Level 3 vs. Comcast: Peering Dispute or Breach of Net Neutrality? | Hacker News Reader

Level 3 vs. Comcast: Peering Dispute or Breach of Net Neutrality?

datacenterknowledge.com

26 points1SockChuck20 comments

> “Level 3′s position is simply duplicitous,” said Joe Waz, Comcast’s Senior Vice President for External Affairs, in a statement. “When another network provider tried to pass traffic onto Level 3 this way, Level 3 said this is not the way settlement-free peering works in the Internet world. When traffic is way out of balance, Level 3 said, it will insist on a commercially negotiated solution. Now, Level 3 proposes to send traffic to Comcast at a 5:1 ratio over what Comcast sends to Level 3, so Comcast is proposing the same type of commercial solution endorsed by Level 3.”

I believe Comcast is pointing at when Level 3 blocked Cogent for pushing too much traffic onto Level 3:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/105790/Level_3_Cogent...

An interesting article on why de-peering matters:

http://scrawford.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2005/10/22/1316...

Thanks for that second link. I think Comcast is clearly drawing a line between L3's CDN and their tier one backbone. The following press release (from 2004) details Comcast's use of L3's fiber:

http://www.comcast.com/About/PressRelease/PressReleaseDetail...

Fishy. From Slackerboy @reddit:

  > Yeah I have seen the peering agreements with L3 and Comcast,
  > this story is complete BS.
  >
  >> Before Level 3 Communications landed the Netflix CDN deal,
  >> it sent approximately the same amount of traffic to Comcast
  >> as it received.
  >
  > This is a flat out lie, end consumer networks like Comcast ALWAYS
  > receive FAR more traffic then they send. Note how you get something
  > like 5 megs down and 1 meg up... wonder why? Because as an end
  > user you are not allowed to run any servers or serve any services.
  >
  > When you request a YouTube video you send maybe 20KB up stream
  > and receive 50-200MB back. Comcast has NEVER had more then 5%
  > upstream.
  >
  > I am smelling a Comcast fed story here.

http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/edxjp/level_3_ou...

It's wrong to assume that Comcast does not send a lot of upstream traffic. They actually sell IP transit at relatively small prices.

They have about 16 million users of broadband asymmetric access. I doubt any IP transit sold would balance that. It'd be nice to see real numbers instead of conjectures.

Comcast is also a transit provider, much like Cox. For example Atjeu located in Phoenix has Cox as their major transit provider.

So don't be so quick to dismiss this fact.

Comcast and Level3 are both being disingenous, really. Each is pretending they're operating as a transit provider (because they both do at times, Level3 more than Comcast), but neither is actually doing that at the moment. In this case Comcast is the eyeball network and Level3 is the CDN.

I have no doubt that Level 3's CDN traffic went through the roof when they took on Netflix. I also have no doubt that Comcast went "oh, we have them by the balls, lets get more money". It's not really a simple thing to take sides on.

It is a problem, though, that Comcast is operating as a de facto monopoly with their connected consumers. That's kind of the breaks of giving them that sort of leverage. Thank your congressman. Level3 is sure using that story to their advantage.

--Edit-- Also, Comcast apparently does charge other CDNs like this. My opinion has tilted slightly in their favor, it sounds like they're at least being consistant. CDNs always have the option of not using a peering connection but going through paid transit.

I always thought that Google should buy NetFlix. Netflix's market cap is $10B or so (maybe they pay $12-$15B in a buyout). Seems like a better deal than $6B for Groupon.

I'm sure Google has a lot more leverage in peering negotiations.

And let's not leave out Level 3 and the perennial rumors that it is a prime acquisition target for Google in order to gain a strong fiber backbone (not that I think it will ever happen: I don't).

It’s funny when evil telecoms fight each other until I realize no matter which one wins, we lose.

So, does this mean that Comcast is no longer merely a content provider since they are now actively filtering/determining what content is allowed on their network? If so, then Comcast should now be held liable for any and all illegal/pirated content sent across their network.

RIAA maybe you should find a few Comcast subscribers downloading and sharing illegal/pirated music then go after Comcast (who actually has the money to pay the fines) for not actively filtering said content out of their network.

Comcast, you are walking on a rope next to a slippery slope.

This is not what is happening.

Comcast is an ISP. Just about every CDN out there pays to peer with Comcast to deliver bits faster and cheaper to Comcast eyeballs.

Level(3) is an ISP. Because they carry traffic Comcast customers want they have been able to peer at no-cost to Comcast historically. Now Level(3) is building and selling a large CDN. Level(3) is taking advantage of these existing peering circuits to be able to offer lower-cost CDN than their competitors because they don't have to pay Comcast to exchange traffic. As a consequence, their CDN has grown very large. They now dump far more traffic onto Comcast's network than Comcast sends them. Comcast says their peering policy is based on equal traffic ratios. Therefore, unless Level(3) can balance their peering circuits, they will be forced to pay.

