Comcast subscriber? No netflix for you!

[Yuri-G]

posting because this deserves to be seen by people who are too lazy to click on that article:

http://static.arstechnica.net/assets...auto-18053.jpg

yeah, that picture is... accurate, in my opinion. perhaps a bit too kind.

[FNH]

How fast can you get with it btw? Max for comcast in my area is 50down/6up



I've yet to get an e-mail from these guys for going over, i know i've hit 350gb in a month before.

you have to be in the top % of people going over in that month. I got a phone call from them about 4 months ago for hitting 1tb iin a month. Lol I didnt know about the cap.

[Komm Suesser Tod]

you have to be in the top % of people going over in that month. I got a phone call from them about 4 months ago for hitting 1tb iin a month. Lol I didnt know about the cap.

I work for Mediacom cable, and we had a guy doing 1tb a week. Don't know what or how, but it was insane.

[ZarakiKujata]

I work for Mediacom cable, and we had a guy doing 1tb a week. Don't know what or how, but it was insane.

The internet is for porn?

[Komm Suesser Tod]

The internet is for porn?

If that's the case, then I need to find that man, and well, not shake his hand for obvious reasons, but that is a superhuman level of masturbation.

[Furtwangler]

I'm so happy my college campus has wicked fast internet.. dont have to worry about dealing with these twats for a few years anyway...

[Altariel]

What Level 3 wants is to pressure Comcast into accepting more than a twofold increase in the amount of traffic Level 3 delivers onto Comcast's network

LOL, really??? It's your own fucking customers that are requesting the bandwidth. It's not like they are through-putting the data through your network to another ISP. I can't even believe they are trying to justify this shit.

[Baelorn]

LOL, really??? It's your own fucking customers that are requesting the bandwidth. It's not like they are through-putting the data through your network to another ISP. I can't even believe they are trying to justify this shit.

I like the part where they accuse Level 3 of doing the same thing when it wasn't the same thing at all. Never let facts get in the way of PR.

[Korietsu]

Here's Comcast's response:



The problem is, they already charge for data, bandwidth and all. Guess what, if you're an ISP charging a company fees because they're going to dump more data on you (and everyone else) is your fucking problem. It doesn't give you the right to demand fees or further increase the fees on your customer who you already charge out the ass. And I'm sure it's just a big fucking coincidence that Netflix is a direct competitor to your own services.

That's because they lost Akamai's co-hosting and peering fees. They want to charge L3 for acting like a T2 Content Delivery Network. L3 wants to double dip on fees, and because of the agreement with Netflix and Limelight, they'll be hosting traffic on the L3 fiber backbone, rather than co-locating as Akamai did before.

LOL, really??? It's your own fucking customers that are requesting the bandwidth. It's not like they are through-putting the data through your network to another ISP. I can't even believe they are trying to justify this shit.

Here's the reason.

L3 is a T1 ISP and does CDN (T2) stuff on the side. Comcast is a T2 ISP, and previously, netflix's CDN providers (Akamai and Limelight) had a peering agreement with comcast because they shared space with them. Since L3 is comcast's main transit provider, and comcast pays them to get across to other networks, they feel that since they're acting like a CDN since they now are netflix's CDN they should pay the previous fee. The problem here is that it's the same traffic, just now coming from the transit provider. L3 gets to double and triple dip on fees, and comcast wants in.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network

While this is partially a Net Neutrality issue, this is also a messy who's trying to fuck who in the ass business wise. While I wont disagree that Comcast has violated many anti-trust laws and has shitty practices, people need to do more research before going batshit insane.

Couple of key quotes about the dispute from reddit.com explaining the situation better.

It is being sensationalized (although so is the rebuttal above) but that is just human nature. It is important we cut through what this really means.
Normally I'd say that this is just a peering issue which spilled out into the public, as the public doesn't normally see nor understand what these are about.
But, where it gets interesting and takes a step into the issue of neutrality is the proposed buyout of NBC/Universal by Comcast which was a few days before there were concerns on the part of regulators to make sure there isn't any anti-competitive behavior. One could say Level3's timing is interesting -or- that they are exposing the bully that Comcast can and has been before. Because they have a history of that.
At this point it is probably less important for the issue of neutrality to decide who is right or wrong in this dispute than to see that this is a situation that needs to be scrutinized. Also the Redditor tadcaster has some good comments in this thread.
Edit: Also, for a good industry discussion about the issue, people should read the archives from the Nanog mailing list - the North American Network Operators Group. Discussions there give far greater insight than (most) anything found on Reddit (but not all). Its non-political and cuts to the heart of the matter, including issues about peering.

