Comment on ISPs can charge extra for fast gaming under FCC’s Internet rules, critics say
Cuttlefish1111@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Data is data unless they can commodify it. Data is like a river that never ends. Doesn’t cost them Anything
Comment on ISPs can charge extra for fast gaming under FCC’s Internet rules, critics say
Cuttlefish1111@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Data is data unless they can commodify it. Data is like a river that never ends. Doesn’t cost them Anything
theit8514@lemmy.world 8 months ago
You seem to be misinformed on how the internet works. Nothing is “free”. ISPs have to buy equipment, pay for expensive physical connectivity (without disturbing existing infrastructure), and usually have to deal with constant, ever increasing bandwidth requirements.
I’m all for a bit of net neutrality, but ISPs tend to get a lot of flak for policies like this, for seemingly no reason. For example, let’s say ISP A and Upstream B have a mutual bandwidth sharing policy (called Peering) where both sides benefit equally from the connectivity. ISP A determines that N is using all the bandwidth to Upstream B. ISP A has three options: N gets all the bandwidth to Upstream B (disturbing other traffic to/from that network), N has to be throttled to allow all traffic equally, or ISP A and Upstream B need to expand their network again (new equipment, new physical links) which will cost a lot of money. N doesn’t even pay ISP A or Upstream B, they just pay their ISP C. In the end, ISP A has to throttle N, and N is the one who had to expand/change their business model to deliver content to their customers. They had to go out and buy services from many upstream providers to even the load and designed a solution to install Caching boxes inside each ISP’s datacenter so their traffic could reach end users without going upstream.
OsaErisXero@kbin.run 8 months ago
The correct answer in that scenario is C should be paying for it, as in the stated scenario C's traffic would be exceeding the peering arrangement with B and/or A, but there were/are a number of reasons that breaks down in the real world.
roguetrick@kbin.social 8 months ago
Sender pays is what Korea has. It does not work well at all.
OsaErisXero@kbin.run 8 months ago
Peering isn't Sender Pays, Peering is "I'll carry your traffic if you'll carry mine", with the understanding that when there's an imbalance in one direction or another that an exchange of some sort is had, be it dollars, bandwidth limits, or similar. In this case, where C interconnects with A which interconnects with B, if C's traffic is so substantial that it's saturating the crosslink between A and B, A would need to evaluate whether their peering agreement with C means that C needs to be paying for the network upgrade, or if there's enough traffic moving from A's network into C's to offset that, and that the interconnect between A and B is the root issue. In your example, rather than paying more into ISPs and, essentially, indirectly funding US network backbone infrastructure upgrades across the board, they solved their problem with cache servers that they handed out like candy to avoid their costs to C sky rocketing. G solved this problem by buying a bunch of dark fiber which was laid on spec by contractors and started peering directly with the Tier 1 providers, dramatically reducing their cost delta.
Where Korea's system differs is that in traditional Tier 1 peering, as I understand it, T's ISP (call them P) should be using some of the money they get from T to pay Q and R for the excess traffic of their customer, but instead Q and R were, per the government, allowed to also charge T for delivery of their packets, resulting in T having to pay both on the up and downlink side, charging them twice for the same bit. T, rather than attempt what G did, told Korea to pound sand and exited the market.
kalleboo@lemmy.world 8 months ago
The customers of A are paying A to access to the internet, including N. So A should charge their customers enough that they can pay for the equipment to deliver that.
In a working market with many participants, customers can choose a cheaper ISP that has congested/throttled peering, or a more expensive ISP with gold-plated interconnects.
The problem is that in the US, typically your choice of ISP is limited by geography. In many other places you have open fiber networks where the last mile is shared and then you can choose what ISP you want ontop of that, and the ISP is what determines how good your peering is.