back to article Netflix sued by South Korean ISP after Squid Game fans swell traffic to '1.2Tbps'

Netflix should cover bandwidth and maintenance costs of a surge in our network traffic, says South Korean ISP SK Broadband, which has taken legal action after subscribers flocked to watch the streaming giant’s latest Korean-language TV show Squid Game. SK Broadband is unhappy that the flow of packets through its systems …

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  1. vektorweg

    Sooo, an ISP sells bandwidth to customers and then complains to enablers when the customers use it?

    1. John Doe 12

      I am not surprised this type of douchebag comment is right at the top of the pile. Netflix are leeches who built their business on this kind of attitude shown by the original poster.

      Domestic Internet supply is contended - get used to it. You would complain fast enough if they charged for supplying uncontended access. This is no different to one of those open buffets being abused by a gang coming in with the intention to put the owner out of business.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        It's not abuse to utilize all resources promised to you.

        If you do not intend to provide all you can eat, Then it may be in your interest to be honest in that intention and specify specific limits and enforce them consistently.

        An ISP's customers pay the ISP to deliver the packets from any endpoint on the net to them, and to transmit from their end to any another.

        If the isp has dishonestly represented their costs by abstracting that from their customer service fees, then they should be left to learn from their choice of strategy.

        They are already being paid for that traffic. If they mismanaged their own resources, it should be on them.

        They could always partner with Netflix and put a Netflix box on their data center.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "Netflix are leeches "

        No Netflix are a business selling movie viewing, and without businesses like Netflix, there is not reason to pay for ISP's high speed links. They drive the demand that this ISP cashes in on by selling services.

        "Domestic Internet supply is contended"

        No, that's not the agreement the customer is paying for. It's totally reasonable for customers to use what they paid for and expect the ISP to deliver on their promises, just like every other business everywhere (including all you can eat buffets).

        "This is no different to one of those open buffets being abused by a gang coming in with the intention to put the owner out of business."

        How would that even make sense?

        Look, you have a weak argument there, and you've tried to fluff it up with childish insults like douchebag.

        Go away, rethink your argument to be cogent, and come back with a proper claim like a grownup.

        1. W.S.Gosset Silver badge

          Actually, you're both right but he's operating off a better knowledge of the network than you.

          The ISPs are not the cable providers. They are charged for traffic. They compete on price by modelling usage patterns and scaling retail price accordingly. Netflix breaks that model deliberately -- treats transmission as free. It's not -- the cost is borne by 3rd parties.

          1. Tomato42

            Netflix does pay for its peering, they wouldn't be on the Internet otherwise.

            if ISP underestimated what customers will actually want to use, it's entirely the fault of the ISP unable to do their business properly, not a fault of Netflix

            1. Jon 37 Silver badge

              Most of the Internet giants pay for transit, but not peering. Most big ISPs have loads of customers using Google/Amazon/Microsoft/etc, so instead of paying for transit for that traffic, they agree to free peering. This saves money for the ISP, as well as for the big Internet companies, and gives a better experience for their mutual customers.

              1. Anonymous Coward Silver badge
                Boffin

                "free peering" has a cost - they need to buy and maintain the equipment; potentially renting some dark fibre or paying to get their own fibre installed. Often that's within the same datacentre/IX, but in the case of a nation-level provider it may translate to international fibre links.

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            "The ISPs are not the cable providers."

            They are SK Broadband, the Korean cable provider, its in the article:

            https://www.skbroadband.com/eng/Main.do

            So their 3 year contract KRW 38,500 pcm, about £25 pcm for gigabit unlimited cable, assuming every single customer uses UHD, that's 2.5% of the bandwidth they sold to those customers.

            "They are charged for traffic. They compete on price by modelling usage patterns and scaling retail price accordingly. "

            This is not Netflix's problem. Models fit markets, not markets fit models. If they sold 100% of the service and cannot deliver even 2.5% they have a very bad model. They need to fix their model, not try to force the market to cap it at 2.5% just to make their model work.

