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Hey folks here's a friendly reminder of what current cable territories look like (yes this is from 2011, but there have been only minor chagnes to the boundaries since then) brothertim posted:What you said here seems to be exactly what is happening. Seems to me that swallowing up a competitor is the same as stamping out all competition. It's only a matter of time before they own the entire cable ISP market. And when that happens, skyrocketing prices. Time Warner Cable (which is a separate entity from Time Warner for the past few years after a spinoff) does not and cannot compete with Comcast. There are no locations where you can choose between the two providers without moving. brothertim posted:If you're right, and you probably will be, this is horse poo poo. This is one huge reason this merger shouldn't be allowed. When they have no competition, they have no reason to improve their networks and knowing how comcast/capitalism works, they wont. They already have no cable competition in most of their service territory, and none of those competitors in overbuild areas are TWC.
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Feb 17, 2014 20:25
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Largo Usagi posted:Its easier to just buy out a company if you had intended to compete in that area though. Comcast was never going to spend billions to do a cable network overbuild, when even buying the various local cable territories piecemeal would be cheaper. Comcast, as a matter of corporate policy, essentially swore off overbuild in favor straight buyouts back in the late 90s/early 2000s. PS Comcast and Time Warner Cable already have the benefit of not having to compete. Like seriously, none of the major cable providers are in the business of attempting to do overbuild and take on customers that way. The only cable companies that do overbuild have overbuild as almost their entire business model, usually alongside being a general fiber optic provider as their main business - like RCN or Grande. Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Feb 17, 2014 |
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Feb 17, 2014 21:03
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psydude posted:Service providers always oversubscribe their lines, just ask anyone who owns a cell phone inside of a major city. That's why they get you with the "SPEEDS OF UP TO" line. DOCSIS is a pretty outdated technology, but good luck convincing Comcast et al to switch. I'd LOVE to hear why you think DOCSIS 3.0 is outdated!
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Feb 18, 2014 02:49
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psydude posted:Because FTTH doesn't have the same shared bandwidth or symmetry issues and is becoming much more widespread than it was even 5 years ago. Again, explain why it's outdated. Please don't tell me you think they run coax all the way from the cable central office to your door! DOCSIS 3.0 is currently capable of 1 gigabit per subscriber from the node to the house. None of the cable companies currently implement it at that, because they haven't run sufficient fiber capacity to the nodes, but it's right there ready to be used.
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Feb 18, 2014 03:11
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Don Lapre posted:Technically docsis 3 is only limited by the number of channels the cable company wants to allocate. There is no max defined in the spec. The only limit right now is that modems only go up to 24 down stream channels. That's what I'm talking about, modems are currently available using DOCSIS 3 for about a gigabit down, it could be rolled out tomorrow with sufficient connections to the node.
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Feb 18, 2014 04:00
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rebelEpik posted:After reading this thread, I'm still at a loss of what me, as an individual, can do to help prevent this from going through. Is there anything I can do? Why do you want it to not go through, exactly?
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Feb 18, 2014 05:57
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rebelEpik posted:Honestly, I don't agree with the way Comcast has been running, especially with the data caps, and I believe that allowing this to go through will only promote the false idea that data caps are needed. That, and one company shouldn't have such a large % of the market to itself. It stifles innovation and reduces the amount of people/companies who could potentially get into those markets and make it more fair to the consumers. So you're not aware that Time Warner Cable is the one that's had consistently worse performance, Time Warner Cable is the one that's tried much more onerous data caps, Time Warner Cable is in general a lot worse and the only reason you don't hear as much anger about them online is that they have fewer customers? Also, again, what innovation? There hasn't been any real innovation in cable systems in a good decade, you can't stifle what none of the big companies have even bothered to try. Don Lapre posted:If the FCC handles this well they have quite a bit of leverage and can make demands to approve the merger. I suppose that special net neutrality thing they made Comcast agree to when they bought NBC would at the least now apply to the former TWC systems. thelightguy posted:An assfucking is an assfucking, it's true. If they were going to do that they'd already do that, what with being the largest ISP, cable TV provider, and owning the second largest media production org. And again, TWC treats everything worse.
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Feb 18, 2014 07:00
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AlternateAccount posted:What? Why would anyone WANT it to go through? How can it possibly be any sort of benefit to the cable subscribing public as a whole? There's no benefit to not having it happen. There's no benefit to have another company buy TWC instead. And Comcast has been objectively performing better for internet and TV services than TWC, so really what we have going on here is nothing changing for consumers at the worst and maybe some better performance at best. TWC currently is very open to being bought in general since they're kinda having bad business lately. They're currently offering service that's doing middling performance among national cable systems at best. And Comcast's the only national cable ISP with any effective net neutrality terms upon them, as part of the terms allowing them to buy NBC. TWC isn't subject to that as is, but they would be once merged in. thelightguy posted:Fishmech wants it to go through because he's fishmech. It offers no benefit at all - the most benefit to the public would be to cut up comcast and TWC along state lines and make independent companies out of them all. That will literally never happen, and also wouldn't provide any benefit. You're just cargo culting some vague idea of competition with that.. But those baby cables would never compete.
