I’ve said it before, the only real reason I need internet at my house is because the coffee shop doesn’t seem to want me watching movies on their couch in my jammies. No Netflix, no reason to pay for internet. AT&T should think long and hard before they are too horrible about Netflix. If all I’m doing is checking e-mail or reading blogs it’s pretty easy to walk the 45 feet to the coffee shop and use their free wi-fi. In the summer I can pick up the coffee shop wi-fi in my own yard. If I canceled my internet I could afford a whole lot of extra lattes too.
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This might be the carrier that DirectTV uses for “broadband internet” in areas that have DSL.
The regulators already have stepped in - and in, and in, and all over everything. That’s how we got where we are today - the soft-monopolies-via-regulation that are phone and cable franchises. The reason customers can’t flee is specifically because competition has been systematically suppressed through government-granted monopolies for decades. It’s mostly a happy accident that we even have the last-mile competition we have now between the telephone and cable networks, because they were originally completely different and incompatible networks.
AT&T is joined at the hip with the regulators, and so is Comcast and every other major cable company. In many senses, they are the regulators - their employees, or more often their lobbyists, are the ones being tapped to run the FCC for example. In short, the last thing we need in this situation is more regulators, because that’s just handing things over to AT&T, Comcast, TWC, and their buddies in government.
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I think, perhaps, you are in the minority here, and probably increasingly so. Lots of us are expected to do work from home, which often requires internet and may be confidential or proprietary - I doubt the coffee shops wants you to (or has a stable enough connection for you to) use a VPN client, for example. And do I really trust their network security enough for me to log into my bank account there?
On the contrary, if I didn’t have home internet or a smartphone, I wonder if I could convince my employer to pay for it? No, nevermind, not gonna happen.
Here’s the thing that I don’t understand, and so I invite anyone to help me out.
I pay for a 35/5Mbps connection with Time Warner because I like (I can’t exactly say need) that level of bandwidth. But, if I wanted/needed more, I’d have to pay for it. The specific price and whether or not it’s reasonable may be arguable, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect that I should pay more for more bandwidth.
So, if Netflix is super popular and now needs more bandwidth in order to satisfy the demand for their service, shouldn’t they have to pay more?
Because of Cory’s bus analogy I suspect that I’m missing something and that there’s a good reason why the above logic is flawed in this case, but I need help seeing it.
OIC, thanks.
Honest question about symmetry: why does it matter? I would have guessed the costs for sending and receiving data as it passes between networks would be fairly similar. Or, at least, that it would be easy for the two relevant ISPs to negotiate cost sharing.
And suppose Netflix and I were both AT&T customers. Is it actually cheaper for AT&T to serve me files from Netflix in that scenario? Or what if Netflix were and I were not?
None of that is relevant to the problem at hand, which is that AT&T should be negotiating with Cogent not Netflix and Netflix should be negotiating with the FCC not AT&T. But I’d still like to know.
Airlines have oversold seating for years. It’s even covered in intro probability class how they do it. On the occasions more people than seats actually turn up, they have to look after the people who rightfully want a seat on the plane. Have to.
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The misunderstanding is right here. Netflix doesn’t need more bandwidth - they’re paying their provider (Cogent) for all the bandwidth they are using, and likely for much more than that.
The issue is a connection between two ISPs: AT&T and Cogent. The rules tend to get fuzzy at these kinds of interconnects. For two ISPs that are large enough, there is typically an agreement that they’ll accept each other’s traffic at no charge, because both ISPs benefit from their customers being able to talk to the other side’s customers. When bandwidth usage at those kinds of interconnection points gets high, however, there’s always an argument about who’s going to pay for upgrades.
Netflix is only involved in this because they’re an easy scapegoat for AT&T and other providers to use in soundbites about how it’s horribly unfair for AT&T to bear any of the costs of the upgrades for the traffic their customers are requesting.
([edit] That last sounds awfully one-sided, and it is, but that’s because ultimately this boils down to a negotiation between two companies who would each like to bear as little cost as possible. The problem is that the customers of those companies are being pulled into the haggling by making it into a PR battle as well. Sadly, Cogent for many reasons has repeatedly ended up in this kind of battle.)
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Netflix doesn’t need more bandwidth, not to continue to provide their current level of service.