            1. Anonymous Coward Silver badge
              Facepalm

              Precedent

              Let them do it.

              Because if netflix has to pay the ISP to deliver the content, presumably the ISP has to pay the consumer in the same way.

              It's the exact same process - data arrives at your router, you get paid for it.

              No? Well then don't try to charge upstream.

            2. Alan Brown Silver badge

              "the Korean cable provider"

              aka Vertically integrated Monopoly

              There are very good reasons for not allowing this kind of behaviour in a regulated market

          3. 0xAE

            The ISP aren't a cable providers, they are an internet provider.

            The ISP provide bandwidth regardless what the customer do or how much he consume : netflix, pornhub or open exit relay tor node is at the discretion of the consumer

            They are the only responsible: over sell, can't deliver, end.

        2. boblongii

          "without businesses like Netflix, there is not reason to pay for ISP's high speed links"

          Netflix doesn't require the 180Mb connection I have, and not only because I don't have Netflix. I use it for working from home and transferring large amounts of data around to different sites and servers.

          If I only wanted to watch TV shows I could do that with a tenth of my current bandwidth.

          The problem here is that the Internet is a hugely inefficient way to deliver television to millions of people compared to broadcasting radio-waves, and that's not going to change any time soon.

          "No, that's not the agreement the customer is paying for."

          In terms of contention, it probably is. Read the small print on your agreement.

          1. doublelayer Silver badge

            "The problem here is that the Internet is a hugely inefficient way to deliver television to millions of people compared to broadcasting radio-waves, and that's not going to change any time soon."

            It's not that inefficient for delivering specific videos. If I want something that you don't want, then the internet gets it just to me without impacting you. Radio waves work very well for people who all want the same thing in the same format at the same time, but a lot of modern videos don't work on that basis. People want video on-demand, they want to watch things that others don't want to, they want full streams which aren't popular with their neighbors, and in each case wire works better than radio waves. This isn't new or limited to the internet. Although digital broadcast has increased the number of channels you can send through the air, it's nothing to the number you can send over a wire.

            1. Zolko Silver badge

              broadcast -vs- streaming

              they want to watch things that others don't want to, they want full streams which aren't popular with their neighbors

              did you read the article ? It specifically talks about videos that everybody wants to watch ! Which means that this should be broadcasted and not streamed. Netflix is using/abusing a system which was not meant for that.

              1. Annihilator

                Re: broadcast -vs- streaming

                Not at the same time they don't. Plus I'm not sure about Korea, but so far I don't believe there are many 4K broadcast facilities in the UK. Sky might have an occasional one, but most of their 4K content is (you guessed it), downloadable/streamed.

                "Netflix is using/abusing a system which was not meant for that"

                That's a pretty bold statement. I'd say 90% of internet traffic wasn't conceived of when the internet was.

                1. Zolko Silver badge

                  Re: broadcast -vs- streaming

                  I'd say 90% of internet traffic wasn't conceived of when the internet was.

                  At it's core, Internet is a decentralised point-to-point protocol ... which Netflix is trying to use as a centralised broadcasting service.

                  1. Anonymous Coward
                    Anonymous Coward

                    Re: broadcast -vs- streaming

                    @zolko

                    "centralised broadcasting service"

                    FFS, netflix is NOT a broadcaster, it's a point to point individual choice streaming service.

                    Broadcast = same thing sent out to many at one time, (all get same no individual choice)

                    Streaming = you choose what you want, (everyone can watch a different item)

                    See the fucking difference?

                  2. Annihilator

                    Re: broadcast -vs- streaming

                    I think you need to read up on what streaming services do. Broadcasting is not on that list.

                    Not to mention there are multicast protocols available to do what you're suggesting. But funnily enough, people aren't gathering around the box all at the same time to watch the same thing anymore. They're not any likelier to do it just because a few die-hard ISP zealots think that people shouldn't use the bandwidth they think they've paid for...

