On Sun, Oct 10, 2021 at 2:44 PM Doug Barton <dougb@dougbarton.us> wrote:
[some snipping below]
Also just to be clear, these are my own opinions, not necessarily shared by any current or former employers.
On 10/10/21 12:31 PM, Mark Tinka wrote:
On 10/10/21 21:08, Doug Barton wrote
Given that issue, I have some sympathy for eyeball networks wanting to charge content providers for the increased capacity that is needed to bring in their content. The cost would be passed on to the content provider's customers...
But eyeballs are already paying you a monthly fee for 100Mbps of service (for example). So they should pay a surcharge, over-and-above that, that determines how they can use that 100Mbps? Seems overly odd, to me.
Yes, I get that. But as you pointed out here and in other comments, the ISP market is based entirely on undercutting competitors (with a lot of gambling thrown in, as Matthew pointed out).
[...]
So what rat hole does this lead us down into? People who want to stream Youtube should pay their ISP for that? People who want to spend unmentionable hours on Linkedin should be their ISP for that? People who want to gawk over Samsung's web site because they love it so much, should pay their ISP for that?
First, I'm not saying "should." I'm saying that given the market economics, having the content providers who use "a lot" of bandwidth do something to offset those costs to the ISPs might be the best/least bad option. Whether "something" is a local cache box, peering, money, or <other> is something I think that the market should determine.
Going back to the fact that it's not the content providers "using" a lot of bandwidth, it's the eyeball customer *requesting* a lot of bandwidth, I think the best approach is for the content providers to help manage traffic levels by lowering bit rates towards eyeball networks that are feeling strained by their users. Instead of a 4K stream, drop it to 480 or 240; the eyeball network should be happy at the reduced strain the resulting stream puts on their network. The content network can even point out they're being a good Network Citizen by putting up a brief banner at the top of the stream saying "reducing bit rate to relieve stress on your ISPs network". That way, the happy customer knows that the content provider is doing their part to help their ISP stay profitable...I mean, doing their part to help the Internet run better.
And to answer Matthew's question, I don't know what "a lot" is. I think the market should determine that as well.
The market *is* determining that at the moment...but not in the direction people expect. Instead, it's creating a new market for intermediaries; imagine you're an eyeball network that happens to have peering with SKB, and largely inbound traffic flows. Wouldn't it make sense for you to reach out to a player like Netflix, and offer to host content cache boxes that happen to only answer requests coming from SKB IP space, at a price well below what SKB was going to charge the content provider? As the eyeball network, you'd see your traffic ratios balance out as the cache traffic filled your under-utilized outbound port capacity, and you'd get a bit of additional revenue you otherwise wouldn't get. As the content provider, you're serving your customers for a lower price than SKB wants to charge, and without giving into SKB's extortion tactics. It's a win-win-lose situation, in which the content provider wins, the eyeball network that has a peering relationship with SKB wins, and the only loser is SKB, which doesn't get the additional revenue it was looking for, and actually helps funnel money to a competitor that they otherwise wouldn't have gotten. I'm pretty sure this is going to start happening more and more, as ISPs realize that putting content caches into their IP space to serve not only their own customers, but also customers of selected peers can be a source of good leverage in the market. Matt