Netflix and AT&T strike deal to boost streaming speeds
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@JaredBusch So as Netflix is an end point, not a network (in the same way that my home is an endpoint, not a network) what makes one a subscriber and one a peer? AT&T to Verizon where both provide "pass through" networking and not endpoint services (server or subscriber) is what peer to peer used to mean - network providers who provide routing services. Anyone providing an actual service or consuming a service is an end point.
Netflix might be being granted a peering agreement, and I might not be, but the situation is the same that in both case, I am an endpoint (node) and they are an endpoint (node) and we are trying to talk to each other across a network (AT&T, Cablevision, Verizon, etc.) from which the only service either of us pay for is the routing of traffic from one to the other.
Netflix is much bigger than me, but it is still just an endpoint service. You can't get traffic to route from AT&T through Netflix to Verizon for example, so not a network peer. And you can't buy an IP address from Netflix. So Netflix is neither a backhaul carrier nor even an ISP. They are an end node every big as much as I am.
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@scottalanmiller That is not correct. They are not just an end point. They are also in the business of peering traffic now. They were an end point and they paid their provider for their connection. That provider was out of balance of their peering agreement and that agreement was being enforced by the other parties (Comcast/Verizon/AT&T) causing the issues with the service. This is why Netflix chose to get into the business of peering traffic.
Netflix did not have to. They chose to in order to get around the problem that they were experiencing with their current provider.
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Think of it this way, what if I got a dual WAN connection at home? I could have Verizon and Cablevision. That's not unlike what we are calling a peering agreement for Netflix. They had a connection to one carrier but they wanted lower latency, better bandwidth or whatever so they got another WAN connection. That's all a peer connection is (normally more than two links, of course.) But it is not fundamentally different than what you can and sometimes do do at home. I don't route traffic between the WAN links, I just use both for myself. Netflix is doing the same, being an end user on multiple networks. Netflix does more detection to determine shortest path to client to determine which of their WAN connections to choose, but you could do that at home if you wanted to.
It's perfectly fine for them to do this and it is fine for the carriers to let them. It makes sense. If you want to talk on the Verizon network with the best possible quality using them as your ISP (getting a peering agreement) allows for that in the best possible way.
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@JaredBusch said:
@scottalanmiller That is not correct. They are not just an end point. They are also in the business of peering traffic now. They were an end point and they paid their provider for their connection. That provider was out of balance of their peering agreement and that agreement was being enforced by the other parties (Comcast/Verizon/AT&T) causing the issues with the service. This is why Netflix chose to get into the business of peering traffic.
Netflix did not have to. They chose to in order to get around the problem that they were experiencing with their current provider.
A peer is still paying a provider for a connection. Using the term peer does change their endpoint status. In what way is Netflix different than any other endpoint other than a piece of paper (maybe not even that) using the term "peer" on it? What is different at the network traffic level?
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@scottalanmiller said:
Think of it this way, what if I got a dual WAN connection at home? I could have Verizon and Cablevision. That's not unlike what we are calling a peering agreement for Netflix. They had a connection to one carrier but they wanted lower latency, better bandwidth or whatever so they got another WAN connection. That's all a peer connection is (normally more than two links, of course.)
Dual subscriber connection is not the same thing. You may use them in a similar fashion, but they are not the same.
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The "real" peers, carriers like AT&T and Verizon, are still subscribers to each other. They are equal in that they both service roughly identical amounts of upstream and downstream traffic and so are called peers because they give and take the traffic. The word peer implies an equal relationship where they are both doing the same thing.
Netflix might have signed something called a peering agreement but unless they become an ISP, they are not a real peer with AT&T or Verizon. They are just an end user with a different title on their paperwork.
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@JaredBusch said:
Dual subscriber connection is not the same thing. You may use them in a similar fashion, but they are not the same.
How is it different?
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Netflix can't be paying to be a peer. Peers don't pay because they are peers and the interconnect is mutually beneficial. There is nothing for either side to gain. Here is Wikipedia's definition of peering: In computer networking, peering is a voluntary interconnection of administratively separate Internet networks for the purpose of exchanging traffic between the users of each network. The pure definition of peering is settlement-free, "bill-and-keep," or "sender keeps all," meaning that neither party pays the other in association with the exchange of traffic; instead, each derives and retains revenue from its own customers.
