On 17 July 2014 00:57, Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com> wrote:
If Netflix had a closed or limited peering policy, then I'd say "shame on Netlfix". If Netflix only peered in an exchange point or two near corporate HQ and didn't have an extensive nationwide network, I'd say shame on Netflix. Reality is that Netflix is in most of the major peering centers already and continues to work aggressively to expand into more and more second-tier and third-tier peering centers. I'd say that is Netflix paying their share. Further, for providers that aren't in peering centers Netflix is in, they have offered a variety of alternative solutions and they pay a selection of transit providers to move the bits to providers they can't economically connect to directly.
Except they don't. Excuse me for talking about the world outside America. Netflix believes Denmark is an important enough market to pay for danish subtitles for their entire catalog and to have Denmark as a launch market for their service in Europe. But they can't be bothered to have a physical presence in Denmark. We have to go to a different country and a long way at that, to get to Stockholm in Sweden, where Netflix peers at the Netnod IX. Some danish ISPs do peer at Netnod, but it is only the ones that are big enough to qualify for a cache anyway. It is not economical to buy a link to Stockholm. Transit is cheaper, so that is what we are all doing. Then Netflix announces that you have to either have a cache or to peer directly with Netflix to get Super HD. This is a case of reverse net neutrality: The content provider is filtering content to ISPs that wont pay the transit bill for the content provider. "for the content provider" not "to the content provider". We pay our transit, it should not be our problem how Netflix pays theirs. Luckily this is so far only theory. We still get the Super HD. Either Netflix never implemented the policy or one of our transit providers made a deal with Netflix. I am not sure which one. But nevertheless even threatening to play reverse net neutrality games is NOT being the good guy. If transit is too expensive for Netflix, they should put in a shared cache at the danish IX (DIX) in Copenhagen. We would all be happy to peer with Netflix at that location. If Netflix chooses to host the cache at Interxion they also get access to the Netnod IX that covers Denmark and southern Sweden, a metropolitan area of more than 10 million people. Regards, Baldur