Time Warner Cable Also Charging Netflix For Direct Connection

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Is there anyone left that isn't charging Netflix for a direct connection to their network? :(

Comcast, then Verizon, AT&T and now Time Warner Cable. That's the list of ISPs that have less-than-politely declined Netflix's free OpenConnect setup, and instead decided they'll take a payment from the streaming service in exchange for connecting its network directly to theirs.
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This is Netflix's fault for giving in to Comcast.

Don't stand up to one bully? Don't be surprised when the rest see you as Free Lunch Money
 
Might be another price increase coming now...
 
When the backbone of your company's business model is based on using another company's product in order to deliver it and you are now worth more than them, they are going to take their taste. Im pretty sure nothing is stopping them from starting up their own ISP if they truly feel it is against their financial interests to keep paying.
 
You mean besides high start up costs, legality, and prohibition by municipalities to lay new cable. right.

You were aware that the ISP's have been spreading money around to help protect their monopoly.
 
qbert95 said:
When the backbone of your company's business model is based on using another company's product in order to deliver it and you are now worth more than them, they are going to take their taste. Im pretty sure nothing is stopping them from starting up their own ISP if they truly feel it is against their financial interests to keep paying.
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WTF?

Starting a real ISP isn't all that possible in the US. It's not even easy for an established ISP to move into a new area. For example: 10 years ago or so Verizon was all set to move FIOS into our city. They said they were about to do it. They had kiosks in the mall where you could sign up for it. Then, for some mysterious reason, it never happened. Comcast is the evil overlord here. They bought the (not too bright, I know her personally) mayor. Quite literally. Cash changed hands and FIOS never came.
 
qbert95 said:
When the backbone of your company's business model is based on using another company's product in order to deliver it and you are now worth more than them, they are going to take their taste. Im pretty sure nothing is stopping them from starting up their own ISP if they truly feel it is against their financial interests to keep paying.
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That other companies product is already paid from by me. I pay my Cable company to fetch data for me. I don't need to pay twice. Once to do it as they promised me directly in our agreement and a second time when Netflix passes on their charge to me. Cable company is double dipping. They are at a limit where they can't overtly charge consumers more without consumers dropping and limping by with alternatives.

Its like I've hired a shipping company to pick up a washer for me I bought at XYZ warehouse, then when they get to the warehouse, they charge XYZ more money or they won't follow through on the delivery and XYZ won't get paid.
 
Netflix should try and see if they can start their own ISP. Make it competitive and throw in the Netflix subscription bundled with the connection. As long as its competitively priced watch ppl say FU comcast, timewarner, and everyone else. I know I would.
 
Let's see, if this Comcast merger goes through, I'm sure Comcast will play nice and forgive the Time Warner Cable deal... They won't double dip on Netflix, right? ;)
 
///AMG said:
Netflix should try and see if they can start their own ISP. Make it competitive and throw in the Netflix subscription bundled with the connection. As long as its competitively priced watch ppl say FU comcast, timewarner, and everyone else. I know I would.
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Never happen. It costs tens of Billions of dollars to start an ISP and get the necessary permits to be allowed to start working the infrastructure, plus tens of Billions more over a decade or two to create the network. Netflix doesn't have that type of cash.
 
gamerk2 said:
Never happen. It costs tens of Billions of dollars to start an ISP and get the necessary permits to be allowed to start working the infrastructure, plus tens of Billions more over a decade or two to create the network. Netflix doesn't have that type of cash.
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Never said they did. They could always borrow, for the long run spending it now would be better. They could always start buying small local ISP companies. As it is I think netflix is growing and going to become a media creation company not just consumption and once they get big M&As always happen. I would think ISP companies would be on their list. Maybe even partner with google to make it happen. Share the infrastructure costs. There are a lot of way they could make it happen.
 
WTF it's called hosting, and it's never been free. The only thing they've ever paid Comcast for is hosting, and since they've grouped the ISPs together, I assume that is the same for the others also. Of course it makes sense to have the content closer to the end users. Sounds more dramatic to make it sound like Netflix is being punished I guess. Just because hosting more content on internal networks is the solution, still doesn't mean that ISPs are responsible for the effect Netflix has on peering agreements, which is the problem.
 
