1) Level3 has offered to split the cost with the Big5 ISP's of upgrading their infrastructure.[1]
* This would increase throughput and capacity for both Level3 and the consumer networks.
2) Netflix has offered free Open Connect Appliances to all major ISP's.[2]
* This would allow consumer networks to only download a video once, then serve it up locally within their network to all their customers. In-network traffic is almost free for the ISP's.
3) Netflix has offered to change their entire distribution model into a P2P model.[3]
* This would allow consumer networks to only download a video once, then serve it up locally within their network to all customers. In-network traffic is almost free for ISP's.
.
All of these options have been flat-out refused. The Big5 ISP's are purely after the money. There is no other compromise for them.
I work at an ISP, can confirm. All decisions about capacity are about how much money we'll make or lose. We're intentionally keeping bandwidth constrained because we know it will severely impact our cable TV business.
And that is the main problem here: ISP's are competing with themselves. This is why everyone hails Google Fiber so much: it's a dedicated internet service provider, and does not compete with another branch of the same company. As a result, they (or any dedicated ISP for that matter) will try to get their users the best internet experience and speed out there. In theory anyway.
Thought of a great analogy. Imagine it's the nineteenth century, and by whatever coincidence the dominant electric power delivery company actually also still owns a thriving kerosene delivery business, i.e. for lamp oil. They don't care if you run sewing machines or home appliances at the going rate for electricity - but every night after dark, they determine whether you're streaming electricity to power your light, and if so they intermittantly dim the power (to well below the level you're paying for), expressly to give you an awful experience and retard the adoption of electricity. Just so they can make more money selling lamp oil.
Net neutrality simply means they are not allowed to go into homes and figure out what you're using your electricity for, and try to charge you more based on that usage.
That's true, and an exceptionally strong argument for forcing ISPs to be utility providers that are not allowed to have content businesses. It's back to Econ 101.
The problem with this is that to some extent, the content business effectively sponsors the internet business. The same is true for the phone business.
It gives them pops, "free" capacity (meaning they have to buy dark fiber, and can resell internally cheaply, or just wouldn't have it at all if they didn't have phone business), shared infrastructure.
So if you do this, effectively it will mean the same any other solution means : more expensive internet.
Given that that will be the result, might I suggest an alternative solution ? Get a basic business internet line from Verizon. See the difference.
The bulk of your "business internet line" services are really only expensive due to the SLA that is attached. Drop your SLA, and the price will drop sometimes up to 80% (even though it is still technically "business internet connection" and is on the same business line subnet, etc).
Nobody says ISPs should ignore short term profit/loss considerations. However, more and more people are saying by ignoring everything else, they are making their customers and themselves a disservice. This is a dangerous game, and a business which thinks they can make money while pissing off their customers is putting itself in danger. Sometimes it can be sustained, but in many cases in the long run the customers would either leave or set the regulators on them.
Netflix could solve the bandwidth problem by just mailing the whole library to customers. "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of magnetic tapes."
Netflix offer this as an option to any ISP that wants it, free.
They will put a server in a data center anywhere an ISP wants, and they'll manage the whole syncing thing so the ISP doesn't even know it's there. After that, all content comes from that cache.
To clarify Grecy's statement, netflix offers openconnect[1] for to ISPs as a caching mechanism, and the box contains about 108TB of disk capacity[2]. The boxes are sent to ISPs instead of customers though.
While the "oil tanker full of hard drives" approach has incredible bandwidth the latency is a bit of a problem. Especially when the Netflix library is updated constantly.
My personal opinion is that you should cache/co-locate your data close the the edge of the edge of your network whenever it presents a benefit for congestion and price.
* This would increase throughput and capacity for both Level3 and the consumer networks.
2) Netflix has offered free Open Connect Appliances to all major ISP's.[2]
* This would allow consumer networks to only download a video once, then serve it up locally within their network to all their customers. In-network traffic is almost free for the ISP's.
3) Netflix has offered to change their entire distribution model into a P2P model.[3]
* This would allow consumer networks to only download a video once, then serve it up locally within their network to all customers. In-network traffic is almost free for ISP's.
.
All of these options have been flat-out refused. The Big5 ISP's are purely after the money. There is no other compromise for them.
[1] http://blog.level3.com/global-connectivity/chicken-game-play...
[2] https://www.netflix.com/openconnect/hardware
[3] http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/netfli...