This has little to do with Net Neutrality and has been happening between various ISPs over the last 10-20 years.

In IPv6 it's even worse. If you have Cogent as your ISP you can't reach Hurricane Electric's network over IPv6 because neither of them has transit and they don't peer with each other. :-(

This entire model is duplicitous on Comcast's part. They complain when content providers dump too much content on their network. Never mind the fact that Comcast's entire infrastructure is built to deliver lots of downstream traffic. If, for example, a lot of Comcast customers started seeding BitTorrent traffic to L3 customers, generating upstream traffic, Comcast's network would collapse because it is not designed to do this.

Comcast should be thankful that their peer is sending them content directly, and that they don't have to pay transit costs from their upstream provider.

This is clearly an attempt by Comcast to put up a pay-wall for content from 3rd parties.

I've noticed more and more cable company manipulation of CDNs. For example, nothing scientific, but a few days out of each month, Cablevision, my ISP in Connecticut, starts randomly delaying traffic to Akamai CDN which serves Hulu content. It is difficult for me to scientifically prove anything is wrong, however, when the entire Internet is working flawlessly and a few random Akamai CDN content addresses, which just happen to have Hulu content, stop working, or are throttled, something stinks.

I guess we disagree. I don't find anything you wrote to be very factual.

Most networks charge their neighbors -- be them customers or peers. That means when one neighbor sends traffic to another neighbor via the ISP, they both usually pay.

If you call that duplicitous, then every network is duplicitous.

Also -- Comcast's network is symmetrical to the head-ends. It's true the head-ends are configured to allow more spectrum to be used for download than upload, but that's easily changed if people's surfing habits changed. I imagine in the future it'll be dynamic, per customer (if we even continue to use this model for cable modems, which I think DOCSIS is starting to move away from).

Most peering agreements don't work like ISP customer agreements. Peering agreements are usually entirely agreements NOT to charge for traffic which terminates directly on your network. Transit agreements are more like typical ISP customer relationships, where I pay you to transit traffic that has an endpoint on some other network.

Ignoring the fact that the entire DOCSIS standard was designed around downstream distribution of content, and simply would not function well if you try to reverse the flow, how do you determine who pays who in your world? If I'm Comcast, do I have to pay L3 because they have content my customers want? Or should L3 pay me because I have customers they want to deliver content to?

You see, it is not so cut and dried as "everybody pays for bandwidth." ISP customers pay for bandwidth because they are asking the ISP to transit traffic through their network. Peers typically don't pay because they are both endpoints.

1) How do you know what peering agreements look like? What you write is simply untrue from my experience. I peer with about 200+ networks today. Who are you? Illumin8 me please.

2) Of course DOCSIS works if you reverse the flow. You already have separated spectrum in each channel. The wider one is typically for downstream, but could easily be converted for upstream. As I said, I think in the future it'll be dynamic.

You said: "That means when one neighbor sends traffic to another neighbor via the ISP, they both usually pay." This is true, if they are both customers of an ISP, and they are using that ISP to transit traffic to each other, they both pay. But if we have a lot of traffic destined for each other, it would make sense for us to peer and reduce our bandwidth costs from our upstream providers.

DOCSIS only works in reverse if you are willing to install cable plant equipment at a customer site, which would mean a rack full of head-end gear at every house. Not feasible, and won't happen tomorrow.

I used to handle BGP and peering for a tier 1 ISP and CLEC in the western US, so I've seen my fair share of peering agreements, and I've run my fair share of DS3, OC3 and OC12 circuits to peering locations.

It sounds like you have a lot of credentials working for OpenDNS, so I don't mean to denigrate your experience, but OpenDNS seems more like a bandwidth customer and less like a provider/peer. I have a lot of experience with cable plant equipment because we provided cable modems and DOCSIS equipment to a lot of small business/enterprise customers in the late 90s/early 2000s.

Comcast is not filtering traffic.

They are "peering" their servers with L3 servers at the datacenter to bypass regular networks. "Peering" is when you basically interconnect the servers directly (more or less).

This saves on costs greatly and improves latency and congestion issues.

The problem here is that the peering is now imbalanced by a ratio of 5 and this is not a fair deal for Comcast.

How is that not fair to Comcast? Comcast is getting a great deal. They get content for their customers free of charge and don't have to pay an upstream transit provider for the bandwidth. Comcast is not a tier 1 backbone, which means they have to pay MCI/UUnet or AT&T just like any other ISP. By peering they save a significant amount of money in bandwidth costs.

I'm actually surprised how many people here have no knowledge of how peering really works, and are buying the propaganda that Comcast puts out.

My understanding is that peering agreements are usually done on a 1:1 to a 1:2 ratio. "Peering" is considered no-charge ... both parties are "partners".

Anything else is considered transit and one party becomes a "customer".

If L3 is now 5x asymmetrical with Comcast, they should do what everyone else in the industry does and pay a fee.

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