Verizon's Accidental Mea Culpa 390
Barryke writes: Verizon has blamed Netflix for the streaming slowdowns their customers have been seeing. It seems the Verizon blog post defending this accusation has backfired in a spectacular way: The chief has clearly admitted that Verizon has capacity to spare, and is deliberately constraining throughput from network providers. Level3, a major ISP that interconnects with Verizon's networks, responded by showing a diagram that visualizes the underpowered interconnect problem and explaining why Verizon's own post indicates how it restricts data flow. Level3 also offered to pay for the necessary upgrades to Verizon hardware: "... these cards are very cheap, a few thousand dollars for each 10 Gbps card which could support 5,000 streams or more. If that's the case, we'll buy one for them. Maybe they can't afford the small piece of cable between our two ports. If that's the case, we'll provide it. Heck, we'll even install it." I'm curious to see Verizon's response to this straightforward accusation of throttling paying users (which tech-savvy readers were quick to confirm).
Connect with a VPN (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Connect with a VPN (Score:5, Interesting)
I disagree (Score:3, Interesting)
We all know most top tier network providers are running over multiple bands of fiber just sitting there idle. What Verizon is saying is Level 3 has not worked out an agreement with Verizon to upgrade capacity. The physical part is the easy part; it's just about upgrading port usage. Now, if Level3 is paying for X bandwidth and they're not getting X bandwidth because Verizon hasn't upgraded their equipment, I'm sure Level3's lawyers would be all over that.
Level 3 - start pulling cards (Score:3, Interesting)
ugh (Score:1, Interesting)
I get tired of being the only person on slashdot that understands this...
The problem isn't the interconnect. The problem is between the local remote that feeds your house and the Central Office. When that much data comes from Netflix all at the same time, the remotes trunks can't handle it. Upgrading THOSE trunks costs a fortune. Throttling netflix at the peer reduces load on those trunks without affecting other services. That's what's going on and why Verizon (and others) are throttling Netflix. They have no other way of targeting netflix traffic directly without sending the FCC into a tizzy.
Netflix-------> Level3-------> Verizon core network-------> Verizon local CO----(the problem is here)---> remote-------> your house
You can argue that Verizon should fix that trunking themselves, we'd have a different argument then... but what this "Story" is about isn't even what's wrong. You can't just look at one section of the cheapest part of Verizons network and claim how easy it would be for them to fix. They've got a huge multi-billion dollar network to maintain and the front door to that network is the least of their concerns.
Re:ugh (Score:5, Interesting)
So when Netflix decided to pay Comcast, they were able to upgrade all of those remote trunks in ~24 hours, even though they cost of fortune?
Level3 (Score:5, Interesting)
Level 3 Communications is (or at least was) a really great company to work with. When the company I worked for was a huge customer of theirs, they did anything and everything to satisfy us. The claim of them volunteering to install 10GE cards really does sound like something they'd just do to make a large customer happy.
I really miss working with them.
Re:But scarcity! (Score:2, Interesting)
It's not even about overcharging customers for buisness.
It's about being a rent-seeking middle man where they exploit their position to extract a toll from other business and users. Free money.
Unfortunately that's not even the final goal. The ultimate goal is to become media distributors themselves. They don't' charge themselves rent in the above scenario, so they have an advantage that will let them edge out their competitors. Being the gatekeepers, they also get to choke out disruptive new ideas and competitors before they become a threat.
This is why we need heavy regulation. Slap these crooks down and make them the agnostic bit carriers they are supposed to be. I want connectivity, not theft.
Fuck. I'd rather see nationalized internet infrastructure before we're all under the thumb verizon-comcast-warner-fox
Re:But scarcity! (Score:5, Interesting)
[...] Level3 and Cogent aren't last-mile providers; they're Tier 1 backbone providers. Tier 1 providers have things like peering agreements -- last mile providers do not. [...]
Except that Verizon Enterprise (formerly Verizon Business) is also a Tier 1 backbone provider. Different part of the company, but the behavior does appear to be a conflict of interest, of exploiting the Verizon's ISP (last-mile) business actions (failing to resolve congestion to L3) to make a competitor (L3) to Verizon Enterprise (formerly UUnet, AS 701 / 702 / 703) less desirable to Level 3 customers, namely Netflix.
