French Telecom Claims To Have Forced Google To Pay For Traffic 207
Dupple writes "The head of French telecoms operator Orange said on Wednesday it had been able to impose a deal on Google to compensate it for the vast amounts of traffic sent across its networks. Orange CEO Stephane Richard said on France's BFM Business TV that with 230 million clients and areas where Google could not get around its network, it had been able to reach a 'balance of forces' with the Internet search giant. Richard declined to cite the figure Google had paid Orange, but said the situation showed the importance of reaching a critical size in business. Network operators have been fuming for years that Google, with its search engine and YouTube video service, generates huge amounts of traffic but does not compensate them for using their networks. An editorial piece at GigaOm says Google is abandoning its principles and giving Orange 'the incentive to demand the same from other content providers.'"
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Re:Makes no sense. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Makes no sense. (Score:5, Funny)
Like many whores, they charge extra to get it in both ends.
Re:Makes no sense. (Score:4, Interesting)
Or maybe not. PR is all about the worst lies you can get away with. The only question is, how bad are they?
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You may pay for that, but most people think of their internet service as being access to certain other services like YouTube. If YouTube doesn't work they get pissed off, and Virgin Media recently discovered when they broke it by trying and failing to introduce in-network proxies.
If this story is true I'm surprised Google didn't just tell them to sod off and allow their services to be throttled into oblivion. Users would soon get fed up and start calling Orange to complain, then leaving for other ISPs that
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The reality is the same as it always has been. Google doesn't really generate that traffic, Google's customers generate that traffic. Google's customers request the downloads and generate the uploads. This has always been about the same thing. Existing telecom wants to provide competing services to Google and of course 'ALL' the other content providers. To out compete, the Telecoms own services would be provided free data access and all competitors would have to pay for data transmission, with this cost be
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As a user, I pay for my cap that includes up and down.
There is no data cap on ADSL connections in France. Never has and likely never will given Orange's competitor, Free, said they think data caps make no sense.
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Now ISPs want usage paid for by the user AND the content provider? Nice business model.
And I was under the impression that content providers were already being charged by ISPs.
Specifically: ISPs that provide bulk rates to datacenters.
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I was under the impression that end users were paying for bandwidth they're using. Now ISPs want usage paid for by the user AND the content provider? Nice business model.
It used to be that ISPs could arrange for the traffic at their peering points to be quite symmetrical (e.g. provide cheap hosting on your network). When that's the case both peering partners call it a wash and peering is done for free. So ISPs set the price to cover support, maintaining the network and developping some new services. But sites like YouTube changed all that. Now their traffic is asymmetrical and hosting a few more regular web site won't change a thing. So now they have to pay through the nose
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The connection is still symmetrical in the only way that ever actually mattered. For every byte Google sends to Oranges network (for example), there is an Orange customer that wanted that byte and paid Orange to deliver it to them.
The only time peering settlements should exist is where transit is involved. Other than that, it's just a matter of splitting the cost of the physical peering connection.
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Every byte? Certainly there are bytes that make up images and sounds and text, most of them are wanted but there is a lot more that comes along with the wanted bytes.
In some ways it is like a little game some of us play, you have something your friend wants but you have no particular use for say a cpu cooling fan. Only thing is you don't just give them the fan you give them a bunch of extra stuff along with the fan, eg the rest of the base unit containing the desired cooling fan.
Thus a winning deal you get
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More info http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/01/frances-second-largest-isp-suspends-ad-blocking-for-now/
Re:Makes no sense. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Makes no sense. (Score:5, Insightful)
Google is changing it by coming an ISP. As soon as they offer service in a reasonable share of the market, they can refuse to pay anyone. If the ISP doesn't comply, they can't offer Google to their customers. Orange gets Internet lite. This gives me yet another reason to dislike France.
Google is probably running traffic straight from their networks to Orange, so charging the smaller, connecting network an interconnect fee isn't out of line. However, with two large netowks, they usually just call it even. Google's customer facing network is the 2nd largest in the world, without even counting the new Kansas City service, so it would actually make more sense for Google to charge them.
If I were Google, during negotiations I would have run ads to Orange customers on the main page about Orange wanting to charge Google for bandwidth customers paid for, and point out that additional fees would make it more difficult to run a free service, possibly shutting down access. It would give Google more leverage to just say no to fees, especially if Orange is getting 100,000's of complaints. Option 2 is to charge the customers for each youtube video and explain why. If running Internet search is lucrative, then why is no one else making money on it? Microsoft is losing $1 billion or so per year, and Yahoo nearly went bankrupt.
