On 4/28/14, 9:23 AM, "Suresh Ramasubramanian" <ops.lists@gmail.com> wrote:
And it has a settlement free peering policy - with a stated requirement that traffic exchanged be symmetrical.
http://www.comcast.com/peering
Applicant must maintain a traffic scale between its network and Comcast that enables a general balance of inbound versus outbound traffic. The network cost burden for carrying traffic between networks shall be similar to justify SFI
Now, that big elephant in the room taken into account, where do the middlemen come in here?
People seem to forget what Comcast is doing is nothing new. People have been paying for unbalanced peering for as long as peering has been around. It's a little different because Netflix doesn't have an end network customer to bill to recoup those charges, they have customers on someone else's network. It's not like all broadband providers are anti-Netflix, some are even starting to include NF as an app on their STB. There are also many who do peer with Netflix settlement-free even with very unbalanced ratios. The key in the future is moving the bandwidth closer to the users, and we will see more edge caching exist either within the broadband provider facilities or at more localized 3rd party datacenters. Phil