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Comment by msandford | Hacker News Reader

From the article: "Netflix sends out an unprecedented amount of traffic."

YES! Yes they do! But Netflix doesn't send that traffic for fun and giggles, just to swamp your network and clog up the port. They do it because YOUR CUSTOMERS HAVE ASKED THEM TO and you, Verizon, you duplicitous shitbag, have SOLD THAT CAPABILITY to your customers. They have LITERALLY PAID you to successfully receive up to 75Mbps worth of traffic from ANYONE, INCLUDING NETFLIX.

I can't fucking stand this "they send a lot of traffic our way, but we don't send any back!" bullshit. Netflix doesn't PUSH traffic to your customers, your customers PULL traffic FROM Netflix.

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Maybe we're getting to the point where Internet connections are more like public roads.

Maybe no private entity should control these roads.

Maybe it's time for a sweeping change.

Or just call it a toll road. Of course those tolls will go up every year for things like maintenance and improvements and other esoteric vagaries....

I think this might be a clear description of what would happen if roads became privatized.

Imagine UPS as Netflix and a turnpike operator as Verizon.

The "sweeping change" is an old legal standard: "common carrier". They're contracted to move bytes from source A to customer B at "up to" X Mbps; so long as (albeit limited) bandwidth is available at any given moment, fill the pipe and shove that data thru regardless of source. Traffic shaping may be fair if the pipe is full, but not if unused bandwidth remains sparsely used based solely on source or content.

Raise your hand if you've contacted your elected representative regarding ISPs becoming Common Carriers.

(Full disclosure, I'm not an American and thus have little to no say regrading American ISPs, but I advocate for this in my home country.)

/me largely expects crickets in response.

Unfortunately I think we just aren't pissed off enough about this as a group yet, evidenced by the lack of action from us and from legislators.

Raise your hand if your elected representative has any idea what having ISPs become Common Carriers means or entails. Keep your hand up if 10% of your district also knows. Keep your hand up if you (and your district collectively) can out lobby Comcast, TWC, ATT, Verizon, etc.

I don't know that it's that people aren't pissed off, its probably more that the people who are pissed off are uninformed, will not become informed easily, and will not organize as easily as already well organized and very well funded corporations, lobbyists, and PACs.

They have LITERALLY PAID you to successfully receive up to 75Mbps worth of traffic from ANYONE

Aye, there's the rub: "up to". Nothing says (and perhaps deep in the EULA there's the opposite) you'll get that, or even a substantial fraction of unused shared bandwidth, commensurate to your needs.

Customers should push the meme that "up to X Mbps" really means "you won't get more than X Mbps, and likely much less".

Customers should be writing Verizon et al complaining "you CAN send that data faster but you aren't, and we have proof you're choosing to practically renege on our contract."

Yeah, but we're talking about a 1-5MBps stream here. Even though the headline 75Mbps number is, as you say, a "we promise never to exceed", I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that the ISP provide 7% of the listed capacity.

+1 for "duplicitous shitbag". That really hits the nail on the head.

Peering is the part I wonder about. Netflix pays for the pipes to upload. Customers pay for the pipes to download. But who pays for the peering pipes in the middle? Should it be Netflix's ISP? Customer's ISP? Both? Neither?

Exactly this. I try to explain this to people in layman terms like this: Comcast ist trying to charge the water fountain, saying it "wants" to pump to much water into people's homes.

Also, don't they tend to sell service with much higher download capacity than upload? If so it's arguably their fault that traffic is unbalanced.

I almost upvoted this.

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