..Allen

On Oct 20, 2021, at 15:43, Matthew Walster <matthew@walster.org> wrote, among other things:

Seems pretty disingenuous to now say the called party has to pay as well, in stark contrast to decades of precedent with their telephone product, just because their customers are actually using what they were sold.

Let me add a (perhaps naïve) perspective: When speaking of calling party costs, there are two costs in that model: the cost of access to the network (recurring telephone line charges) and the cost, if metered, of making an actual call. My analogy looks something like this: as the manager of a telecom system where hundreds of clinical dictators were calling at all hours, while I did not pay for any individual incoming calls, it was a necessary business expense for me to have sufficient connection to the network – that is to say, a sufficient number of telephone lines. The cost for dozens of T1 lines was not a small budget item. So, in one sense, I as a called party did indeed find it necessary to pay substantial fees for the privilege of being called. And when I instituted toll-free calling, of course I paid significantly more. I totally agree that this is not a perfect analogy. But I have some sympathy for both parties in this debate. Blessings.. ..Allen

On Thu, 21 Oct 2021 at 17:43, Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com> wrote:

...

On Oct 21, 2021, at 06:30 , Allen McKinley Kitchen (gmail) < allenmckinleykitchen@gmail.com> wrote: I totally agree that this is not a perfect analogy. But I have some sympathy for both parties in this debate.

Close enough on the analogy, but under the circumstances, I fail to understand the need for sympathy for the eyeball providers.

For the most part, with the advent of adaptive streaming, any congestion should (not quite that simple at large scale, of course) mean the quality of the viewed content should only degrade rather than stop working. That implies that the eyeball networks can wait until links are a lot more utilised before being upgraded, because there isn't this catastrophe of streaming media ceasing to work once available bandwidth is exhausted. This is the UK, though, and so many ISPs have been doing that for a long time already. In fact, there have been several marketing campaigns over the years differentiating services solely on "we're faster during the internet rush hour" and similar. I'll be quiet now, though, I'm not advancing the discussion in a useful way any longer :P M

On Thu, 21 Oct 2021, 19:28 Fred Baker, <fredbaker.ietf@gmail.com> wrote:

I’m not sure I disagree, but let throw in a point of consideration. Historically, as you note, the caller pays the toll. However, the caller also CHOSE to call, even though the called party might find the call irritating. With a CDN, the network is out there hoping to be called, and the user makes that choice, “calling” the CDN. Could it not be accurately said that the user originated the “call”?

Yes. The caller is the person at home, the called party is the CDN. Without the CDN, it then becomes a trunk call. I'm deliberately ignoring the fact that the connection initiation goes in one direction and the bulk of the traffic flow goes the other way -- because it wouldn't go at all if it wasn't called up to be requested. Like... The speaking clock I guess. My analogy long since broke down. M

I don't know what they are putting in the water in Korea, but strange things are reported from there. In addition to the SK Telecom shenanigans, apparently KT can't tell the difference between a DDoS and a routing error. https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20211025006253320 - Jared

On Wed, Oct 20, 2021 at 3:41 PM Matthew Walster <matthew@walster.org> wrote: The user initiates the connection to the CDN. The user is paying for a level of access to the internet via the BT network, with varying tiers of speed at particular costs. They are advertised as "Unlimited broadband: With no data caps or download limits, you can do as much as you like online." on their website. Many CDNs bring the data closer to the customer, either embedded within their network, or meeting at various PoPs/IXPs around the country. Seems pretty disingenuous to now say the called party has to pay as well, in stark contrast to decades of precedent with their telephone product, just because their customers are actually using what they were sold. All in all, this raises an interesting question. Is British Telecom running

their networks so hot, that just keeping the lights on requires capacity upgrades or are they just looking for freebies?

What happened is pretty clear, and not just for BT or SK. Those providers, as a business decision, built their business models around a certain level of oversubscription that would strike a balance between customers not being unhappy and squeezing as much headroom out of the network before upgrades are required (beefier routers/switches, fatter pipes, more peering/transit, etc). That business model got upended when that acceptable level of oversubscription changed. Video streaming was the puddle of gasoline/petrol on the floor, and the change in user traffic patterns was the lit match. By asking content providers to hand over money to those carriers in exchange for (better) access to their customers, many of the ISPs could in fact be triple-dipping because they already get revenue from their customers and some also get various government subsidies to provide certain types of service or services in certain areas. Definitely doesn't pass the sniff test. Thank you jms