(The only reason you might believe this is that ISP’s are slowing down (throttling) Netflix bandwidth coming in form Netflix’s ISP (Cogent)
So its like this:
Lets say you want to stream a movie from your computer to other computers on the internet, (for all intents and purposes this is exactly what Netflix is doing but on a massive scale), you have a 5Mb upload limit as you mentioned so lets say that you can stream 4 movies at the same time in HD just for arguments sake.
Lets say that you are streaming a movie from your computer from another location from within your ISP’s network (Your neighbor’s house, thorough his internet connection), you will most likely be able to use up the 5Mbps upload bandwith alloted to you as an AT&T customer and that will certainly be less than the 35Mbps download limit for your neighbor as well.Your ISP (AT&T, again, for arguments sake) should not have a problem with this.
Now lets say you’re at a friends house but he has a different ISP (Verizon), and you try to stream a movie form your AT&T connected PC at home.
Lets say, for argument’s sake that Verizon doesn’t like that so many of its customers are asking for data from AT&T customer’s, they want AT&T to pay for the bandwidth that traffic takes up on their network. So they throttle the data coming in from the AT&T network. Lets say they throttle you to 1 Mbps.
(Its not that they can’t handle it, its that they want to renegotiate the existing data transfer agreement because they think its unfair, too much data from AT&T to verizon, but very little from Verizon to AT&T)
Now, while at your friend’s house, your movie takes a looong time to load and pauses randomly while the transfer catches up, your streaming setup is just fine, the problem is there is a dispute between these two ISP’s on data handling.
Now Verizon asks you to pay them more so you can stream movies from your PC to their customers because you are using up too much bandwidth on their network.
This is exactly what is going on.
Netflix pays for its bandwith through Cogent (its not that simple but were keeping it simple), and Netflix users pay for their bandwith usage through AT&T.
AT&T and Cogent can’t agree on how to split costs for data transit between their networks so Netflix and its customer’s get screwed.
The only reason Netflix is brought into the dispute is because of the realities of owning a business, if your provider has problems, your business suffers, this is where AT&T is being deceptive, they want netflix to sign up with them as their data provider for AT&T customers instead of going through Cogent.
Netflix is not getting a free ride and they are paying for their bandwith, all their bandwith.
What AT&T is doing (just to add yet another analogy to the discussion) is, they are running a protection racket. They’ll “protect” Netflix traffic from the trouble’s Cogent is having, (And of course, they are the ones creating that trouble in the first place!)
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There is virtually no cost for transferring data from one provider to another, costs cover maintenance and future upgrades.
Just like you don’t have any costs associated with transferring files form one pc to another on your home network once you bought and set up the devices that take care of this.
Edit:
I think I replied to a question you didn’t really make, so I’ll add that the “cost” such as it is for transferring data between networks isn’t always the issue, in cases where both sides traffic is equal, both sides agree to not charge each other.
Yes… I have ATT for DSL and directv for television…If I go to comcast for the interweb I would likely cancel directv and only have one provider for phone/internet/television.
Edit: meh. nevermind.
Some of you seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of who is agreeing to what. Cogent and AT&T have a peering agreement. This peering agreement is for a certain sized pipe between the two carriers. AT&T is providing the agreed-upon service to Cogent – they are accepting X amount of data from Cogent, as specified in their peering agreement. Unfortunately, Netflix needs X+100 amount of bandwidth to properly serve AT&T customers. So Netflix service for AT&T customers is crappy.
So someone has to pay for a bigger pipe to AT&T’s network. Does AT&T pay for it? Does Cogent pay for it? Or does Netflix pay for it? It’s clear someone has to pay for it, because there’s no such thing as a free lunch. This isn’t a case of net neutrality, this is a case of Cogent having filled their pipe to AT&T. Netflix is complaining because a lot of their data is being munched by the overfull pipe, and AT&T has offered Netflix an alternative – pay AT&T for bandwidth like any other AT&T customer, and get a direct pipe into AT&T’s network instead of having to go through the clogged Cogent pipe. Or Cogent could pay AT&T for a bigger pipe. Whatever. Someone has to pay for a new pipe, interconnects don’t just happen for free.