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Feb 18, 2014 18:58
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AlternateAccount posted:Uhh, I would say that personally, my own service would go to poo poo if it were run by Comcast, and I have had accounts for long periods with both companies. It wouldn't go to poo poo, you'd have the same local cable operator actually handling operations. And Comcast has been statistically shown in continuous monitoring to better deliver advertised service than TWC, it'd be out of expectations for it to work worse than TWC. There was never ever the illusion of competition in cable with these two companies. Less than 1% of households have access to multiple independent cable systems, for everyone else the "competition" is between cable/satellite/maybe fiber for TV and between cable/DSL/maybe fiber for internet. That you could move 100 miles to switch between Comcast and TWC was never a serious consideration. And here's the thing, these two companies not merging can never provide the incentive for either to boost speeds. That can only be done by actually having other options, like all fiber companies, or the very rare cable overbuild companies like RCN. Surely you've noticed that Google Fiber was made by, well, Google and not an out of territory cable company trying to muscle in on someone else's turf?
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Feb 18, 2014 19:19
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thelightguy posted:It worked just fine with Ma Bell and it would make it literally impossible for them to assrape content providers or engage in anticompetitive lobbying to the degree that they are currently doing so. It didn't work with the Baby Bells. The baby bells did not compete, they had and have designated operating areas. They also bought each other and outside carriers like GTE. The competition that did exist was completely unrelated companies to any AT&T successor, using the phone lines - though it's worth noting that most consumers remained with their designated Baby Bell rboc. Incidentally a few of those Baby Bells started off with shares of the phone market the same proportion as Comcast plus twc would be in cable, or nearly as much. And the 2 of the remaining 3 are significantly bigger than that, of course. Basically learn your history of telecommunications.
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Feb 18, 2014 20:07
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AlternateAccount posted:Yes, so we need more competition and not more monolithic cable companies. This merger does not further anything remotely resembling a customer serving agenda. It actually does, Comcast is the only major cable ISP with any kind of still standing FCC net neutrality rule, which is in place as it was part of the agreement to have NBC bought. TWC is currently subject to nothing in that manner. weaaddar posted:I'm actually extremely sad about this merger. Just recently TWC rolled out 100mbps (for free as I was paying for 50 and they just bumped it up) to my area, and are looking into supplying 300mbps service. Comcast also has similar services and is looking to supplying similar services. P Yes you have no competition now so nothing is going to change. I'm using my own DOCSIS 3 modem on Comcast as a matter of fact! Plus you're worried about enforced data caps now when TWC's the one who has historically been far more willing to try them? Of course they're giving you the best deal. It'd be impossible for anyone else to give you a better one. demonachizer posted:All I know is that I pray every day that they stay the gently caress away from RCN. Attempting to buy RCN would actually be likely to result in a flat blocking of the purchase, because most of RCN's territory is overbuild on Comcast territory. thelightguy posted:GTE lasted well into the 90s, maybe the early 2000s, before being sucked up by verizon, and I didn't realize I was still renting my home phone. The breakup of Ma Bell made it easier for other companies to compete, as well as removing their ability to collude as effectively. They didn't have to compete with each other, other companies came in and engaged them in competition - more effectively now that they were not a nationwide asset-laden behemoth of a telecom company. Dude you don't understand anything about the Baby Bells if you think the breakup ended renting phones! As a matter of fact, there are still people paying rental fees for phones to this very day, primarily because they're old people who never changed it. The breakup of Ma Bell did nothing to make it "easier to compete", that was solely down to the separate rules mandating opening the local loop - which didn't come about for several years afterwards. Like seriously, every single thing in your post is wrong, except that eventually other companies came in to compete. And you got the causation of that wrong because the things that mandated opening to long distance carrier changes and opening the local loop came years seperate. Edit: PS the right for customers to attach their own phones, and thus no longer pay phone rentals if they did so, was given in 1977. Edit again: Essentially, the big "AT&T Breakup" is one of the most egregious examples of supposed competition created, while resulting in almost no real competition for the average consumer. The only thing that really brought local phone access choice was individual states mandating CLEC-type access starting in the early 90s and made national by the 1996 Telecommunications Act - prior to this "competitive" local phone service only existed in companies, almost exclusively in the largest cities, building separate fiber networks in the business districts for phone service. And even after this, the Baby Bell companies kept in their own territories. So from 1984 when the "split" officially took effect to about 1994 or so, you didn't have any local competition, and you only had minimal long distance competition (essentially picking from your regional bell's rebranded AT&T long distance, direct AT&T long distance, Sprint, and a few more minor carriers). Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Feb 18, 2014 |
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Feb 18, 2014 22:04
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A lot of ISPs got edge caching arrangements set up with Netflix years ago, but the infrastructure used wasn't suited to Netflix's vast growth since then. Additionally, these were often set up either when Netflix was only pushing out SD video or at the start of their introduction of HD video, and as such can't handle so many more subscribers all using HD. This is a large part of why many ISPs now have trouble providing Netflix without excessive buffering at high demand times.
