L3 escalates on Peering/CDN/Neutrality.
The devil on my left shoulder wants to laugh at L3 for their hypocrisy.
The angle on my right shoulder wants to congratulate a "tier one" (whatever the F that means) provider for finally admitting, in writing, in public, from a lawyer, what the rest of us have known for decades.
In the middle is me being afraid of the gov't actually regulating something that _is_ a problem, but because they are the gov't, doing it in a way that will cause more issues than it solves. 
Every time the market has troubled the status quo, networks
have failed to find ways that adapt to that market. The
market ends up working around the network.
Napster and all the goodness that followed it, is one such
example; until iTunes adapted. And yes, iTunes is NOT the
network.
Now the OTT's are driving the network hard, and the network
des not want to adapt (perhaps calling in the FCC is
adapting... not).
So expect the market to work around this as well. The
network keeps getting left behind...
Mark.
Mark Tinka wrote the following on 3/20/2014 7:39 AM:
The angle on my right shoulder wants to congratulate a
"tier one" (whatever the F that means) provider for
finally admitting, in writing, in public, from a lawyer,
what the rest of us have known for decades.Every time the market has troubled the status quo, networks
have failed to find ways that adapt to that market. The
market ends up working around the network.Napster and all the goodness that followed it, is one such
example; until iTunes adapted. And yes, iTunes is NOT the
network.Now the OTT's are driving the network hard, and the network
des not want to adapt (perhaps calling in the FCC is
adapting... not).So expect the market to work around this as well. The
network keeps getting left behind...Mark.
I don't see this as a technical problem, but one of business and ethics. ISP X advertises/sells customers "up to 8Mbps" (as an example), but when it comes to delivering that product, they've only guaranteed 512Kbps (if any) because the ISP hasn't put in the infrastructure to support 8Mbps per customer. Customer believes he/she has 8Mbps, Content provider says we provide 8Mbps content, but ISP can (theoretically and in practice) only deliver a fraction of that. That feels like false advertising to me.
One can reasonably make the argument that not all of ISP X's customers are using the service simultaneously, so the infrastructure to support 8Mbps per customer is unnecessary and unjustified. However, if past experience proves that 25% of business X's customers are consistently using the service simultaneously and business X has NOT put in the infrastructure to support this common level of usage, then this appears to be a simple financial decision to advertise/sell something that the business knows it cannot deliver. Would the same business practices fly in other fields? Perhaps. Airlines overbook, knowing that some customers won't show up. However, they don't sell 200 tickets (knowing that 90% if customers will show) but have only 100 seats to serve the 180 customers they expect. Fast food restaurants don't sell you a fry and drink when they know they're out of fries. I can speculate that customers would not patronize companies in the travel or food industry if they operated the same way that some ISP's operate. The difference, to me, seems to be that ISPs often enjoy a monopoly while there are usually several food and travel options in most places.
--Blake
"The market" can only "work around" things if there is a functioning market. Monopolies are not a functioning market.
There will be a solution - in fact, there is today. Doesn't mean it is optimal. In fact, in the presence of a monopoly, it is pretty much guaranteed to be sub-optimal.
Completely agree.
What I'm saying is the market is now suggesting that the
idea that I won't be using my 8Mbps all the time does not
hold as true now as it did ten years ago.
A lot of the content is being driven from the homes
(symmetric bandwidth being driven by FTTH). And while
customers are not online 100% of the time, they are more
online now than they were ten years ago. So building the
network just enough for what you over-advertise isn't a
workable strategy. Will it stop? Unlikely...
Now the market is saying, "I want Netflix and all its
cousins" on a consistent basis, or at least, during prime
viewing. And the network is failing to deliver this because
the network is set in its ways.
I'm not yet sure what the solution will be (looking at a
global scale, not just North America), but I hazard that it
might not involve the network, in the way it does today,
unless the network can figure out how to make this work with
happiness all around.
Mark.
"The market" can only "work around" things if there is a
functioning market. Monopolies are not a functioning
market.
When did we ever have a "functioning market", even in
markets that are considered "liberalized" :-)?
It is what it is - it's just less bad in some places than
others.
There will be a solution - in fact, there is today.
Doesn't mean it is optimal. In fact, in the presence of
a monopoly, it is pretty much guaranteed to be
sub-optimal.
Aye.
Mark.
Mark Tinka wrote the following on 3/20/2014 11:05 AM:
"The market" can only "work around" things if there is a
functioning market. Monopolies are not a functioning
market.When did we ever have a "functioning market", even in
markets that are considered "liberalized" :-)?It is what it is - it's just less bad in some places than
others.There will be a solution - in fact, there is today.
Doesn't mean it is optimal. In fact, in the presence of
a monopoly, it is pretty much guaranteed to be
sub-optimal.Aye.
Mark.
