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Comment by cs702 | Hacker News Reader

Verizon is blaming Netflix for sending "an unprecedented amount of traffic" and "not taking steps to ensure that there is adequate capacity for their traffic to enter" Verizon's network.

The thing is, Netflix is NOT pushing any of that traffic to Verizon. It is Verizon's customers who are pulling that traffic from NetFlix -- and they are paying Verizon to deliver it!!!

More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7701494

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You're paying Verizon for a connection to their network, but that doesn't make it Verizon's responsibility to pay to upgrade every intermediate network on the way to every destination a Verizon customer might request data from. That is not how peering on the internet has ever worked.

See this circa 1999 article about peering and settlement on the internet: http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac123/ac147/archived_issues/i... (Part I); http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac123/ac147/ac174/ac200/about... (Part 2). Note that this was published by Cisco 15 years ago, long before any of these disputes arose. We're talking about a very settled understanding of how the internet works that Netflix is trying to overturn to help its own bottom line.

Wrong -- I'm paying Verizon for access to the internet -- more specifically, for access to Netflix. If I can't get Netflix, I don't pay Verizon. I either get a new ISP, or don't have internet at all.

It's rather simple. Verizon's customers are consuming traffic, and it's Verizon's job, as a consumer network, to facilitate consumption of said traffic.

There is no such thing as the "internet." What appears to be the "internet" is just a mesh of interconnected but private networks all running the same protocol. The Cisco article I linked to above shows you what you're actually buying. What you're talking about is an illusion that only exists in software.

You are arguing over the semantics of the word "internet" and completely missing the bigger picture.

I only pay Verizon so that I can have access to Netflix content. No access to Netflix, then I'm not a Verizon customer any longer. Verizon is a Consumer Network -- so by definition, almost all of their traffic will be ingress.

Level3 has a great blog post detailing the issues at hand. Specifically, they state the consumer networks are refusing to upgrade their networks, and this is shifting the burden to Level3. Level3 knows they are refusing, because they have discussed the matter with the "Big 5" ISP's here in the states.

Level3 has even offered to split the cost with the Big5, which as they pointed out, is a win-win for everyone involved. Yet, the Big5 still refused.

http://blog.level3.com/global-connectivity/chicken-game-play...

That's funny, why does verizon call their service "high speed internet service", when the is no thing as the internet. And if you go to the landing page for high speed internet access on the verizon homepage, it becomes immediately obvious that they are selling it as a internet service.

Should we now start talking about there is no such thing as a video, just 1's and zero's, or, there is no such thing as 1's and 0's, just timed voltage oscillations. Or perhaps in verizon's case, there is no such thing as customer service, just opportunistic moneymaking leveraging monopoly and an army of lobbyists.

I mean to say that there is no such thing as what software folks think of as the "internet": the sort of idealized network that you think of when you're dealing with sockets instead of edge routers. Obviously "internet" exists as a marketing term, but it refers to what's described in the Cisco article, not to the idealization.

Do you get upset when you sign up for a United flight and one of the legs is operated by a codeshare partner? It's the same thing: there's an idealized abstraction of a "flight from New York to Burkina Faso" and the actual reality that the underlying physical service is a distributed one.

Abstraction or not, you are missing the bigger picture.

1) Level3 has offered to split the cost with the Big5 ISP's of upgrading their infrastructure.[1]

* This would increase throughput and capacity for both Level3 and the consumer networks.

2) Netflix has offered free Open Connect Appliances to all major ISP's.[2]

* This would allow consumer networks to only download a video once, then serve it up locally within their network to all their customers. In-network traffic is almost free for the ISP's.

3) Netflix has offered to change their entire distribution model into a P2P model.[3]

* This would allow consumer networks to only download a video once, then serve it up locally within their network to all customers. In-network traffic is almost free for ISP's.

All of these options have been flat-out refused. The Big5 ISP's are purely after the money. There is no other compromise for them.

[1] http://blog.level3.com/global-connectivity/chicken-game-play...

[2] https://www.netflix.com/openconnect/hardware

[3] http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/netfli...