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Feb 24, 2014 18:08
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You're still forgetting A) Netflix takes up up to 30% of all the transfer in America at times B) Significant portions of Netflix's catalog is NBC Universal properties, which is to say Comcast properties You're also ignoring that this is cutting significant money out of their current peering agreements, and that apparently Netflix or their current peering partner was so incompetent at arranging agreements that they had to switch to direct peering to Comcast in the first place. And you're throwing in the frankly utterly unfunded assumption that because you hate Comcast, they're going to charge Netflix eleventy bajillion dollars for peering soon.
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Feb 25, 2014 02:56
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Alereon posted:Netflix didn't choose to pay Comcast for direct connectivity because it would save them money, Comcast used an array of tactics to degrade the experience for Netflix subscribers until Netflix agreed to pay them to stop. Netflix's traffic volumes are not relevant since Comcast subscribers already pay for that traffic. If Comcast is having trouble making their usage-based pricing model work out they should probably fix that, though I think their financials indicate they are not in fact having any problems with this. My heart is also warmed by your faith in the inherent goodness and generosity of Comcast that they will not exploit this one-sided relationship with Netflix, who is their best-bud partner and definitely not a competitor. Netflix's current peering partners' own agreements with Comcast did not include enough to handle the Netflix traffic, it's as simple as that. In particular, Level 3 and Comcast have had ongoing issues with each other that heavily involved Netflix's traffic: http://www.telecompetitor.com/behind-the-level-3-comcast-peering-settlement/ Comcast subscribers do not, in fact, pay for that traffic, otherwise there wouldn't be the peering issue! This is what happens when a service takes over 30% of internet traffic in the country, poorly manages its peering agreements, and then gets pushed back by just about every ISP in the country. Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 03:33 on Feb 25, 2014 |
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Feb 25, 2014 03:24
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Alereon posted:Yes, threatening to depeer networks that carry Netflix traffic is one of the ways that Comcast has interfered with Netflix's ability to deliver competing content to Comcast customers. Threatening to depeer networks that are not honoring the peering contracts is actually exactly how peering arrangements are meant to work. Alereon posted:It is an interesting idea that Comcast should get paid a second time for the traffic their subscribers are already paying for because they want to be, but I don't think I can agree with that. Please explain where Comcast is asking to "be paid a second time". Alereon posted:It's funny how the first link you posted points out that mainly Comcast and Verizon are causing significant issues, and those are the two companies that give net neutrality legislation a reason to exist. They're "causing problems" in that they have the most peering issues from Netflix's setup at the moment.
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Feb 25, 2014 03:39
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Alereon posted:You depeer networks that demonstrate limited value or violate peering contracts through abusive routing, both of which are visible as a traffic imbalance. Asymmetric traffic patterns because you're connecting an ISP full of clients (with highly asymmetric throughput) to a backbone provider connected to a shitton of servers is, you know, obviously not a reason to depeer a network. Why is it valid for Comcast to say "whoa whoa whoa you gotta pay us for all this data our customers are downloading!!" versus Netflix saying "whoa whoa whoa you gotta pay us for all this data your customers are downloading!!"? The answer is that Comcast doesn't want their subscribers to get Netflix's service because it impacts their TV revenue. It's valid for Comcast to say this because it's in the agreements they have with all the people they're peering with, the problem was resolved when Netflix agreed to peer directly with Comcast instead of running through other networks. Also Comcast doesn't give poo poo one about direct TV revenue because they've already pulled multiple moves to hedge that revenue such as: 1) Directly driving their internet customers to keep cable tv subscriptions through bundling 2) Investing in and receiving revenue from multiple online media services as Comcast as well as those NBC Universal had joined in 3) Buying NBC Universal so any time you watch anything NBC Universal had even partial rights in, Comcast gets money. Practically the only online video service Comcast can't get money from now is straight up piracy Ok, so, I ask again, where is Comcast getting paid twice? Comcast and the various networks Netflix