Note that AT&T doesn’t care what is clogging Cogent’s pipe. They are net-neutral to the actual content clogging Cogent’s pipe to them. They likely didn’t even know what that content was until Netflix told them, just that the interconnect with Cogent was maxed out and that when reported to Cogent, Cogent replied that it was authorized traffic and not a DDOS attack. This is not a network neutrality argument, which is based on content or endpoint originator of traffic. Netflix turned it into a content issue, not AT&T or Cogent. The reality is that Cogent is going to have to pay if they want a bigger pipe to AT&T’s network (and charge Netflix higher rates most likely), or Netflix is going to have to pay AT&T for a direct connection to AT&T’s network. AT&T really doesn’t care who pays for that bigger pipe or the content of what’s being distributed through that pipe onto their network (i.e., they’re content-neutral), just that someone other than them pays for that bigger pipe into their network. They’re a business, not a charity, after all.
Cory,
Did my thesis over 7 years ago about this. I believe it was Ed Whittacker who first took the positional ATT that they deserved to make money as a toll.
What the public NEEDS to understand is that Telecom industry are leasing the wires AND airwaves from taxpayers.
No one seems to remember that in ANY of these discussions.
They get use of the right of way for maintenance, upkeep and saturation
Net Neutrality has somehow fallen into the toothless FCC and due to classification it has no bite? Please!
The problem is the Telecoms, the public, and the fearful politicians that are afraid of having their microphones yanked away as retaliation for going against the telecom industry.
Fun when a citizenry is partially educated, but not enough to do what needs to be done
Everyone read author Ben Bagdikian’s “New Media Monopoly” now
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If this were true, they would not be talking to Netflix at all. They’d be talking only to Cogent, and it would be up to Cogent and AT&T to decide how to pay for it. Netflix screwed up in its dealings with Comcast and invited this on itself, but it’s still hardly content neutral.
AT&T didn’t talk to Netflix. Netflix talked to AT&T to complain that their content to AT&T customers was laggy. AT&T offered to provide them a direct connection, for a price – just as they’d offer anybody a direct connection if said person wished to provide content on AT&T’s network. In the end the main issue is that Netflix chose to go with a crappy vendor (Cogent) that has lousy pipes to AT&T, and now wants to paint AT&T as the bad guy when in fact AT&T is completely and totally providing the contracted-for service to Cogent.
There is no bigger pipe that needs to be built. (Not that it shouldn’t be built, not that it wouldn’t make things better, just that its not what’s slowing Netflix traffic)
There is a dispute over who should pay more though.
I repeat, there is no need to add bandwidth, If Netflix is slow its because the ISP is throttling it and possibly other services BECAUSE there is a dispute over who should pay more.
No, AT&T is not throttling Cogent. They are providing the contracted-for peering bandwidth to Cogent, likely maxing out several 10 gigabit connections. To provide more bandwidth will require additional equipment. A 10 gigabit switch costs around $10,000. A carrier-grade 10 gigabit router costs around $100,000 for a backplane and a single module. Add another $30,000 apiece for each module needed to route an additional 10 gigabit port. Then there are the fiber optic modules, the fibers themselves, the hosting and electric charges, the high-priced labor needed to do the install and maintain it, etc.These are actual real costs that must be paid and we’re likely talking seven to eight figure numbers needed to run enough physical fiber between Cogent and AT&T at peering points to sink all the traffic that Netflix plus other Cogent customers wishes to send to AT&T . The question is who pays that price – AT&T, or Cogent? Cogent has a policy of refusing to pay for bandwidth. That’s their corporate policy. Too bad for their customers, but hey, it lets them keep their prices to their customers low. Too bad about the lousy connectivity to most of the Internet, but hey, they’re cheap, right?
I’m no fan of AT&T, but I’m even less of a fan of Cogent. Their business model is based around providing lousy connectivity to their customers while pointing the blame at other ISP’s. This isn’t Cogent’s first peering issue, and hardly the last, Cogent is the closest thing to a bottom feeder that you’ll find in the Tier 2 ISP provider ranks.
Peering agreements are not about the size of the pipe, but about balanced traffic from both sides.
The pipe is now being reduced from AT&T’s side because they cannot come to an agreement with Cogent.
The difference is subtle but significant because it means that its not a clear cut TOS type of violation on Cogent’s side.
Yes, there is a dispute, but that’s not what makes AT&T into the badguy. It would technically be fair for AT&T to not accept any data from Cogent, except that AT&T would lose out too.
By throttling data they are creating a situation where Netflix will have to enter into a further agreement with AT&T besides the one they have with Cogent, to “guarantee” their traffic isn’t affected.
To be clear, its not a technical solution, its not even the best solution, its a guarantee that AT&T will let AT&T customer’s get normal Netflix streaming.
