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App developer Panic Inc. knew it had a network problem when customers began complaining about trouble downloading and updating Panic apps.
"Geez, your downloads are really slow!" was the common complaint that started coming in a few months ago, Panic co-founder Cabel Sasser explained in a blog post titled, "The Mystery of the Slow Downloads."
But once the mystery cleared up, it all made sense. Panic and its users were the innocent victims of a longstanding network interconnection battle between cable ISP Comcast and Cogent, which operates a global network that carries traffic across the Internet.
The situation will only get worse once the Net Neutrality appeal process is complete.
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When Slow Downloads Hit an App Developer, Only Comcast Customers Suffered
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
TOO BAD YOU CAN'T BUY a voodoo globe so that you could make the earth spin
real fast and freak everybody out.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Monday March 12 2018, @02:48PM (4 children)
1. ISP slows downloads for random app
2. Customers blame random app, and rates app poorly
3. App makers want to resolve issue, and identify ISP is at fault
4. ISP sells "Gold Tier" access to app makers
5. Customers can now download app quickly, which makes the app better than competing apps which don't pay for premium access
6. App profits, ISP profits, Customers profit?
Yes not exactly how the article played out, but this is where I see the internet heading
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Monday March 12 2018, @02:55PM (2 children)
You're missing the alternative:
4. App makers specifically warn customers that if they use Comcast, to expect slow speeds because Comcast intentionally degrades their service, and that they should find a new ISP
5. Customers gripe and complain but generally put up with slow speeds suitable for countries like Zimbabwe
or 5. (This one is not so likely) Customers in metro areas push for local politicians to strongly regulate ISPs and/or invest in municipal-owned ISPs (this last one isn't allowed in certain states thanks to Republican voters)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by dwilson on Monday March 12 2018, @04:47PM (1 child)
Or 5. (I rate this one as the most likely) Customers, being average folk with no real understanding of how their modern world's technology works and lacking the give-a-fuck to learn, disregard App maker's warning (assuming they even received it, or read it if they did...) and continue to blame the App maker, spread the same misinformation via twitter/facebook/reviews. App maker's business tanks as a result.
And the world moves on.
- D
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Monday March 12 2018, @06:19PM
And 6. (In my ideal world...) App makers leave the US market, or at least charge much higher prices for US customers than in markets where they don't have this problem.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 12 2018, @03:20PM
If it were possible to have a free market with infrastructure (which internet is these days), then ISPs who did not have "fast lanes" and "slow lanes" would likely win. Maybe they wouldn't; the invisible hand is capricious, but it generally gives us all a superior product or at least a choice of products that suck in different ways.
However, infrastructure has that strange property we call "natural monopoly." While we will never convince anarcho-capitalists, I would hope that small L libertarians and members of the Libertarian Party in the USA can see the reasons it makes sense for a violently imposed monopoly to provide infrastructure service. We can even have potable water delivery, for example, as a government monopoly, and the government monopoly can rent the pipes out to different water/sewer treatment plant operators. Electricity too. Want to pay more for green energy? Go for it! The transmission lines are maintained by government monopoly. Generation in the free market (and we can come up with different models for providing individual homes compensation for sending excess power generation into the grid, though people here who understand the electricity network better than I do will always remind us this is easier said than done). Roads also. And now communications in the form of TCP/IP pipes, layer 1 provided by government monopoly, and layer 2 services provided by ISP operators on the free market.
Why can't we be more flexible instead of everything socialist and everything capitalist as our black-and-white DuR (Dempublican and Republicrat) team alternatives?