In a world where everyone watches Netflix, the traditional peering arrangements dramatically favor companies like Verizon. Unsurprisingly, they're fine with the existing peering arrangements. Companies like Level 3 are offering to "share the cost" of upgrading the networks, because under the traditional arrangements, they would have to bear the full cost of the upgrades. Everyone in this discussion is just looking out for their own bottom lines.

> I mean to say that there is no such thing as what software folks think of as the "internet": the sort of idealized network that you think of when you're dealing with sockets instead of edge routers. Obviously "internet" exists as a marketing term

So what you're saying is, Verizon's selling a product ("internet access") that doesn't exist—and that it's not their fault that they can't provide it, since it doesn't actually exist? Maybe they shouldn't be selling it, then.

The product ("internet access") is the same thing that everyone sells under that label: access to a private network that's connected to all the other private networks that are sold under the same label. That's what the "internet" has always meant. What doesn't exist is what software folks and net neutrality proponents think of as the "internet": this idealized homogenous network where every path between any two TCP/IP sockets is equally good. But you don't get to take a well-understood label, apply your own idealized definition to it, then attack companies that are using that label consistently with its traditional definition.

> But you don't get to take a well-understood label, apply your own idealized definition to it, then attack companies that are using that label consistently with its traditional definition.

If someone were to talk to Verizon's sales people, and watch their commercial, and read their sales copy—and then be presented with those two definitions, which do you expect they would believe Verizon is using?

> Wrong -- I'm paying Verizon for access to the internet -- more specifically, for access to Netflix. If I can't get Netflix, I don't pay Verizon. I either get a new ISP, or don't have internet at all

You might not like the logical conclusion: the ISPs charge people for what they actually use.

Not necessarily. If Level3 is be believed (and they are credible imho), the Big5 ISP's here in the states are just flat-out refusing to make any network upgrades. Level3 has even offered to split the costs with them, since it benefits Level3 as well.

What happened to all that "National Broadband Act" funding the Big5 ISP's got? What about annual infrastructure upgrades? These guys are not coping with the data-driven society the wold is now, and are trying to stretch their buck the furthest (I don't fault for that, it's business).

However, when they wrongly shift the blame to others, it really fires me up.

Why is Level3 particularly credible to you?

Because the cost of Internet access in the United States is higher, and quality of service lower than what it is in other markets serviced by Level3?

1) Because they aren't a last-mile carrier, but instead a backbone provider and thus don't have chips on the table.

2) As trevelyan said, they operate around the world, and state that this situation, and mindset of last-mile carriers, is unique to the US.

3) One would think a backbone provider would share the same views as the last-mile carriers, since it would mean more money for them too. However, they state that big content providers such as Netflix are very much so not a problem, but instead it's the last-mile carrier's refusal to make necessary network infrastructure upgrades to augment capacity.

This information is available on their blog. This post in particular worth a read: http://blog.level3.com/global-connectivity/chicken-game-play...

What's hilarious here, is that Level3 played the exact same game Verizon is playing now. Back in 2005 they dropped their peering entirely for several days with Cogent due to "Unbalanced Traffic Ratios" as cogent was sending L3 more traffic than L3 was sending them.

It's always historically been the case that settlement free peering required balanced traffic ratios. The difference is L3 used to have far more consumer networks buying transit from them. Before, level3 was needed to connect a bunch of different regional ISPs together who each purchased IP transit. Now, every consumer ISP of any size can orderup a nationwide backbone network (from level3 ironically, yes despite being in a peering war for ip transit, comcast's nationwide fiber network is leased from level3.)

Many of the old Ma Bells that were broken up used to be clients of level3. Through the mergers, many of them now own Tier 1 backbone networks. Verizon, ATT, and CenturyLink all are now also competing backbone providers with Level3 as well as being consumer ISPs. This leaves Level3 in the position Cogent was in when L3 depeered them.

Level3 will now gladly split the costs for unbalanced traffic ratios now that it benefits them. 10 years ago they would have tried to extract transit/paid peering from the same situation from someone else.

Perhaps the whole balanced traffic ratios requirement doesn't work in a time when every consumer ISP has their own nationwide fiber network and many also own Tier 1 IP networks. Or perhaps expect Level3 to start looking to get bought/merge by Time Warner cable or Cox to even the playing field.