This is how I read it:
L3 broke a deal with Netflix to stream video content that competes with Akami.
L3 currently provides network capacity to Comcast. In other words Comcast is currently a customer of L3 and pays L3 for bandwidth and "voice" support.
Akami does not provide bandwidth, rather it buys space to host data directly at Comcast sites. Thus Akami is a Comcast customer. The Akami strategy is to replicate large files around the country to alleviate the problems of bandwidth. Thus all the NetFlix movies are located locally and do not need to use much of the bandwidth purchased from Comcast that is in turn purchased from L3.
L3's strategy is not to locate the movies locally, but rather keep them off site. Thus the video bandwidth that Comcast has to purchase goes up drastically.
This means that Comcast will be screwed twice... 1. Akami will start removing servers that it does not need to keep at the Comcast hosting centers and Comcast will lose that revenue. 2. They will have to pay L3 for the extra bandwidth that would have been saved by having Akami co-located.
In other words, now it looks as if L3 is playing dirty, and Comcast is trying to change it's roll with L3 from be that of a "customer" to that of a network provider. In essence, Comcast is saying "For video content, you are our customer and you pay for the privilege of using our network.", while L3 is now crying "Tool Booth", when in actuality, they are currently the "Tool Booth" and is trying to increase it's revenue on both ends. If this is the case, then Comcast has a point. L3 needs to act like Akami and buy hosting space from Comcast like Akami did, rather than trying to strong arm Comcast into buying more bandwidth than it needed with Akami.
Edit: need => needed

Level(3) is most certainly Tier 1 - which is to say that they have a completely Settlement Free network (they don't pay anyone at all to exchange traffic).
ISPs like Comcast (who is really more of a Tier 2 now - they're not singly homed, and do have their own network, and do occasionally peer with providers) almost always have VERY inverse ratios. Any residential/business Internet provider has substantially more downstream access than upstream (except where heavy bittorrent users are ).
It's entirely possible that Comcast had Settlement-based (money changes hands) peering (this is different than Internet access - they're not paying to reach the whole Internet, they're just paying to reach Comcast customers - and thus is usually much cheaper).
I don't think Level(3) will back down on this (they'd technically stop being a Tier 1 ISP if they did), and even if they get depeered by Comcast, they'll just send all of the traffic via Comcast's own Transit or other peering relationships - which will likely make this much more expensive for Comcast.
These peering disputes are actually quite common - Cogent is notorious for playing peering chicken. They had a spat with Limelight (http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/a...ight-networks/) over a similar issue - and Limelight in retaliation directed all traffic going to Cogent to enter Cogent's network in France, making them backhaul it to the US on their own network (very expensive), but quite comical.
Level(3) had previously had a similar dispute (where they were the aggressor) with Cogent (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/06/level3_cogent/).
The end result with all that is Cogent is now a true Tier 1 (they're also Settlement Free).
So yeah - the only screwed up part is that now it's a content receiver that is depeering a network provider - which I haven't heard of happening before. Level(3) I think is actually right about this - and we should hope that they don't give in at all.
EDIT: and just to give a bit more context - there are VERY few Tier 1 networks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_...ier_1_networks) - exactly 11 globally (and some of those might even not actually be...) This would be a huge deal if Level(3) paid anything at all to exchange traffic.

Wall o Text Quote, also very very important to read. Take the time to read it.

