Germany’s Digital Highway

This translation was generated automatically.

This week I was invited to t3n magazine’s #next14 in Berlin.

I said this about our future:

The digital economy can be blackmailed by network operators. The digital content we sell is throttled both on the server side and on the customer side—sometimes artificially, sometimes because network expansion is poor or deliberately held back. …

t3n 100: 13 theses on the future of Germany’s digital economy [#NEXT14]

Here’s a concrete example. My Bits und so servers are currently at Hetzner in Falkenberg. Connections to Telekom’s important customer network often run via Level 3. Over the past few months, the perceived connection quality (latency in SSH terminals and VoIP apps) and throughput on large downloads have noticeably deteriorated, to the point of being unusable. It isn’t the servers, nor just Hetzner’s network capacity; apparently there isn’t enough line capacity between Level 3 and Telekom. Traceroute or mtr logs show it clearly in the evenings.

Level 3 indirectly confirmed this impression by saying that large but unnamed European ISPs are deliberately restricting peering bandwidth. Another major internet backbone operator, Cogent, explicitly named Telekom as a problem back in 2009.

Anecdotally, the game with a mid-sized provider such as Hetzner goes like this: Telekom offers a connection to its network, but not at one of the inexpensive DE-CIX exchange points. Instead, it offers one or more Telekom hubs on premium-priced greenfield sites. And the fibre to those sites is rented exclusively from T-Systems.

So Hetzner must choose: live with overloaded lines, let itself be blackmailed, or lose customers? My next step will be to send my traffic over other lines with better connections to Telekom. My customers are at the other end of that golden Telekom cable, and I have to be able to reach them.

At #next14, Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière was also asked about the state of Germany’s digital highway and whether the major data lines should be returned to federal ownership to protect net neutrality. In broken English, his answer amounted to this: the government likes net neutrality, but after privatising the postal service, it’s already too late for Germany’s digital highway. I’ll add the video when it becomes available.