There is no logical inconsistency with the notion that wired ISPs offer flat-rate unlimited service and periodically upgrade their networks to be able to provide that service. The cost of the upgrades are completely sustainable notwithstanding Netflix. Verizon has no trouble allowing its customers to watch an unlimited amount of FiOS TV.

The cause of this dispute is that the ISPs each have a monopoly over access to a large distinct block of customers and want to leverage that into a tax on content distributors, creating an unlevel playing field in favor of the ISP's own over the top services in competition with services like Netflix.

I would have no problem with that, and I think the only reason we haven't moved to that model already is that we started out with the "unlimited" model. That's how my other utilities work.

I think many may be like me and literally thought we were buying access to the Internet at large. It wasn't until recently that I've had to learn how the thing actually works (for small values of learn and actual - just enough for some intranet hacking). I suspect a lot of the outrage is simply that we feel the service has been deeply misrepresented, from what qualifies as "high speed broadband" to what "Internet" access really is.

I dunno who is going to cave first, but my money's usually on the angry ignorant masses.

Great comment -- it deserves an answer.

Imagine for a moment that we're talking about water service instead, and that we live in an alternate reality in which, due to accidents of history, the water network evolved much like our Internet, with peering and settlement agreements between privately owned water networks.

So, to borrow your words: you're paying your water service provider for a connection to their water network, but that doesn't make it their responsibility to pay to upgrade every intermediate water network on the way to every home what might need water -- even if water pressure drops every morning when everyone in town wants to take a shower.

Regardless of the technicalities, that doesn't seem right, does it?

Just as water service providers in that alternate reality would be responsible for making sure customers can pull enough water to shower every morning, ISPs are responsible for making sure their paying customers can pull the traffic for which they have paid.

But the problem here isn't that you can't fill your internet connection, period, but that you can't fill it with traffic from one particular endpoint. There is a bilateral aspect to the problem here that's totally ignored in your hypothetical.

Different example. Air Canada has an unlimited North America flight pass: http://www.aircanada.com/en/offers/air/wallet_na_faq/wallet_.... You can characterize this pass as buying you "unlimited travel to any destination in North America." Okay, so is it Air Canada's fault if you really want to go to Buffalo regularly, but you often have trouble booking a flight because of limited capacity at BUF? Does Air Canada have to pay for the airport upgrades? After all, it's their customers that want to go to Buffalo, and they're paying to travel to any destination in North America.

No, the problem is that the ISP's network does not have sufficient capacity at that particular endpoint to receive the traffic pulled (and paid for) by its customers. The bottleneck at that endpoint is the ISP.

PS. Travel is far too different to use in an analogy -- e.g., it doesn't involve delivery of continuous services to customer premises.

Your analogy paints the internet as a distribution system, with some fungible commodity (water, electricity) flowing from sources to sinks. That may be how Netflix uses the internet, but that's not how the internet is designed. It's designed to be a mesh, with nodes being peers to each other. The distributed structure of ownership isn't an accident of history. The internet was designed around that structure. Its much more like the hub and spoke airport system then a water distribution system. And as in the airport system, its not the sole responsiblity of the most popular destinations to pay to upgrade congested hub nodes.

Yes, my analogy paints the internet as a distribution system for a fungible commodity, because bits ARE a fungible commodity, just like water and electricity. A 1 is indistinguishable from every other 1, and a 0 is indistinguishable from every other 0.

In case it's not obvious, I agree that ISPs are NOT reponsible for upgrading infrastructure outside their network. What I'm saying is that ISPs are responsible for upgrading their network so it has sufficient capacity to receive the traffic pulled (and paid for) by ISP customers.

The bilateral arrangement here is between the ISP and an internet backbone - in this case, likely Level3. Level3 has stated that they are willing to split the cost of upgrading the link. Verizon is unwilling to do so. It's also useful to note that the cost of upgrading a link is tiny in the terms of these companies - on the order of $10-20k[1]. Netflix already pays to have sufficient capacity at their end of the connection; it is the ISP's responsibility to do the same, since their customers are paying to access whatever internet content they want. It is unreasonable to expect Netflix to pay for a separate, unnecessary connection. That's more like if the Buffalo airport decided they were getting too many flights from LA, so if anyone else from LA wanted to fly to Buffalo, they would have to pay for the addition of their own private terminal. It's not the way things are normally done, and it doesn't make sense.

