[HN Gopher] S.Korea broadband firm sues Netflix after traffic su...
___________________________________________________________________
S.Korea broadband firm sues Netflix after traffic surge from 'Squid
Game'
Author : pseudolus
Score : 199 points
Date : 2021-10-01 10:33 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| yongjik wrote:
| Couldn't have happened at a better time for Netflix. From what
| I've heard, Koreans are pretty pumped up that Squid Game is
| storming the global market (it's said that the producer of the
| show tried to make it for many years, except that nobody in Korea
| wanted to invest, thinking that it was too out-there), and then
| an unpopular ISP comes along and sues Netflix for profit ...
|
| I have to wonder what the SK Broadband PR team was thinking, or
| if they were overridden by old guys at the top.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| A lot of commentors here are defending that netflix shouldn't pay
| data charges.
|
| I don't know how internet prices works for big players, but from
| the perspective of a little guy, it seems kinda reasonable that
| netlflix pay, doesn't it?
|
| I mean, why am I paying for bandwidth on AWS? Shouldn't that be
| paid for by the downloading party?
|
| If I download something from my neighbors computer over a p2p
| app, then we both still pay for our internet connection, and
| depending on the contract, we pay by the byte.
| jimmydorry wrote:
| You pay for bandwidth on AWS. In the Netflix scenario, the ISPs
| sitting between your service and your customers would be
| demanding that you pay them for using their bandwidth.
|
| The only difference between you and Netflix is that they are
| AWS with all of the interconnect and overhead costs, while you
| get to pay a third party to abstract all of that complexity
| away for what is essentially a management fee.
| fabbari wrote:
| That, though, is exactly how it works. Netflix pays for their
| traffic and infrastructure, the SK clients pay for access to
| internet for a given bandwidth and SK pays for the
| infrastructure and interconnections needed to give their
| clients what they paid for.
|
| Netflix doesn't get free interconnections.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Netflix DO pay data charges, on hosting their own
| infrastructure. Probably unthinkable amounts. It certainly
| isn't up to the hoster to cover an ISPs costs for the people
| access their service.
| chii wrote:
| > why am I paying for bandwidth on AWS? Shouldn't that be paid
| for by the downloading party?
|
| you're paying for it because it costs money to provide
| bandwidth on both ends, and AWS is just shunting the cost onto
| you itemized.
|
| Netflix, believe it or not, also charges for the bandwidth it
| uses, but it hides it unitemized into the subscription fee, and
| in sufficient quantities that when averaged across all it's
| subscribers, they come out at least breakeven.
| viceroyalbean wrote:
| Somewhat unrelated, but your point about costs coming out
| breakeven when averaged over all users made me realize that
| this move by SK makes as much sense as Netflix suing an ISP
| because their customers consume a disproportionately large
| amount of Netflix' bandwidth. The ISP's role in facilitating
| the usage of Netflix bandwidth would be the same as Netflix
| faciliting use of SK's bandwidth in this case.
| yunohn wrote:
| > why am I paying for bandwidth on AWS?
|
| That's a great question; it's because cloud providers have
| conditioned you to believe their rent-seeking is necessary.
|
| See Cloudflare R2 vs AWS S3:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28702997
| mdip wrote:
| > why am I paying for bandwidth on AWS?
|
| Because when you signed up for services on AWS, you agreed to
| pay for egress and ingress bandwidth delivered at very high
| speeds.
|
| When I signed up for my ISP, I agreed to pay for a rate of
| speed that was sold to me as "unlimited" with _some_
| restrictions, but none that even came close to resembling
| "don't download video too much".
|
| It also ignores the value Netflix provides. My parents chose to
| buy _faster_ internet service than they otherwise would have
| purchased _because_ of Netflix. If Netflix was not in the
| picture, they would have purchased the cheapest plan available.
| It 's not a fairness failure, it's a marketing failure.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| How anyone could side with the ISP here is beyond baffling.
|
| They're essentially making the point that if I build a website,
| spend large portions of my own money hosting it, and it becomes
| popular, I should also be charged extra by the ISPs of the users
| who access my site.
|
| We're in clown world at this point.
| EmilioMartinez wrote:
| The lawsuit and court rule are not really about "siding"
| morally speaking. It's about deciding what money collection
| scheme to use. You can either charge user for the internet they
| use, or simply target the really large content providers and
| split the bill with them leaving the user with fixed charges to
| worry only about connection stability when choosing an ISP. I'm
| guessing it was mostly contingency that created a culture where
| the latter became the status quo, and everyone is rolling with
| that. This is a long shot from a mom-and-pop website like you
| describe.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| "Sorry, your ISP is suing us so we can't let you watch anything
| popular right now. Here is a link to other ISPs and a coupon if
| you wanted to swap..." is about to become the most popular show
| on Korean netflix.
| apex_sloth wrote:
| Nice subscription service you have there Netflix, would be a
| shame if your customers couldn't view it.
| evgen wrote:
| Nice ISP you have there SK Broadband, would be a shame if your
| users could not access one of the most popular sites on the
| internet.
| freemint wrote:
| Nice costumers you have there SK Broadband, would be a shame
| if your costumers leave you. Oh? They are unlikey with
| Netflix not in a monthly cancelable contract but Internet
| plans generally require contracts of 2 to 3 years in South
| Korea.
| moate wrote:
| Nice contracts you have there SK Broadband, it would be a
| shame if your anti-consumer behaviors started to nullify
| their enforcability...
| monocasa wrote:
| Lol, in SK? Not a chance.
| meibo wrote:
| Isn't this what ISP subscribers are supposed to pay for? How big
| are the operating margins for major ISPs nowadays?
| NullPrefix wrote:
| No no, subscribers are supposed to pay and not use what they
| pay for.
| adventured wrote:
| I can't speak to South Korea's ISP market, but in the US the
| major cable providers are now doing very well.
|
| Comcast is at $18b in operating profit, with roughly 18%
| operating income margins. Charter Communications is at $9.6b in
| operating income, with 19% operating income margins. Those are
| the two biggest cable companies in the US.
|
| In the early decades of cable, profitability was notoriously
| flaky for the industry. Enormous amounts of required capital
| investment, and it took a long time to saturate - scale into -
| the US market. Now the market is settled and they're printing
| consistently giant profits.
|
| Interestingly Charter has become a giant, worth $133 billion,
| and Paul Allen used to own a controlling interest in the early
| incarnation of it. It was part of his so called wired world
| collection of investments.
|
| https://www.seattletimes.com/business/economy/paul-allen-cha...
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| > How big are the operating margins for major ISPs nowadays?
|
| In 2020, KT: 1.18 trillion KRW (1.00bn USD), SKT: 1.34 trillion
| KRW (1.13bn USD), LG U+: 886 billion KRW (749m USD). Their
| revenues range from 10 to 25 trillion KRW for the reference.
| naomeux wrote:
| Isn't it at the consumer's discretion if they're going to watch
| Squid Game on Netflix? Is the firm blinded by greed and decided
| to take advantage of the sudden surge in the platform?
| fuzzy2 wrote:
| Everyone pays for their internet access, so why should Netflix
| (or anyone else) suddenly pay for mine? Netflix isn't pushing
| data, I'm pulling it.
|
| If my ISP is losing money then I guess they better raise their
| prices, no?
| nsoxo wrote:
| Netflix is pushing data AND you are pulling it.
| fouric wrote:
| "Push" and "pull" in this context refer to the initiation of
| a session. The user is pulling, because they start streaming.
| Netflix does absolutely nothing by itself - it doesn't
| randomly start delivering data to you.
| yunohn wrote:
| Nobody says that a bullock cart involves the bullock pulling
| the cart and the cart pushing the bullock. That's only a
| physics framing.
| nsoxo wrote:
| This is commerce. It's a transaction. Both parties benefit.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| No, they are not "pushing" data.
|
| Pushing implies that data is sent by the server without
| clients explicitly requesting it.
|
| Pulling is when the client requests data explicitly.
|
| I get notifications pushed to my phone by Apple.
|
| I pull YouTube videos.
|
| YouTube doesn't suddenly decide to "push" random videos to my
| phone in the middle of the night.
|
| Similarly, Netflix doesn't "push" videos to their customers.
