preroll music Swiss German would be an option for me. English, because you know the Swiss don't speak proper German. My six year old digital native is telling people rather proud that his Dad invented the fastest internet in Switzerland. It’s called Fiber7. applause Thank you. While we went to Greece for vacation, I was in a target conflict, because I had to explain him why he couldn’t watch YouTube. I mean Greece, you know it’s maybe a bit difficult, but as a matter of fact, here in Hamburg it’s not any better. I’m next door in the hotel InterCity and they offer “free WiFi” with 256 kbit/s. If you want 5 Mbit Internet, you pay 8 Euros extra, per day. So this is where we are in 2015. A few words about me: I’m married, one son as I said. He was born 2009. He was able to unlock the iPhone with the age of 17 months. No one showed him how. My early connection with digital techniques was about 1978 when I was playing with these chips 7400. Who knows them? Raise your hand. Few, thanks. Later on I did an apprenticeship as a Fernmelde- und Elektronikapparatemonteur. And I started to do IT business about 1991. And 1996 – almost 20 years ago – we started with Linux stuff. My first Linux was Suse 4.2. In the year 2000 we started with Init7 and later on I became president of the SwissIX association. This is an association which runs a Internet Exchange. I had also my time in a startup called Zattoo. It’s a network architecture OTT IP Television. Besides, I need a hobby, so I’m also a politician for the Social Democrats in my city parliament, already 8 years. Then I started with the other hobby, Fiber7 as you know. Oh besides, I was also working in an internet expert group of the Social Democrats Switzerland. The internet paper was adopted earlier this month by the national Delegiertenversammlung. I don’t know what this is in English. So, Buffering sucks! Ladies and Gentlemen, this talk is not about Deutsche Telekom. It’s not about peering. It’s not about interconnection. It’s about these thousands and millions of youngsters out there which want to watch YouTube in HD resolution without buffering. So let’s quickly look at the reason why YouTube and all the other video buffers. It’s usually lack of bandwidth. If you have a 2 Meg DSL or if you have an InterCity free WiFi with 250 kilobits; so HD video is not possible. Sometimes they have old PCs, so CPU power is an issue – these days no longer relevant. WiFi quality sucks sometimes. This is rather an individual issue. And sometimes we have an over-subscription of the shared node – mainly in cable networks. Streaming source can be too far away. If you stream from the U.S., it doesn’t really go well. That’s why we have so many CDN, Content Delivery Network systems, close to the end users. Then adaptive streaming can be an advantage, but also disadvantage. You cannot turn it off. When you watch HD and the connection sucks you just cannot keep it on HD. It just drops to SD or lower resolution. It works, yes. But Claire Underwood in low res is not so cool. Routing algorithm issues – sometimes it’s a mismatch of client and server. If your client is assigned to the wrong CDN server, then it’s also slow. Anycast routing is a trick sometimes. Last but not least and the most important thing: It’s over-subscribed interconnections. We go back quickly to the old days. The caller pays. When you call your mother-in-law and you talk with her – well, she talks to you for 45 minutes and you say hello and goodbye – you still pay the call. laughter So with YouTube it’s not any different. You click YouTube and then YouTube talks to you for hours maybe and then you say goodbye, basically. So is the broadband customer calling the YouTube server or is it vice versa? Is the YouTube server calling the broadband customer? Probably it’s the broadband customer who calls. But still the data is flowing from the server to the client. But the client is causing the traffic, because he is requesting the traffic. And if we look at the structure of the internet, we have basically the end user to the right. We have – here is the provider network and the end user is only connected to the provider’s network. On the left side we have all the content in the internet. We have the media and video and streaming and Torrent and you name it. But there is always only one way going to the end user. It’s the yellow marked interconnection points and there is no way around them. This basically means, the provider can monopolize the end customer. At least as long [as] he is connected or subscribed. There is no alternative way. So this gives the provider a position of power. On the other hand these interconnection points used to be – for a long period of time – so called Zero Settlement interconnections and they are basically the foundation of the internet. Without Zero Settlement peering, without interconnection the internet wouldn’t exist as we know it. The broadband provider, mainly the incumbent, the ex-monopolist, or large cable operators, they tend to become more and more restrictive to provide sufficient interconnection capacity. Not upgrading interconnection to the requirements is very common these days and it’s a passive aggressive behavior. So many providers – to name a few: Deutsche Telekom – they just do nothing. They just wait. And the end