Is it just me or is this not at all inconsistent with Verizon's arguments? They've been saying the whole time that this link is meant to be balanced with roughly equal upstream and downstream, and they showed it was not. What am I missing?
Verizon wants to bill it's customers for the bandwidth that they use. And then for some of that traffic, if it's from Netflix, they also want to bill Netflix.
Verizon is the company which is selling asymmetric internet plans so it should come as no surprise to Verizon that their customers are requesting more data than they're sending.
But they use this asymmetry to suggest that what's happening between Verizon and Level3 isn't business as usual (which it is) and that they should be able to double bill.
Verizon is doing a decent job of spinning but if you really look at what's going on it becomes clear that they're really torturing definitions to make their arguments.
I'm a Verizon subscriber and I get apoplectic when Netflix stutters, because I know exactly what's happening. But I also don't know what's the exact right model for peering points, and I think net settlement might be a better model.
That's not true. I pay Verizon $X/mo to deliver the internet to me. And most of what I want delivered at 100mbps is netflix. Now instead of Verizon taking the millions (billions?) in revenue and building out what we're paying for, they're trying to charge netflix (for what they already charged me).
But the real question here is, is this a peering relationship anymore. And Verizon has a legitimate argument that it is not based on the sustained differences in traffic flows. I don't know what the answer is to this problem, but I'm not convinced by either Level3/Netflix or Verizon.
Personally, if I ran Verizon, I'd be meshing with Google/Netflix/Amazon's networks as much as possible. But I'm not, oh well.
That would be up to the arrangement you have with your internet provider.
Verizon and comcast have been selling asymmetrical residential links since always. Verizon is advertising 500/100 on their homepage right now. They know damn well that people are pulling way more data than they're pushing, and the interconnect links from level3-to-ISP have always been hugely asymmetrical.
What's happening here is that they are not making the good-faith effort. They want to get paid for the transit from Level3 onto their network and from their network to your front door.
The thing is according to basically all precedent of how the internet works when you pay for internet you're (theoretically) paying for all costs Verizon incurs while providing that service to you.
If they're trying to bill someone else for entry into their network while billing you for the exit then you should be getting a discount to the tune of however much that service provider is paying. But you're not. Which is why people are getting all up in arms.
EDIT:
> Level3 stops becoming a peer and starts becoming a subscriber
Yes, that point is when Level3 is DOWNLOADING more data FROM Verizon customers than UPLOADING to them.
Verizon charges their customers every month for plans where they download more than they upload.
As it stands Verizon customers are downloading 3x as much data FROM Level3 and Level3 is downloading from Verizon.
So by that logic, Verizon should be a Level3 customer and pay Level3 for any imbalances.
Honestly, it's a case of externalities, so we're not going to see much improvement until government either takes over peering or last mile.
The problem is that Verizon has apparently been successful in spinning the story that peering between Verizon and Level3 is supposed to be balanced. As others have already said in these comments, that doesn't make a lick of sense. Peering between backbone providers should be roughly balanced, but Verizon isn't acting as a backbone provider, they're acting as a residential provider, and there's no way peering with Verizon will ever be balanced. That's a fundamental consequence of the asymmetric plans Verizon sells and the fact that their customers are expected to download significantly more than they upload. This means that Verizon will absolutely be receiving a lot more traffic into their network than they send out.
Basically, I doubt Verizon actually has balanced traffic with any other provider, except perhaps other residential providers. But they're only making a stink about Level3 because they're trying to use this claim to double-bill.
Note again, Verizon made the intentional choice to service the residential market, and to sell asymmetric plans. They knew going into all of this that they wouldn't have balanced traffic with providers like Level3. And that's perfectly fine, because the only reason they're receiving this much traffic is because their paying customers are requesting it. Verizon has already been paid to receive this incoming traffic.
Also, and this is something I haven't seen anyone really address, balanced peering agreements between backbone providers is typically meant to prevent one provider from routing traffic through a second provider's network, destined for a third last-mile provider. In that scenario, the second provider doesn't gain anything from the traffic, and hasn't been paid for it. That's why the balanced peering agreement exists, to ensure that no provider gets taken advantage of that way; if you one provider wants to route traffic through another provider's network, they have to be prepared to receive just as much traffic.
But that argument doesn't apply to last-mile providers. The traffic isn't being routed through their network to a third destination. The traffic is being delivered to the network because that's it's destination. If the traffic was unsolicited (for example, a DoS), then it's reasonable for the last-mile provider to try to charge the sender for it. But if the traffic was explicitly requested, which is generally the case (and certainly is for Netflix), then the last-mile provider has no justification for charging the traffic sender. The traffic has already been paid for, by the subscriber who requested the traffic.
If that's not a settlement-free peering agreement because of the disbalance, then Verizon should be the one paying part of their users subscription fees to the rest of the internet backbone.
>Q8: Comcast says that Level 3 sends it 5 times the traffic that Comcast sends Level 3. Is that true? If it is true, why shouldn't Level 3 pay for the traffic it sends to Comcast?
Comcast goes on to argue that Level3 pushes 5X more data onto the Comcast network than Comcast pushes onto the Level3 network. What I find ridiculous about the whole claim is that every single one of Comcast's residential internet packages has 5X higher download speeds than upload speed. (e.g. 105Mbps/20Mbps, 50Mbps/10Mbps, 20Mbps/4Mbps)
Comcast provides internet speeds that force customers to download 5x faster than they can upload and somehow Comcast is surprised that their customers are pulling down 5X more data then they're pushing to Level3?
[0] http://corporate.comcast.com/comcast-voices/20-qs-with-accur...
Regardless, if Level3 keeps insisting this is a peering point, and then demonstrating that it's more like a transit to ISP link. Which ISPs pay for.