ProdigalSon wrote:
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bodhipooh wrote:
You are confusing treating all traffic equally and handling of excessive traffic. The former is about not discriminating between traffic from one source and another. The latter is about fairness. ISPs have generally been open to allowing any and all traffic to traverse their networks on the belief that things even out in the end. So, FiOS customers may generate a lot of load and traffic on networks belonging to other ISPs (say Comcast, TWC, etc) and the same holds true for customers of other ISPs. So, the loads ISPs carry and generate for each other are usually equal, more or less. But, what we are talking about here is completely different: Netflix has data centers, but they are not large data carries open to other ISPs. As such, they are generating loads but not carrying any for other ISPs. It is truly an imbalance and they CHOSE to make it worse by increasing the data they generate and push.

As for your company generating a lot of traffic/data, they already pay for that. Every company pays for pushing out data by subscribing to specific bandwidth limits when contracting their Internet service.

Netflix has an agreement with their ISP in most cases I believe it is Cogent, they are the ones that are responsible for the peering not Netflix. Who makes the arbitrary number of what is "excessive"? Furthermore as the end consumer I pay for my 75mbps, I should be getting that throughput or at least close, but by throttling the data from Netflix they are not treating it equal to my refresh of JcList.

cousin wrote:
This is all very interesting but what I DO know is I pay both Fios and Netflix and still have completely unacceptable service. I already have a full time job (so I can pay these clowns BTW) so I don't need (or want to) figure out what their problems might be or what new technology I need to learn and buy, or who's screwing who; all I know is we pay, month after month and their problems are becoming our problems. I for one will not take it much longer. I think if enough of us let them know that we will not keep paying for unacceptable service things might change. But things will only change when someone starts to lose money.

bodhipooh wrote:
You are confusing treating all traffic equally and handling of excessive traffic. The former is about not discriminating between traffic from one source and another. The latter is about fairness. ISPs have generally been open to allowing any and all traffic to traverse their networks on the belief that things even out in the end. So, FiOS customers may generate a lot of load and traffic on networks belonging to other ISPs (say Comcast, TWC, etc) and the same holds true for customers of other ISPs. So, the loads ISPs carry and generate for each other are usually equal, more or less. But, what we are talking about here is completely different: Netflix has data centers, but they are not large data carries open to other ISPs. As such, they are generating loads but not carrying any for other ISPs. It is truly an imbalance and they CHOSE to make it worse by increasing the data they generate and push.

As for your company generating a lot of traffic/data, they already pay for that. Every company pays for pushing out data by subscribing to specific bandwidth limits when contracting their Internet service.

bodhipooh wrote:
JCMan8, you seem to have an axe to grind with Verizon. No one has confirmed what Netflix has agreed to pay Comcast. And, despite your claims, it is NOT an extortion. Simply put, Netflix accounts for the vast majority of traffic traversing the networks of most ISPs. That is a VERY COSTLY proposition. These ISPs are being "forced" to provide a "road" for the Netflix traffic and you don't think they are entitled to some sort of compensation for that? Don't you think that the ISPs are entitled to some sort of compensation for their continuous need to upgrade and improve their networks to be able to handle the additional loads being exerted?

If anything, I think Netflix was the offending party here: they CHOSE to start streaming in a format that requires a lot more bandwidth, and did so fully aware of the consequences (larger streams require more bandwidth, which can lead to performance issues for some customers.) They gambled (but lost) on the assumption that the ISPs would cave to their "option" of storing content within data centers by using Netflix's own content delivery network and appliances. In the game of chicken that ensued, Netflix blinked first. It's that simple.

JCMan8 wrote:
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MDM wrote:
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WhoElseCouldIBe wrote:
Just to play devil's advocate, Netflix does take up a lot of an ISP's bandwidth, no?

Yes... the general figure used is up to 30% of the load on the networks is Netflix.

I suspect FIOS hasn't been a big money maker for Verizon. They really cut back the network's expansion, focusing on their wireless service instead. I think they expected to make money by selling content, which Netflix in a way competes against.

The only real out is for companies like Netflix and Amazon to build out their own networks.

Well Netflix can do what they did with Comcast. Pay the ISPs their extortion fee and service will speed back up.

Now we can debate whether this truly is an "extortion" fee or if it is justified given the load Netflix places on ISPs' bandwith. But now that they have paid Comcast, I bet Comcast subscribers experience a marked improvement in Netflix service.

So Netflix's out is to pay the big 3-4 ISPs the fees they want. Just sucks because that cost will get passed down to the consumer.

MDM wrote:
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WhoElseCouldIBe wrote:
Just to play devil's advocate, Netflix does take up a lot of an ISP's bandwidth, no?

Yes... the general figure used is up to 30% of the load on the networks is Netflix.

I suspect FIOS hasn't been a big money maker for Verizon. They really cut back the network's expansion, focusing on their wireless service instead. I think they expected to make money by selling content, which Netflix in a way competes against.

The only real out is for companies like Netflix and Amazon to build out their own networks.

WhoElseCouldIBe wrote:
Just to play devil's advocate, Netflix does take up a lot of an ISP's bandwidth, no?

bodhipooh wrote:
The issues I have with my FiOS router are 99% of the time related to WiFi performance, and I am pretty certain that is due to a combination of the cell phone towers installed on our building and, of course, the multiple other WiFi routers in use by neighbors.

bodhipooh wrote:
That is simply incorrect. DNS servers do NOT determine which path to take. That is determined by predefined "routes" on the switching equipment "upstream" from you. You are confusing two completely different utilities. A traceroute (tracert in Windows, traceroute in the Unix/Mac world) is a way to see how packets are traversing the network on its way to the final destination. The ONLY thing that DNS does is resolve a hostname (e.g. cnn.com) to an IP address (e.g. 157.166.226.26). Different DNS servers may return different IP addresses if multiple such addresses are assigned to the same record (meaning, a given hostname could be defined as having multiple addresses, just like some hostname are often dynamically resolved to an address based on certain logic/parameters.) In any case, I will say it again DNS had NO BEARING whatsoever on network performance.

bodhipooh wrote:
There is absolutely no correlation between broadband bandwidth performance and DNS resolution. The article makes no mention of DNS, and it wouldn't, as that has nothing to do with throttling.

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