Netflix won’t destroy the Internet any more than prioritization
When I read headlines like “Will Netflix Destroy the Internet?“, it is as disagreeable to me as the notion that packet prioritization or enhanced network services will destroy the Internet. Farhad Manjoo cited some Sandvine data which showed that the newly available Netflix in Canada can account for as much as 90% of traffic at certain times on one Canadian broadband network with just 10% of the user base. The same Sandvine data also revealed that Netflix accounted for 20% of the peak hour (8PM to 10PM) bandwidth consumption in North America which is higher than YouTube, Netflix, and even BitTorrent.
Note: I find it promising that consumers are opting for more legal content over pirated content. The price is what consumers are willing to pay and the quality and on-demand aspect of Netflix far exceeds any peer-to-peer (P2P) technology. It’s also interesting that Mr. Manjoo admitted to stealing movies with BitTorrent as if it were as natural as breathing.
Managing the traffic fairly
The disproportionate bandwidth consumption with 10% of the user population consuming 20% to 90% of the resources is interesting, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It certainly justifies managing that 10% user base down to an hourly average of 10% consumption if the remaining 90% of the subscribers all want their maximum equitable share, but subscribers typically average less than 10% of their peak bandwidth performance so there usually isn’t a problem. Occasionally when other subscribers on average want more of their peak bandwidth, the broadband provider can give it to them by reducing disproportionate consumption from Netflix, and Netflix buffers its videos to avoid disruption or dynamically drops bit rates to accommodate traffic conditions if necessary. Broadband providers also have the right and duty to manage the jitter induced by Netflix, but that doesn’t negatively impact Netflix in any way.
Upgrades to broadband capacity are inevitable
The amount of bandwidth that Netflix is currently consuming in North America is probably what the existing broadband infrastructure can handle. As the number of Netflix subscribers increase and as the popularity of other video sites increase, broadband providers will have to upgrade their capacity at significant cost. However, I personally know Netflix subscribers that have upgraded their 1.5 Mbps broadband connection to 6 Mbps connections because they need more than 4 Mbps to take full advantage of Netflix HD content. So while Netflix forces broadband providers to upgrade their capacity, it also increases the number of higher bandwidth tier subscribers.
Cable broadband providers may be more sensitive to Netflix usage because their subscribers already have sufficient peak bandwidth to view Netflix HD but the cable networks can’t accommodate concurrent usage without upgrades. Every time a cable broadband neighborhood (called a “node”) adds another 8 concurrent Netflix users, the node needs another 6 MHz channel of capacity or everyone on the node suffers. But the cable providers already collect higher monthly fees than their DSL ISP counter parts and they didn’t have to spend as much money up front to upgrade to next generation broadband so the infrastructure expenses will have to be paid as the need arises. If a cable provider fails to add capacity, their subscribers will complain and jump ship to the competing Telcos. There is plenty of evidence suggesting that broadband is competitive because we have seen major broadband providers like Comcast double their subscribers bandwidth with no price increase.
Voluntary agreements are the solution and not regulation
Some have implied that Netflix might be responsible for paying for the broadband infrastructure expenses they’ve induced, but this has led to a backlash calling for Net Neutrality laws must be passed to prohibit ISPs from offering premium services to content or application providers. But both extremes are wrong because Netflix doesn’t owe broadband providers anything but nothing should prohibit the broadband providers from offering Netflix better network services on a purely voluntary basis.
Netflix doesn’t owe a termination fee to broadband providers because they’ve paid their Internet transit provider or Content Delivery Network (CDN). The transit or CDN provider already paid the broadband provider directly or indirectly through existing peering agreements, and those payments might involve money or bandwidth exchange. Netflix has essentially paid all the broadband providers through other distribution channels, but that shouldn’t preclude broadband providers from offering direct wholesale bandwidth (e.g., paid peering services) at a quality and price level that is attractive to Netflix and other content or application providers. So long as the premium services are offered with no implied or explicit threat of unreasonable discrimination against sites that don’t pay up, that’s how the Internet has always worked. Applications that consume ever increasing amounts of bandwidth and force network upgrades are nothing new either and it’s how the Internet has always worked.
“So long as the premium services are offered with no implied or explicit threat of unreasonable discrimination against sites that don’t pay up, that’s how the Internet has always worked.”
Sadly this is not the case today with Comcast. It’s easily to verify that they’re running their (paid-for transit) connections to TATA Communications at capacity in an effort to strong-arm networks into either peering or paying them for connectivity. Packet loss ahoy.
@Jack Moves
Comcast can’t be responsible for the reliability of international peering circuits or the circuits on other networks they don’t operate. Comcast is responsible for their own circuits that they operate and sell.
