Muni Fiber and Politics

Wed Jul 23 20:08:09 UTC 2014

What responsibility does Verizon have to maintain this ratio?  Are they 
being faithful to the agreement when they make no effort to compete in 
the wholesale market?  What content players buy transit from Verizon to 
reach networks other than Verizon's?

On Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 03:25:49PM -0600, Jason Iannone wrote:
>You didn't misunderstand me.  But that's not the only point I was
>making.  Yes, Netflix pays Cogent for access to the networks it
>doesn't have interconnections with.  Cogent and Verizon have a 1.8:1
>peering agreement.  Cogent sends more than that and as such is in
>breach of contract.  It's not unfair for the breaching party to accept
>penalties.  So it's not exactly Netflix's responsibility, it's
>Cogent's.  They're responsible for providing their customer, Netflix,
>with the service they purchased.
>
>Netflix's problem is that their application generates a third of the
>internet's traffic.  That leads to special considerations for Netflix
>as it makes its transit and interconnection contracts.  Anyone
>promising anything to Netflix should consider its bitweight.
>
>On Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 2:28 PM, Jay Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: "Jason Iannone" <jason.iannone at gmail.com>
>>
>>> Lots of blame to go around. Verizon isn't an eyeball only network
>>> (Comcast would have a more difficult time describing itself as
>>> anything but), so a reasonable peering policy should apply. In
>>> Verizon's case, 1.8:1. I speculate that without Netflix, Cogent and
>>> L3 are largely within the specifications of their peering agreements.
>>> Netflix knows how much traffic it sends. If its transit is doing
>>> their due diligence, they'll also know. It didn't come as a surprise
>>> to either transit provider that they were going to fill their pipes
>>> into at least some eyeball provider peers. Cogent is notoriously hard
>>> nosed when it comes to disputes, and Level3 caved very early in the
>>> fight. Anyway, this is a simple peering dispute between carriers that
>>> almost certainly knew they were participating with the internet's
>>> number one traffic generator and eyeballs wanting to get back into the
>>> contractual green. Also, I don't think it's out of line for anyone to
>>> ask for free stuff.
>>
>> I might be misreading your posting here, Jason, but it sounds as if you
>> are playing into Verizon's argument that this traffic is somehow Netflix's
>> *fault*/"responsibility", rather than merely being the other side of
>> flows *initiated by Verizon FiOS customers*.
>>
>> Did I misunderstand you?
>>
>> Cheers,
>> -- jra
>> --
>> Jay R. Ashworth                  Baylink                       jra at baylink.com
>> Designer                     The Things I Think                       RFC 2100
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