If it was Netflix connected to say Cogent and Comcast connected to Level3 you would have the same unbalanced ratios between Cogent/Level3 for the same reasons. Level3 would likely be wanting compensation from Cogent for it... It is such a large amount of bandwidth these days it's not made up by other traffic. I am not saying any of it is right, but precedents in the past have led to this. Phil -----Original Message----- From: "Jack Bates" <jbates@paradoxnetworks.net> Sent: 4/28/2014 11:34 AM To: "Phil Bedard" <bedard.phil@gmail.com>; "Suresh Ramasubramanian" <ops.lists@gmail.com>; "nanog@nanog.org" <nanog@nanog.org> Subject: Re: The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they couldenshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post On 4/28/2014 9:18 AM, Phil Bedard wrote:
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. Yeah. It's a scam. Comcast can't do balanced peering. Their customers are not symmetrical.
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.
Netflix is happy to assist with caching. The thing is, Comcast doesn't care about that. What they care about is that their last mile is getting saturated and they have to pay money to upgrade it. Costs are being shoved onto netflix and similar to justify that. This is compared to the small ISP who is just happy to get a peering or cache to save money only on their transit fees. Jack