| Vaderv wrote:
| No.
| xwdv wrote:
| Hmm, I guess ISPs could just drop traffic if they can't afford
| it, but maybe if you push a lot of data you could pay more to
| have the content actually delivered to end users.
| MereInterest wrote:
| > maybe if you push a lot of data
|
| That's leads to a pretty simple conclusion, because Netflix
| doesn't push any data. I pull data from Netflix. I have
| already paid my ISP to pull data from anywhere I ask. If my
| ISP sits down at a negotiating table with Netflix and
| threatens to disrupt that, they should be laughed out of the
| room. "Pay me, or else I'm going to break my obligations to
| an unrelated third party." isn't a move that should have any
| respect.
| xwdv wrote:
| What if the ISP holds a powerful monopoly in some regions?
| Should we still be laughing?
| eximius wrote:
| No, you grab metaphorical pitchforks.
| CivBase wrote:
| Then Musk and Bezos should be laughing since they'll
| likely be getting more customers for Starlink and
| (eventually) Kuiper. Hopefully low earth orbit satellite
| internet will put an end to ISP monopolies in the US
| since the government wont.
| rovr138 wrote:
| We should be!
|
| But the problem is the people that could get affected by
| their actions until they stop.
| ineedasername wrote:
| The ISP could drop or throttle the traffic, assuming that's
| allowable under the ToS with their customers. But then of
| course their customers will quit and find an ISP that doesn't
| throttle/drop.
|
| Regardless, _Netflix is not pushing content_. The consumer is
| pulling it.
|
| As a one-off, issues like the Squid-Game aren't so bad, but
| if it's a chronic problem for the ISP then it's because their
| model of consumer consumption _was wrong_.
| tomtimtall wrote:
| I'd be ok with then charging a significantly lower for a
| "limited bandwidth" connection. But I bought an unlimited, so
| they have no right to complain.
|
| Imagine if the same principles were used in other areas. You
| iPhone suddenly locking up after using Facebook to much
| because Facebook wasn't paying Apple for access to its users.
| spyder wrote:
| ... and customers could just drop the ISP if they don't
| deliver the service they want (if there is no ISP monopoly
| there).
| Jensson wrote:
| But that would raise subscription prices. Should every user
| really pay extra for each subscription based on the data they
| might use on that subscription?
| tgv wrote:
| Akshually ... that could make a bit of sense. Instead of
| paying for bandwidth you rarely use to your ISP, you could
| pay for bandwidth you actually use to the content provider.
|
| However, that would leave free content inaccessible, and
| probably create another wealth divide.
| Jensson wrote:
| But bandwidth is really cheap and this problem doesn't
| exist anywhere else. Worst case the ISP can increase
| their rates by a couple of dollars and improve their
| cables.
| tgv wrote:
| No argument from me. I just saw a tiny bit of logic
| behind another model of balancing the costs. The ISP
| would still have to upgrade the infrastructure in the end
| (although my model could lead to e.g. Netflix buying up
| ISPs).
| [deleted]
| codetrotter wrote:
| > Netflix said it will review SK Broadband's claim, and seek
| dialogue and explore ways in the meantime to work with SK
| Broadband to ensure customers are not affected.
|
| In other words, they will ship some Open Connect Appliance boxes
| to the ISP.
|
| https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/
|
| And that's nice for everyone.
|
| Some think it's unfair that big players like Netflix can do so.
| But I think them doing that is far far better than the idea of
| ISPs charging content providers for the bandwidth.
|
| Like other said, the customers of the ISPs are already paying for
| the bandwidth. Having the ISPs charging Netflix for the bandwidth
| too, that's no bueno.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| This is basically how the internet works though, isn't it? Your
| network and my network have parties interested in each others
| data. If parts of your network are generating traffic that I
| don't think is reasonable then I can either disable their
| access or negotiate with you or one of the parties on your
| network to pay more or I can deny or throttle access to the
| parties on my network. And a OCA box just makes everything
| better for everyone where it's possible to employ them.
| [deleted]
| nisegami wrote:
| "If parts of your network are generating traffic that I don't
| think is reasonable"
|
| But it's your customers (the end users) generating traffic by
| watching content on my network (Netflix shows). If your
| customers can generate more traffic than you can handle,
| regardless of its a single entity or multiple entities, then
| that's a contract issue between you and your customers.
| vlan0 wrote:
| Exactly this. To say that Netflix is generating traffic
| pointed at SK broadband would not be fair. Those TCP
| connections are initiated by the end user. Without the user
| requests there would be no traffic.
|
| So the philosophical question really becomes, what exactly
| is the end user buying from their ISP?
| dr-detroit wrote:
| They're gangsters demanding their cut. The ISPs were
| created with tax money and set up as a public trust then
| stolen away. At least in my state.
| zakki wrote:
| the physical access.
| smiley1437 wrote:
| > the physical access.
|
| Wouldn't that also include the bandwidth? Meaning, if the
| customer is already paying for the bandwidth they will
| consume, why wouldn't that cover bandwidth usage of
| Netflix content?
| ineedasername wrote:
| No. That's not what my contract with my ISP says I'm
| buying.
|
| Besides, physical access alone is useless. Unless you're
| claiming that ISP's have been selling physical access but
| giving away usage for free? I don't know if that's the
| intent of your comment, but again it isn't how my ISP
| words the contract.
| vlan0 wrote:
| >Unless you're claiming that ISP's have been selling
| physical access but giving away usage for free?
|
| I don't think zakki is too far off from the truth.
| Looking at Spectrum's Residential Internet Services
| Agreement, physical access might be what it boils down
| to. It's a little shocking they can have terms that make
| no guarantee to any amount of bandwidth at all, even on
| "their network". I suspect other large ISPs in the US use
| the same terminology.
|
| >Subscriber understands and agrees that Spectrum does not
| guarantee that any particular amount of bandwidth on the
| Spectrum network or that any speed or throughput of
| Subscriber's connection to the Spectrum network will be
| available to Subscriber.
|
| But I think you're correct. Having a physical connection
| does you no good if it isn't passing packets.
|
| https://www.spectrum.com/policies/residential-internet-
| servi...
| simonh wrote:
| As a consumer I paid my ISP to carry say 50 Gb/s of data.
| They took my money on the understanding it's their job to
| carry that data for me. If I only wanted to browse text I
| wouldn't be paying for 50Gb/s. What did they think I was
| going to do?
| apetresc wrote:
| You have... 50 Gb/s in your area?!
| simonh wrote:
| Oops, Mb/s.
| wccrawford wrote:
| I just realized: By this same logic, end-users should be paid
| by advertisers for the bandwidth they were forced to consume
| for their ads.
|
| I bet that wouldn't go over nearly as well as this.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Please explain how that logic fits in with the rest of this
| thread. It was your user agent running on your machine which
| requested the advertisement.
| yumraj wrote:
| That is indeed an interesting point, especially for users who
| have metered Internet service.
|
| Consider a user with a data cap of 1000GB, is metered as
| consuming say 1200GB of data, of which 200GB is Ads. The user
| is forced to pay extra for the 200GB to the ISP which the
| user should not have had to pay if there were no Ads.
|
| Ignoring that ISPs should not meter the service, the above
| just doesn't seem right. The individual Internet services may
| be subsidized by Ads, but the user is paying to the ISP. So,
| in effect a user is paying, just to a different party.
|
| Some lawyer should definitely look into it and see if there
| is potential for a class-action against Ad vendors.
|
| Edit: I'm sure the flip argument would be that the user
| requested the Internet services that came with the Ad, so in
| effect the user is responsible for consuming the data. But
| that is where I think it becomes interesting and given that
| IMNAL I don't know what the legal minds think.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| End users generally don't pay for consuming extra bandwidth,
| so the injury isn't obvious.
|
| SMS spam, though, had a very clear injury when you were
| charged for the privilege of receiving a message.
| wongarsu wrote:
| On a mobile connection you generally have a data cap, and
| you can switch to a more expensive plan for a higher cap.
| That's the same thing as paying for bandwidth, just that
| you are buying in bulk with pre-commitment.
|
| To get significant damage as a single individual, take
| someone on a traditional satellite connection who can't get
| some important work done on time because ads put him above
| his data cap.