As for peering circuits running to capacity, that is the nature of all circuits because ad hoc applications push circuits to capacity no matter how much capacity there is especially when it’s not a toll lane. The incentive is to use as much capacity as possible on circuits that no one pays for. On paid peering circuits where there are contractual agreements in place to guarantee certain characteristics, it’s the carriers job to honor their agreements.
What you’re trying to say is that normal congestion that occurs within the bounds of existing transit contracts is tantamount to a conspiracy and undue interference. By that definition, the whole Internet is guilty of this.
Comcast’s connections to TATA aren’t peering, they’re transit. In other words, Comcast is paying TATA (typically a dollar amount per megabit, or a fixed cost per circuit) for access to the networks they *do not* maintain direct peering or customer relationships with. If Comcast wishes to add more capacity to TATA, they can simply contact their account team and arrange for additional circuits to be added — there’s certainly no shortage of capacity on TATA’s side. But they don’t, they instead choose to run these circuits hot. This is the fallacy in the argument that Comcast is treating “paid” and “unpaid” traffic equally, they’re not, they’re congesting the latter on purpose.
So what’s the problem with Comcast wanting to minimize their transit costs to TATA which in turn minimizes their cost to their customers? If TATA wanted more access to Comcast’s network, they could pay Comcast or at least offer free peering. This is just how the Internet works. There’s no legal or ethical obligation for Comcast to buy more services from TATA.
If the networks connected to TATA don’t like the pathetic amounts of bandwidth going to Comcast (due to the fees charged by TATA on both sides), they can directly peer with Comcast and get better quality and lower prices, or they might even negotiate free peering with Comcast. This is how the entire Internet works and how it should work. Internet transit is one of the most competitive services in the world. Transit bottlenecks like TATA can and should be bypassed whenever possible.
On one hand, you have Comcast claiming they’re about equal prioritization.
On the other, you have Comcast deliberately refusing to upgrade circuits, effectively forcing packet loss on a large demographic of networks.
Comcast should be upgrading their capacity to TATA, or otherwise not claiming to regulators that they do one thing, when in fact they’re doing something completely different. Not running one’s transit circuits hot is “how the entire Internet works”.
@Dave,
First of all, this has nothing to do with Net Neutrality or “discrimination”. Economic limitations affect all network providers and not just Comcast and they buy the most capacity they can afford. That is precisely how the entire Internet has worked all along and will continue to work.
If a transit provider like TATA is too expensive, refusing to give them a blank check for infinite bandwidth is the market signal needed to get the destinations served by TATA an incentive to bypass TATA. That means you can pay for CDN services that only require you to traverse TATA once instead of thousands of times, find a more affordable transit provider to route through, negotiate a direct peering agreement with Comcast for a fee that may be less than what it costs to route through TATA and at better quality, or even negotiate a free peering agreement if the two sides see equal value.
You can’t force network providers to pay for more expensive transit, and you wouldn’t operate any differently if you were in their shoe.
Where I work, the customers pay us to deliver their traffic, not discard it, so I can’t really emphasize.
This URL provides a better illustration of how the problem plays out:
http://bgp.he.net/AS7922#_graph4
For the networks behind AS 6453 (TATA), Comcast is basically forcing traffic down these links, even going so far as to block them access to other possible (paid-for transit) connections, like Level3. This is enforced with “no-export” BGP communities.
Put simply, the claims of non-discrimination differ from realities. It is simply impossible for many large sites (Yahoo! is an example) to serve Comcast over the commodity internet. We’re not talking preferential queuing, we’re talking simply serving HTTP without having their packets dropped due to congestion.
As an aside, TATA is among the cheapest providers in the wholesale industry.
@Dave
“Where I work, the customers pay us to deliver their traffic, not discard it, so I can’t really emphasize.”
Who do you work for Dave? All TCP/IP networks on this planet discard traffic no matter how low the utilization is, so your network discards your customer’s traffic. This is Jacob’s algorithm in effect and it’s built into the fundamental congestion control system of TCP.
Now if you’re suggesting that your customers pay you deliver X Gbps over Y circuit, that’s fine. But nobody in the industry has a transit service that I am aware of that can guarantee you a minimum bitrate over some 3rd party network.
I never claimed that there was no discrimination. What I have said many times is that Internet services (like all other commercial services) are discriminatory. It’s only wrong if it’s “unreasonable” discrimination which occurs when a network provider don’t meet their contractual obligations or if they engage in third degree price discrimination charging different amounts to different parties for the same service.
If Comcast uses AS 6453 to handle a large portion of their transit traffic, they have every right to do so and you have every right to make a paid or free peering agreement with Comcast to bypass AS 6453. Everything a network provider does must be specified by a contract and they have no obligation to you or anyone else to route around AS 6453 as a normal part of their Internet transit service.
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