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ISPs can directly connect their networks to Open Connect for free. ISPs can do this either by free peering with us at common Internet exchanges, or can save eve

ISPs can directly connect their networks to Open Connect for free. ISPs can do this either by free peering with us at common Internet exchanges, or can save even more transit costs by putting our free storage appliances in or near their network. Major ISPs around the world have already connected to Open Connect, including Frontier, British Telecom, TDC, Clearwire, GVT, Telus, Bell Canada, Virgin, Cablevision, Google Fiber, Telmex, and more https://www.netflix.com/openconnect https://www.netflix.com/openconnect

Touche 12y ago
Can you explain why ISPs should pay to run your servers in their network and not do the same for my personal homepage?
- unreal37 12y ago
  First, you'd have to buy and build a server for each ISP containing that content and support it when things go wrong. Next, it would have to be cheaper for the ISP to host your server on their network than for them to upgrade their connections to the backbone to handle traffic to your site. If those two conditions are true, I am sure ISPs will accept your offer.
- nathos 12y ago
  Because your homepage doesn't attract many TB of traffic?
  - Touche 12y ago
    So, bandwidth. What is the threshold with which ISPs should start giving out free hosting?
    - nitrogen 12y ago
      When the space and electricity for the hosting is cheaper than the transit costs they would otherwise incur.
    - criley2 12y ago
      It's not free hosting. It's not even hosting a webpage because it's not internet facing at all. Comcast customers can't visit the "free webpage" hosted on Verizon because it's not the internet we're discussing here. It's delivering a service to the local ISP network subscribers. The ISP is allowing Netflix to bring caches and servers to their interconnect so that the ISP can meet the demands of its users who are requesting that data. When should an ISP give out "free" things? When the quality of service for their customers requests depends on it. It's that simple: Customers request data, and ISPs have an obligation to deliver that data once it arrives at their local network. What you call "Free hosting" and "free upgrades", I call "upgrades for requested service paid for by my monthly bill". Because when I request data, and that data requires infrastructure to reach me adequately, then I am paying for that infrastructure by virtue of my monthly bill, and my decision to use part of my capped bandwidth on that service. Remember: residential internet is capped because "users must pay for their use, and infrastructure can't handle too much demand so we need to charge users to upgrade according to their usage pattern". So therefore, I'm paying for that Netflix interconnect, it's not free, I pay for it, because I pay for 300GB of data a month and all of the necessary infrastructure to deliver it!
    - Xylakant 12y ago
      When it's cheaper for them to host the caches a service offers than increasing their peering bandwidth. That's a fairly simple exercise for controlling.
    - danudey 12y ago
      It's not that they're providing free hosting. Netflix is providing hardware that ISPs can install in their own network locations (which they typically have plenty of). In exchange, their customers get better quality and ISPs don't spend their uplinks on Netflix content. It's pretty win-win for everyone.
    - msandford 12y ago
      Econ 101: all things being equal cheaper is better than more expensive. If I have a network and my customers use Netflix and aren't going to not use Netflix because I don't want them to, then part of my job is to ensure that my customers get the bandwidth I've promised them. (This isn't how it ACTUALLY works but how it's SUPPOSED to work) As an ISP I have really rather large amounts of bandwidth in the last-mile at least in aggregate. Let's say that I can reasonably offer 20Mbps to each of my 1mm customers from my POPs to their houses. That's 20Tbps in aggregate. I probably don't have 20Tbps worth of back-haul from all my POPs to all the peering stations where I actually get the customers connected to the internet at large. If network traffic is all long-tailed and the biggest use of bandwidth is 1% of capacity and it goes down from there "free hosting" doesn't make sense. But what if traffic to one company makes up 30% (or 80%) of total back-haul utilization at peak hours? I'm spending a lot of capacity for a single destination. Now what if that place offered to create a magical wormhole from their servers to my customers at my POPs such that a large fraction -- say 80% -- of my customer's traffic from/to them never hits my back-haul it just appears out of thin air at the POP. Would I consider this a good deal? Depends on how much I pay for the back-haul versus how much electricity they're going to use at the POP. All-in I would suspect that it is a good deal thinking in these terms. That's precisely what the Netflix appliance is. It's a way to give the customers Netflix without costing any bandwidth on the back-haul network that ISPs operate. The reason that ISPs aren't all jumping right on this (despite the likely cost-savings) is that they view Netflix as the competition and they're prefer an adversarial relationship that hopefully puts Netflix out of business rather than cooperating and in their minds speeding their own demise. So the rule of thumb you're looking for is that ISPs should start giving out free hosting when it's cheaper to give free hosting than to pay for the back-haul.
      - devrelm 12y ago
        > rather than cooperating and in their minds speeding their own demise It makes sense, then, that one of the few large cable companies that uses Open Connect is Cablevision, who's CEO is on the record saying "Ultimately over the long term I think that the whole video product is eventually going to go to the Internet."[1] He's one of a few that has accepted the eventual fate of cable TV, and so his business decisions aren't biased by a need to delay the inevitable. [1]: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323420604578647961424594702 http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142412788732342060...
    - mmusson 12y ago
      Your question is backwards. ISPs can choose this option to save themselves money. I suspect that the real reason that ISPs like Verizon are resisting, is that with open connect in place there would be nowhere left to hide and blame the internal ISP bandwidth problems.