| TheJoeMan wrote:
| Ah but in a backwards twist my ISP now has a 1Tb per month
| data cap. You'd think this was huge, but I wanted to
| download all my games to a new Xbox...
| 14 wrote:
| That is a failure of Xbox in my opinion. Games are 100gb
| these days. Massive. My monthly bandwidth is line 400gb.
| That is pretty common in Canada. We can't afford to
| download all the games, again. There should be a local
| transfer of games done over wifi. It should be made easy.
| Arrath wrote:
| Uh, there is?[1]
|
| [1]https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/hardware-
| network/console...
| sc11 wrote:
| On mobile it's very common to have data caps, so end users
| do pay for the bandwidth used by ads indirectly.
| drKarl wrote:
| Yeah, data caps was something common a few years ago...
| criddell wrote:
| I have a Google Fi phone and the data isn't capped, but
| it's $10 / GB.
| int_19h wrote:
| Not quite. They have a soft 15 Gb cap, past which they
| throttle you down significantly but also don't charge
| you. And then it's $10 / Gb if you want to extend that
| cap.
| Larrikin wrote:
| Data caps are very common on phones, but even worse
| Comcast has implemented data limits across their services
| for home internet.
|
| https://www.fastcompany.com/90580656/comcast-data-cap-
| remote...
| IMTDb wrote:
| They are: the advertisers pays for the service users are
| consuming. The "free with advertising" business model is an
| efficient version of
|
| Advertisers _give money to_ users _give money to_ content
| provider
|
| Where money given to the users == money given to the content
| provider
| smhost wrote:
| > They are: the advertisers pays for the service users are
| consuming
|
| and the users pay for the service the advertisers are
| consuming.
| api wrote:
| It's called currency for a reason... it likes to flow.
| spicybright wrote:
| This actually blew my mind, lol
| smhost wrote:
| as long as it isn't downward
| scns wrote:
| Then it would be called suction, maelstrom or waterfall,
| sometimes undertow.
| ksec wrote:
| My question is why Open Connect Appliance wasn't even in their
| network in the first place?
|
| I mean there are only a few ISP in every country. SK Broadband
| isn't small either it is something like 25% of market share. If
| I remember correctly Korean Telecom was 50% and LG was
| something like 15%. SK Telecom is also the largest MNO is South
| Korea. And if you are into hardware you may have at least heard
| of SK Hynix, world's third largest NAND manufacture.
|
| Normally being a Korean conglomerate or Chaebol I would have
| thought SK must have some subsidiary competing with Netflix.
| But this doesn't seems to be the case here.
| notyourday wrote:
| > My question is why Open Connect Appliance wasn't even in
| their network in the first place?
|
| By having Open Connect Appliance network gives up ability to
| traffic engineer Netflix, which may decrease the leverage the
| network has with its peers or its transit providers.
|
| Fundamentally, unless someone must peer with you (settlement
| or settlement free) and must peer with you on your terms (
| locations, types of connections, etc ) you always want
| traffic that you and only you can control.
| hhw wrote:
| No matter what, SK Telecom is going to be eyeball (ingress)
| heavy and no amount of engineering of Netflix traffic is
| going to help with that, as it's all inbound anyway. Not
| that Netflix's upstreams like Level3 or Telia would be
| peering with SK Telecom anyway. Reducing the amount of
| Netflix traffic can only help.
| notyourday wrote:
| Traffic engineering does not just cover what. It also
| covers where. At the eyeball network level where is way
| more important than what as what is constant.
| sodality2 wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if the normal bandwidth is able to be
| handled by existing connections, rather than the boxes with
| the ISP's. Is netflix super popular in Korea?
| ksec wrote:
| >Is netflix super popular in Korea?
|
| Netflix made a few big splash with content made
| specifically for South Korean. Or K-Drama. But I dont have
| any data to judge whether they are super popular or not.
| Jensson wrote:
| > Is netflix super popular in Korea?
|
| Yes, from the article:
|
| > The popularity of the hit series "Squid Game" and other
| offerings have underscored Netflix's status as the
| country's second-largest data traffic generator after
| Google's YouTube
| sodality2 wrote:
| Previously to Squid Game, I mean.
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| That too is true. As of March 2021, Netflix was the only
| over-the-top service that has reached 10M subscribers in
| SK (seconded by Wavve, currently operated by SKT and but
| only had ~4M subscribers at that time).
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| > Normally being a Korean conglomerate or Chaebol I would
| have thought SK must have some subsidiary competing with
| Netflix. But this doesn't seems to be the case here.
|
| Your guess is indeed correct! Two out of three major ISPs in
| South Korea operate their own OTT services (Wavve and Seezn).
| LG U+ is an exception and also the first major ISP to join
| the Open Connect Appliance program for the obvious reason.
| ksec wrote:
| Oh Thank You. Now it makes a bit more sense.
| kevinpet wrote:
| Have they considered degrading the stream to 320x240 and slapping
| a "get a real ISP" banner across the bottom?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| IIUC, there's already a process for this for telecom providers.
|
| 1) Ban Netflix IP.
|
| 2) Netflix (and customers) complain
|
| 3) Come to an arrangement for Netflix to pay a cost
|
| Netflix already had to put together several peering deals in the
| US when the popularity of their service took off. Why is this
| scenario any different / what is it about South Korean law that
| entangles the government in this decision at all?
| dmingod666 wrote:
| What if ISPs created their own CDNs or someone creates a CDN
| network behind major ISP providers -- Netflix and YouTube top
| consumed content seems to be a very good contender for this type
| of a offering.
| AegirLeet wrote:
| Netflix already has https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/.
| YouTube probably has something similar.
| himinlomax wrote:
| There's a big difference in usage patterns: Netflix has a
| small number of videos, each with huge viewer count. That's
| eminently cachable. Youtube otoh is the long tail, orders of
| magnitude more videos with small view counts. Some of it may
| be cachable, but that's going to shave off on the order of
| 20% of the traffic cost, whereas in Netflix's case the gain
| could easily be 99%.
| polkonos wrote:
| https://peering.google.com/#/options/google-global-cache
| scandinavian wrote:
| Correct we have netflix, google and akamai caches in our
| datacenter. A very large chunk of our total traffic goes
| through these racks.
| jonnat wrote:
| > South Korean lawmakers have spoken out against content
| providers who do not pay for network usage despite generating
| explosive traffic
|
| It's impressive how this framing has gotten so much acceptance.
| The content providers are not generating the traffic, the users
| are, and they are paying their ISPs to be able to do so.
| Proven wrote:
| Yep.
|
| It's even more impressive how the average HN reader can't even
| comprehend this comment (or can, but somehow manages to insist
| on their wrong, socialist views) and continues to argue in
| favor of "network neutrality", even though no two users or
| service providers are the same.
|
| If Netflix should pay $10 mil a month to Korea's Internet
| providers, why not HN? If HN should pay less than Netflix, why
| should the user who only visits HN pay the same Internet access
| fee as the one who constantly watches Netflix?
| dahart wrote:
| Don't miss the past paragraph in the article, "In the United
| States, Netflix has been paying a fee to broadband provider
| Comcast Corp (CMCSA.O) for over seven years for faster
| streaming speeds. https://reut.rs/2Y8wOzb"
| ralfd wrote:
| Two points: 1. In 2014 Netflix made similar deals with AT&T
| and Verizon. 2. It is not extortion by the ISP, "pay up or
| else". But Netflix was simply building up its own CDN-
| capabilities. They ditched Akamai and Limelight and for that
| they needed their own server endpoints into the networks.
|
| https://www.streamingmediablog.com/2014/02/heres-comcast-
| net...
| lrem wrote:
| A decade ago I was with an ISP who took a stand for "Google
| should pay us for the priviledge of having our users watch
| YouTube". I believe I wasn't the only one who decided that's
| the last straw and moved to an ISP that wasn't rejecting
| peering based on greed.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| > The content providers are not generating the traffic, the
| users are
|
| Huh?? I am not serving terabytes of movies from my home
| connection. Netflix is.
| Arrath wrote:
| The users are paying the ISP to have that content served to
| them through their connection.