              2. doublelayer Silver badge

                Re: broadcast -vs- streaming

                People are watching the same episodes at different times. You can't broadcast that without setting up the Squid Game Marathon Channel, and that's a lot more expensive than using a wire. And when people are done with this show, they'll still be using video a lot, but no longer watch the same thing. It's not broadcasting because it's different things to different people at a time of their choice.

              3. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: broadcast -vs- streaming

                To appl that consistently, DRM, , traffic shaping, unicast streamimg and centralized services are abuse of the Internet because it prevents casual mirroring ,and Anonymous access and multicast as designed.

          2. Alan Brown Silver badge

            "The problem here is that the Internet is a hugely inefficient way to deliver television to millions of people compared to broadcasting radio-waves, and that's not going to change any time soon."

            Clifford Stoll made the very same point in Silicon Snake Oil about 25 years ago

            And there is a solution for broadcasting: Multicast/mbone - which ISPs ignored

      3. The Brave Sir Robin

        But the bandwidth used by Netflix on any particular home Internet connection is just a fraction of the bandwidth you're allegedly being supplied by the ISP.

        If I'm paying for, say, 30mbps ISP bandwidth and Netflix is consuming at most 10Mbps then I'm only using 1/3 of my total bandwidth. Therefore the ISP should easily be able to provide the bandwidth for everyone to watch Netflix. Not Netflix' fault if the ISP is overselling their bandwidth.

        1. Zolko Silver badge

          But the bandwidth used by Netflix on any particular home Internet connection is just a fraction of the bandwidth you're allegedly being supplied by the ISP.

          peak -vs- mean, that's why there are traffic jams on roads.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            "peak -vs- mean"

            fucking irrelevant.

            ISP sold X can only supply 10% of X is the fucking ISP's problem, not netflix or the consumer.

            And to the fuckwit who keeps saying people don't understand networks due to not working at them, FUCK OFF.

            I created a fucking ISP from scratch, I know all about buying minimum bandwidth and sharing it out due to peek V mean, ISP's over sell what they don't have to make it cheaper to consumer, it worked when the old patterns were just a bit of browsing and email, NOT now pattern useage has changed.

            If a modern ISP does not understand this, they deserve to go out of business, as they are shit and conning consumers

            1. Alan Brown Silver badge

              As someone who also built an ISP, I concur

              This behaviour is what you expect from a monopolist, not a competitive business

      4. W.S.Gosset Silver badge

        By the downvotes and the other posts here, you would seem to be about the only person who understands how the networks (and pricing) _actually_ operate, rather than how people would like them to operate.

        (Cf my post just above)

        1. John Doe 12

          @W.S.Gosset

          I have long since learned there are times where I can be right and almost everyone else is wrong :-D This seems to be one of them ha ha.

          It's one of those emotive topics that brings out a massive sense of entitlement in people. It's been a race to the bottom for many years and though this does mean that most low-income families can afford to have some form of Internet access (which is brilliant) the average joe seems to be losing all sense of reality. What's more worrying is that I guess most people using The Register should know better but seem to be even more deluded :-D

          I am in this line of business by the way which is why I understand how it works. So downvote away guys as you only prove my point further ;-)

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            "I have long since learned there are times where I can be right and almost everyone else is wrong :-D This seems to be one of them ha ha."

            your a fuckwit. and wrong as wrong can fucking be.

            I made an ISP from scratch, stop making excuses for shitty business practice.

            The world moved on, the net is no longer just used for a bit of browsing and email.

            If ISP's want to limit, thats fucking fine, but they need to stop pretending and marketing it like it's unlimited.

            Part of the issue is fucking goverments allowed marketing assholes (are you one?) to use the word "unlimited*" when it's NOT unlimited, words fucking matter, and redefining a word just for marketing assholes is fucking fraud.

            * note unlimited in this use means "NOT unlimited" as the GOV allows me to fool you.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          @W.S.Gosset "By the downvotes and the other posts here, you would seem to be about the only person who understands how the networks (and pricing) _actually_ operate, rather than how people would like them to operate."

