Netflix Refuses To Comply With Verizon’s “Cease And Desist”

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Netflix has has responded Verizon's cease and desist letter. Grab some popcorn, this is getting good.

"You have chosen not to participate in the Open Connect Program, but instead have allowed your network connection to Netflix to degrade until we agreed to pay for augmented interconnection," Hyman wrote. "We brought the data right to your doorstep...all you had to do was open your door."
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I would approve of this more if Netflix didn't roll over and pay up against Comcast.
 
i thought netflix caved already and took down their little message that comes up?
 
sfsuphysics said:
I would approve of this more if Netflix didn't roll over and pay up against Comcast.
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They paid Verizon as well, not just Comcast. Comcast is delivering the bandwidth (or at least most of it), Verizon isn't holding up to their end of the deal. Verizon is getting paid by BOTH their customers AND Netflix -- and not delivering. So...
 
If Verizon decides to pursue legal action against Netflix, it will take years to sort out and cost everyone a shit ton of money. Not to mention that yes Verizon is clearly wrong in this case taking money from both sides (customers and netflix) and not opening up their pipes with a push of the button. If I was netflix, i'd rescind my contract with them.
 
This is all a farce.

Netflix already paid Comcast and Verizon big bucks for bandwidth. They can kick and scream all they want but it's all for show. The money has changed hands and the deal is done. Net neutrality is dead.
 
WinSomeLoseNone said:
This is all a farce.

Netflix already paid Comcast and Verizon big bucks for bandwidth. They can kick and scream all they want but it's all for show. The money has changed hands and the deal is done. Net neutrality is dead.
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Netflix paid because they want proper service now and danegeld is, currently, an unfortunate cost of doing business.

They're still fighting the good fight on Net Neutrality so that they might not have to pay this in the future but a Net Neutrality decision might be delivered potentially years from now.... Netflix, as a business, doesn't want to take the risk in the meantime.
 
I can sort of agree with the Comcast contract since Netflix is also using their server resources but Verizon just boggles my mind.

It is very funny to see Verizon DSL dead last on that list.
 
Trimlock said:
I can sort of agree with the Comcast contract since Netflix is also using their server resources but Verizon just boggles my mind.

It is very funny to see Verizon DSL dead last on that list.
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Netflix isn't using any of Comcast's server resources, it's the same simple extortion in their case as well (it's just that they're holding up their end of the protection money agreement).
 
Netflix, Verizon, and Comcast all playing monopoly while some watch and take sides as if it will win them points.
 
Trimlock said:
I can sort of agree with the Comcast contract since Netflix is also using their server resources
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Even if this were true it's irrelevant. Verizon is paid by their customers to provide access to data, that funding alone is what should enable them to provide the service requested. If I pay UPS to deliver you a package, you shouldnt have to also pay UPS to accept what I just sent you.
 
I think this was Netflix's plan all along.. pay the extortion fees, then shove it right up their ass by telling their customers when things were slow, just to make a point
 
A few years back when everyone was predicting that we would soon get all our entertainment though Internet streaming services, I said that prices would rise. People then informed me that they already paid for plenty of bandwidth, so I was wrong. I tried to point out that they were paying for peak bandwidth, not sustained, but I was ignored. So why is anybody surprised?

"Nobody listens to Zathrus."
 
I find it interesting that Netflix whines about Verizon not joining a group that Netflix created that benefits Netflix. "You chose not to install our gear in your centers and manage our gear for us..."
 
McFry said:
Even if this were true it's irrelevant. Verizon is paid by their customers to provide access to data, that funding alone is what should enable them to provide the service requested. If I pay UPS to deliver you a package, you shouldnt have to also pay UPS to accept what I just sent you.
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The end user is different than a provider. A provider pays for quantity of access, not speed of access. If a provider wants both quantity AND speed, they have to pay more for it.

To use your analogy of UPS, Netflix is basically whining that they paid for Bulk Rate and that their package was not delivered via Next Day Air. If you want it delivered sooner, you pay more.
 
