I made the argument, so I'll clarify.
One of the arguments which was put up for why this was Verizontal's problem
was that they should have *understood* that if they deployed an eyeball
network which was *by design* asymmetrical downhill, that that's how
their peering would look too -- asymmetrical incoming; the thing they're
complaining about now.
Cheers,
-- jra
It's not; Bill simply wasn't assuming L1(/L2) restriction, since not
doing so better suited his "Corporations Are God; Governments Suck"
argument.
I will note that in fact, the power wires are usually owned by a
franchised monopoly, and sometimes the water pipes. Even so, it's the
Natural Monopoly that's the issue: you don't want to dig up the road
every 15 minutes, especially for players who might fold in the middle.
Cheers,
-- jra
+1
A municipality nearby adopted this, and I personally like the model.
They built out their own fiber, largely for their own purposes to connect municipal buildings and (I would assume) consolidate their internet access as well as opposed to a bunch of discrete retail-type connections. Since their laying conduit and fiber anyway, they just lay down a bigger bundle while they're down there; bonus points for piggy-backing on existing infrastructure projects that already dig up the road anyway. The fiber is terminated in one of two city-run DCs based on geography, and any provider can get space there and pick up a pair or more to an on-net building. Pricing is very reasonable ($400/month per pair) and the colo and power are actually free provided you're actually paying for a pair. There's a ring between the two facilities, so you basically just have to work out your transport to one or both facilities, drop in a switch or two and you're off.
New multi-tenant construction gets built out by default. If a building is not yet on-net, submit it to the department running the dark net; if it's a feasible build, the city actually foots the bill for the build-out and you still just pay your $400/month/pair.
They intentionally structured it to only do L1; they don't want to get into the business of running L2 or L3 services and explicitly do not want to compete with private providers. Infrastructure and utilities are their game, and the city is doing it as a play to encourage competition and draw in more connectivity options for residents and businesses. The figures I heard was their their break-even is/was at the 3-year mark. Even if they don't bring in massive revenue from providers participating, their still saving money compared to their previous connectivity solutions.
So:
- level playing field & greater competition: L1 is available to anyone at a reasonable cost, so small players can participate and differentiate on anything > L1
- providers are welcome to participate or not: you want to run your own fiber? Sure, no problem: business as usual in that department
- city doesn't compete with private business
From what I gather it's targeted more at active Ethernet to multi-tenant residential or business locations rather than being a "pass every house to enable PON" setup, but what's not to love about this?
Jay,
I really doubt that the guys who designed Verizon's access network had
anything to do or say about their peering nor do I believe there was a
cross departmental design meeting to talk about optimal peering to work
with the access technology. The group responsible for peering and other
transit operations and planning probably pre-dated FiOS being at scale by
decades. Asymmetrical networks from telecom operators is and has been the
norm world wide for a very long time. We're only now getting to a place
where that consideration is even being talked about and even now none of
the "common" approaches for access give symmetrical traffic except for
Ethernet. I'd like to see EPON more common, but the traditional telco
vendors either don't offer it or its just now becoming available.
Again, I have no doubt that _after the fact_ someone at Verizon said that
this is a good because it helps with the Netflix flap, but drawing
causality between their prior asymmetrical offering and the way they went
after transit is a mistake IMO.
Scott Helms
Vice President of Technology
ZCorum
(678) 507-5000
Greg Walden (R-OR) is similarly funded by the cable and telecom folks,
and is also loud and clear that he thinks we should forget about net
neutrality and let the companies do what is best.
H
My power is pretty much always on, my water is pretty much always on
and safe, my sewer system works, etc etc...
Mine isn't. I lost power for a three days solid last year, I've
suffered 3 sanitary sewer backflows into my basement the last decade
and you should see the number of violations the EPA has on file about
my drinking water system. Only the gas company has managed to keep the
service on, at least until I had a problem with the way their billing
department mishandled my bill. Didn't get solved until it went to the
lawyers.
And I'm in the burbs a half dozen miles from Washington DC. God help
folks in a truly remote location.
Why is layer 1 internet magically different from every other utility?
It isn't.
Regards,
Bill Herrin
Sure. But you're making too much stew from one oyster; *I* did not
*assert* that this was their motivation for doing so.
I simply noted that it's tied into one of the arguments I'd seen for
why they had a problem, and ameliorates it from their POV.
Different thing.