          You didn't even read the article:

          "SK Broadband urged the Korea Communications Commission in November 2019 to get web video giants like Netflix and Google’s YouTube to pay for network usage."

          That's not how they operate, its how they WISH they could operate having failed to get their way in 2019.

      5. derrr

        So are you saying the open buffet providers should not provide content/food people wish to consume to prevent popularity??

        1. John Doe 12

          No I am not saying that. But if some greedy pig comes in with the intention of eating until they puke and then stuffing food into their pockets then I would totally support the buffet owner for banning them. Once again I will use the word "entitled" as this describes the category of personality that has no willingness to be reasonable and behaves like it's a challenge. In the past I have described The Register as the Daily Mail of I.T. and certainly reading some of the comments in this thread I feel like got that correct.

          Downvote away you Daily Mail lovers :-P

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            The "greedy pigs" in this case are the customers watching Netflix streams. Netflix does not force people to watch, it's the customer that initiates the transaction, its the customers that choose that service.

            Cable providers like SKBroadband are paid by those customers to let them watch Netflix and other internet sites. They are in effect, reselling those websites and reselling that content to their customer.

            Without those websites and that content they have nothing to resell.

            So SKBroadband should pay Netflix a cut of the customer money they make on the resale. That would cause a flow of money to content creators who make the actual content. Stimulating content creation and stimulating internet use and increasing broadband in the process. Also ultimately good for the ISPs since their ability to sell fast services to content depends on there being content that needs fast services to resell.

            SKBroadband are a parasite on Netflix here, getting to sell broadband to customers that customers otherwise wouldn't need to buy. But in a broader sense these ISP parasites get to resell the works of others for huge profits, without paying the content creators.

            ISP's customers click on Google and cause processing on Google's servers and bandwidth across Google's network.

            That parasitic relationship needs to stop, ISPs need to pay for the content they resell. They need to pay their way.

          2. Matt Ryan

            If we applied your argument about Neflix to open buffets, the buffet owner would try to get his food supplier to pay him so his customers could eat the food.

  2. IceC0ld

    I can think of one way to settle it .................

    who is up for a quick round of Squid Game ? :o)

    1. Ken Shabby Bronze badge
      Pirate

      Release the Kraken...

      1. Kane
        Joke

        "Release the Kraken..."

        I've seen enough hentai to know where this is going...

  3. Cheshire Cat
    WTF?

    Looks like the ISP wants 2 bites of the cherry

    Haven't the ISP subscribers already paid for this bandwidth? If they all happen to use it to access the same internet site, that's not the fault of Netflix.

    The ISP is just being greedy. If they can't supply the bandwidth the customers paid for, then they should change their pricing structure.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Looks like the ISP wants 2 bites of the cherry

      Yeah, pretty much this. The analogue in the physical world would be an airline overbooking its flights and then demanding that a destination city compensate it for putting on a festival that made people want to go there.

      Oversubscribing any resource you sell should be illegal unless your contracts create explicit tiers of access. Want to be in a higher-priority tier? Pay more. Want to pay less? Accept that you'll sometimes get nothing. Promising something and failing to deliver should mean prison time.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Looks like the ISP wants 2 bites of the cherry

        The big difference being that Netflix could cache their data within the ISPs network, eliminating the cost of purchasing international bandwidth.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Looks like the ISP wants 2 bites of the cherry

          Annndd... who would pay for that? Hmm?

          1. vekkq

            Re: Looks like the ISP wants 2 bites of the cherry

            the ISP is paying of course. they gonna save bandwidth and with that they save money.

          2. John Robson Silver badge

            Re: Looks like the ISP wants 2 bites of the cherry

            Well, when I was running a CDN we'd put the hardware in - they'd pay for power/cooling.

            It makes a huge amount of sense from both parties, since you only deliver once to the cache, and don't pay central bandwidth fees for all the deliveries downstream, and the ISP obviously gets a huge benefit as well.

            So both save on bandwidth costs - the ISP by more than enough to pay for the power.

