[gergles]

Comcast is a residential ISP. What possible traffic could there be to flow out of their network, other than requests for other data? By that logic, everyone has to pay to peer with Comcast because "Ha ha, we have all the customers. Darn, it sure is a shame that our customers don't have any data to send to you. Darn it, we really wish we could do free peering, but we just can't, aw, darn it. [cue South Park cable company responses]"

No, what happened was Comcast discovered another place they could fuck over the customer - by charging for peering even though it benefits their customers to not do so, and decided to spin it into some way that makes people feel like Comcast was somehow being injured by Netflix under the old settlement-free peering model.

[jauer]

While Comcast is primarily a residential ISP they do have a non-inconsequential number of transit & business customers that have more balanced or outbound heavy traffic flows. It most certainly isn't enough to balance out the residential traffic but they are trying to grow that end of the business.

[santosha]

Neither Comcast nor Netflix are trying to operate a non-profit, it's a payment dispute between two large companies who disagree over who should pay. You could just as well argue that Netflix was letting Cogent / Comcast fight it out instead of directly peering with ISPs which benefits customers.

[the_ancient]

The Biggest problem here is, I as a Comcast customer have already paid Comcast to bring me the packets from Netflix... That is what my outrageous bill every month is for..

They will now be DOUBLE BILLING for the same packet, a cost that WILL BE passed along to the netflix customer.

[_delirium]

But what about the Comcast customers who don't use Netflix? They win from this deal! At least, if you make the assumption that costs are passed on to the consumer, as you seem to be making.

[the_ancient]

Costs will be passed along on the netflix side

Savings(if any) will not be passed along on the comcast side

Personally I do not believe there will be any real saving for comcast in the first place, so there is nothing to pass along, it is 100% profit for them

[RKearney]

Previously Comcast argued that, I believe it was Level 3, was "pushing 5 times more data onto their network than Comcast was pushing onto theirs"

This made me laugh seeing as every one of Comcast's customer ISP packages have 5 times higher download speeds than upload speeds.

It's almost as if Comcast is forcibly causing an imbalance of traffic so they can extort more money out of Tier 1 providers.