was peering through were mutually charging varying amounts as part of carrying Netflix traffic as well as other traffic flows, and Netflix was paying those networks directly to distribute. Now they're simply charging Netflix directly, with Netflix paying one more network for transfer.. Comcast's. Probably soon other big ISPs that've been having peering issues will also be arranging direct peering with Netflix, and frankly that's as it should be because Netflix takes up so much of American network capacity. Again, I ask you to consider that for you to access anything online, there already has to be a "paid twice" situation because both ends of the connection need to pay for connection through the middle between each other. To get to Comcast customers, Netflix is already paying someone else to do it for them, they have the option and have now taken it to cut the middleman out, and of course they have to pay their new network provider for that. Alereon posted:In any other context Comcast would be excited about a company contributing to a massive growth in customer usage and justification for customers paying for speed upgrades, especially when they're as willing as Netflix to cooperate by colocating cache boxes and such to reduce network impacts and costs. Comcast suddenly cares because Netflix is FINALLY a real competitor to Comcast's TV business. That's the only reason this is an exceptional case. No they wouldn't? Maybe you missed when they constantly cracked down on torrents et al? Verizon and AT&T each have issues with Netflix even though both of them only offer TV services to a small subset of their subscribers for internet access. Also maybe you're just ignorant here, but do you think colocating edge caches is done for free? Netflix would be paying a good deal of money to place the boxes and be allowed to keep them in place, following on the general way edge caching is handled for other companies. Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 04:29 on Feb 25, 2014 |
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Feb 25, 2014 04:07
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beejay posted:Can someone explain the below graph, from here Overloaded connections at peak usage times dragging down the average speed, the same as for all the other ISPs showing drops since about September.
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Feb 25, 2014 04:34
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I just wonder how many of the people upset about Netflix direct peering are aware that Microsoft, Google, and Facebook among others already participate in direct peering with Comcast and other ISPs?beejay posted:So some of the ISPs like Google Fiber which are actually going up since September 13 don't have the Super HD or don't suffer the same problems with "Overloaded connections at peak usage times"? Also howcome the overloaded connections at peak usage times only started then? September is when the peering into most ISPs started to have real problems, and thus drop the average connection speeds. The ISPs without drops since then either had no peering issues, or only minor ones. Cox, Cablevision, and Google Fiber, as you can see, were the only ISPs that had consistent increases in average speed since September.
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Feb 25, 2014 05:14
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psydude posted:None of those companies are in direct competition with Comcast. Most YouTube traffic on the East Coast is delivered from addresses owned by Level 3, and even then I wouldn't really call YouTube a competitor to Comcast. Netflix isn't a competitor to Comcast if YouTube isn't considered one. AlternateAccount posted:So should we have a law saying that the same company can't run both content creation and content delivery systems? That would basically make television networks illegal, so no. SamDabbers posted:It's great from a technical perspective, and will definitely improve the experience of Netflix customers on Comcast's network. I don't think anyone disputes that. What people are upset about is the power differential between the two companies. Comcast basically forced Netflix's hand at the expense of their common customers. No, Netflix's lovely peering agreements forced their hand. And nothing was done at the expense of their customers.
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Feb 25, 2014 16:35
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AlternateAccount posted:How so, excepting digital OTA signal? And fine, you can't generate content and then serve generalized delivery service. The networks only really broadcast their own stuff. They have their distribution systems from the network to their affiliates, their owned and operated stations of course, their distribution networks to cable and satellite providers, etc. Furthermore all of them have some manner of web presence. And many cable channels have been owned by single cable carriers for decades, even though they get shown on other cable carriers, without any ill effect. It just doesn't make sense at any level. It is a knee jerk response to top all kneejerk responses.
