[rjvbk]

Netflix uses fast.com and their speed index as a way to extort ISPs into giving them traffic for free. They refuse to pay any fees to connect directly to ISPs and then they use that website to imply they are being throttled when the meager free routes they use get saturated, which is their own fault.

[dswalter]

I know net neutrality is no longer law, but I think if you interviewed a thousand people on this site, you might be the only one miffed that Netflix isn't paying ISPs for faster routes.

Put another way, it is my impression that consumers are already paying for bandwith. Getting Netflix to pay for faster routes would mean ISPs are double-dipping.

[richbhanover]

Yes, we need to emphasize this point.

Netflix (and Youtube and Hulu and all the other big content providers) pay big bucks (millions per month) to get the content from their servers to the internet backbone. Their contracts with their ISPs don't specify where the traffic goes. They just buy lots of 10 gpbs links, and send the data off. They're paying their share.

Your contract with your ISP doesn't distinguish between getting traffic from a mom&pop website or Netflix. It just said they would deliver the rated speed (7 mpbs or 10mbps, or 100mbs) of data to you for your fixed monthly fee.

When the ISPs found out that people were actually using that much data (that YOU PAID FOR), they found they had underprovisioned their network, and couldn't support the load. ISPs started saying, "Netflix is using too much", because, really, it's rude to blame your customer for using the service you provide as contracted.

This is called double-dipping.

So - Netflix is paying their fair share. You are paying your fair share. If your ISP can't handle the traffic demands of their customers, they need to suck it up and provide the capacity that you're paying for.

[rjvbk]

ISPs are neutral here, the problem is, once again, that Netflix uses a HUGE amount of traffic, and the normal routes (the ones everybody gets) get saturated.

If they want "premium" routes for their MASSIVE traffic, they will have to pay to the ISPs. I think that's reasonable. Giving them premium routes for free would not be neutral, would it? ;)

[corobo]

Either their infrastructure supports what the customer is paying for or it doesn't. If the ISP is running crusty old routes they're slacking and customers should migrate away from them as soon as feasible.

ISPs should provide connection to the internet for their customers in exchange for a monthly bill. How they do that isn't the customer's concern and it shouldn't be Netflix's concern. The only ISP Netflix should be paying is their own link to the internet (AWS last I heard)

Side note, Netflix isn't using any traffic. They're not sending me a UHD video stream unsolicited. I'm using the traffic.

[rjvbk]

>Side note, Netflix isn't using any traffic. They're not sending me a UHD video stream unsolicited. I'm using the traffic.

Milk companies put their lorries in the highway to deliver their products. You're the one buying milk. Are you the one who's using the highways?

If Netflix wants a premium highway let them pay for it. Otherwise they will have to use the normal highway, the one that's worked fine until Netflix decided to fill it with lorries.

[corobo]

In a less direct sense, yes. If there was no demand for milk in my area there would be no milk lorries sent to my area

Sidebar: I do wish HN had a rule against these kinds of analogies as they do other reddit-esque puns and the likes. The internet is not like a milk truck, it's not like a series of tubes, it's like 1s and 0s being communicated across a worldwide mesh of cables of varying material under the control of varying entities

We're all at least vaguely techy enough that we're on HN, we can understand at least the basics. Lets talk about what it is, not what it's like.

[dwild]

Except that I pay for an highway that should support 100 mb/s and they pay for an highway that should support 100 mb/s, yet it only support 10 mb/s.

The Netflix route is using too much bandwidth? Then upgrade it, that's what your customer pay you for. For sure there will be route that will be unequal, some too big, some too small, but that's part of ISP job to make sure its impact is minimal.

[nerdponx]

Milk companies put their lorries in the highway to deliver their products. You're the one buying milk. Are you the one who's using the highways?

Yes, I think that is the right way to think about things here.

As to the rest of your comments - Imagine if Amazon could pay the USDOT for special lane on the highway.

[deno]

Let’s break it down:

BOB pays ALICE for a connection at fixed uplink/downlink parameters to the public collective of interconnected autonomous networks commonly referred to as INTERNET.

BOB uses the service as advertised to connect to CAROL’s autonomous network.

ALICE fails to adequately peer with CAROL’s autonomous network and calls it a feature.

BOB can’t switch ISPs because ALICE has monopoly on the service where he lives.

ALICE tries to muddy the waters with nonsensical milk lorry analogies that have nothing to do with fiber optic cables to maintain its monopoly and further leverage it to run protection racket on CAROL.

Sounds about right?

When BOB is paying ALICE for the service, he is implicitly paying for whatever “highway” connects his house and CAROL’s milk depots. Everything between the two points is ALICE’s responsibility. If ALICE doesn’t like that BOB mostly orders his milk from CAROL’s then she shouldn’t offer the service as supporting fixed amount of lorries per hour.

[rjvbk]

>ALICE fails to adequately peer with CAROL’s autonomous network and calls it a feature.

It also works the other way around: CAROL does not want to pay ALICE to have premium access.

