there is no way Frontier will ever bring in Fios.
Umm, because FiOS is a Verizon product/service and Frontier is only a DSL/phone provider? Frontier doesn't even have their own video product, they just bundle you with Dish Network to get their version of the triple play. You're absolutely right.
Now for my (seemingly required) response. As several of the Gizmodo commenters noted, this is not a Netflix fee specifically, this is a network peering agreement between Level3 and Comcast. Level3 has a pretty substantial fiber optic network and Comcast's is even larger.
(Read as the Old Spice guy) Take a look at Level3's
fiber map, now look at
Comcast's. Now back to Level3, now back at Comcast. What do you notice about the two maps? They follow relatively the same paths and interconnect in several places in what's called a "
Meet-Me Room" or MMR.
What Level3 does (as well as any other large network service provider, such as Verizon, Qwest, ATT, Cogent, XO, etc.) is peer their network service along the fiber optic network of another provider to provide redundancy and access to services/servers/websites on each others networks, connecting at any one of several of the MMR's located all over the country (and the world). If Level3 was not redundant, can you imagine the millions of dollars a second they would be losing because of downtime? The agreement works both ways too, and Comcast peers their network traffic onto Level3's network (and others) for long haul transport and interconnect. When you make a phone call from the Comcast Digital Voice service, how do you think it reaches someone on a Verizon cell phone? Or if you're a FiOS customer, how do you access a website hosted on a server in Sweden (and now the Seychelles)? How do you connect to the hundreds of other users in a torrent swarm on dozens of ISP's? Network interconnects.
The issue that is being raised here is that because Netflix utilizes Level3 for their ISP, and then also peers that (
substantial amount of) traffic on Comcast's fiber network (whether for redundancy or because Comcast covers an area Level3 does not), Level3 is putting an increasing amount of traffic on Comcast's fiber and they'd like them to pay for using it.
I know everyone likes jump up and down and say "F Comcast" and "I can't wait to get FiOS" and before I started working for them, I was probably right there with you. My opinions are now the way they are not just because they sign my paycheck, but because I can fully understand and appreciate the truly complex systems and networks they have in place to try to serve you all better.
So I'd like to ask you all, what do you need to see from Comcast that would change your opinion of them? I'd like you to be brutally honest and tell me what it is that you truly do not like about Comcast and what you all seem to get practically giddy over FiOS for. For all of the negative things that are said about Comcast on this and other forums around the web, when you're getting your 50mb or 100mb internet at the big LAN's you can't stop smiling about how fast it is.
Decepticon stopped by my office back in September(?) to pick up a modem for one of the small LAN's that I couldn't attend and I gave him the nickel tour of our headend and showed him the multiple very large pieces of network equipment that serves all of the Internet traffic in the Harrisburg area, and the stacks and racks of servers/hard drives that serve the On-Demand service, and the brand new multi-million dollar switch (yes, just one switch) that allows hospitals, businesses, and schools to have dedicated point-to-point fiber connections between their buildings that may be hundreds of miles from each other to share data/phone/video service with each of their locations. When I saw those things for the first time, it completely changed my perspective of what a cable company was and I'd hoped it did the same for him (at least a little bit). This is not your father's cable industry by any stretch in the way they operate, and I think if more people understood how they truly operated and how focused they are on improving customer service through any means necessary (as I've witnessed), they'd have a drastically different opinion.
< /soapbox>
Please, share your own thoughts on what I've posted here. I can't promise I'll have all of the answers, but I'll answer as many as I can and those I can't, maybe I can find someone here who does know the answer.
First person with a "TLDR" reply gets slapped
Topic: Uh? (Read 1571 times)