  - pkulak 12y ago
    It's not hosting. These devices are not available to the open internet, only customers of the ISP who's network they are on. And I'd say the threshold is the point at which you are no longer to deliver the content by other means.
- alex_sf 12y ago
  That's a mischaracterization of the situation. ISPs complained about the amount of traffic originating from Netflix. This traffic was requested by the ISP's customers, and the bandwidth to carry it was promised by the ISP. But, still, the ISPs were unhappy. So Netflix approached them and said they are willing to offer local caches of Netflix content, for free, to any ISP that requested it to reduce network congestion. This was a gesture of good will by Netflix, not an attempt to outsource their hosting costs. It is, fiscally, a loss to Netflix because they need to purchase and maintain the storage appliances for open connect partners.
  - Titanous 12y ago
    Actually I don't think the fiscal loss is so clear-cut. Each deployment of cache nodes removes load/bandwidth from the rest of the CDN, and also reduces support time spent with customers. In fact, 100% of Netflix traffic outside the US and 90% inside the US is served from Open Connect[0]. It is actually a shift of the location of the serving hardware that allows both parties (the ISP and Netflix) to save on bandwidth. This is a net win for everyone. [0] http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/05/netflixs-many-pronged-plan-to-eliminate-video-playback-problems/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/05/netfli...
- logfromblammo 12y ago
  Possibly because your homepage does not drive a third of Internet traffic, both from within the ISPs network and from without. The Internet is a collection of public and private networks. When it costs more to upgrade the linkages between your network and everyone else's than to host a server inside it, that is when the ISP should pay to support a local resource. You're comparing apples and oranges, really. If your website ever reaches the point where traffic starts to saturate an ISP's connections, I'm sure they would be willing to discuss a local CDN resource with you, too. Whether they offer to pay for that or charge you for it depends largely upon how stupid and/or greedy their management is.
goatforce5 12y ago
As I understand it, this is similar to one of the ways Akamai builds out it's network: http://www.akamai.com/html/partners/network_partner.html http://www.akamai.com/html/partners/network_partner.html
criley2 12y ago
Free is a misnomer and the misnomer that is driving this whole debate. There is a cost involved with peering, even if the peering relationship is "free". That cost is the crux of much of these issues today, as Verizon (and Comcast and others) feel that Netflix should pay for their own in-house upgrades, because Netflix is creating the need for those upgrades. Netflix argues, and I agree, that the customer is creating the demand for the data, and the customer is paying for access to the data, and the customer is paying for the infrastructure to get the data they're requesting. OpenConnect means "You're welcome to spend a bunch of money upgrading your interconnection to our free network"
- commandar 12y ago
  This would be true if not for the second half of the program: >or can save even more transit costs by putting our free storage appliances in or near their network. They don't have to interconnect to anyone. Netflix is even offering them storage devices to keep the traffic internal to their own networks.
- devicenull 12y ago
  > OpenConnect means "You're welcome to spend a bunch of money upgrading your interconnection to our free network" Or colo their equipment https://www.netflix.com/openconnect/hardware https://www.netflix.com/openconnect/hardware . If upgrading interconnects is such an expensive issue, surely these ISPs could find 4u somewhere to stick one of these boxes in?
- lotsofmangos 12y ago
  Constantly upgrading telecoms infrastructure to cope with increasing demand is the only way to stay in business if you are a telecoms company, unless you have a monopoly. If they think realtime video is bad, they are really screwed in the long run.
  - hga 12y ago
    Quasi-realtime video has the special distinction of competing with their own video offerings, e.g. see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7873331 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7873331 for some Verizon numbers.
kordless 12y ago
Do you guys use IPv6 at all with your server/client connections?
mcintyre1994 12y ago
From your phrasing you work at Netflix right? Is it possible to get a full list of your Open Connect partners in a marketplace? In the competitive UK marketplace this could pretty easily be the difference in a purchasing decision for me.
Terretta 12y ago
Cablevision's Netflix offering is in fantastic "Super HD" because Cablevision did the right thing and let Netflix store and manage content inside Cablevision's network so it doesn't flow over peering edges. The quality is shocking. But then, Cablevision in general is shocking -- when you compare to most other cable ISPs. I can sustain 130+ megabits day or night on a 100 megabit service tier, with the reliability of dial tone. Other ISPs need to follow the Netflix/Cablevision partnership model. People who have that, worry about moving and losing it.
- barrkel 12y ago
  As far as I'm aware, not all ISPs get that deal - the ISPs need to pay Netflix for it. There are four invariants as I see it: 1) Netflix is using a significant amount of a limited resource (bandwidth) 2) If Netflix doesn't work, consumers blame their ISP, not Netflix 3) The consumer is going to pay for this bandwidth, whether via ISP or Netflix 4) Consumers don't like caps or understand special packages that differentiate between packets routed one way or another If Netflix doesn't pay for this bandwidth, then ISPs need to pay for it - and consumers will pay more to their ISPs to cover these costs. That means that consumers that don't use Netflix will be subsidizing consumers who do use Netflix. IMO ISPs should charge Netflix so that Netflix can charge higher prices to users who are using more bandwidth via Netflix. That better reflects the link between who's using a limited resource and who's paying for it. Unfortunately, because of point (2) above, Netflix has quite a strong bargaining position.