It sounds like we're all in agreement that the underlying issue is that some businesses enjoying a monopoly are allowed to design networks for the use case of yesteryear and do not have the market pressure forcing them to provide the use case of today's (or the future's) subscribers. The solution seems to be competition or regulation. The current administration supplied over $7 billion in loans and grants (Growing Fiber Internet in Rural America: A Stimulus Success Story | WIRED) for internet providers to provide high speed last mile services as part of a Federal stimulus package. This type of encouragement in infrastructure and competition seem much better, to me, than regulation formed to to nanny and punish folks that run their business unfairly. I understand that Comcast, as an example, has a fiduciary duty to its stock holders to make the best return possible. But I would think its recent actions would likely fall foul to basic consumer protection regulation (failing to provide the goods or services it sold). All of Comcast's customers could file a complaint with the BBB, but it probably wouldn't be productive because many of them have no other choice for high speed internet service.
As consumers, we may also have to accept that cheap internet access prices were based on the usage case of yesteryear. If we use internet services twice as often today, we may need to pay twice as much as we did yesterday. If we, as consumers, have options, but are choosing to pay for the the bare minimum option, we may as well expect the bare minimum service (which apparently is not very much). As long as we have options, which today is not always true, I think the market will function. This why events like the Comcast/TWC merger are troubling to me. Because it means we are going in the wrong direction, back towards monopoly. Our efforts, at present, are probably best spent encouraging competition and fairness. As a consumer and professional, I sincerely hope that the FCC continues on its trend to support net neutrality because I believe it encourages both competition and fairness.
--Blake
I don't know where everyones traffic goes but level3 and us, nothing.
We've dropped all but 1 line which will be gone in 60 days. I don't care
what their excuse is, they have been horrible this last 14 months and I'd
rather get bw from cogent who isn't great but doesn't blame everyone else
for their inability to peer better...
A premium cost provider should have premium service and level3 is no longer
that.
Bryan Socha
Network Engineer
DigitalOcean
646-450-0472
I'd prefer competition to regulation.
+1
Is this what happens when a vendor gets too big?
-Petter
This email is the reason I spend money with digital ocean. 
You should too.
uhh, no. It's the 21st century. I prefer to spend my money with those
that, at a bare minimum, provide IPv6.
-Jim P.
Meh.. Some providers need to/should comply with the majority of the
requirements. I¹d support ipv6 if I could and it wasn¹t a big deal, but my
traffic originates from (usually) the ipv4 sphere. So unless all of these
carriers start magically migrating to v6, I don¹t know that a lot of
³hosting² providers need to support it. It¹s a cool feature, but it¹s not
something where I head for the door when they say I can¹t receive v6
traffic.
My .02.
Are carriers prepared to tunnel IPv4 traffic?
Carriers offering v6 is a novel idea, but the edge networks,
enterprises, etc. are moving very fast.
- - ferg
Sounds like a lot of 6 to 4 links to me.. 
I don't see this as a technical problem, but one of business and ethics.
ISP X advertises/sells customers "up to 8Mbps" (as an example), but when it
comes to delivering that product, they've only guaranteed 512Kbps (if any)
because the ISP hasn't put in the infrastructure to support 8Mbps per
customer. Customer believes
Hey, what part of "up to 8Mbps" is an assurance, that the system supports
8Mbps from all customers 24x7 simultaneously? Only the former can be
delivered inexpensively; the latter from large service providers is a
business service that doesn't seem to be in the compass of ordinary
mortals. Because this is the well-known industry standard; it can't
accurately be described as one of deception.
Then there is this whole matter of end-to-end connectivity. Just
because your WAN device links up at 8 Megabits, does not mean you have
been guaranteed 8 Mbits end-to-end.
Intentionally failing to upgrade selected links and establish peerings to
carry traffic to high-demand destinations when necessary, is just
constructive rate-limiting.
It's just a very clumsy imprecise alternative to rate-limiting a
destination, that can be claimed to have been done without specific
intent.
As far as network neutrality regulation is concerned... that should be
regarded with (essentially) no difference, from other traffic management
practices, such as using shaping or policing rules to limit
connectivity to the destination IP addresses.
Have run into this one more times that I care to count. We're running
very marginally loaded links all around, and have setup "speedtest" site
locally to prove the issue is not local. Our upstream Commodity
provider also has "speedtest" peer, and we can also point people there.
You can point people to them to prove it's not between us and the next
hop. Of course some folks just don't get it
You chase down the squeaky wheel complainers, and find them running IE
with a dozen toolbars, a few P2P clients, adware out the wazoo, and
other things I can barely bring myself to think about, let alone admit
in a public forum And doing it over wireless, while they're
microwaving their dinner, and ignoring their wireless printer they never
bothered to disable since they plugged it in wired. While playing XBox
with their wireless controllers, listening to Pandora over their
BlueTooth headset, while their roommate is watching Netflix (wirelessly)
on their smart TV, with the wireless subwoofer and back speakers.
Yeah, end-to-end guarantee? It's difficult enough to prove you have the
first hop covered.
Plug the damned thing in the wall, download Malwarebytes / Spybot /
something, and deal with the real problem here, dude
"Your internet sucks!". Or as a recent Tweet from a student mentioned,
"Fix the Mother Effing wireless in the dorms".
(The dorm with the 802.11n / gig ports on the APs / etherchannels back
to the data center, nonetheless).
Jeff
And of course that only last until someone else decides to buy the
competition, I mean "invest in other companies".