Also, laughable that you call me a shill. Seems like the most used argument when you don't agree with someone. I'm not even American. So your "BOB can't switch ISPs" does not even apply here.

[scwoodal]

The grocery store bought the milk so that’s why the truck is on the highway. The truck (Netflix) wouldn’t be there if the grocery store (customer) didn’t order the milk.

[strogonoff]

If we imagine Netflix traffic as milk trucks delivering milk B2C, the “downlink” road to a milk buyer’s house would likely be maintained by neighborhood home owners’ association, thus ultimately paid for by the consumer.

Those highways between the farm and the neighborhood, though… Anyway, either the analogy breaks or it’s onto something!

[manigandham]

What's the problem with routes getting saturated? The consumers are paying for bandwidth and if they're using it all for Netflix, that's their choice.

The only problem is if the ISP can't actually deliver the bandwidth that they promised in exchange for taking the consumers money. That's called a scam.

[zzzcpan]

Couple of megabits from time to time, not even every night, is not a HUGE or a MASSIVE traffic, neither it has to be "premium". It's very normal traffic, on the lower end even. It's just some ISPs are monopolies and want to abuse their position and extort money from anyone they can, despite the fact that customers pay them to literally provide access to those services.

[reitanqild]

Netflix pay for their own uplinks.

That is fair.

They shouldn't pay for our downlinks, that we've already paid for.

That would be double dipping or something by our isps.

[mimimihaha]

I feel like this is a good explanation of the issue.

[notheguyouthink]

> ISPs are neutral here, the problem is, once again, that Netflix uses a HUGE amount of traffic, and the normal routes (the ones everybody gets) get saturated.

What I don't get is, both Netflix and I pay for bandwidth. As far as consumer bandwidth (mine) is concerned, why should Comcast care if it's 1TB/month coming from a thousand sites or just one. I paid for the data, I paid for the bandwidth, give me my bandwidth.

Likewise, Netflix paid for their own too, with whoever is their ISP.

Conceptually the bandwidth has to be paid for, and I could see your argument if I only paid a portion of what it costs to transfer the data.. but that is a broken model if that's the way it is. I want to pay for data, and I shouldn't have to get Movies.com to pay Comcast to serve me movies. I paid Comcast for data, it doesn't matter who it's from. My data is my data.

Is this wrong somehow to you? Honestly it's a strange argument from you, I have a hard time understanding. Like, if you run a website and I visit your website, do you think you should have to pay my ISP for data I'm downloading from your site? That's a bizarre system in my mind.

[inapis]

ISPs were or are double dipping. They actively started throttling Netflix even when there was no congestion or traffic only so that they could extort money out of Netflix. You could access YouTube, Vimeo or their own video-on-demand without any compromise in quality but Netflix was forced to a crawl.

If Netflix wants to pay extra to deal with saturation they are more than welcome too but if ISPs are denying their subscribers access to a service, even when spare bandwidth was available and sitting unutilized then its time for pitchforks to come out

[windexh8er]

Netflix rarely consumes Internet traffic as your statement assumes. Netflix has content caching at, pretty much, most legitimately sized ISP and peering points today. That means you're probably watching your content without leaving your ISPs network. The ISP pays pretty much nothing for transport (because Netflix provides them with a way to alleviate that) however the customer gets better service and quality of Netflix because the content is local. While this isn't always true neither is the thought that all traffic is heading back to Netflix HQ and saturating all of the Internet links in between.

[JustSomeNobody]

Then how is fast.com effective at all? It was created to show that ISPs were throttling Netflix, but if Netflix has boxes at peering points, this seems moot.

[deno]

They peer with Netflix for free then demand extra money to actually keep peering for free at proper capacity. They want money for connecting an extra cable to their router. It’s a protection racket pure and simple.

[diab0lic]

The speed test is running on said boxes at the peering points. It tests how fast your connection is to the open connect appliance.

https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/building-fast-com-4857fe...

[JustSomeNobody]

Ahh... ok, thanks. That makes a lot of sense.

[reitanqild]

I'd guess it indicates capacity if you try to watch something that isn't cached?

[sitkack]

The customers of the ISP have paid to connect to the internet. Netflix isn't generating the traffic, the customers are, and if the ISP wants to serve the customers they need to provide bandwidth to the places they want to go.

Shaking down the destination, because the ISP controls the customer is wrong on many levels.

[inapis]

Um, when this whole debacle started, I saw articles which said that Netflix offered to pay for hardware and put more capacity in ISPs datacenters but ISPs refused and instead wanted more money to give access on the last-mile connectivity

[luhn]

The program is called OpenConnect [1], which has been around for a while. If you're an ISP, Netflix will ship you a beefy server for free to cache Netflix content.

[1] https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/

[JustSomeNobody]

What am I paying for when I pay Comcast?

Edit: I hear arguments like this and I really don't understand them. I would like to hear the reasoning behind it because it just doesn't make sense to me.