Touche 12y ago

Can you explain why ISPs should pay to run your servers in their network and not do the same for my personal homepage?

unreal37 12y ago
First, you'd have to buy and build a server for each ISP containing that content and support it when things go wrong. Next, it would have to be cheaper for the ISP to host your server on their network than for them to upgrade their connections to the backbone to handle traffic to your site. If those two conditions are true, I am sure ISPs will accept your offer.
nathos 12y ago
Because your homepage doesn't attract many TB of traffic?
- Touche 12y ago
  So, bandwidth. What is the threshold with which ISPs should start giving out free hosting?
  - nitrogen 12y ago
    When the space and electricity for the hosting is cheaper than the transit costs they would otherwise incur.
  - criley2 12y ago
    It's not free hosting. It's not even hosting a webpage because it's not internet facing at all. Comcast customers can't visit the "free webpage" hosted on Verizon because it's not the internet we're discussing here. It's delivering a service to the local ISP network subscribers. The ISP is allowing Netflix to bring caches and servers to their interconnect so that the ISP can meet the demands of its users who are requesting that data. When should an ISP give out "free" things? When the quality of service for their customers requests depends on it. It's that simple: Customers request data, and ISPs have an obligation to deliver that data once it arrives at their local network. What you call "Free hosting" and "free upgrades", I call "upgrades for requested service paid for by my monthly bill". Because when I request data, and that data requires infrastructure to reach me adequately, then I am paying for that infrastructure by virtue of my monthly bill, and my decision to use part of my capped bandwidth on that service. Remember: residential internet is capped because "users must pay for their use, and infrastructure can't handle too much demand so we need to charge users to upgrade according to their usage pattern". So therefore, I'm paying for that Netflix interconnect, it's not free, I pay for it, because I pay for 300GB of data a month and all of the necessary infrastructure to deliver it!
  - Xylakant 12y ago
    When it's cheaper for them to host the caches a service offers than increasing their peering bandwidth. That's a fairly simple exercise for controlling.
  - danudey 12y ago
    It's not that they're providing free hosting. Netflix is providing hardware that ISPs can install in their own network locations (which they typically have plenty of). In exchange, their customers get better quality and ISPs don't spend their uplinks on Netflix content. It's pretty win-win for everyone.
  - msandford 12y ago
    Econ 101: all things being equal cheaper is better than more expensive. If I have a network and my customers use Netflix and aren't going to not use Netflix because I don't want them to, then part of my job is to ensure that my customers get the bandwidth I've promised them. (This isn't how it ACTUALLY works but how it's SUPPOSED to work) As an ISP I have really rather large amounts of bandwidth in the last-mile at least in aggregate. Let's say that I can reasonably offer 20Mbps to each of my 1mm customers from my POPs to their houses. That's 20Tbps in aggregate. I probably don't have 20Tbps worth of back-haul from all my POPs to all the peering stations where I actually get the customers connected to the internet at large. If network traffic is all long-tailed and the biggest use of bandwidth is 1% of capacity and it goes down from there "free hosting" doesn't make sense. But what if traffic to one company makes up 30% (or 80%) of total back-haul utilization at peak hours? I'm spending a lot of capacity for a single destination. Now what if that place offered to create a magical wormhole from their servers to my customers at my POPs such that a large fraction -- say 80% -- of my customer's traffic from/to them never hits my back-haul it just appears out of thin air at