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Comment by phkahler | Hacker News Reader

I've always been suspect of cable and wireless internet connections. Anything that shares bandwidth with all subscribers is going to get maxed out if a large number of customers start streaming video. Is it possible that Verison (and Comcast and etc...) know that opening up the gate to the outside world will crush their network under the increased load? I like the milk-our-monopoly-on-the-last-mile theory as much as the next guy, but is it even possible for the technology used to deliver the necessary bandwidth if they open up the pipe?

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Verizon could have legitimately argued artificially throttling at the Level 3 connection is necessary to protect their network. But they didn't say that at all. They basically bragged that their own network is running well under capacity. The insinuation is that Verizon is ready to handle all the bandwidth that anybody can send, but that Level 3 was over capacity.

But, assuming they really did need to throttle traffic in order to protect their own network. For one it wouldn't make sense to control your throttling by running your routers at 100% capacity. But also any throttling should be equal among all of their peers and not selectively chosen based on Verizon's business interests.

How could it possibly crush their network? They can simply charge more from their customers, and build out their network.

By definition, the only way they can be 'crushed' is if they're not using the funds they get from their customers for maintenance of their network.

Net Neutrality isn't about usage, it's about destinations.

Even with Net Neutrality it's fully within an ISPs right to say X GB/mo for $Y and throttle or block over-use. The problem is an ISP deciding that, regardless of what is going on in the network, regardless of what a particular user has used or is trying to use, traffic to Netflix will be slower than traffic to Vudu.

Verizon, Comcast, et al have plenty of available tools to prevent congestion without violating Net Neutrality.

They're intentionally trying to confuse the issue with usage, because it's an easier PR sell.

Oversubscribing lines has been one of the ways to keep ISPs profitable for years. Streaming video absolutely cuts into the ability to do this of course but I doubt it's the primary issue here. Verizon has every incentive to not add more bandwidth to their peering points with Level 3 and try to get more money from Netflix directly.

nope. if you look carefully, the math doesn't work out. verizon will be fine. They want to charge netflix and have people pay for tv programming. The current legal way to do this is to claim they don't have the capacity (between what and where is unspecified, and by refusing to add it - even when it's 5 minutes and free).

Even so, as a paying customer I would expect them to calculate for this and know how to scale.

My point is was that spectrum doesn't scale. There's X gigabits per second available over the air, and a similar X over a cable. For cable companies they can push equipment closer to the home and have fewer subscribers on the same line. I suppose Verizon could do the same with more towers, but imagine doubling the number of towers to support double the bandwidth (or something like that). As people have pointed out though, the congestion is specific to connections that carry netflix.

There's a limit for mobile bandwidth, where also the number of towers won't help; but cable is different - sure, at one point they have to put proper fiber to the home (and it's economically feasible to do so, if there's actual competition instead of monopolistic ability to charge huge prices for weak service), but after that you can have as much bandwidth as your routers can service.

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