----- Original Message -----
From: "Brett Glass" <nanog@brettglass.com>
Note that I misunderstood you to be the Verizon blog poster I started this thread commenting on. My apology for that in a separate post, but here are some replies that amount to "you are standing on the same rock in the river they are". :-)
My customers do not want me to "creatively" find ways to extract additional money from them so as to cover expenses that Netflix should be covering. Nor do they want me to subsidize Netflix subscribers from the fees from non-Netflix subscribers. They want to pay a fair price for their Internet that does not include paying ransom to third parties.
Characterizing it as "ransom" and "expenses Netflix should be covering" is, alas, largely in doubt, from the responses I've seen here; it's assuming facts not in evidence.
We currently provide that: we guarantee each subscriber a certain minimum capacity to the Internet exchange at 1850 Pearl Street in Denver (to which Netflix does not directly connect) with a certain maximum duty cycle. But we can't guarantee the performance of a specific third party service such as Netflix. If Netflix wants us to do that, it is going to have to pay us, as it pays Comcast. That's only fair, because we would be doing something special just for it -- something which costs money.
It's not Netflix who expects you to deliver that quality. It's your customers. Who pay you for it. If they're not paying you enough, well... who set those prices? Netflix?
If Netflix tries to use its market power to harm ISPs, or to smear us via nasty on-screen messages as it has been smearing Verizon, ISPs have no choice but to react. One way we could do this -- and I'm strongly considering it -- is to start up a competing streaming service that IS friendly to ISPs. It would use the minimum possible amount of bandwidth, make proper use of caching, and -- most importantly -- actually PAY Internet service providers, instead of sapping their resources, by allowing them to sell it and keep a portion of the fee. This would provide an automatic, direct, per-customer reimbursement to the ISP for the cost of bandwidth. ISPs would sign on so fast that such a service could BURY Netflix in short order.
Alas, content providers probably would not. But good luck with that. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://www.bcp38.info 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA BCP38: Ask For It By Name! +1 727 647 1274