|
| Is the ISP mad that more users are using more of their
| promised service allowance? Too bad, maybe they shouldn't
| oversell their networks.
| cortesoft wrote:
| The traffic is generated by a user making a request for the
| movie. It isn't like Netflix is just sending movies to users
| at random.
| lowdest wrote:
| Netflix has no association with this ISP, you do. It's your
| choice to request Netflix streams for delivery through the
| ISP. Blaming Netflix for this would be like an apartment
| building blaming Amazon for delivering too many boxes to the
| mail room.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It's not about what is fair, it's about maximizing profit. And
| if a company can earn money from both consumers and producers,
| why not? This is what unrestricted capitalism is like.
|
| IIRC there were some companies that got a slap on the wrist (it
| was something like Uber or a food delivery company) for
| charging both consumers and producers a commission, which is
| illegal (I don't remember the legalese term).
| xxs wrote:
| It's quite common datacenter prices to incl. bandwidth and
| data.
|
| Netflix/youtube cases it's the content providers that server
| the traffic, so most of it is generated by them. The client
| requests are tiny in comparison.
| nix23 wrote:
| Lets compare it with food, if you (client) would not eat so
| much the producer (server) would not produce as much, no
| server produces traffic without a consumer.
| xxs wrote:
| I have replied to a sibling's comment ISP agreements are
| nothing like that.
| Freestyler_3 wrote:
| Lets say you have a website in datacenter A
|
| /You pay datacenter for bandwith etc.
|
| Person pulls your website
|
| /Person pays cablecompany Z for bandwith
|
| Now you have to pay Cablecompany Z for the data.
| xxs wrote:
| But that's not the case in the article "Netflix began using
| =SK's dedicated= line starting 2018 to deliver increasingly
| larger amounts of data-heavy, high-definition video content
| to viewers in Korea from servers in Japan and Hong Kong".
|
| Admittedly the article is light on the details, yet I'd
| presume the line has been created exclusively for Netflix,
| there is no info if there was an agreement between the
| parties. There is no reference to the Seoul District Court
| decision, either.
|
| "Internet"/data between major tube providers (ISP) is very
| different than paying cable company X for end user access.
| Some just have agreements to carry each other traffics and
| some pay to carry their traffic[0]:
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network
| thedougd wrote:
| Time to bring back ISP shaming. Netflix would notify Verizon
| users in the app that Verizon's slow peering was degrading
| their watch experience.
|
| https://bgr.com/general/netflix-vs-verizon-network/
| c12 wrote:
| Wasn't this what fast.com was created for?
| zamadatix wrote:
| Fast.com will let you test the idea yourself (if you
| already know it exists) but it will not proactively notify
| you otherwise.
| jandrese wrote:
| This was one of the first wins for IPv6. I had a Hurricane
| Electric tunnel on my FiOS link and was able to bypass the
| bottleneck that Verizon set up for Netflix.
|
| Now Netflix blocks Hurricane Electric endpoints and FiOS
| _still_ doesn 't support IPv6. We're nearing the 10 year
| anniversary of that "coming soon" FAQ entry on their webpage.
| kijin wrote:
| The framing gets a pass because the majority of "explosive
| traffic" comes from foreign companies. Google and Netflix have
| no voice in the Korean lawmaking process. When they go to
| court, they fall right into the trap of the framing that local
| companies have already set up.
|
| South Korea is well known for having fast internet, but the
| internet is only fast within the small country. International
| connectivity has always been crappy, and getting crappier every
| year as telcos focus on legal avenues instead of actually
| laying enough undersea cables to meet the demand. In the past,
| most Koreans only visited Korean sites because of the language
| barrier; that's no longer true. But it's going to take a lot of
| time and money to remedy years of neglect in international
| connectivity. Especially SK Broadband, who IMO has been the
| most complacent in this department among the Big 3 telcos,
| precisely because of their huge domestic market share. Where is
| the money going to come from? Obviously not by cutting
| executive bonuses. SK Broadband seems to think that they can
| extort it out of Google and Netflix who, despite their global
| prominence, are relatively defenseless in Korean courts.
| anoncow wrote:
| These ISPs have no shame. Have they forgotten their role so
| much that they did not wake up even when they were filing a
| case?
| mrpopo wrote:
| If anything, customers should be suing ISPs every time they
| don't get the expected bandwidth. It's the ISP that fails to
| deliver according to the contract.
| zakki wrote:
| Usually the contract cover the bandwidth on last mile. The
| bandwidth for the internet is shared between all customers.
| dwighttk wrote:
| I bet there is fine print that says they are delivering
| exactly according to the contract
| c12 wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised.
|
| I have a gigabit connection and the contract specifically
| states that they guarantee a maximum throughput of 400Mbit
| at peak times.
| zsmi wrote:
| Hopefully you mistyped and meant "they guarantee a
| minimum throughput of 400Mbit at peak times."
|
| Otherwise 0Mbit is consistent with the terms of the
| contract, which is probably exactly what the ISP was
| going for.
| kmonsen wrote:
| It's like the geico commercials: you _could_ save _up to_
| x% on your car insurance if you switch to Geico.
|
| It says nothing, there are two weasel word exceptions in
| there.
| names_are_hard wrote:
| There's another weasel phrase in there: "Or more"
| (Switching to Geico could save you 15% _or more_)
|
| So it could save you nothing, or it could save you 15%,
| or even more. Basically we have no idea what it'll save
| you, if anything.
| lostcolony wrote:
| Guaranteeing a maximum doesn't sound like much of a
| guarantee.
| david422 wrote:
| "We guarantee our performance will be subpar"
| xoa wrote:
| You're certainly right, and the specific term here for what
| consumers should, but generally don't, have is a "Service
| Level Agreement" (SLA). This is pretty standard for
| business links and nearly anything at all at the datacenter
| level, if you ever subscribe to a whole line at a colo
| you'll probably see that. SLAs tend to spell out not just
| maximum sustained bandwidth, but 90/95/97/99%, uptime, what
| if any burst bandwidth is available, any latency
| guarantees, etc. All of these are different measures that
| cost different amounts to hit at any given level, and SLAs
| spell out exactly what is being paid for in numbers that
| can be monitored fairly easily.
|
| If I could make one simple change to the home broadband
| market, it would be insisting on a standardized big number
| consumer level SLA. I certainly don't expect residential
| rates to cover the same 99.97% or worst case minimum that
| business class does, that's a major part of what higher end
| connections are paying for. But whatever they _do_ offer
| should be transparent, fixed for contract period and
| measurable. ISPs should by law be required to spell out not
| just the top line bandwidth level, but also 75% /95%
| guarantees over a standard time (day/month maybe) and what
| the worst case guaranteed minimum is. This wouldn't be some
| big centralized bureaucratic decision about implementations
| or what numbers have to be hit, but rather merely make sure
| the market has clear information so customers can compare
| and ISPs could be held to their promises. Energy Star
| consumer information might be some guide to layout, but I
| think something like that would be low hanging fruit.
|
| Also to be clear, a distinction can and should be made for
| intra-network vs inter-network, and both should be
| accounted for. Obviously an ISP has the most control and is
| the most responsible for how traffic traverses their own
| network to their edges, but ISPs do have some
| responsibility (affected by size/location) for their
| peering agreements too. If they're purposefully choking
| that it's on them, though small/remote ISPs may be at a
| disadvantage in negotiations there which should ideally
| have some eyes on it.
| jimmydorry wrote:
| I absolutely agree, however national or even regional
| level transparency reports are bullshit. It needs to be
| at the exchange / node level. The same ISP will have
| different levels of service between cities and suburbs.
| xxs wrote:
| >suing ISPs every time they don't get the expected bandwidt
|
| this is beyond flawed, unless you consider all possible
| bandwidth, not just Netflix being slow. The latter can be
| entirely an issue on Netflix side.
| vlan0 wrote:
| I agree, but there still need to be constraints. For
| instance, if I have a 1Gb symmetrical connection, it's
| probably still unreasonable for me to expect 1Gb connecting
| to my buddy's 1Gb 3k miles away.
| geocar wrote:
| If you and your buddy use the same ISP, no it is not
| unreasonable.
| vlan0 wrote:
| Right, that's likely doable on the same ISP, even 3k
| miles away.