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Also according to Wikipedia, for purposes of misleading, incorrect labeling of some agreements as peering happens quite often. That is what is happening here. Netflix is being called a peer for marketing reasons but is clearing not a peer: Marketing pressures have led to the word “peering” sometimes being used to intentionally mislead when there is some settlement involved. In the face of such ambiguity, the phrase "settlement-free peering" is sometimes used to explicitly denote pure cost-free peering.
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Yes and that is the same point I argued in a prior thread but I got lazy on the terminology because no one else seemed to care or understand. I simplified to using the word peer.
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I even linked to the wiki article last time.
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@JaredBusch said:
Yes and that is the same point I argued in a prior thread but I got lazy on the terminology because no one else seemed to care or understand. I simplified to using the word peer.
I understand, as does every news article. But the reality is is that Netflix is an end user, not a peer. They are just paying for more WAN connections to more carriers directly for better levels of service than are possible passing only through that network's own peers. It all makes sense. It's just not a special case.
I've worked for shops that had global "peer" agreements like this and BGP and massive 10Gb/s and higher connections to lots of carriers and points of presence. But we weren't a peer, just a massively high performance and highly redundant endpoint network.
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Peering is swapping or doing favours (that sounds naughty.)
Netflix is a customer. A big customer. The biggest. Netflix is a special case, sort of, due to their size. But they shouldn't be treated unfairly and in this case I doubt that they are. But if we agree that they are not really peering and are, according to the Wikipedia article, just a "customer" then.... what's the discussion about? I'm a customer in the same way. I have a network that pays for a link to a peer-level carrier. Aren't we back to Netflix being a subscriber / customer like me?
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Is Netflix even a "network" or is it lots of endpoints? Previously Netflix was hosted on Amazon. If they are exclusively on Amazon still, Netflix might have a single, internal network that is connecting at many WAN points. But my guess is that their framework is more disparate as there probably is not a great need for a single, unified, backend network. Could be wrong, I don't have any special insight into Netflix's behind the scenes architecture. But normal peers are single networks, big backbones. Netflix, as far as I know, does not operate any unified network of that nature but just uses existing Internet connections for their own internal structure (as most customers on cloud providers do.)
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What is concerning about the Netflix situation is that it sounds a warning bell that the Internet model is failing. True peers (net neutral, free) were the backbone of what built the Internet. Connect once, to everywhere, is what made the whole thing work. If Netflix can't be serviced by that model I think that a lot of companies are worried that it is going to be a network mesh future where anyone of any size (including non-service customers, those not providing any service at all) will be forced to have individual network connections to all the carriers that they want to talk to.
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the problem is peering costs a lot to maintain and doesn't always provide much benefit See this I'm not going to describe too much about this but just know this is a major network covering lots of areas and with peering connections to multiple CDNs.
Granted this is just over the past Day
This is one of the peering connections over the past year (keep in mind that the in/out are actually reversed from what you'd normally think due to the location of the router interface, if that makes sense). In other words the Bigger spikes that are technically outbound are Outbound from the peering CDN into the the network.
Basically this means that certain sites, (that may or may not provide streaming content of some sort), are visited more during the college semesters for the most part. There are many many colleges and college apartments in southwest Virginia -
@scottalanmiller said:
Peering is swapping or doing favours (that sounds naughty.)
Netflix is a customer. A big customer. The biggest. Netflix is a special case, sort of, due to their size. But they shouldn't be treated unfairly and in this case I doubt that they are. But if we agree that they are not really peering and are, according to the Wikipedia article, just a "customer" then.... what's the discussion about? I'm a customer in the same way. I have a network that pays for a link to a peer-level carrier. Aren't we back to Netflix being a subscriber / customer like me?
this was my whole point. Why is Netflix being singled out? It's true that Netflix is pumping out tons more data than it brings in, but that really shouldn't be Netflix's problem, that should be Cogent's problem since Cogent is providing the ISP access (the real Peering points) to the rest of the internet. Cogent is the one in violation of peering agreement with the other providers.
Scott's right, the internet's model is now broken. Perhaps Cogent should have simply said.. sorry Netflix, you're using an unbalanced amount of internet traffic, so you have to stop, or we have to find a new model to bill you upon.
Netflix has started doing this on their own already by placing banks of servers directly on several of the major players networks so that customers of those networks aren't traveling over the Peering links to get the content.
My next question is, why did some carriers accept this and others not? It is because Verizon didn't want to allow Netflix to compete with it's own content? and this was/is a way to hold them hostage?