Cheers,
-- jra
Bill,
I'd say your experience is anomalous. I don't know which township you're
in, but I'd suggest you focus on getting a set of more effective local
officials.
Scott Helms
Vice President of Technology
ZCorum
(678) 507-5000
Sure, 'cause fixing local utility problems at the voting booth has a
long and studied history of success. Who do I vote for? The officials
that allow rate increases and, when the utilities fail to fix the
problems, allow more rate increases? Or the officials who refuse rate
increases so that the utilities can't afford to fix the problems?
Regards,
Bill Herrin
Bill,
If your issues are common in your town then getting the attention of
city/town hall ought to be pretty damn easy, I've had to do so myself. If
its just your neighborhood it still ought not be very hard.
Scott Helms
Vice President of Technology
ZCorum
(678) 507-5000
Well, if they are provisioned for it, and if they don't (continue to)
impose the silly "you can't run a server on a consumer circuit"
crap they traditionally have.
It might improve their ratios if they did relax that... Eventually.
I just have no faith that all the dominos are lined up in the proper
direction...
Indeed; quite hard to be trusting at this point.
Tom
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.
Ask Skype just how easy it is to do that with a dual-stacked service.
Owen
So, could you then, Bill, convince us that your opinion isn't based
on confusing anecdotes for data? 
Cheers,
-- jra
Do you have an example of a municipality that gives free internet access to it's residents?
This is exacatly why ashland fiber network came to be. Because no provider was willing to step up and provide service. So the city did it.
If there were laws against it there, then ashland would still have no service at all to this day.
-Dan
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
I'm sorry, I thought we were discussing politics and opinions. Did you
have some actual data you wanted us to look at? 
Regards,
Bill Herrin
Hi Scott,
You're welcome to give it a try. I'll cheer you on and offer any data,
letters, etc. that I can. Sad to say, but folks in the DC area are
true masters of intransigence. We've elevated it to an art form.
That billing dispute with the gas company took 18 months to resolve,
and didn't get fixed until after it was referred to their lawyers.
Even then I strongly suspect the fact that I was offering to pay them
when the guy who opened the account and whose name was on the bill
died 25 years prior probably had more to do with it than any argument
about reasonableness.
Regards,
Bill Herrin
Over the last decade, 19 states have made it illegal for municipalities
to own fiber networksHi Jay,
Everything government does, it does badly. Without exception. There
are many things government does better than any private organization
is likely to sustain, but even those things it does slowly and at an
exorbitant price.
Actually, in all of the places that have Muni fiber, things seem to be much
better for consumers than where it does not exist. Of the people I've talked
to (admittedly not a statistically valid sample), I've heard no reports of slow
installations, problematic situations, or bad service anywhere near the levels
offered by the various commercial broadband providers.
Muni fiber is a competition killer. You can't beat city hall; once
built it's not practical to compete, even with better service, so
residents are stuck with only the overpriced (either directly or via
taxes), usually underpowered and always one-size-fits-all network
access which results. As an ISP I watched something similar happen in
Altoona PA a decade and a half ago. It was a travesty.
Whoever installs fiber first and gets any significant fraction of subscribers in any
but the densest of population centers is a competition killer, _IF_ you let them
parlay that physical infrastructure into an anti-competitive environment for higher
layer services.
OTOH, if we prohibit layer one facilities based operators from being service
providers, you create an environment well suited to rich competition for the
higher layer services while providing an opportunity for higher-layer service
operators to increase accountability among the physical facilities operator.
I'm not saying we grant legal monopolies to layer one providers or mandate
that they be run by municipalities. I am saying that we should not prohibit
municipalities from operating fiber systems, but, instead, we should prohibit
anyone installing new facilities from also selling services over those facilities.
Instead, facilities operators should be required to lease those physical plant
elements to any service providers on an equal footing on a first-come-first
serve basis.
If a layer one provider does a bad enough job, the service providers can create
demand for an alternative layer one provider much more easily than consumers.
The only exception I see to this would be if localities were
constrained to providing point to point and point to multipoint
communications infrastructure within the locality on a reasonable and
non-discriminatory basis. The competition that would foster on the
Yes... This is absolutely the right answer, but they should only be able to provide
physical link, not higher layer services.
services side might outweigh the damage on the infrastructure side.
Like public roads facilitate efficient transportation and freight
despite the cost and potholes, though that's an imperfect simile.
I will point out that in my experience, private roads do not tend to be as well
maintained overall as public roads with some notable exceptions in very wealthy
gated communities.
Owen