|
| It does highlight a philosophical question I raised in
| another comment. What exactly are consumers purchasing
| from last mile ISPs? Is it 1Gb to anywhere on the
| providers network? 1Gb to the nearest CDN/Internet
| exchange?
|
| I don't think there is a good answer for this. But it's
| important to think about when we talk about ISPs reaching
| their hand towards large content providers.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| moreira wrote:
| It really is wild. ISPs have been overselling "unlimited"
| connections for forever, and being paid for it, but when their
| customers actually want to use literally the service they paid
| for, _legally_, it's somehow wrong?
|
| I guess that's the thing with Netflix though, it's torrent-like
| traffic, but legal, so there's no excuse to stop it and they
| have to come up with something. "oh they're generating
| explosive traffic that's not good"
| Proven wrote:
| You seem to spend too much time on leftist web sites.
|
| First, they aren't being paid for unlimited. Do you think
| that $39.99 or $199.99 per month can cover the cost of
| transferring unlimited amount of data to another continent?
| Of course, it doesn't. Somebody pays $39.99 to download 10
| emails, another customer runs BitTorrent 24 by 7 consuming
| TB's of bandwidth for the same price.
|
| Second, they don't want to sell "unlimited" - they could make
| more money by selling differentiated services.
| Scaevolus wrote:
| How is Netflix traffic torrent-like? It's large volumes of
| video data received over HTTPS connections. Users perform
| negligible upload apart from ACK packets.
| EmilioMartinez wrote:
| He meant the volume is arguably similar to torrent
| leeching, although that comparison is a bit outdated; Today
| it's easy to get high quality torrents that are orders of
| magnitude more network-intense than Netflix streaming,
| while in turn today's Netflix is orders of magnitude more
| intense that old torrenting
| nix23 wrote:
| >torrent-like traffic, but legal
|
| Since when is ANY traffic illegal on the Net? Is the idea of
| an open (for everyone) data "highway" already death in our
| heads?
| tw04 wrote:
| The thing that's most ridiculous about this is that the
| bandwidth is essentially "free" for SK telecom. They sit a
| netflix caching server in their network and the traffic never
| leaves. Other than the cost of switch ports (which are dirt
| cheap relatively speaking) they have absolutely 0 overhead
| beyond power and cooling for the netflix box which again with
| their user count is a rounding error.
|
| I'm not sure if the lawmakers are ignorant, bought and paid
| for, or a little of both but it would be refreshing if one of
| them took 30 seconds and applied a little critical thinking
| to the situation.
| dzonga wrote:
| it's SK, so there's a probably an element that the law-
| makers are paid for. SK is notorious for sending its past
| presidents to jail for corruption cases. but yeah with that
| netflix redbox, traffic shouldn't be taxin' the telco's
| pockets hard.
| pasabagi wrote:
| Is that actually because SK is corrupt, or because SK is
| really keen on rectitude in politicians? I think there
| are more than a few UK politicians who could definitely
| serve time for corruption, and it's even been
| occasionally (recently the health secretary) bourne out
| in court, but it's rarely even a political issue, let
| alone a criminal one.
|
| Also, the less said about SK's neighbors (Japan, for
| instance) the better.
| mcspiff wrote:
| You're assuming the over subscription is only occurring on
| the transit / peering side and not the last mile. I'm not
| so sure that's entirely true.
| [deleted]
| piaste wrote:
| > The thing that's most ridiculous about this is that the
| bandwidth is essentially "free" for SK telecom. They sit a
| netflix caching server in their network and the traffic
| never leaves.
|
| Wouldn't that require them to MITM the Netflix traffic,
| which I would hope is under TLS?
| ZetaZero wrote:
| It's not a caching server run by the ISP. It's a Netflix
| server embedded in ISP's datacenter/network. No MITM
| required
|
| https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/
| namibj wrote:
| Netflix ships them the box is they ask and sign a
| contract that they will plug it in and have a security
| guard it so.
| isiahl wrote:
| Here's more information about the program:
| https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/
|
| I believe YouTube has the same type of program.
| merlinscholz wrote:
| Netflix provides the ISP with the box, afaik the box
| contains a signed certificate for a Netflix subdomain
| specific to that box. The "real" Netflix servers direct
| the customer to that subdomain for the actual content.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| No, Netflix's applications would have users of that ISP
| use the CDN server which they would locate within SK
| Telecom's network.
|
| Netflix calls it their Open Connect Appliance:
| https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/appliances/
|
| That server would, of course, have a connection to the
| Internet, they push logs to AWS and get updates from
| Netflix's authoritative servers in Netflix's other
| datacenters, but they also serve HTTPS connections to
| thousands of ISP users; the upstream traffic would be
| minimal.
| gregable wrote:
| Does this mean that Netflix has to have a private TLS key
| in the box? I wonder how the security of these keys is
| usually maintained. Interesting engineering/cryptography
| problem.
|
| This problem might also be an interesting use case for
| Signed HTTP Exchanges. Sign the video files, then push
| them to the caching server. The caching server then never
| possesses the private keys for the connection and also
| cannot modify the content.
| ryanlol wrote:
| There's nothing interesting here.
|
| What are you going to achieve by stealing the certificate
| for edge0.sktelecom.geo.netflixcdn.com from the box you
| already have access to?
|
| There's no reason to put *.netflix.com certs on the edge
| caches.
| 1001101 wrote:
| Could be in a TPM as well.
| monocasa wrote:
| TPMs are pretty slow; the LPC bus they sit off of is
| basically run at ISA bus speeds.
| nitrogen wrote:
| Maybe they used TPM when they meant HSM
| monocasa wrote:
| Even then, it's probably too high of latency. These
| Netflix caching boxes are perennially the subject of
| "this is how you TLS at line rate and memory bandwidth
| limits" talks. When you combine this with the fact that
| these boxes aren't just installed anywhere, but deep
| inside ISP networks, and ostenisbly the certs aren't for
| *.netflix.com, but instead for either that specific ISP
| or even that specifc box, _and_ the certs need to be
| remotely updated anyway, so they can't just live in an
| HSM the whole time, I'd just store them on disk if I were
| Netflix.
| soneil wrote:
| Wouldn't HSM only be needed for the private key though?
| Once it's in memory it's free
| monocasa wrote:
| And you need the private key for every new TLS
| connection. And when you are running multiple 100Gb
| interfaces, that's a lot of TLS connections.
|
| Versus, what's the attack? The ISP with physical access
| to the box can pull can screw with the cached video data
| somehow? Or MitM and know what Netflix videos their users
| are watching?
| sumtechguy wrote:
| My guess Netflix can guide that by handing back different
| IPs when the end user requests the netflix server name.
| They can also handle it in application the netflix
| application can look and see it is in a network that has
| a box and just goto that ip/host/proxy instead of the
| generic one. Netflix still controls the keys. No MITM
| needed.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> it's torrent-like traffic, but legal,
|
| There is nothing illegal about torrent traffic any more than
| any other form of traffic. "It's streaming-like, but legal."
| "It's VPN-like, but legal." "It's cyptolocker-like, but
| legal." "It's SSL-like, but legal." "It's Tor-like, but
| legal."
| xattt wrote:
| It's unreasonable to the bottom line of the ISP because
| it's high demand on an oversubscribed network. Torrents
| used to be a convenient scapegoat because they were more
| than likely carrying content that was infringing copyright.
|
| I am surprised that ISPs haven't started cracking down on
| WfH, and start saying it violates their TOC because this is
| a business use. Public uproar would be immense.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > It's unreasonable to the bottom line of the ISP because
| it's high demand on an oversubscribed network.
|
| No, it's not unreasonable. They sell consumers unlimited
| high bandwidth connections and at no point are they told
| they can't actually use the service they're paying for.
| What's unreasonable is cutting off paying consumers and
| suing streaming services when the company's dumb business
| model starts failing because of their own invalid
| assumptions. If oversubscribing is such a problem, they
| should stop doing it instead of blaming consumers for
| overusing their low capacity network.
| lostcolony wrote:
| "I am surprised that ISPs haven't started cracking down
| on WfH", "Public uproar would be immense."