[1] http://blog.level3.com/global-connectivity/observations-inte...

Hey rayiner. I just wanted to say I appreciate your posting on HN about net neutrality and topics related to this and how diligent you are about it even though it's often contrarian (but right) and going to get you downvotes. I upvote every comment you make whenever I see a story like this unfolding in exchange for being unwilling to fight the good fight myself. I don't know how you do it, but thanks.

> See this circa 1999 article about peering and settlement on the internet

The purpose of the arrangement you're pointing to is so that transit providers (e.g. Level 3 or Cogent) could distinguish other transit providers from transit customers whose traffic was characteristically asymmetric. The reason transit providers care more about upload bandwidth than download bandwidth is that customer ISPs can easily offer web hosting services to balance their traffic load, so it would be fruitless to charge the ISPs more for not sending the transit provider more traffic they have to carry. Better to give the ISPs free transit than that.

But Verizon isn't the transit provider here, they're the ISP. By sending Verizon a lot more traffic than they receive, Level 3 is effectively offering Verizon a huge amount of free transit in the other direction. That's like free money. Verizon could trivially use it to out-compete AWS on bandwidth pricing and make a boatload of easy cash. But that wouldn't unbalance the playing field for competitors of Verizon's video services.

Please remember that Verizon is also a Tier 1 transit provider! They own (via Verizon Business) the old MCI/Worldcom/UUnet backbone that was one of the largest transit providers. Level3 and Verizon are both transit providers.

Verizon is not a transit provider in this context. Level 3 is not asking Verizon to take traffic in New York and deliver it to customers in California or Germany. They're giving Verizon traffic destined for local Verizon customers.

Importantly, there is no other way to reach those customers. If you need to get traffic from New York to San Francisco you can use Level 3 or Cogent or Verizon or any of a dozen others. If you need to get traffic to a particular household which is a Verizon subscriber, there is no path other than Verizon.

Not to be devils advocate, but if I have 75mbps pipe at home and some internet server is on 1mbps, I'll still be buffering because of the server connection not mine. Right?

You shouldn't be downvoted for this. It's a reasonable question, it's just not what's happening. The traffic is reaching Verizon (or Comcast etc's) network at reasonable speed, and then congesting.

But it's also not right to say it's reaching Verizon. It's not. It's just hitting the edge of their network.

Now you can say that Verizon is responsible for making sure the edge connection works properly.

But you could also say that Netflix shouldn't just dump it's entire load onto shitty congested peer points.

Think of Verizon as an island city with 10 bridges. Netflix is trying to send 1/3 of all the traffic through one bridge. This causes congestion on that bridge when the other 10 bridges are moving fine.

Verizon is saying, use a different bridge they are all open.

Netflix is saying, add more lanes to the one I use because I'm delivering loads to people who ordered it.

Both are valid arguments. However, one thing to consider is that Netflix could switch ISPS tomorrow and start dumping their load on a different bridge.

Realistically it's absurd that Netflix isn't use a whole variety of ISPs to manage the load themselves. Other big data providers do it. Why can't they?

But also, Verizon is probably playing hardball because they are a competitor.

The real question is whether Verizon is saying "Use the other bridges" or "If you pay us we can open another bridge for you". What I've read mostly points to the latter and Netflix is either taking a stand against this practice or Verizon wants to much money.

> Realistically it's absurd that Netflix isn't use a whole variety of ISPs to manage the load themselves. Other big data providers do it. Why can't they?

IIRC, Netflix offered to provide hardware to all the major ISPs that would cache Netflix content at the ISP data centers. Not a single one took them up on the offer.

That was the Open Connect Hardware. Free big storage boxes for all ISP's who wanted them.

They also offered to change their entire distribution model to P2P as-to keep the traffic burden inside the consumer isp's network (which effectively costs them nothing, it's ingress traffic that is the major costs).

