Time Warner Defends Comcast In Level 3 Dispute 315
MojoKid writes "On December 21, the FCC will finally vote on adopting net neutrality rules. This may (or may not) have been caused by Comcast's spat with Level 3 after Level 3 won a big contract to handle Netflix's video streaming. Grind it all together, output it to Facebook and you get this campaign: 'Save the Internet: Stop Comcast from Blocking Netflix. Without strong net neutrality rules, companies like Comcast can demand fees from innovative companies like Netflix in an attempt to choke consumer freedom and coerce users to adopt its own video services instead.' Comcast insists that this has nothing to do with blocking the upstart Netflix's business but about how much of Level 3's traffic it must carry before they get to send Level 3 a bill. Level 3's traffic has greatly increased thanks to Netflix. On Thursday, Comcast's frienemy, Time Warner, issued a statement of support for Comcast that explained the pro-cable provider side of the fight."
Re:Double Dipping? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is double dipping, but not like you think.
I pay my ISP for bandwidth. ISPs want to charge Netflix for bandwidth too.
If i'm using more bandwidth now because of Netflix, that should be between me and my ISP, but ISPs don't want to mess with that relationship for fear of pissing off customers and spurring real competition in the marketplace. It's cheaper to buy legislation mandating your business model than to compete.
If we had real competition then net neutrality would be a non-issue because we could choose open networks over closed ones, but with the near-monopoly of the big operators in most markets, it's usually just a choice between their crappy service or another crappier, more expensive option.
Clearly I need to adjust my agreement with Comcast (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Double Dipping? (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't how it works.
Even if Comcast drops Level3 completely, you will still get Netflix - Level3 will just pass off the traffic to someone who does peer with Comcast. It'll be slower than if Level3 directly peered with Comcast, but it will still get there.
Netflix doesn't need to pay Comcast anything. Netflix is already paying Level3 to be their CDN. Level3 just now needs to pay for the bandwidth they're using.
Huh? Aren't Comcast's customers, the one's who are streaming Netflix, already paying for that bandwidth that they're using? This sounds like Comcast wanting to double-dip.
Not Netflix trafic but customer traffic. (Score:2, Insightful)
And those customers are paying Comcast to transit whatever data they want, not because it's today Netflix and tomorrow YouTube.
So I would see it as a breach of contract between Comcast and their customers when they try to levy toll on individual suppliers to their customers.
Re:What Flavor Of Neutral? (Score:5, Insightful)
Except you're missing one thing here: the traffic isn't crossing Comcast's network on it's way to some other network, it's on it's way to Comcast subscribers and was requested by those subscribers. Backbone providers carry other people's traffic (eg. carrier X handling traffic originating on network A and destined for network B because A and B both have connections to X but don't have a direct connection with each other). Comcast doesn't connect other networks to the backbone, it only connects it's own subscribers. If those subscribers are incurring bandwidth costs, Comcast ought to be billing them for it. In fact it is, I'm fairly sure Comcast sends every subscriber a bill every month for their connection and turns that connection off if the bill isn't paid. If Comcast wants Level 3 to pay, then what's that bill to the subscribers for?
Re:Just one question (Score:4, Insightful)
Service for cablemodems probably has gotten better since I ditched them quite a few years ago, but at that point they were actually going backwards in terms of actual service. Service was getting both slower and less reliable. DSL is getting faster, but at a much slower rate. And FiOS isn't available at all as far as I can tell, suspiciously enough they won't even tell you if there in a rough geographic area without asking for a specific address. Until recently they couldn't even locate my address let alone provide service.
A municipal ISP as a utility or Google coming in with their service is about the only way that any of the telecoms are going to care enough to make any effort at improving service. What's particularly embarrassing is that we've got it quite good compared with most of the country.
Re:Peering Agreement (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference is that Cogent was sending traffic across Level 3's network, when in this case Level 3 is sending traffic to Comcast.
If Level 3 and Comcast were peers in between two other endpoints, I could understand this. But that's not the case, Comcast is one of the end points. Doesn't Comcast owe their customers the ability to receive the traffic they want?
Also, it's not like Level 3 is suddenly going to quintuple traffic to Comcast and everything else stays the same. The fact that Netflix movies are going to be served from Level 3 means they are not being served by someone else, which should free up some of the ports they are so worried about.
Re:Double Dipping? (Score:3, Insightful)
Level 3 isn't using any of Comcast's bandwidth. Comcast's paying customers are requesting the videos from Netflix. Netflix pays for the bandwidth they are using from Level 3. Comcast's customers are paying for the bandwidth they are using from Comcast when the streaming video crosses their network.
What Comcast would like to do is get paid from their customers and from Level 3 for the same data. That, my friend, is called double dipping.
The bottom line is that if Comcast's customers found that Netflix was unacceptably slow, they would have to sign up with some other video-on-demand provider, and Comcast would like it to be them.
Re:Double Dipping? (Score:4, Insightful)
What you're missing from this equation is that this traffic used to be handled inside Comcast's network, likely at a lot of different locations, because Akamai used to be Netflix's CDN and Akamai colocates servers with ISPs for quicker response times.
In other words, this is new external traffic to the network, and I have a feeling no matter where it passes into Comcast's network, they're going to want an increase in money from whomever is passing it in.