|
| You listed the reason why yourself, you shouldn't be
| surprised. Maybe -after- the pandemic, when WfH people
| can be painted as "tech elite" or something, but not
| while everyone wants to WfH and it's a mixed bag who can.
| xattt wrote:
| I do recognize the cognitive dissonance of my statement.
| I am just surprised at the restraint that ISPs have
| shown.
| int_19h wrote:
| In the current climate, it would only invite government
| scrutiny and regulation. Which, once it is in place, is
| unlikely to go away even if COVID does.
| EmilioMartinez wrote:
| It really sounds like a waste of time and money though.
| What judge would ever side with them? I would fire a
| lawyer that even proposes that seriously
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Judges implement the law though, so if the contract says
| "no business use" and this was made clear at the time of
| purchase -- eg by having business level accounts -- then
| what can the judge do? It's for the legislators to
| legislate, not the judges (under English law (UK), common
| law and equity aside).
|
| Actual, I might be wrong here with how contact law is
| handled ... anyone?
|
| A related consideration: when we moved into our terraced
| house the land was under leasehold and the lease
| specified 'no business use'. We bought the freehold some
| time back, but I've often wondered what my position might
| otherwise have been. Presumably breech of the lease
| conditions would be a tort against the landlord and so
| I'd have been fine as long as they didn't sue.
| EmilioMartinez wrote:
| I meant specifically in the context of a pandemic when
| working from home is state mandated in many parts of the
| world. Arguably even constitutions have been bent.
| jandrese wrote:
| Back in the day my ISP had a "Can not be used for
| business traffic or a corporate VPN" line in the TOS. I
| have doubts they ever tried to enforce it.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Yeah, these companies sell unlimited connections despite not
| having the capacity to deliver and then have the gall to be
| offended when we start using what we pay for. Based on their
| marketing I should be entirely justified if I wanted to
| saturate their links at maximum speed 24/7. They _assume_
| most people won 't do it but they deserve absolutely no
| sympathy when their assumptions are proven wrong.
|
| Lashing out at Netflix and bringing them to court for their
| own failings is such an absurd course of action. They should
| try upgrading their networks instead so that their service
| stops sucking.
| Aerroon wrote:
| This seems like a really popular technique in politics. Frame
| the problem in a way that makes it seem unjust regardless what
| the wider implications are.
|
| Online ads and data vacuuming is often presented in a similar
| fashion. Your browser goes to the advertiser and requests the
| ad. The advertiser asks for your data. Your browser sends the
| data to the advertiser. And the way we frame this is that
| advertisers are stealing our data.
|
| Once a system is opaque and automated enough it doesn't seem to
| matter how it really works. Netflix is a big entity, therefore
| we blame Netflix. If Netflix didn't exist then the traffic
| surge wouldn't exist, therefore Netflix should pay.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| wccrawford wrote:
| Seems like a good opportunity for Netflix to raise their prices
| in S.Korea and use a portion of that increase to pay what the
| courts seem like they're going to demand.
|
| The rest of the increase would go to offsetting the additional
| burden on Netflix that this will cause by forcing them to treat
| S.Korea differently than everyone else.
|
| I'm honestly surprised that any corporations are paying that
| there, but if the government is going to requirement, there's not
| a lot you can do about it. It's a very bad precedent and I don't
| see it actually going well for S. Korea. Putting up extra
| barriers is a way to keep companies _out_. We usually call it a
| "tariff", but that's generally for physical goods. And the goal
| is often to prevent as many of those goods from being imported.
|
| What would S.Korea's internet look like if even 1 of the major
| players decided to just block the country instead of paying the
| fees?
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| > I'm honestly surprised that any corporations are paying that
| there,
|
| It benefits Netflix in the long term as it raises barriers to
| entry for disruptive competitors.
|
| If, in order to reach an ISP's customers, you have to pay the
| ISP for the privilege, then creating new startups is harder and
| the incumbents can just price it in.
|
| I wouldn't be at all surprised if this became more common
| elsewhere, as everyone involved benefits. Except us, the
| customers, of course, but we don't get a seat at this table and
| the people who should be fighting for us are taking bribes
| (sorry "campaign donations").
| criley2 wrote:
| While I see the logic in what you're saying, the Netflix
| business moat is already much deeper due to A) billion dollar
| content deals with major providers and B) billion dollar
| investments into first party content.
|
| Content is king and competitors are already priced out long
| before minor squabbles over bandwidth.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| The disruptor may have an answer for the content problem
| that Netflix never thought of. It's a competition for
| attention, after all, and if someone else can provide a
| more compelling alternative than video for people's
| attention then that will mess with Netflix' business
| despite its content deals.
| 14 wrote:
| This reminds me of Netflix vs blockbuster.
| ojhughes wrote:
| Squid Game is one of those shows you can never "unwatch". It's
| quite harrowing but strangely addictive and a great critique of
| modern capitalism. Strongly recommended if you have the stomach
| for it
| flixic wrote:
| It's also very simplistic. In subject matter, in character
| archetypes, sometimes in acting, and most annoyingly, in
| editing (how it never trusts the viewer to remember what
| happened 25 minutes ago, so they show flashbacks to remind
| you).
| lelanthran wrote:
| > It's also very simplistic. In subject matter, in character
| archetypes, sometimes in acting, and most annoyingly, in
| editing (how it never trusts the viewer to remember what
| happened 25 minutes ago, so they show flashbacks to remind
| you).
|
| I just saw the final episode last night, and I don't remember
| seeing many flashbacks other than at the start of E01.
|
| I admit it is slower moving than I'd like, and some of the
| episodes had way to much filler and not enough plot arcs, but
| I seriously do not remember seeing flashbacks.
| hereforphone wrote:
| It's full of blatant inconsistencies and unrealistic to the
| point of being comic (and yes I am capable of attenuating my
| definition of "reality" for shows and movies.) I rarely watch
| TV but someone made me watch this, and I'm enjoying it as a
| comedy. Am I in good company or is everyone else taking it
| seriously?
| hereforphone wrote:
| Everything is a "critique of modern capitalism" to the right
| crowd. Are you in college?
| odiroot wrote:
| > It's quite harrowing but strangely addictive and a great
| critique of modern capitalism.
|
| Do you have some exclusive access to a version of Squid Game
| that we all don't?
| injidup wrote:
| I'm dubious of this common posture of "horrible violence in
| entertainment" is ok because it's a critique of XYZ.
|
| It's like "free guy" (spoiler boring) tries to be a critique of
| video Game violence by positing the existence of another gaming
| reality where people are nice to each other. But this other
| reality is just a Macguffin. We come to watch the violence and
| mayhem and we come to watch squid game for the same reason.
|
| It is better to own the fact that watching torture porn gives
| you the jollies rather than posturing that it gives you
| membership of some anti capalist intelligensia.
|
| It's just Romans and Christians and Lions. The crowd loves it
| because people love blood.
| hereforphone wrote:
| This violence is unrealistic to the point that it's not
| disturbing (to me, at least). Someone pulls an undamaged
| bullet from a guy's forehead with tweezers. Blood is the
| color of cranberry juice. It's so over the top it's lost all
| impact.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Because all entertainment is the same right? And it's of
| course not possible for a piece of entertainment to be both
| violent _and_ intelligent?
|
| Considering your comment seems to be targeted at pseudo-
| intellectualism the irony here is simply off the charts.
| latexr wrote:
| > I'm dubious of this common posture of "horrible violence in
| entertainment" is ok because it's a critique of XYZ.
|
| The comment you're replying to says the show is harrowing
| _and_ a critique. There's no "because" or apologia.
| drcode wrote:
| The violence is OK because Squid Games is awesome. The social
| critique is merely a bonus.
| justshowpost wrote:
| Its just Yet Another Battle Royale.
|
| > capitalism
|
| Too bad they don't want to watch award winning _Kim and
| Beautiful_ in sustainable 320x200 format from the North :)
| wiradikusuma wrote:
| Let customers vote with their wallet then.
|
| If I were the judge, I would ask Netflix to stream low bandwidth
| version of the content so it won't impact SK Broadband.
|
| AND, tell BOTH parties that they must put announcement in their
| respective website, "SK Broadband provides you internet at a cost
| (as per their claim). To enjoy Full HD of this content, pay extra
| to SK Broadband".
|
| See which party the customers will be angry to.
| Arrath wrote:
| Considering how often I've seen the "SK has the best/fastest
| consumer internet connections" news bits, I'd be awfully angry
| at the provider for drumming up the hype and failing to
| deliver.
