On Wed, Dec 01, 2010 at 06:31:39AM -0800, Leo Bicknell wrote:
In a message written on Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 10:59:25PM -0600, Richard A Steenbergen wrote:
I believe that's what I said. To be perfectly clear, what I'm saying is:
* Comcast acted first by demanding fees * Level 3 went public first by whining about it after they agreed to pay * Comcast was well prepared to win the PR war, and had a large pile of content that sounds good to the uninformed layperson ready to go.
I think I can make this very simple. What I am saying is that you're missing a step before your 3 bullet points. Before any of the three things you describe, Level 3 demanded fees from Comcast. Level 3 is doing a great job of getting folks to ignore that fact.
Do you have any basis for this claim, or are you just making it up as a possible scenario that would explain Comcast's actions? I have it on good authority that Level 3 did not attempt to raise their prices or ask for additonal fees beyond their existing contract, nor was their contract coming to term where they could "renegotiate" for more favorable terms. Comcast simply said, we've decided we don't want to pay you, you should pay us instead, and you're going to bend over and like it if you want to be able to reach our customers. Obviously the version I've heard and the version you're pitching can't co-exist, so either you have some REALLY interesting inside info that I don't (which I honestly find hard to believe given your knowledge of the facts so far), or you're stating a theory with no possible basis that I can find as a fact. If it's just a theory, please say so, then we don't keep having to argue these positions that can clearly never converge.
Comcast is a customer of L3, and pays them for service. Brining on Netflix will cause Comcast to pay L3 more. More interestingly, in this case it's likely Level 3 went to Comcast and said we don't think your existing customer ports will handle the additional traffic....so...um...you should buy more customer ports.
Comcast is th customer, they have complete and total control of the traffic being exchabged over their transit ports. If they wanted less traffic, they could announce fewer routes, or add more no-export communities. They also have complete control of traffic being sent outbound, and since Level3 is more than capable of handling 300Gbps (the capacity comcast claims they have), if Comcast actually had 300Gbps of outbound traffic to send they could easily have had a 1:1 ratio. Framing this as a peering ratio debate is absurd, because there two networks were NEVER peers. Any customer could have sent addtional bits to Level3 at any time, and Comcast should be prepared to deal with the TE as a result. That's life on the Internet.
Does network neutrality work both ways? If it is bad for Comcast to hold the users hostage to extort more money from Level 3, is it also bad for Level 3 to hold the content hostage to extort more money from Comcast?
You know, most people manage to buy sufficient transit capacity to support the volume of traffic that their customers pay them to deliver. Only Comcast seems to feel that it is proper to use their captive customer base hostage to extort content networks into paying for uncongested access. Level 3 is free to sell full transit or CDN to whomever they like, just as Comcast is free to not buy transit from Level 3 when their contract is up. The net neutrality part starts when Level 3 is NOT free to turn off their customer for non-payment just like what would happen to anyone else who suddenly decided they didn't think they should keep paying their bills, because Comcast maintains so little transit capacity that to shut them off would cause mssive disruptions to large portions of the Internet. -- Richard A Steenbergen <ras@e-gerbil.net> http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)