Netflix packets being dropped every day because Verizon wants more money | Hacker News Reader

Netflix packets being dropped every day because Verizon wants more money

arstechnica.com

11 pointstrauco7 comments

I really don't get it. Customer wants to use Netflix, buys a service from Verizon to get/access "what he/she wants". And Verizon wants to charge Netflix for that? Always a WTF moment for me.

Verizon doesn't care what customers want. Cellular is a cartel if ever there was one.

This is Verizon the FIOS/DSL company, not the cellular carrier. My understanding is that the VZW unit is barely related to the cabled connections.

Not that this makes them any better, of course.

This goes back to peering between Cogent and Verizon, and possibly "legitimately" has nothing to do with netflix the business. Verizon's public peering policy states:

"1.2 Traffic Exchange Ratio. The ratio of the aggregate amount of traffic exchanged between the Requester and the VERIZON Internet Network with which it seeks to interconnect shall be roughly balanced and shall not exceed 1.8:1."

Their equal traffic ratio has been in every tier 1's peering policy since the 90s. The issue is that Cogent (One of Netflix's ISPs) is used almost exclusively by content providers, and thus traffic ratios are going to not going to be balanced. Traditionally peering was only free between those with similar traffic ratios, and it was free as payments to each other would cancel each other out anyway. Verizon, you could say legitimately, believes Cogent is not a peer and should either pay them for the interconnection, or purchase transit from someone who is a peer.

This is not new with Cogent. At one time they were practically giving away IP transit to any eyeball heavy ISPs to help balance their ratios. They muscled themselves into Tier One-ish status by buying cheap fiber after the bubble burst and sold transit for cheaper than anyone to build up traffic. Rather than paying settlement fees to make up for the traffic inbalance, Cogent has played hard ball and went through numerous de-peerings where Cogent's customers were unable to access the other network.

Peering is a messy world. It used to be the content providers and the eyeball networks both had to pay the national Tier 1s for access and the Tier 1s interconnected for free. Now the ma bells ended up buying the Tier 1s. (Verizon bought MCi/UUnet, SBC/BellSouth bought ATT) and so the eyeball networks are the Tier 1s. And the Tier 1s also own cable networks that compete with one Cogent's customers (netflix). This is a newer development and so while Verizon's network team may rightly be suggesting Cogent should pay them, this ignores the bigger picture. The old peering paradigms may need adjusting now.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this solely Cogent's fault?

Settlement-free peering agreements tend to be fine as long as symmetrical traffic is sustained, and that's not the case at the moment, meaning Cogent are in breach of the agreement.

So... Cogent need to re-negotiate the peering agreement with Verizon, which is what Verizon is demanding, quite fairly?

One of the Ars comments pointed it out: Residential service is almost all asymmetric and heavy on the download side. The residents paid for plans to deliver data in certain advertised up and down rates. Why should Verizon get the resident's to pay for the pipes, and charge yet again to deliver data downstream just because it's a popular service.

Though there's a media undercurrent to treat peering disagreements separate from Net Neutrality, I think most users would differ.

That makes sense, thank you.

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