Arguably, Verizon is abusing its ISP customers as pawns in making a competitor to one its Enterprise IP business less desirable, in a very anti-competitive fashion. [ftc.gov]
Re:But scarcity! (Score:3, Interesting)
In case you're honestly asking: city-owned roads are much the same as they were 50 years ago, same for sewer pipes. We can do things like that in a publicly owned manner due to the long cycles, and even then it's often not optimal. Note, too, that most roads that you travel on were not built by a government but were built by a developer and simply maintained by the government.
Trying to get government to run networks would work well up front, but in 5 years it would be outdated and there would be no money to upgrade it. It would end up being a ghettoized mess.
The other issue is that it works fairly well right now, it's just stupidity like this that we have to overcome. And it should be easy to overcome this using law, public pressure, or both.
Verizon FiOS customers downgrade! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:But scarcity! (Score:4, Interesting)
I've lived in Europe and I got to see first hand what very strong competition means.
Every ISP peers to the max with every other ISP it can, and with the backbone providers. Nobody charges for peering either way, everybody wants to open the pipes as much as possible.
At one place I lived at I had a choice of the biggest 3 providers in the country and 2 small ones. All of them offered bandwidth in the range of 100 Mbps, both up and down, to/from anywhere inside their network (which for the big ones meant pretty much the entire country) and varying levels of outside bandwidth (but 10-30 Mbps was usual). This was pretty much the standard on cable or copper connections in the cities. Outside it went down but you'd still typically get 30-50 Mbps. Fiber was only available in the cities – but it meant 1000 Mbps down (yes, 1 Gbps).
Lowest basic monthly subscription started from around 10$. It was 25$ for the fancy fiber stuff. I wish I was making this up.
Was there throttling, blocking, or shafting customers with lower-than-advertised bandwidth? You betcha, and plenty of it. Did anybody call for government regulation? Nope. They bitched about it to the ISP, and if the ISP didn't fix it (or couldn't) they switched to another one. Or they decided they don't care that much and stayed on. Whatever. Even with the most crap of the crappiest ISP's you still got something like 10 Mbps so, yeah, some people didn't care.
Re:I disagree (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think Netflix *wants* to fight dirty, or they would have done this already (and with Comcast, as well).
Re:But scarcity! (Score:4, Interesting)
No, if he's getting a 404, there's a connection to the server. Would be hilarious if Verizon had something to do with it, but we can't pin that one on them.
It was a joke, but if we are going to take it seriously it is certainly not out of the realm of possibility for an ISP to redirect a specific URL to a different URL. Just get the 404 page from the site and redirect it there as it passes through the provider's network gear. Similar process to the one used by internet providers in countries that have mandatory blacklists for "pirate" sites.
Individual Rights are Granted by Societies (Score:4, Interesting)
Individuals, and individual rights, are like single atoms. They only exist in the abstract sense. The real world is entirely dominated by groups and collective actions.
You're a confused anarchist. The problem with non-coercive government is that all government is coercive. Government is primarily a set of restrictions on the use of force, or alternately the monopoly on that use of force. Getting rid of a government, or disarming it, merely allows anyone with a larger arsenal to set up their own government -- anarchy is an unstable system. We all have a right to violence, because it cannot be taken from us except in extreme situations. Remember, the Code of Hammurabi was instituted, "...so that the strong might not harm the weak." Coercive government is a necessary evil, and it will remain necessary so long as men are capable of harming their fellows, for that is its justification and primary purpose.
Rights are not inherent, except in some abstract sense. In the real world, your rights are what the men with guns say they are. You may feel fortunate that the world has had a long, bloody time to work out semi-cooperative frameworks to restrain our darker impulses. Individual rights are an important conceptual counterbalance to the overwhelming powers of the collective, but they are no justification for anarchy, economic or otherwise. The "free market" is an ideal, even a good one, but in most cases removing government interference makes markets less free, more subject to collusion and fraud. In some cases, where the service is required to be universal, or when the barriers to entry would be insurmountable, it makes sense for the government to assume these functions directly. Govenment can also be thought of as the natural monopoly of natural monopolies, in that sense.
Slavery is a word that has a specific meaning; your definition is specious. You just fundamentally don't like being told what to do. To some degree this idealism is admirable. For the true individualist, I can recommend (from long personal experience) the Alaskan wilderness; you can get land for free still up there, provided you build upon it. Whatever romantic images your mind conjures upon thinking of Alaska are all true; I can't stand the weather, personally, but it's as close to a pure state of nature as you will ever find. If you'd like to enjoy the benefits of society, however, you have to play by the rules. "Slavery" isn't an option -- it's mandatory.