Spoiler: show

This was an interesting post from NANOG:
http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/n...er/028387.html Having been involved with a few peering spats in the past I know what is said publically rarely matches the reality behind the scenes. In this particular case my spidy sense tells me there is absolutely something interesting behind the scenes, but the question is what.
I'd never really paid attention to how Netflix delivers its content. It's obviously a lot of bandwidth, and likely part of the issue here so I thought I would investigate.
Apparently Akamai has been the primary Netflix streaming source since March. LimeLight Networks has been a secondary provider, and it would appear those two make up the vast majority of Netflix's actual streaming traffic. I can't tell if Netflix does any streaming out of their own ASN, but if they do it appears to be minor.
Here's a reference from the business side of things: http://www.fool.com/investing/genera...new-level.aspx
This is also part of the reason I went back to the very first message in this thread to reply:
In a message written on Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 05:28:18PM -0500, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/lev...k=MW_news_stmp
I understand that politics is off-topic, but this policy affects operational aspects of the 'Net.
Patrick works for Akamai, it seems likely he might know more about what is going on. Likely he can't discuss the details, but wanted to seed a discussion. I'd say that worked well.
I happen to be a Comcast cable modem customer. Gooling for people who had issues getting to Netflix streaming turned up plenty of forum posts with traceroutes to Netflix servers on Akamai and Limelight. I did traceroutes to about 20 of them from my cable modem, and it's clear Comcast and Akamai and Comcast and Limelight are interconnected quite well. Akamai does not sell IP Transit, and I'm thinking it is extremely unlikely that Comcast is buying transit from Limelight. I will thus conclude that these are either peering relationships, or that they have cut some sort of special "CDN Interconnect" deal with Comcast.
But what about Level 3? One of my friends I was chatting with on AIM said they thought Comcast was a Level 3 customer, at least at one time. Google to the rescue again.
Level 3 provides fiber to Comcast (20 year deal in 2004): http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keat...nd-comcast.asp
Level 3 provides voice services/support to Comcast: http://cable.tmcnet.com/news/2005/jul/1168088.htm
Perhaps the most interesting though is looking up an IP on Comcast's local network here in my city in L3's looking glass: http://lg.level3.net/bgp/bgp.cgi?sit...=68.86.240.141
Slightly reformatting for your viewing pleasure, along with my comments:
Community: North_America
Lclprf_100
Level3_Customer # Level 3 thinks they are a customer
United_States
San_Jose
EU_Suppress_to_Peers
Suppress_to_AS174 # Cogent
Suppress_to_AS1239 # Sprint
Suppress_to_AS1280 # ISC
Suppress_to_AS1299 # Telia
Suppress_to_AS1668 # AOL
Suppress_to_AS2828 # XO
Suppress_to_AS2914 # NTT
Suppress_to_AS3257 # TiNet
Suppress_to_AS3320 # DTAG
Suppress_to_AS3549 # GBLX
Suppress_to_AS3561 # Savvis
Suppress_to_AS3786 # LG DACOM
Suppress_to_AS4637 # Reach
Suppress_to_AS5511 # OpenTransit
Suppress_to_AS6453 # Tata
Suppress_to_AS6461 # AboveNet
Suppress_to_AS6762 # Seabone
Suppress_to_AS7018 # AT&T
Suppress_to_AS7132 # AT&T (ex SBC)
So it would appear Comcast is a transit customer of Level 3 (along with buying a lot of other services from them). I'm going to speculate that the list of supressed ASN's are peers of both Level 3 and Comcast, and Comcast is going that so those peers can't send some traffic through Level 3 in attempt to game the ratios on their direct connections to Comcast.
Now a more interesting picture emerges. Let me emphasize that this is AN EDUCATED GUESS on my part, and I can't prove any of it.
Level 3 starts talking to Netflix, and offers them a sweetheart deal to move traffic from Akamai to Level 3. Part of the reason they are willing to go so low on the price to Netflix is they will get to double dip by charging Netflix for the bits and charging Comcast for the bits, since Comcast is a customer! But wait, they also get to triple dip, they provide the long haul fiber to Comcast, so when Comcast needs more capacity to get to the peering points to move the traffic that money also goes back to Level 3! Patrick, from Akamai, is unhappy at losing all the business, and/or bemused at the ruckus this will cause and chooses to kick the hornets nest on NANOG.
One last thing, before we do some careful word parsing. CDN's like Akamai and LimeLight want to be close to the end user, and the networks with end users want them to be close to the end user. It doesn't make sense to haul the bits across the country for any party involved. Akamai does this by locating clusters inside providers networks, LimeLight does it by provisioning bandwidth from their data centers directly to distribution points on eyeball networks.
So let's go back and look at the public statements now:
Level 3 said: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/lev...mcasts-actions -2010-11-29?reflink=MW_news_stmp
"On November 19, 2010, Comcast informed Level 3 that, for the first time, it will demand a recurring fee from Level 3 to transmit Internet online movies and other content to Comcast's customers who request such content."
Comcast said: http://blog.comcast.com/2010/11/comc...n-level-3.html
"Comcast has long established and mutually acceptable commercial arrangements with Level 3's Content Delivery Network (CDN) competitors in delivering the same types of traffic to our customers. Comcast offered Level 3 the same terms it offers to Level 3's CDN competitors for the same traffic."
You can make both of these statements make sense if the real situation is that Comcast told Level 3 they needed to act like a CDN if they were going to host Netflix. Rather than having Comcast pay as a customer, they needed to show up in various Comcast distribution centers around the country where they could drop traffic off "locally". To Comcast this is the same deal other CDN's get, it matches their statement. To Level 3, this means paying a fee for bandwidth to these locations, and being that they are Comcast locations it may even mean colocation fees or other charges directly to Comcast. Comcast said if you're not going to show up and do things like the CDN players then we're going to hold you to a reasonable peering policy, like we would anyone else making us run the bits the old way.
The most interesting thing to me about all of this is these companies clearly had a close relationship, fiber, voice, and IP transit all on long term deals. If my speculation is right I'm a bit surprised Level 3 would choose to piss off such a long term large customer by bringing Netflix to the party like this, which is one of the reasons I doubt my speculation a bit.
But, to bring things full circle, neither of the public statements tell the whole story here. They each tell one small nugget, the nugget that side wants the press to run with so they can score political points.
Business is messy, and as I've said throughout this thread this isn't about peering policies or ratios, there are deeper business interests on both sides. This article: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/lev...kam-2010-11-11
Suggests Level 3 is adding 2.9 Terabits of capacity just for Netflix. I'm sure a lot of that is going to Comcast users, since they are the largest residential broadband ISP.
Messy. Very messy.
--
Leo Bicknell - bicknell at ufp.org - CCIE 3440
PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/

