net neutrality and peering wars continue

Fri Jun 21 14:48:32 UTC 2013

On Jun 21, 2013, at 4:20 PM, Benson Schliesser <bensons at queuefull.net> wrote:

> On 2013-06-21 4:54 AM, Bill Woodcock wrote:
>> Again, this only matters if you place a great deal of importance both on the notion that size equals fairness, and that fairness is more important than efficiency.
>> ...
>>> I think the point is here that networks are nudging these decisions by making certain services suck more than others by way of preferential network access.
>> I agree completely that that's the problem.  But it didn't appear to be what Benson was talking about.
>> 
> 
> It's clear to me that you don't understand what I've said. But whether you're being obtuse or simply disagreeing, there is little value in repeating my specific points. Instead, in hope of encouraging useful discussion, I'll try to step back and describe things more broadly.
> 
> The behaviors of networks are driven (in almost all cases) by the needs of business. In other words, decisions about peering, performance, etc, are all driven by a P&L sheet.

This isn't exactly true and it turns out that the subtle difference from this fact is very important.

They are driven not by a P&L sheet, but by executive's opinions of what will improve the P&L sheet.

There is ample evidence that promiscuous peering can actually reduce costs across the board and increase revenues, image, good will, performance, and even transit purchases.

There is also evidence that turning off peers tends to hamper revenue growth, degrade performance, create a negative image for the organization, reduce good will, etc.

One need look no further than the history of SPRINT for a graphic example. In the early 2000's when SPRINT started depeering, they were darn near the epicenter of internet transit. Today, they're yet another also ran among major telco-based ISPs.

Sure, their peering policy alone is likely not the only cause of this decline in stature, but it certainly contributed.

> So, clearly, these networks will try to minimize their costs (whether "fair" or not). And any imbalance between peers' cost burdens is an easy target. If one peer's routing behavior forces the other to carry more traffic a farther distance, then there is likely to be a dispute at some point - contrary to some hand-wave comments, carrying multiple gigs of traffic across the continent does have a meaningful cost, and pushing that cost onto somebody else is good for business.

Reasonable automation means that it costs nearly nothing to add peers at public exchange points once you are present at that exchange point. The problem with looking only at the cost of moving the bits around in this equation is that it ignores where the value proposition for delivering those bits lies.

In reality, if an eyeball ISP doesn't maintain sufficient peering relationships to deliver the traffic the eyeballs are requesting, the eyeballs will become displeased with said ISP. In many cases, this is less relevant than it should be because the eyeball network is either a true monopoly, an effective monopoly (30/10Mbps cable vs. 1.5Mbps/384k DSL means that cable is an effective monopoly for all practical purposes), or a duopoly where both choices are nearly equally poor.

In markets served by multiple high speed providers, you tend to find that consumers gravitate towards the ones that don't engage in peering wars to the point that they degrade service to those customers.

On the other hand, if a content provider does not maintain sufficient capacity to reach the eyeball networks in a way that the eyeball networks are willing to accept said traffic, the content provider is at risk of losing subscribers. Since content tends to have many competitors capable of delivering an equivalent service, content providers have less leverage in any such dispute. Their customers don't want to hear "You're on Comcast and they don't like us" as an excuse when the service doesn't work. They'll go find a provider Comcast likes.

The bottom line is that these ridiculous disputes are expensive to both sides and degrade service for their mutual customers. I make a point of opening tickets every time this becomes a performance issue for me. If more consumers did, then perhaps that cost would help drive better decisions from the executives at these providers.

The other problem that plays into this is, as someone noted, many of these providers are in the internet business as a secondary market for revenue added to their primary business. They'd rather not see their primary business revenues driven onto the internet and off of their traditional services. As such, there is a perceived P&L gain to the other services by degrading the performance of competing services delivered over the internet. Attempting to use this fact to leverage (extort) money from the content providers to make up those revenues also makes for an easy target in the board room.

> This is where so-called "bit mile peering" agreements can help - neutralize arguments about balance in order to focus on what matters. Of course there is still the "P" side of a P&L sheet to consider, and networks will surely attempt to capture some of the success of their peers' business models. But take away the legitimate "fairness" excuses and we can see the real issue in these cases.

The problem I see with "bit mile peering" agreements is that the measurement of traffic that would be necessary to make such an agreement function reliably and verifiably by both sides would likely cost more than the moving of the traffic in question. I'd hate to see the internet degrade to telco style billing where it often cost $0.90 of every $1 collected to cover the costs of the call accounting and billing systems.

> Not that we have built the best (standard, interoperable, cheap) tools to make bit-mile peering possible... But that's a good conversation to have.

It might be an interesting conversation to have, but at the end of the day, I am concerned that the costs of the tools and their operations exceeds the cost being accounted. In such a case, it is often better to simply write off the cost.

It's like trying to recover all the screws/nuts/washers that fall on the floor in an assembly plant in order to save money. The cost of retrieving and sorting them vastly exceeds their value.

Owen