GotNoRice said:
WTF it's called hosting, and it's never been free. The only thing they've ever paid Comcast for is hosting, and since they've grouped the ISPs together, I assume that is the same for the others also. Of course it makes sense to have the content closer to the end users. Sounds more dramatic to make it sound like Netflix is being punished I guess. Just because hosting more content on internal networks is the solution, still doesn't mean that ISPs are responsible for the effect Netflix has on peering agreements, which is the problem.
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Netflix has their own 'hosting' and the Netflix CEO pretty much said that paying for services was just they way they are paying the extorted surcharge. They are paying for transmission, not hosting. In fact the only silly thing here is Netflix's content providers prevent Netflix from allowing local buffering (hosting) of their content, so the last thing Comcast is doing is any kind of hosting.

Almost every netflix customer is paying their ISP at least $600/yr to fetch data for them. Comcast has the financial resources to fulfill their end of the deal but see an opportunity to extort more money because their average consumer will backlash againt Netflix instead of Comcast.
 
jpm100 said:
Its like I've hired a shipping company to pick up a washer for me I bought at XYZ warehouse, then when they get to the warehouse, they charge XYZ more money or they won't follow through on the delivery and XYZ won't get paid.
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That is not what they are doing because you are still getting your washer. They are simply slowing down the delivery speed you get the washer because XYZ Company is exploiting their delivery service and monopolizing all its trucks impacted their other customers shipping needs. They simply want the XYZ Company to pay an extra fee to compensate for those excessive demands and if XYZ charges you more as a result, than question why they are allowed to continue to pursue their profits but the shipping company is villainized when they do the same.
 
qbert95 said:
That is not what they are doing because you are still getting your washer. They are simply slowing down the delivery speed you get the washer because XYZ Company is exploiting their delivery service and monopolizing all its trucks impacted their other customers shipping needs. They simply want the XYZ Company to pay an extra fee to compensate for those excessive demands and if XYZ charges you more as a result, than question why they are allowed to continue to pursue their profits but the shipping company is villainized when they do the same.
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Huh? If the shipping company isn't getting paid enough by me to do their job, they are false advertizing.
 
And do you have a clue on the profitability of the large providers? The small providers may be getting reamed by the content providers because they have no leverage. But TWC & Comcast ain't going hungry
 
I wonder if Netflix would be better off bundling a VPN with their service for a bit extra?
 
This is why most advanced nations don't let companies own the highways, physical or digital, they build them themselves and make it public, leasing to anyone wanting to run a business on that infrastructure on equal terms.

It's just gonna keep snowballing from here, and it'll hurt the entire economy for the benefit of a few monopolies involved.
 
Ashbringer said:
I wonder if Netflix would be better off bundling a VPN with their service for a bit extra?
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If Netflix had done that from the beginning as their standard they would not have any issues right now with ISPs. NSA problems probably, but not ISPs which would be doing everything they could to crack the VPN.

Sure would be entertaining though.
 
Yakk said:
If Netflix had done that from the beginning as their standard they would not have any issues right now with ISPs. NSA problems probably, but not ISPs which would be doing everything they could to crack the VPN.

Sure would be entertaining though.
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It's established that VPN's work great for getting around throttling done by the ISPs, especially for Netflix. Some people are in work or college which will almost always throttle anyway. I say offer a bundle deal with NetFlix+VPN. Yea it would be off loading the cost onto you but you would get a VPN, and that can provide secure web browsing as well as faster video streaming.
 
Ashbringer said:
It's established that VPN's work great for getting around throttling done by the ISPs, especially for Netflix. Some people are in work or college which will almost always throttle anyway. I say offer a bundle deal with NetFlix+VPN. Yea it would be off loading the cost onto you but you would get a VPN, and that can provide secure web browsing as well as faster video streaming.
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Oh I agree, I've had to do exactly this with my old ISP before I switched to a new ISP which opened my area which doesn't throttle, yet.

I'd be curious why Netflix has not opened its own VPN yet, they have to have studied the possibility before resorting to giving protection money to the major ISPs.
 
These ISPs need to be broken like the Bells were in 1982. Force each service to become an independent entity. Each entity operates a different service. (internet, cable and telephone)
 
If they are paying Verizon, then they are getting screwed.

ZERO improvement here. Still stuck at 250SD or so.
 
