John Oliver calls it "cable company f*ckery" and we've all suspected it happens. Now on Steven Levy's new Backchannel publication on Medium, Susan Crawford delivers decisive proof, expertly dissecting the Comcast-Netflix network congestion controversy. Her source material is a detailed traffic measurement report released this week by Google-backed M-Lab — the first of its kind — showing severe degradation of service at interconnection points between Comcast, Verizon and other monopoly "eyeball networks" and "transit networks" such as Cogent, which was contracted by Netflix to deliver its bits. The report shows that interconnection points give monopoly ISPs all the leverage they need to discriminate against companies like Netflix, which compete with them in video services, simply by refusing to relieve network congestion caused by external traffic requested by their very own ISP customers. And the effects victimize not only companies targeted but ALL incoming traffic from the affected transit network. The report proves the problem is not technical, but rather a result of business decisions. This is not technically a Net neutrality problem, but it creates the very same headaches for consumers, and unfair business advantages for ISPs. In an accompanying article, Crawford makes a compelling case for FCC intervention.
The question people should be asking, how come in Eastern European countries internet access is so cheap and fast, yet barely regulated? It's so easy to argue for more regulation when things go wrong: trying to control businesses always sounds like a more noble idea than settings them free. And yet, in every possible example we see that where there's more freedom of enterprise, the customer always wins. And this is especially obvious with ISPs.
And the answer is simple: The local ISPs in the US are granted a monopoly by the local government, given special privileges, and given free money. These 3 issues make it hard for new competitors to enter the market.
Shame we have the data from nearly a hundred million witnesses, and yet the feds still won't put together a racketeering case and go after these mobsters.
Was it Enron company? that was in business with electric power and would shutdown power factories from time to time just to make shortage of power and rise the price of electricity? How bad did it end?
I truly appreciate that this is being publicized complete with evidence, but has the author also written a letter to the FCC and other relevant bodies to complain about this behaviour and offer their supporting evidence?
I'm concerned that people will feel placated by writing a blog post, when I think we need to be communicating more directly with the FCC.
Did you read whole article? This wasn't the author but to answer your question, yes, people have contacted the FCC.
"“You know, I contacted the FCC. I contacted the [state] utilities commission, just for help because you couldn’t make any ground with Verizon, Cogent, or anyone,”..."
Can anyone with knowledge of Citrix speak to this:
> Because Boegly uses a Citrix application for payroll data, and “Citrix doesn’t like packet loss,” according to Boegly, the process was failing.
...
> “Any time you have packet loss over a Citrix connection, it’s going to dump you,” says Boegly. “And that’s exactly what’s happening in the middle of the process. It has to then be started all over again and then begin the transfer process to get it to connect.”
Pretty sure this is straight-up TCP behavior, possibly combined with trying to send large files inside the TCP connection via the Citrix protocol. If you consistently lose some percentage of packets for a while, the TCP connection can drop. The file transfer doesn't have auto-resume built in because it operates at a very low level.
I'm guessing that the networks with speakeasy.net/speedtest/ and speedtest.net were not slowed or special solutions were put in place to assure fast connection... because TWC's favorite answer is to point me to these.
I really appreciate the clarity with which this article described the issue. I had read an article by someone from Netflix few months (I think) ago about this and did not get the clear understanding this article provided.
I don't think it's a mystery to any regulator what's going on. I think it's hard to argue against the notion that this is good for the economy. If the Monopolistic ISPs can extract more wealth out of the content-to-consumer pipeline, doesn't the GDP go up? Everybody wins?
> If the Monopolistic ISPs can extract more wealth out of the content-to-consumer pipeline, doesn't the GDP go up?
Perhaps you are being sarcasic, but I cannot tell. This is a version of the broken window fallacy[0]. The money spent on the ISPs is now unavailable for netflix (as an example) to spend hiring new people, buying rights to new movies, etc. So it is not a given that this increases the GDP, or that it would do so in a healthy or beneficial way.
Yes. (: Definitely being sarcastic, just playing some mild Devil's Advocate. It's how I spend karma. I think you're almost right. It's almost exactly the broken window parable. The only difference I have is that it's not [just] Netflix's money being wasted on broken glass, it's the ISP customers.
Netflix has to pay because they're too lazy to run their own ISP. In a way. Get your own 'last mile' customers, or pay the man. But why are there no other ISPs Netflix can choose from? Certainly a competitor could charge less, or nothing. But the customers all seem to want throttled access! They certainly pay the monthly fees. But why would a rational customer do that?
When would a rational customer pay for cracked windows? Why would Netflix, the stained glass entertainer, deliver their product on cracked glass? When there's only one glassmaker in town, I'd guess.
> Netflix has to pay because they're too lazy to run their own ISP. In a way. Get your own 'last mile' customers, or pay the man. But why are there no other ISPs Netflix can choose from? Certainly a competitor could charge less, or nothing. But the customers all seem to want throttled access! They certainly pay the monthly fees. But why would a rational customer do that?
Because the end customers do not have a choice. In most areas of the US, the large ISPs have a government granted monopoly.
Take the house where I live as an example. I can choose Comcast or no internet. Great choice, right? In the region where I live, there are exactly 2 high-speed internet providers. So that lets the ISPs claim that there is competition. In reality, there's only a handful of houses in this region that can choose between the 2 options. Most houses are stuck with one choice or no connection.
At my work, the choices are even more limited. We pay crazy amounts for a T1 line at 1.5Mbs because that's the only option! Neither of the two high-speed options will provide access to our building. (They call regularly, "would you like our high-speed business package", "YES!", "oh, sorry, we can't connect to that address", "Then stop calling.")
Why have no new companies entered the market to provide better service? There's an enormous capital outlay to get started. Even worse, the local government regulations about running new cable or fiber make it cost-prohibitive or downright impossible.
Google is laying out new fiber networks right now. They have adequate capital, and they have the clout so that local governments are willing to change laws to get google fiber. The average startup does not have that kind of sway.