I'm glad the cable companies are under attack. Should have happened years ago. It's good to see that public awareness is being raised about how anti-consumer and monopolistic the internet/cable/satellite industry is. I saw a post on reddit saying that something like 60% of people said they would cancel their cable sub if they had a decent alternative. I know if Google came to my town offering internet, I'd cancel my internet with Charter as fast a humanly possible.
 
cybrsage said:
The end user is different than a provider. A provider pays for quantity of access, not speed of access. If a provider wants both quantity AND speed, they have to pay more for it.

To use your analogy of UPS, Netflix is basically whining that they paid for Bulk Rate and that their package was not delivered via Next Day Air. If you want it delivered sooner, you pay more.
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cybrsage said:
I find it interesting that Netflix whines about Verizon not joining a group that Netflix created that benefits Netflix. "You chose not to install our gear in your centers and manage our gear for us..."
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Wow, you just have it all wrong, son. Netflix is not 'whining' about being a in group benefiting themselves alone. If you would bother to read up on the whole situation it goes much further beyond even Netflix. It just so happens Netflix is at the pinnacle of the issue at the moment. The problem lies with ISP's not upgrading their infrastructure to support the bandwidth they are charging their customers for. Netflix, or anyone else for that matter, should have to help pay ISP's infrastructure costs for exchanges to other networks. Creating these 'fast lanes' is bad for competition and reeks of unregulated capitalism. Netflix also doesn't need to co-locate their gear inside ISP's data centers. Google Fiber chose to do this b/c (get this!!) they wanted to better support their customer base. Imagine that.

To speak to the analogy, it's really more akin to Netflix paying for Next Day Service and UPS telling them they didn't have enough planes to fit all the overnight traffic so we sent it on an overnight truck instead. It might still get there next day, but much less efficiently.
 
ravx25 said:
To speak to the analogy, it's really more akin to Netflix paying for Next Day Service and UPS telling them they didn't have enough planes to fit all the overnight traffic so we sent it on an overnight truck instead. It might still get there next day, but much less efficiently.
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No the situation before would be Netflix paying for Next Day Service from UPS, but UPS can't reach the destination so they must handoff the package to FedEx. However, UPS's prior agreements with FedEx are inadequate for covering all the packages UPS needs to ship.

In this case, FedEx could accede to UPS demands that it ship the additional packages for free (akin to Cogent and the settlement-free peering with no ratios that it wanted), thus adding an additional cost on all FedEx clients. Or, as in the case of Comcast and Verzion, FedEx can take UPS's business with Netflix and handle the entire shipping process. While in this new scenario, Netflix may be paying more than before (though some reports say they are paying less), it is not paying any additional class of fees than before.

And though it may be wrong that powerful regional ISPs like Comcast and Verizon have both residential customers and Tier 1 backbone networks, even if their backbone side gets split off or nationalized, it won't matter to Netflix since they will still have to pay the backbone to deliver their data to you.
 
cybrsage said:
The end user is different than a provider. A provider pays for quantity of access, not speed of access. If a provider wants both quantity AND speed, they have to pay more for it.

To use your analogy of UPS, Netflix is basically whining that they paid for Bulk Rate and that their package was not delivered via Next Day Air. If you want it delivered sooner, you pay more.
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I think that the effected consumers of Verizon FIOS should sue Verizon.

It all boils down to what Verizon is selling their customers. FIOS is sold as an Internet service, not an Intranet service. Meaning, they are selling you a connection speed between networks. Verizon will likely say bullshit like "your speeds to our network are fine". That's great since speeds to your network are part of and Internet service, the other part is the speeds between Verizon's exit connections. If you're selling an Internet service, you need to deliver on both.

Say you are subscribed to the 50/25 Mbps tier, and you are only getting 1.75 Mbps, which is literally less than 4% of the speed you are paying for, when traversing to an external network (it doesn't matter which one or why), and Verizon is aware of the slowdown, and does nothing to improve it then they are pretty much guilty of false advertisement and intentionally defrauding the consumer. Since they are selling an Internet service, they need to do everything in their power to make sure their infrastructure delivers on what they are selling. If you are selling me a 50 Mbps connection between networks, then that's what you need to deliver.
 
canna said:
I think that the effected consumers of Verizon FIOS should sue Verizon.