Ashbringer said:
It's established that VPN's work great for getting around throttling done by the ISPs, especially for Netflix. Some people are in work or college which will almost always throttle anyway. I say offer a bundle deal with NetFlix+VPN. Yea it would be off loading the cost onto you but you would get a VPN, and that can provide secure web browsing as well as faster video streaming.
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If Netflix was to provide VPNs, would that mean that all internet traffic from that household would have to go through Netflix, or is there a way to split the network traffic so that only Netflix data would come through the VPN. All other sources (websites, games, online apps, Steam) would go through your normal connection?
 
h.265 + encryption + user-adjustable resolution?
It would need capable devices.. probably netflix-specific though.
 
NeghVar said:
If Netflix was to provide VPNs, would that mean that all internet traffic from that household would have to go through Netflix, or is there a way to split the network traffic so that only Netflix data would come through the VPN. All other sources (websites, games, online apps, Steam) would go through your normal connection?
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It could be split. That's called a split tunnel where we route some traffic one way and some another.
 
Uvaman said:
It would need capable devices.. probably netflix-specific though.
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Exactly the issue with VPNs. Average consumers use tablets, rokus, consoles, and TV apps for their streaming. VPN software for pc is easy, other devices are not as simple. Also netflix would be in danger of alienating people with older devices that didn't get VPN updates.
 
NeghVar said:
If Netflix was to provide VPNs, would that mean that all internet traffic from that household would have to go through Netflix, or is there a way to split the network traffic so that only Netflix data would come through the VPN. All other sources (websites, games, online apps, Steam) would go through your normal connection?
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Maybe. My boss took a slightly different route. He recently got a VPN (VyprVPN) and routed all of his TV's and DVR through an older router that he put DD-WRT on with a VPN client. All his normal computers, tablets and phones go through the ISP supplied router. It appears to work great. A video stream that was coming in at ~300k without the VPN would stream at between 10-15mb when the VPN was enable (running the VPN client on his main computer).

He would have put all his devices through the DD-WRT router except for the fact that the encryption for the VPN connection was eating up the routers CPU. His 80mb connection to the net is only around 10mb through the VPN router. The CPU in the router is only running at a few hundred megahertz so it's not going to be particularly fast doing encryption for the VPN connection. A new/faster router would probably do better.

On his 80mb FIOS connection he was getting lots of buffering with most video streams. Surprisingly, Netflix was working fine. It was Vudu, Amazon Prime video, Youtube, etc. that was doing excessive buffering. Since putting in the VPN he's now happy with his streaming but is quite pissed with Verizon which still claims it's not throttling.
 
Ashbringer said:
It's established that VPN's work great for getting around throttling done by the ISPs, especially for Netflix. Some people are in work or college which will almost always throttle anyway. I say offer a bundle deal with NetFlix+VPN. Yea it would be off loading the cost onto you but you would get a VPN, and that can provide secure web browsing as well as faster video streaming.
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If enough people did that, they would detect VPN's and throttle them all.
 
jpm100 said:
If enough people did that, they would detect VPN's and throttle them all.
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Yes they could, maintaining this throttling would be time consuming for them and could lead to a more defendable false advertising claim regarding advertised speed if a customer is throttled all the time on vpn, maybe even opening the possibility of a class action lawsuit.

Perhaps more importantly for them, a lot more corporate customers would also be affected and they would not be happy.
 
jpm100 said:
If enough people did that, they would detect VPN's and throttle them all.
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Exactly; I guarantee a CCIE could set up routing tables to including these VPN's as they pop up. It would take some learning time, but the ISP's would eventually get most of the VPN portals. VPN is not the definitive way for Netflix to go right now. It works for pure VPN companies b/c it's harder for ISP's to monitor all the different VPN addresses.
 
This whole peering dispute nonsense needs to stop.

I pay my ISP for internet access. That includes ALL of the internet, not just subsections of it. It is their responsibility to provide access, and peering based on my service fee, and my service fee alone. Charging other networks for peering to reach me is unethical double dipping, and must stop.

FCC: Reclassify the Internet as a Common Carrier NOW!

Meanwhile, Netflix aren't sitting on their asses on this.

Rumor has it they are looking into going peer to peer to partially address this situation, as it ought to significantly reduce the load across the peering boundaries.
 
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