Re:Makes no sense. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell, what if they just refused to pay right now, and instead of sending regular traffic to that network, send a "You are being held hostage by your ISP, which is demanding that we pay them so you can access our services, even though you have already paid them to access the internet. Please complain to your ISP and/or government."
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It's the local ISP which would have to block Google.
Google probably decided they'd make more money by paying the extortion fee than loosing Orange's customers ad views.
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If they did, the are stupid. They pay one hand, they will find hundreds of others open their way around the world.
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Google is changing it by coming an ISP. As soon as they offer service in a reasonable share of the market, they can refuse to pay anyone. If the ISP doesn't comply, they can't offer Google to their customers. Orange gets Internet lite.
They could even name it AOL and start mailing everyone installation thumb drives.
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Google is changing it by coming an ISP. As soon as they offer service in a reasonable share of the market, they can refuse to pay anyone. If the ISP doesn't comply, they can't offer Google to their customers. Orange gets Internet lite. This gives me yet another reason to dislike France.
This is just a peering dispute. It's nothing to do with Google paying Orange to let their customers access Google services.
Which makes me wonder how many of your other reasons for disliking France are based on misconceptions. ;-)
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Spoken by another American waving a flag and mouthing empty platitudes who hasn't bothered to see the world or even find out were the United States now rates on all the vital statistics. On healthcare we suck. On child and infant mortality, we suck. On education we suck. On criminal justice we suck HARD. On public violence, we suck. On the issues of human rights, the state of our Constitution and compliance with international codes of conduct... we suck. On the growing collapse of the social safety net, and
Re:Makes no sense. (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe this will work out in our favor. Perhaps it will lead me to forcing best buy to pay me for buying their products or something.
Sarcasm aside, I completely agree. Unless Google is using some sort of peering agreement and just going through their network, all the bandwidth and everything is already paid for by the customer who requests it. There is absolutely no reason to have it paid for twice.
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If France doesn't charge enough to cover their costs, they really isn't anyone's problem but theirs. You see, google and Youtube or yahoo or any other company does not broadcast using the bandwidth up hoping someone will catch the stream and be happy. They sit there and answer requests for services like searches or movies or clips or the news and so on by the end user of the ISP in France.
To hear it their way, it would be like me ordering a pizza and you, the pizza shop owner, expecting the company that mad
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Sure it would be. The customer paid for the connection which includes the monthly bandwidth usage.
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They provide low quality service at exorbitant prices, and then complain about clients using their services.
Yeah, no shit. I don't recall Comcast, Qwest, Charter, or Century offering any kind of quality search engine or a user generated content service such as YouTube. I'm not praising Google for their services, but if any is to be given, Google has earned more than any of the ISPs I've suffered.
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Re:Makes no sense. (Score:5, Informative)
From the article:
It sounds like they are not talking about traffic that goes from Google to their customers, but rather traffic that passes through their network on its way to a customer of another provider. If this is the case, then the situation is a little bit different than the "their customers already paid them for the bandwidth" argument. I'm not saying that Orange is in the right; merely that without more information I don't think anyone could make that determination.
Re:Makes no sense. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Makes no sense. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Makes no sense. (Score:5, Interesting)
From the article:
This is clearer in the French interview [universfreebox.com]. What Stephane Richard said is that they leveraged the fact that Orange is a major player in many countries, particularly in African countries, where Google has been looking for some kind of deal with them. So they made clear to Google that it wouldn't get those deal if they couldn't also come to some kind of agreement on the YouTube issue.
Re:Makes no sense. (Score:5, Informative)
It's actually a peering fight [techdirt.com] between cogent and france telecom; cogent being google's carrier, with google being the hostage and orange being france telecom's consumer arm.
Basically youtube (and streaming tf1, a popular french tv channel) are getting throttled because there's not enough capacity on the peering links between FT and cogent. Since much more traffic goes from cogent to FT, FT want more money to carry it. Note, this is not unusual in the peering world. Where they agree to carry each others traffic (because it's roughly equal) then they do it for free i.e. peering. When one party sends much more traffic, then sender pays for transit is common - after all, the receiving party is the one that has to pay for more equipment to carry the traffic, often including more 'last mile' infrastructure for that data to actually go to, or big pipes to other networks the transiting party needs access to.