It all boils down to what Verizon is selling their customers. FIOS is sold as an Internet service, not an Intranet service. Meaning, they are selling you a connection speed between networks. Verizon will likely say bullshit like "your speeds to our network are fine". That's great since speeds to your network are part of and Internet service, the other part is the speeds between Verizon's exit connections. If you're selling an Internet service, you need to deliver on both.

Say you are subscribed to the 50/25 Mbps tier, and you are only getting 1.75 Mbps, which is literally less than 4% of the speed you are paying for, when traversing to an external network (it doesn't matter which one or why), and Verizon is aware of the slowdown, and does nothing to improve it then they are pretty much guilty of false advertisement and intentionally defrauding the consumer. Since they are selling an Internet service, they need to do everything in their power to make sure their infrastructure delivers on what they are selling. If you are selling me a 50 Mbps connection between networks, then that's what you need to deliver.
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This!
 
rivertown_rat said:
A few years back when everyone was predicting that we would soon get all our entertainment though Internet streaming services, I said that prices would rise. People then informed me that they already paid for plenty of bandwidth, so I was wrong. I tried to point out that they were paying for peak bandwidth, not sustained, but I was ignored. So why is anybody surprised?

"Nobody listens to Zathrus."
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That makes no sense at all.
 
I hope Google Fiber becomes widely spread ASAP so it face fucks these shit companies...ya I'm looking at you Crapcast.
 
SLee said:
No the situation before would be Netflix paying for Next Day Service from UPS, but UPS can't reach the destination so they must handoff the package to FedEx. However, UPS's prior agreements with FedEx are inadequate for covering all the packages UPS needs to ship.

In this case, FedEx could accede to UPS demands that it ship the additional packages for free (akin to Cogent and the settlement-free peering with no ratios that it wanted), thus adding an additional cost on all FedEx clients. Or, as in the case of Comcast and Verzion, FedEx can take UPS's business with Netflix and handle the entire shipping process. While in this new scenario, Netflix may be paying more than before (though some reports say they are paying less), it is not paying any additional class of fees than before.

And though it may be wrong that powerful regional ISPs like Comcast and Verizon have both residential customers and Tier 1 backbone networks, even if their backbone side gets split off or nationalized, it won't matter to Netflix since they will still have to pay the backbone to deliver their data to you.
Click to expand...

The peering agreements that major ISP's, primarily backbones, have with each other is that they could exchange traffic freely between networks. In that xase FedEx wouldn't really be delivering it for free necessarily becuase they would expect UPS to reciprocate with the same service.

In the more direct issue, though, if better exchanges are needed it's really up to Cogent to manage that and charge Netflix accordingly. Netflix paying the fees to handle the interconnects is unfair because then the architecture is in place for everyone behind them, up to a point obviously. Verizon and Comcast are being greedy. They need to upgrade their infrastructure to be able to deliver what they are selling to their end users.
 
ravx25 said:
Verizon and Comcast are being greedy. They need to upgrade their infrastructure to be able to deliver what they are selling to their end users.
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It's really this simple. It amazes me how the media and politicians try to obfuscate the issue just to confuse people.
 
ravx25 said:
The peering agreements that major ISP's, primarily backbones, have with each other is that they could exchange traffic freely between networks. In that xase FedEx wouldn't really be delivering it for free necessarily becuase they would expect UPS to reciprocate with the same service.
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That's the basis of these disputes, unbalanced traffic ratios across settlement-free peering points.

In the more direct issue, though, if better exchanges are needed it's really up to Cogent to manage that and charge Netflix accordingly. Netflix paying the fees to handle the interconnects is unfair because then the architecture is in place for everyone behind them, up to a point obviously.
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It's not really an issue of better exchanges; Cogent is known as a low cost provider who has a history of peering disputes. It's more of an issue how delivery of data should be paid for, if they don't fall under an existing settlement-free agreement or other agreements.