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Feb 25, 2014 17:04
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HUGE SPACEKABLOOIE posted:You seriously can't see the fundamental difference between Netflix and Youtube? One being a place you upload dumb videos of your dog, the other being a fledgling TV and Movie content provider, which you're so fond of pointing out takes up 30% of American traffic. On top of that you really think content creators should also be allowed to own the mechanism by which that content is delivered? By that line of thinking can I assume you're ok with Comcast also refusing to provide service to anyone who doesn't use a Comcast created or sanctioned TV, rented monthly of course? I also like how you bring up that Comcast is required to abide by Net Neutrality rules when they bought NBCU but totally fail to mention that only lasts until 2018 after which they're free to go hog wild. There's no fundamental difference, no. Netflix is hardly fledgling, it's a 17 year old company worth 27 billion dollars. Yes they should be able to own that. No, that doesn't make any sense or follow on. Every other ISP out there isn't bound to follow any net neutrality rules at all. That the internet is a utility doesn't mean what you think it means. Time Warner Cable doesn't own Warner Brothers, nor does Warner Brothers own Time Warner Cable. Time Warner the company did own both Warner Brothers and Time Warner Cable from 1989 (formation of Warner Cable) to 2009 (Time Warner fully spins off Time Warner Cable). It is really funny though, that you are upset Netflix is going to buy direct access over access through regular transit, but you didn't seem to ever be upset when Facebook, Google and Microsoft did that? Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 00:45 on Feb 28, 2014 |
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Feb 28, 2014 00:39
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HUGE SPACEKABLOOIE posted:I'm not upset about the peering issue, its more the fact that content creation, content ownership, and content delivery are all falling under the same roof. When I speak about Netflix being fledgling I'm referring more to the idea of them producing in house content. They're already a pain in the rear end for Comcast/TWC in the bandwidth area but now this pain in the rear end is also producing their own content in direct competition with the carriers Netflix relies on. Should Netflix pay for the bandwidth? Yes for sure. Should Comcast/TWC be allowed to gently caress with the bandwidth? Not as long as the bill is getting paid. Are they doing so anyway? Of course they are. Comcast and TWC aren't loving with Netflix's bandwidth, though. Additionally creation ownership and delivery under one roof has happened many times before in the history of American media, to say nothing of other countries.
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Feb 28, 2014 01:19
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SamDabbers posted:Just because it has happened, and will likely continue, doesn't mean that it should or that such an arrangement serves the public interest. The distribution infrastructure companies have a monopoly (oligopoly, actually, since it's multiple players operating in distinct areas) on said infrastructure. The vast majority of people have no choice among competing service providers, because there really isn't any competition. The fact that these same companies have, and are seeking to expand, ownership of the content as well is definitely cause for concern, because we, the subscribers, are at the mercy of their for-profit corporate structure. Without network neutrality enshrined in law, and possibly a requirement to separate ownership/control of infrastructure and services provided atop it (e.g. the power grid, which has competing generation companies feeding into the same set of lines), the vertically integrated media giants could exercise their control over which content we consume, from whom we get it, and how we get it delivered in ways that are blatantly against the public interest. Is it not clear that this is a situation that's ripe for abuse? The spokespeople for these companies have answered the calls for neutrality regulation with "we haven't abused our position yet, and we promise we won't," and "trust us." Why should we? This has all happened before. I'll be frank here: I see absolutely no actual guarding of public interest in "we're still going to have a whole bunch of private companies taking care of all of this, but some will be slightly less integrated". That's just a cosmetic thing to make people who don't think too hard feel good - precisely like the "breakup" of AT&T was! The primary purpose of cable companies first getting into the internet game, and then into the production game, is that it allows them to survive once cable TV dies out, and also allows them to survive if cable network access itself dies out. And in the meantime, Comcast for example gets revenue if you watch a significant part of Netflix's catalog on any ISP anywhere in the world. The context in which it happened is: Netflix's transit partners couldn't provide reliable service. That's all it is. PS: Comcast is required to obey net neutrality regulation now where no other provider is. You can moan about how that will technically end in 2018, but it's far more than any other fixed connection ISP in the country actually has to follow. Again: there is absolutely no cause for concern when transit providers fail to provide their service and very high bandwidth web entities decide to cut the problem off by direct peering. PS: decoupling production of content from distribution would forbid Netflix from producing any of their own shows anymore.
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Feb 28, 2014 02:21
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SamDabbers posted:I agree that vertical integration provides benefits to the corporation's shareholders, and that having a bunch of private for-profit companies running critical infrastructure doesn't particularly serve the public interest, but having an environment where competition is actually possible among service providers would be better than what we have now. It'd be great to have publicly run communications infrastructure (e.g. municipal fiber) become the norm, but that's just not likely to happen in this country any time soon. The thing is owning production companies doesn't actually prevent competition, and production companies not being owned by distributors doesn't really encourage competition either. It's a non-sequitur to the idea. The breakup of Bell did NOT produce competition in long distance service - it was the separate ruling that phone companies must provide access to any long distance service that did that. The baby bells did not seek to compete in each other's local markets for long distance service. Additionally, competition in local phone service remained practically non-existent, and often hampered by the Baby Bells themselves. It's not just Cogent, it was also at least Level 3 and another transit provider for netflix that have all been having trouble supplying Netflix's particular needs while also supplying everyone else who uses them - Netflix's sheer bulk of one-way data has also caused many of them to lose settlement-free peering privileges with many ISPs. Right but those Netflix original programs simply weren't going to happen without the megabucks Netflix has off its regular service. The rules proposed themselves don't really make much sense except for a feel good thing. But Netflix has set no precedent here. Again, many other major Internet companies already pay for direct peering so they can avoid bottlenecks and slowdowns that can result going over public transit network suppliers. The prices paid to directly peer are roughly similar to the prices paid to deliver the same amount through normal transit networks, Netflix may claim their next service price hike will be to cover increased costs but I'd bet that their financial reports show they had nothing to do with it.