Level3 has even offered to split the costs of upgrading the Big5 ISP's peering connections.

All options were refused.

> They also offered to change their entire distribution model to P2P as-to keep the traffic burden inside the consumer isp's network (which effectively costs them nothing, it's ingress traffic that is the major costs).

Why wouldn't they do this anyway? How does the ISP have any say in whether or not Netflix distributes their content via P2P? Or am I misunderstanding?

P2P would make the service quality depend on how many people were online, etc... I think they'd rather sort it out another way.

But regardless, even with that offer, Comcast scoffed at it, citing Netflix would still be a "large burden" to their network. (which would be even more-so false than it currently is).

But they weren't going to pay for rack space and power. Also, IMO offering free rackspace violates net neutrality since a start up couldn't get a similar deal.

Netflix could do something differently, the question is really whose responsibility is it? The fact that the data gets to the edge of Verizon's network uncontested means the congestion is on Verizon's network. The fact that the traffic was requested by their members, and then delivered uncongested to them tells me it's on Verizon to fix the issue.

In an ideal world Netflix would pay a single ISP for access to "the internet" and their traffic would be handled properly across peered networks. Unfortunately it's not an ideal world, and so Netflix has made a bunch of philosophical compromises to increase service for its customers (including setting up other Fast Lanes). But that doesn't mean we should expect Netflix to continue to do this.

And Verizon says that they have plenty of open peering points and it's Netflix's responsibility to deliver it in a responsible manner.

>In an ideal world Netflix would pay a single ISP for access to "the internet" and their traffic would be handled properly across peered networks.

Netflix can do that now, but its not what they are doing. It's paying an ISP to send it over only their peering points by choosing the lowest bidder. It saves Netflix on bandwidth costs. A normal ISP will send the data by any means to get it there. Netflix's ISP is just letting their saturated points sit there. That's the ISP's fault.

>The fact that the traffic was requested by their members, and then delivered uncongested to them tells me it's on Verizon to fix the issue.

You could easily make the argument that Netflix is selling their service and is the one sending the data. It should be on their ISP.

> Verizon is saying, use a different bridge they are all open.

You're assuming Verizon isn't over-subscribing all of their other peering connections too.

> Both are valid arguments. However, one thing to consider is that Netflix could switch ISPS tomorrow and start dumping their load on a different bridge.

Your analogy is broken because peering connections aren't like bridges. Expanding a bridge costs millions of dollars and can't reasonably be moved from where you build it. 10Gbps switch ports do not cost millions of dollars and can trivially be moved to a different peer if loads change.

According to Level3 - a 10Gbps link bears only a one-time cost of $10K-$15K USD.[1](see comments)

Chump change for major ISP's.

[1] http://blog.level3.com/global-connectivity/chicken-game-play...

>You're assuming Verizon isn't over-subscribing all of their other peering connections too.

The PR release linked as the topic of this thread claims it's only 44% on the other connections.

>Your analogy is broken because peering connections aren't like bridges. Expanding a bridge costs millions of dollars and can't reasonably be moved from where you build it. 10Gbps switch ports do not cost millions of dollars and can trivially be moved to a different peer if loads change.

There isn't just one peering ports there are many many peering points.

It's also cheap for Netflix to use another ISP who won't cram it down saturated peering points.

Finally, if it's so cheap why won't LEVEL3 or Cogent pay 100% of the cost?

> The PR release linked as the topic of this thread claims it's only 44% on the other connections.

Percentages don't tell you anything. The fact that some 10Mbps link is at 23% utilization is of no utility. Neither is the capacity of links not connected to the relevant customers. The real question is, if Netflix used some other transit provider and their traffic went over some other Verizon links, wouldn't those links still get saturated?

> There isn't just one peering ports there are many many peering points.

...and?

> It's also cheap for Netflix to use another ISP who won't cram it down saturated peering points.

If that were true then there would be no dispute.

If they're pushing more than 1mbps to all connections, yes.

Why are Bridges Dangerous? Dispelling the Killing Myth

signed: The Trolls

Is there a special lane for billy goats?

