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Comment by mikeryan | Hacker News Reader

I'm probably going to get downmodded for this because its unpopular to side with the big guys.

But..

The Netflix/Level3/Comcast dustup was not a net neutrality issue. It was a peering disagreement. Comcast pays Level3 to be a transit provider, so they pay to connect to Level3's network. Traditional CDN's such as Akamai and Limelight pay Comcast in order to get a direct pipe into Comcast's network. Level3 in the meantime was charging Netflix as a CDN since they already had a direct pipe into Comcast's network as a transit provider. So in essence Comcast was paying Level3 to act as a CDN as opposed to the other way around.

While Level3 quickly screamed "Net Neutrality" when Comcast wanted to fix the agreement, that was just a smokescreen for a peering issue.

EDIT (Shimon has covered this as well http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2121472)

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The reality is that Comcast never raises the issue over transit to e.g. ICanHasCheezburger.

Do you not see that Netflix competes directly with the Comcast sister offering of cable TV and video on demand?

This is a test case to determine how to "tax" every content provider for access to Comcast customers; who as I mention, are already paying for access to the Internet.

Comcast never raised this issue with Netflix specifically. They raised it with everyone using Level3 as a CDN, if ICanHasCheezburger is using Level3 as a CDN then it got raised. Netflix's volume of traffic over Level3 is likely what made it a pressing concern.

I'm well aware of Comcast's dislike of Netflix. Probably better then most. But a vast amount of data being thrown around on these networks is video, most of it by Netflix. While there are net neutrality concerns there, there are also legit network stability and infrastructure concerns.

You say "there are also legit network stability and infrastructure concerns"

I would like to ask, "how do you know this"?

Also, would reference my original point - "Comcast has a residential cap of 250GB/month as being acceptable usage by a customer" - if a Netflix user is staying within that limit, and if Comcast is having problems - they deliberately under-engineered their network, yes?

I would like to ask, "how do you know this"?

Umm.. check my profile, I worked for Comcast for 4 years I know their broadcast and HSI infrastructure pretty well.

Comcast has a residential cap of 250GB/month as being acceptable usage by a customer

Yes and if everyone used it at the same time your network would crawl. Bandwidth on Comcast (And most networks) is a shared service. Caps be damned there's not an ISP in existence who can survive massive simultaneous usage by all their users (such as everyone using Netflix around 8pm in the evening). Unless you want Comcast to throttle down their limits?

Again you keep making this argument a battle between Netflix and Comcast and its not. If Netflix used Akamai as their sole provider of CDN services (who have CDN agreements with Comcast) this would not be a Netflix issue. This is a Level3 and Comcast business dispute.

But yet again, how is this the customers fault Comcast oversold their bandwidth? Comcast set the limits, the max speed, and takes care of the infrastructure. And fyi, electrical grids are designed for peak usage, same with water systems, and same with sewer pipes. Look at stadiums for an example where they engineered the system to handle every crapper to be flushed at the same time.

Comcast has been reaping the benefits of over selling for years and now its time to pay the piper back. They sold it this way and they didn't complain or sink every dollar of profit back into the infrastructure that they made from over selling. In my eyes they are using their customer base to slow down a competitor, and in all rights its probably against some federal law. Some sort of anti competitive law.

How is it the end user's fault that Comcast's network can't handle everyone using the service they paid for?

I understand that everyone does overselling because it's profitable, and makes sense, but don't expect the customer to not use what they are paying for because you have oversold your services.

No ISP on earth can "handle everyone using the service they paid for", the same way that the electricity grid can't handle everyone using their full 100 Amp supply.

Overselling is the way the industry works.

It depends; there are some ISPs that have enough capacity in their burstable circuits, that they could actually do that.

Jeez, I'm really not a Comcast apologist, I'm not sure how we got here ;-)

But in reality you, and I and Patrick above, as probably power users of our internet service, benefit from this overselling. If an ISP actually had to provide the entire bandwidth cap to all their users the only way they'd be able to do this is by raising their prices considerably. Instead they stick a high cap up there to discourage people soaking all the bandwidth with torrents and try to provide the best level of service they can.

The other option is for Comcast to provide the service as advertised, at the current price, yielding a reduction in profit. No business wants to do that obviously, however since Comcast effectively has a monopoly in many markets, they can't (should be allowed to) abuse their market position.

What's to prevent building a network with fiber to the home, with ethernet switches with 100 megabit ports for each home, and a 10 gigabit uplink on each switch going directly to a Netflix server? And is there any reason the per port cost of this ethernet switch should be any more than ten times the typical home ethernet switch?

How is this different than charging Akamai? I pay for my internet connection, why does comcast get to charge akamai for their data?

Peering agreements have been falling apart for years. There are numerous cases where it is not clear, even to a disinterested observer, who should be paying whom.

If we get net neutrality or the like, I think at some level the thing that will ultimately disappear is the unlimited traffic packages available to the consumer as the heavily connected are being subsidized by those paying for a high speed connection but not sucking large amounts of data. If the ISPs can't charge the providers of those packets, they are going to have to charge the people requesting them.

Okay, so tell me something: If the bits came over Level3, but did not originate there, because the CDN was powered by idiots who didn't have a direct peering arrangement with Comcast, would it be fine for Level3?

Is the distinction really just whether or not the bits originate in Level3's network or whether they originate in another network?

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