EFF – “Almost any time you access the Internet, your computer transmits and receives data that travels across not only your own Internet provider’s network, but also the networks of Internet backbone providers and other ISPs before reaching its final destination. This is what puts the “inter” in the “Internet”: independent networks connected together physically at interconnection points. But this same feature that makes the Internet so powerful can also be a weakness. If the interconnection between two networks doesn’t have the capacity to handle the traffic being sent across it, then that interconnection can become a point of congestion, leading to slower speeds and dropped packets. A report released earlier this week published by M-Lab, a research consortium focused on measuring global Internet performance, studied this problem. They were curious how interconnection affected US Internet users’ connection quality, and how particular interconnections between “access” ISPs (e.g. Comcast, Verizon, Cox, Time-Warner Cable, etc.) and “transit” ISPs (Internet providers that connect between access ISPs and websites or other Internet services) were performing. Sadly, the results were not encouraging. M-Lab’s data showed that the interconnections between certain access ISPs and transit ISPs were subject to consistent congestion, causing customers to experience sub-broadband speeds, more latency, and more dropped packets. In particular, for a period of nine months from May 2013 to February 2014, customers of Time-Warner Cable, Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, and CenturyLink all experienced degraded connections to the transit ISP Cogent. For those following the net neutrality debate, this should be no surprise. It was during this period that transit ISPs like Cogent and Level 3 accused access ISPs like Verizon and Comcast of refusing to upgrade their interconnections to handle the increased traffic load, unless transit ISPs agreed to pay substantial fees above and beyond the cost of upgrading the interconnection infrastructure. In return, the access ISPs claimed that transit ISPs were at fault for trying to send so much traffic (primarily Netflix video) onto their networks. While much of the congestion subsided once Netflix acceded to the access ISPs’ demands and paid up, the fact remains that for nine months, ISPs did not deliver the speeds they promised to many of their customers.”