NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: Economics of P2P (was Re: Re: Net Neutrality vs. Illegal Acts)
At 12:23 PM 3/22/2008, Nick Weaver wrote: >P2P data transfer can be used for legitimate purposes. "Can," yes. But it is not necessary to fulfill those purposes. >In this case >it is massive cost shifting and far less economically efficient >overall, but its still legitimate usage. > >EG, rather than spending $.18/GB through S3 to deliver a video, the >provider spends nothing and the consumer's ISP probably spends an >additional $.40+/GB. Not so. If you take as a benchmark the fact that bandwidth typically costs $2/Mbps/month at a co-lo, and that we pay $100/Mbps/month (and we are in the middle; many ISPs pay more), and that a P2P user will upload at least 7 copies of whatever he or she downloads, then the cost is multiplied by a factor of 400. That's right: 400. And I'm being fairly conservative here. I know of rural ISPs who pay more than I do, and the "7 copies" number is likely quite low. > Scummy? Yes. More than scummy. It's theft. > Legitimate: HELL YES! Theft of our services is not legitimate. >The problem is really that if there is NO congestion on a link, then >the extra bandwidth use does cost the ISP $0.00 in many arrangements. >Which is the pro P2P bulk transfer argument. We can't afford to waste bandwidth. Also, remember that all links must reserve some bandwidth for spikes. If your link is more than 75% full, you are treading on very dangerous ground and your quality of service WILL begin to suffer. >But if there IS congestion (and current P2P will happily cause >congestion) then it has significant cost because it crowds out other >flows. See my slides showing Japanese bandwidth consumption. They increased available bandwidth, and P2P took much more while other applications took only very slightly more. And saturated their networks. In any event, third parties should not be dictating ISPs' business models. We have already considered all of the options and factors in far more depth than anyone else and have experimented with different pricing models. No one outside the industry should pretend to expertise in this area or try to dictate ISPs' business models to them, as many in this forum seem to want to do. --Brett Glass