Net-neutrality petition, if you believe they care...

[the86d]

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/maintain-true-net-neutrality-protect-freedom-information-united-states/9sxxdBgy

True net neutrality means the free exchange of information between people and organizations. Information is key to a society's well being. One of the most effective tactics of an invading military is to inhibit the flow of information in a population; this includes which information is shared and by who. Today we see this war being waged on American citizens. Recently the FCC has moved to redefine "net neutrality" to mean that corporations and organizations can pay to have their information heard, or worse, the message of their competitors silenced. We as a nation must settle for nothing less than complete neutrality in our communication channels. This is not a request, but a demand by the citizens of this nation. No bandwidth modifications of information based on content or its source.

[pterrell]

I don't think the petition has it right. The FCC had been a huge advocate for net neutrality. Unfortunately the courts have overturned their policies in favor of the big corporations.

Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using Tapatalk

[Merc1138]

I don't think the petition has it right. The FCC had been a huge advocate for net neutrality. Unfortunately the courts have overturned their policies in favor of the big corporations.

Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using Tapatalk

The FCC's latest idea of net neutrality means paying ISPs to not throttle traffic of users to your website.

That isn't net neutrality.

Comcast demanding that netflix pay them or comcast users can't get a decent connection to netflix is garbage, and of course netflix would have no choice but to pass the cost on to their customers by raising their own subscription fees. What stops the ISPs from going overboard and deciding that calguns must pay money for users to be able to browse this site at better than dialup speeds? This is what people are ticked off about: http://www.pcworld.com/article/21489...ally-know.html

[bbguns44]

It's the free market. Don't like it, start your own network. Standard calguns
answer.

[Merc1138]

It's the free market. Don't like it, start your own network. Standard calguns
answer.

It's not a free market, and when your local ISP decides that you or calguns need to pay them additional money to access this site leaving you with no other option, you'll change your mind real fast. It's the equivalent of the local power company charging you more for the energy to run your AC than your TV. But at least with that scenario, solar is an option. You can't just start your own ISP.

Furthermore, there is more than 1 ISP between you and calguns.net, and if one of those ISPs carrying traffic demands payment, you end up SOL. At best local ISPs are an oligopoly and monopolies at worst. Maybe you should learn how the internet works before pointing out that you're a low information voter. The internet is not a "series of tubes".

[Baeleron]

Why should a company's network, which they own, be subject to gubbermint meddling? Let them run their network any way they see fit.

[Merc1138]

Why should a company's network, which they own, be subject to gubbermint meddling? Let them run their network any way they see fit.

Because that company's network, which they own, interfering with traffic between networks it's connected to, screws with other people's networks. While you, the end user have zero control over it, and unless it happens to be your ISPs network that is doing the interfering, you can't even change ISPs to try and get around it.

In other words, if the network between your ISP and 2a related websites demands that either your ISP or the 2a related websites pay more money or they slow the traffic to a crawl, you're SOL. There's more to it than just comcast wanting to charge netflix to allow comcast customers to get a decent quality video stream.

[Jason95357]

I suggest you all research this beyond what NetFlix is telling you. Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T aren't interfering with Netflix. Netflix is chosing to go with a cheaper ISPs who don't have good enough peering agreements to get the traffic to where it needs to go.

You don't see Google, Yahoo, Amazon, etc. complaining about this problem. Why? Because all those companies understand that in order to deliver their product, they need to get enough connectivity to where their traffic needs to go. If there is a bottleneck from where they presently peer, they solve the problem by either peering directly (either settlement-free peering, or paid peering) or by paid peering with an ISP closer to the destination and beyond a bottleneck, or by outsourcing it to a company that does this automatically for them (Akamai).

Netflix didn't want to do this. Finally they caved because they couldn't deliver their product and their product suffered and they were not growing as fast as they'd like and/or were losing customers because their product offering was poor.

Second, look at who Netflix chose to peer with. Two relied on ISPs are big problems, Cogent and Telia - both ISPs who have had major peering problems in the past, to the point of being islanded where their customers couldn't be reached by each other in a dangerous game of peering chicken. I'm sorry, that doesn't sound like an acceptable company that I'd ever want to do business with. Netflix is trying to save money and chose to go with less than the better ISPs, or ISPs that don't have good enough connectivity to where their customers are, and basically put all their eggs in bandwidth-connectivity starved baskets. Guess what? You get what you pay for.

