S.Korea broadband firm sues Netflix after traffic surge

Mon Oct 11 07:49:58 UTC 2021

On Sun, Oct 10, 2021 at 2:44 PM Doug Barton <dougb at dougbarton.us> wrote:

> [some snipping below]
>
> Also just to be clear, these are my own opinions, not necessarily shared
> by any current or former employers.
>
> On 10/10/21 12:31 PM, Mark Tinka wrote:
> > On 10/10/21 21:08, Doug Barton wrote
> >> Given that issue, I have some sympathy for eyeball networks wanting to
> >> charge content providers for the increased capacity that is needed to
> >> bring in their content. The cost would be passed on to the content
> >> provider's customers...
> >
> > But eyeballs are already paying you a monthly fee for 100Mbps of service
> > (for example). So they should pay a surcharge, over-and-above that, that
> > determines how they can use that 100Mbps? Seems overly odd, to me.
>
> Yes, I get that. But as you pointed out here and in other comments, the
> ISP market is based entirely on undercutting competitors (with a lot of
> gambling thrown in, as Matthew pointed out).
>
>  [...]

> > So what rat hole does this lead us down into? People who want to stream
> > Youtube should pay their ISP for that? People who want to spend
> > unmentionable hours on Linkedin should be their ISP for that? People who
> > want to gawk over Samsung's web site because they love it so much,
> > should pay their ISP for that?
>
> First, I'm not saying "should." I'm saying that given the market
> economics, having the content providers who use "a lot" of bandwidth do
> something to offset those costs to the ISPs might be the best/least bad
> option. Whether "something" is a local cache box, peering, money, or
> <other> is something I think that the market should determine.
>

Going back to the fact that it's not the content providers "using"
a lot of bandwidth, it's the eyeball customer *requesting* a lot
of bandwidth, I think the best approach is for the content providers
to help manage traffic levels by lowering bit rates towards eyeball
networks that are feeling strained by their users.

Instead of a 4K stream, drop it to 480 or 240; the eyeball network
should be happy at the reduced strain the resulting stream puts
on their network.

The content network can even point out they're being a good
Network Citizen by putting up a brief banner at the top of the
stream saying "reducing bit rate to relieve stress on your ISPs
network".  That way, the happy customer knows that the
content provider is doing their part to help their ISP stay
profitable...I mean, doing their part to help the Internet
run better.

> And to answer Matthew's question, I don't know what "a lot" is. I think
> the market should determine that as well.
>

The market *is* determining that at the moment...but not in the
direction people expect.  Instead, it's creating a new market for
intermediaries; imagine you're an eyeball network that happens
to have peering with SKB, and largely inbound traffic flows.
Wouldn't it make sense for you to reach out to a player like
Netflix, and offer to host content cache boxes that happen to
only answer requests coming from SKB IP space, at a price
well below what SKB was going to charge the content provider?
As the eyeball network, you'd see your traffic ratios
balance out as the cache traffic filled your under-utilized outbound
port capacity, and you'd get a bit of additional revenue you otherwise
wouldn't get.  As the content provider, you're serving your customers
for a lower price than SKB wants to charge, and without giving into
SKB's extortion tactics.  It's a win-win-lose situation, in which the
content provider wins, the eyeball network that has a peering
relationship with SKB wins, and the only loser is SKB, which
doesn't get the additional revenue it was looking for, and actually
helps funnel money to a competitor that they otherwise wouldn't
have gotten.

I'm pretty sure this is going to start happening more and more,
as ISPs realize that putting content caches into their IP space
to serve not only their own customers, but also customers of
selected peers can be a source of good leverage in the market.

Matt
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