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| There are three major nationwide broadband services in SK: Korea
| Telecom (KT), LG Uplus and SK Broadband (SKBB, a subsidary of SK
| Telecom). Among them SKBB is considered the worst because both KT
| and LG U+ operate their own infrastructures due to their pre-
| privatization history but SKBB don't, so SKBB has to perpetually
| lease infra from them. It is therefore no surprise that SKBB (and
| also SKT) is one of the biggest forces against net neutrality in
| SK, given their service is especially weak and net neutrality
| will make it worse.
| [deleted]
| dewoleajao wrote:
| It's strange that SK Broadband would go to so much trouble rather
| than be happy for the profit opportunity that Netflix brings
| since their content is cacheable.
|
| In Nigeria which arguably is more broadband-challenged than
| Korea, it took me only a few weeks to ship in a Netflix
| OpenConnect appliance and integrate into the network at a local
| fiber company where I did some work last year. All we had to do
| was agree with Netflix that we would keep it powered up and cover
| the cache-fill bandwidth costs.
|
| Net results: Today, that ISP uses less than 2Gbps of Internet
| bandwidth for less than 8 hours daily to update their cached
| content which they deliver to thousands of Netflix users at wire
| speeds. Literally you're spending less than 2Gbps to acquire
| popular content and selling more than 10Gbps to your users during
| peak periods (if your local infrastructure can support it).
|
| https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/
| chii wrote:
| > for the profit opportunity
|
| Sk broadband already got paid from their customers. Netflix is
| merely incurring more costs for them, which is why they are
| suing in court in the first place!
|
| Sk broadband would prefer that their customers don't have
| netflix, but only browse text websites!
| moate wrote:
| I worked in pricing and I always framed it as a scale with
| "Greed" on the left and "Customer Service" on the right and
| the 2 ideas being in a tug of war.
|
| Greed wants to charge customers infinite money and provide 0
| product in exchange for it. Customer Service wants to give
| away everything for free to as many people as possible.
|
| To be a real, viable business you need to find that sweet
| spot where neither of the two makes too many of the
| decisions.
| Jensson wrote:
| By this logic the consumer would have to pay the ISP fee to every
| new service they sign up for, like Netflix, Youtube, Disney etc.
| I prefer the way it works now where I only have to pay for my
| connection once.
| ninjinxo wrote:
| Similarly, Australia had problems when Netflix was first becoming
| popular here, putting huge strains on the network and causing
| widespread congestion issues from 6 to 10 pm.
|
| I wonder if we'll ever see a predictive home-caching system; if I
| watch the first three episodes of squid game in one night, it
| might be sensible to have my TV download the rest of the series
| overnight.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| At least the Android app does have the ability to do downloads,
| and I thought it had the ability to schedule downloads for off
| hours, but I don't have it in front of me so I might be
| misremembering
| okamiueru wrote:
| Doesn't Netflix have a CDN in Australia, and doesn't Australia
| have fast Internet within the continent? I'm a bit surprised
| this is such a problem
| mewse wrote:
| We do now. The problem was when Netflix first opened here and
| the vast majority of people were still on ADSL links or even
| slower, and our NBN infrastructure was still just starting to
| come together (which I'm not going to go into details about
| because omg there's a huge political fight in that which I
| really don't want to think about)
|
| Short version: our Netflix is just fine now. There were just
| a couple rocky weeks/months at the start. :)
| m4tthumphrey wrote:
| And then you'd have storage issues instead of bandwidth!
| mercora wrote:
| having multicast working on the internet would make this
| extremly efficient for the distributors (i.e. netflix) but the
| last mile (i.e. your ISP) still would have to deliver the
| packets to their customers one by one. at Netflix scale it
| would probably be already very beneficial to do that by
| broadcasting the stream starting every 5 seconds or something
| for uncached viewing. (i.e make the player wait for the next
| broadcast and jump to different ones [or start a new one at
| desired offset if none exist] when seeking).
|
| Instead of using the internet its also feasible to use the DVB
| network like this. they could even broadcast a copy long before
| release so its guaranteed to be ready for offline watching when
| released. i am almost certain Sky Germany does something
| similar...
| the8472 wrote:
| A hybrid approach would be the best. You could start with an
| unicast stream and prefetch the rest of the show in the
| background by subscribing to a few cycling multicast streams.
| That requires a few gigabytes of temporary storage of course.
| hansel_der wrote:
| a long, long time ago, we used devices called "vcr" to record
| specific streams that were broadcast over the cable network
| to have them ready for offline watching.
| mercora wrote:
| yes its basically the same thing with DRM on-top.
| Genmutant wrote:
| Doesn't the Netflix app already do that? Or was that the Prime
| Video one?
| mdip wrote:
| I find this thinking just _bizarre_ and displays quite a bit of
| hubris from the ISPs and /or S. Korean courts.
|
| What's happening here is simple: Netflix is so popular that an
| ISP _dare not_ block their content. Really, put simply: Netflix
| costs money to deliver, yes, but it is an expectation of ISP
| customers that they have access to Netflix. If an ISP were to
| block /charge more for access to Netflix (assuming that's even
| legal, but let's just say it is), customers would move to another
| ISP. Outside of cases where moving to another would be
| impossible[0], that should be the end of it.
|
| It's interesting to me that the article focuses _entirely_ on
| _the courts_ getting involved. What 's happened is that a
| business made assumptions about cost (that "unlimited" would
| mostly be users surfing lower-bandwidth web sites, not delivering
| video) and the market (all of their competitors likely land
| somewhere near eachothers' pricing) and discovered that those
| assumptions were wrong. Instead of either accepting that they are
| not a commodity that will always chase the lowest price and
| operating accordingly, they've gone to the courts to have the
| government require Netflix to reward them for their mistakes.
|
| This idea that as an ISP customer, you "paid for unlimited
| service at a certain rate" but "don't you _dare_ actually _use_
| that unlimited service " is absurd. Watching Netflix, even the
| vast majority of the day/night, isn't a matter of abuse -- akin
| to bringing a sleeping bag and living at a 24-hour gym that you
| have a membership to -- it is what _most_ ISPs are advertising as
| a _reason to subscribe to them_. They know they can 't turn
| around and tell their customers (that have choices in service
| providers) that they're going to charge them for access to
| something that is central to that service, so they go after
| Netflix. What if Netflix refuses to pay and just leaves the S.
| Korean market or decides to say "screw it" and shut the business
| down (ala Atlas Shrugged)? Would that make S. Korean ISPs service
| more valuable?
|
| [0] In these cases, they're a monopoly to those customers and
| should be regulated accordingly; preferably in a manner that
| brings in an ISP that can handle Netflix traffic without the
| charges.
| glanzwulf wrote:
| In reality what should happen is the users of SK Broadband should
| sue the ISP for being unable to provide a service they pay for.
| AlexAltea wrote:
| > Netflix's data traffic handled by SK jumped 24 times from May
| 2018 to 1.2 trillion bits of data processed per second
|
| What an odd way of representing data transfer bandwidth: Was it
| so hard to just say 1.2 Tbps (or better 150 GB/s)?
|
| Also, maybe an ignorant question from my side: Is that bandwidth
| such a big deal at nation-scales? It feels like barely 1000 homes
| maxing out the fiber usage. All submarine cables being deployed
| today are already in the 100+ Tbps range, aren't they?
| FatalLogic wrote:
| In Korea, can popular shops, restaurants and similar destinations
| be sued by public transport operators for overloading their
| trains and buses?
| justshowpost wrote:
| SK Broadband's customers should be suing. The only guilt of
| Netflix (besides selling down-level show at rip-off price) is
| what their action helped to reveal SK Broadband can not actually
| service their customers with agreed bandwidth (and no, its ISP's
| sole responsibility to pay their uplink for required bandwidth).
| I'm pretty sure the problem was well known to geek minority, just
| this streaming spike uncovered the problem to general public.
