It's impressive how this framing has gotten so much acceptance. The content providers are not generating the traffic, the users are, and they are paying their ISPs to be able to do so.
I guess that's the thing with Netflix though, it's torrent-like traffic, but legal, so there's no excuse to stop it and they have to come up with something. "oh they're generating explosive traffic that's not good"
I'm not sure if the lawmakers are ignorant, bought and paid for, or a little of both but it would be refreshing if one of them took 30 seconds and applied a little critical thinking to the situation.
Wouldn't that require them to MITM the Netflix traffic, which I would hope is under TLS?
I believe YouTube has the same type of program.
Netflix calls it their Open Connect Appliance: https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/appliances/
That server would, of course, have a connection to the Internet, they push logs to AWS and get updates from Netflix's authoritative servers in Netflix's other datacenters, but they also serve HTTPS connections to thousands of ISP users; the upstream traffic would be minimal.
This problem might also be an interesting use case for Signed HTTP Exchanges. Sign the video files, then push them to the caching server. The caching server then never possesses the private keys for the connection and also cannot modify the content.
What are you going to achieve by stealing the certificate for edge0.sktelecom.geo.netflixcdn.com from the box you already have access to?
There’s no reason to put *.netflix.com certs on the edge caches.
Versus, what's the attack? The ISP with physical access to the box can pull can screw with the cached video data somehow? Or MitM and know what Netflix videos their users are watching?
Also, the less said about SK's neighbors (Japan, for instance) the better.
"But SK Broadband demanded that Netflix pay network usage fees on top of installing those caches. The streaming service sued the telco, and that case is pending — Netflix told us that it would continue negotiations even as it made its case in court."
Alternatively, they would peer with SK Telecom but "SK was demanding large content providers money for peering with them."
https://www.medianama.com/2020/08/223-net-neutrality-south-k...
There is nothing illegal about torrent traffic any more than any other form of traffic. "It's streaming-like, but legal." "It's VPN-like, but legal." "It's cyptolocker-like, but legal." "It's SSL-like, but legal." "It's Tor-like, but legal."
I am surprised that ISPs haven’t started cracking down on WfH, and start saying it violates their TOC because this is a business use. Public uproar would be immense.
You listed the reason why yourself, you shouldn't be surprised. Maybe -after- the pandemic, when WfH people can be painted as "tech elite" or something, but not while everyone wants to WfH and it's a mixed bag who can.
Actual, I might be wrong here with how contact law is handled ... anyone?
A related consideration: when we moved into our terraced house the land was under leasehold and the lease specified 'no business use'. We bought the freehold some time back, but I've often wondered what my position might otherwise have been. Presumably breech of the lease conditions would be a tort against the landlord and so I'd have been fine as long as they didn't sue.
No, it's not unreasonable. They sell consumers unlimited high bandwidth connections and at no point are they told they can't actually use the service they're paying for. What's unreasonable is cutting off paying consumers and suing streaming services when the company's dumb business model starts failing because of their own invalid assumptions. If oversubscribing is such a problem, they should stop doing it instead of blaming consumers for overusing their low capacity network.
Lashing out at Netflix and bringing them to court for their own failings is such an absurd course of action. They should try upgrading their networks instead so that their service stops sucking.
Since when is ANY traffic illegal on the Net? Is the idea of an open (for everyone) data "highway" already death in our heads?
If I could make one simple change to the home broadband market, it would be insisting on a standardized big number consumer level SLA. I certainly don't expect residential rates to cover the same 99.97% or worst case minimum that business class does, that's a major part of what higher end connections are paying for. But whatever they do offer should be transparent, fixed for contract period and measurable. ISPs should by law be required to spell out not just the top line bandwidth level, but also 75%/95% guarantees over a standard time (day/month maybe) and what the worst case guaranteed minimum is. This wouldn't be some big centralized bureaucratic decision about implementations or what numbers have to be hit, but rather merely make sure the market has clear information so customers can compare and ISPs could be held to their promises. Energy Star consumer information might be some guide to layout, but I think something like that would be low hanging fruit.
Also to be clear, a distinction can and should be made for intra-network vs inter-network, and both should be accounted for. Obviously an ISP has the most control and is the most responsible for how traffic traverses their own network to their edges, but ISPs do have some responsibility (affected by size/location) for their peering agreements too. If they're purposefully choking that it's on them, though small/remote ISPs may be at a disadvantage in negotiations there which should ideally have some eyes on it.
I have a gigabit connection and the contract specifically states that they guarantee a maximum throughput of 400Mbit at peak times.
It says nothing, there are two weasel word exceptions in there.
So it could save you nothing, or it could save you 15%, or even more. Basically we have no idea what it'll save you, if anything.
Otherwise 0Mbit is consistent with the terms of the contract, which is probably exactly what the ISP was going for.
It does highlight a philosophical question I raised in another comment. What exactly are consumers purchasing from last mile ISPs? Is it 1Gb to anywhere on the providers network? 1Gb to the nearest CDN/Internet exchange?
I don't think there is a good answer for this. But it's important to think about when we talk about ISPs reaching their hand towards large content providers.
this is beyond flawed, unless you consider all possible bandwidth, not just Netflix being slow. The latter can be entirely an issue on Netflix side.
Now Netflix blocks Hurricane Electric endpoints and FiOS still doesn't support IPv6. We're nearing the 10 year anniversary of that "coming soon" FAQ entry on their webpage.
South Korea is well known for having fast internet, but the internet is only fast within the small country. International connectivity has always been crappy, and getting crappier every year as telcos focus on legal avenues instead of actually laying enough undersea cables to meet the demand. In the past, most Koreans only visited Korean sites because of the language barrier; that's no longer true. But it's going to take a lot of time and money to remedy years of neglect in international connectivity. Especially SK Broadband, who IMO has been the most complacent in this department among the Big 3 telcos, precisely because of their huge domestic market share. Where is the money going to come from? Obviously not by cutting executive bonuses. SK Broadband seems to think that they can extort it out of Google and Netflix who, despite their global prominence, are relatively defenseless in Korean courts.
When there are alternatives, ISPs would bend over backwards for what customers want.
That are not colluding like a cartel, of course.
Online ads and data vacuuming is often presented in a similar fashion. Your browser goes to the advertiser and requests the ad. The advertiser asks for your data. Your browser sends the data to the advertiser. And the way we frame this is that advertisers are stealing our data.
Once a system is opaque and automated enough it doesn't seem to matter how it really works. Netflix is a big entity, therefore we blame Netflix. If Netflix didn't exist then the traffic surge wouldn't exist, therefore Netflix should pay.
https://www.streamingmediablog.com/2014/02/heres-comcast-net...
IIRC there were some companies that got a slap on the wrist (it was something like Uber or a food delivery company) for charging both consumers and producers a commission, which is illegal (I don't remember the legalese term).
Huh?? I am not serving terabytes of movies from my home connection. Netflix is.
Is the ISP mad that more users are using more of their promised service allowance? Too bad, maybe they shouldn't oversell their networks.
Netflix/youtube cases it's the content providers that server the traffic, so most of it is generated by them. The client requests are tiny in comparison.
/You pay datacenter for bandwith etc.
Person pulls your website
/Person pays cablecompany Z for bandwith
Now you have to pay Cablecompany Z for the data.
Admittedly the article is light on the details, yet I'd presume the line has been created exclusively for Netflix, there is no info if there was an agreement between the parties. There is no reference to the Seoul District Court decision, either.
"Internet"/data between major tube providers (ISP) is very different than paying cable company X for end user access. Some just have agreements to carry each other traffics and some pay to carry their traffic[0]: