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by lucianof 5190 days ago
I agree. The article lost me at this bit: 'The company claims that “content is being delivered over our private IP network and not the public Internet,” but that’s a meaningless distinction given that Comcast owns the entire pipe and can arbitrarily create private networks any time it’s convenient to do so.'

What does the author mean? Comcast certainly doesn't own the entire Internet, so why is it a meaningless distinction?

2 comments

The public Internet is a bunch of connected private networks with peering agreements. So comcast can flip the public bit by turning off peering whenever they want.
Making that distinction would mean Comcast is justified in pricing it differently, but since we already know Comcast is not justified, the distinction must be meaningless.