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donkeyrock shared this story from  I, Cringely.
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There’s a peering crisis apparently happening right now among American Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and backbone providers according to a blog post this week from backbone company Level3 that I am sure many of you have read. The gist of it is that six major ISPs of the 51 that peer with Level3 have maxed-out their interconnections and are refusing to do the hardware upgrades required to support the current level of traffic. The result is that packets are being dropped, porn videos are stuttering, and customers are being ill-served. I know exactly what’s going on here and also how to fix it, pronto.
The problem is real and Level3′s explanation is pretty much on target. It’s about money and American business, because this is a peculiarly American problem. Five of the six unnamed ISPs are American and — given that Level3 also said they are the ones that typically get the lowest scores for customer service (no surprise there, eh?) we can guess at least some of the names. According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index’s 2013 report (the latest available with a new one due any day now) the worst ISPs in American are — from worst to less bad but still lousy — Comcast, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, Charter Communications, AT&T U-verse, Cox Communications, and Verizon FiOS. That’s seven companies and since Level3 says only five are creating this peering problem then two in there are off-the-hook but still not the best at what they do.
The idea here is pretty clear: these five ISPs want to be paid extra for doing the job they are already being paid for. Extra ports are required to handle the current level of traffic and these companies are assuming that when the pain becomes great enough — that’s our pain, by the way — Level3 or some Level3 customer like Netflix will pay the extra money to make the problem go away.
This ties into the current Net Neutrality debate and the new FCC rules that Chairman Tom Wheeler says he’ll be offering-up later this month that will both keep the playing field level while somehow allowing for a version of fast lane service. I already have doubts about Chairman Wheeler’s proposed rules.
Let’s understand something: Internet service is an extremely profitable business for the companies that provide it. Most on this notorious list are cable TV companies and generally they break even on …read more
Source: Donkeyrock_BlurBlog