the POP. Would I consider this a good deal? Depends on how much I pay for the back-haul versus how much electricity they're going to use at the POP. All-in I would suspect that it is a good deal thinking in these terms. That's precisely what the Netflix appliance is. It's a way to give the customers Netflix without costing any bandwidth on the back-haul network that ISPs operate. The reason that ISPs aren't all jumping right on this (despite the likely cost-savings) is that they view Netflix as the competition and they're prefer an adversarial relationship that hopefully puts Netflix out of business rather than cooperating and in their minds speeding their own demise. So the rule of thumb you're looking for is that ISPs should start giving out free hosting when it's cheaper to give free hosting than to pay for the back-haul.
    - devrelm 12y ago
      > rather than cooperating and in their minds speeding their own demise It makes sense, then, that one of the few large cable companies that uses Open Connect is Cablevision, who's CEO is on the record saying "Ultimately over the long term I think that the whole video product is eventually going to go to the Internet."[1] He's one of a few that has accepted the eventual fate of cable TV, and so his business decisions aren't biased by a need to delay the inevitable. [1]: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323420604578647961424594702 http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142412788732342060...
  - mmusson 12y ago
    Your question is backwards. ISPs can choose this option to save themselves money. I suspect that the real reason that ISPs like Verizon are resisting, is that with open connect in place there would be nowhere left to hide and blame the internal ISP bandwidth problems.
- pkulak 12y ago
  It's not hosting. These devices are not available to the open internet, only customers of the ISP who's network they are on. And I'd say the threshold is the point at which you are no longer to deliver the content by other means.
alex_sf 12y ago
That's a mischaracterization of the situation. ISPs complained about the amount of traffic originating from Netflix. This traffic was requested by the ISP's customers, and the bandwidth to carry it was promised by the ISP. But, still, the ISPs were unhappy. So Netflix approached them and said they are willing to offer local caches of Netflix content, for free, to any ISP that requested it to reduce network congestion. This was a gesture of good will by Netflix, not an attempt to outsource their hosting costs. It is, fiscally, a loss to Netflix because they need to purchase and maintain the storage appliances for open connect partners.
- Titanous 12y ago
  Actually I don't think the fiscal loss is so clear-cut. Each deployment of cache nodes removes load/bandwidth from the rest of the CDN, and also reduces support time spent with customers. In fact, 100% of Netflix traffic outside the US and 90% inside the US is served from Open Connect[0]. It is actually a shift of the location of the serving hardware that allows both parties (the ISP and Netflix) to save on bandwidth. This is a net win for everyone. [0] http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/05/netflixs-many-pronged-plan-to-eliminate-video-playback-problems/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/05/netfli...
logfromblammo 12y ago
Possibly because your homepage does not drive a third of Internet traffic, both from within the ISPs network and from without. The Internet is a collection of public and private networks. When it costs more to upgrade the linkages between your network and everyone else's than to host a server inside it, that is when the ISP should pay to support a local resource. You're comparing apples and oranges, really. If your website ever reaches the point where traffic starts to saturate an ISP's connections, I'm sure they would be willing to discuss a local CDN resource with you, too. Whether they offer to pay for that or charge you for it depends largely upon how stupid and/or greedy their management is.