Netflix paying Comcast is really no different than Netflix paying Cogent; Netflix wasn't just paying Cogent to deliver the data to Comcast, it was paying for the entire trip from Netflix to the end user at Comcast. The fact that Cogent is paying Comcast (supposedly by delivering a roughly comparable amount of data back) is abstracted away in the same way a foreign postal service is being paid by the USPS when you send a letter to that country.

The only difference is that Netflix was paying Cogent for "x" bandwidth into Comcast, but Cogent only had a fraction of "x". Now, Netflix is paying Comcast for (and reasonably) getting "x" bandwidth.

Verizon and Comcast are being greedy. They need to upgrade their infrastructure to be able to deliver what they are selling to their end users.
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But there is not enough information to say that's the case. If this spat did end up in court, it would be nice for some information to be released to see exactly what caused the congestion.

The blame would be on the ISPs if they didn't have adequate bandwidth into their network to support the Netflix traffic, or if they were unwilling to sell it to Cogent at market rates, or if they did not meet

On the otherhand, if Netflix/Cogent was delivering the entire network traffic to a small number of exchanges not geographically close to the end user, then that would be on Netflix.Or if Cogent specifically knew beforehand that it did not have enough guaranteed bandwidth into the ISP before telling Netflix that it did, that'll be on it.
 
chockomonkey said:
It's really this simple. It amazes me how the media and politicians try to obfuscate the issue just to confuse people.
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Except it's not that simple, the media is usually on the side of Netflix, and the confusion is caused by there being not enough information to say which side has the poor infrastructure and by the incorrect application of net neutrality (itself a completely confusing topic) into it.
 
canna said:
I think that the effected consumers of Verizon FIOS should sue Verizon.

It all boils down to what Verizon is selling their customers. FIOS is sold as an Internet service, not an Intranet service. Meaning, they are selling you a connection speed between networks. Verizon will likely say bullshit like "your speeds to our network are fine". That's great since speeds to your network are part of and Internet service, the other part is the speeds between Verizon's exit connections. If you're selling an Internet service, you need to deliver on both.

Say you are subscribed to the 50/25 Mbps tier, and you are only getting 1.75 Mbps, which is literally less than 4% of the speed you are paying for, when traversing to an external network (it doesn't matter which one or why), and Verizon is aware of the slowdown, and does nothing to improve it then they are pretty much guilty of false advertisement and intentionally defrauding the consumer. Since they are selling an Internet service, they need to do everything in their power to make sure their infrastructure delivers on what they are selling. If you are selling me a 50 Mbps connection between networks, then that's what you need to deliver.
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I'd love to say this is a good idea, except the fact is that Verizon has more than enough Washington stalwarts in their pocket to avoid having to pay anything out for a looooooong time.
 
SLee said:
The blame would be on the ISPs if they didn't have adequate bandwidth into their network to support the Netflix traffic, or if they were unwilling to sell it to Cogent at market rates, or if they did not meet.
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No. As a customer I'm paying them for a 50 Mbit Internet (not Intranet) connection. I really don't care about their back end dealings and sob stories. I only care that they deliver what they sell to me, bottom line. If they lose money because they didn't think their business model through, well, then they should suffer like any poor business plan.

Think about it this way...

What if you were sold 50 kegs of beer, and the store showed up with 2 kegs. The store then gave you some sob story that they didn't have the trucks to pickup all the beer you requested, but here's your full 50 keg bill anyways. Would you accept that? Quite frankly I wouldn't want to hear some sob story, the whole reason I would pay a store to source and deliver the kegs would specifically be to NOT have to worry about getting items from a distributor, etc. The reason we as people pay for services is specifically NOT to have to worry about the back end and processes.
 
Ok, I'm gonna say it..... SLee sounds like he works for Verizon/Comcast/etc.

Who in there right mind could side with any of these horribly anti consumer companies? When did it become ok to pay for something, not get what you paid for, then get told "Deal with it because we are the only game in town"?

Screw these companies. I hope Google puts them all out of business. Bring on the cable/telecom apocalypse!!!!
 
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