn't seem like the best we can do.

I also disagree with the notion that inconveniencing some billionaires is less moral than hurting millions of consumers and setting a horrible precedent, so: regulate the shit out of them. If poor people can bootstrap huge medical bills then ISPs can handle some simple regulation.

e: you didn't make that point about prioritizing rich over poor etc, that was directed more broadly at net neutrality opponents

My argument isn't "this is complicated so let's not"; it's "this is complicated and needs to be handled with care, not with a trivial attempted fix like 'dumb pipes only' the way people often seem to think". Together with a healthy dose of "regulation has historically failed to adapt to future technologies". And we don't really want regulations that privilege the tech we currently know over the future tech we don't; that tends to lead in unpleasant directions, including regulatory capture and blocking of future competitors.

I think the fundamental problem here is that in most locations we don't have a market at all, free or otherwise. We're looking at all these restrictions in an effort to work around the fundamental problem of "people have little to no choice in ISPs". If you're going to have one ISP in an area and regulate its behavior heavily, you might as well just have the government run it. (Note: that's not a recommendation.)

I'd be entirely in favor of solving the problem by saying "last-mile infrastructure (from customers all the way to the nearest meet-me room) is a public utility, all ISPs have to remain separate from the last-mile infrastructure". If the average customer had a choice of half a dozen or more ISPs, none of these problems would arise, because any ISP stupid enough to make services deliberately worse would get dropped in favor of ISPs that don't. ISPs could then compete on everything from services provided, customer service, neutrality, geek-friendliness, IPv6 availability, CDNs/mirrors, or anything else they think people want.

> "this is complicated and needs to be handled with care, not with a trivial attempted fix like 'dumb pipes only' the way people often seem to think"

Why do you think turning ISPs into dumb pipes only would not fix most, if not all, problems?

The reason we have all these problems is that the ISPs do not want to be dumb pipes only.

Because many customers don't actually want a dumb pipe.

Dumb pipes don't come with email addresses.

Dumb pipes serve YouTube more slowly, and might not have the capacity for HD/4K video. (Look at what server the video comes from; if you're on a major ISP, the server name likely has your ISP's name in it.)

Dumb pipes serve Netflix more slowly.

Dumb pipes can't hold as many customers.

Dumb pipes might not get as many customers.

Dumb pipes cost more.

Personally, I'd like a dumb pipe only as far as the nearest major datacenter, and then quite a lot of smarts in that datacenter. I don't just want a raw connection to a major bandwidth provider, though.

See also the last paragraph of my previous reply: I'd be in favor of separating out the "dumb pipe" as a utility, and then having ISPs operate independently from that. I think that would solve the majority of the problems.

> Because many customers don't actually want a dumb pipe.

Yes, they do. That's exactly what they want. A dumb pipe that transports their bits and nothing more.

I'm omitting your list about dumb pipes, as nothing you write has anything to do with dumb pipes and is all completely wrong.

> Personally, I'd like a dumb pipe only as far as the nearest major datacenter, and then quite a lot of smarts in that datacenter. I don't just want a raw connection to a major bandwidth provider, though.

Hate to disappoint you, but there are no smarts in any ISP datacenter. It's just a big router and some interconnects. Raw bandwidth is all you get, if you are lucky.

> See also the last paragraph of my previous reply: I'd be in favor of separating out the "dumb pipe" as a utility, and then having ISPs operate independently from that. I think that would solve the majority of the problems.

It's not that simple, there are a lot of implementation details that matter. Do you want local loop unbundling, bitstream access or only resale?

I think we have a serious problem of definitions (which goes back to what I said about this being not trivial to define): we're both saying the phrase "dumb pipe" and apparently meaning quite different things by it. Defining terms differently does not invalidate arguments, it just means we're talking past each other.

> Do you want local loop unbundling, bitstream access or only resale?

In an ideal world? A form of local loop unbundling, with a not-for-profit entity running/maintaining the local fiber, and umpteen ISPs readily available to handle termination and routing at the other end.

> I think we have a serious problem of definitions (which goes back to what I said about this being not trivial to define): we're both saying the phrase "dumb pipe" and apparently meaning quite different things by it.

Really? How many definitions are there?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumb_pipe http://www.hyperorg.com/misc/stupidnet.html

> In an ideal world? A form of local loop unbundling, with a not-for-profit entity running/maintaining the local fiber, and umpteen ISPs readily available to handle termination and routing at the other end.

That's nice. Now you've either locked out small/unsophisticated ISPs/network users who can't or can't afford to light the fiber or increased cost and/or complexity by requiring an additional service provider on top of the dark fiber provider to provide bitstream, retail and other transport services. Also excellent choice for finger pointing when these two actors donit get along.

> Dumb pipes don't come with email addresses.

Neither do rack servers. End customers don't buy the dumb pipe directly.

> Dumb pipes can't hold as many customers.

The same fiber can transfer the same amount of traffic.

> Dumb pipes cost more.

Cost more than paying monopoly prices for services?

> I'd be in favor of separating out the "dumb pipe" as a utility, and then having ISPs operate independently from that. I think that would solve the majority of the problems.

Sure it would. But it has to be one or the other. Would Comcast rather have network neutrality or divest its ISP/TV business?

> Neither do rack servers. End customers don't buy the dumb pipe directly.

Of course; they buy it from ISPs, and now you have the same problem again.

> The same fiber can transfer the same amount of traffic.