[Norellicus]

Thanks for that, I had gone looking for something on NANOG about it but that place can be hard to find good results (when you're not a member following along in realtime, anyway).

So it definitely sounds more like some corporate games are going on and they're just rallying the politically charged net neutrality commentariat with their method of complaint.

[Olo401]

http://www.craigslist.org/about/best...593048210.html

Just another reason to quit Comcast..

[Ikith]

Still a monopoly up here where I live. Shit sucks.

[Korietsu]

Thanks for that, I had gone looking for something on NANOG about it but that place can be hard to find good results (when you're not a member following along in realtime, anyway).

So it definitely sounds more like some corporate games are going on and they're just rallying the politically charged net neutrality commentariat with their method of complaint.

While the situation is a first, and it does have large net neutrality implications, L3 is not devoid of all blame. I do hope however, that because of this we have a proper discussion on net neutrality when a company is vying to block a rivals service in order to encourage use of theirs.

[Skyylya]

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1055584668.png

My FIOS internet connection + HD tv package is 94.99/month and I get every channel I could want.

it's supposed to be 25/25 but i really never know why my upload speed is always fail. Verizon makes a ton of mistakes, but i've always been able to clear them up with enough persistance it's just one of those situations where you need to escalate it usually.

[Xanthe]

Yeah, Comcast sucks. I had them as a provider for ~3 years after college when I was still out in MI. Slow and unreliable connection with horrid customer support. At least the drop off location where I finally turned in my modem and set top box splurged on ropes for the line.

Now I'm stuck with Time Warner which while better than Comcast is far from perfect. Speeds are great (especially now that I had my modem replaced after 3 years of heavy traffic), but the connection drops fairly frequently under heavy load, almost exclusively between 6PM and 6AM. The only way to recover is to recycle the power on the modem. I'm fairly convinced TWC intentionally drops the connection when they see sustained heavy traffic (750 KBps is what I cap my uTorrent download at).

This is my speed test for TWC at home (Road Runner Turbo):
http://www.speedtest.net/result/1055624407.png

And here is my test at work (University of Rochester T1):
http://www.speedtest.net/result/1055619833.png

So very tempting, especially being outside any firewall/monitoring.

[Callisto]

it's supposed to be 25/25 but i really never know why my upload speed is always fail.

That sounds odd to me, granted I don't know a ton about internet service but idk if I've ever seen a non-commercial internet package that had upload speeds as high as download speeds.

[Hitoru]

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1055722199.png

Yeah, I don't get it sometimes really. Not much one can do about it as Tally has nothing but. Just wish Comcast would pull their shit together with service. Cap my bandwidth? Fine. But at least max out the damned speed at which I use my net.

[Callisto]

Which service did you sign up for? I got the 33/5-6~ package, think it was called Ultra which they actually cut and replaced with a 25ish package, and I still get the 33 consistently. They have like 5 different levels just for consumer packages, a lot of people I see complain their speeds are low but they're signed up for the minimum one.

[Hitoru]

Took the middle of the range on it, so I do know what you're talking about. Mine's supposed to be about 20-25ish, I believe. Would have to go back and look but I did skip the lowest end option. Shit would kill me with how much I torrent.

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

Well it looks the govt. is going to regulate the internet now.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...ernet-freedom/