There are two ways to solve this problem - either Netflix demands their ISPs fix the problem, or they, Netflix, fix it themselves. Both solutions cost money. Why? Because the traffic flows are not symmetrical (Netflix sends way more than it receives). Traffic flow symmetry is a key cornerstone with settlement free peering. If you don't have symmetry, you pay to peer, period.

Read up, you might learn something before you voice your opinion or sign a petition.

https://www.nanog.org/meetings/nanog43/presentations/Zmij_Brown_peeringwars_N43.pdf

http://as-rank.caida.org/?n=100&ranksort=3&mode0=as-intro#relationships

http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac123/ac147/ac174/ac200/about_cisco_ipj_archive_article09186a00800c8900.html

[Jason95357]

Speaking of peering, I was just checking where my present TV stream is coming from - because hasn't buffered all night while watching "Top Shot" which has pretty constant action, has great HD video quality (never pixelated) and runs great at 14mb/s right now (about half-way into the show). It's Amazon Prime that I happen to be watching (but I have Netflix streaming-only as well). The IP address in question that is streaming is 96.17.148.26 owned by Akamai and routed via their Autonomous System (AS) number 31377 (aka AS31377) to one of Akamai's peering relationship with one of Comcast's Autonomous System (AS) Number 7922 (aka AS7922).

So what's going on here? Amazon is paying Akamai to make sure its Amazon Prime traffic has great delivery into Comcast. Why is this? Because Amazon pays Akamai and Akamai pays Comcast. Whose happy? Me, the customer, no complaint, I'll be renewing my Amazon Prime.

Now, had Netflix not resolved their issues with delivering traffic to Comcast, I was seriously considering getting rid of Netflix as we were rarely watching it because of all the buffering. Netflix knows this - they know their customers were watching them less and less, and eventually that leads to lost customers.

None of this is Comcast's problem, or frankly their concern.

So what's the real problem? The ISPs which are trying to deliver content for Netflix into Comcast's network don't have fast enough pipes to get there. Why not? They don't pay Comcast and have settlement-free peering. Their traffic flows are not at all symmetrical - they're sending hundreds of time more traffic into Comcast's network than they are receiving. They want Comcast to upgrade their network ports connected to them, for free. Comcast isn't going to budge - without payment - because of lack of traffic symmetry or other peering agreement disagreements.

If an ISP does have enough bandwidth to deliver to Comcast, Comcast has absolutely no problem getting the traffic there. I can literally watch 3 HD shows at home from Amazon Prime (~14mb/s each) at the same time on my 50mb/s connections with absolutely no buffering or problems. Netflix no longer has this problem, but I only get 3-5mb/s streams from them,

If you have a finite amount of capex to spend on networking, and all things being equal, where are you going to spend it? Where it is needed most and where it will benefit you most. Comcast doesn't need Netflix, and because they are both content providers, it actually benefits Comcast the least to upgrade these bottlenecked ports with Netflix's ISPs. Will they upgrade them or give Netflix direct access? Yes - for payment-based peering.

[Kit1885]

If the internet is ever successfully throttled thats end game

[Merc1138]

I wasn't talking about netflix finally deciding to pay comcast for better access to the network, I'm talking about ISPs charging for better access through the network. The peering issue is a completely different matter(and not a big deal since it's really no different in the end than an end user paying for better access to the network, simply on a larger scale).

You're fooling yourself if you believe that it's going to remain as paying for the "fast lane" while leaving everything else be. What's going to happen is the "normal lane" is going to get throttled for content that the ISPs feel they can convince someone to pay up to get their traffic not throttled as the faster service. This entire problem comes down to ISPs wanting to be content providers and make money off of the content, rather than simply act as dumb pipes for data(which is what the end user customers are paying for).

From the sound of it, comcast is your ISP, right? What about all of the other networks that sit between you and the content you're using your ISP to access? It's not always a straight shot between your ISP and the service provider that the web host is using. The fact that these ISPs are pretty much almost a monopoly(your point about comcast wanting to play content provider with their internet service rather than just their cable tv service reinforces that point) is part of the problem, with the regional access issues being another. Statements from posters above like "just start your own network" are some of the dumbest **** I've ever read regarding discussions about how the internet works, because if that were actually possible most people would have more than 1 broadband ISP in their area in addition to a crappy DSL provider reselling service through a half dozen companies all providing the same lousy access, and then of course... dialup.