| oefrha wrote:
| This seems to be the opposite of Internet behemoths zero rating
| their bandwidth to undercut smaller competitors: Internet
| behemoths being shaken down for transit technically already paid
| for. I suppose the ISPs didn't expect this level of utilization.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| The Internet is literally a series of erbium doped tubes,
| analogous to highway traffic.
|
| Videos of cats at high enough bandwidth can melt optical
| interconnects.
|
| For the same reason truckers pay some tax for brutalizing the
| roads, giant content providers beaming data through these systems
| must be taxed lest the Internet infrastructure be destroyed and
| the cost only be burdened by general taxpayers instead of users.
| (because Netflix would just charge users more, but in the
| meantime they will fight to have other non-user taxpayers
| maintain the infrastructure)
| Illniyar wrote:
| I think in your analogy netflix is more the shop that those
| truckers are delivering goods to.
|
| So if you want to be more accurate, the proposed payments won't
| be like a tax on truckers (in this analogy the truckers are the
| users, or maybe ISPs), rather it'll be a tax on supermarkets
| and shops that are getting the goods.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| They are sending the trucks out of their shop...
| the8472 wrote:
| > literally [...] analogous to highway traffic.
|
| No, it isn't. Cars can't spawn clones as they travel down a
| branching set of roads.
|
| But IP Multicast can do this, which is how IPTV works on the
| ISP level. And multicast is basically emulated by edge
| distribution boxes so that the traffic moving into the ISP can
| be multiplied to multiple customers.
| reportgunner wrote:
| I don't think the parent was serious, I believe it's a
| reference to _The Internet is a series of tubes_ [0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_of_tubes
| niemandhier wrote:
| I think it becomes easier to think about this, if I frame the
| problem in terms of more tangible objects than bandwidth and
| data.
|
| The public street network is in large parts paid for by taxes, so
| for everyone access to the network is already payed for.
|
| If I now envision a single company blocking all streets with its
| giant truck fleet, I could completely understand a motion to
| introduce a new form of toll to be payed by such companies to
| avoid having to rise taxes.
|
| That toll would most likely just increase the price of whatever
| said company is selling.
| jedberg wrote:
| This already happens. The big trucks are UPS and FedEx and
| Amazon. This companies already pay to maintain their trucks,
| which includes taxes for road maintenance through gas tax and
| registration fees.
|
| Those trucks are only on the road because all the people in the
| houses keep ordering stuff online.
|
| Should FedEx/UPS/Amazon have to pay an extra tax just because
| they are popular with the people? The homeowners already pay
| taxes to maintain the roads to their houses. Why should the
| city get extra from the trucking companies?
| Jensson wrote:
| Its more like, there is a new stadium in town. Then the stadium
| holds a game with a team from a nearby town, everyone in that
| town wants to drive to see it, so all the streets in that town
| are now clogged.
|
| Should the stadium pay the other town money to hold a game
| because lots of people there drive to watch it? Or should the
| other town build their roads to meet the demand of their
| citizens? I think the second option is more reasonable, the
| problem was that there wasn't enough road for the citizens in
| general, not that there wasn't enough road for them to watch
| this particular game.
| mdip wrote:
| It's more of a "false advertising" arrangement than that,
| though.
|
| If the ISP is selling me 1Gbps access to _specific internet
| content only_ and I purchased the plan I use based on that
| knowledge[0] then charging me a toll for things that are
| outside of that _specific internet content_ would be
| acceptable. But I didn 't. I signed up for service that was
| limited only by speed, not consumption.
|
| It's a little more evil than that, though. In a
| consumption/speed model, the two work against each other. I've
| paid a premium for 1Gps service over 300Mbps which results in
| me hitting that consumption barrier much faster, so I've paid
| for the privilege of getting hit with more "tolls". That's a
| hell of a profitable business model if you can get customers to
| actually do business with you.
|
| Using a different analogy, the car wash company by ,y father's
| house offered $3/use car washes or a $30/month plan with hand-
| towel drying. It's a profitable arrangement for the car wash
| because most people won't wash their car ten times in a month.
| My dad, however, owned a company that sold products to
| automotive manufacturing plants and placed an unusually high
| value on having a very clean car. He took his car in for a wash
| _every morning_ and many afternoons. That was _the point_ of
| buying the $30 plan. For the car wash company to turn around
| and say "You're using your unlimited service so much that
| you're negatively affecting access to the car wash for our more
| profitable customers" would be _illegal_. That 's not to say it
| doesn't happen all the time in other places, but it also
| doesn't mean we should allow it.
|
| [0] And it's not OK for that to be buried in paragraph 11 of
| subparagraph a) in the user agreement as "abuse of network
| services".
| resizeitplz wrote:
| Envision every driver owning a semi-truck made by the company.
| It's not a single company blocking the streets; it's the
| drivers who purchased the company's very large vehicles and who
| also paid for street access.
| viceroyalbean wrote:
| I don't think that's a fair framing. As others have said, the
| users of the broadband pay for their bandwidth. It's not
| Netflix pushing data, it's the users pulling it. If you have
| 100 users that pay you for 1Gbps/s but your network can't
| handle 100Gbps/s that's your failure to adhere to the contract
| you made with your users.
|
| In the road example, it's more like if every person paid for
| the ability to put one truck on the road and everyone delegated
| their truck space to a shipping company who now has millions of
| trucks hogging the roads. Yes, they're using tons of
| infrastructure but their usage has been paid for already.
| pkaye wrote:
| I thought South Korea has fast cheap internet?
| drcongo wrote:
| There is no way that this is anything other than a clever bit of
| PR.
| Beldin wrote:
| From the headline I thought this was something like where a phone
| number is shown in a serie, and it's viewers start calling it in
| droves.
|
| Not so. This is about an ISP having to deliver what its customers
| pay it for: bytes.
|
| Incredibly, this has gone to court and the ISP won. The judge
| found it isn't fair that the market changed, and that Netflix
| should pony up now that they've dared to become popular.
| CreateAccntAgn wrote:
| "The move comes after a Seoul court said Netflix should
| "reasonably" give something in return to the internet service
| provider for network usage"
|
| Any additional info on why the courts said so?
| EmilioMartinez wrote:
| This is just a framing issue and I don't get the hate here. It
| would make sense that ISP's openly decide to charge flat rates to
| users while charging special fees to really large content
| providers. What's ridiculous is that this is being settled in
| courts of law, as if someone did something wrong, instead of
| being just business deals.
|
| Internet infrastructure and usage is relatively recent and
| quickly shifting, so the social/political/economic aspects are
| always trying to fit into legacy arrangements. In this case it
| was easier to preserve the ISP-user agreement of how content is
| served and billed, while using pre-existing infrastructures
| (courts of law) to settle who actually pays the extra bills. It
| feels out of place, but if you strip the legal content out it's
| just business deals about services.
| gumby wrote:
| Netflix pays for the packets that go in and out of its network.
| SK's customers pay for the packets that go in and out of their
| home networks. So what am I missing? That's sounds like the way
| things are supposed to work.
|
| When I read this description of SK's complaint it appears they
| are unhappy with the deals they struck with their customers. Nor
| in other words they are unhappy their customers are actually
| using the product.
| mdip wrote:
| I think it's fairly simple: in the original arrangement where
| ISPs provided access to content and that content was not video,
| ISPs were making out like bandits offering unlimited service at
| ridiculous speeds while not having to upgrade their own
| connections since customer demand was lower. Suddenly content
| comes along that increases customer demands on their "unlimited
| service" and instead of the ISP deciding correct the capacity
| imbalance (and accept that they "done screwed up"), they cry
| "unfair" and run to the courts.
|
| Back when peering agreements were in place it made sense for
| everyone involved; ISPs get great content they don't have to
| provide and/or pay for, content providers get access to
| customers. Now, however, ISPs are finding out that these
| agreements are very costly for them, they can't turn to their
| customers for more money due to competition and they can't just
| block Netflix because those same customers would leave for
| another ISP so they turn to the courts to repair their
| mistakes. If they win, Netflix gets screwed, the customer gets
| screwed and the ISP gets rewarded for their mistakes... that
| sounds like a heck of a public-private partnership. :)
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