Tuesday 11 October 2011

Power Peering

Some content providers are national or global operators. They don’t need to connect via Tier 1. They have Tier 2 peering agreements. 
But those who control the access networks control access to consumers. “Why,” they ask, “should we pay transit charges to tier 2?”  If they want access to our customers, they should pay us. 
So they see themselves as higher in the pecking order than the content providers – and, although they are already charging their customers for internet access, they also want to charge the content providers for access to these customers.

A logical outcome of such exploitation of a monopoly over customer ‘eyeballs’ would be to reverse some of the flows of cash through the hierarchy of ISPs.

Dr Peering gives an excellent account of one example (involving Comcast, Level3 and Netflix):
http://drpeering.net/AskDrPeering/blog/articles/Ask_DrPeering/Entries/2011/9/6_Access_Power_Peering.html


PC World see a danger here:

Comcast Toll on Netflix Screams for Net Neutrality


Comcast fired the net neutrality "shot heard round the world" when it throttled BitTorrent peer-to-peer networking traffic. 
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/211964/comcast_toll_on_netflix_screams_for_net_neutrality.html


Comcast see it slightly differently
http://blog.comcast.com/2010/11/10-facts-about-peering-comcast-and-level-3.html
and other weigh-in to support them
http://www.digitalsociety.org/2010/11/level-3-outbid-akamai-on-netflix-by-reselling-stolen-bandwidth/

The latter piece is by George Ou, whose independence has been called into question elsewhere:
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2007/08/24/zdnets-george-ou-exposed-as-ignorant-microsoft-shill-zoon/

It comes from "Digital Society" a 'think tank' funded by Jon Henke, and Arts+Labs which is itself funded by Viacom, NBC Universal, AT&T, Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI), Verizon, Auditude, Microsoft,
Songwriters Guild of America, Jib Jab, Blue Pixel, Cisco,  and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP).

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