It doesn't matter how much your fiber can transfer if the arrangements at the meet-me room can't get you that much content for a price you want to pay.

> Cost more than paying monopoly prices for services?

For the same bandwidth? Yes. Raw bandwidth costs more than a plan from an ISP offering that much bandwidth.

> Would Comcast rather have network neutrality or divest its ISP/TV business?

I don't want a single choice of ISP, whether that ISP has agreed to network neutrality restrictions or to divest any particular services. I'd like a dozen ISPs to choose from, and then the rest stops causing a problem.

> Of course; they buy it from ISPs, and now you have the same problem again.

What problem?

> It doesn't matter how much your fiber can transfer if the arrangements at the meet-me room can't get you that much content for a price you want to pay.

So free isn't enough for you?

You can pretty much get as much content as you want, if you have the customer demand for it.

Join an IX and you'll get as much content as you want for free for the cost of the port. If you got serious content demand, do a private interconnect and get the content for the price of a crossconnect. There are facilities with no recurring costs for crossconnects. Need a shitload of content? The content providers will send you a CDN node to you, for free.

In summary, your your statement is provably false.

> Raw bandwidth costs more than a plan from an ISP offering that much bandwidth.

You obviously never bought wholesale bandwidth. Wholesale IP transit is 20 cents or less per Mbps. IX peering is cheaper than that. Private interconnects, again cheaper.

I don't see ISPs offering 100M connections for $20 or less.

Again, your statement is provably false.

>> Of course; they buy it from ISPs, and now you have the same problem again.

> What problem?

The message I originally replied to said "End customers don't buy the dumb pipe directly." And once an ISP starts trying to provide value above and beyond the pipe, all the same questions about neutrality come up again.

> If you got serious content demand, do a private interconnect and get the content for the price of a crossconnect.

> The content providers will send you a CDN node to you, for free.

What happened to "dumb pipe"? Both of these, especially the former, seem to contradict that.

> You obviously never bought wholesale bandwidth. Wholesale IP transit is 20 cents or less per Mbps. IX peering is cheaper than that. Private interconnects, again cheaper.

I have, in fact, looked into both wholesale bandwidth and IX peering (though not in the last year or two). Both of which, at least in the areas and exchanges I've looked in, were several times higher than the cost you're quoting. It's entirely possible that you have access to better information/markets, or that ISPs can get much lower pricing; I based the comment I made on the information I had.

All the numbers I've seen suggested that raw bandwidth costs significantly more than ISPs charge for it, because consumer ISPs rarely expect 24/7 utilization of the full bandwidth, and likely also because they can provide some of the larger sources of content for free out of their own datacenter.

> The message I originally replied to said "End customers don't buy the dumb pipe directly."

But they do, and that's what they want to keep on doing. An Internet connection is by definition a dumb pipe. It's only when you start messing with it and prioritizing traffic that it becomes something else.

> And once an ISP starts trying to provide value above and beyond the pipe, all the same questions about neutrality come up again.

No, this is just a silly argument. Just because an ISP provider other services in addition to or on top of the Internet connection does not make nor any net neutrality issues. It is only when they start prioritizing stuff that there is an issue.

> What happened to "dumb pipe"? Both of these, especially the former, seem to contradict that.

Nothing. Seriously, this is how the Internet works and is supposed to work. You are supposed to interconnect networks, that's why it's called the Internet. Doh!

Just because somebody else has a shorter path to you than somebody else doesn't make it wrong or unfair.

> All the numbers I've seen suggested that raw bandwidth costs significantly more than ISPs charge for it, because consumer ISPs rarely expect 24/7 utilization of the full bandwidth, and likely also because they can provide some of the larger sources of content for free out of their own datacenter.

Well, it doesn't and it's not for the reasons you state. Wholesale bandwidth prices decrease by 30% on average year on year. Consumer prices are stagnant, or rising.

While it's true that consumers don't use their connection 24/7 (although some make a pretty good go at it), the ISPs could without much problem support that use case. Furthermore ISPs provide close to zero of the content consumers consume. All the content is coming from the content providers, either directly, via an IX or a local cache. The ISPs have nothing to do with it, they are just dumb pipes.

> What does "last mile ISP" mean here?

It means you control a physical data wire that goes into more than a thousand residential buildings.

> DSL is no longer competitive, and most implementations of cable and fiber have no separation between "infrastructure provider" and "bandwidth provider".

You're the last mile ISP if you're the infrastructure provider regardless of whether you're also the bandwidth provider.

> What if their central office isn't connected to anyone else directly, because they get all their bandwidth and peering from one or more of the major backbones? Presumably they can say "go to those backbones", rather than having to start making peering arrangements with individual services.

Outside of megaplayers like Netflix and Google who are effectively Tier 1 networks unto themselves, the backbones and CDNs are the people who use the free peering. Some website like Yelp or Expedia doesn't want to peer with ISPs or run a CDN, they want to pay Akamai et al to take care of that.

> What if their central office doesn't have an "across the street" where you can put servers?

You can put them wherever you want to. Nobody stops you from putting all your servers for the whole world in one city, or having regional hubs, or doing whatever you want. That's your network, not the last mile ISP's. Level 3 can run fiber from an office 200 miles away if they think that's worth it over buying closer office space.

> Or what if they don't have a "central office", period?

Then where do they normally peer with other networks or operate CDN hardware?

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