Comment by ankushnarula | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ankushnarula | Hacker News Reader

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> Packets delivered to the ISP at an exchange are equally free. > There is nothing wrong with ISPs engineering traffic to be delivered to them via the closest exchange possible, they just don't get to abuse their monopoly over their subscriber's line.

I don't think the ISP's problem (opportunity) resides in the scenario you're describing. The problem is the top .0001% of Internet destinations congest the ISP generic network interconnects. Hence, these larger vendors (Netflix, Akamai, Cloudflare, Amazon, Google, Apple, etc) either pay the ISP for direct network peering or server hosting to sustain acceptable performance. However, this typically leaves the cost of growing internal network backbone capacity on the ISP. I believe the scenario you are describing would allow ISPs to offset this capital cost to both the big content providers and the biggest consumers.

> Which is solved by discriminating between services how?

The point about torrents and bitcoin is that these applications are particularly burdensome on routers because of the amount of connection requests as compared to a fairly manageable HTTP or RTSP session. As I mentioned above, server co-location and direct network peering is already a thing that many larger ISPs offer on a non-discriminatory basis. However, most new businesses will piggyback on existing cloud hosting (AWS/Google/Azure) or CDN (Akamai/Google/Cloudfront) arrangements.

> I don't think the ISP's problem (opportunity) resides in the scenario you're describing. The problem is the top .0001% of Internet destinations congest the ISP generic network interconnects. Hence, these larger vendors (Netflix, Akamai, Cloudflare, Amazon, Google, Apple, etc) either pay the ISP for direct network peering or server hosting to sustain acceptable performance. However, this typically leaves the cost of growing internal network backbone capacity on the ISP. I believe the scenario you are describing would allow ISPs to offset this capital cost to both the big content providers and the biggest consumers.

I really don't understand what your point is ... how does avoding load on the internal backbone leave which costs of growing the backbone to the ISP?!

> The point about torrents and bitcoin is that these applications are particularly burdensome on routers because of the amount of connection requests as compared to a fairly manageable HTTP or RTSP session.

Uh? How is the number of connection requests relevant to a router?!

> As I mentioned above, server co-location and direct network peering is already a thing that many larger ISPs offer on a non-discriminatory basis.

Non-discriminatory is no enough, it has to be free or at cost. They are a monopoly, and as such non-discriminatory is still a monopolistic price.

> However, most new businesses will piggyback on existing cloud hosting (AWS/Google/Azure) or CDN (Akamai/Google/Cloudfront) arrangements.

Which isn't necessarily that bad, as long as there is competition among CDNs. A CDN ultimately is just a different kind of transit provider.

> how does avoding load on the internal backbone leave which costs of growing the backbone to the ISP?

I didn't say anything about avoiding load. They don't want to raise capital to build their own backbone - so they want to pass off the cost to the largest traffic sources (Netflix etc) and largest traffic destinations (most oactive consumers).

> How is the number of connection requests relevant to a router?!

More connection requests means more CPU usage on a router. More open connections means more RAM usage.

> Non-discriminatory is no enough, it has to be free or at cost. They are a monopoly, and as such non-discriminatory is still a monopolistic price.

Non-discriminatory means they offer all content providers the same prices. Now if you're saying that they can overcharge because there's no competition, then I agree. This is a problem in the short term. But if I understand Pai's logic, this gap in the market will spur competition (and solutions) to emerge through innovation. I'm skeptical about this logic but cautiously optimistic.

I grant you that this is not a satisfying answer when you only have one shitty ISP option like Comcast and there's no hope fore a competitor in the short term. But given the growth of fixed residential wireless and new spectrum like White Spaces it's possible that a Comcast/Verizon would be doing more damage to their own brand (and content offerings) in the long term by mistreating their customers.

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