customers are suffering. Buffering is very common, especially during prime-time. This is basically what the topic of… …the main topic of this conference is: It’s a gated community. The provider creates a gated community for his own end customers. So as I said before: The data is flowing from the server, from the video server to the end customer. It’s about 50 times more traffic flowing to the client and the usual traffic ratio we have for a broadband provider is 1:5 or 1:10. So they’re pulling about 10 times more traffic towards the end customer. Then we have this interconnection policy. So they don’t do anything. As I said before, they just over-subscribe the existing interconnection. And if you want to upgrade you have to have a traffic ratio of about 1:1.5 to 1.3. But no video stream service can deliver traffic and also maintain the traffic ratio. No content provider can. So all they can do is: They can pay money to get upgraded. And if they don’t pay, data is stuck in congestion and the clients are suffering, seeing the buffering sign. Large broadband providers, such as the incumbents and cable providers, they want to get paid twice. They are able to force the money due to the temporary monopoly – as I explained. And they can ask money from the end customer and on the other hand also from the content. This is called double- sided market. And if they don’t pay, the content is not paying, this is what we see. And sometimes – as a side note – the end customer pays, but still sees this. But IP interconnection would be cheap. The business cost per broadband customer is just a few cents per month. And if the provider would invest this, people would be happy. On top content providers are easy to deal for peering or provide cache servers etc. So please talk to our community fellows of Akamai, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Limelight, Netflix. T is not Telekom, it’s Twitch. And Zattoo and a lot of others. So traffic congestion is costly. I took a random Google search and was looking for how much traffic is actually costing. And “Die Welt” showed the result: “Staus kosten in jedem Haushalt 509€/Jahr”. So my assumption was: If traffic jam is costing money, then probably data traffic jam is also costing some money. But I figured that no one was really exploring that field, yet. So I thought I’m going to do a little “Milchbüechlirächnig” laughter applause When I was a child, the milk man came every morning and we just put our order into the Milchbüechli and he put the milk into the box outside of the house. By the end of the month, we went to the shop and paid our Milchbüechlirächnig. So this is my quick calculation: We have about 30 million broadband connections in Germany. I assume that everybody is waiting for one minute accumulated while watching Netflix, YouTube, whatever. Probably this is far too less. Who thinks one minute is fine, or – who thinks one minute is not enough? Oh, ok, so let’s stick with one minute for the calculation. And I also assumed that 5€ / hour waiting is a good salary. If you think, 5€ is not enough, you can adapt the calculation. This is called “Reservationslohn”. I have no clue what it means, but this was on Wikipedia, for time when you take a job or refuse a job, how much would be the value for the spare time. So this is my calculation: If you wait one minute per day, this is 6 hours per year. If you multiply this with the 5€, every broadband customer would lose 30€ per year. This sums up – with 30 million broadband subscribers – to 900 million Euros per year. This is the economic damage in Germany per year. applause As we can assume that a large part of the buffering is caused by the insufficient interconnection, especially during prime- time when everybody wants to watch Netflix. This is also a result of the restrictive peering policy of the incumbent and large cable operators and the ability for them to force some extra money out of these double sided market power as I explained. They probably would gain a few millions. I don’t have exact figures but I assume it’s probably some 10..20..30 millions per year, they could force through this market power. On the other hand we have the damage of 900 Million Euro per year and I mean this is like a – how do you say that? – imbalance. So my conclusion in democratic countries like [in] Western Europe: The economic gain of a multibillion company at the expense of the general public is commonly not tolerated. The next question is basically following the previous talk of Thomas: When will the regulators wake up and force every market participant to cooperative peering and interconnection because the end user is suffering, the public is suffering. Zero Settlement peering – as I explained – is rather common. Of course the “Deutsche Telekom Lobby” would tell otherwise, this is clear. The unbalanced traffic should no longer be used to refuse peering; and also disputes about the interconnection should be resolved rather quick. My case against Swisscom is taking years already and still no end and no light at the end of the tunnel. Then, last but not least we should have broadband providers, must be committed to the interests of their own end user customer base. As I said, Telekom managed to get paid twice because of their market power; and other Telecoms, such as