Internet Traffic Shifting Away From Tier-1 Carriers 153
carusoj writes 'The way traffic moves over the Internet has changed radically in the last five years. Arbor Networks next week will present the results of a two-year study, drawing on more than 256 exabytes of Internet traffic data, which found that the bulk of international Internet traffic no longer moves across Tier-1 transit providers. Instead, the traffic is handled directly by large content providers, content delivery networks, and consumer networks, and is handed off from one of these to another. You can probably guess what some of these companies are: Google, Microsoft, Facebook. Arbor says there are about 30 of these 'hyper giant' companies that generate and consume about 30% of all Internet traffic.' Here is the Arbor Networks press release on the report.
Re:more reason for the FCC's Internet neutrality r (Score:5, Interesting)
With a few large, unregulated companies sourcing and directly distributing much of the Internet's traffic, the potential for self interested mischief grows.
Actually, most of the motivation to erect additional barriers and artificial costs is the result of gatekeepers on users. What motivation does Google have to try to charge users more for traffic to Google? What motivation do they have to restrict access by some subset of users?
This actually removes a potential problem, that being tier 1 providers using their position to extort money for not degrading performance to specific content providers. Still, I think the proposed network neutrality rules are important for network edge, last mile providers and it doesn't hurt to apply it across the board.
Re:more reason for the FCC's Internet neutrality r (Score:3, Interesting)
Spot on. The rise of the multi-national corporation continues. At some point their power will eclipse that of all but a few countries. This will result in a strengthened form on international government to counteract that power. Or, we are looking at rule of the people through corporations. Some will argue this has already happened.
Re:more reason for the FCC's Internet neutrality r (Score:5, Interesting)
Getting back on TOPIC...
Original poster is spot on. The big telecomms like to argue that a tiered internet, where big content providers pay extra for better transport, is necessary (nay, crucial) because that traffic produced by the content providers is consuming so much bandwidth that major infrastructure upgrades are needed.
Instead, we see that big content is handling much of the fat transport by itself. So it seems to me that content providers have stepped up to the plate in terms of managing their own bandwidth usage.
Time for big telecomm to shit down, shut up, and eat crow.
Re:more reason for the FCC's Internet neutrality r (Score:3, Interesting)
Agreed. If bandwidth capacity becomes concentrated upon the same entities that are content providers, then the next logical step is the erection of barriers to competing content.
I think you're misunderstanding what this article is talking about. It is about users of Google and other big content providers bypassing the tier 1 operators of the network core. There's no way Google can erect barriers to anyone but themselves in this scenario.
It will be in their interest to create an artificial scarcity of bandwidth, either through network architecture or legislation, so that they can monopolize the delivery medium, much in the same way that TV networks and Radio stations were able to because of the real scarcity in the open-air EM spectrum.
There are already one cable provider and one phone line provider making a duopoly restricting access and introducing uncompetitive scarcity. And you're worried that Google and 29 other companies that provide about 30% of content are going to together exercise influence to create a new bottleneck? That's not particularly plausible or worrying.
All the more reason for the development and mainstreaming of reliable, high bandwidth peer-to-peer ad hoc networking over wifi or wimax, or something else not controlled by telcos and googles.
I wish wifi made for a viable solution, but I don't think it does reliably enough. The engineer in me says hard wired cabling for big bandwidth transfers makes a lot more sense than the latency of many hops through a peer-to-peer system. It makes a lot more sense in my mind to follow the lead of other countries and implement net neutrality rules or even a socialized backbone to provide competition and prevent abuse of power.
This is because the FCC has demonstrated its vulnerability to capture by the entities it's supposed to be regulating.
This is because we allow corporations to lobby congresspersons and donate to campaign funds when there is no legitimate reason for them to do so.
Re:Holy Fuck, the free market works! Imagine that (Score:5, Interesting)
WELL said, sir.
I have plenty of gripes about capitalism. But yes, it is AWESOME to see it work the way it's supposed to. Content providers have protected their interests by making an investment in network infrastructure. And by doing so, it makes the internet, and internet-related industries at large, more competitive, diverse, and structurally robust.
Random numbers (Score:3, Interesting)
Wasn't there a study that 80 to 95% of all traffic was bittorrent?
And now 30% of all traffic is big sites like Google?
This math doesn't add up. I think they're just making stuff up.
Re:more reason for the FCC's Internet neutrality r (Score:2, Interesting)
Robert Malcolm McDowell ... the head of the FCC?
Way to give them the answer. Now he will just repeat that instead of learning about what he is mindlessly repeating. :P
Re:more reason for the FCC's Internet neutrality r (Score:3, Interesting)