In this case, FT is saying they want more money from cogent for transit, i.e. for all the google traffic - not money from google directly, but from their carrier; and because they have exclusive access to many households because they own and maintain the physical phone lines and exchange infrastructure, cogent can't just peer with someone else and route round FT (many french ISP's have to pay to use the FT infrastructure even though they're competitors to orange, in a similar way that a lot of British ISP's use BT lines and exchanges for DSL). If Cogent don't cough up more cash for transit to, then google traffic will continue to get throttled along with other cogent traffic at the boundary to FT's network.
The reporting on this has been woeful though, confusing the 'receiver pays' model of end users, the 'sender pays' model of big transit networks, and of course google with cogent, and France Telecom with orange.
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It's really a Peering fight with Cogent (Score:2)
In this posting, below [slashdot.org], Animats points to an article [fiercetelecom.com] that says it's really a peering fight between Orange and Cogent, an ISP that Google uses for transit. More detail in techdirt [techdirt.com]. At least 90% of the time, if you see an article about "ISP Peering Fight", Cogent is one of the players. They're really big, they're really cheap, and they sell lots of bandwidth to content providers. They're pretty much the bottom of Tier 1 - they'd like to get free peering from all the other Tier 1 providers, but that doesn
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The Internet IS DATA. I don't get ISPs. They provide low quality service at exorbitant prices, and then complain about clients using their services.
The quality and price are not so bad. What's wrong with paying $50 [wikipedia.org] for as much bandwidth as your phone line supports (up to 25Mbps); no data cap; a fixed IPv4 address; IPv6; unlimited phone calls to France and 100+ other countries, including the US, Canada and most of Europe; unlimited phone calls to French cellphones (which you normally have to pay for otherwise); a SIP phone line if you wish; a fax line; millions of WiFi hotspots; a box [wikipedia.org] that's a Blu-Ray drive; lets you watch 100+ free TV channels; free an
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also, I can access the net throught that SIM card using wifi... wherever an open (unlocked) wifi net is caught.
Actually the cool thing is not really being able to access unlocked hotspots (anyone can) but being able to access Free's network of hotspots: essentially anywhere there's a Free ADSL customer there's a hotspot just for other Free/Free Mobile customers. And before someone asks, yes the ADSL customer can disable it (but then he cannot access other customer's hotspots); and hotspot traffic is kept completely separate from the ADSL customer's traffic. This preserves privacy of your own WiFi traffic; allows ban
What? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Network operators have been fuming for years that Google, with its search engine and YouTube video service, generates huge amounts of traffic but does not compensate them for using their networks."
Are these the same operators who make users pay for the bandwidth consumed by the YT videos the users view as part of their ISP contracts? So they want to be paid twice for the traffic, or what?
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Yes, they want to be paid twice for the traffic. Who wouldn't want to be paid twice for the same thing if you could? Orange discovered they had enough leverage on Google that they could, so they did.
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For their next trick, they'll try to use this unspecified payment for leverage to get the government to mandate a usage tax payable to themselves.
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Yes. Our biggest ISP tried that when Netflix launched, that they should pay the ISP for all the traffic they were sending. Netflix's reply was (paraphrased) "How about I give you the finger and if you want to keep your customers, deliver our videos." From what I understood it was rather effective, wasn't the first time they've tried and I'm sure it won't be the last but they've been shot down in flames every time.
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The BBC did that too. They threatened to introduce a traffic light system for iPlayer, where every ISP would get a green, amber or red light showing if they could support the service or not. ISPs knew their customers would not accept any excuse as to why iPlayer was broken when it worked fine with other ISPs, so they caved pretty much immediately.
Hurray for French internet users! (Score:5, Funny)
Congratulations, French internet users; pretty soon you should see your internet bill lowered!
Atleast... I'm assuming Orange isn't going to charge twice for the same traffic.
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No wonder you posted anonymously. If you didn't take the time to look up that they're a corporation practicing capitalism then navigating a login must be tough.
It hasn't been a government entity in 23 years.
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I think they're actually a Monopoly. Capitalism usually "should" include competition.
