So does that mean there's a downloader-pays rule?

If so that means that Verizon should be paying Level3 because it consumes 3x the bandwidth that it provides.

Verizon's needs Level3 3x as badly as Level3 needs Verizon on a bit-by-bit basis. So why isn't Verizon paying Level3 for the imbalance?

There are actually two sides to the ISP game. There's the consumer ISP side and there's the commercial ISP side.

Consumer ISPs are in business to get their customers hooked up to as much of the internet as possible to enable them to consume things. And they charge their customers (normal folk like us) for this service.

Commercial ISPs are in business to get their customers hooked up to as much of the internet as possible to provide services. And they charge their customers (big companies) for it.

When commerial ISPs meet consumer ISPs typically they say "let's trade traffic for free so that way we can both keep our money and not worry about accounting"

What's happened is that a consumer ISP is trying to charge more than just it's last-mile normal customers for data that they use and which it is ostensibly contractually obliged to provide to them without further fees.

What Verizon is saying is "look they need to pay us to upgrade this link" which on the surface doesn't sound too bad. It kinda makes sense. If I used more bandwidth they would charge me more. But the thing is that I am already paying them to make sure that the connection to the internet is uncongested. They are deliberately allowing it to get congested to try and bill both sides of the transit.

> But when we ask them if we too would qualify for no-fee interconnect if we changed our service to upload as much data as we download -- thus filling their upstream networks and nearly doubling our total traffic -- there is an uncomfortable silence. That's because the ISP argument isn't sensible. Big ISPs aren't paying money to services like online backup that generate more upstream than downstream traffic. Data direction, in other words, has nothing to do with costs.

> in other words, moving to peer-to-peer content delivery

Verizon is selling me a 50Mbps connection, but if I use it, for even a little, they get upset and say they are over capacity. This is the same company that over-subscribes their network on purpose, as most ISP's do. They will come into a neighborhood with a 1Gbps link, then sell 50Mbps to 100 homes, in hopes that not everyone uses the connection at the same time, nor for long duration.

http://devnull-as-a-service.com

Imbalance fixed, but I don't think that is what Verizon wants.

Seems to me it's a win-win for everyone, including poor border routers. Except Verizon then wouldn't make an extra penny from that efficiency, hmm?

Why should they have to do that? Level 3 has open ports now (so they claim). It doesn't matter which provider the traffic is coming from, either Verizon wants it or they don't (and apparently they don't, even though their core is no where close to saturated).

The balanced traffic requirement is bogus anyway. Its not as if Verizon offers their own video streaming service that I can subscribe to as a Comcast or AT&T customer. So they're never going to see balanced traffic in the age of video streaming.

- If you push traffic to my network it is because someone in my network requested it. - Incoming and outgoing traffic are technically no different. - It makes more sense to pay to receive traffic than get paid to receive traffic. That's actually what VZ customers pay for and that's why not many people complain about ADSL speeds.

If I were Level3 I would actively partner with VZ alternatives in the US, announce it to VZ customers so they can move away and then proceed to remove any peering with VZ. Enough bullshit already.

I work at an ISP, can confirm. All decisions about capacity are about how much money we'll make or lose. We're intentionally keeping bandwidth constrained because we know it will severely impact our cable TV business.

All of Netflix, in HD, on 24TB.

Netflix could solve the bandwidth problem by just mailing the whole library to customers. "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of magnetic tapes."

http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/2014/07/search/bmV...

Even if we agree that Verizon has the right to bill Level 3 for transit within _Verizon's own network_, it seems odd that they are not taking advantage of Netflix's CDN boxes, which would drastically reduce the amount of transit required.

If you just dump your data on the nearest Verizon peering port, you aren't fulfilling your end of the bargain.

So, let's say I build a new skyscraper with 10,000 apartments, and I set myself up as the exclusive ISP to the tenants of that skyscraper. I wire up the building nicely, and have some big switches and routers in the basement. Does every content provider (e.g. Netflix) or company working on their behalf (e.g. Level 3) now have an obligation to build new circuits, and deliver the traffic all the way to my basement?

How quickly would this change Verizon's policy?

As a customer of an ISP, I pay for access to servers on the internet. My ISP charges me for a level of bandwidth. If they are the bottleneck slowing down my connection to the services I want to access, they should fix it, and give me what I'm paying them for.

Is that accurate? Or no?

For (2), Netflix could almost certainly do that, but I assume they'd prefer to not pass any cost onto consumers (because, really, they're making a stand against this business practice by Verizon being fair play at all). Among other reasons, if it's seen that Netflix is willing to pay a "ransom," other carriers may try to increase their contracted costs.

1. Verizon, as a monopolist, is already pricing its service at the level that extracts the most revenue while remaining within the envelope of whatever loose regulation they have.

2. Netflix, as a company in a competitive market, can't easily increase prices without losing customers. If Netflix charges Verizon customers $9 and Hulu is only $8, it makes Netflix look less attractive, and they'd lose customers.

We think of ISPs as selling us data, but the big ones have realized they can make more money as data market makers. This whole kerfuffle is just them trying to see if they can get away with it. Because they're effectively monopolies on the last mile, it's important that they fail here.

Verizon already increases prices x% per year, so maybe. But for every price increase there are some number of customers who will cancel or downgrade to a lower plan. (Alternately, Verizon could decrease their profits.)

Could Netflix pay Verizon's ransom and then charge Verizon customers a "Verizon Tax" of sorts?

Sure, but some percentage of Netflix customers would cancel.

Would it be legal for Verizon to literally just cut off Netflix?

Considering that the FCC is debating Net Neutrality right now, that would be a very bad idea.

In other words Netflix doesn't start streaming data to me for the hell of it. Pandora doesn't stream songs to my computer unless I hit play. Songs don't get downloaded from iTunes unless I request them and pay for them.

This is in contrast to the mail that the USPS delivers to my door. I don't ask for most of it and I have to sort through it and throw all the bullshit away.

I guess what I mean is that most internet traffic is based on consent of some kind. While paper mail is not.

I might not specifically request any particular bits but the majority don't show up unannounced and unwanted.

> there's plenty of application protocols which involve "pushing" data over TCP/IP transpor

Right but by the time a TCP link is established you've already setup a session which can't be done unilaterally. That is akin to consent and quite possibly a request. You can't be "data-raped" because if you decline the TCP session that's the end of it. Someone can send a billion request to initiate TCP sessions but they can't initiate without your (or your computer's) consent.

Given the router/firewalls that basically everyone has between their modems and their computers it's getting very, very difficult to send data to residential ISP customers without their express or implied consent.

You're equivocating on 'push' and 'pull'. Under OPs definition, a 'pull' is a customer's valid usage of the service, while a 'push' is something like unwanted or unrequested data transfer from a 3rd party. This definition is a little muddled when you talk about uploads but it should be easily understood. You uploading your backup data is you merely using the service you paid for, even though you're 'pushing' data somewhere.

As an example I use a website (like Facebook or something) which does live auto-updating. Under the hood it's something like WebSockets or SocketIO and the server does send datagrams to me without me specifically requesting those individual data packets. I couldn't request them, I didn't even know about them until they arrived!

But while that technically is "push" from a high level it's still "pull" in that Facebook (or whoever) doesn't just start sending them to me for giggles. It doesn't start happening until I visit their site, and it stops happening fairly shortly after I navigate away from it. Their computers don't unilaterally send packets to me. I request them by continuing to execute the javascript that their servers sent to me when I loaded the page. Once I stop executing it, the connection is closed and the messages stop.