To be fair, I have no evidence that Comcast demanded money in advance. As far as I can tell, Level 3, Cogent and Comcast all agree on the rest though, Comcast's peering filled up. Both Level 3 and Cogent offered/requested to upgrade. Then at least Cogent (IIRC?) offered to upgrade *and pay Comcast to upgrade*. All of these offers were ignored or rejected, and at this point I think all parties agree that ransom was demanded by Comcast. Then, just weeks after Verizon's successful litigation against Net Neutrality, Netflix agreed to pay Comcast directly. I'm not sure if the removal of Netflix is enough to resolve the congestion on the Level 3 and Cogent links, but I'm not sure how one could explain the above situation other than deliberate throttling in an attempt to extort money. Nick On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 12:51 PM, <arvindersingh@mail2tor.com> wrote:
Yes Kevin, this is understood - but valid observation from Nick.
Can you pls answer my question first? Very curious.
Arvinder
Guys, I'm already pretty far off the reservation and will not respond to trolling. I think most ISPs are starting to avoid participation here for the same reason. I'm going to stop for a while.
- Kevin
On May 15, 2014, at 12:42 PM, "Nick B" <nick@pelagiris.org<mailto:nick@pelagiris.org>> wrote:
Yes, you've got "some of the largest Internet companies as customers". Because you told them "if you don't pay us, we'll throttle you". Then you throttled them. I'm sorry, not a winning argument. Nick
On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 10:57 AM, McElearney, Kevin <Kevin_McElearney@cable.comcast.com<mailto: Kevin_McElearney@cable.comcast.com>> wrote: Upgrades/buildout are happening every day. They are continuous to keep ahead of demand and publicly measured by SamKnows (FCC measuring broadband), Akamai, Ookla, etc
What is not well known is that Comcast has been an existing commercial transit business for 15+ years (with over 8000 commercial fiber customers). Comcast also has over 40 balanced peers with plenty of capacity, and some of the largest Internet companies as customers.
- Kevin
215-313-1083<tel:215-313-1083>
On May 15, 2014, at 10:19 AM, "Owen DeLong" <owen@delong.com<mailto:owen@delong.com>> wrote:
Oh, please do explicate on how this is inaccurate…
Owen
On May 14, 2014, at 2:14 PM, McElearney, Kevin <Kevin_McElearney@cable.comcast.com<mailto: Kevin_McElearney@cable.comcast.com>> wrote:
Respectfully, this is a highly inaccurate "sound bite"
- Kevin
215-313-1083<tel:215-313-1083>
On May 14, 2014, at 3:05 PM, "Owen DeLong" <owen@delong.com<mailto:owen@delong.com>> wrote:
Yes, the more accurate statement would be aggressively seeking new ways to monetize the existing infrastructure without investing in upgrades or additional buildout any more than absolutely necessary.
Owen
On May 14, 2014, at 8:02 AM, Hugo Slabbert <hugo@slabnet.com<mailto:hugo@slabnet.com>> wrote:
> > So they seek new sources of revenues, and/or attempt to thwart >> competition any way they can. No to the first. Yes to the second. If they were seeking new sources of > revenue, they'd be massively expanding into un/der served markets > and > aggressively growing over the top services (which are fat margin).
Sure they are (seeking new sources of revenue). They're not necessarily creating new products or services, i.e. actually adding any value, but they are finding ways to extract additional revenue from the same pipes, e.g. through paid peering with content providers.
I'm not endorsing this; just pointing out that you two are actually in agreement here.
-- Hugo
>> On Wed, May 14, 2014 at 7:23 AM, >> <charles@thefnf.org<mailto:charles@thefnf.org>> wrote: >> >> On 2014-05-14 02:04, Jean-Francois Mezei wrote: >> >> On 14-05-13 22:50, Daniel Staal wrote: >> >> They have the money. They have the ability to get more money. >> *They see >>> no reason to spend money making customers happy.* They can make >>> more >>> profit without it. >> >> There is the issue of control over the market. But also the >> pressure >> from shareholders for continued growth. > > > Yes. That is true. Except that it's not. > > How do service providers grow? Let's explore that: > > What is growth for a transit provider? > > More (new) access network(s) (connections). > More bandwidth across backbone pipes. > > > What is growth for access network? > More subscribers. > > Except that the incumbent carriers have shown they have no interest > in > providing decent bandwidth to anywhere but the most profitable rate > centers. I'd say about 2/3 of the USA is served with quite terrible > access. > > > > >> The problem with the internet is that while it had promises of wild >> growth in the 90s and 00s, once penetration reaches a certain >> level, >> growth stabilizes. > > Penetration is ABYSMAL sir. Huge swaths of underserved americans > exist. > > > >> When you combine this with threath to large incumbents's media and >> media >> distribution endeavours by the likes of Netflix (and cat videos on >> Youtube), large incumbents start thinking about how they will be >> able to >> continue to grow revenus/profits when customers will shift spending >> to >> vspecialty channels/cableTV to Netflix and customer growth will not >> compensate. > > Except they aren't. Even in the most profitable rate centers, > they've > declined to really invest in the networks. They aren't a real > business. You > have to remember that. They have regulatory capture, natural/defacto > monopoly etc etc. They don't operate in the real world of > risk/reward/profit/loss/uncertainty like any other real business has > to. > > > >> So they seek new sources of revenues, and/or attempt to thwart >> competition any way they can. > > No to the first. Yes to the second. If they were seeking new sources > of > revenue, they'd be massively expanding into un/der served markets > and > aggressively growing over the top services (which are fat margin). > They did > a bit of an advertising campaign of "smart home" offerings, but that > seems > to have never grown beyond a pilot. > > > >> The current trend is to "if you can't fight them, jon them" where >> cablecos start to include the Netflix app into their proprietary >> set-top >> boxes. The idea is that you at least make the customer continue to >> use >> your box and your remote control which makes it easier for them to >> switch between netflix and legacy TV. > True. I don't know why one of the cablecos hasn't licensed roku, > added > cable card and made that available as a "hip/cool" set top box > offering and > charge another 10.00 a month on top of the standard dvr rental. > > > > Would be interesting to see if those cable companies that are > agreeing >> to add the Netflix app onto their proprietary STBs also play >> peering >> capacity games to degrade the service or not. > > So how is the content delivered? Is it over the internet? Or is it > over > the cable plant, from cable headends?