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since there is so little difference between socialism and fascism anyway
Yes, because we all know there's little difference between modern day Sweden and Nazi Germany. /sarcasam
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If it was capitalism then someone could actually start a company to compete with them.
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If it was capitalism then someone could actually start a company to compete with them.
I am not sure of how to take your comment, but just in case you meant that: There are multiple telecom operators in France.
Google Fiber (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm confused. (Score:2)
Network operators have been fuming for years that Google, with its search engine and YouTube video service, generates huge amounts of traffic but does not compensate them for using their networks.
Isn't it the ISP's *customers* that are using Google and YouTube? Don't those customers pay the ISPs, who, if not one-in-the-same, pay the network operators and any (negotiated) inter-connection fees? Seems the ISP/network operators just want in on a little double-dipping. Perhaps I'm naive, but aren't they greedy enough?
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How quickly things change (Score:5, Insightful)
Network operators have been fuming for years that Google, with its search engine and YouTube video service, generates huge amounts of traffic but does not compensate them for using their networks.
I remember when the US government turned over the internet backbone to the telecos. The deal was they would get the infrastructure in exchange for upgrading the network and the telecos were all about that deal, for a few years. Then AT&T started making noise about places like Google not paying for "their" pipe.
If it's that unprofitable, give it back to the government or sell it. Get out of the network business if it's that hard. Notice that idea never comes up.
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I think it's time the government took the pipes back. These greedy bastards are making government mismanagement look more and more palatable. It's a fucked choice between government utility or greedy fucking money grubbing bastards.
I pay my ISP for my traffic (Score:3)
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Shame on you for reading Slashdot, and all the inflamatory and trolling article summaries this place has turned in to.
CmdrTaco knew what was coming after /.'s change of ownership before us. We should all follow his good example and get the hell out of here.
I recomend ArsTechnica, PopularScience, and HackerNews. None of which has a good discussion forums, but I'm open to suggestions for others.
Charging on both ends (Score:2)
Users pay for the bandwidth already. Orange should just charge all content providers to send data across their network and see how many users they can hold on to.
Full of shit (Score:5, Insightful)
The CEO of Orange is full of shit. There is no way that Google or any other provider would pay a carrier a "fee", since if they did, EVERYONE would start charging Google.
Google is not dumb, they know when they pay out the first carrier, they will be paying out a lot of other carriers. I am really sure that Google would cut off France (or whom ever Orange carrier for) rather than give in. Google not only would have the users on their side (You know, they PAY for Internet), but also the local governments and every other business out there. Orange is just blowing smoke up people's asses on this one.
Re:Full of shit (Score:4, Interesting)
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Google has cut off companies before. This market is large enough that it could cause a culture shift away from Google.
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Not really surprising. As a former customer of their UK arm, I can attest that Orange is shit. They're probably trying to gouge Google because of all the money they're losing from their actual customers leaving and not coming back.
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It sounds like a peering arrangement turning into transit. There was a comment earlier about extra detail from French language reports on this story; Google is trying to break into certain African markets that Orange have a large presence in. Orange, like many large carriers, is having a hissy fit over the traffic volume coming from Google services. This would be an olive branch from Google being used as a back-scratcher.
It is not uncommon for Google to co-lo equipment and caches in the datacentres of larg
It isn't Google that generates that traffic. (Score:3)
It's Orange's customers. Surely Orange could to block them from Google. That would reduce Orange's traffic, would it not?
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And now I see that it is actually a peering dispute. Both the article and the Slashdot summary are, as usual, misleading.
It's a peering dispute. (Score:5, Informative)
For a less clueless article, see "France Telecom and Google entangled in peering fight". [fiercetelecom.com]
Re:It's a peering dispute. (Score:4, Interesting)
Mod up please. This is much more reliable that the shrill /. summary, and the poorly informed article.
A peering dispute is totally conceivable, it's happened many times in the past between ISPs. Google paying a consumer network fees to carry traffic has *never* happenend. The former is much more likely.
Re:It's a peering dispute. NOT! (Score:2)
Peering dispute? Why? Just blackhole the packets! FT is presumably in control of their routers -- they do not need to allow pass-thru.
Of course customers will scream, and loud, but that is the choice -- charge for the traffic or live with the losses. The french probably don't want to, and think they can lean on GOOG who can and should give 'em the run-around. FT probably has the only fiber to Corsica and the Quai d'Orsay (English Whitehall, American Foggy Bottom) don't want to upset the natives. So an
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Peering dispute? Why?