Telecom Hungaria or Swisscom, they use Deutsche Telekom and their market power as a leverage to force their also restrictive peering policy; and the regulators so far don’t do much. I quote here Marc Furrer, this is the chief of ComCom Switzerland: “Nur ein fauler Regulator ist ein guter Regulator”. laughing Thank you! Questions? applause Herald: Okay, thank you Fredy; and let’s have Thomas back up on stage and we’re gonna take questions, please. There is actually more than the mics I said before, there is 2 right up on the top and there is 3 in each aisle. So if you please line up if you have any questions and ask; and please speak into the mic, we need your questions on tape, and those who are leaving now: Do it silently please. Okay, first question, over there! Q: I have a question for Thomas: From your talk it sounds like you did a lot of work. Can you tell us a little bit about the budgeting, that goes into having a team like that? T: Yeah, so, SaveTheInternet is a coalition of 12 NGOs which have all their independent budget. There is no fixed budget for the work that we have been doing as a whole. All of them have transparency reports. So I can not really speak for the budget of EDRI or accessnow. The organization where I am based in Austria got a grant from the media democracy foundation from 10.000€ and money from Netflix, 10.000€ also; and we used both for development and paying for the Faxes. Because in the second run of the Fax tool the provider that it was referring to was no longer paying. Otherwise the funding in general about Digital Rights in Europe is awfully low. So if you compare it to the U.S. where you had double-digit millions going into the lobbying it is ridiculous what resources we have here in Europe; and we are thinking about making a donation tool for the new SafeTheInternet; but again that’s complicated because you have 12 NGOs with very different activity scales. Like some of them do a lot, others not so much. So how would you divide the money? These are unresolved questions, that we are working on right now. If you wanna support us with independent funding, then just donate to the individual organizations. EDRI, Initiative für Netzfreiheit, are probably the ones I would mention most, because they have done most of the work; accessnow as well, but they generally have a lot of funding from the U.S., so I don’t think they need it that much. Q: But to summarize, I saw a picture of your team. I saw all the work you did. You did that for 20.000€? T: No. I never got a Cent. I was paid by EDRI for 4 months when I was working in Brussels within BEREC for the first reading; but otherwise this was mostly free time. I got my expenses covered for travel but other than that I am doing this in my spare time. Also now unemployed… applause I work for Data Protection NGOs, so they are allowing me to do a lot of my stuff also for Net Neutrality. Herald: We’re all elephants. We do it for peanuts. Okay, No.1 go ahead! Mic 1: Yeah, hello! Hi Thomas, thanks a lot for your work, that’s great. I have a question about the involvement of the Business Angels and the companies: What is the reason, what do you think why they came so late into this discussion in Germany. What probably can we do to change this in the future because I think that’s a… they are great allies in this fight. Thomas: That’s… you’re asking exactly the right question. Sadly in Europe you have no organized voice for Startups or for SMEs when it comes to Digital Rights issues; and you would have to work with them to get them involved in the debate. They were really late to the party and then, again, mostly activated through U.S. networks. So the connection between the civil rights scene here and the business scene, particularly the one which is organized in Brussels with European umbrellas is very weak. So everything you can do there to strengthen this connection would be great. But I don’t have those business contacts. I got a few people involved in the first reading stuff but we definitely need more people that act as multipliers to get more companies involved, particularly now when we enter into a new phase with the BEREC guidelines. We no longer need the loud arguments of many people, we need more the arguments from the business side, from the universities, from those people who run networks. These arguments are better suited to make a difference with the regulators. Fredy: And to add: Don’t underestimate the influence of the lobbies, of the big names, the Telecoms and the liberty globals, they have a lot of money and they try to influence the politicians as good as they can. They do a good job from their perspective. Thomas: You can be sure that the Telecoms will have people for all 28 regulators, now continuously lobbying for an upcoming 9 months. The question is: Who is in our team? Herald: Okay. Thank you. Is there a question from the internet? Signal Angel: Yes, there is a question, it is: Whether peering providers should differentiate between virtual private network traffic and public traffic and where is the line between internal network and the public internet? Fredy: What should I say… this is difficult question, I mean… Basically, if you all commit your backbone then there is always plenty of traffic… or plenty of capacity. So there is… there shouldn’t be