Well, Netflix is pushing traffic to Verizon. Saying they're not is factually incorrect.

They're just doing so in response to requests coming out of Verizon networks.

Still though, Verizon customers are running Netflix apps, which are making the requests, so it's not like customers are doing the requesting "in the raw", or as "informed" consumers. They're just clicking "play" on Netflix video devices.

Also, Verizon customers aren't paying Verizon to deliver content, they're paying Verizon to try to deliver content. This goes all the way back to the "unlimited" deception ISPs pull on consumers, and Verizon is double-guilty of this deception, as they're a cell phone carrier as well.

Edit: I really hate to be that guy (and I know I'm breaking rules by saying this), but have we really devolved to the point where we downvote everything that isn't 100% in agreement with the hive mind? I thought HN was better than this. I'm just getting so sick of being downvoted because I'm offering a different angle - I've been polite, deferent, and explanatory, and my words get sent straight into the "grey" anyway. You're given downvote privileges because it's been determined that you're capable of thought, please don't disprove that.

That's silly word twisting. Following that logic, my bartender is pushing drinks on me, just by my request.

Bartenders will get fined and lose their license if they serve drunk people.

Also, calling what I said "word twisting" isn't really addressing their argument, it's more or less just name-calling, which companies are really good at ignoring. To beat them, you've got to do better than that.

> Bartenders will get fined and lose their license if they serve drunk people.

only because they don't have a large lobby organization to protect them from the laws ;)

Heh yeah, I mean the "let people get wasted in public" lobby isn't quite as big as the ISP lobby.

The analogy isn't great, I'll agree. I prefer the "water" analogy, myself.

I think we downvote people who just post nit-picky irrelevant "corrections".

The reply about a bartender "pushing a drink on you" is spot-on for why your point is pointless and not in need of visibility.

What's irrelevant about "some of the major points you said are factually wrong"?

It just sounds like you're okay with misrepresentation of the facts, because it agrees with your overall point.

Also, like I said in the above comment, bartenders can lose their license and get fined heavily for continuing to respond to requests for drinks once a user is "saturated", so I don't think it's the best analogy possible for your argument.

A better analogy might be water usage, which lends itself well to an "Internet as a utility" segue.

You wrote:

Well, Netflix is pushing traffic to Verizon. Saying they're not is factually incorrect.

Then you wrote:

They're just doing so in response to requests coming out of Verizon networks.

The point at hand, of course, was whether it's fair to frame things in terms of "Netflix pushing traffic to Verizon" when the reason for the traffic is requests initiated by customers on Verizon's network. Nit-picking about whether someone is "pushing" data when responding to a request does not in any way further the discussion. Hence, downvote into invisibility.

Incidentally, the way to continue the script here is for you to ignore everything I just wrote and continue focusing with laser-beam intensity on bartenders serving drunk people in order to cover the fact that you did not have any relevant point to make in your original comment.

Netflix wrote all of the apps people are using to make requests to Netflix. It's important to note that, because that means Netflix is in complete control over the number of requests that come "from" Verizon. To say that customers are directly making the requests is factually incorrect - Netflix is making the requests, to itself, over the connections of Verizon customers.

Important distinction, because Netflix is in control the whole time, and can do things, if it wants to, to mitigate the flood of requests. It's not, and in fact is intentionally ramping up the volume of requests by offering content such as 4k resolution videos, most likely to further push this issue.

So no, again, this isn't a nit-pick, it's a central point to this conversation.

I don't really understand why you're being such a jackass about this, though.

Wow, so your claim is that Netflix is maliciously, and intentionally, offering high(er) definition content not to please its customers, but to spite ISPs?

And you're saying that with a straight face...

And wondering why people aren't taking you seriously?

Just like your argument that Netflix is 'pushing content to Verizon consumers', ignoring that 'Verizon consumers are requesting said content'.

Maybe one of the things Netflix could do to deal with the volume of data is let Verizon customers know that that their service is being degraded because of that volume...

Wait... I'm getting deja vu...

Maliciously? I haven't said. Intentionally? Yes.

I guess it's more of the, "added bonus" of further stressing ISP networks to further push the issue.