Peering is a game of mutual benefit. Two companies agree to exchange traffic because despite being rivals they believe the exchange will benefit both sides. If either side belives they are not benefiting from the agreement then the peering arrangement may be terminated.
Due to the way internet routing works the receiving peer tends to bear most of the cost of moving data around geograpically. As such many networks are reluctant to free-peer with "outbound-heavy" networks. It sounds like cogent is very conent
Google Doesn't Generate Traffic (Score:2)
Sounds more like a peering arrangement to me (Score:2)
Since we are denied any real details other than what some ceo is spewing for public consumption it seems pointless to draw any conclusions at this point.
On the more general problem of service provider entitlements from those who give their customers what they want this seems to me to be all about lack of effective competition, rise of the mega ISP and total ownage of the last mile.
Allowing ISPs to get big, fat and lazy leads to inflated sense of entitlement and piss poor value for consumers.
The french and m
absurd (Score:5, Insightful)
This story is absurd any way you look at it.
First of all, the telecom's customers already paid them for the traffic. The telecom should shut up and deliver their product already (with the promised bandwidth).
Second, Google should just ignore them. What will the telecom do? Block Google? Good luck with that. I would be surprised if they'd have any customers left by the end of the month.
Third, if Google pays up, suddenly all telecoms around the globe will come asking for money. Nobody in their right mind would succumb to such an absurd demand from some telecom.
This is complete idiocy (Score:2)
I doubt it. (Score:2)
Getting compensation (Score:2)
They should get their compensation from their own customers for a service of getting those customer to the internet Customers using more bandwidth? Make those customers pay more. Problem solved.
And so they can understand:
Ils devraient recevoir leur rémunération de leurs propres clients pour un service à la clientèle de se ceux à l'internet. Les clients qui utilisent plus de bande passante? Rendre ces clients paient plus. Le problème est résolu.
We pay for Data (Score:2)
Google refused Free, Free blocked Google ads (Score:2)
Free (which is another French ISP) asked for the same a while ago. Google refused.
Free decided to block Google ads automatically for all its customers in retaliation.
This has led politics to question the issue and to consider enacting laws. Unfortunately, politicians are clueless about technology, and all they see is making the big American company pay the French companies.
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This seems to be a general theme for France, trying to find new ways to force American companies to just "give" money to French companies/French government, in order to prop up their failing economy.
Just like forcing American companies to pay French income tax, even if they have no offices in France
double dipping and blackmail (Score:2)
Everybody who connects to the Internet already pays for their bandwidth to the ISP, effectively in proportion to what they use. If there is a lot of traffic coming from Google, then both Orange's customers pay for their individual usage, and Google pays wherever they hook up to the Internet. At some level, Orange has a peering arrangement, and if there are traffic imbalances, they negotiate with their partners, who then pass on the cost to Google and their customers. Trying to extort additional payments fro
I would have done the opposite in Google's place. (Score:2)
It's the users who are generating the traffic, not Google. Instead of offering to let them double-dip I would have blocked all of their users with a static page that explained why they were being blocked and a suggesting to try another ISP. It's not like Google needs to kiss this ISPs ass to stay in business.
Second option I would make use of Google Wallet to make the users pay for Google use with an explanation yes, only the users on that ISP have to pay for what's free to everyone else, if they don't lik
Once again The Last Mile Cache comes to rescue! (Score:2)
the last mile cache [fredan.se]
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the worlds largest tax evading commercial advertising data miner is NOT for the public good, however well their services are technically, forgive me if i dont gush praise on them.
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Google provides an extremely valuable service for free. This is good. Some of their practices may not be good but frankly I can't care less if they evade taxes since it is flatly impossible to build wealth without having a wise tax strategy. Taxing corporations only causes them to pass those costs to their customers anyway.
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I doubt you are in as much demand as Google.
Re:Great investigative reporting, there... (Score:5, Interesting)
If I were Google, I'd prefer to pull the plug on all of France rather than agreeing to push the first rock which would be almost certain to start a landslide that even I wouldn't survive...
I was wondering this as well. I would imagine the ISP would reverse course in a matter of nanoseconds if their users started seeing a page like
"Your ISP has blocked Google from providing you Gmail. They are demanding we pay for your use of the internet, something which you already pay for. Here's their contact info:...."