any differentiation. Networks should provide enough capacity and then we’re good. A common argument from the big names: “Oh we are investing millions and millions and millions in broadband expansion” but unfortunately they stop investing right at the end of their own backbone so they don’t invest any money beyond their little percentage of the total investment for their interconnections. Herald: Okay, there is another question at No.1? Mic 1: I have a question about buffering: So the most of the content in the web is delivered over TCP/IP and… will changing the media to something like UDP which has lower overhead over TCP/IP; will that change the situation? Fredy: Not really. Mic 1: No? Fredy: No. It won’t help. I mean packet loss is packet loss regardless whether it is TCP or UDP. Herald: Okay, that was a short answer. Next question please. Please talk into the mic. Mic: So when I came here, this year, I had the impression that at digital subscriber line connections not only bandwidth is bad but also the ping gets up way high. Of course – I mean – at home I have Fiber7 nowadays so I just thought I got spoiled by fiber connections but I noticed that ping times went up from, well, couple of years ago 60-80ms from sites in your neighborhood more or less to nowadays 80-160ms. Where is the problem there? Fredy: Well the latency is directly related if the provider is not delivering enough bandwidth, then ping goes up that’s a normal behavior of TCP. Mic: So the problem is also at the interconnection sites? Fredy. Probably yes, most likely, you can find out if you do traceroute, then you see where… well, there is a long presentation how to interpret traceroute properly. If you look for “Nanog traceroute” you should find this lecture. But that would probably give some indication. Mic: Alright, thank you. Herald: Thank you. Next question from the internet, just in between and then we’ll go back, go ahead. Signal Angel: “Is Netflix a gated community by itself?” and “Are you sure that their interest will align with the movement of net neutrality in the long run?” Fredy: We should differentiate between Netflix content and Netflix interconnections. So for the content I probably would say: Yes, but I am not the expert. This would be then layer 7 in the OSI model. I am talking here on layer 3, this is content agnostic. Netflix, they are one of the good guys because they really help to deliver the packets. I know them personally a few fellows from the peering community. They are the good guys, definitely. Thomas: Just also to answer this question for the European debate, Netflix was one of the good guys in the U.S. and they also supported of course the European movement. But again, they are so big that I wouldn’t really trust them as an ally because they could also pay, they could also survive in a double sided market and for them in the growing emerging markets like Europe where they just have started, it’s probably risky to allow for this new type of anti net neutrality business models; but in the consumer side where net neutrality is seen as an end user issue I think so far their interests mostly align. On interconnection they have their own interests of course. Fredy: So I can say: Netflix is definitely paying Deutsche Telekom otherwise no single Deutsche Telekom user would be able to watch any movie on Netflix! So! For sure! Herald: Okay, we are short for time so please, last 2 questions. No.2 first. Keep it short please. Talk into the mic. Mic 2: Regarding the first talk: What is the… do you have an explanation for the behavior of the European Commission in behave of the net neutrality debate? I especially think of the behavior of Günther Oettinger who repeatedly said his ridiculous lie of a “net neutrality kills” and he repeated it again and again even if there was no reason behind it. And do you have an explanation for this behavior of the Commission and Junker and this. Thomas: For that argument, we had this great YouTube video “net neutrality kills”. If you search it you will find it or “Netzneutralität tötet” in German. That deconstructs this argument of Oettinger. But in general, and you can go back to the previous commissioner Neelie Kroes that I showed. Our sole suspicion is that the deal was that the telecom industry has to give up a little bit of their profits when it comes to Roaming, but on the other side they gain a lot of future profits on the abolishment of net neutrality and so it was like “Okay, we need a Populist argument", Neelie Kroes also needs a quick win at the end of her career and this was again like you take a little bit there and put it there for the Telecoms industry. And Oettinger is a big industrial favor guy, he is always for big business. Herald: Okay, short for time, last question, No.1. Mic 1: Hi, so what strategy should an ISP use when their capacity on their backbones is fully loaded? Like first-in-first-out or what is your idea about that, because the capacity is limited, so when there is so much traffic that everything is stuck. Fredy: Upgrade! Thomas: Yes, invest in the network! Fredy: I mean, sorry, a 10G port is now some 3000€ including optic and cross connect. It’s not that much. Upgrade! Herald: Okay, thank you! applause postroll music Subtitles created by c3subtitles.de in the year 2016. Join and help us!