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Feb 28, 2014 04:16
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SamDabbers posted:It is not a non-sequitur. A vertically integrated company has every reason to promote their integrated service over that of a competitor's, or degrade that competitor's service over their network to make their own service look better. The idea of separation is to remove the temptation to behave uncompetitively. It would be even better if regulation prevented the production company/subsidiary from giving preferred terms to one distribution provider over another, but it'd be a big first step to prevent the integration in the first place. Non-vertically integrated companies also have every reason to promote everything they've got. Again, you're not showing where the competition will actually come from just by, effectively, rolling some things back to a few years ago where there was also minimal competition in all the same areas. Competing long distance service started a good decade before AT&T's local operating companies were split up. Rulings very close to the one that split up the regional operating companies also decreed that the existing services would now have to get free access to local systems (previously most long distance carriers had had to build their own fiber networks across the country and into cities to provide their long distance service). There isn't any proposals on the table to mandate TCA96 type access sharing for cable networks by the way - there's nothign for the cable cos to fight against because no one's even proposed it. The fact that subscribers pay Netflix and their ISP has nothing to do with anything. Traffic balancing makes perfect sense - when the two partners are exchanging roughly the same loads to each other it greatly simplifies operations, and makes it a mutually beneficial connection, and as such payments between them are restricted. The more unbalanced they get the more one party starts to have to pay, because one side needs the other a lot less. There's no double dipping here! After all, someone already was accepting payment to take in the heavily asymmetric load and it's an industry wide standard that past a certain point one guy's going to have to pay to continue beign asymmetric If you think it's bad for someone to have exclusive rights to media, you're basically calling for the abolition of the entire current media industry. I'm not saying that I disagree with that as an ultimate goal per se, but it's incompatible with things like believing it would be ok to instead just split things up. "Content networks" aren't really a thing. They should have to pay, for the same reason you have to pay to have internet access. Do you not get that they have to get the data to another network somehow? You either pay a third party, who gets access to others through symmetric mutually beneficial links that "pay" for access by meeting needs in kind, or gets the access by paying the target directly; or you get the access by going and hooking up to the target network yourself. Again, the internet works because, globally, companies agree to these terms where heavy asymmetry means payment and close symmetry means essentially free transit (it's not really free of course, as the companies will share costs for maintaining their own links, as well as paying any exchange hosting sites as neccesary).
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Feb 28, 2014 05:40
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SamDabbers posted:The core of it all is the monopoly. The company that has a monopoly on the last mile AND owns a content producing subsidiary is in a better position to throw their weight around than a company that simply has a monopoly on the last mile. If a monopoly is to be granted at all, then it should definitely come with many strings attached, such as not being allowed to vertically integrate, and to provide wholesale access to the network, even if that's not under consideration at the moment vis-à-vis cable companies. I'm willing to bet that it hasn't been proposed because of lobbyist influence, but of course I'd have a hard time proving it. No company has a content producing monopoly now, nor will they anytime soon. The reason cable access a la the 96 decision for DSL and phone access hasn't been proposed is that it became considered that fiber network companies were "good enough" in combination with how most localities do not refuse access to build a brand new fiber optic network or replace copper POTS with fiber. It isn't really good enough of course. Consumer ISPs do provide even traffic ratios most of the time. For one thing, you're forgetting that every consumer ISP out there also has plenty of business customers as well, as well as many major services like Google/Facebook/etc already direct peering and this results in most ISPs being able to maintain settlement-free peering with major transit networks - well, until Netflix really took off that is. And they'll be going right back to settlement-free when Netflix follows suit and direct peers, reverting the peering to symmetric enough. Well no, you're asking for pushing the media industry back about 3-4 years which isn't any kind of meaningful reform, and then simultaneously asking for completely changing it. Again, you can't have a monopoly on "media". Those are networks that don't exist. But companies do already pay for access? SamDabbers posted:Pay for access to a transit network that'll haul your data between regions; sure. Pay to have a presence at a datacenter; ok. Pay a network that needs you (ideally) as much as you need them for a local (same datacenter) connection; no. Both networks have already paid to build their networks out to the peering location so they can service their customers. At that point the traffic ratio is irrelevant. The only reason it doesn't work this way is that one network has a monopoly and the other doesn't. Note that I'm talking only about edge networks, not about transit networks. This is logically inconsistent. I honestly and seriously do not understand your complaint or what you're trying to address. You pay almost nothing when your load is symmetrical, you pay more and more the more asymmetrical you are - this is a core principle of the global networking business. What problem is there with it? Like this is a rock-solid basis of the internet, you're going to have to answer why it suddenly needs to change because another big company decided to stop having their massive amount of traffic interfere with public routing? Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 06:54 on Feb 28, 2014 |