Like I've been saying, I'm offering no "ought" statements, only "is" statements[0].

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem

'[I]t's not like customers are doing the requesting "in the raw", or as "informed" consumers. They're just clicking "play" on Netflix video devices.'

I think most people clicking "play" on Netflix devices understand that it entails Netflix sending the content to them. I think most of them probably understand that this is more data than your average webpage, too. Maybe I'm significantly overestimating the intelligence of the average Netflix user, but I don't see how a deliberate request to play a show differs from "a request for the traffic".

My point is that Netflix controls the requests, the whole time. So to say that "customers" are making these requests isn't actually true. Netflix is asking its own servers for the streaming video, which means they can control the volumes at which the data gets sent.

Netflix could ask for less data, in the form of lower quality streams, but have intentionally decided to ask for, at all times, the highest possible video quality possible. In fact, they're so intent on sending as much data as possible, that they've begun rolling out 4k quality videos of more and more of their content.

It's just important to recognize that it's not like Netflix has no control over these request volumes, because it's their software that's making the requests. They're in charge of the entire end-to-end.

It's their software proxying customer requests. It's not like Netflix devices up and decide to watch a movie. It's true that Netflix software is involved at every point, but it's still fundamentally the customer demanding the data. Note that users can opt to stream lower quality than their link supports:

    Adjusting the data usage settings for your account is
    the easiest way to reduce the amount of bandwidth used
    while watching Netflix. There are 4 data usage settings 
    to choose from, each estimate below is per stream:

        Low (0.3 GB per hour)
        Medium (SD: 0.7 GB per hour)
        High (HD: 3 GB per hour, 3D: 4.7 GB per hour, Ultra HD 4K: 7 GB per hour)
        Auto (adjusts automatically to deliver the highest possible quality, based on your current internet connection speed)

From https://help.netflix.com/en/node/87

Now this is where I don't think consumers are as privy to the technology as they could be. I doubt most Netflix customers adjust their data usage settings with their ISPs in mind.

Frankly, I'm not sure they should, but I doubt they're even thinking about that, either way. I'm not going to watch a 480p video because I'm trying to conserve my ISP's capacity. That's silly.

Besides, I think Netflix has a vested interest in continuing to push this issue, and thus the "Auto" adjustment might favor as much data as possible, irrespective of the overall ISP's capacity.

Why should they be adjusting their settings "with their ISPs in mind"? They're paying Verizon for "up to X mbps", Netflix is paying Level 3 for something enormous.

When the amount the user is requesting exceeds X mbps, then certainly Verizon has zero responsibility to meet that. When it's an appreciable fraction, it's understandable that they don't always meet it - it's "best effort", after all. When it's a small fraction, "too much is being requested collectively by all the users over that link" seems like it should quite legitimately be Verizon's problem.

If I had to have an actual opinion on this, I'd say they shouldn't, and the ISPs should just eat the cost of the upgrades, like they do for all their other network upgrades.

But this just goes all the way back to the "up to" and "unlimited" bullshit verbiage ISPs have been using for years to sell their product.

I just don't think this is as much about net neutrality as people are making it out to be. It's more or less, "Who should pay for this?" and the choices are, "Customers of ISPs" or "Customers of CDNs".

Coldcode notes elsewhere in the thread that to the consumer, the Internet is a requests based system.

Your comment, while well written, sounds suspiciously like the Current Push theory of modeling electrical flow: put a huge motor on a small drive, and you'll blow the drive from all the current the motor forces through it. In reality, that's backwards, and the motor simply stalls. (Full disclosure: I'm not an EE, but man a master electrician I knew thought it was funny.)

Back to the point. Consumers request data, and then expect it to arrive. Netflix offers a service that replies with enormous amounts of data for very little request data. Now, most sites are like this, but video is a caricature of the imbalance typically seen. And Netflix serves a _lot_ of video. So a quick Pareto diagram points right to Netflix for congestion. But none of that is preemptive - all of that data was requested from the Verizon side, and so the word pushing gets you downvoted.

It's just that Netflix's service is less like Newton's equal and opposite force and more like Flubber.