            The CDN also gets to provide a better service to it's customers in that region.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Looks like the ISP wants 2 bites of the cherry

          Only if they're permitted to install caching servers. And its the ISP who has to permit it. Please re-read the article.

        3. martyn.hare
          Thumb Up

          Or… a happy medium

          Netflix could offer a way for ISPs to opportunistically cache data by not unnecessarily using HTTPS to deliver their video content. Send the client a compressed+encrypted wad of checksums/keys and then deliver the exact same DRM-encrypted data to every subscriber.

          Problem sorted.

          1. ewanm89

            Re: Or… a happy medium

            You mean like the system they do provide: https://openconnect.netflix.com

            They can do it with the DRM and encryption, they have a whole setup for it.

        4. MatthewSt Silver badge

          Re: Looks like the ISP wants 2 bites of the cherry

          https://openconnect.netflix.com/en_gb/

          Looks like this is already solved for ISPs if they're willing to get a free appliance from Netflix to plug in to power and network

          1. jockmcthingiemibobb

            Re: Looks like the ISP wants 2 bites of the cherry

            Yeah it's really bizarre that there's no netflix CDN / openconnect in South Korea?

      2. AndrueC Silver badge

        Re: Looks like the ISP wants 2 bites of the cherry

        Oversubscribing any resource you sell should be illegal unless your contracts create explicit tiers of access.

        I don't totally disagree with you but we're talking about resource contention here and it is a very complicated problem that all businesses have to deal with (talk to a restaurateur about how they plan staffing levels and manage bookings throughout the week). The only reason private individuals can afford a home network connection is because it's contended. Lower contention is the reason business packages cost more (lower bandwidth and lower engineer contention). Lack of contention is why leased lines are so expensive.

        Residential contention is sometimes a fixed figure if the connection rates are fixed. In the early days of fixed rate connections in the UK it was 50:1 for residential, 20:1 for business. With today's variable rates that doesn't work so the ratio varies across the network according to local demand with the ISP trying to balance cost v customer complaints. Spikes in demand are particularly tricky because bandwidth isn't something you can just increase and decrease on a whim. Who knows how long Squid Game will capture attention? When viewing figures drop off SK could be left with under utilised routers losing them money.

        1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

          Re: Looks like the ISP wants 2 bites of the cherry

          The only reason private individuals can afford a home network connection is because it's contended.

          Yup. It's one of the key arguments/problems behind the whole 'Net Neutrality' debate.

          Customer pays ISP $10/month

          Customer pays Netflix $10/month

          Netflix pays ISP $0

          So Netflix and their customers generate 1.2Tbs, which is a cost to the ISP. ISP is generally forced to provide 'free' peering to Netflix, because otherwise that traffic will go via a transit ISP, which means more costs to the consumer's ISP. The transit ISP will probably peer with Netflix, or if the the cost of carrying Netflix's traffic is too high, may want to charge Netflix for transit.

          But changing from a 'free' peering to a paid transit connection generally ends up leading to peering (or PR) wars when there's a trafic imbalance. Which there always will be with content like streaming. But such has been the Internet since the '90s. Netflix doesn't want to pay carriage because it's loss making.

          So we're left with an uneasy status quo, and lobbying. This ISP has identified the cost element, and that cost is due to Netflix. If Netflix has to pay to deliver it's traffic, it's subscription charges will have to go up (again). If the ISP has to, consumers will find their $10/month subscription has to increase.

          It's an old problem, and one that really needs the regulators to solve. The model is pretty simple, ie the old POTs model with orignation & termination costs, and settlement betwen operators. But that would add costs to the OTT content providers, hence why they lobby for the ISPs to carry all the costs.

          (There's also been some fun with Amazon's new MMO game. Launch day for those generally gets interesting. Amazon's created instances for 2,000 players, >2,000 players have attempted to join. So people have found themselves sitting in queues of 10k+ players trying to get into the game. Which is fun because if anyone could 'flex' server capacity to support surge demand, you'd think it'd be Amazon and AWS.)

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