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Feb 28, 2014 06:51
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SamDabbers posted:Of course nobody can have a monopoly on content production. I didn't say that. I'm talking about when a company has a monopoly in one aspect of their business (regional end-user ISP) integrates another business (content) in which there are competitors. That gives them unfair leverage, since the competing companies still need to have a relationship with the first (because of the monopoly) in order to do business. The difference is that now they need something from a competitor, and can't get it elsewhere. That has already existed for decades though, due to most big cable companies owning or having a controlling interest in at least some cable channels that are also available off their network. This isn't something that happened "now". I don't understand why you think the only fiber alternates are municipal build though. SamDabbers posted:Consumer ISPs aim for even traffic ratios because that's what every other player in the industry is using to determine who pays. However, traffic ratios are not a good indicator of the value derived from the peering connection at all, even if that's what everyone's doing. The access-heavy consumer ISP's customers are going to request the content in any case, the content provider is going to send it, and the consumer ISP is going to pick up that traffic on some interface. It benefits both companies to peer so that expensive transit links don't get overloaded, and paying customers get faster access to the content they request. This was debated at NANOG35 and the audience voted 100 to 3 that traffic ratios were not a rational metric for peering. So again what's the problem here? Why should people stop paying who are paying now? The idea that "well people are going to use that thing" is a rationale for not charging for it doesn't make sense. SamDabbers posted:Perhaps it was more fragmented 3-4 years ago, but the entire goal is to level the playing field for the benefit of the consumers, not to move it backwards. I'm probably getting some details wrong since I am not an expert about the media and telecoms industries and the regulation thereof, but I contend that it does not serve the public interest to allow for-profit enterprises run for the benefit of their shareholders (not the public) to have monopoly rights to a subset of a market that's become increasingly critical to modern life as we know it without strong regulation to prevent abuse. But it doesn't level any playing fields to benefit consumers. It doesn't do anything for consumers, it only vaguely increases competition a little in a market where competition doesn't really work to begin with. You also keep trying to extend a monopoly claim into media, which just doesn't make sense. To be blunt here, the problem with all of this is capitalism, and vaguely increasing faux-competition to attempt to fix it with capitalism isn't going to work. And nationalization of internet access is outside the capabilities of the FCC, at least for the moment.
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Feb 28, 2014 16:45
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SamDabbers posted:Agreed. I'm saying it shouldn't be this way. But why? It seriously has not been a problem. SamDabbers posted:I don't. It is one alternative that seems to work well where it's been implemented, and has been fought every step by entrenched players who refused to build out fiber in response to customer demand. If there's no competition to one-up, there's no incentive to upgrade anything. Then why did you bring it up? Most fiber alternate roll outs have been by private companies regardless of the later enactments of those ordinances, because most localities can't be bothered to put up the funding for their own. SamDabbers posted:I'm not saying that there's a monopoly on media, only on last mile connections. A last mile provider whose transit links are getting clogged by streaming video traffic actually derives significant value from directly peering with the streaming video network. The justification of maintaining balanced traffic ratios to get the video provider to pay for peering is flawed because the last mile network would carry the traffic anyway, since their paying customers are requesting it. There's always been that monopoly, because even if TCA96 style regs were applied to cable, you'd still have to hook up with Comcast's network to get your content to Comcast's customers, regardless of if those people could switch to another carrier. Why should the video provider get to access the network for completely free, but consumers couldn't? How does that make any sense? The only way that would be supportable is if you massively raised prices on consumers so that the other providers could do it all for free on their end - and you'd also be wiping out a huge chunk of the business for most transit providers, because why pay them to go to everyone if you can connect straight to most ISPs for free? SamDabbers posted:Agreed entirely. We can try to make it incrementally better though in the mean time, rather than holding out for the fall of capitalism. The "faux-competition" would at least give the appearance that consumers could vote with their dollars, and switch to a provider who will better meet their needs, instead of only having one option for Internet access. I'm actually part of the fortunate minority who lives in an area with more than one cable provider. My experience has been that the smaller competitor has provided better service for the price compared to the larger, and I think that having a choice between providers is better than not having one, even if it's not as good as having a not-for-profit public network. But you are not making it incrementally better by resetting it to "capitalism 2 years ago", you're effectively doing nothing. Nobody's ever decided that they couldn't possibly use any other TV provider except Comcast because NBC is owned by them. A choice between providers is not what you're actually asking to have, what you're asking to have is that a cable company can't own some channels because it hurts your feelings.
