Re: COVID-19 vs. our Networks

[Mike Bolitho <mikebolitho () gmail com>]

> "It is something that matters, because it has the potential to set a
> dangerous precedent."

Can we stop with this talk... around everything? We're literally living
through an unprecedented event right now. My 86 year old grandmother said
she's never seen anything like this in the US. My friends 94 year old
grandmother in Italy said she hasn't seen this since WWII. Nobody is going
to say "Well we did this during a global pandemic so we can now do it
because we feel like it". People will laugh them out of the room. I live in
Phoenix, the mayor shut down bars and restaurants (carryout only) in order
to help stop us from becoming Italy. One of our city councilmen was saying
the same thing: "This is martial law and sets bad precedent! We must open
everything up!" Of course, they then held a closed to the public meeting
because city council can't be exposed. The point is, the mayor isn't going
to do the same thing in six months on a whim because traffic on the freeway
is bad. Thankfully calmer heads prevailed and the rest of the council told
him to pound sand, at least for now.

Something that keeps happening on this mailing list over the last few weeks
is this tendency to try to take the "Moral high ground". And from way up
there people are looking at the whole topic from an idealistic point of
view like we live in some Network Operators Utopia with perfect conditions
where money doesn't exist and we can do whatever we want because there is
no upper management. We should be having a practical conversation that sits
within the confines of reality. We don't have perfect networks built. We
don't have unlimited resources. We are facing a global pandemic. Money is
tight. In principle, I agree with what you guys are saying. But in reality,
we're going to have to bend our convictions in order to protect populations
from COVID-19. You will be changing your tune when your mother is sick and
can't get the care she needs because the system is overwhelmed because we
(communities, not just network operators) didn't do what was
necessary because of some idealistic hard line people drew in the sand.

- Mike Bolitho


On Fri, Mar 20, 2020 at 7:44 AM Tom Beecher <beecher () beecher cc> wrote:

> It is something that matters, because it has the potential to set a
> dangerous precedent.
>
> If you say "$Service should reduce their bit rates because this is an
> emergency!" , I guarantee that exact same argument will be made well after
> this crisis has passed with a different definition of "emergency", and
> adding on "well it's an emergency to me!".
>
> Some of the pipes Netflix goes through is also used by other services that
> > aren't as adaptable.
>
> And how is that Netflix's responsibility? They have already taken action
> to ramp down bitrates when they detect congestion. Why should other
> applications be able to say piss off, I don't want to? Didn't we just have
> a 10 year net neutrality argument that we're not supposed to want to treat
> the bits differently?
>
> On Fri, Mar 20, 2020 at 10:17 AM Mike Hammett <nanog () ics-il net> wrote:
>
> > It's one of those most important things that matters.
> >
> > The end user likely won't notice the difference between 4k and 720p. They
> > also aren't likely to notice the transition from one to the other.
> >
> > The person on the VPN, VoIP call, video conference, video game, etc. will
> > very much notice the congested link, even if it's only a few seconds.
> >
> >
> > Yes, Netflix video is very efficient, if not the most efficient. They're
> > also one of if not the largest slingers of bits on the Internet. Small
> > changes in usage of such a huge player totally eclipse most other usages on
> > the Internet.
> >
> > https://help.netflix.com/en/node/306
> >
> > Netflix recommends 25 megs for Ultra HD, while only 5 megs for HD. That's
> > a 5x difference in something people likely won't notice and would make a
> > big difference on the additional VPN, VoIP, video conferencing, etc.
> >
> >
> >
> > -----
> > Mike Hammett
> > Intelligent Computing Solutions <http://www.ics-il.com/>
> > <https://www.facebook.com/ICSIL>
> > <https://plus.google.com/+IntelligentComputingSolutionsDeKalb>
> > <https://www.linkedin.com/company/intelligent-computing-solutions>
> > <https://twitter.com/ICSIL>
> > Midwest Internet Exchange <http://www.midwest-ix.com/>
> > <https://www.facebook.com/mdwestix>
> > <https://www.linkedin.com/company/midwest-internet-exchange>
> > <https://twitter.com/mdwestix>
> > The Brothers WISP <http://www.thebrotherswisp.com/>
> > <https://www.facebook.com/thebrotherswisp>
> > <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXSdfxQv7SpoRQYNyLwntZg>
> > ------------------------------
> > *From: *"Blake Hudson" <blake () ispn net>
> > *To: *nanog () nanog org
> > *Sent: *Friday, March 20, 2020 9:01:18 AM
> > *Subject: *Re: COVID-19 vs. our Networks
> >
> > Yes, but does that matter? If there's extra capacity on the link, Netflix
> > runs at full rate. If there is not extra capacity Netflix rates down to
> > prevent congestion. While streaming video (including Netflix) uses a lot of
> > bandwidth, I don't see Netflix causing congestion. It gets a bad wrap, and
> > I think that's unfair because Netflix is actually really efficient and
> > really conscientious compared to others.
> >
> > On 3/20/2020 8:52 AM, Mike Hammett wrote:
> >
> > Some of the pipes Netflix goes through is also used by other services
> > that aren't as adaptable.
> >
> >
> >
> > -----
> > Mike Hammett
> > Intelligent Computing Solutions <http://www.ics-il.com/>
> > <https://www.facebook.com/ICSIL>
> > <https://plus.google.com/+IntelligentComputingSolutionsDeKalb>
> > <https://www.linkedin.com/company/intelligent-computing-solutions>
> > <https://twitter.com/ICSIL>
> > Midwest Internet Exchange <http://www.midwest-ix.com/>
> > <https://www.facebook.com/mdwestix>
> > <https://www.linkedin.com/company/midwest-internet-exchange>
> > <https://twitter.com/mdwestix>
> > The Brothers WISP <http://www.thebrotherswisp.com/>
> > <https://www.facebook.com/thebrotherswisp>
> > <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXSdfxQv7SpoRQYNyLwntZg>
> > ------------------------------
> > *From: *"Blake Hudson" <blake () ispn net> <blake () ispn net>
> > *To: *nanog () nanog org
> > *Sent: *Friday, March 20, 2020 8:32:45 AM
> > *Subject: *Re: COVID-19 vs. our Networks
> >
> >
> > On 3/19/2020 12:22 PM, Mark Tinka wrote:
> > > On 19/Mar/20 18:07, Matt Hoppes wrote:
> > > > Agreed... 720 or 1080 Netflix will work just as fine as 4K for the
> > > > next month or two.
> > > Well, the article claims "Drop stream quality from HD". That means 4K,
> > > 1080p and 720p.
> > >
> > > If you have an OCA on your network, how does this encourage consumers to
> > > use the "extra bandwidth" for anything else?
> > >
> > > Are we assuming we know how consumers want to spend their time now?
> > >
> > > Mark.
> >
> > Across several eyeball networks I'm not seeing any noticeable increase
> > in peak (95%) demand between now and January. Since Netflix
> > automatically scales down data rates in the event of congestion, the
> > only thing I foresee forcing Netflix to reduce data rates [ahead of any
> > congestion] would accomplish is causing excess link capacity to go
> > unused (wasted). This sounds like a policy decision made without a
> > technical argument... e.g. not a data driven decision, but a decision
> > made out of fear or panic.