But like all things, there's more to it than just Netflix replying to requests with an asymptotic amount of data. Check out the Level3 blog posts linked elsewhere in this thread, as I think they're a reasonable counterpoint. At least, I thought it was neat.

I agree, it ultimately ends up being a cost issue.

Analogies just start to break down a bit when you consider the fact that these consumers aren't making these requests of Netflix's CDNs on their own. Netflix is giving them an app that does this, so Netflix the company is actually in charge of the volume and direction of these requests from start to finish.

From what I gather from Level3's blog post, they've built out a lot of extra capacity to specifically handle the kinds of traffic that a company like Netflix would be pushing, and that the ISPs have not done so, intentionally, and are trying to get Level3 and others to pay the costs for the upgrades.

Why? Well, again from what I've gathered from the submission and Comcast's article on the same topic, it's because they don't want ALL of their customers paying for upgrades that will only benefit the folks who actually use that increased capacity - specifically, Level3's content. If I don't use YouTube and Netflix, the argument goes, why should I have to pay for the upgrades that'll only benefit Netflix and YouTube? The ISPs are therefore saying that the folks providing the content would be the best ones to pay for these upgrades, because that way the costs are only on the consumers paying for the services (in the form of money or ad views), instead of all of the ISP customers.

Now I think the debate can really take place once we start talking about "who benefits" from these upgrades. The ISPs appear to be saying Netflix, et. al. are the only beneficiaries, and Netflix, et. al. are claiming that since the upgrades are taking place on the ISP side, everyone who is a customer of the ISPs would benefit from the upgrades.

I tend to side on L3's notion that upgrading the interconnects is something with such a large pay-off it's miserly to even consider worrying about it. My understanding of it is that as the pipes get larger demand follows to consume more, and with higher demand comes a greater market to serve. And you can bet many companies salivate at the chance to get a piece of the Netflix pie (including Verizon et al.)!

It always struck me as duplicitous of the ISPs to talk about who holds the cost for the Netflix volume, since most are also attempting to sell in the same market as Netflix (namely streaming video and TV shows). It just smacks of conflict of interest. It's not like Comcast, Verizon, and Time Warner don't all stream _enormous_ amounts of video either, and it's not like I as a consumer care about all the technical nonsense. (I also was terribly underwhelmed by the switch to HD broadcast TV, and generally feel like the signal glitches are so grievously bad and corrupted that surely someone pulled a fast one there.)

Really, I suspect this whole mess may merely be the result of the companies providing the pipes also competing on content, and their roles get muddied. We expect to be able to abstract away all that peering nonsense as a consumer, and since the Internet is so stupefyingly big, creating special cases seems like an unreasonable burden to push on the typical consumer who neither understands not cares how the magic info-pipe works (my personal stance).

Of course the techie part of me has a load of popcorn to see how it turns out. As I noted elsewhere, it kinda doesn't matter who is technically right. My money is on the angry ignorant masses who just want some shows before sleep, and against whomever they blame. So far, my money's on Netflix, as cable companies are somewhat reviled by comparison.

Following your logic, restaurants should be charging their wholesale suppliers for all the ingredients they're 'pushing' into the restaurant's kitchen.

> I really hate to be that guy (and I know I'm breaking rules by saying this), but have we really devolved to the point where we downvote everything that isn't 100% in agreement with the hive mind?

I think people are seeing this as a misinformed viewpoint and reacting to that.

I never made a value judgement - there is no "should" statement in my comment. Like I said in another comment, I've given up trying to express a view on this topic.

This isn't "my" logic, it's fact. It's a fact that customers aren't making informed requests, and it's a fact that Netflix is in control of the requests, from start to finish, and it's a fact that Netflix is increasing the request volume over time by offering more and more higher-quality video (they even offer 4k video streams for some of their content and have said they intend to do more of this over time).

I gave you an upvote correction. I know it's frustrating, but sometimes comments get an unfair downvote, and then I think two issues kick in. One, less people see the comment, so you're less likely to get the correction upvote. And two, the priming effect kicks in, and people see your negatively voted comment as inherently negative, and don't give it a correction upvote, or pile on.

I've seen this happen for a while. My only advice is to just roll with the punches.

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