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Feb 28, 2014 17:25
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I have a suspicion that Time Warner Cable's business service stuff might have different terms depending on which predecessor company ran the territory you're in. There was some oddities in what you could get in Comcast territories that had been bought from the old AT&T Cable services, from back when AT&T ran plain coax cable for TV/Internet instead of just the U-Verse system.
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Mar 25, 2014 22:15
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The "double charging" bullshit was disproved months ago. And why are you white-knighting a 20 billion dollar company that disagrees with you?
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Mar 26, 2014 03:20
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SamDabbers posted:
Because otherwise someone's already getting paid on each side genius. It's like bitching that Comcast double charges for sending email between two customers because OMG both of you paid Comcast! But hey keep pretending like it makes any sense to give the billion dollar company absolutely free access but still charge the customer! Because that totally makes sense.
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Mar 26, 2014 06:23
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psydude posted:Netflix doesn't actually like it, BTW. People are saying Comcast is now "double charging" because Netflix is paying them for access and customers are paying to use Comcast. This ignores that Netflix was already paying for access to Comcast, they were just paying it to Cogent (and a few others), and now pay to Comcast instead with a much better connection than Cogent provided. So the only way Netflix could not be "double charged" under that insane logic is if Netflix doesn't have to pay anybody for access to Comcast And if Cogent wasn't supplying substandard service in the first place this wouldn't be a problem.
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Mar 27, 2014 00:46
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So again, what, exactly, is the problem? Netflix was paying someone for access to Comcast, who incidentally could not provide the service at an acceptable level. Now Netflix is instead paying Comcast directly, for service that's impossible to not be provided at the acceptable level. gently caress cogent for selling access their pipes couldn't cash.
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Mar 27, 2014 04:01
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Cogent should pay. That's standard practice. Again, cogent shouldn't go around selling Transit they ain't equipped for in the first place.
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Mar 27, 2014 04:44
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revmoo posted:Comcast has been purposely delaying upgrades to these interconnects to force Netflix's hand. Prove it for once. Noone ever has. Ryokurin posted:The bottom line is, Netflix agreed to peer directly with Comcast probably because it was cheaper than Cogent. Definitely.
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Mar 27, 2014 20:35
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Crotch Fruit posted:http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/10/7186243/obama-just-did-the-right-thing-for-the-internet-and-made-life-hell Note that "treating it like a utility" doesn't really mean anything in day to day business.
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Nov 12, 2014 03:42
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Treating it like a utility has some vague connection to making it slightly easier to enforce certain regulations. It's a thing some people have really latched on but it's not some sort of magic bullet for anything.psydude posted:Treating it like a utility requires them to allow their competitors to use their infrastructure to deliver their service to your home. So any ISP can use Comcast's cable to serve you. This isn't really true. It's something that could potentially happen but in no way guarenteed. Also I'll remind you that we have that for DSL and landlines and nearly everyone just uses the actual owner of said DSL and landline instead of the "competitors" because they get to dictate maintenance terms and can easily control what'll actually go through. Most people don't really want to have "your existing cable company, and 3 other cable companies that charge +/- 0.01% of the price for the same service". Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 04:35 on Nov 12, 2014 |
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Nov 12, 2014 04:32
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"Fast lanes" aren't preventable. There's no sensible way to void all the existing in-network CDNs and private routing arragements. Also nobody's really been complainign about them for the past 15 plus years they've existed.Crotch Fruit posted:Actually, your choices are slow (DSL), medium (cable) and ungodly regulated and limited but sometimes "fast" 3g/4g In what world are you that cable is "medium" and 4g is "fast"? Current national 4g networks top out around 75 megabits down in ideal conditions, 100 or higher megabit cable connections are available all over the place, and in places where they aren't, the LTE services available tend to be much slower than them as well.
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Nov 12, 2014 04:57
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Thanks Ants posted:Forcing companies to open up their ducts / poles / network to competitors who have absolutely no capital costs is a great way of ensuring nobody invests in infrastructure. Nah, this isn't actually true. They'll invest plenty, but everyone else using it doesn't get any say in when they do it and is completely at their mercy. Diviance posted:They are already overselling what their infrastructure can handle, how can you say they put anything but the bare minimum into their infrastructure as it stands? This is actually super unlikely, considering what the infrastructure is these days. Things have changed a lot since the days of DOCSIS 1.0 and coaxial running all the way back to the cable office instead of terminating on fiber less than a few blocks from the house.
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Nov 13, 2014 04:55
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psydude posted:It's also the reason why Comcast has an incentive to throttle or engage in anticompetitive practices with regards to services like Netflix And yet they haven't done either of those, why is that?
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Nov 13, 2014 14:50
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