goatforce5 12y ago

As I understand it, this is similar to one of the ways Akamai builds out it's network: http://www.akamai.com/html/partners/network_partner.html http://www.akamai.com/html/partners/network_partner.html

criley2 12y ago

Free is a misnomer and the misnomer that is driving this whole debate. There is a cost involved with peering, even if the peering relationship is "free". That cost is the crux of much of these issues today, as Verizon (and Comcast and others) feel that Netflix should pay for their own in-house upgrades, because Netflix is creating the need for those upgrades. Netflix argues, and I agree, that the customer is creating the demand for the data, and the customer is paying for access to the data, and the customer is paying for the infrastructure to get the data they're requesting. OpenConnect means "You're welcome to spend a bunch of money upgrading your interconnection to our free network"

commandar 12y ago
This would be true if not for the second half of the program: >or can save even more transit costs by putting our free storage appliances in or near their network. They don't have to interconnect to anyone. Netflix is even offering them storage devices to keep the traffic internal to their own networks.
devicenull 12y ago
> OpenConnect means "You're welcome to spend a bunch of money upgrading your interconnection to our free network" Or colo their equipment https://www.netflix.com/openconnect/hardware https://www.netflix.com/openconnect/hardware . If upgrading interconnects is such an expensive issue, surely these ISPs could find 4u somewhere to stick one of these boxes in?
lotsofmangos 12y ago
Constantly upgrading telecoms infrastructure to cope with increasing demand is the only way to stay in business if you are a telecoms company, unless you have a monopoly. If they think realtime video is bad, they are really screwed in the long run.
- hga 12y ago
  Quasi-realtime video has the special distinction of competing with their own video offerings, e.g. see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7873331 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7873331 for some Verizon numbers.

kordless 12y ago

Do you guys use IPv6 at all with your server/client connections?

mcintyre1994 12y ago

From your phrasing you work at Netflix right? Is it possible to get a full list of your Open Connect partners in a marketplace? In the competitive UK marketplace this could pretty easily be the difference in a purchasing decision for me.

Terretta 12y ago

Cablevision's Netflix offering is in fantastic "Super HD" because Cablevision did the right thing and let Netflix store and manage content inside Cablevision's network so it doesn't flow over peering edges. The quality is shocking. But then, Cablevision in general is shocking -- when you compare to most other cable ISPs. I can sustain 130+ megabits day or night on a 100 megabit service tier, with the reliability of dial tone. Other ISPs need to follow the Netflix/Cablevision partnership model. People who have that, worry about moving and losing it.

barrkel 12y ago
As far as I'm aware, not all ISPs get that deal - the ISPs need to pay Netflix for it. There are four invariants as I see it: 1) Netflix is using a significant amount of a limited resource (bandwidth) 2) If Netflix doesn't work, consumers blame their ISP, not Netflix 3) The consumer is going to pay for this bandwidth, whether via ISP or Netflix 4) Consumers don't like caps or understand special packages that differentiate between packets routed one way or another If Netflix doesn't pay for this bandwidth, then ISPs need to pay for it - and consumers will pay more to their ISPs to cover these costs. That means that consumers that don't use Netflix will be subsidizing consumers who do use Netflix. IMO ISPs should charge Netflix so that Netflix can charge higher prices to users who are using more bandwidth via Netflix. That better reflects the link between who's using a limited resource and who's paying for it. Unfortunately, because of point (2) above, Netflix has quite a strong bargaining position.