My customers do not want me to "creatively" find ways to extract
additional money from them so as to cover *expenses that Netflix
should be covering*. Nor do they want me to subsidize Netflix
subscribers from the fees from non-Netflix subscribers. They
want to pay a fair price for their Internet that does not include
paying ransom to third parties.
(emphasis mine)
I've gotta be frank here: I really don't understand the line of reasoning from
an access network's perspective that says $CONTENT needs to pay $ACCESS to
accept the bits that $ACCESS's users requested from $CONTENT. I might be
missing nuances here, but I've not yet come across an argument that's convinced
me of why this should be the case.
Of course your customers don't want prices raised; that's a no-brainer, and
similarly it's fair for Grandma that just checks her email and Facebook to not
want to carry the infrastructure costs of someone who consumes more content. I
think what Charles is driving at is that users don't care about whether you
pull in content through 1850 Pearl Street, transit, direct peering, or
whatever; if I as a customer am paying for a 50 mbps service, I want my 50 mbps
service. That said, to your point of no performance/connectivity guarantees
to/from third parties: experience seems to indicate that users understand that
you're not responsible for ensuring Netflix can *push out* the content at a
given rate. However, if Netflix is capable of delivering the bits to your
doorstep (wherever that is), it becomes your problem to get those bits from
your doorstep to the customer.
If Netflix users (or users of any other bandwidth-hungry service) are sucking
up more than "their fair share", which is generally to say that they're over
your oversubscription ratio, and they are *also* over the minimum capacity that
you're guaranteeing below, you're in the clear from a business standpoint as
long as your remaining users still get their minimum. If other users are
starting to get impacted so that they don't get their guaranteed minumum,
that's a network management problem (i.e. how do I cap the "offending" traffic
so that other users' still get their guaranteed rate?). I suspect you may have
a hard time explaining to the Netflix users that, while you're
dropping/delaying their traffic in that case, you're still delivering the
promised service because they're still getting their minimum service to 1850
Pearl as they're traffic is coming in from somewhere else, but I digress...
If those users are over the overscription ratio *but* still below their
guaranteed minimum, that sucks for the provider, but it's still the provider's
problem, and the math in the business plan was apparently wrong. Since not all
users consume exactly the same amount of network resources, someone is *always*
subsidizing someone else's service; the question is just "by how much?" If the
value north of the oversubscription ratio is sufficiently large that it's
becoming a problem, either the agreement with the user(s) needs to be adjusted
("I know we said x mbps, but we actually meant < x mbps"), which again sucks
from a business standpoint but is the provider's problem to deal with, or
capacity needs to be augmented to match. The agreement bump can be either
global (which again is a difficult business maneuver) or targeted at the users
sucking up the extra capacity (which is more palatable, though users still
generally balk at tiered/usage pricing).
None of these are really fun to deal with from the business side, but if
$CONTENT is simply getting the bits to your edge as requested, I don't see in
any way how they can be blamed for the unfortunate business situation in which
$ACCESS finds himself. User asks for bits; $CONTENT gets the bits to $ACCESS's
edge; $CONTENT's responsibility is done.
You stated earlier:
"Open Connect" is not, in fact, a CDN. Nor is it "peering." It is merely a set
of policies for direct connection to ISPs, and for placing servers in ISPs'
facilities, that is as favorable as possible in every way to Netflix.
That's news to me. We peer settlement-free with Netflix at the SIX, and they
cover that in the OpenConnect umbrella term:
"ISPs can directly connect their networks to Open Connect for free. ISPs can do
this either by free peering with us at common Internet exchanges, or can save
even more transit costs by putting our free storage appliances in or near their
network."
-- https://www.netflix.com/openconnect
Also:
Because it requires expensive bandwidth that's dedicated solely to Netflix,
"peering" (as Netflix calls it; it's really just a dedicated link) has 0%,
not 100%, offload. The ISP is paying for all of the bandwidth, and it
cannot be used for anything else.
I don't see any requirements that this is a dedicated link; we peer with them
over public peering fabric and exchange a bunch of other traffic over that
link. Is there another requirement in OpenConnect peering that we've just not
hit but you are subject to?
OpenConnect has a range of options, from public peering to private
interconnects to caching appliances; the intention, I gather, is to provide a
range of options. Exchange a bit of traffic but not really all that much?
Public peering. Starting to consume a bunch of traffic but don't want a cache
appliance? Private interconnect. Exchange a bunch of traffic and prefer
caching? Get a free appliance.
Presumably if you're not peering with Netflix and you don't have an appliance,
you're getting the traffic via transit. You're free to not do any of the above
if you find your transit costs for Netflix traffic are lower than those options
(or if you just don't like OpenConnect), but for a lot of people public/private
peering or a caching appliance saves $$ and resources.
...(b) pay them equitably for direct connections (smaller and more remote ISPs
have higher costs per customer and should get MORE per account than Comcast,
rather than receiving nothing);
The Comcast and Verizon deals were made because those guys had leverage, not
because it costs them more. "We should get paid because Comcast got paid"
doesn't add up.
On Sun 2014-Jul-13 17:00:46 -0600, Brett Glass <na...@brettglass.com> wrote:
At 10:25 AM 7/13/2014, Charles Gucker wrote:
ALL ISPs are in the business of providing access to
the Internet. If you feel the need to rebel, then I suggest you
look at creative ways to increase revenue from your customers,
My customers do not want me to "creatively" find ways to extract
additional money from them so as to cover expenses that Netflix
should be covering. Nor do they want me to subsidize Netflix
subscribers from the fees from non-Netflix subscribers. They
want to pay a fair price for their Internet that does not include
paying ransom to third parties.
We currently provide that: we guarantee each subscriber a certain
minimum capacity to the Internet exchange at 1850 Pearl Street
in Denver (to which Netflix does not directly connect) with a certain
maximum duty cycle. But we can't guarantee the performance of a specific
third party service such as Netflix. If Netflix wants us to do that,
it is going to have to pay us, as it pays Comcast. That's only fair,
because we would be doing something special just for it -- something
which costs money.
If Netflix tries to use its market power to harm ISPs, or to smear
us via nasty on-screen messages as it has been smearing Verizon, ISPs have
no choice but to react. One way we could do this -- and I'm strongly
considering it -- is to start up a competing streaming service that
IS friendly to ISPs. It would use the minimum possible amount of
bandwidth, make proper use of caching, and -- most importantly --
actually PAY Internet service providers, instead of sapping their
resources, by allowing them to sell it and keep a portion of the fee.
This would provide an automatic, direct, per-customer reimbursement
to the ISP for the cost of bandwidth. ISPs would sign on so fast
that such a service could BURY Netflix in short order.
--Brett Glass
--
Hugo
