Level 3’s Selective Amnesia on Peering | Hacker News Reader

Level 3’s Selective Amnesia on Peering

publicpolicy.verizon.com

20 pointslovelettr17 comments

This is a rebuttal by David Young, Vice President, Verizon Regulatory Affairs to Level 3's blog regarding peering and bottlenecks [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8048997

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Two companies, A and B, have a network connection between them. Packets flowing through this wire fall into three categories:

   * Traffic for which both A and B are being paid by their respective customers
   * Traffic for which A is being paid by the sender or recipient, but B is not paid
   * Traffic for which B is being paid by the sender or recipient, but A is not paid

The latter two categories are called "transit"; that's when you carry packets between two parties, neither of which is directly your customer. There is an established tradition which says that if two companies set up a connection which carries transit, the flow of traffic across it should be balanced.

Currently, there is controversy over a large amount of traffic flowing like this:

    Netflix -> Level 3 -> Verizon -> Consumers

For which the corresponding flow of dollars looks like this:

    Netflix -> Level 3    Verizon <- Consumers

In the past, it has sometimes been difficult to frame peering in terms of who's paying who, so it was instead framed in terms of senders and recipients, rather than in terms of who's paying who. Verizon is trying to use this framing to say that Level 3 should pay them. But looking at the economics, it's clear that neither Level 3 nor Verizon should be paying the other, because each of them is already being paid for the traffic by their respective customers.

This argument is regurgitated ad-nauseam and is selective ignorance. Let me repeat what has been repeated literally thousands of times: A ISP will not have the same ingress and egress traffic due to two reasons: 1. Download speed is usually more than upload speed, 2. There is nothing to peer with due to TOS / customers not running services.

Verizon just wants to double dip and get more money, as a business with commitments to shareholders this is a reasonable argument, as a person that can reason it is very ignorant.

> Verizon just wants to double dip and get more money, as a business with commitments to shareholders this is a reasonable argument, as a person that can reason it is very ignorant.

Fuck the cunts with their "commitment to shareholders" at the cost of society. The subhuman imbeciles running this show deserve nothing more than to be taken into an alley and shot. The same goes for the lobbyist cunts that make it all happen, since their entire business is "enrich myself at the cost of EVERYONE else."

I don't get this response.

> Rather than buy the capacity they need, Level 3 insists that Verizon should add capacity to the existing peering link for additional downstream traffic even though the traffic is already wildly out of balance.

So... Verizon doesn't even claim it's impossible, or the wrong solution. L3 says they need additional peering links and is willing to pay for the cards. Both companies have spare capacity on both sides of that link. The complaint is weird too "the traffic is already wildly out of balance" - of course it is - they're an ISP! Of course the customers will download more than upload.

What's wrong with that? Could someone explain why it isn't an accepted solution?

I think Level 3 is saying they'd be willing to pay for the cards, but not bandwidth, eg continue using the free peering agreement.

Verizon is saying that Level 3 should pay for the bandwidth (probably way more costly than the cards), since they are already getting more than they are owed in the free peering agreement.

There is no bandwidth to pay for. This is settlement-free peering. Once you have the line cards, it's simply a matter of adding the physical cross-connects.

Settlement free peering only happens if the traffic is balanced. In the case of Level3 and Verizon, it's not, hence Verizon's point (and apparently it was Level3's point when dealing with Cogent) is that the settlement free peering is not appropriate for such lop sided traffic and Level 3 needs to pay via alternative arrangement with Verizon.

It happens when it's mutually beneficial, regardless of whether the traffic is balanced. I have (free) peering w/ a few networks that are wildly off-balanced (on the order of 5:1 at times) simply because "free" is still cheaper than what I'd pay to send it to them over another (paid) transit link.

Bandwidth doesn't grow on trees :)

Verizon's position is that simply adding more cards within the free peering agreement will make it even more unbalanced in level 3's favour, hence their suggestion that level 3 pay for bandwidth through a different agreement.

This is a rebuttal by David Young, Vice President, Verizon Regulatory Affairs to Level 3's blog regarding peering and bottlenecks [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8048997

The thing is, Mr Young, Cogent wasn't an ISP. Verizon is. Verizon will never have equal peering with any backbone.

When you start looking into the relationship between Cogent and Level 3. One starts to wonder if all this is not a straw-man argument anyways. It seems to me that both Cogent and Level 3 are both united in their stance against Verizon regarding these sorts of tactics [1].

There are some interesting points in that Ars article that I think are worth noting. For one, what is being discussed in that article is case in point what Verizon is admitting they are doing. They have the head-room to handle the bandwidth that Cogent and Level 3 could send in their direction [2]. However are specifically not adding any more interconnections and asking for someone to pay for more interconnections. Sounds like a "toll" to me.

The other point that is interesting to me is in some of the debate about net neutrality people specifically state that what they what is for ISPs to not purposely throttle traffic on their network. However, this tactic seems to be the loop-hole in that request. Meaning if Verizon never properly peers with Level 3 then they have no reason to throttle the Level 3 traffic. It is already made scarce, and throttled, by the arbitrary scarcity of the limited traffic that is allowed through the peers. Thus Verizon and all ISPs can adhere to the letter of the law. While probably ignoring the spirit of it.

[1] http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/03/level-3-and-cogent-a...

[2] http://publicpolicy.verizon.com/blog/entry/why-is-netflix-bu...

The absurdity of this become apparent when you realize that Netflix has code running on both sides of the connection. Netflix could easily modify its client-side code to upload random data of the same size as the content it's downloading, or whatever size is necessary to ensure settlement-free peering.

Verizon is in the process of switching to all-symmetric connections, so this is a little less absurd than it was a week ago.

My main question is this: have other CDNs been paying ISPs like Verizon for a while for additional peering?

Jesus Christ. This whole thing reminds me of when I was a kid and my divorced parents were having a legal battle over child support payments, and each one was telling me their version of how horrible the other parent was, and why they should get more money (like I had any say in the matter). It was transparently manipulative then, and it's transparently manipulative now.

Can't anyone act like adults these days? Or is this just how adults behave?

This happens any time two parties think they have a good reason to defend their own interests. Often even when a compromise is suggested it'll be balked at, because the offer of compromise makes you seem weak, so the other party thinks they can just wait you out and you'll cave to their demands. It has nothing to do with being adult; it has to do with having something to lose.

>Or is this just how adults behave?

I'm going to go with this.

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