Comcast and Netflix now have a direct adjacency

[ck2]

It would be funny if netflix just looked for one of their hubs/datacenters and moved in next door on purpose.

ISPs are common carriers and must be regulated as such, because as soon as Comcast makes its own netflix-like service, you can forget getting netflix to stream smoothly.

[nathancahill]

I've done this before for large scraping projects. I find the datacenter the target website is hosted in, then get a dedicated server right next to it. I've never gotten better performance.

[InclinedPlane]

> as soon as Comcast makes its own netflix-like service, you can forget getting netflix to stream smoothly.

Comcast owns NBCUniversal and a 1/3 share of hulu as well as an "ondemand" service through the comcast cablebox and the internet, "soon" happened already. And in many places netflix on comcast already does not stream smoothly (almost unquestionably due to throttling of netflix traffic).

[davidrudder]

Comcast has it's own netflix-like service. They call it something like Xfinity OnDemand. It's actually not terrible.

[bdb]

There are only a handful of buildings where you need to be in order to just be a cross-connect or switch fabric away from nearly every network in the world.

[wcummings]

Comcast already has a competing service: Cable TV

[MiguelHudnandez]

It's anti-climactic that all it was going to take was a compelling business case. Netflix made it easy with their peering initiative [1].

Now Comcast gets to count these bytes against their customers' quotas, and it costs them nearly nothing to deliver the traffic.

This reminds me of NNTP, but Netflix is still running their own hardware.

[1] Netflix's "Open Connect" https://signup.netflix.com/openconnect/guidelines

[exelius]

I wouldn't be so sure there's no money changing hands. One of the sides caved; and it was probably Netflix. The amount of money the ISPs were asking for from Netflix was not outrageous; the ISPs were more worried about the precedent that providing free interconnects might set. Give one to Netflix for free, and Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft all think they're entitled to one too.

Strategically, Netflix was holding a far weaker hand because the ISPs had no reason to give in since their brand perception was already so bad. I mean really, is it possible to hate Comcast more than most people already do?

[sp332]

Most boxes like "Open Connect" pay to be colocated and connected that way. Netflix insists on free installation.

[achille2]

I always thought that Netflix served everything from AWS. How can they they have their own AS number and peering locations?

[koblas]

I've noticed that the 11greatoaks.ca.ibone.comcast.net router(s) (Equinix SV1) are typically the ones that fail / have large latency issues. Hopefully if this has happened then they've increased overall capacity through this bottleneck.

[bdb]

You're seeing this because that's where Comcast primarily buys transit and peers with other networks; those edges are where the congested ports are. They generally have plenty of capacity between SV1 and their CMTSes (even if they have to take you from Oakland to Sac-town to get from SF to San Jose).

[jeremydw]

Perhaps it's Netflix Open Connect? (http://oc.nflxvideo.net/docs/OpenConnect-Deployment-Guide.pd..., https://signup.netflix.com/openconnect)

[bifrost]

I can confirm this:

198.45.63.0/24 *[BGP/170] 2d 05:02:06, MED 150, localpref 100, from 68.86.80.82

AS path: 7922 2906 I

[akulbe]

I will admit that I am probably making a pretty sweeping assumption here... but I'm assuming Netflix previously had the same access as everyone else on the Internet, from Comcast - and now, they do not. They have BETTER access.

To me, this is disturbing. Surely there is some financial incentive for Comcast to do this.

It seems to me that this is exactly the kind of thing that the whole "net neutrality" issue is trying to prevent (i.e. back office deals that give one content provider better access over others)

Or... am I just missing lots of things? (wouldn't be the first time!) :)

[jonny_eh]

I did notice last night that my stream of House of Cards looked way better than it has in the past month (when it started to go bad). It was HD level the whole hour, while previously it would only go HD for about 10 minutes total randomly through the episode.

I'm a Comcast user in San Mateo, CA.

[bifrost]

That is probably my doing :) Comcast had some internal congestion issues that we helped illustrate.

[egray2]

Isn't it possible that the traffic could just be going over an MPLS backbone? If that's the case, then there could potentially be more hops that aren't seen.

[bifrost]

Thats not relevant to traffic interchange...

[squigs25]

A short route doesn't necessarily mean good bandwidth

[wmf]

It does reduce the buck-passing. See the current Verizon-Netflix squabble using Cogent as a proxy.

[CamperBob2]

How are you concluding that from the tracert?

[freeasinfree]

Using the Equinix IX https://signup.netflix.com/openconnect/faq

[bdb]

I don't think so. It's multiple direct 10GE ports. Given the traffic volume the two networks exchange, there's no way it would be economical to move these bits over a public peering exchange (which Comcast doesn't participate in in the first place).

Even so, if it were in fact going via the IX, you'd see Netflix's IP from the exchange (206.223.116.133) as hop 8 in the traceroute.

[sergers]

Meh. So your ISP joined the Netflix open connect CDN to make your Netflix experience even slower.

Have fun blocking that address and other known Netflix cdn