It always strikes me as funny too since Cable is the other way around. I'm pretty sure Cable providers pay television stations. And even if a station doesn't have enough clout there is a law (in the US) they can use called "must carry" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Must-carry [wikipedia.org]
I'm surprised this analogy isn't used much.
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Why go this far? Just ignore orange completely. No need to do the activism as customers will soon realise that only Orange's network has youtube severely throttled or cut off.
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Cable companies pay television stations for content, not for delivery. It is not yet quite practical to let users pay for content independently because cable channels occupy a fixed portion of the bandwidth of the entire downstream network. When the fixed allocation of bandwidth required for a real time channel becomes irrelevant, cable channels as we know them will go away, and users will pay for content directly. The cost for delivering the content is another story.
That is what network peering arrangeme
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If I were Google, I'd prefer to pull the plug on all of France rather than agreeing to push the first rock which would be almost certain to start a landslide that even I wouldn't survive...
The only thing Google can't afford is to pull the plug...
Suddenly, people would realize how dependent they are on Google, and migrate elsewhere in no time.
Sure, people will change provider, but that takes weeks and lots of time and most ordinary people won't get around to it.
Google can't pull the plug, I seriously doubt it's even an option. From a business point of view, that would be suicide...
Google can afford to pay up, it easier, whether or not they'll survive in the long run is a good question.
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Only things deep underground survives... In this case that would be cable.
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The internet is not client server based. IP doesn't make any distinction between client and server, and doesn't have a concept of a connection. That's all handled by higher level protocols, which ISPs shouldn't be concerning themselves with.
So yes, it *is* Google sending the data.
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At the request of their users. Just like every other part of the Internet works. ISPs make money because their users want to access resources, including Google's. Charging Google for the traffic generated by the requests sent by the subscribers who are also being charged is like the grocery store charging the dairy farm for the shelf space to stock their milk.
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The "users" want to access resources. Google want them to, so they can sell advertising. The benefits of the transaction aren't one-way. Besides, if I used my internet connection exclusively to host a server I would still have to pay for it. The difference is that Google is big and important enough to be able to bargain for good terms.
It's all just throwing packets around, ultimately. Considerations of "who benefited most from this exchange of packets" are outside the concern of an ISP.
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>The "users" want to access resources. Google want them to, so they can sell advertising. The benefits of the transaction aren't one-way
Nor is selling milk. The customer gets milk, the dairy gets money.
>Besides, if I used my internet connection exclusively to host a server I would still have to pay for it. The difference is that Google is big and important enough to be able to bargain for good terms.
You pay for transit as a provider. Transit is when your traffic passes a third party network. Transit i
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You pay for transit as a provider. Transit is when your traffic passes a third party network. Transit is not when the traffic that the users of a network requested passes through their own network.
Which one does Google sending data to me via my ISP come under? Am I paying my ISP to be a part of their network (the second case) or for transit from my network to the internet as a whole (the first)? Seems a bit of an arbitrary distinction, unless we want to go by technicalities like "having your own IP range / AS number makes you a separate network".
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>Which one does Google sending data to me via my ISP come under?
Where is the source of confusion? Google is a customer to its transit providers. To your ISP, they're just another station on the Internet sending bits that its clients requested.
>Seems a bit of an arbitrary distinction, unless we want to go by technicalities like "having your own IP range / AS number makes you a separate network".
There's nothing arbitrary about it. If your traffic needs to traverse a third party network, then you pay tha
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If a small company trys to get free peering with a tier 1 the tier 1 will laugh at them and suggest transit or possiblly paid peering. If a small company buys transit service from the teir 1 then the small company will pay for all traffic regardless of whether it is going to/from another customer of the same tier 1.
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That's a benefit of being a large content provider. You become the tier 1 networks' product. Just like you become the end user ISPs' product. Notice, however, the distinction here. Regardless of whether or not a small company has to pay for their transit, it certainly doesn't have to pay for access to Orange's end-user network. Nor should Google, or any other company whose resources are being requested by the users of Orange's network.
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If the source is the "head of French telecoms operator Orange", I think he is lying.
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That is assuming you HAVE a choice in providers. In some places (at least in the US) your only option is the local cable or phone company (satellite isn't much of an option, with it's 800-1220ms ping time)